[00:00.000 --> 00:11.000] [SPEAKER_05]: Hey, it's Ife tuning every Tuesday night, Wednesday morning at midnight to Seldom Heard as well as classic R&B, soul, funk, disco and hip-hop music.
[00:11.340 --> 00:15.720] [SPEAKER_05]: Music from yesteryear to today with special guests every so often.
[00:15.960 --> 00:26.420] [SPEAKER_05]: So stay up at night with me with the show, that's the name of it, every Tuesday night, Wednesday morning at midnight on 99.5 WBAI.
[00:31.220 --> 00:34.740] [SPEAKER_09]: And the time is just about 7 o'clock p.m.
[00:34.740 --> 00:38.520] [SPEAKER_09]: You are listening to 99.5 FM WBAI New York.
[00:38.840 --> 00:41.740] [SPEAKER_09]: And it's time for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
[01:34.790 --> 01:36.430] [SPEAKER_09]: A very good evening to you.
[01:36.650 --> 01:37.750] [SPEAKER_09]: The program is Off The Hook.
[01:37.850 --> 01:38.150] [SPEAKER_09]: Rob T.
[01:38.290 --> 01:39.230] [SPEAKER_09]: Firefly here with you.
[01:39.410 --> 01:40.610] [SPEAKER_09]: I am joined in the studio by Mike.
[01:40.910 --> 01:41.330] [SPEAKER_06]: Good evening.
[01:41.950 --> 01:44.270] [SPEAKER_09]: And on the phone, I should have Emmanuel.
[01:45.250 --> 01:46.190] [SPEAKER_09]: Yes, I'm here.
[01:46.470 --> 01:47.770] [SPEAKER_09]: And is Kyle there as well?
[01:48.390 --> 01:49.270] [SPEAKER_09]: Yes, I'm here.
[01:49.990 --> 01:50.350] [SPEAKER_09]: Excellent.
[01:50.350 --> 01:51.950] [SPEAKER_11]: And we also have Greg Newby joining us.
[01:52.330 --> 01:53.050] [SPEAKER_11]: Excellent, excellent.
[01:53.690 --> 01:54.790] [SPEAKER_09]: Always good to hear from you, Greg.
[01:55.410 --> 01:58.250] [SPEAKER_11]: We're all in the same room, actually, but we have three different phones.
[01:58.710 --> 01:59.670] [SPEAKER_06]: That's pretty exciting.
[02:00.730 --> 02:03.210] [SPEAKER_11]: It's the most exciting thing that we've done in a while, actually.
[02:03.370 --> 02:03.870] [SPEAKER_11]: No, it's not true.
[02:03.990 --> 02:04.930] [SPEAKER_11]: We've been doing lots of exciting things.
[02:05.150 --> 02:08.190] [SPEAKER_06]: So this is an international conference call we're taking part in.
[02:08.970 --> 02:10.210] [SPEAKER_11]: It's an international conference.
[02:10.310 --> 02:13.450] [SPEAKER_11]: I guess you could say that, yeah, because we're in Ontario and you're in New York.
[02:15.110 --> 02:16.250] [SPEAKER_11]: And we're conferencing.
[02:16.750 --> 02:16.990] [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[02:17.850 --> 02:20.650] [SPEAKER_06]: What were you conferencing about before we got you on the phone?
[02:23.530 --> 02:24.190] [SPEAKER_11]: Nothing really.
[02:24.370 --> 02:25.570] [SPEAKER_11]: We were just talking amongst ourselves.
[02:27.130 --> 02:27.570] [SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[02:27.650 --> 02:28.590] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, lovely speaking to you.
[02:28.650 --> 02:29.390] [SPEAKER_06]: We'll talk to you next week.
[02:29.850 --> 02:30.470] [SPEAKER_11]: Okay, then.
[02:30.690 --> 02:31.830] [SPEAKER_09]: How's it all going out there?
[02:32.950 --> 02:33.670] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, okay.
[02:33.930 --> 02:40.210] [SPEAKER_11]: Last time you tuned in, or may have tuned in, we were in Dawson Creek.
[02:40.930 --> 02:42.570] [SPEAKER_11]: In what province was that, Greg?
[02:43.450 --> 02:44.150] [SPEAKER_02]: What province?
[02:44.290 --> 02:45.170] [SPEAKER_02]: I was in Yukon.
[02:45.290 --> 02:45.790] [SPEAKER_02]: Was it Yukon?
[02:45.890 --> 02:46.630] [SPEAKER_02]: No, I don't think...
[02:46.630 --> 02:47.730] [SPEAKER_02]: No, it was British Columbia.
[02:47.730 --> 02:48.490] [SPEAKER_02]: That's where it was.
[02:48.650 --> 02:51.630] [SPEAKER_02]: We actually dipped down into northern British Columbia and then back into Yukon.
[02:51.630 --> 02:52.870] [SPEAKER_11]: Northern British Columbia.
[02:53.210 --> 02:58.070] [SPEAKER_11]: And we stopped in a park there with our 34 dogs that we were transporting across the country.
[02:59.890 --> 03:03.550] [SPEAKER_11]: And that's where we took a break and did a half hour of radio.
[03:03.550 --> 03:07.310] [SPEAKER_11]: And since then, we've made it all the way to Ontario.
[03:07.590 --> 03:11.650] [SPEAKER_11]: Seven days of driving, three vehicles, six drivers, 34 dogs.
[03:11.950 --> 03:13.570] [SPEAKER_11]: And everybody made it.
[03:13.670 --> 03:15.070] [SPEAKER_11]: Everybody made it to Ontario.
[03:15.070 --> 03:16.170] [SPEAKER_11]: All the dogs are happy.
[03:17.290 --> 03:21.690] [SPEAKER_11]: Greg, I guess they have a lot more land now to run around in?
[03:21.890 --> 03:22.690] [SPEAKER_02]: It's really super.
[03:22.890 --> 03:25.650] [SPEAKER_02]: They have several acres of enclosed, fenced area.
[03:25.890 --> 03:27.610] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's quite safe for the dogs.
[03:27.750 --> 03:29.970] [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of green pasture and places to explore.
[03:30.150 --> 03:30.710] [SPEAKER_02]: And they've been exploring.
[03:31.170 --> 03:33.450] [SPEAKER_11]: So the trip was completed successfully.
[03:33.610 --> 03:42.930] [SPEAKER_11]: Unfortunately, we had a bit of a snafu literally right after arriving here while we were trying to unload the moving van.
[03:43.110 --> 03:45.610] [SPEAKER_11]: Kyle had a bit of an accident and wound up breaking his hand.
[03:46.270 --> 03:46.790] [SPEAKER_09]: Ouch.
[03:49.990 --> 03:52.430] [SPEAKER_06]: So, Kyle, you broke your hand.
[03:53.070 --> 03:55.270] [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you for waiting until you were in one place.
[03:55.270 --> 03:57.430] [SPEAKER_06]: I'm sure the rest of the caravan appreciates that.
[03:58.050 --> 04:01.810] [SPEAKER_06]: And then I hear your hand was fixed by socialism.
[04:03.070 --> 04:06.050] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, it was quite an interesting experience.
[04:06.190 --> 04:11.890] [SPEAKER_10]: But it seems to be on track to be mending properly.
[04:11.930 --> 04:14.910] [SPEAKER_10]: And a lot of the people here have been incredibly supportive.
[04:14.910 --> 04:21.390] [SPEAKER_10]: But it certainly is interesting when you're in a foreign country and you're covered, right?
[04:21.390 --> 04:30.710] [SPEAKER_10]: You have some semblance, some approximation of what people might mistake for health care in the States.
[04:30.710 --> 04:36.570] [SPEAKER_10]: But then you go to a country's different system, they have an entire process.
[04:36.850 --> 04:48.790] [SPEAKER_10]: In fact, you have to fill out a whole bunch of separate forms, acknowledging that you're not going to just skate and avoid paying and so on and so forth.
[04:49.470 --> 04:58.730] [SPEAKER_10]: But they have a great system in Canada, and I did fill out those forms and promised to be available to look at their billing.
[04:58.970 --> 05:02.070] [SPEAKER_10]: And you have to pay up front, basically.
[05:02.230 --> 05:04.430] [SPEAKER_10]: That's how most of the systems work, I gather.
[05:04.430 --> 05:15.430] [SPEAKER_10]: And then you get to take your bill after having paid it one way or another, or attempted to pay it, and then submit it.
[05:15.870 --> 05:16.830] [SPEAKER_10]: Actually, no, that's not true.
[05:16.930 --> 05:27.090] [SPEAKER_10]: You get the invoice, and you don't have to pay it necessarily, but you get to hand carry it or otherwise get that to your provider, and then they have to figure out how to get money overseas.
[05:27.310 --> 05:28.210] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, that's how it works.
[05:28.210 --> 05:37.590] [SPEAKER_11]: We actually had a very interesting conversation with the doctor there, because it would really be very easy for Kyle Simply to skip out on this and go back to the States and not pay the hospital bill.
[05:37.750 --> 05:45.230] [SPEAKER_11]: So the doctor, after looking over Kyle's hand and explaining all the medical issues, got into the billing issues.
[05:45.250 --> 05:51.810] [SPEAKER_11]: And it was really kind of a weird thing to be talking to a doctor about payment, but that's how it works here.
[05:51.810 --> 06:06.290] [SPEAKER_11]: He basically said that the way it works is that if he billed through the hospital, it's likely that it would be one of those cases that never got resolved, and he would not get anything for that.
[06:06.530 --> 06:08.110] [SPEAKER_11]: Basically, it's just written off.
[06:08.270 --> 06:14.930] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, if we paid him up front in cash, literally, he knocked a certain percentage off.
[06:14.930 --> 06:23.270] [SPEAKER_11]: So we wound up paying him $150 right there on the spot, and that pleased him, and I thought it was the right thing to do.
[06:23.770 --> 06:34.150] [SPEAKER_11]: But what we could have done was simply paid, I think, about $250 or something after getting billed back in the States and maybe not paying that at all.
[06:34.370 --> 06:37.650] [SPEAKER_11]: So that's basically how they present things to you when you're a foreigner here.
[06:37.790 --> 06:42.350] [SPEAKER_11]: We still have to get the hospital bill, and there's a follow-up appointment, which is why we're still up here.
[06:43.990 --> 06:48.830] [SPEAKER_11]: But overall, I'd have to say they're pretty up front with the way things work.
[06:48.990 --> 06:49.890] [SPEAKER_11]: It's very fast.
[06:50.430 --> 06:57.410] [SPEAKER_11]: I know people say it's slow, and it can be slow for certain things, but when it's an emergency like this, things seem to work.
[06:57.710 --> 07:02.910] [SPEAKER_11]: Again, we're not finished yet, but right now I'm pretty impressed with the system.
[07:03.130 --> 07:08.010] [SPEAKER_06]: I just have one question, which is how do they expect you to fill out all these forms with your hand broken?
[07:08.530 --> 07:14.390] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, no, Mike, that is absolutely the most hilarious and ironic part about a lot of this.
[07:14.550 --> 07:18.410] [SPEAKER_10]: Because if you think about it, there's a lot of things you do with your dominant hand.
