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June 12, 2004 - Art Bell

02:51:52

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Dr. Lauren Weinstein - The Internet and Privacy

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	From the high desert of the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon,
	whatever the case may be, in whatever time zone you reside in at the moment.
	25 in total, and we cover every single one of them, one way or the other, with this program called Coast to Coast AM.
	I'm Art Bell.
	It is an honor to be with you throughout this great weekend.
	George takes a couple days off.
	Let's review a little world news, and then more.
	Al-Qaeda is claiming a U.S.
	slaying and hostage.
	Remember, Al-Qaeda was warning U.S.
	citizens were going to be killed and that Saudi citizens and others should stay away from anybody while they're doing it.
	Suspected militants killed an American in the Saudi capital on Saturday, shooting him in the back.
	Brave, huh?
	As he parked at his home garage and the U.S.
	Embassy said it was searching for an American.
	Who is listed as missing.
	A purported al-Qaeda statement posted on an Islamic website late Saturday did claim the terror group had killed one American, kidnapped another in Riyadh.
	It threatened to treat their captive as U.S.
	treat their captive as US troops treated Iraqi prisoners in Iraq.
	Senator John Edwards, the smooth-talking populist who emerged from the nominating campaign as
	John Kerry's chief rival, is now his chief favored probable vice presidential running
	You know, he had considered John McCain, and oh, that would have been quite a ticket, huh?
	I really like, oh, I have liked for a very long time John McCain.
	That would have made a very interesting ticket.
	And polling showed, by the way, that a McCain ticket with Kerry would have been about 15 percent ahead of the President or so.
	But it looks like next best choice is going to be at Edwards.
	In the bloodiest fighting this year in Afghanistan, U.S.
	Marines killed more than 80 insurgents in a three-week offensive against the Taliban stronghold in the mountains of southern Afghanistan.
	U.S.
	military insisted the battle was a victory that will help secure fall elections rather than a sign of the resilience of Taliban-led militants.
	Toughening its stance in advance of a meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, Iran on Saturday said it would reject international restrictions any of them at all on its nuclear program and challenged the world to accept Tehran as a member now of the nuclear club there's something to think about a little bit Iran as as a as a full nuclear nation
	The internationally built Cassini spacecraft completed a flyby of Saturn's largest outer moon as it prepared to enter a four-year orbit to study the ringed planets at NASA on Saturday.
	The plutonium-powered spacecraft, which is carrying 12 science instruments and a probe, came within about 1,285 miles of the dark moon on Friday.
	miles of the dark moon on Friday. So we've got it out there.
	I wonder if any of you, and I know for a lot of you this will have been a long time
	ago, saw the series taken because I received a million emails saying, hey Art, that
	was you in an RV at the end.
	Well, I never watched Taken.
	Instead, my wife and I obtained it on DVD and watched it commercial free, all 20 hours of it.
	And finished just yesterday, and I must tell you, and if you think back, I'm sure you'll recall, that young lady, that Dakota Fanning, who played the little girl in Taken, was incredible.
	She was absolutely incredible, and she did the, of course that was her voice, you know, doing the narration during the series as well.
	And she was so good that she was... I really don't have the right words to describe the way she played that part.
	It was surreal.
	That anybody that age, and she's what, nine or so, I guess when she did take it?
	It's just beyond all reason that there would be a young lady with that sort of ability to read and act And have on her face the exact, correct expression at the correct moment.
	There was nothing, no fake moments, no moments when you went, oh, come on, or any of the rest of it with respect to what she did in that series.
	It was absolutely amazing.
	So, better late than never, but I did get C taken, which I thought was incredibly, Spielberg's taken, which was incredibly well done, and Dakota Fanning, I don't even know what to say about her.
	absolutely incredible i've only seen to uh... what you would regard as ufo's my
	entire life One, the very large black triangle, a story of which I've told many times.
	Second one, in both cases, my wife was with me, thank goodness.
	Second one was on this property, just simply looking up, watching a jet and the contrail behind it, suddenly seeing a silvery object, a saucer.
	It was a saucer.
	In the contrail behind this airplane, which then moved above and finally took off like a bat out of hell of the western horizon.
	And we stood in my driveway and watched that.
	I received a bit of a video footage from Mark, Mark O we'll call him, on May 14th.
	Well, actually just a couple days ago, but it occurred May 14th in Sonora, California.
	It shows what he caught on camera.
	Which I showed to Ramona and she said, yep, that's what we saw.
	It didn't act exactly the same way.
	Ours more or less stayed within the Contrail, moved aside from it a little bit and then took off to the west and was gone.
	But what he's captured, what Mark has captured on video here is very, very reminiscent of exactly what we saw.
	Didn't act quite the same way physically.
	Other than that, certainly what we saw, it's a saucer, and it's good video footage, and it's on the website right now.
	So I invite you to go to coastam.com and play the video footage that Mark caught.
	Same thing we saw.
	Just about exactly the same thing.
	So that was the second sighting I've had in my life.
	Now, while you're up there at the website, you might also want to go by my webcam.
	In the upper left-hand corner of the website, you'll see Art's webcam.
	Click on that.
	This is from Chuck in Orlando, Florida, and it says, hey Art, the webcam photo you have up, an aerial view of your property, leads me to ask, are you building a small harp?
	Yeah, I guess I am, Chuck.
	This is sort of an interesting story, of course, and Chuck refers here to a photograph of my antenna, which is indeed up there right now, and of my property.
	And that antenna that you see covers five acres in total.
	Five acres.
	And it is remarkable.
	In every sense of the word, remarkable.
	I built this antenna, which was quite a very serious undertaking, after reading a book about W6AM.
	It was called W6AM Amateur Radio's Pioneer.
	And he built very large rhombic antennas and put two wires on them and claimed that it gave additional gain.
	That's a very long time ago, right after, well, virtually in years following SparkGap, you know, at the very beginning of radio.
	And he made some claims in his book that were remarkable about using two wires and so I thought why not apply the technology to a very large loop which is what I did and it has been most anomalous I must tell you we've been you know testing this antenna for some time now and it does much more than I ever asked or imagined that it would as you know there are about
	And now in excess of 300 anomalous volts, which I have carefully shunted to ground, which there are many theories about what it's doing there.
	It's been measured on a cloudless, stormless, Windless blue sky day.
	It's still there when there are power failures in the area.
	Disabling the grid so you would have imagined any coupling.
	It's still there because we had power failure and I ran out and measured the voltage and sure enough there it was.
	So it's a fairly remarkable thing that I've built.
	It would seem.
	And I did take a photograph of it.
	Had a good friend come over in a helicopter and he took me up.
	And it's really the only way to capture The size, and as for the scale, as I just told you, it takes up about five acres of ground, and what it does is really, really incredible.
	And so, it would seem that in the very early days of radio, those days following the old spark gap transmitters, they may have known a lot more than they know today, in some ways.
	In other words, I'm suggesting there was technology developed that has been virtually forgotten with the advent of directional antennas and beams.
	A lot of these very large array antennas have been virtually forgotten.
	And so I must tell you that building something of this scale and magnitude has been illuminating, would be the right word, in a lot of ways.
	Got an email here from... I've got of course a lot of things I want to cover with you.
	From L.H.
	Davis, asking me my opinion on the Burrish thing.
	And I refer, of course, to somebody called Dan Burrish, I believe it is, who was allegedly a microbiologist or something, a whistleblower, somebody who was going to tell all.
	And, you know, this thing went flying around the Internet like there was no tomorrow.
	And so I did some investigation on my own and it was kind of vapor.
	I guess there is a Mr. Burrish and I guess Linda did talk to him but somebody asked me a week or two ago what I thought of it from a credibility point of view and my answer is not much.
	That's what I said then and that's what I still think now after hearing what I heard last night on the radio.
	I still think there is nothing to it.
	But you never know, and I could certainly be wrong.
	I just, I followed the trail as best I could, and I talked to a lot of people who used pseudonames on the internet, and frankly were kind of strange.
	The whole story just did not gel for me, and so I never went forward with it.
	Now, there may be something to it, and there may turn out to be something to it, but I don't know.
	I would join George, who I heard last night suggest Mr. Bursch be solicited to take a lie detector test.
	Now this is interesting.
	This comes from, the following comes from Whitley Strieber's UnknownCountry.com.
	A Bob White kept a secret for many years.
	He says, I'm a 73 year old.
	I don't have much longer.
	This is the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.
	He's showing the world an artifact he claims fell off a UFO in 1985.
	Steve Rock writes in the Kansas City Star that White keeps the artifact locked up in a small building that he calls the Museum of the Unexplained.
	White says, I've been called every name you can think of, what I'd like to see before I'm gone, Is the national media get their heads out of the sand?
	I'd like to see the national media and everybody else realize that what I have is real.
	Once it happens, White says, it's something you'll never forget.
	What I saw was not one of this Earth.
	He didn't believe in the existence of UFOs before 1985.
	In fact, I was the biggest skeptic in the world, he said.
	He and a friend were driving from Denver to Las Vegas on a lonely highway at about 2 or 3 a.m.
	White asleep in the passenger seat when his friend woke him up and pointed to a strange light in the sky which eventually became so bright that it almost blinded them.
	White got out of the car to look at it.
	Says the object was only about a hundred yards in front of him.
	It was huge, absolutely huge.
	That's the quote.
	Eventually, it zoomed quickly up into the sky, where it merged with what looked like a cigar-shaped UFO, and then the larger ship disappeared.
	Now, as the craft flew away, White saw an orange light falling to the ground.
	It was red-hot, but when it cooled, he picked it up and kept it secret for about ten years.
	I didn't want anybody to call me a UFO nut, said he.
	I was afraid it might hurt my career.
	The object is about seven and one-half inches long and shaped like a teardrop.
	It's metallic.
	It weighs less than two pounds.
	White had it tested and discovered it's made mostly of aluminum.
	He removes the object from the museum display and puts it in a gun case at the end of every day.
	It never spends the night at the same place any two nights in a row.
	In 1996, NIDS, you know NIDS, right?
	Sent a sample of it to the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
	The analysis was pretty mundane, said a NID spokesperson.
	We didn't find any evidence that it was extraterrestrial, but we also couldn't identify it.
	White has twice now passed polygraph tests about the encounter and the artifact.
