Off The Hook - 2009-07-08

[00:00.460 --> 00:02.600]  [SPEAKER_04]: What are you listening to?
[00:02.900 --> 00:04.080]  [SPEAKER_09]: What you were listening to.
[00:04.280 --> 00:06.700]  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what it is.
[00:07.300 --> 00:09.520]  [SPEAKER_09]: It's WBAI.
[00:10.320 --> 00:12.200]  [SPEAKER_09]: Wow, sounds weird.
[00:13.200 --> 00:14.940]  [SPEAKER_09]: Weird, but I like it.
[00:16.200 --> 00:17.560]  [SPEAKER_09]: I like it.
[00:17.860 --> 00:18.740]  [SPEAKER_09]: What is it?
[00:19.160 --> 00:21.120]  [SPEAKER_00]: It's WBAI.
[00:21.620 --> 00:22.500]  [SPEAKER_09]: I like it.
[00:23.320 --> 00:26.180]  [SPEAKER_09]: Did you honor your pledge?
[00:26.540 --> 00:27.960]  [SPEAKER_00]: To go low carb?
[00:29.020 --> 00:31.320]  [SPEAKER_09]: To send money to WBAI.
[00:31.400 --> 00:32.580]  [SPEAKER_09]: You mean write a check?
[00:32.760 --> 00:34.040]  [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean write a check.
[00:34.260 --> 00:34.900]  [SPEAKER_09]: I wrote it.
[00:35.040 --> 00:35.860]  [SPEAKER_09]: Well, now send it.
[00:36.140 --> 00:37.360]  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, send it.
[00:40.220 --> 00:41.260]  [SPEAKER_09]: To WBAI.
[00:41.440 --> 00:42.660]  [SPEAKER_09]: 120 Wall Street.
[00:42.940 --> 00:43.940]  [SPEAKER_09]: New York, New York.
[00:44.280 --> 00:46.740]  [SPEAKER_04]: One, triple, zero, five.
[00:47.820 --> 00:48.340]  [SPEAKER_09]: WBAI.
[00:48.480 --> 00:49.520]  [SPEAKER_09]: I like it.
[00:49.660 --> 00:50.060]  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah!
[00:57.920 --> 01:07.380]  [SPEAKER_12]: And you're listening to radio station WBAI, New York, where the time is just about seven o'clock time once again for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
[01:12.640 --> 01:34.410]  [SPEAKER_10]: The telephone keeps ringing So I ripped it off the wall I cut myself while shaving Now I can't make a cough We couldn't get much worse They would Fun diddly bomb But the best is back from worst I hope that's understood Fun diddly boom!
[02:31.150 --> 02:47.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: And good evening to everybody The program is Off The Hook I'm Daniel Goldstein here with you On this Wednesday evening Back from tour camp Which I'll be happy to talk about A bit later on in the show Joined tonight by Mike Hello Jim Hi Rob T.
[02:47.250 --> 02:53.370]  [SPEAKER_12]: Firefly Good evening Gus Hi And Voltaire And down in Philadelphia Bernie S.
[02:53.950 --> 03:14.850]  [SPEAKER_12]: Greetings from Philadelphia Oh and stepping in the door right now Is Red Hack I'm not late You sent me on a mission I did send you on a mission It took a little longer than I thought But welcome back And yes Tour camp was amazing You guys are all lamers and losers For not going I mean You know It was the most incredible thing Spending time inside a missile silo I mean Come on How often can you say
[03:14.850 --> 03:15.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: something like that?
[03:15.570 --> 03:39.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: How often can you say That you're actually underground In a missile silo So many cool things happened Of course Camping out in the desert You can't beat that For the coolness factor But I met a lot of cool people Had many interesting conversations And Just a great time overall I never gave a talk In the command room Of a missile silo before And that was really something Did you need that hard hat
[03:39.530 --> 03:40.150]  [SPEAKER_02]: For protection?
[03:40.710 --> 03:47.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well I wasn't going to mention it But yeah I am in fact Still wearing the hard hat From It makes the headphones Not fit too good Doesn't it?
[03:47.350 --> 04:03.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah well you know There's no reason to talk about The problems I'm having Behind the console You weren't going to mention it But I'm sure you assumed One of us would Well yeah I guess I should have This could be the very first time On Off The Hook That we throw something At your head during the show Awesome You know people have been doing this Since I got back Hitting me on the back of the head
[04:03.330 --> 04:14.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Throwing things at me You're the one wearing the hard hat To be fair to people Yeah and you know what There's a reason why I have to wear a hard hat Around this group And when you're underground When you're in a missile silo You damn well better wear a hard hat Did everyone have a hard hat?
[04:14.470 --> 04:24.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: Everyone had a hard hat This is part of the admission badge This hat is When you went to tour camp You didn't get just a badge Which you did get But you also got a hard hat Orange hard hat Was it required that you had to have?
[04:24.310 --> 04:40.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yes because you're inside A missile silo Gus If you're inside a missile silo You better wear a hard hat So the FBI doing flyovers Is confused when instead of hackers They saw a bunch of construction workers Well it was kind of cool Because when I was When I was giving my talk Looking out at the crowd Everybody had an orange head And it was It looked like something Out of the prisoner Or just some
[04:40.890 --> 05:04.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: alien type of thing But I'll tell you Walking down the corridors Where the actual silo is When you go downstairs First it's very scary Going downstairs You go round and round On this metallic staircase Where there's a big drop Then you're down on that level And then Once the guy Who knows every inch of the place Is giving tours He takes you down These long long corridors And you actually get to a
[05:04.930 --> 05:16.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: point Where you're on a precipice And he holds on to a bar That's attached to the ceiling And he sticks his hand on the wall, and you stand there and look over.
[05:16.170 --> 05:22.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: He basically becomes the barrier to prevent you from toppling over more than 100 feet into a cavern.
[05:22.810 --> 05:26.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: And I'll tell you, that was one of the scariest things I've ever done in my life.
[05:26.250 --> 05:33.290]  [SPEAKER_12]: And very impressive, just seeing this huge, huge crater with pipes and all kinds of contraptions on the wall and ceiling.
[05:34.290 --> 05:34.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: And...
[05:34.690 --> 05:35.350]  [SPEAKER_05]: What was down there?
[05:35.530 --> 05:36.110]  [SPEAKER_05]: Was that what it was for?
[05:36.110 --> 05:38.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: That was where the silo, the actual missile was.
[05:38.210 --> 05:39.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: That was the silo for the missile.
[05:39.270 --> 05:43.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: So there were three of them on that site, and it just was huge.
[05:43.250 --> 05:47.450]  [SPEAKER_02]: Was that somehow locked off during the off hours so that people wouldn't go exploring it, or...
[05:47.450 --> 05:48.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well...
[05:48.070 --> 05:50.030]  [SPEAKER_02]: Or was it just common sense would prevail?
[05:50.210 --> 05:51.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, common sense did prevail.
[05:51.470 --> 05:55.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: I have to say, this was something equivalent to a European hacker camp.
[05:55.390 --> 06:00.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: And so far as the way it was run, the way people took care of each other, the way common sense prevailed.
[06:00.450 --> 06:06.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: And yeah, you have these huge drops where people can easily topple over.
[06:06.110 --> 06:07.550]  [SPEAKER_12]: So we made sure people didn't go down there.
[06:07.550 --> 06:11.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: There were volunteers that were guarding entrances to make sure that it was all safe.
[06:12.330 --> 06:13.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: And it was.
[06:13.250 --> 06:14.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: And it was an incredible place.
[06:14.570 --> 06:14.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: Imagine that.
[06:15.070 --> 06:17.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: Hackers actually in control of a missile silo.
[06:17.950 --> 06:20.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: The worst fear of governments for decades.
[06:20.750 --> 06:22.770]  [SPEAKER_12]: And now it's actually come true.
[06:23.690 --> 06:26.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: You know, we have to think of the next cool place to have a hacker camp.
[06:26.590 --> 06:28.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: Was anyone using a payphone there?
[06:28.570 --> 06:29.750]  [SPEAKER_02]: I saw a payphone there.
[06:30.110 --> 06:32.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: I saw a payphone, but they weren't using it to control the missiles.
[06:32.250 --> 06:36.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: There were no missiles to control, so no need for housewives and congressmen to panic.
[06:37.730 --> 06:39.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: Everything was under control.
[06:39.310 --> 06:40.370]  [SPEAKER_02]: So I don't have to duck and cover?
[06:40.710 --> 06:42.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: Not as of yet.
[06:42.170 --> 06:45.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: But there are lots of other missile silos out there that are in use.
[06:45.270 --> 06:48.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: This one was built in the early 1960s.
[06:48.190 --> 06:50.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: This was a direct result of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
[06:50.190 --> 07:01.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: And I was told that it was built as kind of disinformation, a disinformation campaign, where the Russians would see what the United States was doing and sink a lot of money into something that didn't make any sense.
[07:01.790 --> 07:03.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: And that's kind of...
[07:03.710 --> 07:05.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: This one only lasted about two or three years.
[07:06.090 --> 07:06.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: Wait, wait.
[07:07.310 --> 07:14.230]  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't really understand the Cold War, but the theory is that the United States should waste money on something that doesn't make any sense.
[07:14.230 --> 07:18.590]  [SPEAKER_03]: And thereby, the Soviet Union will also waste money on something that doesn't make sense.
[07:18.630 --> 07:19.690]  [SPEAKER_03]: And somehow the U.S.
[07:19.790 --> 07:20.010]  [SPEAKER_03]: benefits.
[07:20.090 --> 07:20.830]  [SPEAKER_03]: Because we had more money.
[07:21.010 --> 07:21.750]  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, couldn't we have...
[07:21.750 --> 07:25.790]  [SPEAKER_12]: If we could get them to waste the same amount of money, then they'd have less, even less money than what they already had.
[07:25.970 --> 07:27.670]  [SPEAKER_02]: Couldn't we have just built these things out of styrofoam?
[07:27.670 --> 07:28.830]  [SPEAKER_02]: They didn't fall for it, though, apparently.
[07:29.410 --> 07:31.030]  [SPEAKER_05]: We've got Dadaists on our side.
[07:31.090 --> 07:32.310]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's what we've got with Surrealists.
[07:32.330 --> 07:33.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, the thing is, there was a mole.
[07:33.710 --> 07:35.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: There was a mole in the whole operation.
[07:35.270 --> 07:42.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: And part of the whole purpose of building this particular silo complex, which, by the way, is in Moses Lake, Washington, which is another place where you can land a space shuttle, by the way.
[07:42.250 --> 07:43.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: They have a huge airport there.
[07:43.490 --> 07:49.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: But part of the reason was to flush out the mole, to find out, you know, when they told the Soviets about this, who it was.
[07:49.170 --> 07:50.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: I don't know if that ever worked.
[07:50.230 --> 07:55.790]  [SPEAKER_08]: But wasn't this what they did in Three Amigos or Blazing Saddles, where they built a fake town for the bad guys to come attack?
[07:55.910 --> 07:57.430]  [SPEAKER_12]: Blazing Saddles may well have been based on this.
[07:57.510 --> 07:58.450]  [SPEAKER_12]: That's entirely possible.
[07:58.590 --> 07:59.250]  [SPEAKER_08]: It all makes sense now.
[07:59.330 --> 08:07.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: I've got to say, the town of Odessa, the little village of Odessa, where absolutely nothing is open late at night and no people are seen, I sort of developed this affinity to it.
[08:07.230 --> 08:09.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: I had to go back and see it one more time when I was driving out.
[08:09.390 --> 08:15.450]  [SPEAKER_12]: But it was just, I don't know, it's weird when you stay in weird places, in the desert where no people are.
[08:15.630 --> 08:17.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: You just kind of get attached to it somehow.
[08:18.590 --> 08:24.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: And a lot of things are weird that you've never seen before, like dust devils.
[08:24.530 --> 08:26.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: You know, they're very creepy.
[08:26.370 --> 08:28.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: They're like tornadoes and they're everywhere, but they're not as big.
[08:29.550 --> 08:30.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
[08:30.870 --> 08:33.030]  [SPEAKER_06]: Did you ride through the desert on a horse with no name?
[08:34.010 --> 08:35.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, I did not do that.
[08:35.470 --> 08:36.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: In fact, I didn't even see a horse.
[08:37.650 --> 08:40.290]  [SPEAKER_06]: Were there alligator lizards in the sky?
[08:41.070 --> 08:43.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: Boy, you're a regular top 40 of the 1970s, aren't you?
[08:43.550 --> 08:45.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, there weren't any of those either.