[07:18.410 --> 07:24.470] [SPEAKER_10]: And I happen to be in a situation where my dominant hand is the one that's injured.
[07:24.990 --> 07:35.670] [SPEAKER_10]: And so, like, brushing your teeth, shaving your whiskers, you know, all those little simple things you take for granted become incredibly taxing, trying, difficult.
[07:35.950 --> 07:43.430] [SPEAKER_10]: It's a challenge to remember that you, oh, yeah, cannot do it that way, and you have to figure out another way.
[07:43.610 --> 07:45.890] [SPEAKER_10]: So I'm having a lot of those kinds of experiences.
[07:46.330 --> 07:57.170] [SPEAKER_10]: And to answer your question, I ended up signing it with the other hand, and it was really hilarious the way it looked, but they accepted it, and we all had a good laugh.
[07:57.170 --> 08:01.110] [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, they were all very friendly and supportive, and they answered any questions we had.
[08:01.330 --> 08:07.130] [SPEAKER_11]: And it was very bizarre, you know, being there in the middle of the night in a small town that we had just arrived in, having to deal with this.
[08:07.230 --> 08:10.870] [SPEAKER_11]: And we were really, really tired, since we had just driven about 1,000 miles that day.
[08:11.030 --> 08:14.710] [SPEAKER_11]: And we just wanted to go to sleep, and we wound up staying up for most of the day anyway.
[08:14.890 --> 08:21.550] [SPEAKER_11]: But it was also really kind of interesting when Kyle tried to contact his insurance company back home, because that's when he got kind of Kafka-esque.
[08:22.450 --> 08:29.990] [SPEAKER_11]: He didn't have his insurance card with him, and he needed to either get a copy of that insurance card or get the information that was on it.
[08:30.090 --> 08:34.330] [SPEAKER_11]: But to do that, after logging in, he had to be, quote-unquote, verified.
[08:34.730 --> 08:38.750] [SPEAKER_11]: Even though he was logged in, even though he paid his bill every month, he still was not verified.
[08:39.010 --> 08:50.990] [SPEAKER_11]: And the only way he could get verified was to have a postcard sent to the mailing address that was on file back in Washington State, or the second option was for him to personally visit them in Washington State.
[08:51.170 --> 08:55.250] [SPEAKER_11]: Obviously, neither of those was a very good option for us.
[08:55.350 --> 09:01.830] [SPEAKER_11]: But it was just insane watching him on the phone trying to deal with these people and explain to them that, look, I'm in Ontario now.
[09:01.830 --> 09:02.890] [SPEAKER_11]: I can't do that.
[09:03.010 --> 09:05.810] [SPEAKER_11]: Can you please just give me the information that is my information?
[09:05.810 --> 09:18.070] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, and this is supposed to be the, like, the online, sort of the high-tech, convenient way of accessing all your stuff, everything in one, you know.
[09:18.250 --> 09:21.990] [SPEAKER_10]: And the irony is how antiquated their verification system is.
[09:22.130 --> 09:29.730] [SPEAKER_10]: So that was a quick reminder of what I faced back home and probably foreshadowing for how they're going to handle my invoice from here.
[09:29.890 --> 09:32.550] [SPEAKER_09]: I also find it kind of entertaining that there you are.
[09:32.550 --> 09:37.450] [SPEAKER_09]: You're in a strange foreign land, you know, seeing exotic witch doctors or whatever they use out there.
[09:37.550 --> 09:43.770] [SPEAKER_09]: And still the most frustrating part of this process seems to be dealing with your own company back home.
[09:45.530 --> 09:46.370] [SPEAKER_06]: Absolutely, yep.
[09:46.590 --> 09:56.930] [SPEAKER_09]: Now, Greg, I need to have some words with you, Greg, because I remember specifically telling you last week that I needed both of these guys back in, you know, somewhat broadcastable condition after they were done helping you out out there.
[09:57.410 --> 10:01.470] [SPEAKER_09]: But I just wanted to ask, did you have to staple Kyle together at all?
[10:02.550 --> 10:05.970] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, there were no staple-worthy incidents.
[10:05.970 --> 10:07.850] [SPEAKER_02]: I had the staple gun standing by.
[10:08.870 --> 10:15.370] [SPEAKER_02]: And, in fact, since we're in the middle of Ontario, in sort of a rural area, there's really not a lot of non-commercial radio.
[10:15.370 --> 10:19.970] [SPEAKER_02]: So I was tempted to reach out to the local media with the staple gun.
[10:20.190 --> 10:24.670] [SPEAKER_02]: But I'd say that Emmanuel and Kyle, for the most part, behaved.
[10:26.210 --> 10:27.170] [SPEAKER_11]: We tried.
[10:27.190 --> 10:27.890] [SPEAKER_11]: We really did.
[10:27.890 --> 10:35.410] [SPEAKER_11]: But speaking of radio, yeah, radio is something that is very important, obviously, as you're traveling across, what, 4,000 miles of territory.
[10:35.770 --> 10:39.490] [SPEAKER_11]: And I was always trying to find either Radio 1 or Radio 2 from the CDC.
[10:39.490 --> 10:43.010] [SPEAKER_11]: But occasionally, we'd find some other interesting stations.
[10:43.550 --> 10:44.390] [SPEAKER_11]: AM radio.
[10:44.390 --> 10:46.610] [SPEAKER_11]: I heard some really amazing things on AM.
[10:47.110 --> 10:58.010] [SPEAKER_11]: There was a radio station, a local radio station, I believe it was near Edmonton, or maybe Winnipeg, one of those, that was reading out bingo numbers.
[10:58.470 --> 11:00.630] [SPEAKER_11]: Literally, they were playing bingo on the radio.
[11:01.170 --> 11:05.070] [SPEAKER_11]: The guy would say, what's a bingo?
[11:05.250 --> 11:07.450] [SPEAKER_11]: Like, A3 or something like that.
[11:07.710 --> 11:08.190] [SPEAKER_11]: That's bingo, right?
[11:08.190 --> 11:11.930] [SPEAKER_11]: And then he would say, the first number is A3.
[11:12.190 --> 11:13.350] [SPEAKER_11]: There'd be a 10-second pause.
[11:14.470 --> 11:14.830] [SPEAKER_11]: A3.
[11:15.450 --> 11:17.030] [SPEAKER_11]: There was no audience or anything like that.
[11:17.070 --> 11:18.290] [SPEAKER_11]: Everybody was listening on the radio.
[11:18.650 --> 11:21.470] [SPEAKER_11]: These were farmers and their wives and people like that all over the region.
[11:21.690 --> 11:26.550] [SPEAKER_11]: And then, you know, after doing this for about 10 minutes, he'd say, oh, the phone is ringing, and we may have a winner.
[11:26.690 --> 11:28.170] [SPEAKER_11]: We're going to confirm that.
[11:28.230 --> 11:28.890] [SPEAKER_11]: And yes, we have a winner.
[11:29.110 --> 11:30.390] [SPEAKER_11]: Okay, on to the next game.
[11:30.490 --> 11:31.550] [SPEAKER_11]: That went on for an hour.
[11:31.870 --> 11:35.810] [SPEAKER_11]: And that was how they ran that particular radio program.
[11:36.090 --> 11:37.490] [SPEAKER_11]: I just thought that's really kind of cool.
[11:37.490 --> 11:42.690] [SPEAKER_11]: You know, you've got this local radio station, and they're playing bingo with all the local people, and they're winning money, too.
[11:42.850 --> 11:43.970] [SPEAKER_11]: Some of them are winning a good amount.
[11:44.330 --> 11:47.990] [SPEAKER_11]: There was another radio station that had classified ads on the radio.
[11:48.950 --> 11:49.390] [SPEAKER_11]: People...
[11:49.390 --> 11:55.350] [SPEAKER_11]: I heard some guy reading an ad saying that he needed a radio for his 1973 Dodge.
[11:56.030 --> 11:58.610] [SPEAKER_11]: And it was just being broadcast to everybody in the region.
[11:58.810 --> 12:00.530] [SPEAKER_11]: And I'll bet he got his radio that way.
[12:00.990 --> 12:09.450] [SPEAKER_11]: It's better than just hearing the same old garbage that you get repeated from city to city on radio stations to see them used locally like this.
[12:09.550 --> 12:17.390] [SPEAKER_11]: But at the same time, we also heard in the middle of the night, because in the middle of the night, when there is a night, that is, many of the places we went to didn't have a nighttime.
[12:18.050 --> 12:21.470] [SPEAKER_11]: But when night falls, AM radio travels a lot further.
[12:21.630 --> 12:28.230] [SPEAKER_11]: We were able to hear distant Canadian stations, and local Canadian stations as well, that were playing music.
[12:28.230 --> 12:30.070] [SPEAKER_11]: And you don't hear that very often these days.
[12:30.210 --> 12:31.450] [SPEAKER_11]: Most AM radios talk.
[12:31.590 --> 12:32.790] [SPEAKER_11]: But there's something...
[12:32.790 --> 12:35.950] [SPEAKER_11]: And I can't really explain this to people who don't share the same sentiment.
[12:36.190 --> 12:43.270] [SPEAKER_11]: There's something really appealing about hearing a song you like that sounds really crappy on an AM radio.
[12:43.470 --> 12:43.970] [SPEAKER_11]: I really...
[12:43.970 --> 12:51.750] [SPEAKER_11]: It's kind of like, I guess, hearing an old jazz piece on a crackly vinyl record rather than on a pristine CD.
[12:52.570 --> 12:53.690] [SPEAKER_11]: There's something about it.
[12:53.790 --> 12:54.930] [SPEAKER_11]: And that's what they do up here in Canada.
[12:54.930 --> 12:59.990] [SPEAKER_11]: They have radio stations that play old songs or even new songs on AM radio.
[13:00.150 --> 13:01.190] [SPEAKER_11]: I just think that's kind of cool.
[13:02.370 --> 13:03.870] [SPEAKER_09]: There is something charming about that.
[13:04.030 --> 13:09.770] [SPEAKER_09]: And I've heard of things like the classified ads and little auctions and things still happening in this country.
[13:09.790 --> 13:14.390] [SPEAKER_09]: But yeah, mostly in the sort of rural areas where I guess it's a smaller town thing and it makes sense.
[13:14.410 --> 13:19.190] [SPEAKER_09]: I don't think you'd find much success with that here in this particular radio market we're in.
[13:19.550 --> 13:20.710] [SPEAKER_09]: But who knows?
[13:20.890 --> 13:21.410] [SPEAKER_09]: Who knows?
[13:23.090 --> 13:24.130] [SPEAKER_09]: It's interesting to think about.
[13:25.210 --> 13:26.170] [SPEAKER_11]: It certainly is.
[13:26.790 --> 13:31.790] [SPEAKER_11]: We have some interesting news in the hacker world, obviously, that we need to get to as well.
[13:31.930 --> 13:35.670] [SPEAKER_11]: And tonight we're going to be talking about some of that from the various parts of the world that we're in.
[13:35.750 --> 13:37.030] [SPEAKER_11]: We're only going to be on until 7.30.
