I hope the sergeant never traces that call. You like to play games, don't you?
This is Wayne Kramer from the MC5.
Nobody kicks out the jams like WBAI New York.
And that's the station you're tuned to, 7 p.m.
Time now for Off the Hook. Take it away, guys and gals.
And gals.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook on WBAI New York. Coming up.
I cut myself while shaving. Now I can't make a cut.
We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would.
Funding it all for the best, it's paying for worse.
I hope that's understood. Funding it more.
I hope that's understood.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook, as mentioned.
This manual scene joined by Kyle.
Over here.
Are you over there?
Wow, okay. Try that again.
A little hot.
Who messes with the equipment every week? Every week we have to reset everything.
Okay, over in Skype land, and that's always changing, I know, we have Gila.
Hello.
Caught you off guard there. We have Alex.
Good evening.
And we have Rob.
Good evening.
T Firefly. Please wait for your full name.
And good evening to everybody. It's, I guess, a holiday edition of the show here.
First, I want to thank everybody who called in last week to pledge and to keep the station moving forward.
We are paying, get this, we are paying off our transmitter bill for the next year by raising $250,000.
And we've had a great response so far.
And all you've got to do is call 212-209-2950 and pledge any amount.
It can be a monthly amount. It can be a one lump sum.
All kinds of premiums that you can get in exchange for this.
But the biggest premium of all is WBAI.
And the knowledge that we will not be going off the air because we are not paying our bills.
We actually are on top of it now for the first time in a long time.
I'm sure we've been on top of bills in the past before.
You can also go to givetowbai.org and make your pledge that way.
Give the number to WBAI.org.
And you'll see all kinds of different premiums there.
And you'll be able to use your credit card.
And please spread the word about this too.
We're having this special fund drive blitz until the end of the year.
So that we can raise money for the transmitter next year and not have to worry about it.
Won't that be amazing?
Again, 212-209-2950.
Before we move on with the show, I'll open it up to anybody else who might have something to say on this subject.
Please just raise your hand.
You're in all different parts of the country.
Rob T. Firefly, go ahead.
Yes. This is really wild because as we said last week,
we are actually getting ahead of the game financially as a station.
And that is awesome for us.
If you've been listening to this program, this station, for any length of time,
you may know that that has been a difficulty for us for a while.
And the fact that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that with the help of you, the listeners,
we've been able to keep this station running as it has since 1960,
just purely on the generosity of the listeners who want to throw in their support
and keep this place going, keep the lights on, keep the transmitter transmitting.
And you can check out our special donation page for this campaign at towerfund.wbai.org
and check out what we're doing, why we're doing it,
and a little explanation of the fact that we have a big transmitter rent to pay
and your help with it is appreciated and vital.
Or you could pick up your phone and dial 212-209-2950.
You could be a BAI buddy where you donate a small amount automatically every month
or you could make a one-time donation.
Those of you who like to wait for the end of the year
to get your last little charitable contributions of the year in, that's now.
It's the end of the year and we would very much appreciate that.
212-209-2950 or towerfund.wbai.org and keep us doing what we're doing.
Radio is such a magical thing.
It really is.
Those of you who listen to radio know that when you find a particularly good radio station, it matters.
Kyle and I just watched a documentary on a station called WBCN in Boston.
You might have heard of this station.
It was part of a series of stations that were bought.
This particular one was bought by a bunch of hippies actually up in Boston in, I think, 1968.
They basically started playing rock and roll music in ways that had never been played before.
We were watching this documentary and realizing, wow, there's so much that is similar to BAI here.
Of course, there it's mostly about music.
There it's very focused, but the attitude, the spirit was the same.
I was particularly sad about this documentary.
We saw the beginnings of WBCN as an alternative rock station.
It lasted until about 1974.
Then it became so popular that it was lost.
It was so successful, yeah, that the copycat phenomena, I think, made it something like sort of a template ultimately.
It was adopted and widely copied and that made it less unique in the airwaves.
There were musicians that would just stop by the studio and sing songs on the air,
things that everyone says you could never do today because you'd have to have managers and record companies involved
and all this money passing back and forth.
Whereas then, it was all about the music, all about the spirit, all about the alternative.
That station, it might even still exist, but it's lost as far as that particular spirit.
Here at WBAI, we never lost the spirit.
You might say we're stuck in that period, but you'd be wrong
because we have been moving forward in all different directions,
covering all kinds of different subject matter and playing all kinds of music
and exposing people to different views and different perspectives,
which is what alternative radio is all about.