[08:45.910 --> 08:47.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: You got another one for us?
[08:48.450 --> 08:48.810]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's it.
[08:48.830 --> 08:52.010]  [SPEAKER_06]: I just wondered, you know, being out in the desert can be a very serene experience.
[08:52.130 --> 08:53.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: I did ride on Ventura Highway.
[08:53.310 --> 08:54.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, I did not do that either.
[08:54.910 --> 09:01.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, but I saw Rambo Road, and Rambo Road went into an Air Force base, which I thought was kind of strange.
[09:01.670 --> 09:05.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: I also saw a road called Government Way, which was kind of interesting as well.
[09:05.990 --> 09:07.430]  [SPEAKER_06]: I'd like to have that road sign, actually.
[09:07.910 --> 09:10.770]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I imagine a lot of people do, which is why they have guards around it.
[09:12.630 --> 09:17.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: But yeah, tour camp, an amazing group of people, a lot of fun, history was made.
[09:18.650 --> 09:23.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: Remember, we went to the CCC camp a couple of years ago, and that took place on a military airport.
[09:24.190 --> 09:25.850]  [SPEAKER_12]: An abandoned military airport with airplanes.
[09:26.010 --> 09:27.810]  [SPEAKER_03]: The other side of the Cold War.
[09:27.850 --> 09:28.550]  [SPEAKER_12]: Exactly, yeah.
[09:28.750 --> 09:30.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: And we thought that was the ultimate in cool.
[09:30.390 --> 09:33.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I think the Americans might have actually beaten the Germans in this.
[09:34.630 --> 09:37.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: And the only thing I would say could have been better was the attendance.
[09:37.690 --> 09:39.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: I think we had about maybe 300, 400 people, which was great.
[09:39.950 --> 09:41.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: It was a manageable crowd.
[09:41.370 --> 09:42.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: You know, a nice community was formed.
[09:42.970 --> 09:46.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: But I just wish so many more people had experienced this, because it was really incredible.
[09:46.450 --> 09:48.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: I don't know if we'll ever be able to do something like that again.
[09:48.750 --> 09:54.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: But we should think of cool places to have conferences where you'd think that people can't possibly survive.
[09:54.190 --> 09:55.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: Maybe Antarctica or something.
[09:56.230 --> 10:00.610]  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a town in Pennsylvania where there's a coal fire that's been burning underground for 40 years.
[10:00.610 --> 10:02.630]  [SPEAKER_02]: You're not the first person to mention that as a possibility.
[10:02.930 --> 10:08.850]  [SPEAKER_12]: Except once you actually mention about the coal fire in Pennsylvania, then suddenly there's no reason to actually be there.
[10:09.010 --> 10:09.890]  [SPEAKER_02]: People still live there.
[10:10.010 --> 10:11.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, but why would you want to go there?
[10:11.910 --> 10:13.150]  [SPEAKER_06]: We were actually there, Emmanuel.
[10:13.310 --> 10:15.130]  [SPEAKER_06]: Emmanuel, remember we actually drove by that place?
[10:15.170 --> 10:15.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: I do remember that.
[10:15.990 --> 10:17.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: I don't remember seeing the fire, though.
[10:17.510 --> 10:18.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: I think we were looking for the fire.
[10:18.770 --> 10:21.390]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, there was tons of snow and ice and everything.
[10:21.570 --> 10:22.790]  [SPEAKER_06]: It was a dead of winter.
[10:22.990 --> 10:27.450]  [SPEAKER_06]: It was right after we dropped off Phiber Optik in federal prison to check in.
[10:27.610 --> 10:29.730]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, that wasn't fun enough, so we decided to see a town burning.
[10:30.130 --> 10:33.490]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we had to see something even more depressing to fit the mood of the day.
[10:33.810 --> 10:37.310]  [SPEAKER_06]: But I've been there since, and there are vapors coming out of the ground.
[10:37.310 --> 10:44.470]  [SPEAKER_06]: There's actually been a couple of good documentaries about the holdouts in that town and how they're convinced that, you know, everybody will come back someday.
[10:44.530 --> 10:46.130]  [SPEAKER_06]: And it's very eerie.
[10:46.410 --> 10:46.770]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's like being on the moon.
[10:46.770 --> 10:47.450]  [SPEAKER_06]: Come back from where?
[10:47.650 --> 10:48.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: Where'd they go?
[10:48.710 --> 10:50.850]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, they all left, and their houses were torn down.
[10:50.850 --> 11:05.290]  [SPEAKER_06]: But these people who lived there their whole lives are convinced that, some documentary I saw at the Philadelphia Film Festival a few years ago, which is very good, people believe that some, the few people still living there think that the people who once lived there will move back.
[11:06.570 --> 11:11.490]  [SPEAKER_06]: And it will be a viable town again with, you know, a vibrant community, with stores and a fire department.
[11:11.770 --> 11:12.850]  [SPEAKER_06]: But, you know, everything's gone.
[11:13.070 --> 11:17.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: Maybe if they had a fire department now, there wouldn't be a fire going for however many uses.
[11:17.430 --> 11:19.290]  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, they tried to put it out for like 10 years.
[11:19.990 --> 11:21.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, well, I guess they need to do a better job.
[11:22.450 --> 11:23.410]  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what...
[11:23.410 --> 11:23.530]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[11:23.830 --> 11:25.930]  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to say anything about the content of Tor Camp?
[11:26.150 --> 11:27.190]  [SPEAKER_03]: Or just the setting?
[11:27.450 --> 11:33.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, there are all kinds of talks on various hacker-type issues.
[11:33.490 --> 11:47.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: My talk related to history of various events that took place, the first ever Dutch camp, the first ever Dutch conference, the growth of conferences in the States, the growth of hacking, how people perceive us.
[11:48.330 --> 11:51.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: But there are all kinds of other, more technical talks.
[11:51.410 --> 11:58.430]  [SPEAKER_12]: And there was one talk I saw, well attended, on meditation, which is kind of cool in the middle of the desert, just seeing people learning how to meditate.
[11:59.150 --> 12:05.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: But I think the biggest attraction was the actual camps that were set up.
[12:05.050 --> 12:07.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: For instance, HackerBot Labs from Seattle.
[12:08.070 --> 12:09.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: Coolest bunch of people ever.
[12:09.510 --> 12:11.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: They set up this amazing...
[12:12.690 --> 12:14.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's not doing it justice to call it a flagpole.
[12:14.850 --> 12:19.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: Basically, it was just a structure that held a pirate flag way up high in the sky.
[12:19.790 --> 12:21.370]  [SPEAKER_12]: And they had to like put this thing together.
[12:21.550 --> 12:23.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: Took them hours and hours to do it.
[12:23.170 --> 12:30.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: They brought all these cargo containers, the empty cargo containers in, and sort of built a little village that surrounded the pirate flag.
[12:31.370 --> 12:34.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: There were people from Noisebridge in the Bay Area.
[12:35.830 --> 12:38.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: There's Nick Farr and the Hackers on a Plane people were there.
[12:38.830 --> 12:40.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: All kinds of groups represented.
[12:40.810 --> 12:42.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: Canadians, they had their own camp.
[12:42.630 --> 12:44.150]  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have photos that you could post?
[12:44.290 --> 12:45.270]  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we could give them...
[12:45.270 --> 12:45.550]  [SPEAKER_02]: I have photos.
[12:45.970 --> 12:46.550]  [SPEAKER_12]: I have photos.
[12:46.730 --> 12:47.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: They're not the best quality.
[12:47.570 --> 12:49.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: We can go over them later and see if they're worthy of posting.
[12:50.430 --> 12:51.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's probably a tag on Flickr for it, too.
[12:52.110 --> 12:52.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, yeah.
[12:52.750 --> 12:53.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: And, you know, all kinds of...
[12:53.810 --> 12:54.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: There was wildlife, too.
[12:55.150 --> 12:55.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: People brought their dogs.
[12:56.090 --> 12:56.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: There was a puppy there.
[12:56.790 --> 12:57.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: It was a lot of fun.
[12:57.310 --> 12:58.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: That doesn't count as wildlife.
[12:58.270 --> 13:01.790]  [SPEAKER_12]: There was a crow that fell out of its nest, and we were feeding it, and that was kind of fun.
[13:01.930 --> 13:05.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: And then there were the seagulls from Spokane, which I don't understand.
[13:06.030 --> 13:08.130]  [SPEAKER_03]: Do the seagulls know they're not anywhere near the sea?
[13:08.170 --> 13:09.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, well, I went to this...
[13:09.010 --> 13:13.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: I went to this hamburger joint called Dick's, and for some reason, Dick's is surrounded by seagulls.
[13:14.030 --> 13:16.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, the reason the seagulls are interested is because of the French fries.
[13:16.610 --> 13:17.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: People want French fries.
[13:18.170 --> 13:20.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: But I don't know why there were seagulls in Spokane, and nobody can explain that to me.
[13:21.130 --> 13:22.930]  [SPEAKER_08]: Weren't you also chased by a coyote at one point?
[13:23.010 --> 13:24.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: I wasn't chased by the coyote.
[13:24.210 --> 13:29.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: I was driving down the road, and I saw two coyotes, and they obviously weren't dogs.
[13:29.750 --> 13:32.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: They looked very different, and they just sort of ran back into the desert.
[13:32.750 --> 13:41.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: But then five minutes later, I was driving, and I saw this big white furry creature on the side of the road, and he was standing completely still.
[13:41.310 --> 13:42.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: He didn't want me to see him.
[13:42.630 --> 13:46.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: He was just not moving at all, and I stopped my car because there were no other cars around.
[13:46.370 --> 13:49.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: You could drive for an hour and a half and not see a single other car, and this was the middle of the night.
[13:50.050 --> 13:55.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: So I turned my headlights onto him, and then he just started running away, and I said to myself, what in the world...
[13:55.610 --> 13:56.950]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's the town's local furry.
[13:57.150 --> 13:58.250]  [SPEAKER_05]: I think he's a rabbit.
[13:58.670 --> 14:00.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: The first thought that went through my head was, it's a polar bear.
[14:00.970 --> 14:02.770]  [SPEAKER_12]: What is a polar bear doing in the middle of the desert?
[14:02.890 --> 14:10.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: And all of a sudden, I realized I'm in the show Lost and with hatches and crazy underground control rooms and things like that.
[14:10.910 --> 14:20.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: But no, in actuality, it's a big white shaggy dog with a collar, and I don't know why he was there in the middle of the desert, but he knew to stand still when the car was going by and try not to be seen, but it didn't work.
[14:20.290 --> 14:27.730]  [SPEAKER_12]: So yeah, and then on the way back when I was leaving finally, my car was deluged with I think a plague of locusts or grasshoppers.
[14:27.910 --> 14:34.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: It was like a rainstorm except they were all grasshoppers and it was making disgusting plopping noises and the highway became littered with them.
[14:35.010 --> 14:35.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: And then that stopped.
[14:36.070 --> 14:37.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: I think it's a sign.
[14:37.570 --> 14:38.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, it really is.
[14:39.110 --> 14:39.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: You know what?
[14:40.810 --> 14:42.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: It was about time for that hat to come off.
[14:42.970 --> 14:43.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[14:44.210 --> 14:46.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: Wearing that damn thing on my head is really taking its toll.
[14:47.830 --> 14:48.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's a hard hat to wear.
[14:48.830 --> 14:51.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's a hard hat to wear, but it's a cool hat to wear too.
[14:51.370 --> 14:54.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: And you'd be surprised how long you can go around wearing a hard hat and not realize it.
[14:56.570 --> 15:00.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: So if you ever see somebody walking around with a hard hat, assume that they forgot they have it on.
[15:01.350 --> 15:01.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: All right.
[15:02.090 --> 15:05.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, so let's get to the news of the week, what's been going on.
[15:05.230 --> 15:08.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: So I understand our good friends in North Korea are being accused of a cybercrime.
[15:09.050 --> 15:10.290]  [SPEAKER_12]: Let's look into this.
[15:10.370 --> 15:12.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: Let's decide if they're guilty or innocent.
[15:12.690 --> 15:13.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: All right.
[15:13.410 --> 15:13.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: You've already decided.
[15:14.150 --> 15:25.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: South Korea's intelligence agency suspects that North Korea may have been behind an Internet attack of today and yesterday that targeted government websites in South Korea and the United States.
[15:27.330 --> 15:29.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: 26 Internet sites in the two countries.
[15:29.890 --> 15:30.790]  [SPEAKER_12]: How does this become news?
[15:30.890 --> 15:35.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: 26 sites get attacked somehow and all of a sudden it's a front page of the Washington Post.