[13:37.110 --> 13:45.550] [SPEAKER_11]: Then Bernie steps in from Philadelphia, which is great because there's Philadelphia connections to the stories we're going to be talking about tonight.
[13:46.070 --> 13:48.550] [SPEAKER_11]: But I understand today was a day of snafus.
[13:49.010 --> 13:52.330] [SPEAKER_11]: United Airlines had some technical issues.
[13:52.470 --> 13:54.890] [SPEAKER_11]: They had to ground flights for a good amount of time.
[13:55.530 --> 14:00.570] [SPEAKER_11]: And then the stock market went down and trading was halted for a while.
[14:00.930 --> 14:04.870] [SPEAKER_11]: I believe the stock market even went down significantly as a result of that.
[14:04.870 --> 14:07.330] [SPEAKER_11]: The Wall Street Journal homepage was down.
[14:07.610 --> 14:09.550] [SPEAKER_11]: I had trouble getting my Mac to boot.
[14:09.750 --> 14:11.350] [SPEAKER_11]: There are all kinds of issues to that.
[14:12.390 --> 14:16.450] [SPEAKER_06]: The only sad part of this is that the stock exchange apparently is working again.
[14:17.630 --> 14:18.710] [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, that's what I heard.
[14:18.830 --> 14:22.150] [SPEAKER_11]: I heard that they were down for about four hours.
[14:22.790 --> 14:25.210] [SPEAKER_11]: And they lost 261 points.
[14:25.350 --> 14:26.470] [SPEAKER_11]: They're playing it on Greece.
[14:27.510 --> 14:34.550] [SPEAKER_06]: My favorite thing, actually, about WBAI Radio is that they're not always telling you about the Dow Jones, whatever that is, going up and down.
[14:34.590 --> 14:36.650] [SPEAKER_06]: So we should not break that rule, I think.
[14:36.750 --> 14:37.010] [SPEAKER_11]: All right.
[14:37.090 --> 14:37.950] [SPEAKER_11]: We won't do that then.
[14:38.270 --> 14:44.470] [SPEAKER_11]: However, in traffic, I understand that the West Side Highway is jammed up right about 120th Street.
[14:44.570 --> 14:45.010] [SPEAKER_11]: Is that true?
[14:45.270 --> 14:46.930] [SPEAKER_06]: It seems like a reasonable guess.
[14:47.090 --> 14:47.770] [SPEAKER_06]: I had nothing to do with that.
[14:47.770 --> 14:49.310] [SPEAKER_11]: And in sports today, how are the Mets doing?
[14:49.990 --> 14:52.130] [SPEAKER_11]: You know, there's a lot we don't talk about on WBAI.
[14:52.130 --> 14:52.330] [SPEAKER_11]: There we are.
[14:53.010 --> 14:54.510] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, and moving on to country music.
[14:54.590 --> 14:56.790] [SPEAKER_06]: But the traffic and the sports, I at least know what those are.
[14:56.890 --> 15:00.690] [SPEAKER_06]: The Dow Jones, I don't know what that is or why I care why they're always talking about it on other stations.
[15:00.810 --> 15:02.190] [SPEAKER_09]: But we know what airplanes are.
[15:02.410 --> 15:11.130] [SPEAKER_09]: And United Airlines grounded tons of flights, about 3,500 flights this morning due to apparently a networking glitch in their system.
[15:11.570 --> 15:14.910] [SPEAKER_09]: And this happened, I think the Wall Street Journal went down after that.
[15:16.230 --> 15:17.690] [SPEAKER_09]: Their homepage just went down.
[15:17.930 --> 15:20.830] [SPEAKER_09]: And yeah, then the New York Stock Exchange also went down.
[15:21.470 --> 15:23.910] [SPEAKER_09]: They had some issues earlier in the morning.
[15:24.550 --> 15:28.150] [SPEAKER_09]: Apparently certain stock symbols were causing trouble, you know, as they do.
[15:28.490 --> 15:32.070] [SPEAKER_09]: But they thought they had it fixed, and they didn't.
[15:32.150 --> 15:33.010] [SPEAKER_09]: So they took everything down.
[15:33.150 --> 15:36.410] [SPEAKER_09]: And it only started up again around sometime after 3 today, I believe.
[15:37.510 --> 15:38.870] [SPEAKER_09]: So yeah, apparently.
[15:39.110 --> 15:42.430] [SPEAKER_09]: And the interesting thing about that was just watching everyone's reactions to it.
[15:42.430 --> 15:57.850] [SPEAKER_09]: because the people that I know who are into the whole world of stocks and bonds and pieces of paper with numbers on them, they were all sort of freaking out about it in much the same way as people that I know who play things like Warcraft act when their game goes down.
[15:59.350 --> 16:03.810] [SPEAKER_09]: Although, of course, when Warcraft goes down, it doesn't tend to make all our grandparents lose their houses.
[16:04.530 --> 16:07.210] [SPEAKER_09]: But yeah, it's kind of fun to see it mixed up a little.
[16:08.250 --> 16:13.950] [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, World of Warcraft is a lot more fun than the New York Stock Exchange if you're going to play games.
[16:14.210 --> 16:17.930] [SPEAKER_06]: I'm not really into either one, but I see the appeal of the Warcraft thing.
[16:17.930 --> 16:26.670] [SPEAKER_11]: What I find interesting about all this is how quickly everybody was to jump up and say this was not a result of any kind of intrusion.
[16:26.910 --> 16:28.950] [SPEAKER_11]: It was just some kind of technical glitch.
[16:29.130 --> 16:48.290] [SPEAKER_11]: And I don't know if that makes me feel any better, knowing that a technical glitch at any time can just really foul things up and ground airplanes and stop trading on stock markets or whatever, you know, things that are supposedly important just because of a malfunctioning router or some bad code or something like that.
[16:48.590 --> 16:49.990] [SPEAKER_11]: Everything grinds to a halt.
[16:50.550 --> 16:57.590] [SPEAKER_09]: I'm kind of more comforted being at the horrible mercy of unfeeling machines than I am at being at the horrible mercy of terrible people.
[16:59.390 --> 17:06.890] [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, there will certainly be many long meetings where people try and figure out what went wrong over the coming days at these companies.
[17:07.130 --> 17:09.850] [SPEAKER_06]: I feel bad for the people who have to sit in them.
[17:10.130 --> 17:12.970] [SPEAKER_06]: But I mean, do you think they're lying to us?
[17:13.090 --> 17:13.870] [SPEAKER_06]: Or what do you think?
[17:14.090 --> 17:15.310] [SPEAKER_10]: I have a theory.
[17:15.630 --> 17:28.350] [SPEAKER_10]: Mike, I think it's that we're at a point now where this stuff is so important and so common that we can't deny it, but we can kind of slow down the effects of it, right?
[17:28.530 --> 17:40.650] [SPEAKER_10]: And sort of, it seems like a PR mitigation method because as soon as you start saying it was an attack or something else, a whole other realm of possibilities opens up.
[17:40.650 --> 17:49.830] [SPEAKER_10]: And what's really important is like the trust in your brand, the image, so to speak, of your corporation.
[17:49.890 --> 17:55.130] [SPEAKER_10]: It becomes, you know, comes into question and it becomes, that then becomes vulnerable.
[17:55.130 --> 18:03.450] [SPEAKER_10]: And that is like the ripple effect of like sales and maybe deals or negotiations that are currently underway.
[18:03.450 --> 18:04.770] [SPEAKER_10]: It overshadows it.
[18:05.150 --> 18:19.130] [SPEAKER_10]: And so if you can vaguely describe what happened but not really admit to what technically happened or be absolutely upfront, so you're kind of saying it without saying it, I think it's a strategy.
[18:19.170 --> 18:44.950] [SPEAKER_10]: And I think it is now kind of the state-of-the-art, as it were, with PR for these companies because they know it's important but they cannot say things that would, not instill, but that would make their investors and customers feel as though they can't put a lot of faith in them handling things properly.
[18:45.210 --> 18:47.970] [SPEAKER_10]: But to me, it's all the same, right?
[18:47.970 --> 18:54.770] [SPEAKER_10]: It's all something messing up or some system or protocol not being appropriately implemented and so on and so forth.
[18:54.810 --> 18:57.250] [SPEAKER_10]: It's just about how they're going to characterize it.
[18:57.250 --> 19:09.490] [SPEAKER_10]: And that, basically, if we can put some mystery around it or make it seem as vague as possible, I think that that is a better choice in a lot of these people's minds.
[19:11.790 --> 19:18.290] [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I mean, we've also seen, on the other hand, companies, you know, too eager to blame malicious actors for their own messing up.
[19:18.650 --> 19:22.250] [SPEAKER_06]: So we'll see what happens, I guess, next time.
[19:22.410 --> 19:28.530] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, not just companies, but politicians and people like that and anyone who wants to use what's going on to support their own agendas.
[19:30.790 --> 19:36.350] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, speaking of maliciousness, there is this company known as Hacking Team.
[19:36.530 --> 19:37.630] [SPEAKER_11]: You all have heard of them, I assume.
[19:37.850 --> 19:38.910] [SPEAKER_09]: Hacking Team, yes.
[19:39.110 --> 19:43.030] [SPEAKER_06]: I think those of us on the air have, but maybe some of our audience hasn't.
[19:43.210 --> 19:49.990] [SPEAKER_11]: Okay, well, Hacking Team is a company based in Italy, but with a very strong presence in the United States as well.
[19:50.550 --> 19:59.810] [SPEAKER_11]: And just to give you a sense, the register, we love the register, they had this headline that basically was alerting people to what happened recently.
[20:00.470 --> 20:07.330] [SPEAKER_11]: And the way they phrased it, they said Adobe Flash and Windows Zero Day vulnerabilities were leaked from a Hacking Team raid.
[20:07.670 --> 20:12.390] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, what they refer to as a raid, most other media would refer to as a hack.
[20:12.570 --> 20:14.510] [SPEAKER_11]: But basically, it was a raid.
[20:14.510 --> 20:24.350] [SPEAKER_11]: Somebody went in there and used a security vulnerability to retrieve information that basically exposed everything these guys were up to.
[20:24.570 --> 20:28.690] [SPEAKER_11]: And I got to tell you, what these guys are up to is seriously disturbing.
[20:28.990 --> 20:43.690] [SPEAKER_11]: We're talking about breaking into people's computers, breaking into companies' computers, helping oppressive governments of all sorts, and using vulnerabilities such as the Flash and Windows vulnerabilities.
[20:45.290 --> 20:57.010] [SPEAKER_11]: Basically, these security holes are used to inject malicious code into PCs, and then that installs surveillance tools to monitor the users every move and remotely control their machines over the Internet.
[20:57.790 --> 21:08.790] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, the Hacking Team counts the governments of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Russia, and, of course, the United States, plus various private organizations as its customers.
[21:09.510 --> 21:13.790] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, with Adobe Flash, this is from the register, of what we've seen so far.
[21:13.990 --> 21:19.230] [SPEAKER_11]: Inside the leaked source code lies an Adobe Flash exploit for which no patch exists.
[21:19.230 --> 21:28.010] [SPEAKER_11]: It can be used against Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, and affects Flash Player 9 to the latest version, 18.0.0.194.
