[00:01.850 --> 00:09.730]  You've been listening to Free Speech Radio News, supported by Pacifica Radio, Community Radio Station affiliates, and listener supporters.
[00:10.310 --> 00:14.010]  Today's newscast was produced by Monica Lopez and Kristen Schwartz.
[00:14.250 --> 00:16.470]  Our Headlines Editor is Shannon Young.
[00:16.770 --> 00:19.030]  Our DC Editor, Leanne Caldwell.
[00:19.470 --> 00:23.150]  Today's technical team included Rose Kitabji and Pup Lowe.
[00:23.430 --> 00:24.630]  I'm Nell Abram.
[00:34.230 --> 00:37.210]  And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
[00:37.410 --> 00:38.630]  The time is 7 o'clock.
[00:38.790 --> 00:39.470]  Time once again.
[00:39.970 --> 00:40.870]  We're off the hook.
[00:46.270 --> 00:48.090]  The telephone keeps ringing.
[00:48.510 --> 00:50.610]  So I ripped it off the wall.
[00:51.710 --> 00:53.570]  I cut myself while shaving.
[00:54.270 --> 00:56.110]  Now I can't make a call.
[00:56.870 --> 00:58.930]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:01.650 --> 01:04.390]  Bum-diddly-bum for the best, it's fake for worst.
[01:05.070 --> 01:06.870]  I hope that's understood.
[01:07.090 --> 01:07.850]  Bum-diddly-bum!
[02:04.540 --> 02:05.520]  And good evening to everybody.
[02:05.580 --> 02:06.360]  The program is off the hook.
[02:06.400 --> 02:08.360]  Emmanuel Galtzine here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[02:08.520 --> 02:09.860]  Joined this week by Mike.
[02:09.860 --> 02:10.300]  Hi.
[02:10.460 --> 02:11.540]  On the other side of the room, not Kevin.
[02:11.960 --> 02:12.400]  Hello.
[02:12.640 --> 02:13.460]  And is that everybody?
[02:13.620 --> 02:14.160]  That's the whole room?
[02:14.640 --> 02:15.560]  Where is everybody?
[02:15.760 --> 02:17.120]  We have a skeleton crew tonight.
[02:17.200 --> 02:18.040]  And of course down in...
[02:18.040 --> 02:19.780]  Actually, where are you, Bernie S?
[02:20.040 --> 02:26.700]  I'm three miles from the nearest paved road in the rural area of northeastern Pennsylvania.
[02:26.700 --> 02:26.840]  Yeah.
[02:27.360 --> 02:30.420]  That's rather vague, but sounds good.
[02:30.440 --> 02:32.000]  Actually, you sound better than usual.
[02:32.260 --> 02:35.000]  A testament again to the improving technology of Sprint PCS?
[02:35.140 --> 02:38.320]  Well, actually, no cellular carrier works where I am.
[02:38.420 --> 02:39.060]  Oh, that is good.
[02:39.480 --> 02:42.820]  It's down in a valley and far from civilization.
[02:43.640 --> 02:43.840]  Yeah.
[02:44.020 --> 02:45.580]  You know, I could use a little bit of that myself.
[02:46.340 --> 02:49.080]  It's very relaxing here, although it's not why I came.
[02:49.080 --> 02:49.820]  I can get into that.
[02:49.920 --> 02:52.460]  But it's very quiet.
[02:52.620 --> 02:55.080]  You can hear yourself think, and you can...
[02:55.080 --> 02:59.460]  Where I am, if you shout or clap your hands, you can hear five distinct echoes.
[03:00.460 --> 03:00.820]  Wow.
[03:00.980 --> 03:01.500]  You want to try that?
[03:01.840 --> 03:04.340]  Well, I don't know if it would play over the air very well, but...
[03:04.340 --> 03:05.880]  Yeah, but we could hear the reaction to it.
[03:05.940 --> 03:08.640]  Maybe other people would shout back from distant towns or something like that.
[03:08.680 --> 03:15.000]  There is a Verizon cell phone tower that was built here late last year, about a mile and a half away.
[03:16.000 --> 03:18.300]  It'd be a line of sight if there weren't a free hill between here and there.
[03:19.840 --> 03:21.160]  But it's not switched on yet.
[03:21.640 --> 03:22.220]  Oh, really?
[03:22.380 --> 03:22.980]  It's very odd.
[03:23.200 --> 03:25.320]  Sprint PCS has a roaming agreement with Verizon.
[03:25.320 --> 03:30.500]  And if I'm on the top of the mountain near here, I can hit another cell site that's Verizon.
[03:30.820 --> 03:34.340]  And I can use both voice and data services with my Sprint PCS cell phone.
[03:34.660 --> 03:39.940]  But if I get right up next to this one that they just built, that's near to where I am, nothing.
[03:39.940 --> 03:40.940]  It's not turned on yet.
[03:41.540 --> 03:43.340]  So now what are you talking to us on right now?
[03:43.840 --> 03:44.240]  Landline.
[03:44.840 --> 03:46.380]  On what used to be an old...
[03:46.380 --> 03:47.400]  It's a rural switch.
[03:47.600 --> 03:50.360]  But I think they just installed a new one about two weeks ago here.
[03:50.580 --> 03:53.120]  Because all kinds of wacky things have been going on.
[03:53.120 --> 04:01.220]  There's been just unexplained hang-ups and just strange noises on the line.
[04:01.300 --> 04:03.020]  I don't think it's the FBI wiretapping me up here.
[04:03.140 --> 04:04.440]  But it's just...
[04:04.440 --> 04:06.580]  I've talked to a neighbor who's an engineer himself.
[04:06.720 --> 04:10.740]  And there's just strange goings-on with the phone system.
[04:10.840 --> 04:12.140]  I'll have to take a trip over to the switch.
[04:12.260 --> 04:14.720]  And I know somebody used to work there and see...
[04:14.720 --> 04:20.680]  Well, if you do that, if you do that, I'd be very curious as to what kind of a switch they switched from, if they just installed a new one.
[04:20.680 --> 04:24.100]  Because I'm under the impression that everything these days is a digital switch in the States.
[04:24.460 --> 04:25.080]  It probably is.
[04:25.120 --> 04:29.120]  When I was a kid up here, they actually had a step-by-step switch here.
[04:29.300 --> 04:29.520]  Yeah.
[04:29.780 --> 04:30.820]  I was walking through it.
[04:30.880 --> 04:31.740]  It was loud and noisy.
[04:31.920 --> 04:33.720]  And I've enjoyed walking through it.
[04:33.780 --> 04:34.760]  Well, I remember those days.
[04:34.880 --> 04:36.500]  I mean, I never had a step office.
[04:37.080 --> 04:41.400]  And I guess we get into the technicalities, what a step office is, as opposed to what a crossbar office is.
[04:41.400 --> 04:45.480]  But step is basically, I guess it's less advanced than crossbar.
[04:45.620 --> 04:51.400]  Crossbar is a little bit closer to completely automated, almost electronic type of switching.
[04:51.520 --> 04:52.560]  I'm explaining it wrong.
[04:52.680 --> 04:57.200]  But basically, step, crossbar, electronic, ESS, is the progression.
[04:57.200 --> 05:02.060]  And then after that, completely digital phone systems, which I think everybody has now.
[05:02.060 --> 05:06.160]  But back then, and back then meaning, what, the 70s, 80s even?
[05:06.460 --> 05:06.660]  Yeah.
[05:06.860 --> 05:08.520]  You could tell.
[05:08.520 --> 05:10.700]  You could tell a phone company's switch.
[05:10.880 --> 05:21.280]  You could tell what kind of a switch it was based on the way the ring sounded, based on certain noises that happened before the ring, based on the busy signal, the numbering format, all sorts of things like that.
[05:21.380 --> 05:24.320]  And every single part of the States was unique in some way.
[05:24.320 --> 05:34.040]  And we used to call all kinds of exchanges in weird and distant places just to hear the strange rings and weird sounds that would happen when you placed a phone call.
[05:34.140 --> 05:34.700]  Those were the days.
[05:34.820 --> 05:35.760]  And those days are gone.
[05:36.460 --> 05:36.840]  Largely.
[05:37.200 --> 05:40.300]  But fortunately, some people have recorded those things and archived them.
[05:40.380 --> 05:48.720]  And I think we're going to be having a panel at the Last Hope Conference that will be playing some of these sounds, if I'm not mistaken.
[05:48.900 --> 05:51.580]  Well, I hope you're not, because I'd like to hear that myself.
[05:51.580 --> 05:59.600]  I don't know which panel specifically you're talking about, but I do know we do have a few Phone Freak panels and telephone history panels that have been submitted and have been approved.
[06:00.280 --> 06:03.180]  I know, not Kevin, you're involved in the Telefreak project.
[06:03.340 --> 06:04.920]  Do you want to tell us anything about the Telefreak project?
[06:05.160 --> 06:14.700]  The Telefreak project, as I mentioned last time, is a community of people who have come together and rebuilt the old days of voice conference bridges.
[06:15.620 --> 06:19.600]  And we've used asterisks and, you know, set up boxes so people all over the world can call them for free.
[06:19.600 --> 06:21.440]  Asterisk being a computer system?
[06:21.740 --> 06:25.320]  It's a language that mimics a PBX.
[06:26.500 --> 06:28.460]  PBX being private branch exchange?
[06:28.720 --> 06:29.260]  Yes.
[06:29.260 --> 06:30.900]  That's kind of an internal phone network?
[06:31.220 --> 06:37.100]  And we're bringing our whole system into the conference, so anyone can dial basically anywhere in the world.
[06:37.500 --> 06:38.220]  And we'll be having...
[06:38.220 --> 06:40.540]  World being the planet Earth that we're on right now?
[06:40.720 --> 06:40.980]  No.
[06:41.740 --> 06:43.180]  I'm sorry, just defining terms.
[06:43.280 --> 06:43.540]  Is that okay?
[06:43.760 --> 06:45.780]  Could you please clarify what you mean by planet?
[06:46.940 --> 06:53.420]  Well, okay, so basically at the Hope Conference, you're going to be, I guess, emulating the old days.
[06:53.640 --> 06:54.260]  A conference?
[06:54.520 --> 06:55.400]  What does that mean?
[06:56.240 --> 06:57.200]  Let's drop it already.
[06:57.440 --> 06:58.900]  Yes, we'll be emulating the old days.
[06:58.900 --> 07:03.660]  And if anyone has old phones they'd like to bring in and just allow people to play with, we'll hook them up.
[07:03.800 --> 07:06.540]  You know, you can dial it, dial out, dial other people.
[07:07.040 --> 07:07.800]  Tons of fun.
[07:08.300 --> 07:10.460]  Contests, workshops, the whole deal.
[07:10.700 --> 07:11.920]  People can bring in old phones?
[07:12.040 --> 07:13.100]  People can bring in their old phones.
[07:13.100 --> 07:16.020]  I'm asking people to bring in their old phones because I would love to play with them.
[07:16.100 --> 07:21.240]  Wait, are you expecting people to walk around New York City with desk phones, those, you know, black rotary dial phones?
[07:21.360 --> 07:22.680]  Is that what you're talking about or something else?
[07:22.940 --> 07:25.200]  Anything from pay phones to...
[07:25.200 --> 07:27.040]  You think someone's going to come in with a big pay phone?
[07:27.120 --> 07:28.380]  I hope someone does.
[07:28.540 --> 07:32.400]  Okay, so if they walk in with a pay phone, you're saying you'll be able to plug it in and use it?
[07:32.900 --> 07:35.620]  With a little bit of tweaking, a little hacking, we could get it working.
[07:35.780 --> 07:37.160]  Even if it's an Austrian pay phone.
[07:37.720 --> 07:38.940]  Yeah, you know, that might happen.
[07:38.940 --> 07:44.880]  We know of an Austrian pay phone that currently is in Vienna, but it was at the German camp last year.
[07:45.160 --> 07:48.540]  And that phone could easily be finding its way over here.
[07:48.740 --> 07:50.180]  Maybe it's on a boat right now, in fact.