[15:35.830 --> 15:39.790]  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought they suffered like a million attacks a day according to their previous press release.
[15:39.950 --> 15:40.590]  [SPEAKER_03]: They claim they do.
[15:41.150 --> 15:43.130]  [SPEAKER_03]: So how did they notice like one extra?
[15:43.290 --> 15:43.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: I don't know.
[15:44.030 --> 15:45.450]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, maybe because of what they are.
[15:45.530 --> 15:49.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: They included the office of South Korea's president and the defense ministry.
[15:49.730 --> 15:53.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: The South Korean National Intelligence Service claimed this in a statement.
[15:53.610 --> 16:00.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: In the United States, the targets were the Departments of Homeland Security, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Trade Commission.
[16:01.030 --> 16:03.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, it's a smoking gun pointing right to North Korea, isn't it?
[16:04.010 --> 16:06.010]  [SPEAKER_05]: So is this South Korea reporting this about the U.S.
[16:06.030 --> 16:06.550]  [SPEAKER_05]: or did the U.S.
[16:06.630 --> 16:07.610]  [SPEAKER_05]: come out and make a statement too?
[16:07.810 --> 16:15.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, the South Korean National Intelligence Service claimed that their president and defense ministry were targeted.
[16:17.010 --> 16:19.290]  [SPEAKER_12]: Apparently, this is all coming from lawmakers in Seoul.
[16:19.410 --> 16:26.950]  [SPEAKER_12]: According to this story, anyway, the attacks appear to have been elaborately prepared and executed at the level of a group or a state.
[16:33.670 --> 16:38.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: who were told by intelligence officials that North Korea or its sympathizers were prime suspects in the attacks.
[16:39.030 --> 16:41.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: They cited unnamed legislators.
[16:41.510 --> 16:44.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: No hard evidence has emerged that North Korea is responsible for the attacks.
[16:44.890 --> 16:48.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: A spokesman for the South Korean Intelligence Agency said it could not confirm the Yonhap report.
[16:49.110 --> 16:54.950]  [SPEAKER_12]: The attacks were described as a distributed denial of service, a relatively unsophisticated form of hacking.
[16:55.550 --> 16:56.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, we'll get into that.
[16:56.910 --> 17:00.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: In which personal computers are commanded to overwhelm certain websites with a blizzard of data.
[17:00.930 --> 17:10.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: The effort did not involve siphoning off of sensitive information or disabling crucial operational systems, government and security experts said, but it was widespread, resilient, and aimed at both U.S.
[17:10.710 --> 17:15.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: and South Korean government websites, security researchers said.
[17:15.210 --> 17:23.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: Now, the thing is, having been to North Korea and having studied it a bit, their connectivity really isn't all that much.
[17:23.770 --> 17:28.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: For them to be able to pull this off would be almost impossible, I think.
[17:28.050 --> 17:30.150]  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not coming from one source.
[17:30.150 --> 17:30.850]  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the whole point.
[17:30.930 --> 17:33.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, is it not coming from North Korea then as well?
[17:33.270 --> 17:40.230]  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, no, the idea is that you have a bunch of basically drones at your disposal that are various computers all around the Internet that have been infected.
[17:40.230 --> 17:41.190]  [SPEAKER_02]: Which could be anywhere in the world.
[17:41.350 --> 17:43.090]  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, but, yeah, a botnet basically.
[17:43.250 --> 17:43.690]  [SPEAKER_02]: A botnet, right.
[17:43.790 --> 17:46.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: So how is it that North Korea is getting the blame for this?
[17:46.310 --> 17:50.850]  [SPEAKER_02]: Probably because the South Koreans are saying we got attacked too and who else would want to attack us but North Korea.
[17:51.050 --> 18:01.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: But the idea is that you wouldn't really, well, I mean, you could maybe trace it but it would be difficult because the actual hosts doing the attack are not located where the attacker is necessarily.
[18:01.770 --> 18:09.890]  [SPEAKER_04]: So not only is there no evidence saying that North Korea is guilty doing this on South Korea but there's no evidence linking the attacks on the U.S.
[18:09.950 --> 18:11.330]  [SPEAKER_04]: to that of South Korea.
[18:11.790 --> 18:13.090]  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, the U.S.
[18:13.270 --> 18:15.170]  [SPEAKER_04]: hasn't put out a statement at all about this.
[18:16.050 --> 18:19.370]  [SPEAKER_04]: I think it's just the South Koreans saying that the U.S.
[18:19.970 --> 18:24.630]  [SPEAKER_04]: is attacked every day by just like the average botnets that everybody else is attacked with.
[18:24.830 --> 18:28.950]  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's just the South Koreans saying, oh, you guys are at fault too.
[18:29.030 --> 18:32.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: We do have a statement from Department of Homeland Security.
[18:32.350 --> 18:42.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: Spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the agency was aware of ongoing attacks and that the government's computer emergency response team had issued guidance to public and private sector websites on stemming the attacks.
[18:42.310 --> 18:47.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: We see attacks on federal networks every day and measures in place have minimized the impact to federal websites.
[18:48.150 --> 18:52.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: The attacks did not penetrate the targeted websites and the attackers did not steal any data.
[18:54.250 --> 18:58.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: So, but before reports emerged of North Korea's alleged involvement, a U.S.
[18:58.550 --> 19:06.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: official familiar with the attacks who spoke on condition of anonymity said that not knowing who's behind them is problematic from the standpoint of preventing future attacks.
[19:07.470 --> 19:08.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: So, they don't know anything.
[19:10.070 --> 19:14.350]  [SPEAKER_03]: I find it amazing that the Department of Homeland Security issued the more reasonable of the statements.
[19:15.410 --> 19:16.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, you know, hysteria.
[19:16.950 --> 19:18.430]  [SPEAKER_12]: Hysteria reigns in things like this.
[19:18.510 --> 19:22.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: But it's weird because hackers are always getting blamed for things without any evidence.
[19:22.510 --> 19:25.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: And just because they're the likely suspects in the eyes of many.
[19:26.270 --> 19:37.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: And I think we can all identify with North Korea here and stand up in brotherhood with them against this kind of unfair accusation against people who really aren't interested in this kind of thing.
[19:37.290 --> 19:37.630]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know about that.
[19:37.730 --> 19:39.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, I mean, if we...
[19:40.250 --> 19:42.430]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you just read the article and you said hackers.
[19:42.650 --> 19:43.350]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, hackers...
[19:43.350 --> 19:44.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I read the article that said...
[19:44.730 --> 19:44.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[19:45.010 --> 19:45.310]  [SPEAKER_05]: Right, exactly.
[19:45.450 --> 19:47.670]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, but are we not just perpetuating the same?
[19:47.790 --> 19:49.070]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, what are we going to call them?
[19:49.150 --> 19:52.430]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the traditional name for people who are doing negative things is crackers, right?
[19:52.430 --> 19:53.450]  [SPEAKER_05]: But we don't tend to...
[19:53.450 --> 19:53.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: No, that's a stupid name.
[19:53.930 --> 19:54.630]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's a stupid name.
[19:54.630 --> 19:59.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: Because all it is is just saying that, okay, these are evil hackers and they're crackers.
[19:59.670 --> 20:00.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: So, okay, case closed.
[20:00.590 --> 20:01.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: They're crackers.
[20:01.450 --> 20:03.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, I mean, call them vandals.
[20:03.410 --> 20:04.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: Call them vandals.
[20:04.050 --> 20:05.150]  [SPEAKER_02]: I like the attackers.
[20:05.370 --> 20:06.110]  [SPEAKER_02]: That was a fine term.
[20:06.110 --> 20:06.750]  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, attack...
[20:06.750 --> 20:08.090]  [SPEAKER_02]: It implies violence, though.
[20:08.250 --> 20:08.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: Attacking.
[20:08.890 --> 20:09.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: But vandals.
[20:09.750 --> 20:10.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's vandalism.
[20:10.410 --> 20:12.110]  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't get what purpose this was...
[20:12.110 --> 20:14.810]  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, who uses the FAA website?
[20:14.950 --> 20:15.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: I guess...
[20:15.950 --> 20:16.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, it's a good question.
[20:16.730 --> 20:17.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: I've never...
[20:17.050 --> 20:17.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: I mean, I don't know.
[20:17.690 --> 20:18.610]  [SPEAKER_02]: If it's just the website, maybe.
[20:18.730 --> 20:22.970]  [SPEAKER_02]: If they were taking down the network and it affects, you know, actual aviation stuff that's important...
[20:22.970 --> 20:25.390]  [SPEAKER_02]: Why would aviation stuff be on the World Wide Web?
[20:25.390 --> 20:26.990]  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like they probably have their own network for that kind of thing.
[20:26.990 --> 20:28.030]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I would hope so.
[20:28.030 --> 20:34.530]  [SPEAKER_02]: So, if they're attacking a website, I don't really see what purpose this serves and what really gain North Korea would have from taking down somebody's website.
[20:34.690 --> 20:35.230]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's kind of cool.
[20:35.230 --> 20:38.190]  [SPEAKER_08]: And like you said, these are sites that get attacked every day.
[20:38.310 --> 20:39.630]  [SPEAKER_08]: Millions of attacks, you know, constantly.
[20:40.130 --> 20:44.650]  [SPEAKER_08]: And so, what this boils down to is something that happens constantly also happened again.
[20:44.990 --> 20:47.290]  [SPEAKER_08]: But now they have someone that they want to blame it on, I guess.
[20:47.610 --> 20:56.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I just want to extend the offer to North Korea if they need some expert witnesses to stand up and say that I know where North Korea was at that particular time and it had nothing to do with this.
[20:57.390 --> 20:58.770]  [SPEAKER_12]: You know, we're just willing to help out.
[20:58.890 --> 21:00.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: Do you suppose this has anything to do with the football?
[21:01.330 --> 21:02.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: You know, I don't think so.
[21:02.930 --> 21:03.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: It might, though.
[21:03.590 --> 21:07.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, South Korea might be a little peeved that they're going to be sharing the World Cup with North Korea.
[21:07.550 --> 21:08.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: And launch some missiles.
[21:08.890 --> 21:12.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, North Korea launched some missiles, but that was just to celebrate Independence Day for the United States.
[21:12.590 --> 21:17.630]  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe South Korea thinks that this will really get our goat and that we're going to go after North Korea now.
[21:17.730 --> 21:19.970]  [SPEAKER_02]: Forget the missiles, but they attacked our website?
[21:20.010 --> 21:20.610]  [SPEAKER_02]: God forbid.
[21:20.710 --> 21:25.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: But actually, South Korea wants conflict with North Korea less than the U.S.
[21:26.170 --> 21:26.950]  [SPEAKER_12]: does or did.
[21:27.150 --> 21:29.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: I'm not really sure what the policy is now, but...
[21:29.390 --> 21:31.530]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, they're going to lose more people in the case of conflict.
[21:31.670 --> 21:31.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[21:31.870 --> 21:39.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: And they're not too thrilled about having reunification either because then they have to deal with millions and millions of people that they have to finance and, you know, all out of East Germany.
[21:39.950 --> 21:41.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: And wretched poverty, as I understand.
[21:41.310 --> 21:42.530]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, things are really bad in North Korea.
[21:42.770 --> 21:44.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, but then maybe bad in South Korea as well.
[21:44.730 --> 21:48.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: And Russia and China, they're not interested in this either because they'd have to deal with all those people too.
[21:48.770 --> 21:49.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: Okay.
[21:49.270 --> 21:51.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: So that interesting story that just came out.
[21:51.830 --> 21:55.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Now, this is something else that we were talking about on the list a little bit.
[21:55.310 --> 22:00.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: And it was kind of reminiscent of something that happened over a decade ago.
[22:00.510 --> 22:08.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: Husband and wife owners of a California company that distributed pornographic materials over the Internet have been each sentenced to one year and one day in prison.
[22:09.090 --> 22:09.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: That's according to the U.S.
[22:10.150 --> 22:10.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: Department of Justice.
[22:10.670 --> 22:18.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: Extreme Associates and owners Robert Zaccari, also known as Rob Black, and his wife, Janet Romano, a.k.a.
[22:18.650 --> 22:20.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: Lizzie Borden, pleaded guilty...
[22:20.570 --> 22:22.290]  [SPEAKER_12]: Those names probably didn't help them, I guess, in court.
[22:22.570 --> 22:29.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: Pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mail and over the Internet.
[22:29.310 --> 22:31.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: They were sentenced on Wednesday.
[22:31.550 --> 22:39.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: The couple in their plea agreement acknowledged distributing three videos through the mail and six video clips over the Internet to Western Pennsylvania.