You will see these occasional sparkles of radio stations, especially in the early days.
It is very rare for a radio station to survive.
What Pacifica has done with the five stations that they own throughout the country is preserve that spirit.
I think that's a really, really important thing to support.
That's why we continue to do this week after week.
That's why we ask you to invest in WBAI.
You see what your investments have done over the past couple of years.
A couple of years ago, we were literally out in the street.
We got kicked into the street by evil forces that took over Pacifica.
It can happen. It can happen to anything.
It can happen to the US government. It can happen to the radio network.
It can happen in your household.
There are all kinds of evil forces that can always take over.
We fought back, and our listeners fought back, and we won.
We won the station back, and that was the first victory.
The next victory is that we are climbing up out of debt and actually moving forward.
Instead of being dead last in the five stations as far as paying bills,
I think we're pretty close to the top now as far as getting things paid, which is great.
But we couldn't have done that without you, and we will need your support in the future.
Since 1960, that is how WBAI has stayed on the air at 99.5 FM as,
I will say this, as the most stable radio force in New York.
Now, you might be doubled over laughing when you think about WBAI as being a stable radio force,
but compare it to every other frequency that is out there in New York City,
and you will find that pretty much every frequency has changed at some point,
has fired their entire staff, has gone to a different format, has swapped frequencies.
Who knows? Somehow, we have stayed at 99.5 FM, and WBAI continues to transmit at that frequency.
And we did that because of you.
So please call 212-209-2950 or go to give2wbai.org and pledge whatever you can.
Go ahead, Gila.
I did hear a rumor that WBAI changed formats to a country western station.
I think what you're referring to there, Gila, is an April Fool's joke that we here at Off The Hook put on one April Fool's Day.
When we happened to land on that day, and what we did was a countdown of a new station debuting,
it caused a bit of a panic and a whole lot of pledges.
So I think that was the goal.
It can happen. It can always happen.
In the world of radio, it's certainly possible to lose your station,
to have the owners decide to go in a different direction.
The WBCN station that we're referring to, that's what happened originally beforehand.
They were known as the Boston Concert Network.
That's what BCN stood for.
It was one of a series of classical stations.
You might remember WNCN in New York was at 104.3.
They were the New York Concert Network.
There was one in Hartford, WHCN.
There was one on Long Island, out in Riverhead, RCN.
They were all part of this network, but it fell apart.
They didn't have the funds to keep going.
That's when these hippies in Boston decided,
hey, here's a radio station that we can buy time on.
Eventually, they bought the station.
In that particular case, it was a good move,
but that's what happens in the world of radio.
Things get changed and taken over all the time.
It was something that came to mind.
I think the ownership that we have is something that is built upon
many other people's contributions in the past.
Your contribution is something that other people have recognized before,
and that's why we're here.
That's why we're – because they value and have stepped up
and got us to this point.
I feel very strongly that the independence and free format
is mostly because there's a certain vigilance
and a certain responsibility that comes with having a community ownership scheme,
and that's what you're a part of as a listener.
Go ahead, Gail.
I think the other thing to bear in mind that's really important
is how unusual it is to find community listener-supported radio
smack in the middle of the FM dial.
We are in the heart of everything here at 99.5 FM,
and quite frankly, because of where our broadcast tower is,
we're coming to you from basically the heart of New York City.
We're broadcasting from – well, we're transmitting from Times Square,
right in the heart of the dial, in the heart of New York City,
and we cannot continue to do that without your support.
So please visit towerfund.wbai.org or call the phone number,
which someone else is going to remind me of
because I don't remember it off the top of my head.
212-209-2950, but you reminded me of that other nifty website, towerfund.wbai.org.
That's a great site to look at for updates
and to see what it is that we're moving forward with.
Rob, did you have something?
Yes, indeed.
It intrigued me that you mentioned what the Boston station's call letters stood for,
and I'm sure you know this, Emmanuel, because you must,
but I'm wondering how many other people here know what the letters W-B-A-I stand for,
what the B-A-I, because it actually stands for something.
Yes, I'm pretty sure I know, and it's not We Beg at Intervals.
No, it's something else.
Anyone else want to take a stab at it?
And I might be wrong, too.
I'm going to recuse myself because I can see Rob's screen.
Okay.
Is it World Broadcasters of America, Incorporated?
You are so close.
The W is not part of it.
