That comes from a radio station like WBAI is clearly, clearly invaluable, and we need to keep this going on.
And once again, that number again is 833-WBAI-NYC or 833-922-4692.
Off the Hook is coming up. It is 7 p.m., and this is WBAI New York.
We'll be right back.
Thank you for choosing K1 Wallet KT.
Thank you for choosing K1 Wallet KT.
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Thank you for listening to Off The Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bundedly bump, but the best is back the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bundedly bump!
Bundedly bump!
Bundedly bump!
and a very good evening to everybody the program is off the hook
here on wbai this is emmanuel goldstein joined tonight by kyle uh yes hello hi everyone happy
okay let me just stop you right there kyle this is not that kind of a radio program
we we are trying to do a serious job here uh you apparently fixed some kind of robot or something
and um uh yeah a normal voice maybe yeah i'm here oh okay good good that's all i ask uh out there in
skype land we have rob t firefly good evening welcome back we have uh gila good evening also
welcome back and we have alex you do indeed good evening welcome well uh tonight is a very
important um night for wbai uh because we are in the middle of a phone drive and i know you've heard
that sentence many many times over the years but this is different this is different we have
a whole new cast of characters here uh who are really really um uh working their tails off to
get this place back into shape and they are doing a tremendous job it's it's the spirit here has
just been incredible uh over the past couple of months uh and what we have tonight is a part of a
phone drive that is only lasting i think it's less than a week and here's the thing instead of sounding
like the home shopping network uh we are going to be just very upfront and honest with you um we need
your support to keep the radio station going and what you get out of that is the radio station what you
get out of that are programs like off the hook and so many others if you just listen to 99.5 fm
in new york city you will be treated to a plethora of viewpoints and opinions music um culture all
sorts of things um 24 hours a day seven days a week that is the premium that is what it's all about
please support us so that we can continue to be on the air talking about all sorts of things and
in our case we talk about technology we talk about um the latest in hacking we talk about privacy
consumer affairs you name it anything having to do with a telephone or a computer we are interested in
phone number is and this is cool we even have a new phone number 833 which is a toll-free area code
by the way 833 wbai nyc how cool is that yeah 833 wbai nyc now if you don't have uh letters on your phone
get a new phone if you don't have letters on your phone but if you don't um i'll help you out here
833-922-4692 833-922-4692 now you even get a human you might get voicemail if you get voicemail
simply leave information to be called back uh and uh you will be and um we're asking people to become
bai buddies what a bai buddy is is somebody who pledges a set amount every month can be as as small
or as big as you wish it to be and what happens is in 12 months well that that figure is 12 times
what it is you're pledging and it's really awesome and it's one of the the main sources of
our budget right now so please um help us out by either calling 833-922-4692 833 wbai nyc or going to
the website and this is also new buddy.wbai.org buddy.wbai.org on that site you'll find all kinds
of information on how uh you can pledge a particular amount each month and um please tell
your friends again this is only happening for a few days and it will determine and you might have
heard this on some other programs it will determine how this radio station survives into the future or
if it survives into the future not to sound too dire but it's um it's really important that we have
enough money to pay the bills we don't have commercials we um don't really have many sources
of funding our listeners are pretty much the only investors that we have and it's operated that way
since 1960 we hope it can operate that way until 2060 because this kind of radio is very much alive
this kind of radio is what true listeners appreciate yeah if you turn on you know uh the top 40 station
uh or the easy listening station it's background music you have it on you know just to calm your
nerves and i understand that wbai maybe won't calm your nerves it can but it will also make you think
and these days we need thinking people to be out there to be debating discussing and um when we have a
listener to our radio station they tend to stick around they tend to engage they tend to either
agree passionately or disagree passionately we we like both because it's the conversation that makes
things interesting now what we're going to have in the background um uh during this one hour that we are
on uh is um part of a clip show that we put together on our 20th anniversary and this is going to make us
seem really ancient uh because this show aired in 2008 yeah and that was our 20th anniversary so uh you can
imagine how close we're getting to our 40th anniversary at this point um we're just going to
step back in in time for a moment uh and and just step away for a second uh but we'll be um we'll be
cutting in and out of this um uh this special piece that we put together
so what you may ask is this program all about well we come here and we discuss technology
