Off The Hook - 5 March 2008

Mar 6, 2008

This is the synopsis of Off The Hook that aired on 5 March 2008.

In the studio: Emmanuel, Mike, Redbird, Not Kevin On the phone: Bernie S in Philadelphia

Emmanuel credits last weeks record donations to the Lego kits that were given as premiums and promises many Legos at the HOPE conference this year. Pre-registration for the conference is open.

Mike brings up the case brought against Wikileaks by Bank Julius Baer that caused the California-based registrar that registered the domain wikileaks.com, Dynadot, to de-register the name. The Swiss bank with ties to the Cayman Islands has since dropped their suit against Wikileaks after the Streisand Effect brought more press to the issue than it would have gotten had they simply left Wikileaks alone.

Meanwhile, a British man running a travel agency specializing in trips to Cuba has had a number of his domain names, ciaocuba.com and bonjourcuba.com among others, de-registered because they were bought through an American registrar, eNom. The man was recently added to the Treasury department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals which consists of persons who deal with organizations and countries that the United States finds unsavory.

Emmanuel mentions a new law in New Jersey law which makes talking on cellphones and two-way radios illegal but has an exemption for amateur radio operators.

The German constitutional court has struck down a law allowing investigators to install spyware on suspects’ computers.

FBI director Robert Mueller has announced that a DOJ report will show that FBI investigators abused national security letters using them to obtain information from banks, telephone and internet providers under circumstances that did not warrant their use.

Pakistan has blocked access to YouTube because the video site posted a blasphemous video. After being told that routers were probably used to block the site the head of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority said, “We are not hackers, why would we do such a thing?”

Digital television is coming in 2009. In order to use non-digital TVs with the new over-the-air digital signal a converter box must be used. Vouchers for the boxes can be obtained from dtv2009.gov. The group speculates that the changeover won’t go smoothly at all.

One out of 99 American adults is in prison, with a total of 1.6 million prisoners in the company. The United States leads the world in incarceration rates.

Phone calls - 212.209.2900 Letters - oth@2600.com

A listener who hosts a show on Radio Free Olympia, a pirate radio station in Washington writes in to praise Off The Hook.

A caller says that he saw NYPD vehicles using what are presumably automatic license plate scanners that resemble spotlights in their vehicles. He says that they drive slowly through neighborhoods, presumably to scan all the plates of parked cars. Bernie has an idea to print out the license plates of most wanted criminals and posting them where the police scan in order to slow down such automated scanning.

A caller asks about receiving digital television signals from Jersey. Despite having a large antenna in his attic, he is unable to receive the digital version of a channel that he receives fine in analog. Bernie notes that the UHF frequencies for digital TV are higher than those for analog and so the antenna might not be tuned properly.