It's the W from being on the East Coast,
but it is B-A-I stands for Broadcast Associates, Incorporated.
Really?
Which was the owners of this station in 1955, the station W-B-A-I.
The call letters were assigned to the company that ran the radio station
as a regular commercial concern until five years later
when a person with a lot of money and a good heart called Schweitzer
and donated it to the Pacifica Network in 1960,
and they kept the same call letters.
So a lot of stations, they get random call letters assigned
or they don't stand for anything, but ours once stood for something,
and they still have that meaning, which I think is very cool.
You stand for a lot, I think.
Absolutely.
W-B-A-I means something.
But even in the Pacifica Network, B-A-I is kind of standing out
because all the other stations have the P-F in it,
W-P-F-W, K-P-F-T, K-P-F-A, K-P-F-K, and K-P-F-B if you want to be technical about it.
But we're W-B-A-I.
We could be W-P-F-N or something for New York,
but we wanted to keep those call letters.
And over 60 years later, we still have them, and we still have 99.5 FM.
But it's interesting that you say that station started in 1955,
only lasted five years as a commercial entity,
whereas we've been on the air as a noncommercial station.
And I believe we're the first station that actually tried asking for listener support on the air.
I don't think anyone else had tried that before.
There was no NPR, so they certainly weren't in that particular mix.
Alex, did you have anything?
I don't have very much to add because I think that you and Gila and Rob and Kyle
pretty much covered it all.
But I'm really amazed to hear that W-B-A-I actually stands for something,
actually means something, and existed prior to our incantation of the station.
I think that's really historical.
I would put money on the fact that these are probably the oldest call letters in New York consistently,
the oldest consistent call letters in New York.
Everything else is changing.
I mean, it's really pretty amazing stuff.
And just to echo one sentiment that you had obliquely referenced earlier,
but it was almost exactly two years ago that we were in litigation over the ownership of this station.
And if you think about the ragtag group of misfits and weirdos that comprise W-B-A-I,
and I mean that in the fondest sense, it is a real miracle that this place continues to operate.
And I think because of its diversity and because of its inclusivity, not by design,
but by nature, is how it survives.
We have activists.
We have union organizers.
We have shows about weaponry.
We have political shows, news shows, lawyers, hackers.
We all come together and somehow we make this crazy place continue to go,
and we can't do it without the listeners.
The fact that we are in the black right now is not the time to close your purse books.
It's the time to keep them open, make sure that we stay on the air,
keep us going for another 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, I hope.
Just to step in here to make a slight correction because we will get letters if we don't.
WNYC actually has had call letters longer than we have.
Kidding.
Well, they actually, it's an interesting story.
I'm looking at Wikipedia right now.
They signed on March 13, 1943 at 43.9 megahertz.
Is that right?
Because they're at 93.9, but this article says 43.9.
Maybe somebody could clarify that for us.
They were known originally as W39NY, and they basically changed to WNYC a few years after that.
That's before 1960, but they have gone through all kinds of different transitions as well
and changes in ownership.
We certainly are one of the original call letters and stations.
All right.
That being said, one final time, phone number 212-209-2950,
website give2wbai.org, additional website towerfund.wbai.org.
Please show your support.
Help keep us strong, and it'll be an amazing bunch of years in the future.
Okay.
So, Log4J.
We didn't talk about Log4J on the show last week.
We talked about it on overtime.
Well, let's discuss what Log4J actually is because you've probably heard about it in the news quite a bit.
You've probably seen that this is something that is affecting people, computers everywhere, networks, websites,
and kind of like our – can you turn that thing off?
Computer, stop.
Every time you say that word, the automated assistant chimes in and says something,
and you've got to tell it to stop.
I'm sorry about that, folks.
So, basically, machines are affected by this particular security hole.
Alex, maybe you could describe it better than I'm attempting to do right now.
Yeah, you seem slightly distracted there.
I don't know what's going on.
Something's got you very flustered, and I don't think it's Log4J.
It's the damn Alexa device that has the name –
I'm going to turn my microphone off after I say this so you don't have to hear what it says in response –
has the name computer, and my voice is also changing as Kyle adjusts the –
was there a problem with the levels?
Yes.
You're not helping if you whisper.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
All right.
Go ahead, Alex.
Well, Log4J.
So, Log4J is a very popular logging library, and we talked about this quite a bit right at the end of overtime last year.
So, if you want to tune in to that bit of the recording.
But Log4J is a very popular Java-based open source logging library that's used, well, throughout Apache,
but not just in web servers.