[07:50.400 --> 07:50.560]  Maybe.
[07:50.620 --> 07:55.980]  So if somebody walks in with that pay phone, you're saying that it won't be any problem at all.
[07:56.000 --> 07:59.780]  It'll be as simple as anything to plug that in and start using it.
[07:59.800 --> 08:01.500]  Oh, no, it'll be tons of problems, and that's what makes it fun.
[08:01.600 --> 08:01.900]  Okay.
[08:02.280 --> 08:02.620]  All right.
[08:03.040 --> 08:05.060]  As long as the Austrians know that when they bring the phone over.
[08:05.220 --> 08:05.660]  And Kevin?
[08:05.660 --> 08:06.240]  Yes.
[08:06.800 --> 08:12.600]  Will people be able to do other things with this system that'll be at the last HOPE conference?
[08:12.600 --> 08:19.380]  Will they be able to bring, say, a blue box and make calls the way freakers used to?
[08:19.740 --> 08:21.100]  Hopefully we'll have that set up.
[08:21.100 --> 08:23.220]  As of right now, it's still tentative.
[08:23.960 --> 08:24.320]  Wow.
[08:24.520 --> 08:28.960]  There was a great presentation by Fiber Optic at the previous HOPE conference, HOPE No.
[08:29.060 --> 08:29.280]  6.
[08:29.380 --> 08:30.380]  Yes, Project MF.
[08:30.860 --> 08:32.160]  That was incredible.
[08:32.360 --> 08:34.340]  MF, by the way, standing for multi-frequency.
[08:34.340 --> 08:36.060]  You know, that doesn't help anyone.
[08:36.160 --> 08:37.560]  Don't get any ideas about what it stands for.
[08:37.780 --> 08:49.700]  Our listeners who've been around for quite a few years may remember that when you would dial a long-distance phone call, it wouldn't ring that distant phone switch right away.
[08:49.780 --> 08:52.500]  You would hear some clicks and ker-chunks.
[08:52.760 --> 08:58.380]  Then you'd hear a series of tones that sounded like touch phones, but they're higher pitched and they were in rapid sequence.
[08:58.700 --> 09:11.680]  And those are MF tones, multi-frequency tones, which AT&T, back in the bell system, was whole, would use to route calls through its public switch telephone network.
[09:11.680 --> 09:17.560]  It used to be, Bernie, that you could say to people, those tones that you hear when you make a long-distance phone call, those tones you hear in the distance.
[09:17.560 --> 09:30.320]  Now, that hasn't happened in such a long period of time, and kids today have no memory of those days, that the easiest way to get them to know what you're talking about is to say it's those tones you hear on side two of Pink Floyd's The Wall.
[09:30.480 --> 09:30.840]  Exactly.
[09:31.060 --> 09:35.040]  Actually, you can't even say that anymore because you don't have vinyl records, so it's like, I don't even know where to put it.
[09:35.100 --> 09:36.120]  It's on a single CD.
[09:36.440 --> 09:37.480]  That was edited, actually.
[09:37.480 --> 09:50.420]  If you listen, as I did, if you listen and play that, say that part of the album back slowly, they edited out one or two of the digits, so they were whoever did the audio production on that.
[09:50.600 --> 09:51.700]  It was great.
[09:51.960 --> 09:54.440]  Oh, and I saw a movie just the other night.
[09:54.580 --> 10:02.240]  Oh, I was watching, I think it was Three Days of the Condor, where somebody made a long-distance phone call.
[10:02.340 --> 10:02.900]  I had Robert Edford.
[10:03.020 --> 10:04.440]  Isn't that Kevin Mitnick's favorite film?
[10:04.520 --> 10:05.060]  Yeah, his favorite movie.
[10:05.060 --> 10:19.240]  But forget that, there was just a long-distance phone call that was made, and when they hung up, you heard this 2,600 hertz tone, just briefly, this jing sound, which you always used to hear when a phone long-distance call would hang up.
[10:19.620 --> 10:21.480]  So they got that part right.
[10:21.600 --> 10:21.860]  It was good.
[10:22.020 --> 10:24.420]  And that, I hear, is where we got our name from, 2,600 hertz.
[10:24.420 --> 10:25.440]  I've heard that rumor, too.
[10:25.540 --> 10:25.700]  Yeah.
[10:26.120 --> 10:28.340]  Nobody really knows how we got started, but...
[10:29.420 --> 10:30.460]  That's patently false.
[10:30.720 --> 10:33.180]  Yeah, well, you know, people will deny just about anything.
[10:33.660 --> 10:40.900]  But yeah, it's a lot of history, so I'm glad we took this little trip down memory lane, because we'll certainly be sharing that with a lot of people at the last HOPE conference.
[10:41.080 --> 10:45.660]  Now, as far as HOPE goes, a couple of announcements since last week.
[10:45.760 --> 10:51.340]  We mentioned that the hotel was sold out, the rate for the hotel was sold out, the special conference rate.
[10:51.580 --> 10:56.080]  I don't think that's ever happened before, which tells me that a lot of people are registering and that we're going to have quite a turnout.
[10:57.040 --> 11:10.060]  You can still register at the Hotel Pennsylvania for the conference, taking place July 18, 19, and 20, but you'll be paying the regular rate, unless you're able to find some fantastic deal through some online service, which we're not aware of.
[11:10.080 --> 11:11.280]  If you do, please let us know what that is.
[11:11.860 --> 11:13.740]  But Mike, I think we have some alternatives, too.
[11:14.240 --> 11:18.340]  Yes, we have many alternatives, and you can read about them on HOPE.net, which is a website.
[11:19.100 --> 11:20.400]  It's, in fact, our website.
[11:21.140 --> 11:22.200]  It's more than a website.
[11:22.300 --> 11:23.000]  It's a way of life.
[11:23.580 --> 11:24.640]  That's Obama's website.
[11:25.540 --> 11:27.140]  Look, stop confusing the audience.
[11:27.360 --> 11:27.840]  Yeah, that was an example.
[11:28.220 --> 11:38.860]  Go to HOPE.net and learn about the HOPE conference, and one of the things you can learn there is that we have some discount rates at the New Yorker Hotel and the Hotel Walcott, which are both about a block away.
[11:39.060 --> 11:40.260]  But there are other hotels, too.
[11:40.360 --> 11:41.320]  And there's many, many other hotels.
[11:41.320 --> 11:44.740]  I was looking, and I found some for, like, you know, 50 bucks a night.
[11:44.920 --> 11:46.760]  I think that was just dorm beds for 50 bucks a night.
[11:46.760 --> 11:47.600]  Okay, fine, but you know what?
[11:47.600 --> 11:49.300]  You don't need much more than that.
[11:49.300 --> 11:52.880]  If you're coming to New York City to take part in the Hacker Conference, you're going to be up till all hours.
[11:53.100 --> 11:55.160]  You don't need the Ritz-Carlton or whatever.
[11:55.440 --> 11:57.700]  You know, a bed in a hallway will do.
[11:57.900 --> 12:00.200]  Even if you're just coming to New York, there's so many things to do.
[12:00.300 --> 12:04.660]  But the HOPE conference is one of the better things to do, and it will take up all your time.
[12:04.800 --> 12:10.720]  I mean, we suggest people stay in New York for at least a week or two and take in a lot of the other things that are going on, HOPE being, of course, the highlight.
[12:11.460 --> 12:15.220]  Now, we've announced a whole bunch of other speakers in the last week.
[12:15.380 --> 12:16.960]  We're going to be announcing a whole bunch more.
[12:17.600 --> 12:20.980]  We're putting together the program and the final schedule and all that kind of thing.
[12:21.180 --> 12:25.740]  So it's all coming together rapidly, and it'll be upon us before we know it.
[12:27.080 --> 12:31.540]  Also, people who want to submit talks, you know, it's really, really late in the game.
[12:31.540 --> 12:36.820]  We have something like 100 talks already, and I can't guarantee that there's space.
[12:36.820 --> 12:38.300]  I cannot guarantee it at this point.
[12:38.420 --> 12:41.240]  But if you want to submit something, you better do it now.
[12:41.440 --> 12:43.480]  The 15th of this month is the absolute cutoff.
[12:43.480 --> 12:47.300]  We can't even consider anything past the 15th of June.
[12:47.440 --> 12:58.120]  So if you have an idea for a talk you want to give to a couple of thousand hackers or a panel suggestion or something like that, email speakers at hope.net.
[12:58.280 --> 13:03.800]  Speakers at hope.net is the email address just to mail to submit your ideas for talks.
[13:04.000 --> 13:06.160]  And we have so many good ideas for talks.
[13:06.920 --> 13:09.440]  There's some fantastic talks being scheduled.
[13:09.600 --> 13:10.680]  Just amazing stuff.
[13:10.940 --> 13:16.160]  As all the whole conferences have just been phenomenally interesting information that you can't get anywhere else.
[13:16.260 --> 13:19.140]  It's frustrating how much good stuff there is because you can't possibly see it all.
[13:19.220 --> 13:21.780]  That's just why we tape it so that we can eventually see it.
[13:21.780 --> 13:23.580]  I still haven't gotten around to seeing all of hope number six.
[13:23.760 --> 13:24.640]  Do you actually use tape?
[13:25.100 --> 13:25.700]  Well, no.
[13:26.060 --> 13:26.640]  No, we do.
[13:27.000 --> 13:27.480]  Is it tape?
[13:27.940 --> 13:29.060]  It's digital tape, though, right?
[13:29.300 --> 13:30.100]  Oh, well, DV tape.
[13:30.220 --> 13:30.360]  Yeah.
[13:30.360 --> 13:31.100]  It's a tape.
[13:31.200 --> 13:31.740]  It's a tape.
[13:31.840 --> 13:33.900]  Yeah, everything comes down to a tape at some point, I guess.
[13:34.660 --> 13:40.340]  And this year, in fact, we had to add a track because we've gotten so many good talks.
[13:40.520 --> 13:41.460]  A lot more, I think.
[13:41.520 --> 13:53.120]  So we're going to have three main tracks and one adjunct track, an unscheduled track for those people who want to come up with something at the last minute or don't know they're going to be attending to the last minute.
[13:53.480 --> 13:55.280]  We try to open up a room for that as well.
[13:55.620 --> 14:02.300]  There were some good adjunct track talks at the previous Hope and other Hope's.
[14:02.300 --> 14:06.940]  People just decided off the cuff when they got there, I'm going to talk about this to a bunch of people.
[14:07.100 --> 14:09.460]  And you write it down on this board.
[14:09.460 --> 14:11.780]  You can reserve a slot for yourself.
[14:12.040 --> 14:15.300]  And there were some really interesting things that people wanted to present.
[14:15.300 --> 14:20.700]  They didn't submit formally a proposal or they didn't get it in time or they just didn't want to submit it that way.
[14:21.120 --> 14:24.280]  There's just so much really good information being shared at these Hope conferences.
[14:24.280 --> 14:30.100]  And some of those talks that were in the adjunct track have actually advanced to the schedule track this year.
[14:30.780 --> 14:33.400]  So you'll be able to see bigger versions of those talks.
[14:34.120 --> 14:37.200]  They'll be announced on the website and in the program as well.
[14:37.380 --> 14:39.640]  Again, all the information, www.hope.net.
[14:39.800 --> 14:44.220]  And also people who are interested in volunteering to help run the conference, volunteers at hope.net.
[14:44.800 --> 14:48.220]  And, Mike, I believe we also have vendor space available, right?
[14:48.540 --> 14:48.800]  Yeah.
[14:48.800 --> 14:51.120]  So vendors at hope.net.
[14:51.400 --> 14:54.820]  And if you'd like to be informed before you email, go to hope.net.
[14:55.660 --> 14:57.060]  Not anything at hope.net.
[14:57.180 --> 14:59.080]  Just go there and click the links.
[14:59.260 --> 14:59.380]  Right.
[14:59.480 --> 15:00.680]  Or click www.
[15:01.020 --> 15:01.880]  You could do that, too.