[21:28.370 --> 21:39.230] [SPEAKER_11]: A proof-of-concept exploit uses the flaw to open calc.exe on Windows, proving a malicious Flash file downloaded from the Internet can execute arbitrary code on a victim's computer.
[21:39.470 --> 21:47.570] [SPEAKER_11]: A hacking team describes it as, quote, the most beautiful flash bug for the last four years, unquote, in its internal documentation.
[21:48.170 --> 22:08.730] [SPEAKER_06]: So, Emmanuel, I'm a fan of beautiful bugs, of course, as we all are, but what hacking team would do with these bugs, maybe they sell these to these governments, to the police forces of these governments, and what these police forces do, you listed a long list of countries who are not maybe the biggest fans of human rights,
[22:09.630 --> 22:13.750] [SPEAKER_06]: you know, the United States among them, but certainly not even the worst offender on the list.
[22:15.110 --> 22:16.070] [SPEAKER_06]: And they...
[22:16.070 --> 22:30.950] [SPEAKER_06]: So, we've been hearing sort of rumors of what hacking team is up to for a while, but it's been hard to get concrete information because they don't talk about their client list, but there have been journalists in Ethiopia who people believe were targeted by this kind of stuff,
[22:31.070 --> 22:35.810] [SPEAKER_06]: and now we know that the Ethiopian government was, in fact, a customer of hacking team.
[22:35.950 --> 22:40.990] [SPEAKER_06]: So, this is not something that is sort of purely amusing on a technical level.
[22:40.990 --> 22:50.690] [SPEAKER_06]: This is something with real consequences for people who are trying to do good in the world, and hacking team was, you know, selling their tools to police states all over the place.
[22:51.450 --> 22:54.890] [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, I'd like to go back actually to a story from 2012.
[22:55.090 --> 22:56.870] [SPEAKER_11]: I think we might have focused on this.
[22:57.570 --> 23:02.450] [SPEAKER_11]: Basically, the headline was how government-grade spy tech used a fake scandal to dupe journalists.
[23:03.130 --> 23:10.110] [SPEAKER_11]: And it's interesting, too, because I searched through our own email archives to find some of these stories, and they've disappeared from Google News.
[23:10.110 --> 23:15.210] [SPEAKER_11]: You can't find them on Google News anymore, which just goes to show you how easy it is to...
[23:15.210 --> 23:20.930] [SPEAKER_11]: Not that I'm saying it's intentional, but it's easy for news to disappear if you don't save it yourself.
[23:20.930 --> 23:22.470] [SPEAKER_11]: So that's why it's important to do that.
[23:22.650 --> 23:27.750] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, an email claiming to reveal a political scandal will grab the attention of almost any journalist.
[23:27.750 --> 23:35.810] [SPEAKER_11]: But what if the email was just a ruse to make you download government-grade spyware designed to take total control of your computer?
[23:35.950 --> 23:41.670] [SPEAKER_11]: It could happen as a team of award-winning Moroccan reporters recently found out.
[23:43.010 --> 23:47.530] [SPEAKER_11]: Memfekinch.com is a citizen media project that grew out of the Arab Spring in early 2011.
[23:48.010 --> 23:59.350] [SPEAKER_11]: The popular website is critical of Morocco's frequently draconian government, and last month won an award from Google and the website Global Voices for its efforts to defend and promote freedom of speech rights on the Internet.
[23:59.970 --> 24:05.890] [SPEAKER_11]: Eleven days after that recognition, however, their journalist received an email that was not exactly designed to congratulate them for their work.
[24:06.030 --> 24:08.250] [SPEAKER_11]: It was sent via the contact form.
[24:08.490 --> 24:10.390] [SPEAKER_11]: It was titled Denunciation.
[24:10.390 --> 24:19.310] [SPEAKER_11]: It contained a link to what appeared to be a Microsoft Word document alongside a single live text in French which translates as, please do not mention my name or anything else.
[24:19.370 --> 24:20.330] [SPEAKER_11]: I don't want any problems.
[24:20.750 --> 24:30.570] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, some members of the website's team, presumably thinking they'd just been sent a major scoop, tried to open the file and after they did so, they suspected their computers had become infected with something nasty.
[24:30.850 --> 24:43.710] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, as it turns out, that was something from the hacking team that pointed straight to that Italian company, one of the leading providers of spyware style tools to governments and law enforcement agencies worldwide.
[24:43.710 --> 24:45.650] [SPEAKER_11]: So that was from a number of years ago.
[24:45.650 --> 24:47.130] [SPEAKER_11]: We knew about this company.
[24:47.270 --> 24:59.630] [SPEAKER_11]: A lot of people were talking about them, but it took somebody going in there and exposing their files and showing who they're doing business with and what they're taking advantage of to really make this a news story.
[24:59.630 --> 25:12.150] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, Microsoft is sending out patches for the Windows vulnerability and that vulnerability is actually a pretty major one.
[25:12.530 --> 25:19.570] [SPEAKER_11]: It's a vulnerability in ATMFD.dll, which is an Adobe font driver in the kernel level of the Windows operating system.
[25:20.050 --> 25:32.450] [SPEAKER_11]: It basically affects 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP all the way up to Windows 8.1 and that vulnerability can be used to elevate an attacker's privileges to administrative level allowing more damage or surveillance to be carried out.
[25:32.610 --> 25:36.750] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, Microsoft is out there patching this right now, but I find it interesting.
[25:37.170 --> 25:40.430] [SPEAKER_11]: They're patching it based on stolen information.
[25:40.770 --> 25:49.230] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, they've got stolen information from somebody who hacked into the hacking team website and now they're using that for their advantage.
[25:49.250 --> 25:53.170] [SPEAKER_11]: So I wonder, a clever lawyer could probably get Microsoft in trouble for protecting themselves.
[25:54.810 --> 25:56.070] [SPEAKER_09]: I like this.
[25:56.170 --> 25:57.410] [SPEAKER_09]: I like the way you think.
[25:58.530 --> 26:08.170] [SPEAKER_09]: Something that just came about today as a result of all this, hacking team finally, after a couple of days of this whole fiasco, posted a response on their site to what happened.
[26:08.930 --> 26:09.630] [SPEAKER_09]: A news release.
[26:10.070 --> 26:10.190] [SPEAKER_06]: Don't...
[26:10.190 --> 26:13.010] [SPEAKER_06]: If you go to their website, they probably have some, like, malware on there.
[26:13.110 --> 26:13.450] [SPEAKER_06]: Watch out.
[26:14.830 --> 26:15.390] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I've...
[26:15.390 --> 26:16.310] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, I went to their website.
[26:17.030 --> 26:18.190] [SPEAKER_09]: I've also gone to their website.
[26:18.190 --> 26:18.990] [SPEAKER_09]: I have it right here.
[26:19.210 --> 26:23.490] [SPEAKER_09]: And it's kind of funny, but expected how they would spin all this.
[26:24.270 --> 26:32.090] [SPEAKER_09]: They're basically not admitting to doing anything wrong despite all the proof that they're doing wrong things out there, which we'll go into, I think, a little bit more.
[26:32.410 --> 26:42.250] [SPEAKER_09]: But they start with saying, it is now apparent that a major threat exists because of the posting by cyber criminals of hacking team proprietary software on the Internet the night of July 6th.
[26:42.430 --> 26:48.250] [SPEAKER_09]: Hacking team's investigation has determined that sufficient code was released to permit anyone to deploy the software against any target of their choice.
[26:48.470 --> 26:54.650] [SPEAKER_09]: Before the attack, hacking team could control who had access to the technology, which was sold exclusively to governments and government agencies.
[26:55.070 --> 27:00.410] [SPEAKER_09]: Now, because of the work of criminals, that ability to control who uses the technology has been lost.
[27:01.390 --> 27:05.730] [SPEAKER_09]: Terrorists, extortionists, and others can deploy this technology at will if they have the technical ability to do so.
[27:06.110 --> 27:08.210] [SPEAKER_09]: We believe this is an extremely dangerous situation.
[27:09.250 --> 27:18.990] [SPEAKER_09]: Now, to interject here, I don't believe that this is any more of a dangerous situation than when just these people had access to the technology because it's been shown that they've been doing kind of bad things with it.
[27:18.990 --> 27:24.890] [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, the exciting bit is that the vendors are now patching these vulnerabilities that hacking team has been sitting on for years.
[27:25.070 --> 27:29.350] [SPEAKER_06]: So the result will be the Internet will be just ever so slightly more secure.
[27:30.770 --> 27:39.410] [SPEAKER_06]: But, you know, they're right that there will be an interim period where even more criminals, not just criminals with lots of money, can use these vulnerabilities.
[27:40.450 --> 27:46.670] [SPEAKER_06]: They're right that the people who broke into their servers are criminals, but I think these criminals are like the best criminals in the world.
[27:48.570 --> 27:55.710] [SPEAKER_06]: So, yeah, I mean, and just the documents that have come out of this, there's some amazing stuff in here.
[27:56.010 --> 28:12.110] [SPEAKER_09]: It's also funny how they're phrasing it, just because anyone in the computer security industry, basically, standard procedure, if you find some kind of vulnerability or some kind of zero-day or whatever you want to call it, the proper way to go about that is to assume that somebody else somewhere,
[28:12.110 --> 28:17.870] [SPEAKER_09]: where maybe somebody on the other side of the law from where you're sitting also has figured out that vulnerability.
[28:18.730 --> 28:23.450] [SPEAKER_11]: So, yeah, they basically, they kept this to themselves and used it for their own advantages.
[28:23.450 --> 28:30.670] [SPEAKER_11]: And now they have the gall to actually say that because the rest of the world knows about it, that's the threat, that's the injustice there.
[28:30.970 --> 28:39.330] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, Rob, that statement you just read from Hacking Team, and it really pains me that they call themselves hackers, but that's what they do.
[28:39.330 --> 28:42.570] [SPEAKER_11]: So, do you have the name of the person who wrote that?
[28:42.870 --> 28:47.750] [SPEAKER_09]: That was written by Eric Rabe, R-A-B-E, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer.
[28:48.670 --> 28:59.230] [SPEAKER_09]: Info at hackingteam.com, plus 39-337-114-3876 is the phone number that this is signed with on hackingteam.com.
[28:59.410 --> 29:01.730] [SPEAKER_11]: That's his Italian phone number.
[29:01.770 --> 29:02.730] [SPEAKER_11]: Yes, his company is in Italy.
[29:03.530 --> 29:07.670] [SPEAKER_11]: He's actually from the Pennsylvania area, and he has a 215 number as well.
[29:07.670 --> 29:20.250] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, I did a little bit of digging, and I discovered that unless there are two people from the same area with the same name, this guy used to be the vice president of communications at Verizon.
[29:20.830 --> 29:32.130] [SPEAKER_11]: And we did a story a number of years ago talking about Philadelphia having a plan to provide low-cost, wireless Internet access throughout the city's 135-square-mile area.
[29:32.130 --> 29:40.110] [SPEAKER_11]: And not surprisingly, Verizon was against that idea because, well, they didn't get to charge people money for it.