technology uh gone astray technology run amok technology perhaps turning upon its masters
kind of thing that happens all the time and the kind of thing that computer hackers
among many others have a handle on that's why there's much we can learn through the world of
hacking through the world of telephone freaks and just general education something that uh there is
certainly a lack of these days technology wise we can't figure out how to make phone calls we can't
figure out how to get our own credit reports we don't know what's in computer files about us
we know very little hey team t how can we help you hi i'm trying to find out an area code um
i believe it's in california and the name is drakes bad the area code there you uh drakes bad california
yeah have you ever heard of that uh i'll check it for you thank you
d-r-a-k-e-s yeah uh and a contraction across the case you have a lot of drakes you have a lot of
drakes you have drakes bad number one drakes bad number two drakes bad number three all the way up
to a nine up all the way up to nine i wonder which one i need uh you have them all the way up to
number 17 uh-oh got them up to uh 25 they're all the same area code 916 oh they're all 916
okay all right what is that special kind of uh well i thought it was it was just a place but
apparently this uh how many of them did you say i guess there's a lot of them you have a listing up
tool number 36 up to number 36 it makes bad number one number two all the way up to 36 boy i guess
they ran out of names for cities eh yeah right okay thanks for 916 for all of them 916 okay thank you
can you connect me to uh 916 information please oh no problem sir thank you if you're the 18th have a good
night you too here we go this is i mean what city please uh yes hello uh is this the 916 area code
yes sir hi i'm trying to find the number for drakes bad california yes
okay and what number did you need there uh well let's see um yeah i believe it's just listed as
drakes bad you know i don't i don't think it's anything more than that
okay sir then you need to call the operator first and ask for drakes bed drakes bad number two
agent you help can we help you uh yes hello i'd like to place a call please to uh drakes bad number
two california uh that's it drakes bad number two okay
come on i need your help he's calling drakes bad number two california how do you get that
systemville inward may help you yes operator drakes bad california what's your number drakes bad
operator uh sir what number uh i was trying to reach drakes bad number two certainly thank you
how can i dial that direct
pardon can i dial that direct no it's a toll station we have to key it in for you
you mean there's still places in the united states you can't call direct
right oh boy direct dial rate uh-huh and that's it ringing now
well i hope it's it ringing
oh well i guess they're not home uh well so much for that all right we're gonna we're gonna step
away from that that was from our eclipse show which aired on december 24th 2008 i don't know when that
particular adventure that we uh we inserted in there uh actually aired but that was uh basically a step
back into um uh the the kinds of things that used to exist in this country toll stations where you
basically uh had to go through an operator to get a particular number to ring this kind of thing
would not exist without wbai because we wouldn't have had a radio show we wouldn't have been able
to document all this that is one major reason why i think you should be supporting wbai to keep
this kind of thing going now there are no more no more toll stations uh we won't have calls like that
but we will have all kinds of other things and we're about to feature one right now but first i just
want to give out the phone number one more time 833-wbai-nyc 833-922-4692 or go to the website
buddy.wbai.org and uh become a bai buddy uh if if in fact it is true say that off the hook is your
favorite radio show or you'd like to pledge on behalf of that show and um that'll look good for
us now what i'd like to um uh just go around a little bit ask people if they have anything they
want to add uh to entice people to call up and support the radio station uh and then we'll start
moving on to some um some interesting topics uh alex i believe you're first or i've got a lot i can add
and you know i think it's easy for wbai listeners to become complacent in some respects and just think
that the station is going to weather the storm no matter what it is because wbai has always weathered
the storm emmanuel how many years has wbai been on the air right now i've heard to put you on the spot
i know you're bad at math no i actually already said it we've been on since 1960 uh okay but how
many years is that how many years is that that's that's 20 uh 24 i don't know uh yeah you did put
64 years there you go pretty easy to do actually wonderful well well you know for some of us but i
know we appreciate that this is difficult for you but i think 64 years of being on the air uh it's
kind of amazing what wbai has been through i've been listening since i was 15 or so years old um in
the 90s right so the 90s i've seen wbai go through so many storms i mean literally tumultuous times where
do you remember i always bring this up do you remember when we had the nypd in the hallway of 110
brought uh 110 we're on 110 wall street at the time and memory's starting to fade alex isn't it
memory's starting to go with your age well you know what they say when your memory goes forget it