[15:02.140 --> 15:02.760]  It works.
[15:02.940 --> 15:04.600]  Yeah, but so lame.
[15:05.180 --> 15:08.400]  Anyway, so yeah, hope.net is where all that information is.
[15:08.500 --> 15:12.500]  So by all means, feel free to let us know how you feel about all that.
[15:12.720 --> 15:13.840]  It's coming up soon, isn't it?
[15:13.980 --> 15:15.100]  Yeah, it's coming up in a month.
[15:15.640 --> 15:16.580]  Just over a month.
[15:17.200 --> 15:18.460]  We're going to be going crazy, I'm sure.
[15:18.460 --> 15:20.080]  And what are the dates again, Emmanuel?
[15:20.420 --> 15:22.280]  July 18, 19, and 20.
[15:22.680 --> 15:23.300]  And you know what?
[15:23.360 --> 15:24.540]  A lot of people are writing to us.
[15:24.620 --> 15:25.660]  I might as well get to this right now.
[15:26.340 --> 15:30.640]  A couple of the letters that people have been sending in to us.
[15:31.760 --> 15:33.840]  Last week, I pledged $150 to Off the Hook.
[15:33.860 --> 15:36.600]  I was told by the operator that I would be...
[15:36.940 --> 15:37.220]  Operator.
[15:37.340 --> 15:38.700]  That's what they call people who answer the phone.
[15:38.880 --> 15:40.720]  I guess you become an operator when you pick up the phone.
[15:40.900 --> 15:41.640]  I mean, that's kind of cool.
[15:41.720 --> 15:45.760]  If I was a kid and I knew I'd be an operator just by picking up a phone, it would be the biggest thrill of my life.
[15:46.260 --> 15:48.880]  But apparently, if you pick up the phone here at BAI, you're an operator.
[15:49.100 --> 15:49.880]  But anyway, okay.
[15:50.080 --> 15:50.600]  Enough about that.
[15:50.820 --> 15:56.860]  I was told by the operator that I would be receiving an invoice in the mail along with the premium of two Hope tickets and a DVD set of Hope No.
[15:56.960 --> 15:57.180]  6.
[15:57.540 --> 15:59.600]  He said I would be getting it in six to eight weeks.
[15:59.600 --> 16:04.220]  I have just done the math and realized that date is dangerously close to the last hope.
[16:04.320 --> 16:08.500]  I was wondering if you can shed any light on whether I would be receiving the tickets in time.
[16:08.800 --> 16:09.400]  Signed, Mike.
[16:09.600 --> 16:10.980]  Well, Mike, you raise a very good point.
[16:11.120 --> 16:13.440]  Now, here's how it's going to work.
[16:14.460 --> 16:15.800]  Premiums do get sent out.
[16:15.980 --> 16:18.880]  It takes a few weeks, sometimes even a few months for things to get sent out.
[16:18.980 --> 16:21.200]  So that's probably what's going to happen with your DVD set.
[16:21.440 --> 16:25.480]  But as far as the tickets go, that's something, obviously, that's of an immediate nature.
[16:25.480 --> 16:35.460]  So what we're going to be doing, if you pledged for tickets in the last fundraiser, we were on for four weeks and we were giving away tickets to the Hope Conference during that period.
[16:35.580 --> 16:39.180]  And if you're one of the people who pledged, first of all, make sure you've paid your pledge.
[16:39.280 --> 16:42.540]  If you pledge with a credit card, fine, then it's already paid for.
[16:42.980 --> 16:50.360]  If you pledge some other way, then I would suggest paying immediately because if you haven't done that, yeah, we might have an issue.
[16:50.360 --> 16:55.860]  Next week, in one week, I'm going to be getting a list of names from people here at the radio station.
[16:56.020 --> 17:00.740]  And it'll be a list of the people who have paid for the pledges that involved Hope Tickets.
[17:01.020 --> 17:06.640]  And then we have your name and your address and we will send you all the information that you need to get into the conference.
[17:06.640 --> 17:10.900]  So if your pledge has not been paid by then, then, yeah, you might have a problem.
[17:10.920 --> 17:14.740]  If your pledge has been paid, then there won't be any problem.
[17:15.400 --> 17:22.360]  And I guess in the period after that, the week or two after that, if you don't get something from us, that's the time to contact us.
[17:22.440 --> 17:25.840]  OTH at 2600.com so that we can sort it out and figure it all out.
[17:25.920 --> 17:30.060]  But there should be plenty of opportunity to fix any problems.
[17:31.100 --> 17:31.980]  So don't worry.
[17:32.060 --> 17:32.420]  Don't panic.
[17:33.400 --> 17:34.140]  Here's another letter.
[17:34.300 --> 17:36.660]  I recently purchased my ticket for The Last Hope.
[17:36.680 --> 17:38.000]  I wanted to give you a heads up.
[17:38.100 --> 17:38.900]  I was at Hope No.
[17:38.980 --> 17:40.620]  6 and I was coming down the escalator.
[17:41.240 --> 17:42.740]  I saw you staring at me.
[17:44.520 --> 17:45.440]  This is addressed to me.
[17:45.580 --> 17:50.160]  I was a little confused at first, but I just brushed it off, figuring you were just tired from putting together an awesome convention.
[17:50.420 --> 17:53.980]  A few months later, while listening to Off the Hook, you were talking about attending another convention.
[17:53.980 --> 17:59.060]  And you stated, it's funny how all FBI agents wear baseball hats and they stick out like a sore thumb.
[17:59.480 --> 18:00.140]  Then it hit me.
[18:00.200 --> 18:03.240]  I was wearing a baseball hat and that is why you were staring at me.
[18:03.320 --> 18:05.380]  I just want to let you know that I am not an FBI agent.
[18:05.600 --> 18:08.860]  And I will probably be wearing another baseball hat because I am bald and fair-skinned.
[18:09.480 --> 18:10.200]  Good work.
[18:10.660 --> 18:12.480]  I can't wait for The Last Hope, signed Tito.
[18:12.600 --> 18:13.280]  Well, Tito, you know...
[18:13.280 --> 18:13.660]  Wait, wait.
[18:13.700 --> 18:14.980]  I mean, you're wearing a baseball cap.
[18:15.020 --> 18:15.360]  I am.
[18:15.440 --> 18:15.860]  I am.
[18:15.920 --> 18:17.300]  In fact, a lot of people do.
[18:17.500 --> 18:19.060]  In fact, a lot of people at our conference do.
[18:19.180 --> 18:20.640]  And Tito, I don't think I was staring at you.
[18:20.700 --> 18:22.260]  I think I was probably in a daze.
[18:22.280 --> 18:25.720]  If I was coming down the escalator, I might have even been asleep at that time.
[18:25.900 --> 18:29.960]  So, yeah, my eyes stay open a lot of times, but I wouldn't take it personally.
[18:31.220 --> 18:34.000]  And if I saw somebody with a baseball hat, I don't think that would stand out enough.
[18:34.160 --> 18:35.300]  But I'm glad you had fun.
[18:35.400 --> 18:36.120]  I'm glad you're at the conference.
[18:40.760 --> 18:41.760]  All types of welcome.
[18:42.000 --> 18:44.360]  Yeah, we welcome federal people with or without their hats.
[18:44.580 --> 18:45.040]  Hey, Emanuel.
[18:45.220 --> 18:45.400]  Yes.
[18:45.640 --> 18:55.480]  I wonder if any of the feds or state or local law enforcement agents that infiltrate our conference in plain clothes, and many do, I wonder if any of them actually wear 2,600 caps.
[18:55.720 --> 18:56.540]  I'm sure they do.
[18:56.700 --> 18:57.140]  Why wouldn't they?
[18:57.140 --> 18:58.320]  That would be a great disguise.
[18:58.680 --> 18:59.540]  Well, not really.
[18:59.980 --> 19:01.820]  You can pretty much tell.
[19:01.960 --> 19:03.540]  I mean, I'm good at spotting cops.
[19:03.660 --> 19:04.800]  I'm good at spotting feds.
[19:05.140 --> 19:07.660]  You know, it's not the hardest thing in the world to do.
[19:07.800 --> 19:11.600]  You know, at rallies on the street, it's ridiculously simple.
[19:11.820 --> 19:13.400]  It's almost like you can always tell.
[19:13.840 --> 19:17.220]  I see a lot of undercover cops every day in Philadelphia.
[19:17.220 --> 19:29.360]  When I get on the subway platform, the L, the elevated subway in Philadelphia, a whole, you know, there's probably 20 or 30 of them I see every time.
[19:29.540 --> 19:36.080]  And the reason they blow their cover to me is when they flash their badge to get a free ride on the subway.
[19:36.580 --> 19:37.740]  Yeah, it's not the smartest.
[19:38.120 --> 19:39.300]  That's against SEPTA rules.
[19:39.540 --> 19:46.020]  You have to either be a uniformed police officer or show a gold badge as a detective in plain clothes.
[19:46.020 --> 19:56.520]  But all these undercover cops in Philadelphia, not all of them, but a lot of the ones I see, flash their silver badge in defiance of the rules and steal a free ride and blow their covers in the process.
[19:56.540 --> 19:58.020]  Yeah, it's the dumbest thing ever.
[19:58.180 --> 20:02.060]  And I enjoy watching them because I can profile them.
[20:05.200 --> 20:05.860]  Are you there?
[20:06.040 --> 20:06.800]  Yeah, something happened.
[20:07.120 --> 20:09.600]  I have a question, Bernie.
[20:09.840 --> 20:10.120]  Go ahead.
[20:10.420 --> 20:14.440]  Are you sure they're undercover or maybe they just are on their way to or from work?
[20:15.360 --> 20:17.500]  They are on their way to work in the morning.
[20:17.780 --> 20:20.240]  And then maybe when they get to work, they'll put on a uniform.
[20:21.020 --> 20:26.440]  No, these are undercover guys because they have they have like street clothes on like they're going to be doing.
[20:26.980 --> 20:27.500]  They are.
[20:27.560 --> 20:28.980]  I even asked one of them.
[20:29.040 --> 20:31.040]  I said, why do you play your cover like this anytime?
[20:31.200 --> 20:32.700]  He said, well, it's the setting.
[20:33.360 --> 20:33.600]  No.
[20:34.400 --> 20:45.020]  So what I don't get is if you're an undercover cop and just one one criminal sees you or one one citizen sees you, isn't your cover pretty much blown for all time unless you keep going to different neighborhoods?
[20:45.500 --> 20:46.200]  I guess.
[20:46.220 --> 20:49.260]  I mean, unless it's blown on television or something, which happens occasionally.
[20:49.340 --> 20:50.340]  Well, I mean, I see it on television.
[20:50.500 --> 20:51.920]  I'm not basing life on television.
[20:51.920 --> 20:57.280]  But if you see how undercover cops work there, they're pretty much patrolling in the same neighborhood day after day.
[20:57.580 --> 20:59.720]  You'd think everybody would know who they were at that point.
[20:59.720 --> 21:10.500]  Well, I enjoy getting on the escalator up to the L platform and seeing people in front of me in plain clothes and thinking to myself, I'll bet he's an undercover cop.
[21:10.660 --> 21:12.180]  Because you can just tell.
[21:12.340 --> 21:16.600]  And then sure enough, they flip out their badge when they try to scam their free ticket.
[21:16.740 --> 21:18.640]  And I'm almost always right.
[21:18.800 --> 21:20.520]  So you can learn to spot them.
[21:20.680 --> 21:21.780]  Here's another thing I don't get.
[21:21.900 --> 21:27.340]  Now, they flash this badge at what I assume is some kind of a clerk in the subway.
[21:28.100 --> 21:30.180]  And how closely does that clerk look at the badge?
[21:30.340 --> 21:30.840]  Not at all.
[21:30.980 --> 21:34.880]  So you could just pretty much flash anything and maybe the door would be open for you as well.
[21:35.200 --> 21:35.480]  Absolutely.
[21:35.760 --> 21:38.340]  Now, are you necessarily impersonating a cop or are you just simply waving?