[22:40.330 --> 22:45.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: They forfeited their domain name, ExtremeAssociates.com, as part of their plea agreement.
[22:45.710 --> 22:47.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: That's an interesting penalty there.
[22:47.670 --> 22:48.610]  [SPEAKER_02]: They've been dememed.
[22:48.830 --> 22:50.970]  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, then people can't find their content, in theory.
[22:51.070 --> 22:52.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, yeah, the company is also defunct.
[22:52.650 --> 22:54.730]  [SPEAKER_03]: What is the government going to do with this domain name?
[22:54.810 --> 22:56.010]  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a really interesting question.
[22:56.310 --> 23:03.350]  [SPEAKER_12]: Extreme Associates produced and distributed sexually degrading material that portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable.
[23:03.490 --> 23:03.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: U.S.
[23:04.270 --> 23:17.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan of the Western District of Pennsylvania said in a statement, these prison sentences affirm the need to continue to protect the public from obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy material, the production of which degrades all of us.
[23:17.570 --> 23:18.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: Now, I'm a little confused here.
[23:18.690 --> 23:20.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: Were they distributing beauty advertisements by any chance?
[23:20.730 --> 23:21.190]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean...
[23:21.190 --> 23:22.710]  [SPEAKER_05]: Possibly like Paris Hilton's TV show?
[23:22.710 --> 23:25.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: We've all seen obscenity on the Internet, have we not?
[23:25.370 --> 23:29.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: When did it become illegal to have obscene things?
[23:29.070 --> 23:29.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I think...
[23:29.470 --> 23:31.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: I mean, over the air, yes, I can understand that.
[23:31.630 --> 23:37.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: But to distribute video clips online, we're not talking about underage porn or anything like this.
[23:37.170 --> 23:38.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: This is apparently consenting adults.
[23:38.890 --> 23:38.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: Right.
[23:39.370 --> 23:41.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: Did I miss a chapter in our history?
[23:41.170 --> 23:46.410]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's just not a very strong legal definition of what's obscene and what's not obscene.
[23:46.450 --> 23:48.570]  [SPEAKER_02]: And we've seen that, of course, with this whole...
[23:48.570 --> 23:51.230]  [SPEAKER_02]: with what's on the radio, you know, the words you can't say and all that.
[23:51.290 --> 23:52.110]  [SPEAKER_02]: Right, but that's the radio.
[23:52.310 --> 23:52.550]  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[24:03.890 --> 24:07.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they were pretty terrible, but, you know...
[24:07.430 --> 24:08.350]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's true you're interested in this.
[24:08.710 --> 24:19.530]  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think the thing is that, you know, you can take these and say, oh, well, these are really, really bad, so let's prosecute them, because maybe a jury or a judge will side with If it's consenting adults, yeah, it's disgusting or something, but...
[24:19.530 --> 24:19.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: I didn't say it was right.
[24:19.590 --> 24:23.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: Was it violence, or was it coprophagy, or, you know...
[24:23.150 --> 24:24.010]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, all kinds of things.
[24:24.150 --> 24:24.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Okay.
[24:24.370 --> 24:25.730]  [SPEAKER_12]: All right, but, you know, it's still...
[24:25.730 --> 24:28.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: We see violence in films every day, so that's not illegal.
[24:28.970 --> 24:33.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: This is something that doesn't involve children, unwilling participants, I assume.
[24:33.230 --> 24:34.550]  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't say I agreed with it.
[24:34.610 --> 24:35.130]  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just saying...
[24:35.130 --> 24:36.190]  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not asking if you are agreeing with it.
[24:36.210 --> 24:43.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: I'm saying this doesn't seem in line with what we're allowed to do and not allowed to do on the Internet, on our computers.
[24:44.230 --> 24:44.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: Right.
[24:44.670 --> 24:45.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
[24:45.830 --> 24:53.090]  [SPEAKER_06]: This raises, really, a very old question that first became raised a lot back in...
[24:53.090 --> 24:55.790]  [SPEAKER_06]: Jeez, it was back in the early 1990s or late 1980s.
[24:55.870 --> 24:57.250]  [SPEAKER_06]: I think it was the Rusty and 1980s.
[24:57.390 --> 24:58.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: You're talking about the amateur action case?
[24:58.970 --> 25:00.310]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that amateur action bulletin board.
[25:00.410 --> 25:00.550]  [SPEAKER_06]: Right.
[25:00.750 --> 25:03.030]  [SPEAKER_06]: That was like a couple of decades ago.
[25:03.150 --> 25:04.030]  [SPEAKER_06]: It was in the 1990s, I think.
[25:04.130 --> 25:09.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: But yeah, it reminds me of that, where somebody wound up accepting a package from Tennessee or something like that.
[25:09.830 --> 25:24.250]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, Tennessee, where the standards, where the community standards of Tennessee were applied to some place that was, you know, many states away, and really out of their jurisdiction.
[25:24.250 --> 25:29.750]  [SPEAKER_06]: And that's one of the problems you have when you try to apply obscenity laws to the Internet.
[25:29.950 --> 25:40.870]  [SPEAKER_06]: And obscenity laws really are enforced by the community standards of what's considered decent or obscene for that local community.
[25:41.670 --> 25:45.830]  [SPEAKER_06]: But, you know, when you apply that, the most conservative...
[25:45.830 --> 25:46.910]  [SPEAKER_06]: I've been to Western Pennsylvania.
[25:46.970 --> 25:50.670]  [SPEAKER_06]: We've all driven through Western Pennsylvania on our way to Dayton, Ohio, every year.
[25:50.750 --> 25:51.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, we drive very fast through there.
[25:51.930 --> 25:57.390]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's a very, very socially conservative area, parts of West.
[25:57.470 --> 25:59.210]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's right near West Wheeling, West Virginia.
[25:59.610 --> 26:09.670]  [SPEAKER_06]: And frankly, those community standards do not match or even come close to the community standards in most other communities.
[26:09.910 --> 26:24.850]  [SPEAKER_06]: So you have clearly a very overzealous prosecutor who's applying their local community standards to someone who's in a completely different community where the standards there may be perfectly okay with the information that's being distributed on the Internet.
[26:25.090 --> 26:27.830]  [SPEAKER_06]: And frankly, this information wasn't imposed on anybody.
[26:28.070 --> 26:30.570]  [SPEAKER_06]: This is available to people who are requesting it.
[26:30.750 --> 26:42.170]  [SPEAKER_06]: So I really have a problem with prosecutors, overzealous prosecutors, going after people in other jurisdictions, trying to enforce their local community standards on some other community.
[26:42.170 --> 26:49.610]  [SPEAKER_06]: But, you know, you're going to have this until there's some sort of agreement on how this should really be handled sensibly.
[26:49.750 --> 26:51.270]  [SPEAKER_06]: Right now, obviously, it's not being handled sensibly.
[26:51.270 --> 26:58.630]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, what's interesting is, you know, in this case, what you have is you have investigators requesting and ordering or ordering these things.
[26:58.790 --> 27:06.150]  [SPEAKER_02]: And they're saying, oh, well, they were delivered to us, so it's clearly the fault of the person providing it because even though we requested it, they actually sent it to us.
[27:06.270 --> 27:07.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: But, I mean, how can you have that?
[27:07.470 --> 27:15.950]  [SPEAKER_02]: How can you have that in commerce that, oh, okay, well, we've got to remember not to send something to Western Pennsylvania because we have to know the community standards of every single part of the United States.
[27:16.110 --> 27:16.210]  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[27:16.210 --> 27:20.670]  [SPEAKER_02]: That way we don't violate their local, you know, obscenity at a local level.
[27:20.770 --> 27:21.530]  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, how can you know that?
[27:21.590 --> 27:22.950]  [SPEAKER_02]: How can you carry on commerce that way?
[27:23.150 --> 27:24.190]  [SPEAKER_05]: I can't ship something...
[27:24.190 --> 27:25.510]  [SPEAKER_05]: Plus, that sounds like entrapment as well.
[27:25.630 --> 27:25.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[27:25.730 --> 27:27.290]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, if it's investigators asking for it.
[27:27.430 --> 27:31.490]  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I can, you know, it's different, I guess, when you're talking about things that are plainly illegal.
[27:31.490 --> 27:35.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: So, if a state has outlawed some sort of drug or something, you can't ship it there.
[27:35.570 --> 27:35.750]  [SPEAKER_02]: Fine.
[27:35.750 --> 27:36.970]  [SPEAKER_02]: But that's also on a state level.
[27:37.090 --> 27:38.330]  [SPEAKER_02]: But, I mean, this is ridiculous.
[27:38.630 --> 27:39.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: And community standards change.
[27:40.190 --> 27:40.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[27:40.310 --> 27:41.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: And you have to keep updated on all that.
[27:41.850 --> 27:42.110]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[27:42.210 --> 27:45.470]  [SPEAKER_08]: Community standards are completely different all over the world in every locality.
[27:45.710 --> 27:48.030]  [SPEAKER_08]: And, you know, if I put something on the Internet, do I have...
[27:48.030 --> 27:54.530]  [SPEAKER_08]: Is it now my responsibility to somehow impose some sort of filter that lets my website be seen by the entire Internet except Western Pennsylvania?
[27:54.830 --> 27:54.910]  [SPEAKER_08]: Right.
[27:54.950 --> 27:56.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: How do you do that?
[27:56.110 --> 27:56.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: How does that even work?
[27:57.410 --> 28:01.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: So, maybe this was worse because they pleaded guilty back in March.
[28:01.270 --> 28:02.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: Maybe that's...
[28:02.030 --> 28:05.790]  [SPEAKER_12]: If they had fought this, maybe this couldn't possibly have stood.
[28:05.910 --> 28:06.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: But I don't know.
[28:06.590 --> 28:08.530]  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, these guys fought pretty hard.
[28:08.790 --> 28:08.910]  [SPEAKER_03]: Did they?
[28:08.930 --> 28:10.310]  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they ended up pleading guilty.
[28:10.590 --> 28:11.890]  [SPEAKER_03]: But these were not...
[28:11.890 --> 28:15.910]  [SPEAKER_03]: This was not a case of just giving up at the first opportunity.
[28:17.190 --> 28:18.670]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think, you know, I think it's...
[28:18.670 --> 28:22.110]  [SPEAKER_02]: But now, if someone pleads guilty, though, that doesn't set a precedent, right?
[28:22.130 --> 28:24.050]  [SPEAKER_02]: It has to be that they lost the case.
[28:24.050 --> 28:24.510]  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the judge has to...
[28:24.510 --> 28:28.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: Like we learned a couple of weeks ago, the judge has to make a ruling for it to set a precedent.
[28:28.670 --> 28:30.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: So, I'm pleading guilty to a crime.
[28:30.270 --> 28:30.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, it's not a precedent.
[28:30.830 --> 28:32.910]  [SPEAKER_02]: So, this is just on this one case, then?
[28:33.130 --> 28:33.390]  [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[28:33.490 --> 28:33.730]  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[28:33.770 --> 28:34.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: It seems that way.
[28:34.690 --> 28:35.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: But what a case.
[28:36.110 --> 28:36.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: What a case.
[28:36.890 --> 28:37.350]  [SPEAKER_12]: Okay.
[28:37.430 --> 28:40.290]  [SPEAKER_12]: And something else that's rather shocking and surprising.
[28:40.450 --> 28:44.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: This comes from an Electronic Frontier Foundation press release of about a week ago.
[28:45.490 --> 28:56.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: EFF urged the federal court to reject bogus copyright claims in a ringtone royalty battle that could raise costs for consumers, jeopardize consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation.
[28:56.410 --> 29:02.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: Millions of Americans have bought musical ringtones, often clips from favorite popular songs for their mobile phones.
[29:02.410 --> 29:07.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: Mobile phone carriers pay royalties to song owners for the right to sell these snippets to their customers.
[29:07.850 --> 29:21.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: But as part of a ploy to squeeze more money out of the mobile phone companies, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, known as ASCAP, has told a federal court that each time a phone rings in a public place, the phone user has violated copyright law.
[29:21.170 --> 29:29.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: Therefore, ASCAP argues, phone carriers must pay additional royalties or face legal liability for contributing to what they claim is cell phone users' copyright infringement.
[29:30.070 --> 29:40.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: An abacus brief filed last Wednesday, EFF points out that copyright law does not reach public performances without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage, clearly the case with cell phone ringtones.
[29:40.970 --> 29:46.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: If phone users are not infringing copyright law, then mobile phone service providers are not contributing to any infringement.