it's 120 wall street by the way it's 120 wall street that's right exactly 120 wall street we've
got the cops literally in the building i'm out you're on the air i'm out there with a cell phone
and the cops are saying that everybody is going to be arrested unless they leave the station
and then outside the station when we came out we were like heroes that night there was a massive
amount of people that rallied around the station then the station was this was in the throes of
um the corporate takeover of pacifica well it's a little more complex there was a whole uh power
struggle going on i don't want to get into the details you can go back though and listen to that
particular radio show i think that was uh in uh the year 2000 or 2001 it might have been early 2001
yeah uh and um uh basically we were just broadcasting what was going on in front of us
as we tend to do if something is happening we will tell people what's going on and yeah that that
resulted in a large amount of people coming to the station because they heard that it was being
raided by the cops um so we've had all kinds of adventures like that yes we keep talking about that
adventure but there are many many others that we have experienced since our first show back in 1988
uh just a just a few years ago there was a similar attempted coup and corporate takeover where you
know literally people were locked out of the station and we had to file a lawsuit and then go
and and uh appeal an order and i believe in the first appellate division in new york and we had
people showing up into court there i mean we've been through so many storms i don't i don't want
to make it seem like the only thing that happens to the station is that people are trying to take
over the station that's one thing that happens but we also we occasionally have we have like 9-11
that's one thing that happened that's not that's not uh something that we like to remember either
uh but we certainly had reaction to that uh perspective on that uh we we've had uh because
our show is is generally on on wednesday sometimes it moved to tuesday but for for quite a while now
we've been on wednesday but uh we've we've oftentimes had to talk about election results i remember
2016 was a particularly tough one uh and next week i don't know that might be a tough one too
we'll just have to see but um the thing is it's it's not only the history it's not only what's
what's happened in the world of both technology and just society in general um it's it's also the
sounds that technology made if you were just listening now to that phone call that we were
making to the toll station you'll hear all kinds of sounds there electromechanical switching things that
don't exist anymore today and there are many many people who have captured those sounds
and luckily we have captured those sounds both um on recording and live over the air uh when when
people called us up as well uh so there's all kinds of perspective all kinds of history that
we have captured and of course we've we've encoded all of it on our website um but the really
important reason why you should support wbai is that other people have that chance to make history
to make their own kind of history uh and that listeners can be a part of that as well i just you know
i try to imagine what new york city would be like without a station like wbai it would not be the
same new york city certainly not it it definitely would not and there's a sense of community i think
that goes along with being a wbai listener and and and the knowledge that you're listening together
with people that you're not alone when you're listening to the radio there's nobody tracking you
there's nobody watching you you're not leaving an ip address anywhere on anybody else's server
you've turned it you've tuned into the radio through the the miracle of physics right you're
using you know terrestrial airwaves and physics to listen in on communications that nobody else knows
that you're listening to and you're part of this community of listeners right now in the city that's
all tuned in and listening to wbai there's something really special about that that does not exist
anywhere else and the fact that this station exists for how many years was it man really again
boy 64 years 64 years but let me let me also correct you on one other thing uh it's not just
happening here in new york city uh first of all our signal spreads out considerably from new york city but
also thanks to the internet it spreads out all around the world and thanks to archives it spreads out all
throughout time so it's it's a real it's a it's a real um um a piece of history that we constantly have
here at 99.5 also i i think the sense of community is there's there's two different communities that
we're talking about here right now we have the wbai community and we also have the listener community
for off the hook and i think they're both very very special you know we have the community that joins us
every week for off the hook over time we have the community that has been listening to us as off the
hook and shows up at at various conferences and things around the world know us you know for off the
hook um and they're also part of the wbai community and i really hope that that off the hook community
that listens to us as a podcast and maybe listening to us in the future at some time
calls up 833 wbai dot um the wbai nyc or 833 922 4692 and supports the station because this i i really