[21:38.680 --> 21:39.360]  That's a good question.
[21:39.420 --> 21:42.780]  It could be like a janitorial badge or something, you know, just any kind of badge.
[21:42.900 --> 21:43.940]  You're not saying I'm a policeman.
[21:44.120 --> 21:44.680]  You're just...
[21:45.020 --> 21:45.300]  Exactly.
[21:45.420 --> 21:46.680]  You're proud of your fake badge.
[21:46.820 --> 21:47.560]  You're holding your badge up.
[21:47.580 --> 21:48.220]  Look at my badge.
[21:48.320 --> 21:48.880]  And look at that.
[21:48.960 --> 21:49.620]  The door's open now.
[21:49.700 --> 21:51.940]  Private security people sometimes wear badges.
[21:52.020 --> 21:56.200]  If it's not legal for the cops to go through, then, you know, you're not doing anything they're not doing.
[21:56.200 --> 22:04.900]  It's no less legal than for a private citizen to flash a silver badge and board a SEPTA mass transit vehicle.
[22:05.060 --> 22:18.860]  Now, on the subject of undercover cop spotting, here in the East Village, or in the East Village, you can easily spot cops because they drive cars that aren't marked as cops, but they feel they have the right to just go through red lights whenever they want.
[22:19.020 --> 22:22.560]  And cops, for some reason in New York City, they do that more than any place else.
[22:22.560 --> 22:24.740]  They just feel that the lights do not apply to them.
[22:24.960 --> 22:35.540]  But when you're driving without a uniform on and without any kind of label on your car, it's so easy to make the cops that way because they stop and then they just go through the light as if they don't have a care in the world.
[22:35.740 --> 22:39.680]  There's only three kinds of vehicles in this city that can go through red lights with impunity, apparently.
[22:40.140 --> 22:40.920]  One is police cars.
[22:41.220 --> 22:42.560]  Two is sanitation trucks.
[22:42.560 --> 22:44.440]  And three are daily news trucks.
[22:44.840 --> 22:45.920]  And see if I'm wrong.
[22:46.060 --> 22:50.320]  Go and watch and you'll see that all three of those vehicles just with impunity go through red lights.
[22:50.480 --> 22:52.220]  Why do daily news trucks get that right?
[22:52.220 --> 22:52.780]  I don't know.
[22:52.940 --> 22:54.300]  But New York Times trucks will never do it.
[22:54.740 --> 22:55.240]  They won't.
[22:55.520 --> 22:59.420]  Well, I mean, is this just in a presumed right or is this just like embodied into some law?
[22:59.580 --> 23:05.440]  I never got the chance to actually query the driver about this, but I've seen it happen so many times that it's just...
[23:05.440 --> 23:06.580]  And nobody ever stops them.
[23:06.780 --> 23:09.900]  What about the taxi cabs that are actually undercover police vehicles?
[23:10.020 --> 23:10.500]  I've seen them.
[23:10.500 --> 23:12.420]  Yeah, yeah, I've seen that a couple of times, too.
[23:13.020 --> 23:23.460]  The rates are usually a little bit outdated on those cars, but there are taxi cabs that are really police cars, and it's easy to find out what those are, too, because they park at the precinct.
[23:24.620 --> 23:34.600]  Well, if you see them in Hot Pursuit on the street, too, it's a taxi cab racing down the street with the telltale red and blue lights behind the grill.
[23:35.100 --> 23:38.000]  So, you know, it's just amazing seeing these.
[23:38.000 --> 23:45.620]  The other thing I don't get, I don't want to spend time picking on cops, but the other thing I don't get is whenever you get pulled over by a cop, it's always the same basic kind of car.
[23:45.740 --> 23:47.000]  They never mix it up, you know?
[23:47.160 --> 23:49.880]  You're never pulled over by a Volkswagen, you know?
[23:49.940 --> 23:51.920]  It's always like a, what is it, Crown Victoria?
[23:52.100 --> 23:52.740]  What do they drive?
[23:53.100 --> 23:53.620]  Crown Vic.
[23:53.900 --> 23:54.400]  Was it?
[23:54.580 --> 23:56.360]  Crown Vic is the standard vehicle.
[23:56.360 --> 23:59.120]  I don't know why I know that, but that's the way it seems to always be.
[23:59.220 --> 23:59.400]  How about a smart car?
[23:59.500 --> 24:01.380]  I would like to see a smart car police car.
[24:01.880 --> 24:02.440]  I don't know.
[24:02.520 --> 24:03.860]  That'd be sort of ruining the whole thing for me.
[24:03.920 --> 24:07.360]  But, you know, I saw smart car police cars in Portugal, in Lisbon.
[24:07.360 --> 24:07.600]  Really?
[24:07.760 --> 24:07.900]  Yeah.
[24:08.320 --> 24:09.740]  So they do use them in Europe.
[24:09.980 --> 24:10.880]  They use smart cars for everything.
[24:11.500 --> 24:11.860]  Okay.
[24:12.120 --> 24:13.860]  Enough about police.
[24:14.140 --> 24:15.200]  This is not the police hour.
[24:16.060 --> 24:17.540]  Here's a question from a listener.
[24:17.640 --> 24:23.080]  Can you recommend a way to find out what kind of surveillance your employer is using on your work desktop slash laptop?
[24:23.080 --> 24:26.920]  Ideally, I'd like a piece of software that would work like a spyware scan.
[24:26.920 --> 24:31.440]  It would tell me what and how my company is tracking my computer's usage.
[24:31.940 --> 24:37.960]  The corollary would be your recommendation on things to do that would counter any company's surveillance.
[24:38.100 --> 24:39.840]  James writes this letter to us.
[24:39.940 --> 24:42.720]  So I guess concerned about being spied on at work.
[24:42.860 --> 24:43.260]  Mike?
[24:43.360 --> 24:44.360]  I'm afraid not, Emmanuel.
[24:44.600 --> 24:56.080]  Well, in general, a lot of the corporations do the spying not on the computer but on the network connection, in which case there wouldn't be very much you could do to detect it from your computer.
[24:57.460 --> 25:00.580]  So I would watch out if you're concerned.
[25:00.900 --> 25:03.440]  You could also see if the employer has a written policy or not.
[25:03.500 --> 25:04.840]  How do you watch out if you can't see it?
[25:05.040 --> 25:07.500]  Well, you could see if the employer has a written policy or not.
[25:08.080 --> 25:12.020]  Of course, if you start asking around, they'll probably assume you're doing something you're not supposed to.
[25:12.020 --> 25:14.140]  Yeah, it's like filing a Freedom of Information Act.
[25:14.240 --> 25:16.060]  They're going to assume you're up to something if you do it.
[25:16.240 --> 25:16.920]  And it's worth noting...
[25:16.920 --> 25:17.740]  I am up to something.
[25:17.880 --> 25:28.100]  It's worth noting that in most states, they don't actually have to even provide a written policy to show that they are monitoring the use of their own network and their own computers.
[25:29.340 --> 25:39.380]  So just because it's not written in a policy doesn't mean they're not logging every single website you visit and logging every single email.
[25:40.580 --> 25:44.340]  I mean, it's a standard procedure at most companies now.
[25:44.340 --> 26:00.400]  So if you're using your work computer for personal stuff, unless you're using an encrypted tunnel to a web proxy or encrypted tunnel thing and encrypting your email, then they probably have access to it.
[26:00.440 --> 26:02.320]  It doesn't mean they're reading it, but they're logging it.
[26:02.520 --> 26:06.820]  This doesn't help at all, but it can add some fun to the office environment.
[26:06.820 --> 26:10.280]  There's something called the Phantom Keystroker I found on ThinkGeek.
[26:10.420 --> 26:12.300]  It's basically a USB device.
[26:12.300 --> 26:19.740]  What you do is you attach this Phantom Keystroker to any USB port on your victim's computer, I guess.
[26:20.320 --> 26:22.120]  Don't need any drivers or anything like that.
[26:22.240 --> 26:29.460]  And what it does is it emulates a keyboard and mouse, periodically makes random mouse movements and types out odd garbage text and phrases.
[26:29.960 --> 26:34.920]  Your hapless co-worker pal will think his computer has been possessed or infected by a destructive virus.
[26:35.140 --> 26:40.440]  As he writhes in anger and furiously dials tech support, you can rest easy with the job well done.
[26:40.440 --> 26:44.000]  So that's a little counterattack to the boss, maybe, if you feel you're being spied upon.
[26:44.000 --> 26:45.120]  But we don't recommend it.
[26:45.320 --> 26:46.660]  Or at retail establishments.
[26:46.820 --> 26:47.580]  So many retail establishments.
[26:47.580 --> 26:50.340]  I see these point-of-sale terminals, which are really PCs.
[26:50.580 --> 26:57.080]  And you have to, while you're waiting in line, you're just staring at these USB ports, just begging for something to be plugged into them.
[26:57.820 --> 27:04.580]  And, you know, if you get really rude treatment at one of these retail establishments, it might be something somebody would consider.
[27:04.600 --> 27:07.240]  Of course, you're sinking some money into that if you just leave it there.
[27:07.400 --> 27:13.500]  Yeah, but, you know, sometimes the cathartic pleasure of doing that might be worth it.
[27:14.100 --> 27:15.500]  Okay, on to some news.
[27:15.960 --> 27:17.220]  What's up with the TSA, Mike?
[27:17.320 --> 27:21.380]  There's some kind of development with their policies?
[27:21.640 --> 27:22.240]  They've changed something?
[27:23.140 --> 27:37.820]  They used to have a policy, I guess they currently have a policy until June 21st, that if you refuse to show a photo ID at a TSA checkpoint, then you get, like, extra special searches, but they let you on the plane.
[27:38.720 --> 27:39.540]  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[27:39.540 --> 27:41.920]  I thought that they didn't let you on the plane.
[27:42.080 --> 27:45.340]  You get lots of extra screening, but apparently they let you on the plane.
[27:45.680 --> 27:49.120]  Once they determine that you have nothing dangerous in your possession.
[27:49.400 --> 27:51.840]  Okay, see, I thought John Gilmore's lawsuit against them.
[27:51.840 --> 27:57.380]  John Gilmore's lawsuit claimed that he should not, in fact, have to go through extra screening.
[27:57.620 --> 28:00.440]  I thought he couldn't fly because he didn't have ID.
[28:00.760 --> 28:05.340]  He couldn't fly because he refused to show ID and refused to go through extra screening.
[28:05.460 --> 28:06.840]  So what kind of extra screening was involved?
[28:06.960 --> 28:07.320]  I don't know.
[28:07.460 --> 28:08.320]  I never did it.
[28:08.420 --> 28:08.600]  Okay.
[28:09.540 --> 28:18.420]  But they've changed their policy so that if you willfully refuse to provide identification, then you are just not let on the plane at all.
[28:18.420 --> 28:25.320]  However, if you convince them that you have forgotten your identification, then you go through the extra screening.
[28:26.120 --> 28:26.660]  Okay.
[28:28.020 --> 28:45.580]  So if you're a terrorist or somebody who doesn't want to give their name and books a ticket in a false name, then you must remember to lie to the TSA and tell them you have forgotten your ID, not that you are willfully refusing to provide it.
[28:45.900 --> 28:47.640]  It's a good thing all these terrorists are honest.
[28:47.820 --> 28:48.100]  Yeah.
[28:48.460 --> 28:49.500]  Well, okay.
[28:49.560 --> 28:57.640]  But, you know, it sounds to me like you guys are pushing for it to be extended to everybody so that nobody can get on a plane without ID, regardless of any story that they might concoct.
[28:57.740 --> 28:59.000]  I'm just saying it doesn't make any sense.
[28:59.100 --> 29:04.900]  Well, I mean, to me, this is news because I really was under the impression that you weren't able to get on the plane at all without showing ID.
[29:05.020 --> 29:07.220]  I thought that's what all this arguing was about for the last couple of years.
[29:07.340 --> 29:09.080]  But apparently you were able to get on anyway.
[29:09.080 --> 29:10.920]  You just got asked a lot of questions.