	Captain George Larby, who conducted the first polygraph test in 1990, it says, I believe he found an object that fell from the sky.
	There was no reason for me to believe he was intentionally fabricating any aspect of this story.
	White says, I don't know what I've got to do to prove this is the truth.
	You can't make this stuff up.
	Well, you could, I guess.
	But I believe him.
	And you can imagine there are many people out there who probably have things that they could tell us.
	And they're probably approaching their golden years and perhaps they would like to talk.
	Well, I would love to hear what anybody has to say on that score.
	And a lot of us who are now getting toward the end of our lives, the last, you know, the twilight years, I don't know what Frank Sinatra would say, the fall of it all.
	If you have something of that magnitude that has been a burden to you all your life, I can imagine you might want to get it off your chest.
	So by all means, if you have something like that, get hold of me.
	It's easy.
	Art Bell at AOL.com or Art Bell at MindSpring.com.
	Either one will work just fine.
	And this email, Art, this last weekend, you mentioned that it was strange.
	That in other countries, if people see UFOs, they report them to the military, and we don't do that here in the United States.
	I know why.
	Well, he's right.
	I did say that.
	In other countries, like South America, for example, and a bunch of Europe, people will call the military if there's a UFO here in the U.S.
	No, and there is a good reason why.
	A Carlene rights there's no number so you'd have to guess which agency are they listed in in your local phone book the one which one of their many offices and so forth chances are you'd get a lower-level clerk maybe an enlisted person who wouldn't know what to do with the phone call wasn't included in their training so they'd leave a message for someone who'd probably think the whole thing was a joke
	But we do have our local law enforcement that do get such calls.
	I think a lot of people used to call their local radio stations.
	But that's become a joke with all the mergers.
	I tried to call a local station about something big happening in the San Diego area, just kept getting told the news department wasn't in!
	Or, the phone line doesn't even get answered.
	So, That's a pretty good point, isn't it?
	There's really nobody in the military that you can call.
	Really, no one.
	I have made or tried to make such calls in the past, and I had a little bit of luck, but not a lot, and generally you don't get past the night duty officer or somebody like that.
	So we don't... In this country, civilians don't really communicate directly with their military, do they?
	Anymore.
	There may have been a day in America where that was once routinely done, and if you had a question that would seem to bear on something the military might know about, you could call them.
	But a good point is made here.
	Who would you call now?
	There is no real office to report unidentified flying objects.
	Officially, there's not even anybody investigating them.
	As a matter of fact, all of that ended with Project Blue Book.
	If you believe that, I've got a river that you might want to consider purchasing.
	Of course they're investigating, but there's no public admission of this, nor is there any agency that you can pick up the telephone and call, as you would with a crime.
	If you thought it was interstate, you'd call the FBI, right?
	Federal crime?
	Or a local crime?
	But where do you report a UFO?
	You can't.
	There's really nowhere.
	There's Peter Davenport, of course.
	The UFO Reporting Center, NIDS perhaps?
	And that's fine.
	Thank goodness we've got at least that.
	But none of it is even remotely official.
	Even though NIDS, of course, has people that can go out and investigate such claims when they are backed up by something physical, for example.
	That certainly tempts them.
	But nobody in the military.
	You can't pick up the phone and say, would you give me the military's UFO investigation number, please?
	They're not going to give you that number, because there is no such thing.
	All right.
	We're going to do open lines in the half hour coming up, so you're going to want to listen very carefully for the numbers coming up.
	They are a little different on the weekend.
	Open lines means anything at all you want to talk about, whatever it may be.
	We're that close, and it's coming up.
	Be it sight, sound, smell, or touch, there's something inside that we need.
	Why did we need so much?
	The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound, or the strength of an oak when it moves deep in the ground.
	The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again.
	Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing?
	To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing?
	To have all these things in our memories whole?
	And they use them to cover us?
	to come to me.
	I'm gonna be here.
	I'm gonna be here.
	Yeah!
	Ride, ride my seesaw.
	Take this place, on this trip.
	Just call me.
	Ride, take a pillow.
	Take my place, up the sea.
	It's a great day.
	Wanna take a ride?
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east to the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-5033.
	From west to the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
	his area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
	800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
	International callers may recharge by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing
	Option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	You're watching this video myself from Mark, the one with the disc in the tail of the jet,
	the Pond Trail.
	Bye.
	And I was thinking, how strange that we've reached a point in this country where a talk show host, me in this case, can sit here presenting you with a video of this, and it's almost mundane.
	I mean, this is a flying saucer.
	It's in the contrail of a commercial aircraft, and it's doing things and making movements that no aircraft could make.
	And it's almost, well not quite, but almost mundane that I show you this video.
	And there's no number in the military to call.
	They don't investigate things like this.
	Come on.
	This is a silvery disc flying in the sky, no doubt with a radar cross-section, behind an aircraft, captured on videotape.
	I saw one just like it.
	And our military doesn't look at stuff like that.
	There's no number you can call.
	Our military doesn't investigate those things anymore.
	Come on.
	Give me a break.
	Well, alright.
	Good evening.
	As promised, let us dip into the gene pool.
	That means do open lines.
	And first time caller line, you would appear to be first.
	Good evening.
	You're on the air.
	Hello, Mr. Bell.
	Do the wild thing at 775-727-1295.
	Okay, as you know, I don't let you use last names on the air, so... That's just a... It's a moniker.
	Okay, well, give me the first name of your moniker.
	Uh, Kenny D. Alright, Kenny D. From the Fantastic Forum.
	Alright, so what's up?
	Um, well, recently, well, I shouldn't say recently.
	For probably about a year or so, I've been contemplating whether ascension is possible for humans.
	Ascension.
	You mean that all humans would rise to a new level?
	I mean the ability for an actual human being to ascend above matter into a world of... Pure energy?
	Something like that.
	Pure divinity, I'd like to say.
	Well, watching the news in the world, that may happen, but it doesn't look eminent.
	But the thing is, or at least from what I've gathered, is that I don't think everyone's ready for that.
	I know I've already experienced... I think that was the point I was making.
	If you look at the news and the fighting and the killing and all the rest of it that's going on in the globe right now, it doesn't look eminent.
	Well, something looks imminent, but I don't think it's going to be pretty what's imminent.
	I would tend to agree with you, and I don't think that graduation is just around the corner, so to speak, for the human race.
	It wouldn't appear as though we're there yet.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Good morning, Arch.
	Good morning.
	Yes, this is Matthew Security Guard from Tampa.
	Yes, sir.
	First off, great bumper music.
	It answers the age-old question of what did Howard Dean do before he went into politics.
	But I got two things.
	First off, a comment on Dan Bursch.
	I think until we get the polygraph test, like two or three of them, and they've been independently confirmed, we've got to take this with a whole lot of salt simply because of the fact that he is alive and he's telling the story.
	And I do.
	I take it with a great And the other one, I called you a couple of weeks ago and told you about this great big fire we had in Tampa that nobody was talking about.
	Yes, sir.
	We made them blink.
	What do you mean?
	I mean, that call went over the air here about 20 minutes to 5.
	It suddenly got a lot of attention.
	At 6 o'clock there was a story about it on our local station saying that it had started in an abandoned railroad car.
	The media is strange, isn't it?
	Yeah, especially when it came out like 13 hours after it started.
	Have a good one.
	You too, sir.
	Take care.
	Yes, very strange.
	The media is strange.
	And the way it behaves is strange to observe.
	It's been reduced in the U.S.
	There was a day when just about everybody did their own independent investigation one way or the other.
	Or at least there were different sources now.
	In the modern day what's happened is, and it's fascinating, stories are generated at the very top somewhere and they flow downward.
	And all the affiliates, the radio stations, they all rip and read.
	They take the latest five-minute newscast, or even the networks are doing virtually the same thing.
	Some of them have reporters in the field, but most of the information is second-hand.
	You know, it's coming in the written word, teletype and or the modern equivalent of it, and everybody's hooked up and everybody's reading the same thing.
	So, It is kind of interesting, isn't it?
	International Line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, Mark.
	Hello, sir.
	You just talked about the media, and that's something that I find very interesting.
	So do I. I wonder if we're getting the truth at all.
	I'm originally from New Mexico, the state of New Mexico, and if you recall in the 2000 election, Gore won New Mexico by 396 votes.
	Well, there were some accusations that at the very last moment, 600 volts appeared out of thin air.
	I do recall it was hotly contested in New Mexico.
	Right.
	And people have continued to work on it.
	And there was a CPA, I can give you her name if you want, if you'd rather not, I won't say it.
	No, not here.
	Okay, there was a CPA in New Mexico who continued to work on it, and she found Thousands of votes, thousands of votes on the Democratic side that they just couldn't account for, from dead people, things like that.
	This is well known in the state.
	In Las Cruces, a local talk show host has been bringing this up over and over and going, Bush won New Mexico, that means the whole Florida thing is an issue, and it's uncontested.
	He is the President of the United States.
	You know, the Democrats have been throwing, well, he hasn't been.
	And yet, no one wants to pick it up.
	I called this talk show host, and I talked to him for quite a while, and he goes, I don't get it.
	He says, we have real solid evidence, CBS, NBC, ABC, no one wants to pick this up.
	Why do you imagine that to be true?
	Maybe because studies have showed that The major media is like 70-80% liberal, democratic.
	I had a friend who worked for the LA Times and he said as a conservative he was afraid to admit to anyone he was voting for Bush versus Gore.
	Yeah, I can relate to that.
	I think that's right.
	The media is pretty much, by a gigantic margin, leftist in my opinion.
	There's no question about it.
	But to imagine that they would ignore and not do a story of that magnitude, that's a little hard to believe.
	Well, I can tell you about two weeks ago I heard a story on the news, just one story, where the Republicans were coming out and basically said the Republicans have contended they have proof that George Bush clearly won the state of New Mexico.
	I heard one story, and I never heard anything again.
	I don't know, it just makes me wonder if we're getting any truth at all.
	Well, I wonder about that a lot, my friend.
	I don't know about any truth at all.
	There's always, even in the very best lies, the best lies have a nugget of truth, a part of some truth to them.
	That's what makes them good lies.
	The fact they have a center nugget of truth.
	And then they expand and Insert disinformation from that point on.
	But if you look far enough back, there's a gem of truth to it.