truly believe that um we are on to something so good it needs to be preserved and we are preserving history
here as well now um uh with regards to that phone number uh the 833 toll free area code uh i believe
people overseas cannot call that that area code correct me if i'm wrong but i think that's the
case and if you're one of those people that wants to call 833 922 4692 uh to pledge your support um
well you might be better off going to the website until we figure something else out or you can try you
can try calling that area code see what happens that's kind of the hacker spirit right there uh but the
website is buddy.wbai.org anyone else have anything they wish to uh to add rob go ahead yes indeed um
i think one thing i can do to uh to really drive home how precious and special this place is is to
give a short history lesson because uh long ago there was a man called louis schweitzer he was a rich
guy he was he made his fortune in the paper business and uh he was he was an immigrant he was born in
russia came to the united states did very very well for himself and bought himself a radio station at
one point as sort of a vanity project but he got sick of uh dealing with it he didn't like the state
of commercial radio at the time he was inspired by the story of kpfa and the pacifica radio network
which uh which is a non-profit organization activist run um very much uh
very much like it like today it's uh it's a force in community sponsored radio and he just gave his
radio station to them a rich guy gave a bunch of activists and hippies and nuts and wonderful people
a free radio station to just have can i just point out first that he tried to give the radio station
he was not believed when he called up several times because um uh you know giving away a a full
power radio station in the middle of new york city is not a normal occurrence but that is what was
happening and fortunately he called back again and was finally believed absolutely and this just goes to
show how insane the story of this place's existence even is this would never happen again this would
certainly never happen now um now when a when a rich person gets uh bored and disillusioned they they
buy a massive social network and ruin it but no lewis schweitzer gave the pacifica network wbai for free
and it has been able to survive since then solely on the strength of the listeners solely on the
community that uh you know threw in what they could to keep the lights on keep the electricity flowing
and keep us doing what we do here at wbai that includes our show at off the hook that includes
so many other wonderful programs that have come and gone over the years and uh if everything goes uh
if everything goes well it will be able to keep doing that but it can only keep doing that
by the by the show of support that you can make um by calling 833 wbai nyc or going to buddy.wbai.org
and uh doing what you can to keep us going and that phone number translates to 833-922-4692 for
those of you who don't have letters on your phone um so yeah i think we've uh laid out the case pretty
well as to why people should support the radio station uh and if you're listening to this show
in the future um please call that number or go to that website i'm sure it'll still be there even if
it's 50 years from now but um go ahead gila so we talked a lot about the why to support the radio
station and i do want to add just really briefly to that my own experience which is that
the ai has really opened a lot of doors for me experientially i didn't know what existed before i
moved to new york i didn't know what existed the first few years i lived in new york and then i met
someone and he said hey i do this radio show and then i started listening to it and i learned a lot
of really cool stuff and now i'm on it which is mind-blowing to me on a very regular basis
but in addition to the why i did want to talk really briefly about the how because when i'm not
on air i work in fundraising so i did want to throw out there that the pacifica foundation is a 501c3
organization so what you donate to us is tax deductible
um if you have a donor advised fund if you are old enough to be making required distributions from
your ira you can make those donations straight to wbai it's a great idea saves you money in the long run
um also we love our listenership if you're considering writing your will it can't hurt to
include a bequest to wbai we hope we don't see the money for a long time but we know it's coming
eventually and that helps us with long-term financial security so remember it's not just
checks and credit cards there are a lot of different things you could do to support this
station and we appreciate all of them i mean that's a touchy thing to ask people to include you in their
will but that's what people do i know it's hard but um um it definitely is is is keeping things moving
uh and and uh keeping this alive which um you know hopefully is alive for a very long time rob did you
have something else um i did not but uh yeah that's uh i i i i can i can throw in that uh much like
gila was saying getting involved with this station i was a listener to the station i was a listener to
the show for a long time before i got involved and getting involved had was a life-changing experience
for me it got me um interested in the audio uh production world and i've since done that
professionally it's uh you know it's connected me with wonderful people some of whom sadly are no
longer with us um but uh many of whom i have lifelong friendships with and that is that like this station