[29:11.380 --> 29:15.720]  As Mike pointed out, you can't get it up until this new policy is in effect.
[29:15.960 --> 29:22.420]  You could board a plane without ID, even if you refuse to show it, if you agree to go through all kinds of special screening.
[29:22.780 --> 29:29.140]  Now they're saying that if you refuse to show ID, they won't let you do it at all, even with a special screening.
[29:29.300 --> 29:37.020]  But if you claim that you just forgot it or lost it or whatever, didn't have it, then they'll let you on the plane after the special screening.
[29:37.640 --> 29:43.460]  So terrorists can board the flight without ID just after undergoing special screening.
[29:43.680 --> 29:48.600]  Okay, so obviously the next step is to just make it impossible for everybody to get on flights without ID, right?
[29:48.640 --> 29:49.240]  We want to be clear.
[29:49.400 --> 29:55.880]  Only dishonest terrorists will be able to get on flights without ID but with special screening effective June 21st.
[29:56.480 --> 29:59.940]  And what's solved by showing ID to get on airplanes exactly?
[30:01.240 --> 30:03.360]  We don't have any unidentified terrorists, I guess.
[30:03.360 --> 30:15.020]  According to the TSA in their lovely press release, the initiative is the latest in a series designed to facilitate travel for legitimate passengers while enhancing the agency's risk-based focus on people, not things.
[30:15.440 --> 30:24.080]  Positively identifying passengers is an important tool in their multi-layered approach to security and one that they've significantly bolstered during the past 18 months.
[30:24.680 --> 30:25.800]  People, not things.
[30:25.960 --> 30:27.000]  People, not things.
[30:27.220 --> 30:34.640]  So if I'm an okay person, but I bring a bomb or something else dangerous on the plane, that's okay.
[30:35.060 --> 30:40.680]  But if I'm a persona non grata who doesn't have anything dangerous with them, then I don't get on the plane.
[30:41.060 --> 30:42.420]  People, not things, Bernie.
[30:42.900 --> 30:43.100]  Okay.
[30:43.440 --> 30:44.500]  All right, let's move on.
[30:44.620 --> 30:45.360]  I haven't clarified that.
[30:45.480 --> 30:48.660]  And that's your tax dollars at work with the transportation security.
[30:48.700 --> 30:58.380]  There's also, I have to point out, there's this really weird guy staring at me on this page I printed out from the TSA website saying behavior detection officers are looking out for you.
[30:58.500 --> 31:02.140]  And if it were a webpage, not a printout, I could click it to find out how.
[31:02.400 --> 31:03.440]  Well, whose face is that?
[31:03.520 --> 31:03.880]  I don't know.
[31:04.000 --> 31:04.740]  Some guy.
[31:04.980 --> 31:05.980]  Is that an advertisement?
[31:06.280 --> 31:10.400]  It's like an advertisement, but it's for the TSA on the TSA's own website.
[31:10.680 --> 31:11.480]  TSA.gov.
[31:11.720 --> 31:11.920]  Yeah.
[31:12.020 --> 31:14.140]  So you can see those eyes if you go to TSA.gov.
[31:14.260 --> 31:15.000]  I imagine so.
[31:15.160 --> 31:15.920]  That's kind of scary.
[31:16.140 --> 31:16.500]  It's weird.
[31:17.200 --> 31:19.940]  Okay, getting on to things that hackers are being blamed for this week.
[31:19.940 --> 31:34.420]  Hackers took over and defaced Comcast Corporation's web portal for several hours in the last week, leaving a cryptic message on the site that the company's 14.1 million subscribers used to access email, news, and technical support.
[31:34.660 --> 31:39.180]  The front page of Comcast.net went down shortly before 11 p.m.
[31:39.740 --> 31:45.440]  actually two Wednesdays ago and was replaced with a note saying the hackers had rocked, R-O-X-E-D.
[31:45.600 --> 31:46.300]  That's how you pronounce it, right?
[31:46.480 --> 31:46.920]  With an X?
[31:47.160 --> 31:47.680]  I don't know.
[31:47.760 --> 31:49.660]  Well, you're in the whole script kiddie world, aren't you?
[31:49.940 --> 31:50.340]  No?
[31:50.780 --> 31:51.780]  Don't you talk to them?
[31:51.840 --> 31:52.180]  I don't know.
[31:52.300 --> 31:53.080]  I thought somebody here did.
[31:53.100 --> 31:53.580]  I don't even know what the internet is.
[31:53.760 --> 31:54.000]  Okay.
[31:54.920 --> 31:58.540]  Rocked Comcast, according to postings at broadbandreports.com.
[31:58.900 --> 32:09.700]  Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Corey said late Thursday morning that the hijacking had been reversed, but some users were still unable to access Comcast.net and web-based email.
[32:10.320 --> 32:17.240]  There was no indication that email or other private information was compromised by the attack, according to Comcast.
[32:17.240 --> 32:23.880]  The hackers appeared to have seized control of the Comcast.net domain name at Registrar Network Solutions, Inc.
[32:23.940 --> 32:25.160]  Boy, this sounds familiar, doesn't it?
[32:25.220 --> 32:35.040]  This is what happened to us last year where some numbskull grabbed or convinced Network Solutions to release 2600.com and it got redirected to gay porn.
[32:36.060 --> 32:38.120]  Yeah, not one of our fondest memories.
[32:38.640 --> 32:42.440]  And they apparently redirected Comcast.net to other servers as well.
[32:42.440 --> 32:47.620]  The difference is that Comcast has alerted law enforcement authorities and they are working in conjunction with them.
[32:48.260 --> 32:49.240]  Yeah, good luck with that.
[32:49.340 --> 32:50.360]  That's going to work out well.
[32:50.620 --> 32:57.260]  I heard a rumor going around that once the page came back up, if you refreshed it, you'd be logged in as somebody else other than yourself.
[32:57.520 --> 32:58.660]  See, you do talk to these people.
[32:59.420 --> 33:00.400]  Yeah, interesting.
[33:01.840 --> 33:02.460]  I don't know.
[33:02.640 --> 33:04.860]  That seems kind of strange that you'd be logged in as somebody else.
[33:05.000 --> 33:10.400]  Well, it would say like, hello, John, on the top right, as you and you're logged in as John, even though you're Jake.
[33:10.400 --> 33:10.900]  Wow.
[33:11.720 --> 33:13.360]  Bernie, did you have something to add to this?
[33:14.220 --> 33:27.860]  I just thought it was really amusing that Network Solutions still hasn't fixed this obvious flaw in their security and that a major corporation like Comcast, as opposed to a minor corporation like 2600, Thank you.
[33:29.780 --> 33:34.660]  is still vulnerable to this type of social engineering attack.
[33:34.940 --> 33:42.000]  And, you know, if there's any problem here, it's obviously with Network Solutions and their lame security.
[33:42.180 --> 33:46.480]  Well, I think it also goes to show that social engineering is something that will never die as long as there are people.
[33:46.860 --> 33:50.160]  As long as there are people to hack, you will always be able to social engineer them.
[33:50.180 --> 33:56.620]  Social engineering, of course, being the ability to get somebody to give you information they're not supposed to give you because they believe you're entitled to it.
[33:56.660 --> 34:00.160]  And there's all kinds of psychological ways to get people to believe this.
[34:00.300 --> 34:08.360]  It's one of the panels at our conference we've had every single time where we demonstrate this live and we talk about various ways it's done and stories like that.
[34:08.600 --> 34:12.000]  It's one of the most popular panels at the entire conference.
[34:12.160 --> 34:12.420]  Absolutely.
[34:12.940 --> 34:18.880]  And since we're on the topic of social engineering, if you drop by the Telefreak booth during the conference, we'll be having social engineering workshops.
[34:19.320 --> 34:19.560]  Really?
[34:19.900 --> 34:20.020]  Yes.
[34:20.060 --> 34:24.040]  Teaching people how to steal domain names, maybe.
[34:24.360 --> 34:28.740]  It's one of the things about this conference, the last Hope conference that really is intriguing.
[34:28.940 --> 34:44.860]  There seems to be even more this year of these little informal educational sessions on things like the Locket Picking Village, the Telefreak Project, and there's a lot of other sort of like little workshops going on around the place in addition to all the panel discussions.
[34:45.000 --> 34:50.800]  Yes, the Hacker Space Village and Mitch Altman is going to be having a workshop going somehow 24 hours on how he's going to stay up all that time.
[34:51.340 --> 34:51.760]  Club Mate.
[34:52.180 --> 34:54.400]  Yeah, all kinds of neat stuff is coming in.
[34:54.480 --> 34:59.820]  We'll talk about that a little later, but that's one of the bombshells we're going to drop in the next couple of weeks.
[35:00.340 --> 35:00.580]  Right?
[35:00.700 --> 35:00.880]  Oops.
[35:01.080 --> 35:01.220]  Yeah.
[35:02.300 --> 35:07.020]  Well, no, I don't think anybody got too much information out of those two words you said, but if they did...
[35:07.020 --> 35:09.380]  And information in question is public anyway.
[35:09.520 --> 35:11.300]  Yeah, let's just not draw attention to it by continuing to talk about it.
[35:11.340 --> 35:12.120]  Let's go on to something else.
[35:12.700 --> 35:22.180]  Yeah, now, the credit card details of up to 38,000 customers of clothing firm Cotton Traders were stolen following a hack of its website according to the BBC.
[35:22.240 --> 35:28.520]  The firm has not confirmed the size of the breach, but it has acknowledged the site was attacked early this year.
[35:29.060 --> 35:30.200]  They're finally getting around to it.
[35:30.200 --> 35:35.760]  It said Barclay card was contacted as soon as it learned of the attack and most cards were stopped in January.
[35:36.040 --> 35:42.240]  The payment industry's trade body said it was serious because hackers access details for card not present fraud.
[35:43.340 --> 35:48.400]  Apex, the trade association for the payment industry, said a specialist police force was investigating the case.
[35:48.940 --> 35:52.480]  Cotton Traders was founded by ex-England rugby captain's friend.
[35:53.280 --> 35:54.220]  See, here's the thing.
[35:54.320 --> 35:57.180]  I never heard of this company before and they're getting all this press.
[35:57.360 --> 35:59.080]  Their name is all over the news now.
[35:59.200 --> 36:00.600]  It's really good advertising for them.
[36:00.760 --> 36:01.600]  Ex-England rugby captains?
[36:01.700 --> 36:02.220]  You don't want to know about that?
[36:02.260 --> 36:05.000]  I don't want to know about rugby or ex or anything.
[36:05.280 --> 36:06.060]  But these are captains.
[36:06.240 --> 36:07.260]  I mean, they must know what they're doing.
[36:07.420 --> 36:13.280]  And they have one million customers and only 38,000 of them had credit card information leaked like that.
[36:13.680 --> 36:15.880]  Oh, anyway, they say earlier this year we identified a security issue.
[36:15.960 --> 36:25.060]  We immediately brought in industry security experts to resolve the problem and cotton traders have recently upgraded all security on their website which has been validated by leading industry experts.
[36:25.680 --> 36:34.140]  We would like to reassure all our customers that their data is secure and that the cotton traders website meets all leading industry security standards.
[36:34.340 --> 36:35.300]  Maybe that's part of the problem.
[36:35.580 --> 36:42.340]  And that their security staff is just as competent as they were before they failed to put that in place in the first place.
[36:42.540 --> 36:42.840]  Yeah.
[36:43.360 --> 36:45.040]  But the important thing is they blame hackers.
[36:45.560 --> 36:45.680]  Yep.
[36:45.780 --> 36:47.000]  And that's all that matters.
[36:47.000 --> 36:47.940]  Here's something else.
[36:48.040 --> 36:51.160]  This is, I think, story of the week as far as what hackers get blamed for.
[36:51.340 --> 37:01.560]  An unknown, unauthorized person hacked into the home computers of police volunteer Brian Brown and left 1,136 images of child pornography.
[37:01.560 --> 37:02.700]  That's according to his lawyer.