	And that's basically what makes a good lie a lie.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Sounds like Diebold strikes again.
	First a comment, and then a comment about Dan Burrish.
	You were looking for a frequency around 1420 MHz.
	Yes.
	And early on astronomers were concerned that... Let me, if you don't mind, clarify that.
	We had received a signal that some number of us were hearing on 1420 megahertz, which is a hydrogen frequency, and that's got a little stir going at SETI.
	That's what you're referring to?
	Yes, and early on astronomers were concerned That the Iridium satellite, which has frequencies near that in L-band, might have intermodulation products that could interfere with this frequency.
	So that's something you might look at.
	Could be.
	Anything could be.
	It's just that it was there.
	It was being heard here and as far away as Canada, which without, you know, I mean, it was there most of the night.
	Iridium satellites are moving.
	That's right.
	If it was moving in at that rate, you would expect all kinds of things.
	For one, you would expect it to disappear, and you would expect to hear certain properties to a signal traveling at that speed.
	Doppler.
	Yes, Doppler.
	This Mr. Danbury affair, this whole idea of a secret PhD doesn't pass the smell test.
	People do secret work at universities, and in the report, the work product may be classified, but the DoD can't classify Anything that doesn't belong to them.
	And besides, it would be very impractical because if you or I got a PhD that nobody else knew about, we'd be indentured to the DoD, and we could never move anyplace else because no one would recognize our credentials.
	What surprised me more than anything else was that Linda Moulton Howe gave it that much credibility, frankly.
	Yeah, I would be very careful about that one.
	Very surprised that she would jump on that the way she did, but she did.
	Okay, sir.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Take care.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Is that me, Art?
	That would be you, sir.
	Uh, can I get my initials?
	MJC?
	Oh, not the JC, though.
	No, not DJC.
	MJC.
	Couldn't have been.
	Your voice doesn't sound anything like his.
	Codename Spider-Man?
	Codename Spider-Man?
	That's right.
	Okay.
	Can I make a couple of comments and say something about President Reagan?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, it's apparently the government's not listening to your program, because if they were, they might be trying to take you off the air.
	Well, they'd have to answer questions if they did that, wouldn't they?
	Hey Art, have you ever... At least a couple of you out there would say, where has Art gone?
	Hey Art?
	Yes?
	Have you ever actually had an official on air?
	Have I had an official on air?
	Yeah, like a government type official.
	Oh, my guess is I've probably had many.
	Let me ask you something.
	Let me say something about the passing away of Ronald Reagan.
	Okay.
	Did you know back in the day the church thought he was the Antichrist?
	Who did?
	The church.
	I don't recall any such statement from the church.
	Yeah, because of his name, Ronald R. Reagan.
	666, yes.
	Exactly.
	But I don't think that was an official position of the church.
	That was the inevitable workings of a religious mind that dug that one up.
	Anytime you see anything like that.
	Six, Ronald, Wilson, Reagan.
	Six, six, and six.
	And I remember that going around on the internet and then as now I give it about as much credibility as I do the whole Burr-ish thing.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yeah, Dallas, Texas here.
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, years ago, a couple years ago, when I started listening to you, Mr. Bell, Mark, there was a lady that called in, and she had mentioned that she worked in Canada at a gas station, and supposedly a time traveler came to visit her.
	Do you recall that?
	And she said she had a videotape of it, she was going to send it to you.
	Yes, I remember that now.
	Did anything ever come of that, or was she just a kook?
	Well, I never received any such tape.
	That doesn't automatically make her a kook.
	Right.
	Well, I'm fascinated with time travel.
	Any movies, any stories about time travel.
	That makes it two of us.
	I'm right there with you.
	And the other thing I wanted to say, too, is something that always crosses my mind, is how far can we go before we have to go back to the beginning?
	Like athletes.
	They're running so much faster now.
	They're running, you know, and they keep setting records.
	They keep setting records.
	A hundred years from now, are they going to be running 65 miles an hour?
	I don't know.
	There must be the equivalent of the wall in processing speeds for athletes running, but you never know.
	Right.
	OK, we'll carry on, brother.
	All right.
	Thank you very much.
	Take care.
	You know, processor speeds will hit this great wall, they claim.
	And I would think runners would be facing a similar wall.
	Wildcard line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Going once, going twice, gone.
	East of the Rockies, you would have been on the air.
	West of the Rockies, you are on the air.
	Hello.
	No, you're not.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Yes, this is Mark in Dayton, Ohio.
	Hi, Mark.
	Just south of Dayton.
	Okay, Mark, turn your radio off, please.
	Yeah.
	We'll wait.
	No, all the way off.
	Yeah, it's off.
	Good.
	Yeah, I just have a question for Art.
	That's me.
	I'm Art, sir.
	We don't screen... Oh, I'm sorry.
	You see, I don't screen calls, so... Yeah, I was talking to a screener, sir.
	I don't have one.
	Yes, it's a pleasure to talk to you, Art.
	And to you.
	My mother's been listening to you and George Norris for years.
	Yes, sir.
	And she loves you guys.
	Unfortunately, I've just caught up with you in the last five or six months or so.
	But I wanted to ask your opinion about BPL.
	If you think that that's part and parcel of this shadow government, if that's an extension or a cousin, I call it, of HAARP.
	You're all over the place here, hold on.
	One thing at a time, what do I think of BPL?
	I think it is a disaster and that it will screw up the shortwave bands all across the entire country.
	Do I think it has anything to do with the new world order or the shadow government or whatever?
	No, not necessarily.
	I think this has to do with a bunch of people who see an easy, fast way to make money.
	That's all.
	There are existing power lines, and if they can carry the Internet over these power lines into every single home, where every single wall socket will have the Internet integrated with the electrical service, I think there are many reasons that we should be examining this and looking very carefully before we proceed, as the Federal Communications Commission now is inclined to do.
	Blindly, I might add, just proceed.
	There are privacy issues to be addressed.
	There are interference issues to be addressed.
	There's a lot of things that need to be done and ruining the ability of Americans to get shortwave on a 24-7 basis is insane.
	So until we know that it will not produce so much interference as to render All the HF frequencies useless, we should not proceed at all, but they are.
	And what do I think is behind it?
	I think money is behind it.
	People who want lots and lots of money.
	However, let me say one more time, with regard to this whole secret shadow government, I don't know.
	There may be dark forces that work behind the scene.
	I'm not so foolish that I would say that doesn't occur, because it does, because people are secretive.
	People do make deals with each other, and all kinds of things go on, but I just don't buy into all of this ridiculous, asinine, that's what I said, asinine, A propensity of late for some people to be suggesting that the United States destroyed its own buildings in New York, destroyed a portion of the Pentagon with airplanes, that the United States was in any way whatsoever complicit with those who knocked down those buildings and killed so many Americans.
	I think it's reprehensible.
	That these kinds of things are spread around without any proof.
	Oh, I know, you can always say, well, you know, I didn't see the right wreckage here or there, or jets could have gotten there, or whatever it is people are saying, but they're making these horrendous allegations.
	Without a shred, not a shred of proof.
	And that bothers me.
	Because this is my country, too.
	You know?
	And I just don't happen to believe that our elected officials would choose to kill by thousands their own citizens.
	I may believe a lot of things, but that's not one of them.
	I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why.
	I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why.
	You can run, but...
	you can't.
	I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why.
	I'll make it on time to get ready...
	Well, I think it's time to get ready. To realize just what I have found.
	to realize just what I have found.
	I have been on this path of blindness. It's all clear to me behind barbershop. You can run but...
	I have been only half of what I am.
	It's all clear to me now.
	My heart is on fire.
	My soul's like a wheel that's turning.
	My love is that life.
	My love is that life.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing
	Option 5, and dialing toll free, 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	Well, alright everybody, we're about to talk about privacy.
	I don't know how much of it there really is left.
	I guess that's what we're going to find out tonight from Loren Weinstein.
	As one of the old men of the Internet, Loren has been involved with the development of the net now for decades.
	He began his involvement in the early 70s.
	At the first site of the Internet's ancestor, the Defense Department, it's called AR-Planet.
	Or is that A-R-P-A-N-E-T?
	AR-Panet.
	He created and moderates the Privacy Forum, which was founded more than 12 years ago, and co-founded P-F-I-R, People for Internet Responsibility.
	I guess I'll have to explain that Laugh, people for internet responsibility.
	There's not a lot of responsibility on the internet, frankly.
	Lauren is an expert regarding a wide range of privacy issues and many other topics related to technology's impact on individuals and society.
	He writes and speaks about these issues in a broad variety of published and broadcast venues and he'll be
	right here Well all right, so here is Lauren Weinstein
	Loren, welcome to the program.
	Hi Art, it's great to join you.
	Good to have you.
	Where are you, by the way?
	I am in L.A.
	You're in L.A.?
	Okay, good.
	I laughed at that, people for internet responsibility.
	I'm not laughing, of course, at those people, because that's what they want, but the level of irresponsibility being exhibited now on the internet is astounding, Loren.
	You ain't just whistling Dixie.
	I know.
	That's a technical explanation.
	It's a terrible situation, and there's blame to spread around everywhere.
	A lot of it's historical.
	The network that we see today wasn't really designed for the things it's being used for today.
	And that fundamental underlying fact affects a lot that we see and a lot of the problems that we have now.
	My understanding of the origin of the Internet was that it was created by scientists basically to be able to communicate or to have a communications network that was so much like a spider web that you literally couldn't knock it out for example in a nuclear conflict or something of that scale that there would be this interwoven communications capability that would be so widespread with so many points that you simply couldn't knock it out
	Yeah, that in fact was one of the key issues behind the driving of the original network, which was the ARPANET, that was brought from the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is a division of the Department of Defense.
	The same ARPA, in fact, that was behind the Total Information Awareness Project, which was very controversial recently, basically what they have done all these years, all these decades, is invest in speculative technology, things that May not pay off.
	They may pay off.
	Maybe they'll go nowhere.
	Maybe they'll invent a superweapon.
	The ARPANET was in that category of systems to allow government entities, researchers, other people that had to be able to communicate to continue doing so, even if there was a nuclear war in theory.
	And, I guess, to that degree, certainly, they may have done it.
	I mean, the Internet is that, isn't it?