has certainly changed my life i think it changed my life before i was even involved just based on the
the material that was there the stuff that i could listen to and learn about and uh become part of
well it's it's changed the lives of many listeners and certainly many staff people
i remember uh the first time walking into wbai when we were at 505 8th avenue uh and uh just
wandering in there i had worked in radio w usb out in stony brook for a number of years and i i wanted to
check out other radio stations and this was a unique radio station and uh i'll never forget that first day
you know the first person i saw was of course our our uh late receptionist fred uh and um basically got
to meet all these people and and just was put to work you know uh as an engineer as as somebody in
the news department eventually somebody on the air um the idea of off the hook was not mine it was
basically people at the radio station that said yeah this is this is what you're talking about this is
what uh you're interested in this is what your show should be and uh they were right they certainly
were right and you can um um go back and and listen in the archives and and and hear all the old shows
and how it transpired let's um let's just step back into uh time for a second see where our clip show is
at for the modification of telecommunications instruments for the unauthorized use of telecommunications
telecommunication services which in plain english means i have had a computer program on a laptop
computer that allows allegedly allows someone to program a cellular telephone and that's uh bernie
s talking about his uh his legal troubles uh with technology there are so many people that we have
had on the air uh kevin mitnick fiber optic uh who have who have uh gone through hell in our legal
system just for being curious just for playing with technology wbai and off the hook offered a voice for
these people to get the word out and you know i i think um uh many of them would have suffered far
worse consequences uh by being held in prison for longer or being charged with more um if they did
not have the support that wbai listeners afforded them so that's um that's an incredible reminder too
and we are one show we are one show one hour in one day uh there are different shows almost every hour
of every other day and everybody has their own community everybody has uh their own causes
and this place this place is a magical um a gathering point on the radio dial so please
keep that magical gathering point here 833 wbai nyc 833-922-4692 or buddy.wbai.org
uh this is basically the only week we're doing this we're not doing it next week we're doing it this
week and we're not um offering all kinds of uh items and and uh premiums and things like that no
this is real this is about keeping the radio station alive and that's what it's always been about but
we're not kidding ourselves here we're saying that our listeners are the lifeblood and if you are
listening you're a listener so please give us that support okay uh last week um alex you can
maybe refresh my memory on this we were talking about some um uh some regulations involving cell
phones in schools uh that involved um putting phones in pouches and it it basically was a a bit
confusing to me uh mostly because i was never in school when cell phones existed but that just seemed
a little weird to have these these these pouches where kids were supposed to put their phone and
their phone didn't work until they took them out of the pouches anyway you've dragged your son into
the studio here uh or your studio to to explain it all to us you want to you want to set this up
yeah i i do indeed you know and so yeah we we promised it this is the thing with wbi right we
promise and we deliver you know this is this is another reason why people should support us here
right we promised this last week now sasha is here i promised an expert on phone patches being
used in middle schools so that kids did not necessarily have access to their particular
mobile phones throughout the day and we had all kinds of questions about how it worked do they do
you have the pouch do you put the pouch somewhere how does the pouch work etc so in any event i'm going
to hand it over to my son sasha who just started middle school here at a public school in new york
city sasha why don't you take it away yes i am sasha and i'm going to be talking about the phone
pouches okay all right and and how are you going to address this first i'm going to talk about what
is it and what does it do second of all i'm going to talk about how it works and third of all i'm going
to talk about how to defeat the pouches oh wow okay all right let's hear it all right so let's start
with what is it so tell me tell us what is what does the phone pouch actually do what's the point of
it why do they why do you have this in school the phone pouches are for so kids don't go on their
phones during the lessons okay why we need them but this is from the teacher's perspective
oh yes exactly well i guess they they don't want you to be distracted or using phones during
the school day right yeah i mean what do we see when i when when we do drop off in the morning
everybody's what are they doing looking on their phones that's right everybody's looking on their
phones i think people will be looking on their phones during uh classroom time i would imagine why
is that a bad thing alex why can't why can't kids look at their phones why why don't you let them do