This is a logging library that's used throughout almost any application that relies on Java.
It's extraordinarily popular with Java developers because it allows Internet-facing applications
to log what's happening on these particular devices.
So, it's very popular.
It's pretty much ubiquitous.
It's extraordinarily pervasive when it comes to Internet-facing applications
and also in internal applications that companies may be running on their own.
And a vulnerability had been found, actually, originally by some Chinese security researchers.
I believe they were associated with Alibaba.
And this vulnerability is extraordinarily dangerous because it is an RCE,
or a remote code execution vulnerability, that has a very low barrier to entry.
You don't have to be extraordinarily technically adept in order to cause some chaos here with this Log4J vulnerability.
It's a single string that you can send to an application that, when it's logged within the system
and then processes that particular log, it's kind of like the application itself will then pick out that line with tweezers
and you can reference a remote server and a remote application through this particular string.
And through that remote system, you can cause a remote code execution vulnerability to take effect.
So, it's extraordinarily easy to accomplish.
And because it is contained in so many applications all across the Internet,
and not just Internet-facing stuff,
I think this is really important to remember that there are a lot of internal applications that rely on the Log4J library as well.
This has the potential to cause massive disruption across the Internet,
and there has been a race to remediate and patch this vulnerability in all of these affected applications.
There was a CISA, a Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, that is under the auspices of DHS.
They issued a directive, actually, to all civilian federal agencies this past Friday,
requiring them to patch and identify all of the affected applications.
So, there is this race to remediate and patch all of these affected applications,
both on the federal and the civilian side of the planet,
while at the same time, threat actors are trying to figure out ways to automate and exploit this particular vulnerability.
Well, Alex, if I can ask, when you say affected applications, can you give us an example of what that is?
Well, it could be really anything.
There are tons of applications.
In fact, CISA has a list of affected applications
that is sort of a running total of applications that are affected,
but it's really almost anything that incorporates Java as a programming language,
and that contains some sort of logging as well.
And so, because the Log4J library, as I mentioned, is extraordinarily popular,
it could be in almost anything, and it is in almost everything that relies on Java.
Now, if you're not running Java, do you have nothing to worry about?
No, not necessarily at all, because you still have to worry about it,
because the applications on which you rely may still utilize Java.
And so, there are a ton of web-based applications that rely on Java.
Java is extraordinarily popular programming language,
especially in the early 2000s going into the 2010s,
and still to this day it's popular to a certain extent with respect to Internet-facing applications.
But this Log4J library, anywhere Java was incorporated, it's very likely to be found.
So, this vulnerability was also found to have been –
well, at least there was an attempted exploitation of it with respect to Minecraft servers as well,
because Minecraft servers are relying on Java.
They have this Log4J application there,
and they found that Minecraft users could exploit this particular vulnerability
simply by sending the string that I had mentioned,
this well-crafted string that exploits the vulnerability in the library
and has an address included in it through which the remote code can be found and then executed.
And simply by putting that into, let's say, the chat function within Minecraft,
that's then logged.
When that log is processed, the remote code execution vulnerability is affected.
So, even on something as public and prominent and Internet-facing as Minecraft,
is this Log4J vulnerability.
So, does this only affect people playing Minecraft,
or are people who basically just have computers that are connected to the Internet,
should they be worried as well?
Yeah.
I mean, pretty much anybody who's using Internet-facing applications
can be affected by this particular vulnerability.
But companies themselves really have to be vigilant about this,
because let's say you're running some kind of service that relies on Java
that has this Log4J vulnerability included in it.
That can cause a breach on your own system.
It can cause a remote code execution vulnerability,
and that could allow an attacker, essentially,
to drop something like a web shell into your system.
And then right after that, it can be pretty much game over.
If somebody's got a web shell that allows them remote access to your particular system
through this Log4J vulnerability, it can be very, very dangerous.
So, this is a point of entry and a vulnerability that is so pervasive
and found almost everywhere around the Internet
that it's going to be a very, very difficult thing to patch in the short term.
We may not be able to get this done across the board in the manner that we would like to see it.
But as I mentioned at overtime, I think this very well may have an analog to the pandemic
in which we find ourselves today in that, much like we are realizing with the coronavirus,
we may not be able to fully eradicate this.
There may be variants that are popping up here and there.
And I think the same applies to Log4J
because there are certain exploitations of the Log4J library that are known right now.