[29:40.330 --> 29:48.570] [SPEAKER_11]: And one Eric Rabe, vice president of communications at Verizon, said, I reject the idea that this network has to be built because service is not available.
[29:48.870 --> 29:51.250] [SPEAKER_11]: Verizon and Comcast today cover all of Philadelphia.
[29:51.410 --> 29:56.530] [SPEAKER_11]: Broadband may not be available the way the city wants it, so they have a right to try something different.
[29:56.910 --> 30:11.170] [SPEAKER_11]: I also discovered this guy used to be an anchorman at a TV station known as WTAJ-TV, and that's located in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
[30:11.910 --> 30:14.350] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, again, apologies to the other Eric Rabe.
[30:14.430 --> 30:23.170] [SPEAKER_11]: There are two of them, but I suspect since I saw a 215 number show up on one of the press releases from Hacking Team, I suspect it's the same guy.
[30:23.170 --> 30:27.290] [SPEAKER_11]: And it's interesting the background that he has and the connections that he must have as a result.
[30:28.490 --> 30:39.790] [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I wish I could be surprised, but the sort of like, you know, sales of like evil technology to governments is something Verizon does pretty well, too.
[30:42.130 --> 30:44.330] [SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, they deny...
[30:44.710 --> 30:48.610] [SPEAKER_06]: Hacking Team has publicly denied doing business with some of the countries.
[30:50.290 --> 30:58.890] [SPEAKER_06]: The Sudan, for instance, but in the leaked archive is an invoice for 480,000 euros to the government of Sudan.
[30:59.090 --> 31:04.050] [SPEAKER_06]: So if you want Hacking Team's bank account number, that's on the invoice, as well as instructions for payment.
[31:04.390 --> 31:04.930] [SPEAKER_06]: It's just...
[31:04.930 --> 31:06.350] [SPEAKER_06]: There's so much stuff in here.
[31:06.430 --> 31:11.610] [SPEAKER_06]: I think people are going to be going through this for weeks to come and continuing to find interesting stuff.
[31:11.610 --> 31:14.350] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, there's lots of...
[31:14.350 --> 31:19.710] [SPEAKER_09]: If you follow any security researchers on Twitter, chances are you've heard a lot of individual things that are coming out of this.
[31:20.250 --> 31:28.210] [SPEAKER_09]: A 400 gigabyte, basically, torrent of Hacking Team's own information is what leaked out and what's been posted.
[31:28.750 --> 31:33.890] [SPEAKER_09]: And there are a couple of websites that are mirroring the contents of the torrent, if you don't want to download the whole thing.
[31:34.770 --> 31:38.110] [SPEAKER_09]: But, yeah, there's a lot to look at in there.
[31:38.170 --> 31:43.910] [SPEAKER_09]: And I'm sure, like any other massive leak, we'll be hearing about things that come out of this for a long time yet.
[31:44.770 --> 31:49.390] [SPEAKER_10]: I predict that, sadly, that...
[31:49.390 --> 31:50.610] [SPEAKER_10]: Well, not so sadly.
[31:50.610 --> 31:58.370] [SPEAKER_10]: By the time people actually get through this, this Hacking Team company will probably be, like, dissolved.
[31:59.050 --> 32:00.330] [SPEAKER_06]: I don't agree, Kyle.
[32:00.950 --> 32:01.290] [SPEAKER_10]: All right.
[32:01.390 --> 32:02.190] [SPEAKER_10]: Well, hear me out.
[32:02.330 --> 32:02.510] [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[32:02.510 --> 32:18.630] [SPEAKER_10]: Because I think that there are incredibly, there's an incredible amount, and it's becoming sort of popular to have these sort of private consultancies who do cater to governments and institutions and large corporations and so on.
[32:18.690 --> 32:22.170] [SPEAKER_10]: And I'm not, these aren't like your big antivirus companies.
[32:22.350 --> 32:26.030] [SPEAKER_10]: These are like private little consortiums of security companies.
[32:26.030 --> 32:33.090] [SPEAKER_10]: And there's some, like, little promotion and so on.
[32:33.170 --> 32:34.010] [SPEAKER_10]: But they're fairly quiet.
[32:34.010 --> 32:36.330] [SPEAKER_10]: And they fancy themselves experts, right?
[32:36.430 --> 32:43.790] [SPEAKER_10]: And so what I think is that this company's brand, whatever value it may have, will probably be fairly well tarnished.
[32:43.970 --> 32:48.970] [SPEAKER_10]: And the sad part is, a lot of these people will probably be looking for other jobs.
[32:48.970 --> 33:05.730] [SPEAKER_10]: And they'll join other small private security companies and do more of the same stuff that, in my opinion, is fairly criminal against the rest of the people in the world and on the Internet who maybe would like their privacy and not like to be spied upon.
[33:05.730 --> 33:12.170] [SPEAKER_11]: But, you know, the person we're talking about, Eric Rabe, agrees with you, Mike, that this company is not going to go away.
[33:12.170 --> 33:16.410] [SPEAKER_11]: It's going to rebound and continue to exist.
[33:16.410 --> 33:17.790] [SPEAKER_11]: I find that hard to believe myself.
[33:18.350 --> 33:23.710] [SPEAKER_11]: But even if, as Kyle says, they do disappear, there's a bunch of companies just like them.
[33:23.710 --> 33:25.470] [SPEAKER_11]: And we have to keep an eye on every single one of them.
[33:25.770 --> 33:30.910] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, there is a hacker known as Phineas Fisher who has taken responsibility for this.
[33:30.910 --> 33:39.030] [SPEAKER_11]: And he's been part of attacks on spyware makers in the past, one known as Gamma, several years ago.
[33:39.250 --> 33:44.070] [SPEAKER_11]: I have a feeling that they're going to find Phineas Fisher and throw the book at him.
[33:44.130 --> 33:50.650] [SPEAKER_11]: And we all, of course, need to step up when that happens and try and protect him or her as much as possible.
[33:51.370 --> 34:02.170] [SPEAKER_11]: According to Motherboard, on Monday, Phineas Fisher wrestled control of the hacking team Twitter account and proved his identity through promoting the hack through his personal account at the same time.
[34:02.730 --> 34:11.230] [SPEAKER_11]: Phineas has also promised to later reveal how the network was breached once, quote, they have time to fail at figuring out what happened and go out of business.
[34:11.810 --> 34:19.270] [SPEAKER_11]: Now, Eric Grave did not appear sure of the hacker's identity or location in the last few days of a social network storm.
[34:19.490 --> 34:25.450] [SPEAKER_11]: He said, we can disagree about public policy, but that doesn't give someone the right to put someone out of business.
[34:25.450 --> 34:28.270] [SPEAKER_11]: We don't believe it was a guy alone in his basement.
[34:28.370 --> 34:30.350] [SPEAKER_11]: But, you know, it might very well have been.
[34:30.470 --> 34:32.330] [SPEAKER_11]: That's kind of the beauty of this whole thing.
[34:32.530 --> 34:35.730] [SPEAKER_11]: So, from me here in Ontario, I want to thank Phineas Fisher.
[34:35.790 --> 34:39.990] [SPEAKER_11]: And I'm sure many people who care about freedom throughout the world also would like to do that.
[34:40.110 --> 34:43.550] [SPEAKER_06]: Here's why I think the hacking team is going to survive.
[34:44.710 --> 34:53.310] [SPEAKER_06]: Phineas Fisher has, of course, named himself or herself or themself, whatever the, you know, gender and number of this entity is.
[34:53.310 --> 35:03.070] [SPEAKER_06]: Because after the first target, I guess, that they did publicly, which was Phineas Fisher, which was a similar sort of company selling evil software to evil entities like governments.
[35:03.710 --> 35:22.850] [SPEAKER_06]: And they're still around just fine because the customers of these companies and the customers of hacking teams, people like the Thai police and the investigative police in Chile, and, you know, just a whole list of police agencies and national police agencies all around the world,
[35:23.490 --> 35:24.450] [SPEAKER_06]: they don't care.
[35:24.710 --> 35:32.410] [SPEAKER_06]: Like, 98% of the people in the world can think, can be united somehow and think that a hacking team should go out of business.
[35:32.710 --> 35:38.970] [SPEAKER_06]: But the people with the money, with the power to be their customers, I don't think they care one bit.
[35:38.970 --> 35:40.430] [SPEAKER_06]: But, so that's...
[35:41.110 --> 35:49.150] [SPEAKER_06]: And, of course, I agree with Kyle's analysis and your analysis that if they do go out of business, it won't really matter because the people involved will just start something new.
[35:49.230 --> 35:52.470] [SPEAKER_06]: But I think in this specific case, they don't even have to go out of business.
[35:53.170 --> 35:57.530] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, and I think it's definitely something that we're going to have to keep an eye on.
[35:57.730 --> 36:02.250] [SPEAKER_09]: And, you know, maybe if nothing else, hacking team will dissolve and come back as something else and then they won't be called hacking team.
[36:04.130 --> 36:10.650] [SPEAKER_10]: I kind of have a little bit more hope in that, you know, there are a lot of rural police departments in the U.S.
[36:10.710 --> 36:13.330] [SPEAKER_10]: that are just figuring out how to use computers.
[36:13.670 --> 36:15.650] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, I am absolutely serious.
[36:15.830 --> 36:27.170] [SPEAKER_10]: I have a friend whose family members are in the police and he had all kinds of rackets and complaints about computers and this and that and how confounded everything was and blah, blah, blah.
[36:27.610 --> 36:33.330] [SPEAKER_10]: And I would have to say that institutions and governments are probably going through the same thing.
[36:33.470 --> 36:42.810] [SPEAKER_10]: They're fairly expert and so on, but they aren't as pervasive as the rest of the people who are also empowered by the great leveler, which is technology.
[36:43.650 --> 36:46.750] [SPEAKER_10]: So that may be true, Mike, but I don't think it's going to last.
[36:46.830 --> 36:58.870] [SPEAKER_10]: And I think the more we talk about it, the more we understand our right to privacy and security, the better understanding the governments will have because people will respond and that's kind of what we need right now.
[36:58.870 --> 37:09.250] [SPEAKER_02]: I think Kyle put his finger on something important, which is that the notion of hackers for hire is something that these governments and companies need.
[37:09.390 --> 37:16.970] [SPEAKER_02]: They need to be able to go outside of their own expertise in the case of government, sometimes outside of their own legal frameworks or beyond their jurisdiction.
[37:17.330 --> 37:20.570] [SPEAKER_02]: And so if it's not this particular company, there's going to be other companies that step in.
[37:20.710 --> 37:24.590] [SPEAKER_02]: In other words, I think the market demand is going to persist even if the individual companies don't.
[37:24.590 --> 37:25.610] [SPEAKER_09]: Indeed, they will.
[37:26.050 --> 37:30.930] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, it's run a little bit long, but it was great talking to you guys over there in Canada.
[37:31.310 --> 37:34.790] [SPEAKER_09]: And Kyle, we hope you heal up quickly.
[37:35.330 --> 37:37.870] [SPEAKER_09]: But while you're there, enjoy that sweet, sweet Canadian health care.