that well maybe maybe you know some people some people could consider it some kind of study aid if
they were looking up the subjects that the teacher was talking about right but do you think that's
what they're doing maybe they're just doing it to torture us to torture us oh you you think the
teachers are doing this to torture you know sasha you're on to something there because there are some
some bad teachers out there that exist to torture kids yeah i mean okay so let's assume for a moment
that they have um not some kind of nefarious purpose in mind but they're they're talking
they they want to help you learn by keeping you undistracted by all of these mobile phones that
you can focus on the multi-variable calculus that you're inevitably doing in in sixth and seventh
grade right yeah i was joking teachers are amazing yeah they're great right yeah i was joking too
so we so we have an idea about you know what the idea is behind the phone pouch it's to keep you
not distracted right or undistracted keep your attention on the on the list so tell us about
how does this phone pouch work what what happens with it yeah pretty much there's a needle that's on
one side i don't know how it fully works but i'm pretty sure something on the other side locks the
needle in place and you can only unlock it by hitting it on a magnet that they give you at the end of the
day okay so kyle so this is something that you brought up last week you thought that there was
some kind of magnetic component to this right that was what that was one thing that i suspected
um that they had a way to enclose it so that you it would be basically very hard to regain access
unless you use the particular the particular um i guess thing you contact and it reminds me a little
bit of retail stuff you know when they have tags on clothes or something you know they swipe it when
you when you buy it and then you can go home with the stuff without setting off alarms well can i just
ask a question here sasha have you ever thought of bringing your own magnet in and maybe you could um
you know defeat it that way well i don't use the underpatch but the thing is these magnets are
ginormous plaques they're not just small ones they're placed on a special plaque that only the
teachers can hold and that won't fit into your pocket if you want a heavy magnet in your backpack
i guess you can no i don't want that yeah so i guess maybe if you carried around like a very rare
earth magnet or something like that you might be able to replicate this but so so you go in you put
you're supposed to put your phone in this pouch i guess when you get into school at the beginning
of the day is that right yeah okay so your phone is there now the other question that i believe we
had kyle emmanuel the rest of us right was what happens to the pouch during the day is the pouch
in the possession of the students or is it in your locker or does somebody else hold it where's the
pouch the pouch is usually placed in your backpack so it's safe and they have this thing where if you
lose your pouch and you have to pay twenty dollars for it and if you break it or damage it it will
also be twenty dollars so if i understand this correctly your phone is still working you can
still hear it ring you just can't get to it because the pouch is locked and can only be unlocked with
the magnet yeah now that's good well but that's a good question though emmanuel something came up so
that so let's ask that specific question right is it is the pouch in which you put the phone
a faraday pouch do you know what a faraday pouch is yeah what's a faraday pouch something that
blocks the signal okay very good how does he know that how does he know that who taught him he's
smarter than he looks wow he looks smart what are you talking about yeah i know he is yeah so does
the phone still work when it's in the pouch yeah it still works okay now let's talk about how you
defeat the security on the pouch so my friend augustia from another school okay he told me how to do it
because my old friend from my old school who also goes to lab figured out this trick where you put the
pencil under where the needle lies and you want to push the pencil up to the needle and then you want to
bash the pouch on something hard and speaking of this my friend my good new friend max he wanted to
open his yonder pouch and i told him i told him um hey yeah my friend told me this trick i think we
should try to test it out so we did it and after like a full-on five minutes of hitting the pouch
it opened without having to use the magnet wow that's awesome yeah yeah so there there are there
are ways to to physically get around this now it opened up did the pouch break at that point
the pouch did not break okay so you were able to use it again without having to pay twenty dollars
to get a new pouch yeah okay i actually have a good story for this because out of school bathrooms at
my school are completely insane okay all right and i'm not talking about like the toilets or anything
but um one time i went in and i was just looking in the mirror because i thought i was growing pimples i
was getting scared and then these kids jump through the door and they start yelling you think you're safe
in here to each other and then one of them holds up their phone and is one of the other big kids is
like how did you get that and i just ran out i was really scared yeah and nowadays after i reported it
after i wrote nowadays um there's a daily check where one of the teachers will go on and check