It's very likely that variations on a theme of this vulnerability are going to be developed
by sophisticated cyber adversaries and threat actors over the weeks and months to come.
And that because there are going to be variations on this vulnerability,
it's unlikely that patching, even remediating through patching itself,
may entirely close this vulnerability out from exploitation.
So, this may be something that, like the virus, we have to live with for quite a long time.
And we come to terms with the idea that we have to remediate, patch,
and mitigate risk as much as we can rather than actually eradicate it.
Wow. Okay. Well, that's something. It's pretty scary.
And the parallels to coronavirus are really kind of staggering.
It's something that seems to be affecting the entire world,
and it's really, really hard to eradicate.
And people don't seem to know what to do.
Yeah. What kinds of things should people be looking for in the immediate?
Have you gotten any kind of good hints or are there tools yet available
that people should be expecting to look for?
Yeah. I mean, there is definitely a lot that people can be doing.
I mean, there's a lot of guidance that comes from CISA,
from the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency.
And really, I would tell people to take a look at an alert that came out today,
which is known as AA21-356A.
And this is basically a summary of mitigating the Log4j vulnerability.
There is also something called Log4shell.
Log4j is the vulnerability that is inherent to the Java-based library that I've been describing.
Log4shell is how the information security community is describing the actual exploitation
and perhaps the dropping of some kind of web shell through the Log4j vulnerability.
So you'll see a lot of those terms thrown around nearly synonymously,
Log4shell and Log4j.
But alert AA21-356A that came out today from CISA has a really good summary of this,
as well as technical details, descriptions of the impact, and a mitigation strategy as well.
And a lot of the country-based certs or the computer emergency response teams for New Zealand
and the Five Eyes, NCSC at the UK, the National Cyber Security Center in the UK,
are all encouraging vendors and have been encouraging vendors for over the last week
to prioritize patching this and rolling out those patches,
getting these patches into the customer's environment so that these appliances,
these applications, these servers that are public-facing are not vulnerable.
Now, what I fear, though, with this is that because we have such a focus right now
on the public-facing vulnerabilities here with respect to Log4j,
that that may eclipse the patching that needs to happen within an organization itself.
As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of internal applications,
perhaps bespoke applications that organizations may be running internally.
These may be something that's running on an internet to perhaps log something like accounts payable
or whatever internal web-based application you might be running.
Who the hell knows what it is?
But there's all types of things that could be utilizing this Log4j library in an internal application,
something that's not facing outwards towards the internet.
Now, let's say that there's a cyber adversary within your network,
or in a lot of organizations that may already be the case,
and you don't have proper network segmentation or VLANs in place to prevent an attacker from moving around laterally.
If you still have this vulnerability present within your environment,
this is something that could be continually exploited, let's say,
by an external threat actor who's maintained persistence in your network long after this has been way out of the news cycle.
That's what's scary to me.
The other component of this, too, is that if there are internal applications that are missed
as part of this patching and remediation spree that's going on across the globe now,
and those stay inside, then those are always going to be vulnerable to an insider threat.
So if somebody already has access to your network, let's say you might have a rogue employee in IT,
or somebody who's not happy with the way things are going within your company,
this could be a vulnerability that they could exploit and do some damage internally,
so long as they had some kind of network access to the particular device that was running log4j.
Wow. All right. Well, I don't know if you covered this,
but I also heard there was a log4j attack on the Belgian government.
That was confirmed by their Ministry of Defense a couple of days ago.
According to ZDNet, the breach targeted one of the country's computer networks connected to the Internet.
While they didn't confirm what kind of attack it was,
they did say that they quickly put so-called quarantine measures to contain the breach into effect
so as to not let it spread.
I guess we'll be seeing a lot more things like this in the future.
We'll certainly be watching, I think, to see how this kind of stuff is taken advantage of
and how the mitigation efforts actually unfold.
It's a lot looming, but be on your toes.
Alex, yes, quickly.
One thing I would say, we have seen advanced cyber adversaries
already trying to exploit this particular vulnerability.
Several sources have pointed to evidence linking log4j, log4shell exploitation to Iran and China.
The very first exploitations of this actually dropped crypto miners on remote servers,
meaning that it was going to use the processing power of somebody else's device,
perhaps on an AWS system, an Amazon web service system, to mine cryptocurrency.
I think those first couple of exploitations were inexplicably childish,
I think, these crypto miners to put on there.