[37:38.450 --> 37:42.470] [SPEAKER_09]: And we will catch up with you guys on a future episode of Off The Hook.
[37:42.530 --> 37:42.750] [SPEAKER_11]: All right.
[37:42.850 --> 38:00.250] [SPEAKER_11]: I just want to take a moment to thank Greg Newby for just taking us on this incredible adventure of driving 34 dogs across the continent and just teaching us so much about them and about what it means to be a dog musher and just to see it all come about.
[38:00.350 --> 38:01.850] [SPEAKER_11]: We're surrounded by 34 dogs right now.
[38:01.910 --> 38:04.250] [SPEAKER_11]: As you can hear, they're not barking like last week.
[38:04.310 --> 38:06.750] [SPEAKER_11]: They're all relaxed and having a great time.
[38:06.750 --> 38:09.090] [SPEAKER_11]: And we're going to keep improving their lives.
[38:09.770 --> 38:15.070] [SPEAKER_11]: And yeah, that's what the hope coordinators do with their lives, all kinds of interesting, fun things.
[38:15.210 --> 38:16.430] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, I echo that.
[38:16.690 --> 38:18.410] [SPEAKER_10]: I thank Greg a lot for the experience.
[38:18.410 --> 38:24.370] [SPEAKER_10]: And it just proves that hackers are very, very interesting people.
[38:25.350 --> 38:26.250] [SPEAKER_02]: Diverse skill sets.
[38:26.430 --> 38:27.950] [SPEAKER_02]: And thanks to you guys for sticking with us.
[38:27.990 --> 38:29.010] [SPEAKER_02]: It's been an amazing journey.
[38:29.010 --> 38:31.350] [SPEAKER_02]: And we're getting to the cleanup phase.
[38:31.550 --> 38:33.510] [SPEAKER_02]: But of course, the journey continues on.
[38:34.170 --> 38:34.450] [SPEAKER_09]: Excellent.
[38:34.630 --> 38:35.770] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, pet the dogs for us.
[38:35.890 --> 38:39.930] [SPEAKER_09]: And we apologize for any extra cleaning up you have to do after Emmanuel and Kyle.
[38:41.510 --> 38:41.990] [SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[38:42.170 --> 38:43.150] [SPEAKER_06]: Good to talk to you, Greg.
[38:43.230 --> 38:45.590] [SPEAKER_06]: Will we see you in person next week, Emmanuel?
[38:47.330 --> 38:49.310] [SPEAKER_11]: Well, it depends on a couple of things.
[38:49.450 --> 38:52.730] [SPEAKER_11]: It depends on Kyle's follow-up appointment with the orthopedist.
[38:53.490 --> 38:54.750] [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, I might get some upgrades.
[38:54.990 --> 38:57.730] [SPEAKER_11]: And it depends on us getting over the border and a bunch of other things.
[38:57.790 --> 38:58.150] [SPEAKER_11]: We'll see.
[38:58.410 --> 38:58.710] [SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[38:59.010 --> 39:02.150] [SPEAKER_06]: Well, one way or another, we'll talk to you hopefully next week.
[39:03.070 --> 39:04.910] [SPEAKER_06]: And we will make some phone calls.
[39:05.010 --> 39:09.830] [SPEAKER_06]: And while we do that, I'm going to complain about the local cable monopoly in my part of the world.
[39:10.730 --> 39:22.470] [SPEAKER_06]: I have been using for the past year this service called Clear, which I had gotten through Calix, which is an organization that I hope much of our audience is familiar with, but they may not be.
[39:22.910 --> 39:32.230] [SPEAKER_06]: Calix is a small technology concern, one of the very, very few concerns to have publicly fought a national security letter.
[39:32.430 --> 39:33.410] [SPEAKER_06]: So they're great people.
[39:33.550 --> 39:41.050] [SPEAKER_06]: And they were offering a thing at Hope last year, actually, where if you gave them a donation, you get a year of wireless through Clear.
[39:41.290 --> 39:44.010] [SPEAKER_06]: And it wasn't a great service, but it was an okay service.
[39:44.590 --> 39:45.670] [SPEAKER_06]: And my year is up.
[39:45.770 --> 39:50.350] [SPEAKER_06]: And I was thinking of renewing, but apparently Clear is going to shut down in a few months.
[39:50.350 --> 39:51.910] [SPEAKER_06]: So it was time to get rid of them.
[39:51.910 --> 40:01.510] [SPEAKER_06]: And if you are in my part of New York City, like the center of the universe, you really only have one choice for broadband Internet.
[40:01.790 --> 40:04.910] [SPEAKER_06]: And that is a company you may have heard of called Time Warner Cable.
[40:07.310 --> 40:11.170] [SPEAKER_06]: And so I went on the website of Time Warner Cable and, you know, click some buttons.
[40:11.370 --> 40:12.490] [SPEAKER_06]: I would like the Internet.
[40:12.490 --> 40:13.930] [SPEAKER_06]: I would like it at this such speed.
[40:14.350 --> 40:16.830] [SPEAKER_06]: They charge an amount of money, which is really silly.
[40:16.830 --> 40:21.450] [SPEAKER_06]: If you want to rent a cable modem from them and you can get one from the store faster anyway.
[40:21.450 --> 40:23.990] [SPEAKER_06]: So I clicked that I will buy my own cable modem.
[40:25.910 --> 40:30.270] [SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, and then a couple of days later, the cable modem arrived and I want to set it up.
[40:30.610 --> 40:39.770] [SPEAKER_06]: And apparently somehow they managed to mess up my order to indicate that I would be going to their store, their office somewhere in...
[40:39.770 --> 40:40.690] [SPEAKER_06]: I don't even know where.
[40:40.790 --> 40:44.870] [SPEAKER_06]: They never told me where, but apparently they believed that I was going to go there to get a cable modem from them.
[40:44.990 --> 40:53.370] [SPEAKER_06]: And that was the one associated with my account, even though I had already, you know, online chatted with them to give them the Mac address of the thing that I actually owned.
[40:53.890 --> 40:55.890] [SPEAKER_06]: So I had to call them and fix that.
[40:56.770 --> 40:58.190] [SPEAKER_06]: And let me...
[40:58.190 --> 41:02.910] [SPEAKER_06]: Like, I don't want to talk to them and they don't want to talk to me because it costs them money.
[41:03.090 --> 41:05.950] [SPEAKER_06]: Like, every time I'm on the phone with these people, they're losing money.
[41:06.410 --> 41:10.130] [SPEAKER_06]: So it's really in our mutual interest for there to be no telephone conversations.
[41:10.770 --> 41:15.090] [SPEAKER_06]: But I had to have one and it went on for about 10 minutes and I thought they fixed my problem.
[41:15.630 --> 41:17.750] [SPEAKER_06]: And I had the Internet and it was working.
[41:17.930 --> 41:20.930] [SPEAKER_06]: And then like an hour and a half later, it stopped working.
[41:21.990 --> 41:24.490] [SPEAKER_06]: And I was like, all right, maybe it's a temporary glitch.
[41:24.730 --> 41:27.130] [SPEAKER_06]: They're not a very competent Internet provider.
[41:27.630 --> 41:29.490] [SPEAKER_06]: But, you know, it was down for a while.
[41:29.490 --> 41:32.510] [SPEAKER_06]: So I was like, all right, well, I got to get back on the phone with them.
[41:33.090 --> 41:35.790] [SPEAKER_06]: So I called them back up and talked to someone else.
[41:36.170 --> 41:42.550] [SPEAKER_06]: And they were like, they told me to unplug and replug my modem, which of course I had already tried.
[41:42.690 --> 41:47.050] [SPEAKER_06]: But just to humor them, I was like, all right, I'll unplug it and I'll undo the cable and redo the cable.
[41:47.330 --> 41:48.110] [SPEAKER_06]: And what do you know?
[41:48.230 --> 41:49.290] [SPEAKER_06]: Like after all that, it worked.
[41:49.370 --> 41:51.430] [SPEAKER_06]: And I was like, I already tried this.
[41:51.510 --> 41:52.250] [SPEAKER_06]: Did you do something?
[41:52.510 --> 41:54.350] [SPEAKER_06]: And it turns out that they did do something.
[41:54.350 --> 42:01.870] [SPEAKER_06]: They just wanted me to feel stupid and unplug and replug the modem so that I would have something to do while they were actually fixing the problem.
[42:02.650 --> 42:06.710] [SPEAKER_06]: And the problem was apparently that my order was in their words, never completed.
[42:06.970 --> 42:11.530] [SPEAKER_06]: I don't really know what that means because it was clearly completed because it was working.
[42:11.690 --> 42:15.130] [SPEAKER_06]: But 90 minutes later, it was uncompleted and not working.
[42:17.230 --> 42:26.970] [SPEAKER_06]: And I'm a little bit worried because I just got an email during the day while I was at work asking them, asking me to please again provide them with my MAC address.
[42:27.070 --> 42:31.290] [SPEAKER_06]: So I suspect that my order has somehow gotten uncompleted yet again and I'm going to have to talk to them again.
[42:32.410 --> 42:34.090] [SPEAKER_06]: Like, why can't they spend?
[42:34.090 --> 42:41.190] [SPEAKER_06]: It wouldn't cost them that much money to build a system that actually works and then they wouldn't have to pay all these people to talk on the phone with me and I would be happier.
[42:41.190 --> 42:42.410] [SPEAKER_06]: I really don't get it.
[42:43.050 --> 42:44.350] [SPEAKER_09]: We feel your pain, Mike.
[42:44.430 --> 42:45.150] [SPEAKER_09]: We feel your pain.
[42:45.990 --> 42:48.410] [SPEAKER_09]: We're joined now on the phone by Bernie S.
[42:49.070 --> 42:50.550] [SPEAKER_07]: Greetings from Pennsylvania, Rob.
[42:51.870 --> 42:52.870] [SPEAKER_07]: Good to hear you.
[42:53.190 --> 42:53.970] [SPEAKER_07]: And you, and you.
[42:54.550 --> 42:55.990] [SPEAKER_07]: I wanted to...
[42:55.990 --> 43:03.870] [SPEAKER_07]: Mike had mentioned something about a former wireless Internet service provider called Clear.
[43:04.370 --> 43:05.870] [SPEAKER_07]: And yeah, they had been...
[43:05.870 --> 43:07.850] [SPEAKER_07]: Like last year, they were purchased by...
[43:07.850 --> 43:08.550] [SPEAKER_07]: I think it was last year.
[43:08.550 --> 43:14.230] [SPEAKER_07]: They were purchased by Sprint, which dissolved Clear but continues to operate this WiMAX...
[43:15.450 --> 43:16.550] [SPEAKER_07]: Not Wi-Fi.
[43:16.670 --> 43:17.390] [SPEAKER_07]: It's a different technology.
[43:17.510 --> 43:22.010] [SPEAKER_07]: WiMAX network over the 2.5 gigahertz spectrum.
[43:22.350 --> 43:24.590] [SPEAKER_07]: But there's a really interesting background on that.
[43:26.110 --> 43:38.950] [SPEAKER_07]: Sprint has a sub-license to use this 2.5 gigahertz spectrum, which was originally allocated by the FCC for use only by nonprofits to distribute analog...