the condition of the bathroom because one time they threw the whole entire paper towel roll into
the toilet and didn't flush it well this is what happens in new york city public schools in in various
bathrooms right i think i think we might be veering off topic here um so now as far as the phone goes
though um how how does the phone get into your pad who who makes sure that there is a phone in your
pouch couldn't you just not put the phone in the pouch yes very true because at the um entrance
they can't do a full-on tsa check into your backpack so you can just hide the yonder pouch or
just click the yonder pouch uh locked and have your phone hiding inside your backpack that's a way more
easier way to do it you know you know what else would be good sasha is you get you get a fake phone
you put the fake phone in the pouch so therefore you satisfy security people meanwhile you got your real
phone it's like in your shoe or something and then later you you go to that same bathroom you take
the shoe out put it in your backpack and then you can you know talk to anybody you want throughout the
boring class not that you should do that that's a great idea man what do you think about that sasha
uh i mean it's more of an expensive way but why not well we've got plenty of old phones that we can do
this yeah we can we can work this out i also haven't given up on getting a magnet into the school
it just involves after hours access and uh a hand cart so we just wheel it in through a loading zone
and get it into a secret place where where sasha can simply you know whack the thing and open up his
pouch anytime he wants but only he knows where that is we could even make this into some kind of
business right you know five dollars to open up your pouch that's a great idea because you know
you charge the kids to um to get access to their phones you'll you'll clean up well i was and then
you can take all that money and donate it to wbai by calling what's the what's the number here sasha
uh eight three three seven two two oh no that's a nine that's that's your father's like sloppy
writing yeah my bad handwriting what's the number eight three three wbai nyc that's right which is nine
two two four six nine two oh sasha thank you so much for all this it's um uh you've taught us a
lot and you've got the hacker spirit yes something about apples and trees comes to mind i don't know
why these images are coming into my head but um but but but there they are so yeah so our very special
guest tonight thank you so much sasha all right um again we are in the middle of a fun drive
uh please call 833-922-4692 to support us go to buddy.wbai.org become a bai buddy and donate a
small amount every month let's uh check in on our clip show from uh 2008 but it's not completely
unexpected it's not something that uh thank you it's not something that um we didn't see coming
i have no idea what i'm talking about here
such events of horror and tragedy and fear you can always bet that there are those on the sidelines
who are waiting for the opportunity to use those events to their advantage
that probably is a post 9-11 show where i'm talking about the patriot act or something like that but
again all sorts of things happened in history and we were there uh to um uh to witness it all
uh okay uh here's an interesting story uh taking place now uh at least several dozen people uh had
their phones surveilled uh in this um latest chinese spying campaign you might have heard about
uh donald trump's campaign was in fact targeted uh chinese hackers are believed to be behind the
whole thing uh targeting both trump's phone and his running mate jd vance um earlier this week uh or
last week actually trump's campaign was informed of the potential breach it was unclear what information
if any was accessed uh but the former president frequently uses his personal iphone to post on
social media make phone calls and send text messages to billionaires and lawmakers uh yeah i'm not
making this up it's true all private communications at foreign adversaries would be quite eager to get
their hands on in addition it's possible that uh hackers could access location data um roughly 40
people are for now thought to have had their unencrypted call and text data surveilled by the
chinese in the spying campaign which is believed to have compromised at least 10 telecommunications
providers that's according to two other people briefed on the activity in addition to trump and vance
current high-ranking u.s officials are also among the targets in a statement the fbi confirmed the u.s
government is investigating unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors
affiliated with the people's republic of china boy this is getting interesting um so it's it's quite
possible not only um uh the location information uh of of uh phones and devices uh what was compromised
but maybe actually the communications itself and if if any of that is um is is leaked in the next week
or so could have profound implications um or it could have profound implications in the future
whatever it is though it's it's it's another wake-up call that even at the highest levels
our our devices are not necessarily secure any thoughts
yeah i i'll chime in right away and i say you know look i'm not surprised whatsoever that there are
state actors that are interested in the presidential candidates communications especially china because
china i don't think likes any of these candidates at all i mean they they certainly don't like trump