I think those exploitations, if I were to guess, and this is all conjecture,
it is a guess, I have to say,
I would guess that that was probably proof of concept from a more advanced cyber adversary
just to determine whether or not they could exploit this particular vulnerability
and try to automate the exploitation of it.
So we do already see also Russian-based ransomware gangs like Conti,
which are very well known to be persistent and pretty nasty in what they do,
exploiting this vulnerability as well.
So it's dangerous, and it's out there, and it's going to be out there for a while.
Okay, well, also something that's dangerous and is going to be out there for a while, COVID-19.
Here's an interesting story.
At home, COVID-19 tests may not be as trustworthy as you'd hope,
not in the hands of, guess who, a committed hacker, at least.
That's according to The Verge.
They say F-Secure researcher Ken Gannon discovered a security flaw,
a since-patched security flaw in Ellume's Bluetooth-connected nasal swab test
that let him change the reported results.
The vulnerability was complicated but still disconcerting.
Gannon used a rooted Android device to inspect the Bluetooth traffic Ellume's lateral flow tester
was sending to the company's mobile app.
The researcher pinpointed the traffic used to indicate test results
and wrote scripts to change the outcome.
Ellume has made it harder to study and modify the data.
It's not clear iPhone or iPad users could replicate the same feat.
The company is also building a portal to help officials verify at-home tests
and has determined that all previous tests were authentic.
Even so, the findings raise concerns about people using other flaws,
including for other tests, to falsify their COVID-19 results.
Someone with enough know-how could flip results negative to re-enter the U.S.
or a particular workplace when they're actually infected,
although the effort currently involved makes that fraud unlikely on a large scale.
It wouldn't take many bogus results to lead to outbreaks, obviously.
But you know what?
If you have people that are that intent on thwarting the system and spreading the virus,
they're going to figure out a way to do that anyway.
I don't think it's something we really need to stay up nights worrying about.
If you simply have test requirements in place,
I think that's enough of a barrier for most people that are obstinate about this
to actually go out and figure out a way to thwart this particular type of test that uses Bluetooth.
It takes a degree of sophistication that most people don't have.
If you want to take advantage of it on a wide scale,
you have to work with people that do have knowledge.
It becomes a really complex type of organization at that point.
What do you think, Rob?
The thing I'm wondering is, why is this an app?
This is an at-home medical test.
Like so many different types of at-home medical tests that we have nowadays,
it's a thing you stick one thing up your nose, you stick it in another thing,
and then for some reason that thing has to pair to your phone via Bluetooth
and transmit data to an app to tell you yes or no, you have this disease or you don't.
What happens to just having a little stripe on the thing that lights up one way or lights up the other way?
Why are they adding this layer of complexity to what should be a very simple gadget?
I imagine the reason is because they want a way of verifying that you, in fact, tested negative,
whereas you could just say, oh, yeah, I tested negative.
Yeah, that's what happened at my house.
Yeah, I agree, though.
It doesn't have to be that complex.
I think if we don't try and have all this technology thrown into it, we'll have less problems.
It's fairly simple as it is.
Not to mention the fact that you're tampering with something
and fraudulently claiming a result on something that's supposed to be a tool in verifying some of that stuff.
You can go to great lengths to fabricate some kind of thing that makes you appear to be on the level
and you can feign that you're being honest about it,
but these, as you'd said, there'd be a lot of barriers to that,
and it's extraordinary lengths to basically lie.
Indeed.
Of course, that leads us to 5G,
which part of the conspiracy theory is that somehow COVID-19 is linked to 5G
and it makes you magnetic and all kinds of crazy things like that.
All right, get this.
This is classic.
This is Darwinian.
Darwin Awards, that is.
The Dutch Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection
has issued a warning about 10 products that it found that gave off harmful ionizing radiation.
It urged people not to use the products, which could cause harm with long-term wear.
And these products are anti-5G necklaces.
Yeah, if you're wearing anti-5G necklaces,
they apparently are radioactive and you should not be wearing them.
Might I also point out there is no evidence that 5G networks are harmful to health.
The World Health Organization says 5G mobile networks are safe
and not fundamentally different from existing 3G and 4G signals.
Mobile networks use non-ionizing radio waves that do not damage DNA.
Despite this, though, there have been attacks on transmitters by people who believe they are harmful
and all sorts of other silliness.
Now, the products that have been identified included an energy armor sleeping mask,
a bracelet and the aforementioned necklace.
A bracelet for children branded Magnatex Wellness was also found to be emitting radiation.
Don't wear it anymore.