[43:38.950 --> 43:42.310] [SPEAKER_07]: closed-circuit analog TV broadcasts to schools.
[43:42.310 --> 43:45.230] [SPEAKER_07]: This is before the World Wide Web and all that.
[43:46.150 --> 44:14.550] [SPEAKER_07]: And a nonprofit involved with that that had the license for the 2.5 gigahertz spectrum went to the FCC a few years ago and said, hey, can we lease this spectrum to a for-profit Internet service provider if that for-profit Internet service provider gives us an unlimited number of accounts to provide to nonprofits at very low cost.
[44:14.830 --> 44:18.910] [SPEAKER_07]: And that provider is known as Mobile Citizen.
[44:18.910 --> 44:20.870] [SPEAKER_07]: So I encourage our listeners to look up Mobile Citizen.
[44:21.110 --> 44:24.430] [SPEAKER_07]: The Clear WiMAX network is going away in November.
[44:25.010 --> 44:27.790] [SPEAKER_07]: Sprint is migrating it from WiMAX to LTE.
[44:28.190 --> 44:42.990] [SPEAKER_07]: But for people who are listeners who are sort of underserved and either can't afford expensive Internet service from Time Warner and so forth, go to MobileCitizen.org and get more information about it because they have the license for the spectrum.
[44:43.630 --> 44:56.070] [SPEAKER_07]: And Sprint is obligated to provide an unlimited number of accounts to Mobile Citizen, which then provides them to other organizations to provide them to nonprofits and to the people they serve so that people can get...
[44:56.070 --> 44:56.890] [SPEAKER_07]: It's not fast.
[44:57.030 --> 44:59.130] [SPEAKER_07]: It's like a few megabits per second.
[44:59.130 --> 45:01.370] [SPEAKER_07]: It'll be faster when it's LTE, but it's worth checking out.
[45:01.530 --> 45:08.570] [SPEAKER_07]: So I just wanted to provide that information about the whole Clear thing because it's an interesting hack of the RF spectrum.
[45:09.430 --> 45:09.830] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[45:10.030 --> 45:15.170] [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, it frankly wasn't a very good service, but I was really excited to not be doing business with Time Warner for a year.
[45:15.170 --> 45:15.630] [SPEAKER_06]: It was better than nothing.
[45:15.830 --> 45:22.190] [SPEAKER_07]: For people who are underserved and didn't have Internet access and couldn't afford it, it was much better than having nothing.
[45:23.130 --> 45:27.030] [SPEAKER_06]: And I will say, I never talked on the phone with them for the entire year.
[45:27.030 --> 45:34.410] [SPEAKER_06]: The only person I talked to was Nick Merrill of Calyx, who's a joy to talk to, and handed me the device at Hope, and that was it.
[45:35.990 --> 45:36.610] [SPEAKER_09]: Got it.
[45:36.890 --> 45:40.950] [SPEAKER_09]: Bernie, were you listening to what we were talking about before about hacking team?
[45:40.950 --> 45:55.090] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I was listening to the stream before you called me about this guy, Eric Rabe, who apparently is in Philadelphia and a former Verizon employee and now is the lead counsel for this hacking team outfit, this evil company.
[45:55.090 --> 45:56.870] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so what do you think about our new special friend?
[45:57.790 --> 45:59.270] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, I think he's a new special friend.
[45:59.570 --> 46:02.250] [SPEAKER_07]: Some of our folks in our community have been talking about him for quite a while.
[46:02.610 --> 46:07.770] [SPEAKER_07]: Our friend Jake Applebaum has been talking about Eric Rabe for a couple of years.
[46:08.890 --> 46:12.350] [SPEAKER_07]: According to Jake Applebaum, and he's a...
[46:12.350 --> 46:13.970] [SPEAKER_07]: our listeners aren't aware of who Jake is.
[46:14.010 --> 46:15.770] [SPEAKER_07]: He's a core member of the Tor Project.
[46:16.430 --> 46:25.430] [SPEAKER_07]: He says the use of these hacking team tools, it's a company hacking team, not real hackers, and similar software can be the difference between life and death.
[46:25.810 --> 46:34.590] [SPEAKER_07]: Jake said, quote, these people are tortured, some of them are murdered, the result of the things that we are talking about here is a life and death matter.
[46:35.250 --> 46:40.250] [SPEAKER_07]: And Jake said that at an RSA security conference session a couple years ago.
[46:40.370 --> 46:45.530] [SPEAKER_07]: Jake said, quote, we're having to deal with companies in Palo Alto or Milan, Italy, dealing with this.
[46:45.650 --> 46:47.710] [SPEAKER_07]: And that's a hacking team in Milan, Italy.
[46:47.970 --> 46:50.850] [SPEAKER_07]: Jake says this is a shameful thing and we shouldn't be exporting it.
[46:52.550 --> 46:59.370] [SPEAKER_07]: So, you know, people, hackers, people, real hackers in the hacker community have been saying this for quite a while, like Jake Applebaum.
[46:59.530 --> 47:15.210] [SPEAKER_07]: But now, thanks to Phineas Fisher and other ethical hackers who have exposed this really egregious and dangerous use of technology by companies like Hacking Team, now their evilness has been laid bare.
[47:15.510 --> 47:18.370] [SPEAKER_07]: I agree with Mike that I don't think Hacking Team is going away.
[47:18.370 --> 47:33.070] [SPEAKER_07]: I think the government that purchased their evil surveillance products and then used them against political activists, civil rights activists, and so forth, they don't care one whit about what most of the people in the world think.
[47:33.330 --> 47:41.870] [SPEAKER_07]: But I think it's still useful that the people around the world can know what these companies are doing so they can be better prepared to deal with it.
[47:41.930 --> 47:48.090] [SPEAKER_07]: As Mike said, companies like Microsoft and others are now patching some of the exploits that Hacking Team has been exploiting.
[47:49.070 --> 47:50.850] [SPEAKER_07]: And that's a good thing, at least temporarily.
[47:51.750 --> 47:52.070] [SPEAKER_09]: Indeed.
[47:53.030 --> 47:55.290] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, like I said, we'll be keeping an eye on this.
[47:55.510 --> 47:59.290] [SPEAKER_09]: Stay tuned to future episodes for more fallout from this.
[48:00.490 --> 48:01.870] [SPEAKER_09]: We're running a little low on time.
[48:01.950 --> 48:03.750] [SPEAKER_09]: I'd like to get to a couple of listener emails.
[48:04.030 --> 48:08.110] [SPEAKER_09]: You can send us email anytime, oth@2600.com.
[48:08.830 --> 48:13.090] [SPEAKER_09]: This first one, now we were talking last week about a news story that came out of Sweden.
[48:13.930 --> 48:21.290] [SPEAKER_09]: And Mike, you were tripping over a couple of pronunciations of strange Swedish words with little circles above them and all kinds of things.
[48:21.470 --> 48:29.710] [SPEAKER_06]: There's a town or a city somewhere in Sweden which is called U-M-E and then there's an A with a circle in it.
[48:29.790 --> 48:30.190] [SPEAKER_06]: Yes.
[48:30.330 --> 48:37.010] [SPEAKER_06]: And I suggested that one of our listeners might tell us how to pronounce this and one of our listeners did.
[48:37.210 --> 48:37.550] [SPEAKER_09]: Indeed.
[48:37.710 --> 48:40.050] [SPEAKER_09]: A listener called MW writes, Hi there.
[48:40.110 --> 48:41.890] [SPEAKER_09]: I'm a big fan of 2600 living in Stockholm.
[48:42.090 --> 48:43.290] [SPEAKER_09]: I listen to Off The Hook every week.
[48:43.550 --> 48:44.510] [SPEAKER_09]: Thank you very much, MW.
[48:45.070 --> 48:55.010] [SPEAKER_09]: Attached is a WAV file containing the pronunciation of the letter and then there's the A with the little circular diacritical mark above it and the city name U-M-E that A with the diacritical again.
[48:55.510 --> 48:55.950] [SPEAKER_09]: Enjoy.
[48:56.310 --> 48:57.390] [SPEAKER_09]: Thanks for an awesome show.
[48:57.590 --> 49:03.130] [SPEAKER_09]: So I have this WAV and with MW's permission I'm going to play it so we can all enjoy the lesson.
[49:03.290 --> 49:06.590] [SPEAKER_09]: First, first comes the pronunciation of the letter itself.
[49:08.990 --> 49:11.650] [SPEAKER_09]: That's the pronunciation of the letter.
[49:13.350 --> 49:14.530] [SPEAKER_09]: I like that.
[49:14.970 --> 49:17.850] [SPEAKER_09]: And next comes the pronunciation of the town name.
[49:22.890 --> 49:28.950] [SPEAKER_06]: So U-M-E-O that's probably still wrong but a lot better than I would have done without MW's help.
[49:29.170 --> 49:29.530] [SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely.
[49:29.770 --> 49:30.710] [SPEAKER_09]: Thank you very much MW.
[49:31.370 --> 49:31.850] [SPEAKER_09]: That's great.
[49:32.130 --> 49:33.130] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it is pretty great.
[49:33.510 --> 49:37.390] [SPEAKER_07]: I think I've made that first sound before but not for that context.
[49:37.790 --> 49:40.030] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, this is because you're not a Swedish person.
[49:40.310 --> 49:40.690] [SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[49:40.850 --> 49:44.550] [SPEAKER_07]: I've been to Sweden but I'm not a Swedish person and I do enjoy herring.
[49:44.690 --> 49:45.770] [SPEAKER_07]: I had pickled herring last week.
[49:46.110 --> 49:46.310] [SPEAKER_07]: Indeed.
[49:47.810 --> 49:48.990] [SPEAKER_09]: Another email we have.
[49:49.290 --> 49:55.690] [SPEAKER_09]: Jane writes, WTF, I live in NYC and this is the second Amber Alert I've gotten on my cell phone with Sprint, a service provider.
[49:56.510 --> 50:00.330] [SPEAKER_09]: This one is telling me about a person in New Brunswick, New Jersey who abducted a baby at knife point.
[50:00.550 --> 50:02.630] [SPEAKER_09]: In case I see him around the NAIB, I'm to call 911.
[50:03.110 --> 50:04.450] [SPEAKER_09]: Where are these messages coming from?
[50:04.670 --> 50:05.670] [SPEAKER_09]: Sprint or local governments?
[50:05.850 --> 50:06.750] [SPEAKER_09]: Across state lines too.
[50:07.110 --> 50:08.590] [SPEAKER_09]: Did we get signed up for this without knowing it?
[50:08.730 --> 50:10.210] [SPEAKER_09]: Please inform or address my question.
[50:10.890 --> 50:11.470] [SPEAKER_09]: Thanks a lot.
[50:11.650 --> 50:13.590] [SPEAKER_09]: Jane, dedicated fan of OTH for many years.
[50:14.610 --> 50:24.510] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, Jane, what you experienced there and what a lot of people experienced on the 6th when this was sent out is called a wireless emergency alert and it comes from the FCC.
[50:25.550 --> 50:27.610] [SPEAKER_09]: Now, Bernie, I think you know a bit more about this.