	In some respects, it's almost been too successful, because I think what we've got now is a system where spam will continue even in the event of a nuclear war.
	Spam and roaches, I think, is what we'll have.
	Spam and cockroaches.
	Yes, you're probably right.
	If somehow, after a nuclear conflict, you managed to get a computer up and running and connected to some kind of internet, there'd probably be something that would come through and say, We've got this pill.
	An extra three inches, even though the air is radioactive.
	That's right.
	That's what's going to happen.
	You know, we're laughing about it, and in a way, it's the only way to deal with it.
	But the really sad thing is that those kinds of messages and these kinds of problems are literally bringing the Internet down.
	The percentage of traffic now on the net, and this costs us all, because we all have to pay for the infrastructure for all of this, is just astounding.
	And unless it's dealt with through major changes fairly soon, there's just not going to be anything left.
	Oh, that sounds rather apocalyptic.
	What do you mean?
	It's true.
	I mean, what happened now is that more than half the email on the net is spam, and it's rising rapidly.
	Much of that is coming from zombie computers, which have been taken over by spammers.
	People have PCs sitting at home on cable modems or on DSL lines.
	They don't even realize that they've got viruses in these things that are sending out spam.
	They're part of the problem now.
	I'm curious about something, and maybe you could answer this for me.
	Sure.
	After looking at a million of those, and I've had a resident email address, for example, artbell at mindspring.com.
	I've had that for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years or something.
	So, being a very old and very public email address, I get spam.
	Well, for example, I get, at the very minimum, six to twelve opportunities to make millions of dollars from a dead relative in, I don't know, Nigeria per day.
	At least six, between six and twelve of those per day.
	Those are the 419 scams, that's what those are called.
	Yes.
	My uncle has died.
	He has left 31 million dollars in such-and-such a bank, and your last name also happens to be Bell.
	This one was a very creative one.
	It actually used my name.
	It picked my last name out, I guess, and assigned it so that it was specifically targeted spam, which is a little higher quality than the normal.
	But they actually used my last name.
	Some poor guy named Bella died in Nigeria, leaving, I don't know, however many millions.
	And I was the only living relative.
	So that was a particularly creative one.
	But what I've wondered, Lauren, is whether these companies that sell the pills or any of the rest of this baloney that comes through actually makes anybody any money.
	Evidence suggests, well first of all you have to realize that there are different categories of spam.
	A lot of spam exists only to sell systems for sending spam.
	So it's the snake eating its own tail.
	There's no real product there.
	So there's a certain category of those messages where there's really no product.
	It all exists for just to sell people software to do other spamming.
	A lot of the things going on are what are called phishing now, where people try to get you to put in your credit card number.
	Or they claim your PayPal account has expired, please put your account data in here again.
	There's those kinds of frauds.
	Then there are the things where the product actually exists.
	I mean, there's actually a pill, which probably, as we know, does nothing.
	There's people selling illegal cable filters, things like that, that also tend to do nothing.
	Do people get rich on it?
	Yeah, there seem to be a few Top-level people who become very, very wealthy at this.
	These are the ones that we hear about occasionally being arrested and being sued for $50 million and all these kinds of things.
	At the lower levels, it's not clear that people really make money.
	But that's sort of usual.
	It's basically a pyramid scheme when you come down to it.
	And the pyramid's so broad at the bottom that all of us are inundated with the results.
	But there are occasionally people at the top of the various pyramids who do get immensely rich.
	Yeah, it happens.
	I mean, all this has to be happening for some monetary reason.
	Always follow the money, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, the attitude that the people take is that even if a fraction of 1% of recipients will bite on these things, If you send out enough of them and you saturate the universe with them enough, just that little percentage is going to add up.
	And that's where the money comes from.
	Now the 419 scams, the Nigerian stuff you were talking about, that's kind of interesting because unlike most spams you see, most of the 419s have actual live human beings behind them.
	Those aren't generally automated.
	Why Nigeria?
	For example, out of all the places it could be coming from that would be more likely accepted by somebody, why Nigeria?
	It seems to have developed there as a cottage industry.
	There's a lot of people doing it for their livelihood that the term four one nine
	comes from the section of the nigerian penal code that deals with this
	kind of thing all you mean they have a law against it all it's it is
	illegal and and and they do try to act on it but these people move around very
	rapidly and in fact there are people out out there on the network who have made
	a career out of responding to these things and playing along with
	them and and uh...
	tried i don't know how to couple times but not not to catch them just because i wanted to see what
	the rest of the scam look like yeah and what happens to happen is that they'll
	they'll play well To do this, you have to supply some money to do this or that.
	Little by little money.
	It's a thousand here and five thousand here and ten thousand there.
	How many stories are there of poor, little, old ladies who, I guess, have fallen for this and really lost a lot of money?
	I mean, are there a lot?
	Yeah, there are people who have lost a lot of money and there are people who have lost their lives through these things.
	What?
	Who have gone to meet.
	In some of these scams, they have to meet the people.
	Really?
	And people have actually died in the process of doing that.
	Really?
	When things went wrong.
	So it's not a funny kind of thing at all.
	Really?
	I didn't realize it had gone that far.
	That's remarkable.
	I've also, by the way, won a lot of lotteries.
	You have no idea how many lotteries I've won.
	Just amazing.
	And I can claim my prize and it gives like a 19-digit number, which was my winning number.
	The amazing thing is how many people got that same 19-digit winning number.
	It's astounding.
	Yes.
	Anyway, so this is the dark side, and then there's even a darker side personally, for example, of the Internet.
	I'm going to tell you a little story.
	Somebody... I mean, you can be a dog on the internet, is the old phrase.
	Well, I've had a couple dogs go after me.
	Somebody wrote several years ago, Lauren, they wrote an article ostensibly by me.
	My name was assigned to this article, which trashed the Filipino race.
	I mean, it was a racist piece of garbage.
	It was horrible.
	And, uh, it was sent from the campus of UCSD, which, by the way, apologized for the fact that it came from their campus.
	And it was sent round the world.
	Well, I got all these threatening things.
	How dare you threaten my race?
	I mean, my God, my wife, my own wife is Filipino.
	Part Filipino, anyway, half Filipino.
	And, um, but nevertheless, it didn't make any difference.
	In fact, you have no idea how bad it got.
	For example, It was picked up and published by a newspaper in Manila, in the Philippines, who decided to publish it without ever having, you know, called me to find out if it might be real or false, without doing any investigation whatsoever.
	They had to print a retraction, I think it ran, damn thing ran for about six or seven weeks, and of course I threatened to sue them and all kinds of things, but they picked it up off the internet, giving it reality by printing it in in in the largest newspaper in manila and every now and then about every year or two this thing then goes around again but this was done uh... as an act of uh... well i don't know uh... some sort of vengeance against me for some
	God knows what reason, but it was done, and I've had to answer those things for years now, and no matter how many times you say it ain't so, it goes around and around the world on the internet, Lauren.
	Nothing stops it, and so there you have it.
	One act, by one person, faking something, and away you go.
	I remember seeing that story when it first broke in the news, the whole controversy about The original fake story and all the reactions to it, and I remember talking to some of my colleagues about that because it was a real good example of how these things can get out of hand.
	I think that fundamentally what happens in these situations is you have, to a large extent, lazy news organizations as part of it.
	Yeah, that's lazy, alright.
	I mean, you pick up a story off the internet, which is no attribution at all.
	And you print it?
	It doesn't get any more irresponsible than that.
	Yeah, I mean, it's laziness.
	A lot of people have forgotten about fact-checking.
	And because it's so easy, I mean, the message is, hey, this is great, this is a great copy, this is the headline, let's get out there now, quick, quick, quick, news cycle, news cycle.
	And then people get burned, as you did.
	And there's no real solution to it other than education.
	There's no technical solution to this one.
	Well, that's why I chuckled when I read Internet Responsibility.
	And I'm wondering, Lauren, how do we ultimately get any sort of Internet Responsibility?
	How do people who write things be held accountable for them?
	In what way could we assign numbers or IDs or Something to when people initiate an email or do a posting or something or do you on the other hand say no freedom of speech and you just you can't control people that way and have them ID they have every right to get on there and irresponsibly Ruin somebody's reputation or whatever.
	I mean, how do you weigh in on this Lauren?
	You've hit what is probably one of the top three issues on the Internet today, and I'm constantly caught in the middle on this one because of competing interests on both sides.
	What you're talking about is what we call largely authentication and identification, which is trying to decide to what extent email and other postings on the Internet should or can be tracked to a given individual and what the implications of that are For free speech, for anonymous speech, whistleblowers, political speech, other kinds of protected speech, versus, on the other side, people who want to commit fraud, libel, things like that.
	Yes.
	A very, very complicated area.
	And at this point, what makes it even worse is that the legal structure that we're dealing with... I mean, let's not even worry about the technology for a moment.
	The technology of doing this is hard enough and is a big, big problem right now that it's being worked on.
	I have a project now under PFER, which is called Tripoli, which is aimed at dealing with some of this.
	And it's going to take years to implement it if it's accepted.
	But the legal system is the other part of this, because you have a patchwork of laws at the state level, at the federal level, and then the Internet, of course, is international.
	So you have different countries with different domestic laws, Many of which are in conflict in all these issues.
	So even if you have a way of saying, well, I'm going to deal with it a certain way in countries A, B, and C, you have the other countries that do it differently and mail could just as easily be relaying through those.
	Very good point.
	In the case, a case in point in this story about this Filipino fraud letter, I mean, somebody just walked into a computer at UCSD at the library and sent this.
	Now, It was able to be tracked back to the library's computers, but it could have been anybody sitting there.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	So, there's just not any accountability.
	If you do it in the US mails, there's some sort of accountability.
	But doing it on the Internet, there is no accountability.
	Presently, we have no accountability whatsoever.
	Well, keep in mind that in the U.S.
	mail case, though, you are not required to put a return address on a plain envelope.
	Quite right, but there will be a stamp at least indicating from where it was sent.
	At least in terms of the city.
	It's very difficult because you do have these competing interests.
	I mean, it's possible to postulate a highly controlled Internet where you couldn't touch it without some form of authentication.
	That isn't to say, however, That there wouldn't be ways around that, because authentication is only as good as the underlying ID mechanism.
	Yes.
	And as you know, there's tremendous fraud in IDs and driver's licenses.