[37:03.360 --> 37:18.420]  The allegation was made by defense lawyer Lonnie Mark in his closing arguments for 45-year-old Brown who was charged with possessing and distributing child pornography and of luring children younger than 14 on the internet for the purpose of committing sexual offenses.
[37:18.880 --> 37:32.780]  Closing arguments by Mark and assistant crown attorney Amit Ghosh zeroed in on how all the pornographic images as well as videos and discussions in a chat room advocating sex with children ended up on Brown's home computer.
[37:32.940 --> 37:37.440]  It is possible for a hacker to enter, use, leave, and leave no trace.
[37:37.920 --> 37:38.520]  Yeah.
[37:38.900 --> 37:42.620]  He told Ontario Superior Court this.
[37:43.160 --> 37:53.300]  He dismissed the suggestion that someone somehow hacked into Brown's computer to download pornography and lurid chat room conversations.
[37:54.420 --> 37:59.220]  Actually, this is, I think, the person that's prosecuting him saying this.
[37:59.740 --> 38:06.920]  Ghosh told the jury that Brown's extremely sophisticated with computers and had protected his home system with a firewall and antivirus system.
[38:07.020 --> 38:09.880]  Well, that doesn't really make you that sophisticated, now, does it?
[38:10.200 --> 38:17.040]  It doesn't seem remotely realistic to me, he told the jury, noting that some of the chat room comments made references to Brown's age and other personal information.
[38:17.160 --> 38:22.420]  The possibility of this being made by some mysterious hacker becomes completely unrealistic, he said.
[38:23.180 --> 38:29.980]  Mark told the jury that Brown was vacationing with his parents in a rather rustic property outside Perry sound with...
[38:29.980 --> 38:30.780]  Where is this?
[38:30.800 --> 38:31.300]  Is this Canada?
[38:31.520 --> 38:32.380]  I think this is Canada.
[38:32.840 --> 38:39.300]  With no computer or internet access at the time in September 2005 when he's accused of attempting to lure children on the internet.
[38:39.400 --> 38:40.940]  It had to be a hacker, Mark said.
[38:41.220 --> 38:42.200]  Had to be a hacker.
[38:43.360 --> 38:47.700]  Ghosh dismissed the alibi statements by Brown's parents as lies to protect their son.
[38:47.800 --> 38:55.860]  Also said each of his parents stand to gain $1 million if the family manages to successfully sue police over the investigation, over the allegations that is.
[38:56.860 --> 39:02.820]  Ghosh said the Toronto police service made a mistake in letting Brown work as a civilian volunteer on the project, although he has no criminal record.
[39:02.920 --> 39:07.560]  The Toronto police unknowingly let the fox into the hen house by allowing Mr. Brown to volunteer for them.
[39:08.720 --> 39:09.160]  incredible.
[39:10.040 --> 39:12.520]  There's nothing you can't blame hackers for, right?
[39:13.800 --> 39:14.940]  Very few things.
[39:16.120 --> 39:18.020]  Like the current president.
[39:18.860 --> 39:19.300]  Yeah.
[39:19.520 --> 39:20.660]  You can't blame hackers for that.
[39:21.120 --> 39:23.960]  I've played it to the whole dog-ate-my-homework excuse.
[39:25.380 --> 39:25.820]  Wow.
[39:25.900 --> 39:27.420]  But this is one of the better ones, I think.
[39:27.660 --> 39:28.920]  Well, someone just...
[39:28.920 --> 39:39.760]  I mean, I've heard this excuse used so many times in so many situations when somebody doesn't present a report that they need to give to somebody or a website gets all messed up somehow.
[39:40.360 --> 39:44.240]  It's because somebody hacked into my computer and broke it.
[39:44.860 --> 39:47.320]  And you never get many more details than that.
[39:47.440 --> 39:48.860]  Just basically anything that happens.
[39:48.920 --> 39:50.680]  Yeah, it's a dog-ate-my-homework excuse.
[39:51.000 --> 39:54.040]  We have further news on the child pornography front.
[39:54.220 --> 39:54.520]  Oh, good.
[39:54.860 --> 39:55.160]  Oh, yeah.
[39:55.580 --> 40:09.000]  Our dear Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has made a deal with Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable, which are three really big ISPs, to block certain internet websites that disseminate child pornography.
[40:09.580 --> 40:12.600]  This, according to the New York Times and other sources.
[40:14.300 --> 40:22.600]  And if you don't live in New York, you can still thank the New York Attorney General because the agreements will affect customers not just in New York, but throughout the country.
[40:23.460 --> 40:29.020]  Verizon and Time Warner are two of the nation's five largest service providers with roughly 16 million customers.
[40:29.260 --> 40:34.360]  Between them and the Attorney General is continuing to negotiate with other service providers.
[40:34.660 --> 40:35.680]  All right, Mike, I've got a question for you.
[40:35.860 --> 40:36.060]  Yes.
[40:36.440 --> 40:44.380]  So, okay, Time Warner and Verizon have agreed to block any websites that have child pornography on them.
[40:45.020 --> 40:47.860]  I guess if you try to go there, you get some kind of a message.
[40:48.380 --> 40:57.920]  Now, if they in fact do this, if they in fact have images that are illegal to have, then shouldn't someone else be already pursuing them?
[40:58.100 --> 41:02.060]  How did Time Warner and Verizon turn into the cops investigating this?
[41:02.960 --> 41:06.400]  Does it seem far-fetched that something's missing here?
[41:06.400 --> 41:10.260]  Some of the websites could be out of the country where it's hard for the U.S.
[41:10.300 --> 41:11.260]  to go and arrest them.
[41:11.740 --> 41:15.440]  It's the reason, I guess, for the blocking rather than the going and arresting.
[41:15.660 --> 41:20.320]  But are there countries that simply allow that kind of thing to be displayed without any kind of ramifications?
[41:20.540 --> 41:26.380]  Well, some countries have more thorough law enforcement than others, especially when it comes to the internet.
[41:26.580 --> 41:34.560]  But it's really weird because it's not clear to me from this article who's going to be responsible for creating and maintaining this list of child pornography.
[41:35.360 --> 41:37.540]  People like the guy we just read about.
[41:37.780 --> 41:40.480]  People who say the hackers got into his computer and put all the child porn there.
[41:40.640 --> 41:42.680]  So maybe he could go...
[41:42.680 --> 41:45.520]  These are the kind of people who are attracted to these kinds of investigations.
[41:45.840 --> 41:52.400]  Go and find as much child pornography as you possibly can and search the entire internet and while you're at it, save it all on your home computer.
[41:54.540 --> 41:55.320]  I don't know.
[41:55.920 --> 41:57.620]  It's basically asking for trouble.
[42:00.080 --> 42:00.640]  It's weird.
[42:00.800 --> 42:04.020]  But yeah, I imagine all kinds of other sites are going to be targeted.
[42:04.240 --> 42:07.060]  I mean, who do you call if your site gets on this list?
[42:07.320 --> 42:09.000]  Yeah, how do you even know if your site's on this list?
[42:09.040 --> 42:11.020]  What kind of message do you get?
[42:11.260 --> 42:19.300]  It almost sounds like the no-fly list where you get on it and you don't know you're on it until you're blocked from boarding planes.
[42:19.360 --> 42:26.140]  In this case, you won't know you're on it until you're blocked to Verizon and other ISP customers.
[42:26.460 --> 42:37.580]  And the other thing is, if you're a user and you get this message, do you really think you're going to go out and report it to somebody and say, hey, I was trying to access this site and it said that I was trying to access child pornography, so this is what the message is.
[42:37.620 --> 42:38.700]  No one's going to want to do that.
[42:38.760 --> 42:42.920]  No one's going to want to advertise that they were out looking for this kind of thing in the first place.
[42:43.280 --> 42:46.700]  So if your site is blocked, no one's going to tell you.
[42:47.220 --> 43:01.560]  You're going And I see this as a sort of a creeping feature, a feature creep thing, where it will start with child pornography, one of the more offensive things in our society.
[43:01.720 --> 43:09.740]  And then once that's embodied as a policy or a law, then they'll do something else.
[43:09.860 --> 43:11.020]  It's slightly less offensive.
[43:11.680 --> 43:12.860]  Oh, how about drugs?
[43:13.180 --> 43:13.760]  Drugs are bad.
[43:14.000 --> 43:15.200]  Everybody doesn't like drugs.
[43:15.300 --> 43:16.220]  They're very bad.
[43:16.440 --> 43:17.960]  Smoking, possibly, after that.
[43:18.120 --> 43:21.340]  And, well, revolutionary talk.
[43:21.580 --> 43:22.060]  Who knows?
[43:23.200 --> 43:25.560]  I mean, this is really unprecedented.
[43:25.840 --> 43:30.860]  And it's the first time that the Internet providers are creating a list of content you may not see.
[43:30.860 --> 43:41.800]  And even though, in this case, it's content that most sane people do not, in fact, want to see, it's really scary that they're now in charge of deciding.
[43:42.100 --> 43:47.580]  Well, I mean, how about making a list of sites that show people being executed?
[43:47.820 --> 43:49.860]  I mean, I think that's a pretty horrible thing.
[43:50.000 --> 43:50.820]  I know they exist.
[43:50.880 --> 43:51.680]  I know there are sites out there.
[43:51.760 --> 43:52.920]  People have shown me links.
[43:52.920 --> 43:57.680]  But these providers, they're not jumping all over themselves to ban that kind of a thing.
[43:57.780 --> 44:04.280]  They're going for the headlines instead, because apparently, I guess they'll get more congressional support if they do things like this.
[44:04.580 --> 44:05.240]  I don't know.
[44:05.880 --> 44:07.160]  I don't want to be too cynical here.
[44:07.340 --> 44:09.700]  They're also spending like a million dollars on this, it says.
[44:10.080 --> 44:15.160]  The three companies will collectively pay $1.125 million to underwrite office efforts.
[44:15.160 --> 44:17.180]  Well, that means we're paying that because we're the customers.
[44:17.800 --> 44:19.540]  It all gets passed down to the consumer.
[44:20.160 --> 44:20.520]  Absolutely.
[44:21.000 --> 44:27.060]  We're going to take some phone calls, 212-209-2900, if you have anything to say, any remarks to share, things like that.
[44:28.460 --> 44:35.400]  We basically go over all kinds of interesting things happening on the Internet and in the world of hackers week after week.
[44:35.500 --> 44:41.860]  Our email address, OTH at 2600.com, if there's anything that you'd like to send to us in email.
[44:41.900 --> 44:43.860]  Do we have any more news stories, or is that pretty much it for this week?
[44:44.580 --> 44:45.220]  That's about it.
[44:46.180 --> 44:50.560]  We talked about the German spying scandal last week, and it keeps growing.
[44:50.800 --> 44:52.420]  Now Lufthansa is part of it.
[44:52.520 --> 44:53.340]  Yeah, I've heard about this.
[44:53.540 --> 44:55.360]  Every big German company, it seems like.
[44:55.460 --> 44:57.280]  Lufthansa spying on journalists or something?
[44:57.300 --> 44:58.560]  Is that what that was all about?
[44:58.700 --> 45:01.680]  Yeah, spied on a journalist for a major financial daily.
[45:02.060 --> 45:03.740]  Shouldn't journalists be spying on Lufthansa?
[45:03.940 --> 45:05.420]  I mean, isn't that the way it's supposed to work?
[45:06.040 --> 45:06.680]  I don't know.
[45:06.860 --> 45:07.980]  Well, hopefully somebody will.
[45:07.980 --> 45:14.560]  This is a lot like what Heo Packer did a year or two ago, where they didn't actually read their email.
[45:14.820 --> 45:16.740]  They looked at...
[45:17.820 --> 45:19.640]  Basically, they did...
[45:20.460 --> 45:21.460]  They looked at their...
[45:21.460 --> 45:25.740]  They used illegal means to obtain their cell phone and telephone records.
[45:25.840 --> 45:27.940]  See who was calling home to leak information.
[45:28.140 --> 45:30.920]  It's sort of like that, except it's every German company.