[50:28.650 --> 50:28.990] [SPEAKER_07]: A little bit.
[50:29.110 --> 50:33.790] [SPEAKER_07]: I missed her email, but I've been really preoccupied this week with other things.
[50:34.610 --> 50:48.170] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, there are these, I think they're called EAS or something like that, messages that local municipalities and state and even federal governments and even the White House has total control over the system.
[50:48.370 --> 50:56.870] [SPEAKER_07]: They can send these emergency messages to all the cell phones in a particular geographical area defined by who is sending the message.
[50:56.870 --> 51:06.350] [SPEAKER_07]: message and it sends this weird kind of a tone into your phone and then you see this message and you can block all of these except for the ones from the White House.
[51:06.590 --> 51:13.370] [SPEAKER_07]: You cannot block the presidential emergency messages coming to your cell phone should the president wish to send one to you.
[51:13.570 --> 51:19.650] [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it came up a lot around the sort of blogs and Twitter sphere particularly last week for some reason.
[51:20.210 --> 51:26.730] [SPEAKER_09]: But yeah, there are options in Android phones and iPhones and whatever else to limit the amount of these that you get hold of.
[51:27.370 --> 51:31.570] [SPEAKER_09]: But yeah, the president can send messages to your phone without you being able to block them.
[51:31.630 --> 51:33.110] [SPEAKER_09]: But it comes from the FCC.
[51:33.650 --> 51:35.830] [SPEAKER_06]: I highly recommend turning these off.
[51:36.110 --> 51:38.410] [SPEAKER_06]: They're generally pretty useless.
[51:39.030 --> 51:48.630] [SPEAKER_09]: I did get one sometime last week that informed me as I was next to a window that was open and letting the rain in which I could hear the thunder through and see the lightning that there was in fact a lightning storm going on.
[51:49.110 --> 51:53.250] [SPEAKER_09]: So, you know, it's a good thing I had my phone with me or I would have been terribly confused.
[51:53.490 --> 51:56.830] [SPEAKER_07]: You know, I have mine turned on because I like to see what they're sending.
[51:57.170 --> 51:58.990] [SPEAKER_07]: Sometimes they're entertaining and I can laugh at them.
[51:59.170 --> 52:00.770] [SPEAKER_07]: But I haven't gotten one for quite a while.
[52:01.270 --> 52:02.570] [SPEAKER_07]: I've gotten a few when there's...
[52:02.570 --> 52:04.570] [SPEAKER_07]: Actually, I got one that was really well-timed.
[52:04.670 --> 52:11.330] [SPEAKER_07]: I was driving down a country road in the dark one night and I thought there's probably going to be some small stream flooding and this road could be washed out.
[52:11.450 --> 52:15.570] [SPEAKER_07]: And like two minutes later, I got the alert that there's going to be flooding on this road.
[52:15.690 --> 52:18.370] [SPEAKER_07]: And I was like, hey, this actually worked the way it was supposed to.
[52:18.450 --> 52:21.750] [SPEAKER_07]: So I took the high road, I got around the flood, and that was cool.
[52:21.830 --> 52:23.370] [SPEAKER_07]: That was the only time I had one recently.
[52:23.690 --> 52:33.010] [SPEAKER_07]: And so it can serve a useful purpose, but it can also be misused by local municipalities who think, oh, this must be important, everybody should want to know about it.
[52:33.090 --> 52:34.370] [SPEAKER_07]: And it's really not that important.
[52:34.610 --> 52:41.530] [SPEAKER_06]: Bernie, you say this can serve a useful purpose, but the example you gave was literally telling you something that you had yourself thought two minutes prior.
[52:42.070 --> 52:50.230] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, this is true, but I may have been a little more prescient than most travelers on that road that night, so it may have helped other people.
[52:50.530 --> 52:57.930] [SPEAKER_06]: All I know is that most of my coworkers were awakened at four in the morning last week, and I was not because I had these stupid things turned off.
[52:59.050 --> 53:04.130] [SPEAKER_09]: It's not the purview of the federal government to decide whether or not Bernie's likely to take the high road unless they tell him to.
[53:05.850 --> 53:06.730] [SPEAKER_07]: I like that.
[53:07.970 --> 53:08.410] [SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely.
[53:08.750 --> 53:13.330] [SPEAKER_09]: So yeah, send us email, oth@2600.com.
[53:13.530 --> 53:19.790] [SPEAKER_06]: We are working on getting telephone lines so we can hear your voices, but until then, we will love to read your emails.
[53:20.530 --> 53:21.110] [SPEAKER_09]: Very soon, we will.
[53:22.390 --> 53:25.890] [SPEAKER_09]: Yep, so we will be back next week with another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
[53:26.150 --> 53:27.670] [SPEAKER_09]: Stay tuned for the personal computer show.
[53:28.030 --> 53:32.210] [SPEAKER_09]: For now, I leave this with a dedication to our friends on Wall Street who are dealing with crap today.
[53:32.790 --> 53:33.770] [SPEAKER_09]: For Off The Hook, this is Rob T.
[53:33.770 --> 53:34.210] [SPEAKER_09]: Firefly.
[53:34.370 --> 53:34.750] [SPEAKER_09]: Have a good night.
[53:43.710 --> 53:46.840] [SPEAKER_04]: I grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side.
[53:47.020 --> 53:48.340] [SPEAKER_04]: Staying alive was no job.
[53:48.480 --> 53:49.460] [SPEAKER_04]: Had second hands.
[53:49.750 --> 53:51.100] [SPEAKER_04]: Moms bounced on old men.
[53:51.230 --> 53:53.020] [SPEAKER_04]: So then we moved to shall and land.
[53:53.250 --> 53:55.230] [SPEAKER_04]: A young youth, you're rocking the go-to.
[53:55.460 --> 53:56.040] [SPEAKER_04]: Low goose.
[53:56.160 --> 53:58.460] [SPEAKER_04]: Only way I begin to G-off was drug loot.
[53:58.690 --> 54:00.230] [SPEAKER_04]: Unless started like this, son.
[54:00.380 --> 54:02.080] [SPEAKER_04]: Rolling with this one and that one.
[54:02.250 --> 54:03.420] [SPEAKER_04]: Pulling out gats for fun.
[54:03.560 --> 54:06.290] [SPEAKER_04]: But it was just a dream for the teen who was a fiend.
[54:06.480 --> 54:08.040] [SPEAKER_04]: Started smoking rules at 16.
[54:08.380 --> 54:11.210] [SPEAKER_04]: And running up in gates and doing hits for high stakes.
[54:11.460 --> 54:13.040] [SPEAKER_04]: Making my way off fire escapes.
[54:13.420 --> 54:15.840] [SPEAKER_04]: No question I would speed for cracks and weed.
[54:16.210 --> 54:17.980] [SPEAKER_04]: The combination made my eyes bleed.
[54:18.250 --> 54:21.000] [SPEAKER_04]: No question I would flow off and try to get the dough off.
[54:21.210 --> 54:22.940] [SPEAKER_04]: Sticking up right boys on ball cloth.
[54:23.120 --> 54:24.580] [SPEAKER_04]: My life got no better.
[54:24.820 --> 54:26.100] [SPEAKER_04]: Same damn low sweater.
[54:26.380 --> 54:27.960] [SPEAKER_04]: Times is rough and tough like leather.
[54:28.210 --> 54:29.770] [SPEAKER_04]: Figured out I went the wrong route.
[54:29.900 --> 54:32.800] [SPEAKER_04]: So I got with a sick tight click and went all out.
[54:33.190 --> 54:34.560] [SPEAKER_04]: Catching keys from cross-seeds.
[54:34.750 --> 54:36.080] [SPEAKER_04]: Rolling MPVs.
[54:36.080 --> 54:37.860] [SPEAKER_04]: Every week we made 40 Gs.
[54:38.080 --> 54:39.440] [SPEAKER_04]: Yo, brothers, respect mine.
[54:39.560 --> 54:40.580] [SPEAKER_04]: I ain't gonna take now.
[54:40.770 --> 54:41.270] [SPEAKER_04]: Cha-pow!
[54:41.460 --> 54:42.520] [SPEAKER_04]: Move from the gate now.
[54:54.640 --> 54:56.500] You can't even walk the
[55:02.210 --> 55:05.270] stuff that deal on.
[56:40.250 --> 56:42.170] [SPEAKER_01]: It's been 22 long, hard years.
[56:42.310 --> 56:42.990] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm still struggling.
[56:43.230 --> 56:44.510] [SPEAKER_01]: Survival got me bugging.
[56:44.610 --> 56:45.990] [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm alive on arrival.
[56:46.290 --> 56:49.470] [SPEAKER_01]: I beef at the shape of the streets to stay awake to the ways of the world.
[56:49.890 --> 56:50.150] [SPEAKER_01]: Deep.
[56:50.410 --> 56:52.690] [SPEAKER_01]: A man with a dream with plans to make cream.
[56:52.810 --> 56:53.170] [SPEAKER_01]: What's fair?
[56:53.270 --> 56:54.970] [SPEAKER_01]: I went to jail at the age of 15.
[56:54.970 --> 56:59.830] [SPEAKER_01]: A young buck selling drugs and such who never had much trying to get a clutch on what I could not touch.
[57:00.210 --> 57:02.310] [SPEAKER_01]: The court blame me shouldn't I face incarceration.
[57:02.790 --> 57:03.230] [SPEAKER_01]: Patience.
[57:03.510 --> 57:04.870] [SPEAKER_01]: Knowing up state's my destination.
[57:05.310 --> 57:06.570] [SPEAKER_01]: Handcuffed in back of a bus.
[57:06.850 --> 57:07.550] [SPEAKER_01]: Forty of us.
[57:07.690 --> 57:09.690] [SPEAKER_01]: Life as a shorty shouldn't be so rough.
[57:10.010 --> 57:12.310] [SPEAKER_01]: But as the world turned I learned life is hell.
[57:12.450 --> 57:14.770] [SPEAKER_01]: Living in the world no different from a cell.
[57:15.090 --> 57:19.510] [SPEAKER_01]: Every day I spoke from jakes giving chase selling bass smoking bones in the staircase.
[57:20.010 --> 57:22.010] [SPEAKER_01]: Though I don't know why I told you smoke sex.
[57:22.230 --> 57:23.750] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess that's the time when I'm not
[57:29.310 --> 57:34.050] [SPEAKER_01]: who explained working hard may help you maintain to learn to overcome the heartaches and pain.
[57:34.210 --> 57:39.190] [SPEAKER_01]: We got stick-up kids corrupt cops and crack rocks and space all on a block that stays hot.
[57:39.330 --> 57:44.090] [SPEAKER_01]: Leave it up to me while I be living proof to kick the truth to the young black youth.
[57:44.310 --> 57:49.010] [SPEAKER_01]: We're shorties running wild smoking sex drinking beer and ain't trying to hear what I'm kicking in his ear.
[57:49.270 --> 57:53.830] [SPEAKER_01]: Neglected for now but yo it gots to be accepted that what the life is hectic.
[57:56.350 --> 57:59.390] [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me what you want what you want what you want what you want