[29:46.970 --> 29:52.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: EFF senior intellectual property attorney Fred von Lommen says this is an outlandish argument from ASCAP.
[29:52.890 --> 29:57.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: Are the millions of people who have bought ringtones breaking the law if they forget to silence their phones in a restaurant?
[29:58.170 --> 30:03.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: Under this reasoning from ASCAP, it would be a copyright violation for you to play your car radio with the window down.
[30:04.290 --> 30:10.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: ASCAP has responded by saying that it does not plan to charge mobile phone users, just mobile phone service providers.
[30:11.070 --> 30:16.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: But if ASCAP prevails, consumers could find themselves targeted by other copyright owners for public performances.
[30:17.030 --> 30:24.450]  [SPEAKER_12]: Worse, these wrongheaded legal claims cast a shadow over innovators who are building gadgets that help consumers get the most from their copyright privileges.
[30:24.730 --> 30:32.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: Because it is legal for consumers to play music in public, it's also legal for my mobile phone carrier to sell me a ringtone and a phone to do it.
[30:32.250 --> 30:38.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: Otherwise, it would be illegal to sell all kinds of technology that help us enjoy our fair use, first sale, and other copyright privileges.
[30:38.530 --> 30:40.310]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is a really scary slippery slope.
[30:40.450 --> 30:50.130]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I mean, all this looks like to me is, once again, an industry that's losing control over its business model, because it hasn't kept up with technology, just trying to maintain a revenue stream at whatever cost possible.
[30:50.410 --> 30:55.310]  [SPEAKER_05]: Because if you think about it, there's no way that they're going to make the money by going after service providers either.
[30:55.550 --> 30:59.950]  [SPEAKER_05]: Because, I mean, anybody can basically download it, but can put any of the songs on their phone.
[31:00.050 --> 31:01.910]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's all kinds of providers for ringtones out there.
[31:02.430 --> 31:04.930]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, they're not going to be able to corral all of them.
[31:05.270 --> 31:08.130]  [SPEAKER_05]: Plus, I mean, like, this is, this is, you got to think about the slippery slope.
[31:08.270 --> 31:10.530]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, like, the car radio example is great.
[31:10.530 --> 31:15.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the other example is Happy Birthday, for example, is under copyright, even though it was written by somebody at teacher's college.
[31:16.050 --> 31:17.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: People whistling songs as they walk.
[31:17.210 --> 31:17.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: People whistling songs.
[31:17.810 --> 31:26.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so there's, there's a, somebody's created a website, unhappybirthday.com, where you can go and turn in your friends and say, so-and-so was, was singing Happy Birthday in public.
[31:26.610 --> 31:27.050]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, awesome.
[31:27.270 --> 31:27.470]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[31:27.750 --> 31:30.850]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's, it's, I think that's, Mako Hill did that.
[31:30.970 --> 31:34.990]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, yeah, so there's, there's a site where you can turn in your friends for singing Happy Birthday in public.
[31:35.170 --> 31:36.950]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we should just get rid of copyright law.
[31:37.170 --> 31:38.030]  [SPEAKER_02]: It seems to cause too many.
[31:38.030 --> 31:39.150]  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, obviously we can't.
[31:39.310 --> 31:50.010]  [SPEAKER_02]: But the thing is that all of these industries that go after the most ridiculous things, and, you know, I'm glad that they get publicized in the media, at least to a degree, they're not getting themselves any good PR.
[31:50.290 --> 31:57.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm sure, you know, with all of these, every one of these rulings, every one of these court cases, I'm less inclined to go out and buy music because I don't want to pay them because they're a bunch of jerks.
[31:57.430 --> 32:04.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: But you're already paying for the music if you buy a ringtone, something I can never understand, why you buy a ringtone, but now that's not good enough for them that you're buying the ringtone to start with?
[32:04.690 --> 32:11.370]  [SPEAKER_03]: The thing I'm still waiting for an explanation for is why it costs $2 for a 30-second ringtone, but you can buy the whole song for a dollar.
[32:11.890 --> 32:13.010]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, that's weird.
[32:13.170 --> 32:14.690]  [SPEAKER_08]: It also seems like they're double-dipping here.
[32:14.770 --> 32:15.950]  [SPEAKER_08]: I mean, like here, we're on the radio.
[32:16.230 --> 32:20.290]  [SPEAKER_08]: The station has a license to play, you know, certain music, and we can play it.
[32:20.510 --> 32:29.790]  [SPEAKER_08]: Somebody listening to that song on their radio does not have to pay any amount of money to anyone for the ability to listen to it, even if they're in public.
[32:29.790 --> 32:36.310]  [SPEAKER_08]: But when the ringtone companies sell the ringtone, aren't they already paying the royalties on this?
[32:36.610 --> 32:41.530]  [SPEAKER_08]: Has that ringtone not been now authorized to be played by those who own it?
[32:41.770 --> 32:43.890]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's actually a mistake, Rob.
[32:44.610 --> 32:53.570]  [SPEAKER_03]: If I own, say, a restaurant and I have the radio playing in my restaurant, then ASCAP and BMI and CSAC will solicit license fees from me.
[32:53.570 --> 33:05.530]  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the most important thing here, the difference between an individual playing it and a restaurant playing it is because, as I personally said, when the restaurant plays it, it's for indirect commercial gain.
[33:05.850 --> 33:11.750]  [SPEAKER_04]: When an individual plays a cell phone, a ringtone, it's that they're not getting any commercial gain enough.
[33:11.870 --> 33:15.290]  [SPEAKER_04]: In fact, they're probably losing money because people think that they're lame and with the lame sound.
[33:15.290 --> 33:24.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: The thing I don't get is that if you're on a radio station, there's always been a problem with me, if you're on a radio station and you're playing music, it seems to me you're helping the people who produce the music.
[33:25.030 --> 33:26.350]  [SPEAKER_12]: You're doing them a favor.
[33:26.470 --> 33:30.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: You're giving them free publicity and an audience that they would not have.
[33:30.250 --> 33:34.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: So how can they actually want to charge you money for that?
[33:35.050 --> 33:36.990]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's an interesting thing.
[33:37.150 --> 33:44.230]  [SPEAKER_05]: For years, I believe the music industry, one of the industries lobbied against having to pay royalties for music played on the radio.
[33:44.230 --> 33:48.030]  [SPEAKER_05]: But now the music industry has done a turnaround and they're actually doing a campaign.
[33:48.190 --> 33:53.610]  [SPEAKER_05]: They have an AstroTurf campaign called Music First, which I believe is supported by...
[33:53.610 --> 33:54.310]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm trying to remember who.
[33:54.590 --> 33:56.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: Sweet Honey and the Rock was the act that surprised me in there.
[33:56.830 --> 34:08.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: But there are a number of acts that are signed up to this grassroots campaign, which basically says, well, we're fighting to make sure that artists get paid for the songs that get played on the radio.
[34:08.210 --> 34:19.110]  [SPEAKER_05]: But in fact, I mean, a lot of the time there's been evidence that artists aren't actually getting paid on these music from the ASCAP suits, from the RAA suits, which is a tremendous problem.
[34:19.110 --> 34:19.330]  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[34:20.510 --> 34:23.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, I mean, this is really...
[34:23.590 --> 34:24.710]  [SPEAKER_05]: Sorry, I lost my train of thought.
[34:25.010 --> 34:25.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: Bernie, go ahead.
[34:26.610 --> 34:27.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: Go ahead, Bernie.
[34:27.590 --> 34:31.590]  [SPEAKER_06]: I just want to say, ASCAP is really being disingenuous on a number of points.
[34:32.070 --> 34:38.450]  [SPEAKER_06]: First, them claiming that a ringtone, you know, I call them ring tunes because they're actually a tune.
[34:38.730 --> 34:41.990]  [SPEAKER_06]: If you happen to be in public and it plays, that that constitutes a public performance.
[34:42.210 --> 34:46.350]  [SPEAKER_06]: And then for them to say that, oh, we're not going to go after the consumers' pocketbooks for this.
[34:46.350 --> 34:48.450]  [SPEAKER_06]: We're just going after the cell phone providers.
[34:49.290 --> 34:53.870]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's disingenuous, too, because who do they think the money is going to come out of the pockets of, ultimately?
[34:54.150 --> 34:59.750]  [SPEAKER_06]: If they increase the royalty prices to the cell phone providers, obviously cell phone providers don't pay for anything.
[34:59.970 --> 35:01.930]  [SPEAKER_06]: They're not going to take it back to the consumer.
[35:02.170 --> 35:04.630]  [SPEAKER_06]: This is just doubly disingenuous.
[35:05.510 --> 35:12.410]  [SPEAKER_06]: And as Gus pointed out, it's just another desperate attempt by an obsolete business model grasping for the last dime.
[35:12.410 --> 35:13.090]  [SPEAKER_02]: You know what?
[35:13.150 --> 35:18.690]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that if we shut down all of the law schools in America for about 10 years, a lot of these things would go away.
[35:18.710 --> 35:25.230]  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I think the problem is we have way too many lawyers who are sitting around going, what's the next suit that I can file against somebody?
[35:25.230 --> 35:26.430]  [SPEAKER_02]: And I need something to do.
[35:26.570 --> 35:27.690]  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm twiddling my thumbs here.
[35:27.890 --> 35:28.710]  [SPEAKER_02]: Where do I go?
[35:28.850 --> 35:31.650]  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is why you get all these crazy lawsuits in America.
[35:31.750 --> 35:32.730]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we should go to law schools.
[35:32.890 --> 35:40.610]  [SPEAKER_08]: If I go home and I publish an audio track that's just a small electric motor buzzing, and I publish that and I obtain copyright on it, can I get paid every time someone has their phone on vibrate?
[35:41.510 --> 35:41.870]  [SPEAKER_08]: Excellent.
[35:42.670 --> 35:43.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: That's a good idea.
[35:43.390 --> 35:44.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: Interesting idea there, Gus.
[35:46.190 --> 35:53.810]  [SPEAKER_05]: So going on with the... in addition to law schools, PR firms as well, I just wanted to say a couple more things about the Music First campaign.
[35:54.610 --> 35:56.990]  [SPEAKER_05]: I first heard about this from somebody who worked at Sony.
[35:56.990 --> 36:10.290]  [SPEAKER_05]: And what Sony was doing when they had this grassroots, fake grassroots campaign, this AstroTurf campaign, was they were going to people within Sony and saying, here's this great grassroots campaign that has sprung up magically to protect artists.
[36:11.030 --> 36:15.490]  [SPEAKER_05]: You, as a Sony employee, really ought to go out and join this campaign.
[36:15.490 --> 36:25.530]  [SPEAKER_05]: So there was this internal pressure, basically artificially inflating the ranks of people who were going to be fighting for people to get paid when things played on the radio.
[36:25.530 --> 36:29.630]  [SPEAKER_05]: So it's not like it's... I don't think they have much, if any, popular support.
[36:29.630 --> 36:34.050]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they're certainly wearing down their popular support by suing everybody and making that their business model.
[36:34.270 --> 36:34.550]  [SPEAKER_12]: Absolutely.
[36:35.310 --> 36:35.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: All right.
[36:35.630 --> 36:40.370]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's fun to watch these things unfold because there doesn't seem to be any end of the silliness out there.
[36:40.710 --> 36:43.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: But let's move from silliness to complete utter stupidity.
[36:43.650 --> 36:48.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: You guys hear about the MI6 chief's wife.
[36:48.830 --> 36:49.770]  [SPEAKER_12]: You hear this story?
[36:49.870 --> 36:50.330]  [SPEAKER_12]: This is a good one.
[36:51.190 --> 36:51.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: All right.
[36:52.050 --> 36:53.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: MI6 chief's wife walked into a bar.
[36:54.010 --> 36:54.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: New MI6.
[36:54.470 --> 36:55.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[36:55.170 --> 36:57.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: The wife of the new head of MI6.
[36:57.370 --> 36:58.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: What is MI6?
[36:58.310 --> 36:59.370]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's the spy agency over in...
[36:59.370 --> 37:01.250]  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like the British CIA, more or less.
[37:01.930 --> 37:03.770]  [SPEAKER_12]: They've caused a major security...
[37:03.770 --> 37:11.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: She's caused a major security breach and left his family exposed after publishing photographs and personal details on Facebook.
[37:11.770 --> 37:21.450]  [SPEAKER_12]: Sir John Sowers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all of Britain's spying operations abroad.
[37:21.450 --> 37:33.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: But entries by his wife, Shelley, on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, their friends' identities, and where they spend their holidays.
[37:33.290 --> 37:34.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is Lady Shelley, right?
[37:34.430 --> 37:35.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: She's got a title.