[45:31.500 --> 45:31.840]  Yeah.
[45:33.660 --> 45:34.800]  It's really out of hand.
[45:34.960 --> 45:39.240]  And, you know, it calls into question the privacy of your telephone records.
[45:40.540 --> 45:41.760]  All right, let's take some phone calls.
[45:41.820 --> 45:43.120]  212-209-2900.
[45:44.100 --> 45:44.900]  Ann, good evening.
[45:45.400 --> 45:45.760]  Ugh.
[45:46.800 --> 45:47.800]  You know, you've got to move fast.
[45:47.920 --> 45:49.260]  They just move on to the next line.
[45:49.300 --> 45:49.640]  Here we go.
[45:49.760 --> 45:50.080]  Good evening.
[45:50.300 --> 45:50.860]  You're on off the hook.
[45:51.380 --> 45:52.800]  Ugh, I didn't move fast enough that time.
[45:53.260 --> 45:53.620]  Incredible.
[45:54.000 --> 45:54.520]  Good evening.
[45:54.740 --> 45:55.600]  You're on off the hook.
[45:56.100 --> 45:57.900]  Yes, I'm going to be on off the hook, of course.
[45:58.060 --> 45:59.380]  And I'm going to have some love.
[45:59.440 --> 46:00.860]  Rebel, you've never sounded better.
[46:00.960 --> 46:01.720]  Please go on.
[46:02.700 --> 46:06.140]  I'm going to sound a little better on this PCS phone with this bad vocoder.
[46:06.400 --> 46:07.640]  I learned that from you, Bernie.
[46:07.780 --> 46:09.380]  Anyway, I'm going to be displaying...
[46:09.380 --> 46:12.520]  You saw my video about things that are annoying, right?
[46:13.420 --> 46:15.120]  I've heard you talk about things that are annoying.
[46:15.120 --> 46:16.860]  I've heard you talk, and it's been annoying.
[46:17.040 --> 46:18.160]  But other than that, no.
[46:18.700 --> 46:20.000]  But I sent you the DVD.
[46:20.260 --> 46:21.000]  Did you not get it?
[46:21.300 --> 46:22.160]  I saw it, okay.
[46:22.200 --> 46:24.080]  We had this conversation like a year ago.
[46:24.240 --> 46:26.860]  Okay, well, I'll send you another copy, but I'll be playing it at Hope.
[46:26.860 --> 46:32.100]  And I'll also be making a video about what I did as a kid, playing with phones.
[46:32.380 --> 46:34.420]  And there's a video on...
[46:34.420 --> 46:35.280]  Oh, the early years.
[46:35.540 --> 46:36.480]  The early years.
[46:36.640 --> 46:37.680]  Rebel, the early years.
[46:37.980 --> 46:38.280]  Wow.
[46:38.480 --> 46:40.240]  How I got into this and how I...
[46:40.240 --> 46:48.640]  And I'd like to have a panel on the voicemail system that, like, when you call something, welcome to whatever company, please press one or whatever.
[46:48.760 --> 46:50.660]  And then when you press zero, it doesn't connect you.
[46:50.840 --> 46:57.080]  And then when you, you know, then you go to this sub menu that doesn't connect you with other things that, you know what I mean?
[46:57.160 --> 46:59.040]  It's like, it's just...
[46:59.040 --> 47:01.020]  I know I want to have a panel on...
[47:01.660 --> 47:06.360]  There's a website called GetHuman.com, which I told people they can't be at Hope.
[47:06.360 --> 47:09.340]  I asked them to try and come to the conference, but...
[47:10.280 --> 47:12.520]  You asked them and they said they couldn't come.
[47:13.140 --> 47:15.320]  Might be a relationship between that, but...
[47:15.320 --> 47:16.580]  No, that's because they're in Boston.
[47:17.120 --> 47:17.780]  Well, that too.
[47:18.640 --> 47:24.180]  All right, Rebel, look, we do look forward to seeing you at the conference because it is only once every couple of years.
[47:24.420 --> 47:29.080]  And, well, but there's many more people that come to the conference.
[47:29.280 --> 47:29.980]  It's not just Rebel.
[47:30.160 --> 47:33.280]  It's all sorts of people, thousands, thousands of people from all over the world.
[47:33.360 --> 47:34.080]  So a great variety.
[47:34.240 --> 47:35.360]  But thanks again for that call.
[47:35.460 --> 47:38.000]  And thanks for the always informative information.
[47:38.600 --> 47:39.540]  That's taking another phone call.
[47:39.840 --> 47:40.380]  Good evening.
[47:40.500 --> 47:40.980]  You're on Off the Hook.
[47:41.200 --> 47:42.640]  What is with the dial tones today?
[47:42.700 --> 47:43.240]  I swear.
[47:43.360 --> 47:44.880]  We have four broken lines on this phone.
[47:44.940 --> 47:45.280]  You see that?
[47:45.320 --> 47:45.880]  They're all broken.
[47:45.980 --> 47:46.560]  No, it's not.
[47:46.660 --> 47:47.620]  Someone else is using them.
[47:47.800 --> 47:49.460]  Someone's making four phone calls at once?
[47:49.800 --> 47:50.400]  We've done it.
[47:50.900 --> 47:51.320]  All right.
[47:51.400 --> 47:54.060]  Well, the ones that we're getting are all dial tones.
[47:54.180 --> 47:54.480]  Good evening.
[47:54.620 --> 47:55.220]  You're on Off the Hook.
[47:55.220 --> 47:56.520]  Yeah, hi.
[47:56.880 --> 48:01.200]  I had a question about freedom of speech online.
[48:01.200 --> 48:03.200]  I mean, I've been...
[48:03.200 --> 48:05.780]  I have posted...
[48:07.200 --> 48:13.480]  I've posted questionable comments on a public website, a message board website.
[48:13.480 --> 48:15.340]  I'm not going to say the name of the site.
[48:15.440 --> 48:15.640]  Okay.
[48:15.640 --> 48:25.680]  In the past, and I've had the authorities knocking on my door, you know, trying to get my hard drive.
[48:26.800 --> 48:30.720]  I'll crush it into powder before I let them have it, of course.
[48:31.120 --> 48:31.540]  Well, yeah.
[48:31.540 --> 48:34.980]  I mean, that's a sentiment I think a lot of us would identify with.
[48:35.200 --> 48:41.820]  But, you know, now the stuff that I posted online is not a kiddie porn or anything like that.
[48:41.980 --> 48:50.660]  They were just offensive comments about, you know, that some people may consider threatening or...
[48:50.660 --> 48:51.300]  But I would...
[48:51.300 --> 48:51.800]  They were just...
[48:51.800 --> 48:53.580]  They were just jokes to me.
[48:53.820 --> 48:56.000]  Well, I mean, could it be considered threatening?
[48:56.220 --> 48:59.880]  Or were you saying something about, you know, causing people harm or things like that?
[49:00.060 --> 49:09.680]  I posted messages that were, you know, they were threats, but they know that they were not serious.
[49:09.680 --> 49:19.040]  They were quote-unquote threats, but the authorities knew that they were not serious threats, and they knew that before they came to my house.
[49:19.240 --> 49:24.260]  Well, the thing is, you can never assume what authorities know, because sometimes they know a lot less than you give them credit for.
[49:24.440 --> 49:27.120]  Yeah, well, these guys are not as stupid as they act.
[49:27.240 --> 49:32.800]  They knew that I was not involved in any type of, you know, they knew that my threats were not serious.
[49:33.380 --> 49:35.420]  And they also knew...
[49:35.420 --> 49:37.780]  And also, this is a public message website.
[49:37.840 --> 49:39.240]  It's a public website.
[49:39.240 --> 49:40.760]  I'm not going to say the name of it.
[49:41.440 --> 49:48.140]  And, you know, they, you know, they just knew that the threats were not serious.
[49:48.140 --> 49:56.900]  They knew that I was not involved in any, you know, criminal activity, but except that maybe the messages that I was posting.
[49:57.140 --> 49:57.940]  Well, I mean, the thing is...
[49:57.940 --> 50:01.340]  Basically, I think they just singled me out because they did not like my message.
[50:01.440 --> 50:02.500]  Well, that's entirely possible.
[50:02.500 --> 50:03.780]  They didn't like you or something like that.
[50:03.840 --> 50:11.100]  It's very easy to cause somebody problems based on very, very tiny, bits of offensive material.
[50:11.580 --> 50:14.260]  If you raise your voice to somebody, then maybe you're threatening them.
[50:14.380 --> 50:17.100]  If you touch somebody with your finger, then you physically assaulted them.
[50:17.200 --> 50:20.540]  There's all kinds of ways of exaggerating a situation.
[50:20.540 --> 50:25.540]  And if you find yourself annoying the wrong people, yeah, they can cause some grief.
[50:25.560 --> 50:26.820]  And that might have been what happened to you.
[50:26.960 --> 50:28.740]  Yeah, I can claim anybody today.
[50:28.940 --> 50:31.440]  Nowadays, anybody can claim anything against anybody.
[50:31.580 --> 50:38.660]  Anybody can make any accusation against anyone nowadays, it seems, and get arrested for it, even if it's totally false.
[50:38.660 --> 50:41.140]  Now, are these threats happened to be against the president?
[50:41.540 --> 50:41.640]  Huh?
[50:42.520 --> 50:43.480]  No, it was not.
[50:43.660 --> 50:45.420]  I would not be... Come on, man.
[50:45.540 --> 50:51.300]  Do you seriously think I would be dumb enough to post a threat against a politician online?
[50:51.300 --> 50:52.300]  I'm not that stupid.
[50:52.520 --> 50:55.160]  I don't post threats against... personal threats against people.
[50:55.360 --> 50:59.720]  It was not a personal threat against any public official.
[51:00.180 --> 51:03.960]  It was not, you know, it was not like it was, you know...
[51:03.960 --> 51:05.280]  Well, what if it was a perceived threat?
[51:05.380 --> 51:08.940]  What if it's a threat that, you know, you thought was a joke that somebody else took seriously?
[51:09.200 --> 51:15.420]  It's, you know, it's... the magnitude has been raised when you're talking about the president, but if you're talking about just somebody down the street...
[51:15.420 --> 51:23.620]  I'm a grown man, and I know that... I know something about the law, and I would not be stupid enough to post a threat against the president or any other politician.
[51:23.620 --> 51:24.660]  I'm not that dumb.
[51:24.860 --> 51:30.260]  And I think most adults with brains in their head know that's illegal.
[51:30.560 --> 51:33.100]  I mean, unless you're just somebody with a screw loose.
[51:33.180 --> 51:37.480]  Wait, is it just illegal when the president's involved, or is it illegal when anybody's involved?
[51:37.980 --> 51:43.920]  Well, I think posting a threat against any public official on his threat.
[51:44.240 --> 51:46.560]  I mean, that's... I mean, post... I mean, excuse me.
[51:47.040 --> 51:51.320]  Posting a threat against any public official on, you know, is illegal.
[51:51.840 --> 51:53.600]  Yeah, but, you know, I've always had trouble with that.
[51:53.680 --> 51:55.940]  I've always had trouble with people who are public officials.
[51:55.980 --> 52:00.960]  If you say anything that could even be remotely interpreted as a threat, that has to get all kinds of special attention.
[52:00.960 --> 52:08.600]  Whereas, if you say something a lot more direct and threatening about somebody that you actually know and are quite capable of carrying out, that tends to get ignored a lot more.
[52:08.880 --> 52:09.500]  Yeah, maybe.
[52:09.720 --> 52:12.000]  Now, but also, there's another thing I made.
[52:12.200 --> 52:14.800]  What about people who post insults online?
[52:14.980 --> 52:18.560]  I mean, there's a difference between insulting someone and mocking someone.
[52:18.680 --> 52:18.980]  Of course.
[52:19.320 --> 52:20.380]  And threatening someone.
[52:20.380 --> 52:21.760]  People are very sensitive.
[52:21.940 --> 52:23.340]  They take all kinds of things out of context.