	Sure.
	All that stuff.
	So, just having authentication at the Internet level doesn't deal with it.
	But if you take this to its logical conclusion, in terms of really plugging up all the holes, it's pretty hard to do that without creating what amounts to a police state.
	The Balancing Act is very, very delicate, and I don't think any of us really know how to do that balance correctly yet.
	And this is just one of the ongoing issues of the time.
	Have laws caught up with the fact of the Internet yet?
	No.
	No, we basically still have a 19th century view of a lot of this stuff.
	And now we're in the 21st century, so we're falling further and further.
	However, there are places on the Internet where you can virtually publish something, right?
	You can virtually publish something.
	So, have slander and libel laws, for example, caught up with the Internet?
	Does somebody have to be... suppose they write under their own name?
	And they slander somebody, do they?
	Are they then legally responsible for that slander, as they would be if it were a published story in a newspaper?
	Hold the answer to that question, Warren.
	We'll be right back.
	This time it's 2 AM and the weather is off.
	It's 2 AM, but the sun's still warm.
	Feel the neck, the fire taking a chance.
	Yeah, there's a storm on the loose, sirens in my head.
	Rattles outside, these soft circuits of dead.
	When I'm cold, my whole life spins into the brain.
	Oh, the night is my world.
	City lights painted good.
	In the day, nothing matters.
	It's the night, time doesn't matter.
	In the night, no control.
	Through the wall, something's breaking.
	Wearing white as you're walking.
	Down the street, hope not so moved.
	You take my self, you take my self control To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
	at 800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country Sprint Access
	number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free.
	800-893-0903 That would be me, alright.
	Good morning, everybody.
	I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
	We're talking about a fact of modern life, and that is the Internet.
	And I know, so far, it sounds like I'm kind of down on it.
	But actually, the exact opposite is true.
	And so we'll get to that part of it.
	But I do want to know about Internet and responsibility.
	We'll ask more about that in just a moment.
	Loren Weinstein is my guest and he's got a website of course at www.vortex.com
	That's V-O-R-T-E-X dot com, where you can learn a whole lot more about what we're discussing.
	Lauren, the question was with regard to the civil laws and the internet uh... can somebody go and
	publish an article about somebody else clearly
	slanderous or whatever uh... in a news group read by many many people which is
	the rough equivalent of publishing and will that person or not to be held responsible for what
	they were right if it's uh...
	if it's uh... libel unfortunate answer is
	deep and because we were talking about that
	mishmash of domestic laws international law there were
	treaties that that are involved in some of these issues also
	becomes a situation it's very case-by-case uh... depending on the country depending on the person
	depending on the court all these kinds of thanks
	So it's hard to know.
	Now, you mentioned earlier How do you even figure out who really did these things?
	That's right.
	In a lot of cases.
	And I want to give you an example of something that's going on right now.
	There's a big controversy over the data that controls who owns domains.
	Right?
	Yes.
	You have a domain like coast2coastam.com.
	Sure.
	And there's a system called Whois that keeps track of that.
	That's putting it in its basic form.
	Yes.
	There have been moves to basically mask a lot of that data.
	Really?
	Make it harder to find out who owns the domain, where their address is, their phone number, things like that.
	And the reason this has happened is because a lot of that information has been abused.
	Spammers have gotten hold of it, stalkers have gotten hold of it in some cases, as people, as ordinary people have gotten domains, not just big companies.
	They've been putting their home addresses into these things because it's required to be accurate data.
	Right.
	So there's a lot of controversy, and of course there are people on the other side of this Think of the RIAA, for example, who want to stop the file traders of music, who want to be able to track down very quickly who's doing what.
	So at this very moment, there are actually comments being received by the controlling organizations, or at least the influencing organizations, because no one really controls the Internet, as to how this is going to be handled.
	Now, this is all happening below the radar for most people using the Net, but the impact on the sorts of things you're talking about Could be vast, affecting real lives.
	So, these kinds of decisions aren't out there in the public where most people even know that they're being thought about, which is an unfortunate situation.
	Now, having said all these negative things about the Internet, and there are more to be said, I should add, I've been a very, very, very early user of the Internet, and I very early on recognized its relevance, for example, to the radio program that I'm doing, if I have a guest on.
	Even before the Internet came along, I had a bulletin board service in which listeners could dial in And get information on the night's guest, or leave messages, or what have you.
	It was very early use.
	And then when the internet came along, I was one of, I think, the first actually to stream video.
	For example, I would sit here and just let a camera watch me while I did the entire program.
	And I did that for a couple of years, and then invented the Fast Blast that we now use on this program.
	And I've had a sort of interactive relationship between the radio program and the internet now for years.
	And it has been wondrous.
	I mean, it is absolutely wonderful.
	Beyond that, Lauren, I own, I think, 15 computers.
	I'm not sure.
	I've got about 15 for a lot of different purposes.
	I live out in the sticks here, not too far from Area 51 in the desert, and so I do most of my shopping on the Internet, Lauren.
	The Internet's damn well very important to me, and you're suggesting the Internet could Go down in flames.
	You use the phrase, Internet meltdown.
	That would really affect my life heavily, Loren.
	What do you mean by Internet meltdown?
	You know, it's very important to remember, as you're doing now, the good side of this.
	Because the Internet is, when you come right down to it, a tool.
	A very important tool, Lauren.
	You notice you don't have people going door-to-door anymore selling encyclopedias.
	One of the reasons for that is because the encyclopedia is in the little box there.
	You go to Google and you can find out about anything in the world.
	The importance of this can't be calculated.
	Kids are growing up now who will never have known a world where you couldn't get the answer to almost any question a couple of seconds away at a screen sitting in their bedroom.
	Yes, sir.
	It's an amazing thing.
	But like any other tool, like a hammer, you can use a hammer to build a house.
	You can use a hammer to crack someone's skull.
	It's the user that controls what the tool is used for.
	And that's the same thing with the Internet.
	The meltdown that we're talking about mainly has to do with all these corruptions that are occurring of the net.
	By corruptions, I mean both technical problems, spam, viruses, worms, all these kinds of things, and control problems, governance problems, the issue of who makes the rules for the Internet, who makes sure it's reliable, who makes sure it's secure, that you're not being spied on, that your privacy isn't being invaded.
	Because right now, It's a mess.
	You know how you can go to your C drive, Lauren, and you can look at basically all the contents of your computer, the various directories you have.
	And then down below that, of course, is the operating system files.
	And the other day I was looking at one of my computers and I noticed that I have more megabytes of patches than I do operating systems.
	You must be running a Microsoft operating system.
	Well, yes.
	And to keep up on all the current patches for all the current viruses, you do end up with more files that are patches to fix problems and holes and security problems than you do operating system itself.
	So if you want to take a moment and bash Microsoft, have at it.
	I understand Apple people don't quite go down the same road.
	Is that true?
	I really don't bash Microsoft on this.
	Part of the reason that they've got the problem is because they're the 800-pound gorilla.
	Well, and because they wrote it to be functional for users, they really weren't thinking about the virus aspect of all this when they wrote it originally, were they?
	Their whole attitude, until fairly recently, has been features first.
	Yeah.
	Which is an understandable commercial attitude.
	Of course it is.
	And what happened, though, is that a lot of those features were implemented without In retrospect, appropriate attention being paid to the security aspect.
	So while they brought some nice bells and whistles for some situations, they did open up a lot of holes.
	Now, Microsoft is now trying to get their act together on this.
	I think they're making a legitimate effort.
	Oh, sure.
	But because 99% of people's PCs run Windows, that will continue to be the dominant target.
	The reason that Apple people, for example, have less of a problem partly relates to the technical functioning of the operating system, that the newer Apple systems are actually based on Unix underneath.
	But also because they represent a much tinier percentage of the users.
	So the people that write these viruses and spams and such will target the big one, the big kahuna.
	Well, I'm not a Microsoft basher.
	I use it.
	I like Microsoft.
	I like their products, and I go ahead and I load the patches.
	But I do know that they're beginning to be larger than the operating system.
	And I was kind of laughing the other day looking at that.
	So it describes how big the problem really is.
	And could all this really come crashing down, Lauren?
	Could it really?
	Yeah.
	Interestingly enough, the most likely way for it to come crashing down is not necessarily a technical crash, but a sort of political control crash.
	In terms of what's essentially a war that's starting to occur between these different large corporations and some government entities that are involved in all of this.
	The ISPs, for example, the Internet Service Providers, more and more are trying to control what their users do.
	And because of all these conflicts that are starting to occur, the probability is that the kind of meltdown we would see first would be fragmentation of the Internet Where it became harder and harder to do communications that weren't approved in one way or another or to contact people outside your particular, what they call, walled gardens.
	Now, there are technical issues, too, that are occurring.
	Some of these are being triggered by companies.
	For example, .com, right?
	Right.
	The big domain.
	Right.
	.com is controlled by VeriSign, a company called VeriSign.
	Right.
	And VeriSign operates what's called the registry.
	So when you type a .com address, they're involved in figuring out where that address is and how you're actually going to connect to that site and all that kind of thing.
	Gotcha.
	Some time back, fairly recently, they decided on their own that they were going to change the way .com worked.
	And they implemented a system that they thought would be commercially beneficial to them, to themselves.
	What happened, unfortunately, is that it broke lots of applications around the Internet, and there was a lot of yelling and screaming, and they ultimately turned off that application temporarily.
	Now, the odds are they're going to try to bring it back because they filed a lawsuit against the organization ICANN, which ordered them to turn it off.
	Yes, let me understand, please, what they did.
	What was the intent?
	What did they do?
	What was the intent of what they did?
	The intent of what they did was to try to deal with a situation where you type the wrong address into a web browser.
	Seems simple, right?
	Yes.
	so if you typed coast-to-coast am and you
	spelled it wrong instead of just getting a terror message that that
	wrong site those that right
	like that you would get a special web page
	that they were presenting that would suggest to you
	various alternatives and would have other commercially oriented information of
	like a lot of well i mean google
	does that uh... to a degree google for example if you if you mistype something
	google will come back and say did you mean right and it will give you a few alternatives right
	is that the sort of thing you're talking about No, because what VeriSign did was make this change at a fundamental, core level of the Internet.