Put it away safely and wait for the return instructions, the statement said.
The sellers in the Netherlands known to the ANVS have been told that the sale is prohibited
and must be stopped immediately and that they must inform their customers about this.
Thoughts?
Rob, you seem to have something here.
Well, I mean, the whole hubbub about 5G is sad and funny enough to begin with.
If you believe that radiation is doing terrible things to you, then why are you listening to the radio?
Because we also travel over non-ionizing radio waves to get to your homes.
And so, you know, there's some more trouble to deal with.
But yeah, these things being radioactive is just kind of fantastic.
It's terrible and nobody should be put at this kind of risk.
But the fact that quack science has ended up being literally radioactive.
I'm sorry.
It's just I can't.
I can't with it.
I don't know.
I mean, I can see.
If you want to like buy an aloe plant and tell yourself that it's like protecting you from, you know,
all the radiation or I don't know.
I mean, go for that.
That's fine.
There seems like there's probably a great deal of benefit to that relationship that you form.
But yeah, like hard minerals, stuff that's been, you know, unearthed that you're going to strap on to your family.
And lo and behold, it's full of its own kind of radio activity.
That just, I think, seems a bit too far.
You're really damaging yourself at this point.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't ever know of a necklace or bracelet that has helped really with anything other than looks that it might give you.
Yeah.
And it just seems like an amazing leap to kind of try to thread along or go along this path of like sort of natural protection.
And yeah, be wary of that.
I mean, there is good aspects to reducing your exposure to things that are electronic.
That can just be said broadly.
But be careful about what you're telling yourself and believing.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah.
I don't want to make people feel bad for thinking one way or another about this because it is so easy to become misguided.
It is so easy to become afraid of things you don't understand.
That's why people in the hacker world especially, but also people in general, I think, are at their best when they are actually looking into things,
finding out the true science and data behind things, and finding out how things actually work and how things actually interact with things such as the cells of your body.
And the information is out there.
Good information is out there from good sources if you want to track it down.
And yeah, it is okay to be wrong about something.
Learn what's actually going on and change your mind.
And yeah, 5G is not going to hurt you.
Radio waves are not going to hurt you.
Also, I'll mention really quick that vaccines are real and COVID is real.
Yeah, standing next to a radio transmitter isn't advisable.
I mean, radio waves can hurt you if you're unsafe about how to handle them.
RF can cause harm, but the kind of RF we're talking about here is infinitesimal and not an issue.
But there is something.
I don't know if you guys heard this story.
Aerospace giants Airbus and Boeing yesterday warned that the U.S. aviation industry had concerns about potential interference of 5G networks with vital flight safety equipment.
So here's something we might want to pay attention to.
The intervention increases pressure on U.S. regulators in a dispute between airlines and mobile operators over the introduction of the high-speed mobile broadband technology in the U.S.
You know, Kyle and I just got 5G phones.
We don't have them yet, but we're getting them.
And, you know, everyone's getting 5G.
You guys have 5G yet?
Alex?
Anything?
Alex, you there?
Yeah, it takes me a second to go off mute there.
Yeah, I've had 5G for quite a while.
I don't understand why you guys have been living under a cave.
And I have to say, I have this 5G, you know, Ultra Connect thing now.
And, you know, I get this UC icon.
Yes, no question, Alex.
But, okay, go ahead.
Give us a whole story about it.
I mean, it was incredible to me because I didn't know what the heck this UC icon was.
So I looked it up and said, oh, it's just Ultra Connect, or it means you're in an area where the 5G network is extraordinarily fast.
So I checked it out, and I wanted to test the bandwidth.
I've lost control of the story.
I've totally lost control of the story.
Now it's about Alex's phone.
I was talking about airline safety.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry.
It's almost 1,000 megabits a second.
I couldn't believe it.
I could not believe it.
Returning to the story, Airbus and Boeing have been working with other aviation industry stakeholders in the U.S.
to understand potential 5G interference with radio altimeters.
They measure a plane's height above the ground.
Yeah, it's not exactly vital.
Boeing said the aerospace industry was focused on fully evaluating and addressing the potential for 5G interference with radio altimeters.
We are collaborating with aviation authorities, government leaders, airlines, and industry groups
to ensure the continued operational safety of aircraft throughout the aviation system worldwide.
Leading telecom operators Verizon and AT&T were due to start using the 3 to 7 to 3.8 gigahertz frequency bands on December 5th.