[52:23.520 --> 52:25.240]  And they can, like I said, make your life miserable.
[52:25.480 --> 52:27.700]  The Internet was created so that people could insult each other.
[52:27.760 --> 52:29.060]  That's my view of the whole thing.
[52:29.220 --> 52:29.760]  You know, okay.
[52:29.960 --> 52:30.820]  Now, here's...
[52:30.820 --> 52:36.180]  Where do I go to find out more legal information about what I...
[52:36.180 --> 52:38.140]  You know, my legal rights and what I...
[52:38.580 --> 52:40.940]  I mean, I'm not going to hire any lawyer.
[52:41.080 --> 52:48.500]  But where can I go to find out more about what people can do online and what, you know, legal rights and, you know, stuff like that?
[52:48.500 --> 52:54.340]  I think the EFF might be a good resource for this because they certainly deal with issues of speech online a lot.
[52:54.340 --> 52:57.820]  I mean, this isn't something that I've seen them take a front row position on.
[52:57.960 --> 53:01.740]  But I think it would definitely get their interest if it was a case.
[53:02.020 --> 53:02.280]  What is the EFF?
[53:02.380 --> 53:03.620]  You mean the electronic...
[53:03.620 --> 53:04.460]  Frontier Foundation.
[53:04.600 --> 53:05.540]  EFF.org.
[53:05.820 --> 53:08.760]  There might even be cases like this already on their website.
[53:09.060 --> 53:16.460]  But I think there's a way for you to certainly ask around and see if other people have experienced similar things or just at least get some legal viewpoints on this.
[53:16.460 --> 53:18.780]  Yeah, because, you know, listen, I'm not an idiot.
[53:18.960 --> 53:20.220]  I'm not stupid enough to...
[53:20.220 --> 53:24.340]  I know that there are certain things that are obviously illegal.
[53:24.540 --> 53:30.840]  Kitty porn, trafficking, you know, and threatening public officials or threatening maybe anybody.
[53:31.080 --> 53:31.320]  Right.
[53:31.420 --> 53:33.040]  But legality is all subjective.
[53:33.080 --> 53:39.060]  So what you think might not be illegal, someone else, you know, in a courtroom can suddenly say, yes, now that is illegal too.
[53:39.220 --> 53:41.480]  So it changes on a day-to-day basis.
[53:41.620 --> 53:44.880]  So, yeah, you'd be very wise to look into it and ask other people.
[53:44.880 --> 53:46.300]  I want to thank you for a very interesting call.
[53:46.400 --> 53:47.120]  We do want to move on.
[53:47.240 --> 53:49.800]  But best of luck with your future endeavors.
[53:50.480 --> 53:51.940]  Let's take another phone call.
[53:52.480 --> 53:53.140]  And good evening.
[53:53.140 --> 53:54.080]  You're on the air.
[53:55.260 --> 53:55.480]  Yes.
[53:55.780 --> 53:57.560]  And please turn me down.
[53:57.700 --> 53:58.080]  Yeah, I did.
[53:58.240 --> 53:58.360]  All right.
[53:58.400 --> 53:58.600]  Thank you.
[53:58.920 --> 54:03.040]  Yeah, I kind of was worried about the same thing that fellow was saying.
[54:03.700 --> 54:04.180]  How...
[54:04.180 --> 54:09.880]  You raised the question that why should the policemen be Time Warner and Verizon?
[54:10.200 --> 54:25.100]  The other question I thought we could talk about would be that FCC people, that had that conference out in, I think it was Minneapolis, they're really quite upset because they feel that the whole media business is not being regulated.
[54:25.480 --> 54:26.640]  And we are the people.
[54:26.640 --> 54:28.320]  We can regulate these guys.
[54:28.480 --> 54:34.520]  But if we don't know our rights, such as this young man, now you gave us another thing, what you just said, that electronic.
[54:34.520 --> 54:35.800]  Could you repeat that again?
[54:35.820 --> 54:36.940]  That's another good story.
[54:37.080 --> 54:39.120]  Yeah, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF.org.
[54:39.120 --> 54:39.520]  EFF.org.
[54:39.760 --> 54:40.840]  EFF.org.
[54:41.000 --> 54:43.460]  And the other one was the FCC.
[54:44.000 --> 54:53.460]  So they were already having grassroots people organizing so that the people like Fox TV and all the other people that don't like this kind of...
[54:53.460 --> 54:55.560]  And ridicule Moyers.
[54:55.760 --> 54:59.980]  You know, Moyers spoke to this conference, and he was the most eloquent thing.
[54:59.980 --> 55:02.200]  If you ever get it online from Democracy Now!
[55:02.260 --> 55:04.380]  yesterday, I urge your public.
[55:04.580 --> 55:06.120]  Today, too, they had McClellan on.
[55:06.320 --> 55:07.520]  It's so good.
[55:07.520 --> 55:19.180]  He talked about all the lies that we really can indict some of these officials because they were actually caught on tape in lies with what they claimed and what eventually occurred.
[55:19.420 --> 55:24.320]  So here I think there's great hope, Emanuel, and all you guys, because it really is something.
[55:24.320 --> 55:37.200]  There could be grassroots where we have the power, if we take it upon ourselves, to do as you're doing with this program, which, boy, I really can't pay attention to democracy now when you guys are on because then I miss out on the other news.
[55:37.380 --> 55:37.840]  Okay, well...
[55:37.840 --> 55:38.560]  Because you know what else?
[55:38.560 --> 55:39.960]  They also do it on the phone.
[55:40.120 --> 55:45.860]  The harassment that guy was getting, they do it if you say the wrong things to the 311 line, for instance.
[55:45.940 --> 55:46.340]  Oh, really?
[55:46.560 --> 55:48.040]  Oh, well, we'll go into that.
[55:48.040 --> 55:50.200]  I don't have time right now, but we'll talk, okay?
[55:50.300 --> 55:50.580]  Okay.
[55:50.860 --> 55:50.900]  Bye-bye.
[55:50.900 --> 55:51.900]  Thanks for your call.
[55:51.900 --> 55:57.080]  He's referring, I believe, to the free press conference that was held this past weekend in Minnesota.
[55:57.420 --> 55:57.660]  Okay.
[55:57.880 --> 55:59.140]  Let's see if we can squeeze in one more phone call.
[55:59.320 --> 55:59.960]  We're going to try.
[56:00.900 --> 56:02.260]  Let's have a good feeling about this one.
[56:02.300 --> 56:02.640]  Good evening.
[56:02.820 --> 56:03.800]  You're on Off the Hook.
[56:04.640 --> 56:04.940]  Hi.
[56:05.780 --> 56:06.400]  Make it quick.
[56:07.260 --> 56:15.300]  Well, I just wanted to ask if you guys have heard about this change to child pornography law where you can get arrested for purporting to have it.
[56:15.640 --> 56:17.820]  You can get arrested for purporting to have it?
[56:17.880 --> 56:18.360]  Is that what you just said?
[56:18.400 --> 56:18.540]  Yeah.
[56:18.860 --> 56:23.760]  They made a change maybe a month or two ago so that it would be easier to prosecute.
[56:23.780 --> 56:29.260]  Why would somebody brag about having something if they didn't have it and it's completely illegal to have?
[56:29.540 --> 56:30.580]  Seems very strange.
[56:30.860 --> 56:34.380]  But you can get arrested just for falsely reporting that you committed a crime.
[56:34.820 --> 56:35.180]  Right.
[56:35.320 --> 56:38.120]  And I think they did it so that prosecution would be easier.
[56:38.280 --> 56:42.340]  But I wanted to take this opportunity to go ahead and break that law in the air.
[56:43.180 --> 56:47.400]  I have in front of me a piece of blank white paper that anyone can have.
[56:47.520 --> 56:47.940]  They want it.
[56:48.040 --> 56:49.680]  And I claim that it is child pornography.
[56:50.020 --> 56:50.540]  Oh, boy.
[56:50.660 --> 56:52.720]  Well, you certainly opened up a kettle of fish with that.
[56:53.200 --> 56:55.400]  And fortunately, we don't have caller ID at the station.
[56:55.960 --> 56:57.620]  But our records could be subpoenaed.
[56:57.620 --> 56:58.160]  You never know.
[56:58.160 --> 57:01.900]  Well, thanks for ending the show and a bit of controversy there.
[57:02.680 --> 57:03.580]  We're out of time.
[57:03.880 --> 57:06.620]  And I want to thank people for listening and for calling in.
[57:06.880 --> 57:09.240]  Any last-minute announcements we need to make?
[57:09.440 --> 57:11.000]  Anything that we want to pass on to the people?
[57:11.160 --> 57:15.060]  Submit your speaker presentations, proposals, speakers at hope.net.
[57:15.320 --> 57:18.060]  Bernie, what kind of talks could people maybe give?
[57:18.060 --> 57:20.660]  It's not just about technology and computers and phones, is it?
[57:20.660 --> 57:21.280]  No.
[57:21.500 --> 57:30.660]  Anything about how technology impacts people and society, and even things outside of that, if it's interesting enough, we'll consider proving it.
[57:31.060 --> 57:31.380]  Okay.
[57:31.440 --> 57:33.020]  And the deadline, again, June 15th.
[57:33.060 --> 57:34.200]  I think that's Sunday coming up.
[57:34.280 --> 57:34.440]  It's Sunday.
[57:34.500 --> 57:36.320]  So is it midnight Eastern time?
[57:36.320 --> 57:37.220]  I don't know, Mike.
[57:37.340 --> 57:37.940]  It could be midnight.
[57:38.060 --> 57:38.680]  It could be 3 a.m.
[57:38.680 --> 57:39.620]  It could be Hawaii time.
[57:40.040 --> 57:45.380]  Just please try and get it in June 15th and not June 16th, because it just makes our job a lot harder.
[57:45.400 --> 57:46.560]  We have to put together a program.
[57:46.760 --> 57:47.720]  We have to put together a schedule.
[57:47.720 --> 57:49.480]  So you're saying Europeans have less time than Americans.
[57:49.480 --> 57:51.640]  Yeah, we're biased, I guess, in that way.
[57:52.100 --> 57:53.400]  Again, speakers at hope.net.
[57:53.520 --> 57:57.020]  If you want to email us here at the radio show, OTH at 2600.com.
[57:57.360 --> 57:58.180]  Have a good night.
[58:28.150 --> 58:29.370]  Hear me now.
[58:30.830 --> 58:32.310]  My car leaves a kid.
[58:33.770 --> 58:35.370]  Tell it like it is.
[58:36.850 --> 58:37.290]  People.
[58:39.210 --> 58:39.730]  Everybody.
[59:05.870 --> 59:07.850]  Tell it like it is.
[59:07.850 --> 59:36.160]  I want
[59:39.760 --> 59:41.680]  to be around for the good things.
[59:41.680 --> 59:43.000]  I want to come along.
[59:47.010 --> 59:49.390]  Tell it like it is.
[59:50.470 --> 59:52.570]  Maybe I'm wrong.
[59:56.860 --> 59:59.420]  Tell it how it is.
[01:00:00.100 --> 01:00:02.700]  I want to be strong.
[01:00:07.120 --> 01:00:09.860]  Tell it like it is.
[01:00:11.460 --> 01:00:13.020]  I may be wrong.
[01:00:18.620 --> 01:00:20.820]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:00:21.080 --> 01:00:21.780]  All right.
[01:00:21.900 --> 01:00:29.780]  Hey, I'm so happy that Hillary stayed in the race and ran across that finish line with all the people cheering and yelling up and down.
[01:00:30.620 --> 01:00:32.460]  And that's just fantastic.
[01:00:32.760 --> 01:00:33.520]  Oh, look at Hank.
[01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:34.500]  Don't cry, Hank.
[01:00:34.720 --> 01:00:35.120]  Don't cry.
[01:00:35.280 --> 01:00:37.940]  The Republicans will be fine in about 16 years.
[01:00:37.940 --> 01:00:37.980]  We'll be fine.
[01:00:38.560 --> 01:00:38.660]  Bye.