[37:35.450 --> 37:36.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I think so.
[37:36.050 --> 37:42.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: On the day her husband was appointed, she congratulated him on the website using his code name M.
[37:42.470 --> 37:43.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: No, actually, I'm sorry.
[37:43.570 --> 37:44.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's C, not M.
[37:44.750 --> 37:45.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: I'm in James Bond land.
[37:46.030 --> 37:46.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: I'm sorry.
[37:47.030 --> 37:47.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[37:47.370 --> 37:48.990]  [SPEAKER_03]: James Bond worked for MI6.
[37:48.990 --> 37:51.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: James Bond would never have a Facebook page to start with.
[37:51.630 --> 37:52.950]  [SPEAKER_12]: He's got some intelligence.
[37:53.230 --> 37:54.250]  [SPEAKER_08]: This is why James Bond was single.
[37:54.570 --> 37:55.950]  [SPEAKER_05]: James Bond wouldn't have a wife, exactly.
[37:56.110 --> 37:56.930]  [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, he did have a wife.
[37:56.930 --> 37:59.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: This is Penny Weather or Penny Farthing, whatever her name is, she wouldn't have it.
[38:00.050 --> 38:06.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: Anyway, Lady Sowers had put virtually no privacy protection on her account, making it visible to any of the sites.
[38:06.710 --> 38:11.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: 200 million users around the world who choose to be in the open access London social network on Facebook.
[38:11.350 --> 38:15.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: And by the way, if anybody out there has a cache of this page, I'd love to see it because they've taken it down.
[38:15.530 --> 38:22.350]  [SPEAKER_02]: And not to mention the fact that, you know, just, okay, it was public to all the people in London, but the fact that she's actually putting it on Facebook in the first place, it's somewhere.
[38:22.810 --> 38:26.630]  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, with enough digging or enough context, you could dig it up, right?
[38:26.650 --> 38:31.930]  [SPEAKER_02]: If I was really determined to get this information, I could call somebody up on Facebook, and I'm sure I could pay somebody off to send me the data.
[38:31.930 --> 38:34.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, but I'm sure enough people downloaded it and saved it that they must have it.
[38:34.650 --> 38:37.130]  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, no, I mean, she was an idiot, but, you know...
[38:37.130 --> 38:40.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: Was she an idiot or was she just a typical person thinking that this is...
[38:40.010 --> 38:40.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: She was a typical person.
[38:40.510 --> 38:45.390]  [SPEAKER_02]: Just because you have privacy settings doesn't mean that your data is necessarily going to be private forever.
[38:45.530 --> 38:47.810]  [SPEAKER_02]: Somebody has access to it because you've put it on the Internet.
[38:47.910 --> 38:50.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: But I don't think she saw any reason to be private.
[38:50.070 --> 38:51.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: Why would I want to hide this information?
[38:52.030 --> 38:52.850]  [SPEAKER_12]: How could this be bad?
[38:53.090 --> 38:55.870]  [SPEAKER_05]: Facebook's not going to be on your side here either, and I don't mean, ooh, they're evil.
[38:56.010 --> 38:58.110]  [SPEAKER_05]: They're just... they're about to...
[38:58.110 --> 39:01.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: They've announced the intention to make everybody's page public by default.
[39:01.510 --> 39:04.970]  [SPEAKER_05]: They're just going to do that at some point, even if your privacy settings are already set to private.
[39:05.310 --> 39:10.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so this stuff really could change any time, and it's really worth thinking about that when you put things up.
[39:10.590 --> 39:10.950]  [SPEAKER_12]: Absolutely.
[39:11.290 --> 39:11.730]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
[39:12.650 --> 39:22.530]  [SPEAKER_06]: When you're married to someone who works in the highest levels of British intelligence, MI6 is foreign intelligence, like our CIA, and MI5 is like domestic intelligence.
[39:22.750 --> 39:29.470]  [SPEAKER_06]: But when you're married to someone like that, you cannot be unaware of information security issues.
[39:29.570 --> 39:31.610]  [SPEAKER_06]: You know that there's stuff you just can't talk about.
[39:31.770 --> 39:32.110]  [SPEAKER_06]: Now, wait.
[39:32.210 --> 39:33.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: Have you ever been married to a spy?
[39:33.730 --> 39:35.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: Sometimes they don't tell you what they're doing.
[39:36.430 --> 39:38.190]  [SPEAKER_06]: Maybe I am, and I don't even know it.
[39:38.310 --> 39:38.450]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[39:38.930 --> 39:41.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: There's a lot of secrecy going on in that household, I'll bet.
[39:41.130 --> 39:43.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: And she probably thought it was just nice, normal life.
[39:44.390 --> 39:47.990]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, there's probably going to be some good yelling arguments in that household.
[39:48.090 --> 39:51.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: To be a fly on that wall, and it probably is possible with a Facebook application.
[39:51.390 --> 40:04.350]  [SPEAKER_06]: I could just see this guy, this head of MI6, having to explain to members of parliament, and the heads of MI6 are just, I'm sorry, my wife is a stupid git.
[40:07.250 --> 40:08.530]  [SPEAKER_06]: There's no other explanation.
[40:09.250 --> 40:11.710]  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think that she is a stupid git.
[40:11.910 --> 40:22.850]  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, she's just not thinking about the fact that she's married to the head of the MI6, and that she needs to not behave in this very...
[40:22.850 --> 40:29.250]  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, posting the information that she posted on Facebook is an incredibly normal thing to do for people of her social station.
[40:30.750 --> 40:35.070]  [SPEAKER_03]: And just, she didn't make the connection that she needs to opt out of this.
[40:35.130 --> 40:42.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: I agree that it's a normal thing for people to do, but I think, in general, the whole thing is stupid, where people are constantly posting all their private information.
[40:42.690 --> 40:44.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: And this is exactly the kind of thing that can happen.
[40:44.210 --> 40:46.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's a very exaggerated case, but it's a good example.
[40:46.970 --> 40:51.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: I do wonder whether maybe there's sort of a slightly different social norm for this in England.
[40:51.630 --> 41:04.530]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I'd love to hear any callers who could tell us a little bit more about this, because I know that in the American government, there's a huge, huge tendency right now to try to get people to cleanse their information on the Internet.
[41:04.530 --> 41:08.030]  [SPEAKER_05]: I have a high school acquaintance who's now a lawyer for the U.S.
[41:08.310 --> 41:09.130]  [SPEAKER_05]: government doing labor law.
[41:09.410 --> 41:13.070]  [SPEAKER_05]: And she contacted me a little while ago saying, please take down your web page about me.
[41:13.110 --> 41:15.110]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I said, I don't have a web page about you.
[41:15.210 --> 41:22.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: What we have is a comment that my friend left on my website, where he said something, including your name, and he might as well have said, octopus blender.
[41:23.110 --> 41:25.130]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it would have meant basically the same thing.
[41:25.310 --> 41:26.790]  [SPEAKER_05]: It was sort of a nonsensical reference.
[41:26.910 --> 41:28.990]  [SPEAKER_05]: And she's like, well, my employer needs me to take it down.
[41:28.990 --> 41:31.290]  [SPEAKER_05]: I get stalked by people, please take it down.
[41:31.470 --> 41:37.750]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I sort of gave her, you know, I gave her the runaround for a little bit, because it is actually going to be technically hard for me to take it down because of comment spam as it happens.
[41:38.550 --> 41:46.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: But the way this conversation ended with her, and this really disappointed me, was with her saying, well, I'm sure you know a lot more about this than I do.
[41:46.890 --> 41:50.070]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that was her way of signing off and sort of going, I wash my hands of this.
[41:50.170 --> 41:54.470]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I really wish that as a lawyer for the government, she knew more about what was going on.
[41:54.470 --> 42:08.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: You know, this brings up a good example of an incident I had with somebody over the last week concerning trying to explain something and having it fall on deaf ears and just completely go out of control.
[42:10.250 --> 42:18.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: Occasionally, occasionally nonsense happens on the Internet, and I see something that is not spam, something that is actually something I need to pay attention to.
[42:18.870 --> 42:31.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Like if somebody from Nigeria sends me an email saying that they're leaving me all this money and something like that, that's something I tend to take seriously and pursue.
[42:31.590 --> 42:33.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: It hasn't quite panned out yet, but I'm sure at one point it will.
[42:33.970 --> 42:47.770]  [SPEAKER_12]: But this particular case, I saw this order come in, and it was an order to my name, and it was basically, it was an order for, what was this, for Sun Armor Water and Stain Units.
[42:47.770 --> 42:51.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: I have no idea what those are, but somebody ordered two of them.
[42:51.350 --> 42:56.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: They had my address, they had the address, but the credit card number, they had the last four digits of credit card number.
[42:56.810 --> 42:58.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: I have no such credit card number.
[42:58.270 --> 42:59.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: They just had the address.
[42:59.370 --> 43:07.370]  [SPEAKER_12]: So this company basically sent me an email saying that this was being shipped to me as per my request.
[43:08.670 --> 43:09.890]  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a good trick.
[43:10.090 --> 43:13.290]  [SPEAKER_12]: I mean, you have so many credit cards, you have almost every possible last four digits.
[43:13.330 --> 43:14.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, no, I really don't.
[43:14.190 --> 43:15.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: I'd have to have 10,000 for that to happen.
[43:15.690 --> 43:18.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: But basically, this company is called Gordon & Gordon, Inc.
[43:18.910 --> 43:21.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: And they said, Gordon & Gordon, Inc., confirmation number...
[43:21.510 --> 43:24.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I'm not going to give a confirmation number out because that's probably not a good idea either.
[43:24.470 --> 43:30.370]  [SPEAKER_12]: If you're not completely satisfied or have questions regarding your purchase, please contact customer service, 877-223-8245.
[43:30.970 --> 43:32.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: Public service giving their number out.
[43:32.390 --> 43:35.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: Have your confirmation number available when calling so we may assist you promptly.
[43:35.270 --> 43:38.970]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I knew this wasn't a valid order.
[43:39.090 --> 43:43.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: I knew they apparently hadn't checked to make sure that the address matched the credit card.
[43:43.910 --> 43:52.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: So I sent them a friendly little note warning them that this was not quite what they thought it was and that they were about to be ripped off.
[43:52.890 --> 43:54.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: I basically just said, this is a fraudulent order.
[43:54.770 --> 43:55.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: Please don't ship.
[43:55.590 --> 43:59.290]  [SPEAKER_12]: Please check your credit card info more thoroughly to prevent this sort of thing in the future.
[43:59.490 --> 43:59.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: Thanks.
[44:01.310 --> 44:04.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, apparently, I ruffled some feathers by saying that.
[44:05.070 --> 44:11.430]  [SPEAKER_12]: Next thing I knew, I was getting an email from Rebecca over at this company, Gordon & Gordon.
[44:11.970 --> 44:14.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: Dear Mr. Goldstein, are you insulating...
[44:14.810 --> 44:14.930]  [SPEAKER_12]: Insulating.
[44:14.930 --> 44:15.450]  [SPEAKER_12]: That's not even a word.
[44:15.690 --> 44:16.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: Insulating.
[44:16.850 --> 44:17.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: Insinuating.
[44:17.610 --> 44:19.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, it's insulate and insinuating.
[44:19.410 --> 44:20.210]  [SPEAKER_11]: Insulating at the same time.
[44:20.390 --> 44:21.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Insulting and insinuating.
[44:21.590 --> 44:25.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: Are you insulating our staff stole your credit card number and charged a fraudulent order?
[44:25.770 --> 44:32.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: If the answer is yes, I would recommend, before you start attacking my staff's integrity, you better have concrete proof to back up your insulting comments.
[44:32.450 --> 44:34.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: I hope I am making myself very clear.
[44:34.770 --> 44:35.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: You are out of line.
[44:35.890 --> 44:36.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: You are incorrect.
[44:36.690 --> 44:39.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: And you are lucky my attorney is not writing this email.
[44:39.790 --> 44:45.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: Mr. Goldstein, we ship thousands of products each year and this is the first issue we have ever had in our company's seven-year history.
[44:45.590 --> 44:48.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: I believe you owe my staff a written apology.
[44:48.230 --> 44:51.370]  [SPEAKER_12]: Signed, Rebecca Walton, President Gordon & Gordon, Inc.
[44:51.690 --> 44:53.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: My God, talk about cluelessness.
[44:53.610 --> 44:55.950]  [SPEAKER_12]: Trying to help somebody out and you get attacked like this.
[44:56.170 --> 45:05.370]  [SPEAKER_12]: This company, I don't know how they survived seven years, but if they're not checking credit card addresses with the credit card orders, anybody can enter any number and send it to anybody they please.