	So it didn't just affect web applications, it affected all applications, including email, which meant that if you mistyped a domain address on a piece of email, that email actually got sent to them, rather than where you wanted it to go, or at least it tried to go to them, is what actually happened.
	Oh my goodness.
	And there's lots of other, you know, the internet is a lot of applications that are going on all the time, beyond the mail, beyond the web, beyond the obvious stuff.
	And it broke a lot of them.
	And what really got people upset was that they did this unilaterally.
	I mean, there are standards groups, there are people who are out there trying to make sure that the internet runs properly, because again, there's no central authority, it has to be done on a cooperative basis.
	And VeriSign just said, hey, this is good for us.
	We think it's going to work great.
	We're just going to do it.
	They actually, though, had the right to do that, though, didn't they?
	I mean, they're a private company, essentially.
	They're not a government agency.
	They're not regulated by a government agency that I'm aware of.
	It's funny about that.
	Is it?
	Because VeriSign actually operates in a vested situation because they were Uh, chosen for this.
	They were originally part of a company, because they had to do it, a company called Network Solutions, and Verisign bought them.
	Yes.
	But this was essentially a grant from the U.S.
	federal government, from the Department of Commerce.
	I'll be darned.
	To do this on a monopoly basis.
	So, they're sort of like the local phone companies years ago.
	They got this power through a non-competitive means originally, so they've had a very privileged position.
	So it's very problematic as to whether or not it was appropriate for them to just make this decision on their own.
	Okay, but however, technically they are a privately owned and run company, right?
	Right, but they do operate under a complex set of government rules and regulations because of the history relating to all of this.
	They don't own the internet.
	And to the extent that they can just type a few keys on a keyboard and break, really break, I mean, people's printers stopped working around the world.
	Really?
	Yeah, I mean, that was one of the minor things that went wrong, because domain resolutions, people trying to look up domain, stopped working.
	That's a lot of power.
	It is, and you're right.
	And one of the things we're looking at is, is that kind of power being handled appropriately?
	Okay, fine.
	Do we have laws to do that?
	Okay, fine.
	Let's talk a little bit about that.
	Are you making a case for government intervention, regulation, or laws?
	What are you making a case for here?
	We're making a case for balance.
	Which doesn't exist right now.
	Now it's important to realize that if we try just to let things run the way they are now, if we just say we want to maintain the status quo, we're going to fail.
	Because at the international level, things are happening right now that will impact the way the internet is operated and controlled.
	Relating to organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union.
	The UN is getting involved.
	So, to the extent that we don't want to act on this ourselves, we are ceding the power and the authority to others outside the U.S.
	Well, so far, the United States government has kept a pretty hands-off attitude with respect to the Internet, have they not?
	Yes, the Department of Commerce has taken a very hands-off attitude.
	And the reason for that being that they want it to develop and flourish in a free, untaxed, unregulated atmosphere?
	Is that the idea?
	I think that that's a good summary of the way they would describe it.
	On the other hand, you don't harvest a fruit before it's time, do you?
	Not if you don't want to get sick.
	I'm saying, if the internet is a growing piece of fruit, Then, you allow the freedom to grow until you're ready to pluck it.
	Now, that's a very cynical comment, I understand, but my guess is that they intend, eventually, to pluck it, as it were.
	In other words, an email that is free to send today, someday, I imagine, will cost a penny, or two, or ten, or twenty, or who knows?
	But surely, at some point, As the years roll along, Lauren, the government's going to get their fingers into this for revenue.
	They've got to.
	They will certainly endeavor to.
	Now, you mentioned paying for email.
	That, interestingly enough, is one of the recurring urban legends of the Internet, the mail-tax story.
	I know, but it's also a recurring suggestion by some people in the know as a way to nearly instantly stop spam.
	Except it wouldn't work.
	It wouldn't work.
	Right.
	And in fact, there not only are suggestions of using actual cash to try to stop spam, but also various virtual kinds of cash, computational cash, where you would have to burn a certain amount of computer time doing calculations in order to send a message.
	These are all things floating around in the anti-spam community, which I spend a fair bit of time But any of this would require some, we come right back to the identifying, something to identify the sender, or none of that would work.
	Yeah, not only that, there's two other key things you need.
	One of them is if you're dealing with real money, you need a way to deal with micro-payments.
	Tiny, tiny little payments.
	Yes.
	Which is actually a much tougher nut to crack than some people think.
	The other thing you need though, and this is the part you're not going to get, Is some way to actually control the end applications.
	Because there is no way from a technical standpoint to mandate that these applications are going to work the way you want.
	Anyone can build their own mail program.
	A group of people could get together and design a whole new mail system if they wanted to and completely bypass the normal mail channels and bypass those costs.
	Really?
	And they could hide this.
	They could make it look like something else.
	They could make it look like webpages.
	They could do anything.
	So my view of this, and there's people that will disagree with me, is that these pay-per-message schemes, at least in terms of using them to try to control spam, are doomed to failure.
	I understand the reason that they seem attractive.
	I don't think that they're going to be practical.
	So you don't see that as a solution to the spam?
	And you don't see it as a practical solution, even if you could do it, because you couldn't manage those kinds of tiny transactions.
	And if you did, it might not even be financially viable to do so.
	Exactly.
	It could cost you more to manage the infrastructure for doing that than you would get out of it in terms of payments.
	That's fascinating.
	Well, if you were the government and you wanted a piece of the Internet, Where would you get it?
	Consider that, Lauren.
	We're at the top of the hour.
	Lauren Weinstein is my guest.
	We're discussing the Internet.
	It's fascinating.
	On the Internet, you can be anything you want to be right now.
	And a lot of people want to be a lot of different things.
	Some of them not too tasteful.
	a strange but necessary place to modern life.
	I'm going to show you how to get there.
	I'm going to show you how to get there.
	Some of them want to get used by you.
	Some of them want to abuse you.
	Some of them want to be abused.
	I'm going to show you how to get there.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
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	From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	And worldwide on the internet.
	Yes, indeed.
	It's that important.
	I mean, the internet to our daily lives, how important?
	Well, I don't know about you, I do know a few people who swear off computers who wouldn't have a thing to do with them.
	I think they are the devil's work, indeed.
	But for most everybody else, it is really that important.
	That's what we're talking about with Lauren Weinstein and we'll get right back to it.
	Once again Lauren Weinstein.
	Loren, welcome back.
	Hi.
	Loren, the Internet is...
	Challenging.
	A lot of things.
	I mean, you can make telephone calls over the Internet.
	You can dial a number and it flies through the Internet and dials locally on the other side of the country and you have avoided a toll call every time you send an email.
	You do so virtually, for free, eclipsing the need to jot something down, put a stamp on a letter, and send it.
	So, the mail service, it seems to me, has got to be threatened by the Internet.
	Telephone service, mail service, other services that are sent now through the Internet.
	I mean, they threaten a very large economic base, don't they?
	Well, they threaten to change Change the numbers.
	Change what's in what pile.
	So, for example, telephone companies, long-distance carriers, you would think would be threatened by voice over IP, telephone calls over the internet.
	You would think.
	But, when you look at it the other way, it's those same companies that are providing the internet services.
	Right?
	Cable companies are providing telephone service.
	Well, right.
	SBC, for example, a big telephone company.
	provides the appellate provide the infrastructure the the long-distance
	circuits to provide the internet connectivity so they've sort of get it
	get the money either way uh... well i have for example a company i know in mexico
	city uh... installs a uh... a t one down in mexico city for
	whatever purpose and as part of that
	they install a vote voice over i'd peace system so that when they
	uh... pick up a telephone in mexico city they get a dial tone in las vegas
	nevada and they dial locally as many calls for as long as they
	wish wish.
	Now, I guess you can say, gee, it just goes from one pile to another, but they're avoiding all kinds of long-distance call charges.
	Well, the incremental cost of long-distance now is rapidly going down to zero, even on the conventional phone network.
	If you used to call Europe, for example, it used to cost $12 for 3 minutes years ago, I remember that.
	Now, it can be cheaper to call London than it is to call across Los Angeles if you've got the wrong kind of plan.
	What's probably more interesting, though, is the battle between the local phone companies and the long-distance companies when it comes to Internet calls because of what are called access charges.
	And that's the fees that the long-distance companies traditionally pay To the local phone companies for access to their circuits.
	And there's actually little hidden charges on our phone bills that deal with that.
	And internet calls bypass a lot of that.
	So there's been a lot of fights, court fights, FCC rules, judgments, all kinds of things relating to that.
	And some interesting trickery that some companies have tried to pull to get around those charges.
	And another area where there's a difference Is to the extent to their security and privacy issues that differ between voice over IP and conventional telephone because again our laws haven't kept up and there's all kinds of interesting issues about how wiretaps affect these things and such.
	So they're not exactly equivalent and there's issues beyond the money ones.
	I think in an era where long distance is getting so cheap though the issues for the end user in terms of the relative costs are getting vanishingly small.
	Okay.
	This is an interesting era.
	We live in an era when, you know, people drive airplanes into buildings and terrorists have networks.
	And these networks, it seems to me, Lauren, would find the Internet the ideal tool to communicate with each other and plan their terrorism, wouldn't you think?
	You would think so, wouldn't you?
	So, I'm sure if Lauren and Art can figure that out, our government can too.
	And so, where are we with what's being watched on the Internet?
	In other words, how carefully is the Internet monitored?
	If I send a message, what are my expectations of privacy, Lauren?
	If you send an unencrypted message, Yes.
	That is, it's plain text as you send it, and plain text is received, and you send it through your ISP's mail servers.
	Yes.
	The guarantee of privacy is relatively low.
	The probability of any given message being monitored is also relatively low, unless you're a person of interest, or fall into the sphere, somehow, of a net that's been cast in a particular place.
	The reason for this is just because the amount of traffic is so vast.
	What would tend to make you a person of interest, Loren?
	Well, all it takes, really, is being physically in the topology of the internet, where you're located, the servers you use, things like that, sharing facilities with somebody who was under surveillance, for example.
	There have been a lot of cases where the nets were a little bit too broad, or very broad, sucking up a lot of people's materials.
	That shouldn't have been.
	This ties in with systems, they used to be called carnivore, things like that that are used to monitor network traffic.
	Well, could you become a person of interest, Lauren, just based, for example, on the websites you visit?