they certainly don't like kamala i think that um you know the fact that they're here that they're
trying to acquire certain types of intelligence that may influence the outcome of the excellent of the
election is is really just not surprising you know i i feel like since 2016 this is really uh old wine
in a new bubble yep have to agree um okay moving on um this is very telling cable companies
advertising firms and newspapers are asking courts to block a federal click to cancel rule
would force businesses to make it easier for consumers to cancel services i don't think i have
to read any more than that that pretty much tells you where they're coming from you know they don't want
you to be able to cancel services easily there's no other way of looking at this lawsuits were
filed uh last few days actually about a week after the federal trade commission approved a rule that requires
sellers to provide consumers with simple cancellation mechanisms to immediately halt all recurring
charges how do you argue against that well let's see cable lobby group ncta the internet and television
association association and the interactive advertising bureau trade group have sued the ftc
um in the conservative u.s court of appeals for the fifth circuit the lawsuit claims the fifth circuit is a
proper venue because a third plaintiff the electronic security association has its principal offices in
dallas and that group represents security companies such as adt um yeah uh you know it's really hard to get
into their logic here uh that um yeah i'd have to read the legal briefs to figure all this out but
the gist of it is they don't want people to be able to easily unsubscribe from uh alex as a lawyer any any um
ideas as to the logic behind this yeah but and i don't understand the logic of the fifth circuit
uh as well i guess you know that's an that's an appellate court the fifth circuit so i don't know
what they're doing maybe there seems like special rule or something where they go right into the fifth circuit
but so that that's weird number one weird number two is that um i i just seems really mysterious to me
i'm mystified as to the arguments against this i mean you have uh actual patents from amazon that are
on the other side of this that allow you to make a one-click purchase i mean this is a big thing with
amazon prime buy with one click click with one purchase so you're so so on the one hand you're allowed
to buy things as a consumer a whole bunch of nonsense that you probably don't need with one
single click but you cannot save yourself money you can't actually discontinue services with one click
that's what these consumer affairs uh consortiums are are are against it's it's totally insane
but it also brings to mind to me the reasoning behind the the very notion of a class action
which is that there are a lot of uh companies out there that make a tremendous amount of money
through illicit practices and the way in which to make a great deal of money is not to steal a large
amount of money but to make a great deal of money illicitly is not to steal a huge amount of money from
let's say one or two people because you'll get caught for that you'll be sued for that but the way in
which companies make tens of millions of dollars every year year after year is by overcharging a
large number of consumers for a small amount of money so if you have 10 million customers and you're
overcharging them for two minutes for two dollars each you know this is a massive amount of money this
is why uh this should be something in place okay well thank you uh for that for that analysis and also
that's something we will never do here at wbai is overcharge or uh make it hard for you to
unsubscribe if you ever uh wish to do that um that pretty much brings us to uh the close of this hour
thanks uh to all of you thanks chasper for uh for for coming in and uh educating us on on um the
technology at your school um that's it for us for this week you know in another week there's a good
chance uh we'll be in a country that's very different than the one we're in today
and uh we're either going to have an end to an election that seems to have gone on forever
or we'll be at the beginning of what could be a long and possibly painful battle uh we're all feeling
anxiety we're all feeling stress over how this could go and maybe that's the one thing that all sides
have in common but in our last show before d-day i just want to make one thing clear we are going to
be okay no matter what happens you will still be the person you are your friends will still be your
friends wbai will still be there for you and we hope you will be there for us you know there may be
some rough days ahead but never forget you are not alone please don't bottle your feelings up
share them with the people you care about please listen to those who need a compassionate ear
my hope is that um we all finally begin to heal after this uh incredibly long ordeal and that we see
a lot less hatred and ignorance and fear but even if that doesn't happen we still have each other
and we will see you next week stay tuned to wbai support us at either 833-922-4692 or buddy.wbai.org
hang on as we as we hear the last of the clip show give each other time to deal with satellites and
things like that so let's let our caller from iraq uh say the first words here let's um go into the
future stay free everyone
so
by the way i didn't mention that um overtime is beginning on youtube got a channel 2600 we'll see
you there you can call us write to us oth at 2600.com