[45:05.370 --> 45:08.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's that simple and anybody can understand that.
[45:08.930 --> 45:10.570]  [SPEAKER_04]: How do you know this isn't just like a spam?
[45:10.950 --> 45:13.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, the company really exists and that person really exists.
[45:13.230 --> 45:15.830]  [SPEAKER_05]: No, but how do you know that somebody didn't set this up as a prank?
[45:15.990 --> 45:18.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: Obviously, it was set up as a prank because someone used my address.
[45:19.070 --> 45:20.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: So it's obviously...
[45:20.190 --> 45:24.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: But the thing is, this company fell for it and I'm trying to warn them, don't fall for this.
[45:24.650 --> 45:26.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's not good business practice.
[45:26.470 --> 45:27.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: Did you get the product?
[45:27.350 --> 45:29.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: Not yet, but this only happened a few days ago.
[45:29.290 --> 45:32.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: But if I do get the product, I'm not obligated to return it.
[45:32.710 --> 45:34.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: I don't know what I'm going to do with these water stain units.
[45:34.710 --> 45:35.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: I don't even know what they're for.
[45:35.710 --> 45:36.370]  [SPEAKER_03]: You're staying in the deck.
[45:36.370 --> 45:39.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: I am going to enjoy life to the fullest with these things if they do show up.
[45:39.910 --> 45:40.030]  [SPEAKER_08]: Shares.
[45:40.090 --> 45:43.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: And I was not obligated to contact them either and tell them about this.
[45:43.390 --> 45:44.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: Not at all.
[45:44.190 --> 45:48.170]  [SPEAKER_08]: If I ran a business and somebody told me that a fraudulent transaction was going on, I would be thankful.
[45:48.350 --> 45:51.130]  [SPEAKER_08]: I would be grateful that they just saved me a packet and saved me getting ripped off.
[45:51.130 --> 45:54.530]  [SPEAKER_08]: But apparently it's okay to take it a little more personally.
[45:54.910 --> 45:57.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, it's interesting how defensive they got so quickly.
[45:58.690 --> 46:06.930]  [SPEAKER_02]: So basically anyone could go and put their address in and put in a fake credit card number and then claim that they'd never heard of this order before and get some free stain unit.
[46:07.090 --> 46:08.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, or whatever it is they sell.
[46:08.810 --> 46:10.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: And this is not encouraging people to do this.
[46:10.910 --> 46:13.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's encouraging people to wake up and pay it.
[46:13.170 --> 46:19.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: This is the first thing we learn when we open an online store is to watch out for fraudulent orders because there's a ton of them out there.
[46:21.750 --> 46:25.490]  [SPEAKER_03]: People order like hundreds of hats to go to African countries.
[46:25.730 --> 46:29.530]  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just whatever you sell, someone will try and buy it fraudulently.
[46:30.510 --> 46:30.790]  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[46:31.150 --> 46:31.930]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
[46:33.090 --> 46:35.930]  [SPEAKER_06]: Most consumers are not going to do this, but you might.
[46:36.130 --> 46:42.630]  [SPEAKER_06]: Did you happen to examine the email headers of the message you got from them to confirm that it actually came from them?
[46:42.710 --> 46:44.010]  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, so it really was from them.
[46:44.150 --> 46:44.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, absolutely.
[46:45.070 --> 46:45.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Absolutely.
[46:45.670 --> 46:47.730]  [SPEAKER_06]: And I researched this person's name too, this Rebecca.
[46:47.930 --> 46:49.550]  [SPEAKER_06]: She's like the founder of the company.
[46:49.790 --> 46:54.530]  [SPEAKER_06]: So you'd really think she would have a better customer service attitude than that, but go figure.
[46:54.730 --> 46:55.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, it's something.
[46:56.030 --> 46:57.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: Let's hope they wake up.
[46:58.010 --> 46:59.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Okay, time for you to wake up.
[46:59.410 --> 47:01.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: Give us a call, 212-209-2900.
[47:02.230 --> 47:04.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: I'd like to read this incident report that somebody sent in.
[47:04.750 --> 47:05.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: This is great.
[47:05.630 --> 47:06.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: Talking about cluelessness.
[47:07.190 --> 47:11.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: This is the Olympic gold medal of cluelessness.
[47:11.570 --> 47:25.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: On June 6th, this is from a police report, on June 6th, 2009 at 638 in the morning, myself and Officer Adkins were dispatched to Holiday Inn Express at 2370 Sanders Street in reference to a burglary alarm.
[47:25.690 --> 47:30.550]  [SPEAKER_12]: While en route, we were advised that multiple windows had been broken and that there was water on the floors of the hotel.
[47:30.950 --> 47:35.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: Upon arrival, I observed approximately 100 to 150 people standing in the parking lot.
[47:35.310 --> 47:38.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: An audible fire alarm could be heard and many of the windows were shattered.
[47:38.350 --> 47:47.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: I made contact with employee Christina Bergman, who advised that she was working at the front desk of the hotel when she received a phone call from an unknown number at approximately 6 a.m.
[47:48.030 --> 47:52.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: The caller identified himself as an employee of Grinnell Fire Sprinkler Service.
[47:52.970 --> 47:58.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: Bergman stated that the caller then advised her that there was a problem with the fire sprinklers and that she needed to pull the fire alarm to reset them.
[47:59.350 --> 48:02.550]  [SPEAKER_12]: Bergman proceeded to pull the fire alarm at this point, causing the audible alarm.
[48:02.770 --> 48:06.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: The caller then advised Bergman to push the alarm lever back up.
[48:06.790 --> 48:10.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: When she was unable to do so, the caller told her that in order to keep
[48:16.150 --> 48:21.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: At this point, at this point, customer Rusty Brown came into the lobby to assist Bergman.
[48:22.170 --> 48:26.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: Brown identified himself as an incident commander, and Bergman gave him the phone.
[48:26.350 --> 48:32.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: The caller then proceeded to tell Brown that the exterior windows had to be broken in order to reset the alarm and keep the sprinklers from activating.
[48:33.050 --> 48:36.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: At this point, Bergman and Brown began breaking the lobby windows with a fire extinguisher.
[48:37.270 --> 48:44.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: While Brown was breaking the lobby windows, the caller advised Bergman that she must break a portion of one of the sprinkler heads in order to keep it from activating.
[48:44.890 --> 48:50.570]  [SPEAKER_12]: At this point, Bergman removed a portion of the sprinkler head, causing a large amount of water to flow through it.
[48:50.910 --> 48:56.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: After breaking several windows and realizing that the alarm was not deactivated, Rusty Brown got back on the lobby phone with the caller.
[48:56.930 --> 49:00.190]  [SPEAKER_12]: The caller told Brown that he must reset the control panel for the system.
[49:00.390 --> 49:04.350]  [SPEAKER_12]: Brown told the caller that the water from the sprinkler was keeping him from reaching the panel.
[49:04.350 --> 49:08.670]  [SPEAKER_12]: The caller then told Brown that he had to find the breaker box and shut down the power to the hotel.
[49:09.270 --> 49:13.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: At this point, Brown gave the caller his cell phone number in order to stay in contact while mobile.
[49:14.290 --> 49:17.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: The caller made contact with Brown by phone and continued to give him instructions.
[49:18.070 --> 49:22.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Brown found an employee and gained access to the main electrical room and shut down the main power.
[49:22.890 --> 49:31.390]  [SPEAKER_12]: Brown advised that at this point, the unknown caller called his cell phone again and advised him that he was connecting him to the hotel manager, whose phone number he had gotten from Christina Bergman.
[49:31.390 --> 49:36.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: At this point, Brown was in contact with Candlewood manager Donna Caldwell, who was unaware of the situation.
[49:37.730 --> 49:39.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: Fire department was contacted and informed of the situation.
[49:40.130 --> 49:45.350]  [SPEAKER_12]: Once they arrived on scene and determined the hotel was safe, the guests were allowed back inside to retrieve their property.
[49:46.010 --> 49:55.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: Manager Angela Bagby advised that she had made contact with Donna Goodell, who happened to be staying at Holiday Inn Express in Little Rock, and had a similar call was received.
[49:55.230 --> 50:05.950]  [SPEAKER_12]: At this point, Sergeant Hodges advised dispatch to put out a call to all Arkansas law enforcement agencies and advised them that more of these calls could be coming in.
[50:06.090 --> 50:14.950]  [SPEAKER_12]: There was extensive damage to the windows, water damage to the carpets and electrical system, as well as cleanup costs and lost revenue, which they estimate as a total of about $50,000.
[50:15.250 --> 50:17.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Officer Britton took photographs of the damage.
[50:19.210 --> 50:20.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: Okay, you know what?
[50:20.310 --> 50:24.550]  [SPEAKER_12]: When you have people in charge of things like this, anything is possible.
[50:24.550 --> 50:30.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: Doesn't matter how much security you have, this is... I've never heard of anything like this, but this is a real police report.
[50:30.170 --> 50:30.730]  [SPEAKER_12]: This really happened.
[50:30.990 --> 50:32.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: This came from the smoking gun.
[50:33.410 --> 50:35.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: And you're staring at me in disbelief.
[50:35.510 --> 50:36.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: Go ahead.
[50:37.210 --> 50:38.350]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm blown away.
[50:39.190 --> 50:42.210]  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm really not sure there's anything we can say in response to that.
[50:42.210 --> 50:46.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I mean, if somebody calls... a stranger calls you and tells you to pull a fire alarm, right away, that should be...
[50:46.590 --> 50:50.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: Something should go off in your head, saying this probably isn't kosher.
[50:50.890 --> 50:55.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: And then breaking windows with fire extinguishers, yeah, you know, that goes over the line for me, too.
[50:55.750 --> 51:01.810]  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of like when your bank calls you and you need to verify some information and then you give it to them because it's the bank.
[51:01.810 --> 51:02.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: And you're warned about that.
[51:02.630 --> 51:09.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: I guess you're not warned not to break windows when someone calls you to do that because I guess we just figured people weren't that dim that they would do that.
[51:09.430 --> 51:11.950]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, you know, I love a good prank phone call every now and then.
[51:11.950 --> 51:18.090]  [SPEAKER_08]: But I think there are lines and limits and this crosses several billion of them.
[51:18.170 --> 51:19.630]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, but I mean, how could you stop?
[51:19.850 --> 51:25.810]  [SPEAKER_12]: Once you started talking to somebody like this and they just keep doing whatever it is you asked them to do, how can you...
[51:25.810 --> 51:27.550]  [SPEAKER_12]: I mean, how much further can you possibly go?
[51:28.050 --> 51:34.570]  [SPEAKER_08]: If you're talking to someone who's willing to go smashing the windows of the workplace because you tell them they have to, is there really any challenge?
[51:34.650 --> 51:36.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: I just hope whoever did this was recording the phone call.
[51:36.910 --> 51:40.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: Can you imagine how it sounded to them on the phone, hearing the windows breaking in the distance?
[51:41.990 --> 51:43.950]  [SPEAKER_02]: Did the caller identify themselves?
[51:44.210 --> 51:47.690]  [SPEAKER_12]: I think they just identified themselves as an employee of the fire alarm company.
[51:47.870 --> 51:49.830]  [SPEAKER_02]: It would have been great if they used like a fake name that was hilarious.
[51:49.830 --> 51:57.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I just love how they found the actual manager who was probably asleep someplace at six in the morning and connected this person to them.
[51:57.150 --> 52:01.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: So they had to explain, yeah, I just broke all the windows and pulled the fire alarm.
[52:01.270 --> 52:02.850]  [SPEAKER_12]: There's water everywhere and the cops are on the way.
[52:03.490 --> 52:03.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[52:04.010 --> 52:04.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: All right.
[52:04.190 --> 52:06.530]  [SPEAKER_12]: 212-209-2900 is our phone number.
[52:06.530 --> 52:12.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: If you have any questions, comments, experiences of your own to share with us, we'd sure love to hear them.
[52:12.630 --> 52:14.150]  [SPEAKER_12]: Let's take this call over here.
[52:14.250 --> 52:14.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: Good evening.
[52:14.950 --> 52:15.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: You're on Off The Hook.
[52:16.250 --> 52:17.670]  [SPEAKER_00]: How stupid that is.
[52:17.870 --> 52:18.430]  [SPEAKER_12]: Pretty stupid.
[52:18.430 --> 52:20.610]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I think that word definitely summarizes it.
[52:20.610 --> 52:25.970]  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, because if I'm an employee, the manager will have to come and tell me, do that.