	That could happen, yeah.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah, but again, the issue is, would it happen?
	I mean, there's always this differential.
	The reason it could happen is because every access that is made Is logged somewhere.
	And though it can take a little bit of work to track it back to an individual's computer, it can be done in almost all cases.
	Now, if someone walked into a public computer in a library or something, that's a different issue.
	You could track, like you were saying earlier, you could track to the computer, you wouldn't necessarily know who was standing there.
	Right.
	But in the normal case of people who have dial-up accounts or DSL or cable modems, all of those things, every web access can be tracked.
	An ISP could track it at the ISP level, your local ISP.
	The websites that you visit almost certainly log it for their own purposes.
	So there are various vectors that information could be collected.
	Just as an example, there are radical Islamic websites.
	Where Al Qaeda, for example, makes statements or, you know, whatever.
	I was reading about that earlier that Al Qaeda said that they had killed this American.
	This is in the news right now.
	And that Americans were in danger.
	Well, that would be a website, for example, which it seems to me would be a flag.
	And if somebody in America was accessing that and other websites of that ilk, I would think somebody might be watching all that.
	What do you think, Loren?
	Well, you run into the old problem when it comes to that kind of surveillance, which is that, yeah, you could argue that someone who was predisposed to agree with those points of view might visit those websites.
	On the other hand, people who are ardently opposed to those points of view would be visiting those websites also on the know-thy-enemy basis.
	And people who are doing investigations, reporters who were working on stories and want to track what these groups are doing.
	But still, it might make you a person of interest.
	Well, again, you're dealing with vast numbers.
	I doubt if that alone would be enough.
	But I think a more important point is that, in all probability, the really nasty stuff, the stuff that's really of concern when you talk about terrorists using the Internet, are at a different level.
	And are not somewhere where they're publicly visible.
	And it is so technically simple to obscure these things in ways that are basically undetectable that the really public stuff that you can see is unlikely to be the real problem.
	So you're saying it is possible to escape responsibility for having written something or published something on a website Entirely, and the authorities are just stumped.
	There has never been, in the history of the world, I challenge anyone to come up with an example of any technology that's ever existed that allows for one-to-many communications of the kind that the internet presents today.
	And it's the old genie out of the bottle.
	You can't get the genie back in and The technology is so powerful that the ways it can be used and the way things can be encrypted and obscured and hidden means that the world has changed.
	We talk about the world changing after 9-11.
	The world has also changed because of the Internet, and as you point out, a lot of those changes are wondrous, fantastic, and there are downsides too, and not all of them can be fixed the way we might want to in a perfect world.
	That's just the reality.
	Person out there, let me ask this.
	As I mentioned to you, I live out in the boonies, so we do a lot of our shopping.
	For me, electronics.
	For my wife, she'll buy a dress or whatever on the internet.
	In doing so, you give your credit card information and the rest on a secure page.
	Should I regard that, and should my audience regard that, as Absolutely safe as walking into a store and handing the clerk your credit card to swipe into the machine.
	Is there a great deal of difference between sitting on your home computer and ordering something on a secure page and buying it in the store?
	Different risks in both cases.
	I mean, when you go into the store, you run the risk of a clerk running your card through a little recorder that gathers the number for themselves.
	I mean, that's a very popular fraud that goes on now.
	Well, and or, you know, it's sent across probably the Internet or God knows what.
	Even a secure satellite link up to the company's main office, where it's run through some other computers, probably to the credit card company.
	I guess my point is, it's going to get On a network, one way or another, whether you do it or whether someone else swipes it, isn't it?
	Yeah, and in fact, the act of moving the data from your computer to the computer at the other end, assuming you're really dealing with a quote, secure page, unfortunately there have been a lot of cases of sites that were just misconfigured.
	They were just set up in stupid ways.
	I'm sure.
	Where they looked like they were secure, but they really weren't.
	But by and large, getting the data between the two points isn't the problem.
	The problem is what happens to the data at the other end.
	Because often those servers themselves and the people that run them are set up very badly.
	And there have been a lot of cases, I'm sure you've heard of it, where hackers have gotten thousands and thousands of credit cards at once.
	Of course, yes.
	Now they didn't crack any encryption or anything like that.
	The encryption between the PC and the computers was just fine.
	It was just that the servers had holes in the way they were set up.
	And so they got mass numbers of cars.
	Now there's ways to do these things better so that that kind of thing is less likely to happen.
	But absolute security, no.
	You're never going to have absolute security.
	So I agree with you.
	Absolute security, no.
	So my question still remains.
	Am I basically as safe ordering something on the internet as I am going into a store and ordering it that way?
	I'll put it to you this way.
	If you're dealing with a known entity at the other end, Yes.
	A firm that you trust, a firm that you believe is competent and that you have reason to have faith in, then you should be in pretty good shape.
	If you're dealing with an unknown organization and you don't have time to do your homework and the research and who has that kind of time, then you might be better off dealing with a brick-and-mortar, you know, walk-in-the-door kind of place locally, if you have a place locally.
	Okay, because again, you know, for years we've been buying things on the internet and it's always worked out well so far.
	Well, the thing is that just like with, you know, there's this tremendous amount of fraud in the credit card world, right?
	I mean, massive.
	Sure.
	And it's basically buried.
	I mean, the individual user doesn't see it because they can get the, if there's a problem on the credit card bill, they can call the bank and they'll get it credited back.
	But that's actually coming out of merchants' pockets and out of the whole system.
	Well, it just seems the Internet is the way to go.
	If you want product X, you can go on the Internet and you can go shopping, courtesy of the power of a computer, for the best buy on that item.
	you know, little by little. So it's just part of the equation, I guess.
	Well, it just seems the Internet is the way to go.
	If you want product X, you can go on the Internet, and you can go shopping, courtesy of the power of a
	computer, for the best buy on that item.
	And there can be literally hundreds of dollars of difference in price.
	Sure.
	So it's a powerful tool.
	Right.
	Now, keep in mind that a lot of times when you find that best price, and I've had this happen myself, you'll go to one of these sites that does the comparisons, right?
	You see that for this particular camcorder, for example, there seems to be a $400 variation in the price.
	Yes, sir.
	The high and the low.
	And when you call the low, it's some weird, you know, Jose's cameras or something somewhere, I've never heard of it, but they've got a great price.
	And when you call them up, it turns out, well, they don't really have it in stock, and you can't get it unless you also buy the extra special carrying case.
	Ah, yes.
	You know, all those kinds of things start to happen.
	So that's one of the risks when you don't have a physical store nearby.
	If there's a problem, you can go back into the store and say, I want to see the manager.
	I want this fixed.
	uh... and and if you're dealing with some company of the other side of the
	country or maybe in another country uh... your leverage in those kinds of cases is is
	considerably less so that is uh... at that particular issue with the physical
	locality really how much of what
	uh... goes over the internet is monitored i mean you you briefly spoke
	of uh...
	uh... one case where they monitored uh... what what Where are we with internet monitoring?
	Does government have giant computers looking for keywords now and that sort of thing?
	Well, I mean, officially, we don't know, right?
	We know what we believe.
	We don't know what we don't know.
	I'm not trying to be oblique about this.
	What do you believe, Lauren?
	I believe that in terms of the totality of traffic on the internet, The amount that is monitored is relatively small.
	I think it is probably much bigger now than it was a few years ago.
	I believe that the monitoring tends to be focused in places and on people of which there is, like I was saying earlier, some kind of interest already, just to make the amount of data being gathered manageable.
	Looking for keywords tends not to be very productive unless you're dealing with very unsophisticated uh... target
	uh... because it's relatively unlikely that your typical terrorist is going to
	be speaking in plain simple words that are easy to pick out about
	right they're doing they're more likely to say yet the meeting is that eight
	who knows what that means if you're quite sure
	that's a brick is red i mean they think a problem
	and in fact you pick up so much noise when you look for keywords
	It's not as simple as just scanning the internet for people talking about bombs and airplanes and buildings.
	It doesn't work that way.
	But there is surveillance going on, clearly.
	There are increasing amounts of it.
	This is driving moves toward encryption.
	And encryption can't be controlled.
	You can't outlaw it effectively.
	So that takes us back to that same Situation again, where there are problems that just can't necessarily be solved, and we have a world that's very different than it used to be.
	Is there encryption that cannot be broken?
	Sure.
	There is?
	That absolutely cannot be broken?
	Yes.
	From a theoretical standpoint, there is a kind of encryption that can't be broken, if it's used properly.
	And that's what's called one-time pad encryption.
	Which actually has a very long history, but it means that you have to have a good source of random numbers to use for your encryption, and you can never reuse those numbers, but if you do it right, and all of the high-level military codes have been using this kind of system for a long time, it is uncrackable.
	Now, that doesn't mean that people don't screw up using it.
	And in fact, the way these systems have tended to be broken is when people got sloppy in the way they were dealing with them.
	And then they can be cracked.
	But used right?
	Used the way they're supposed to be used?
	Good to random source of numbers?
	You can't crack them.
	Uncrackable.
	Alright, hold it right there.
	Lauren Weinstein is my guess.
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	option five and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	My guest is Lauren Weinstein, and if we haven't given you the heebie-jeebies just yet,
	stick around, they're straight ahead.
	All right.
	We have discussed in some detail the Internet, although we could do that all night and probably will.
	We'll go to the phones at the top of the hour and let you ask questions.
	But a couple of other areas that I want to cover with you, Lauren, for example, the black boxes that are rumored to be in new cars.
	When you buy a new car these days, I'm told these black boxes.
	Oh, my gosh.
	They can they can record how fast you've been driving, how many miles you've been driving.
	All kinds of things about your driving that I suppose, in a pinch, the authorities would just love to know about, in some cases.
	What's the real skinny on these black boxes, do you know?
	Oh yeah, that's not a rumor, that's fact.
	They're definitely in there now.
	They started appearing originally in conjunction with airbags, because the airbags need Fairly sophisticated controllers to work.
	Sure.
	And since they were in there, and because typically there aren't laws controlling this kind of stuff, there we are again with our 19th century legal system.
	Right.
	More and more functions have been added to them in terms of keeping track of not only accident type events.
	If you have an accident, they keep track of when the airbags deployed, what the speed was at the moment of impact, whether you had your foot on the brakes, that kind of thing.