After obtaining licenses worth billions of dollars in February,
they postponed the launch in November after the U.S. aviation regulator expressed concerns over 5G signals possibly interfering with the altimeters.
And in November, Verizon and AT&T wrote to the FCC confirming their intention to start deploying 5G in January of 2022.
Wait a minute.
5G hasn't been deployed yet?
I thought 5G was in use.
Yes, Gila.
I do have a question.
Wait.
I'm trying to answer this question first.
Oh, no.
I don't have an answer to that question.
Is 5G in use or not?
This article seems to say that it's not.
I don't know.
I don't have a 5G phone.
It is in use.
5G has been enabled for quite a long time.
So why are they saying that it's not going to start being used until January?
Are they just talking about Verizon and AT&T and other companies already using it?
T-Mobile has 5G as well.
Okay.
All right.
Go ahead, Gila.
I guess my question is, I know 5G is good, but is it so good that you can get the signal in midair?
Well, you can get any signal in midair.
You really can.
I have not been able to.
If I haven't put my phone in airplane mode, I don't get a signal in the middle of a flight.
Gila, the handoff for 5G can take place at higher speeds.
I know that from the specifications.
So you can be going at like 500 miles an hour and still be connected theoretically.
And people have connected their cell phones while in flights.
I do know that.
You can't say it's everywhere.
Obviously, it has to be a tower somewhere within sight.
Yeah, and I think airplane mode is a good point.
I mean, do you need to be doing all kinds of stuff like at every mode of flying?
I mean, I know they used to have policies about that, and I know most people on planes don't really pay
or a lot of people pay attention to their phones instead of what the policy is, I mean, in practice.
So it's probably a real concern, and it is a new thing that is going to be in the cabin of these planes.
I'm sure they've done testing with what it's like to have a bunch of seats with handsets or whatever.
Here's what I don't get.
If 5G is, in fact, in use for some companies, not others, don't they use the same basic frequency areas?
So wouldn't they already be causing problems?
And that would be documented.
Alex?
Yeah, that's what I don't necessarily understand, why this is coming to light right now,
because the proposal to use 5G or a certain basis of the spectrum would certainly be published
and open for public comment from the FCC for quite some time, way before this is going to be rolled out or implemented.
So you would think that the engineers at Boeing and Airbus and whatnot would have taken notice of that fact
or perhaps tested to determine whether or not there was some kind of interference.
RF interference is a bigger and bigger problem these days.
Given all of these IoT devices, telephone devices, towers, everything that relies on radio frequencies or RF,
RF interference is a very, very big deal.
And so much like the Log4J vulnerability, remediating this type of thing across a fleet of airplanes
can be extraordinarily problematic to do after 5G is rolled out in this particular fashion
that may cause this interference with the usage of an altimeter,
which, as Emmanuel noted, is not really an incredibly important thing,
knowing what the altitude of a plane is, for God's sakes.
I mean, this is a critical component of an aircraft that really should have been tested, I think, well ahead of time.
Yeah, and I think part of this is that there is a lot of people that are changing over
because of parts of the network being shut down and turned off, essentially, in the early part of next year.
And it's a lot different than if a dozen people with 5G iPhones and an air marshal with some other handset
are the only ones with them versus 200 seats full of people pulling in, like,
whatever 8K virtual reality they need these days to get through a flight.
You know, that remains to be seen, like, how that affects this stuff.
But I will – I think that's it. You hit it.
It's like it's about the noisiness and people insisting to be online at all modes of flight.
Well, we're going to have to continue this conversation on overtime.
And if you want to be part of overtime, simply go to youtube.com slash channel 2600
or follow the link that's at the top of the 2600.com webpage.
We will be back on Off the Hook here on WBAI next week, 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
You can write to us, oth at 2600.com.
And if you want to call us, well, tune into overtime over on YouTube, and we'll give out the phone number there.
Until next week, have a happy holiday.
We will – we will be in touch over the air and over the net.
Good night.
And listen.
And kitties, listen to me.
Sleigh bells in the snow.
Ah.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.
With every Christmas I'm dreaming.
May your days be merry and bright.
Merry Christmas and be white.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.
With every Christmas I'm dreaming.
Merry Christmas and be white.
Merry Christmas and be white.
Merry Christmas and be white.
May your days be merry and bright.
And may all your Christmases be white.
Merry Christmas and be white.
Merry Christmas and be white.
This is Ralph Pointer.
Join me and others every Wednesday, 8 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time on WBAI 99.5 on your radio.