[52:26.270 --> 52:26.590]  [SPEAKER_11]: Mm-hmm.
[52:27.330 --> 52:27.710]  [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody...
[52:28.850 --> 52:30.410]  [SPEAKER_00]: One Christmas morning...
[52:30.410 --> 52:33.210]  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a very good alarm system in my own.
[52:33.210 --> 52:39.210]  [SPEAKER_00]: And one Christmas morning, the two fire engines turned up at my house.
[52:39.970 --> 52:41.110]  [SPEAKER_00]: Knock on the door.
[52:41.290 --> 52:42.390]  [SPEAKER_00]: We came, opened the door.
[52:42.670 --> 52:45.470]  [SPEAKER_00]: We got a silent alarm from this house.
[52:45.670 --> 52:46.950]  [SPEAKER_00]: It said no alarm went off.
[52:47.690 --> 52:48.970]  [SPEAKER_00]: Then they came and checked.
[52:49.630 --> 52:50.730]  [SPEAKER_00]: The alarm went off.
[52:51.070 --> 52:55.490]  [SPEAKER_00]: Silently, my wife was doing some bacon in the kitchen.
[52:56.030 --> 52:57.850]  [SPEAKER_00]: And the thing went off silently.
[52:58.230 --> 52:59.710]  [SPEAKER_00]: And they got it and came.
[53:00.610 --> 53:02.550]  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I can understand that.
[53:03.070 --> 53:05.630]  [SPEAKER_00]: But for someone to call me and tell me what?
[53:05.910 --> 53:06.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Mm-hmm.
[53:06.650 --> 53:07.310]  [SPEAKER_00]: You know?
[53:07.590 --> 53:09.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, people are open to suggestion on lots of things.
[53:10.010 --> 53:11.070]  [SPEAKER_00]: No bank...
[53:11.070 --> 53:14.010]  [SPEAKER_00]: No person should take any call from a bank.
[53:14.190 --> 53:14.470]  [SPEAKER_12]: Mm-hmm.
[53:14.770 --> 53:17.630]  [SPEAKER_00]: And give their vitals on the phone.
[53:18.510 --> 53:18.710]  [SPEAKER_11]: Mm-hmm.
[53:18.710 --> 53:23.410]  [SPEAKER_00]: First thing, your social security number should never be repeated on the phone.
[53:23.550 --> 53:23.930]  Never.
[53:24.330 --> 53:24.890]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, yeah.
[53:24.890 --> 53:25.350]  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the first law.
[53:25.770 --> 53:27.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: But many times they ask you for that.
[53:27.350 --> 53:28.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: Many times computers ask you for that.
[53:28.710 --> 53:30.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: I was asked for that today, in fact.
[53:30.170 --> 53:32.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: I was asked to give the last four of my social by a computer.
[53:33.050 --> 53:36.230]  [SPEAKER_00]: Last week, I was taken out in an insurance policy.
[53:36.430 --> 53:36.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: Mm-hmm.
[53:36.810 --> 53:39.150]  [SPEAKER_00]: And they want me to give them my social on the phone.
[53:39.270 --> 53:39.790]  [SPEAKER_00]: I said, no way.
[53:40.490 --> 53:40.970]  [SPEAKER_11]: Mm-hmm.
[53:41.010 --> 53:43.310]  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll have to send me documents and let me fill them in.
[53:43.950 --> 53:44.490]  [SPEAKER_00]: You know?
[53:45.270 --> 53:46.910]  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's something that...
[53:47.430 --> 53:48.330]  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[53:49.290 --> 53:50.810]  [SPEAKER_00]: You have to think twice.
[53:51.210 --> 53:52.410]  [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe three times.
[53:52.490 --> 53:54.790]  [SPEAKER_12]: I think some people need to think half a dozen times.
[53:55.110 --> 53:55.970]  [SPEAKER_00]: Before doing it.
[53:56.050 --> 53:56.930]  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for taking my call.
[53:56.950 --> 53:57.210]  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[53:57.270 --> 53:58.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: Thanks for your call.
[53:58.650 --> 53:59.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: 212-209-2900.
[53:59.970 --> 54:00.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: Good evening.
[54:00.890 --> 54:01.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: You were on off the hook.
[54:02.310 --> 54:03.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: You're on off the hook.
[54:03.210 --> 54:03.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: Go ahead.
[54:04.790 --> 54:05.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: Speak up.
[54:05.790 --> 54:06.130]  [SPEAKER_07]: Hey.
[54:06.350 --> 54:06.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: How you doing?
[54:06.730 --> 54:07.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: What's on your mind?
[54:07.530 --> 54:14.310]  [SPEAKER_07]: I used to work for this company that we used to get calls all the time that was meant for the Clarol Hair Care Helpline.
[54:14.730 --> 54:17.690]  [SPEAKER_07]: And they would listen first to the voicemail for the company.
[54:17.690 --> 54:19.730]  [SPEAKER_07]: And then they would hear me say the name of the company.
[54:19.950 --> 54:23.310]  [SPEAKER_07]: And they would still ask for advice on their hair products.
[54:23.430 --> 54:24.750]  [SPEAKER_07]: And this happened so many times.
[54:25.050 --> 54:26.710]  [SPEAKER_07]: We started dispensing advice.
[54:26.890 --> 54:29.410]  [SPEAKER_07]: And I would tell them that, oh, that product's been recalled.
[54:29.710 --> 54:32.490]  [SPEAKER_07]: It will actually cause all your hair to fall out.
[54:32.750 --> 54:35.490]  [SPEAKER_07]: And we had a study done by the Charles Manson Institute.
[54:36.210 --> 54:36.970]  Oh, God.
[54:37.910 --> 54:42.370]  [SPEAKER_07]: And I'd mention that the head scientist, Miss Lynette Fromm, has confirmed this.
[54:43.390 --> 54:44.650]  [SPEAKER_12]: Oh, good old squeaky, yes.
[54:44.750 --> 54:45.290]  [SPEAKER_12]: Bravo, bravo, sir.
[54:45.450 --> 54:46.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: What's squeaky up to these days?
[54:46.630 --> 54:47.230]  [SPEAKER_07]: It would just...
[54:47.230 --> 54:48.190]  [SPEAKER_07]: But they would go for it.
[54:48.230 --> 54:50.030]  [SPEAKER_07]: But I would always put a time lapse on it.
[54:50.090 --> 54:52.990]  [SPEAKER_07]: I would say there's going to be an announcement tomorrow in the newspaper.
[54:53.370 --> 54:58.450]  [SPEAKER_07]: So they knew when they opened the paper tomorrow, if it wasn't there, maybe, just maybe, they'd finally figure it out.
[54:58.550 --> 54:58.790]  [SPEAKER_12]: Uh-huh.
[54:58.990 --> 55:01.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: But this was after you told them that they weren't actually reaching Clairol.
[55:03.730 --> 55:08.150]  [SPEAKER_07]: Well, when you call the company, first you get the voicemail of the company, you reach such and such company.
[55:08.410 --> 55:08.490]  [SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[55:08.490 --> 55:10.330]  [SPEAKER_07]: Then you'd hear me say the name of the company.
[55:10.830 --> 55:12.450]  [SPEAKER_07]: It wasn't even close to Clairol.
[55:12.550 --> 55:14.690]  [SPEAKER_07]: Our telephone number was a few digits off.
[55:15.090 --> 55:15.410]  [SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[55:15.530 --> 55:16.890]  [SPEAKER_07]: These people were just so nutty.
[55:17.370 --> 55:18.230]  [SPEAKER_07]: It's like, you know what?
[55:18.230 --> 55:20.350]  [SPEAKER_07]: If you're that crazy, you might as well have some fun with them.
[55:20.510 --> 55:20.830]  [SPEAKER_12]: Absolutely.
[55:21.050 --> 55:21.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: All right.
[55:21.310 --> 55:24.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, thanks for that good advice there.
[55:24.230 --> 55:26.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: We see that kind of mistaken identity going on all the time on the Internet.
[55:26.770 --> 55:34.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: I actually maintain a website, gumbaby.org, where basically you get people saying, Dear Maury Povich, to some poor random person's blog.
[55:35.510 --> 55:38.190]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so if you enjoy more of that, go check that out there.
[55:38.710 --> 55:44.470]  [SPEAKER_08]: A similar thing used to happen to an old friend of mine whose cell phone number, unfortunately, was one digit away from the local crisis line.
[55:44.890 --> 55:48.470]  [SPEAKER_08]: So she found herself dispensing advice to people because she couldn't hang up on them.
[55:48.530 --> 55:48.650]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[55:48.730 --> 55:50.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, hopefully that didn't go badly.
[55:50.750 --> 55:52.090]  [SPEAKER_12]: Luckily, she was a nice person.
[55:52.330 --> 55:57.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: I mean, calling for hair products is one thing, but calling for, you know, crisis intervention is something else.
[55:57.170 --> 55:59.750]  [SPEAKER_12]: So yeah, you do have to know the boundaries.
[55:59.910 --> 56:01.910]  [SPEAKER_12]: You have to know when common sense must prevail.
[56:02.070 --> 56:03.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: What if it's a hair crisis?
[56:04.270 --> 56:04.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[56:04.590 --> 56:06.130]  [SPEAKER_12]: I don't think anyone's ever jumped off a bridge for that.
[56:06.210 --> 56:07.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: But then again, I'm humbly wrong.
[56:07.050 --> 56:08.110]  [SPEAKER_03]: Some people almost certainly have.
[56:08.230 --> 56:08.470]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[56:08.630 --> 56:08.810]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[56:08.810 --> 56:09.210]  [SPEAKER_03]: You're right.
[56:09.850 --> 56:10.010]  [SPEAKER_12]: Okay.
[56:10.190 --> 56:12.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: Finally, tonight, I just wanted to focus on this.
[56:12.170 --> 56:17.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: Some people sent us a link to an article about the last phone booths in New York City.
[56:17.190 --> 56:19.730]  [SPEAKER_12]: Do you know there are only four outdoor phone booths left in Manhattan?
[56:20.110 --> 56:22.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: They're all on West End Avenue.
[56:22.370 --> 56:23.050]  [SPEAKER_12]: Only four.
[56:23.190 --> 56:23.870]  [SPEAKER_12]: Here are some pictures of them.
[56:23.910 --> 56:24.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: Look at those.
[56:24.930 --> 56:26.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: This one is at 101st Street.
[56:27.830 --> 56:30.030]  [SPEAKER_12]: This one over here is at the corner of 100th Street.
[56:30.110 --> 56:33.490]  [SPEAKER_12]: So I'm sure if you stand, you can see both of them at the same time.
[56:33.850 --> 56:38.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: And then if you go a little further down, you'll find a tree-shrouded booth at the corner of 90th Street.
[56:38.710 --> 56:44.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: And finally, this one right here, see in front of next to the mailbox in front of that store there on West End Avenue.
[56:44.490 --> 56:45.410]  [SPEAKER_12]: It's at 66th Street.
[56:45.670 --> 56:47.230]  [SPEAKER_02]: Now we're talking about enclosed phone booths.
[56:47.230 --> 56:50.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: Enclosed phone booths where the doors close and the light comes on.
[56:50.430 --> 56:51.850]  [SPEAKER_12]: And there's only four left in Manhattan.
[56:51.970 --> 56:53.210]  [SPEAKER_12]: And I think we should visit them.
[56:53.210 --> 56:54.270]  [SPEAKER_12]: I think we should take pictures of them.
[56:54.810 --> 56:57.110]  [SPEAKER_12]: It would be a fun thing to do.
[56:57.290 --> 57:02.950]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I'm actually looking to set up some sort of field trip through nyc2600.net.
[57:03.110 --> 57:06.430]  [SPEAKER_08]: So if any of our local listeners are interested, get in touch with us through that site and let me know.
[57:06.450 --> 57:06.550]  [SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[57:06.690 --> 57:08.450]  [SPEAKER_12]: And we are at the end of our show.
[57:08.450 --> 57:13.590]  [SPEAKER_12]: And also, we're almost at the end of our year-long feature on songs relating to telephones.
[57:13.990 --> 57:15.510]  [SPEAKER_12]: I counted a number of times we've done it.
[57:15.590 --> 57:18.250]  [SPEAKER_12]: We've done it 50 times, which means this week is number 51.
[57:18.350 --> 57:20.230]  [SPEAKER_12]: And next week will be the last one.
[57:20.230 --> 57:27.310]  [SPEAKER_12]: So if you have suggestions on what our last phone-related song should be, email us, O-T-H, at 2600.com.
[57:27.890 --> 57:29.990]  [SPEAKER_12]: We will see you next week.