	But more and more now they are keeping track of more routine data that can be read out with the appropriate equipment at repair stations, service stations, and things like that.
	Really?
	And there has been interest expressed, as you might imagine, from some government agencies to have access to that data to charge people for speeding and all kinds of things like that.
	And there have been people convicted of serious crimes based on the data from those boxes.
	So, for example, someone was in an accident and they said, look, I tried to stop.
	I couldn't stop.
	I'm sorry.
	I hit the guy.
	That kind of situation.
	Right.
	And if the black box says that, no, you didn't even touch your brake, then you've had it.
	So you mean this this information already then has been used in criminal trials?
	Yes.
	And this has triggered concern.
	When did they begin doing that, Loren?
	How old is this technology?
	When did the black boxes begin to go into the cars?
	I couldn't tell you the exact time without digging through the research material, but it was really when airbags started to come in that this stuff got started.
	And the use in criminal cases and things like that has been over the last few years mainly, I believe, as the technology has become more and more sophisticated.
	One of the big issues here is that this has happened under the radar for most people.
	Sure.
	People buy their cars and they don't realize that there's this kind of surveillance equipment built into it, so there are concerns that there should at least be laws that say that people have a right to know that it's there, to know what information is collected, to have access to the information, and that there should be laws that control how that information is used and who has access to it.
	Why, for example, would that not fall under, let's say, a Fourth Amendment Or a self-incrimination.
	I guess you could look at either one.
	It very well might.
	I think the problem is that this kind of stuff hasn't been adjudicated yet.
	It hasn't really gotten into courts enough.
	It's fairly new in terms of these applications.
	So that's an area where legislators and judges haven't yet taken the time to deal with it.
	So as usual, people end up on the short end of the Boy, are you right about the 19th century legal system and the 20th century reality.
	So they're in there.
	It's not a myth.
	They're really in there.
	And this RFID tracking, can you tell us what RFID is?
	Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing on the black boxes.
	Fire away.
	There's another aspect of this which can go even further, which is a lot of people have systems like OnStar, for example.
	These systems nowadays have full GPS, Global Positioning Satellite systems in them.
	And they can also record information about where you are and where you've been.
	And they have been used to recover, obviously, stolen cars.
	They have been used to, when police have asked for information on a given car at a given time.
	There have actually been cases of cars that have been modified So that the driver didn't even realize that special things were going on through these specialized communication systems to track them.
	So the technology in these boxes is becoming faster.
	In some countries, there have actually been calls for every car to have GPS systems in them.
	And this also has happened in some states here in the U.S.
	There have been calls for this so that people could be charged a tax based on when they travel the roads.
	And whether the road was busy that day, and so they want to know where you traveled and when you did it, and all of that.
	Wow.
	So this is a growth industry, we might say.
	Obviously.
	RFID.
	RFID.
	It's promoted by the folks who like it as a super barcode, like a super version of the UPC code, the bars on the products.
	What it actually is, is a little transponder.
	There are different kinds.
	That picks up a radio signal that's transmitted at it, and in its simplest form, sends back an ID code that's received at the other end.
	A unique ID code.
	And this could be used on products to give you a checkout without having to scan, because you just kind of go by the sensor, and you could read your whole supermarket card at once, in theory, right?
	Wow.
	Which sounds kind of neat.
	Now, the problem that's come up is that most of these things don't turn off after you leave the store.
	I've noticed that.
	So, you could have a situation where everything you buy and everything you use, and people are talking about having this RFID technology on just about everything, could be tracked later.
	So you could be walking down the street and anybody could just be kind of waving a wand, or maybe be 50 feet away, you wouldn't even know it, and keeping track, they know what's in your wallet.
	There's talk about putting RFID in money.
	This is very seriously under consideration for the euro.
	And it could come our way, so you could kind of add up the contents of someone's wallet from a distance.
	That might be interesting.
	And of course, then there's the issue of RFID implants.
	Implants.
	Which was sort of a science fiction-y thing a few years ago, but isn't anymore.
	Well, I know they put them in pets.
	Right.
	So that you can get your pet back if it's lost.
	That seems like a benign application of it.
	A laudable purpose, indeed.
	But the same technology, in fact, promoted by the same people who make the PET inserts, is also being promoted for being implanted in people.
	And while it is possible to look at some of the applications that are being promoted, and these are things like, well, somebody has Alzheimer's disease and they wander off, you want to be able to find them if they don't have any ID, that kind of thing.
	In reality, what's being looked at here is much broader There have actually been promotions where people are saying, well, this will be great, you get the implant, and then when you go to the store, you can check out by waving your hand.
	Okay, I guess that's for some people, that might be a good thing, but you can't turn them off, right?
	So everywhere you go, you're essentially broadcasting, in effect, if there's a transmitter nearby,
	who you are, your ID, for everyone to know.
	And I think what will probably happen is that we'll find calls for these applications first
	in people who don't have any choice in the matter, where there won't be arguments about
	it too loudly, right?
	You could picture people saying, well, prisoners should have these implanted, whether they like it or not.
	That's right.
	Registered sex offenders, right?
	I mean, these are things where you're not going to get a lot of argument from people at large.
	But that's where it starts.
	And then pretty soon, you've got the chips in everyone, and then the world is very much different.
	Is that a nightmare scenario?
	Well, it depends on your point of view.
	It depends on what kind of society you want.
	Is that kind of thing likely to happen?
	Yeah, I think it probably is, unless we take a serious look again at the laws and personal privacy and how we want to draw the balance between security and privacy.
	Well, had there been such a system fully operative, perhaps 9-1-1 never would have occurred.
	I don't think that's true.
	I'm simply making a suggestion.
	I'm not saying I believe, you know, that that should happen.
	I'm just saying if personal identification was universal, then maybe they could not have done what they did.
	Or maybe, on the other hand, everything can be broken.
	All codes can be broken, they say.
	You argue with that a little bit.
	But, you know, everything can be pirated, it seems like.
	Not only can you not necessarily trust the mechanism of the identification, and that leads into biometrics, too, if you want to talk about that.
	Sure, sure.
	But you have to be able to trust the underlying information.
	So, for example, if you have, and this goes into things that people are dealing with right now, you know, a lot of the things going on at airports, the whole Caps 2 system that's going into place now to do a background check on people going to airports or the Trusted traveler cards that they'll be giving out soon to people that meet certain criteria so they don't get as much scrutiny at airports.
	Boy, I just went through a hellish experience at an airport going to New York, I'll tell you why.
	I just managed to walk through and forget one little item, beep, and they will take you in the back and they will swipe and sniff everything that you have.
	I mean, it is, flying is just not the joy it once was.
	And the worst part of it is that when you have these systems in place that will make it easier for some people to get through security than others, you have basically opened up a giant hole in your security system for what we might call deep cover agents who live here, they live exemplary lives, they have their credit cards, they qualify for all the benefits, they get the frequent traveler card, They only have to succeed once, because you're dealing with people in some cases who don't care if they come back.
	And so a trusted traveler card can turn into a, you know, a trusted terrorist card if this kind of scenario plays out.
	And what that tells us is, just because you have an ID card from someone, or an implanted chip, or a biometric identification, even assuming you can trust a biometric identification, It doesn't mean that the decisions you're going to make about that person, whether they're a good person or a bad person, a trustworthy person or an untrustworthy person, are accurate.
	Right.
	They might know that it's person A, but you don't know if the information you have about person A is any good.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	I understand completely.
	Moreover, we're moving into a totally wireless world.
	Most people I know have cell phones.
	I have a cell phone.
	Most people don't know that when you carry a cell phone, you could be tracked, couldn't you?
	In other words, a cell phone company, pressed, could probably tell someone exactly where you are, or darn close.
	Yes.
	Absolutely.
	Within certain variations of accuracy, depending on a bunch of parameters, but basically the answer is yes.
	And that's whenever your phone is turned on, regardless of whether you're making a call or not.
	Yes.
	I mean, it started off, in the earlier days, the information was fairly limited.
	I mean, it's sort of intrinsic to the system because you have these cell towers or you have the antennas that are scattered everywhere.
	The system has to know where you are so that it communicates with you through the correct tower and the correct antennas.
	Yes.
	But because of FCC mandates related to emergency services, 911, extended 911, there were mandates on all the telephone carriers That they'd be able to do very, very accurate location tracking down to just a few feet in some cases.
	It's a kind of complicated formula they use.
	But there were not restrictions put on how that information could really be used.
	It wasn't like they said, well, you can only use this for 911.
	You can only use it for emergencies.
	So immediately people started looking at commercial applications and other applications.
	And again, we've already had court cases.
	Where people have had their records pulled and the tracking information pulled, and they said, well, according to our records, you were here.
	It doesn't matter what you say.
	Yes.
	So that's the reality.
	That's right now.
	Well, is there any going back?
	I mean, you've already said we've got a 19th century legal system trying to address a 20th century, seemingly almost 21st century Scientific advance.
	I mean, it's going so fast that privacy and the Fourth Amendment is just going to vaporize if it already hasn't.
	I mean, you might even make an argument that it's already vaporized right in front of us.
	Yep.
	The steam is forming at this moment.
	I mean, it's a Wi-Fi kind of world.
	That's clearly where we're headed.
	Everybody's going to have a little portable device that gives them access to the World Wide Web and the World Wide Web access to them, I guess.
	And we're going to carry all kinds of devices with us, some of which we know about, others, you know, of which are buried deep in our cars or whatever.
	All these things tracking, keeping track of us.
	Is that, I mean, where do you picture, if you were a futurist, Lauren, That the world is headed.
	I mean, already we've come to a new destination.
	Where are we going?
	I am not in the glass half-full camp when it comes to this, as you might imagine.
	My view of it is that right now, we are living in the Golden Age.
	And people in the future will look back on us, and it will seem like a different universe.
	Because the whole concept of Of individuality, the way we view it now, of privacy.
	Those things will be archaic terms.
	They will be studied in history classes.
	When privacy was something that people expected.
	What an oddball group of people those were back in the early 21st century.
	To have the expectation of privacy.
	Yeah, it's going to go away.
	You can see the trends right now.
	For example, Cameras are popping up everywhere, right?
	Sure.
	And one of the arguments that's made by law enforcement, for example, is, and they have legitimate interests, they want to catch criminals and such, is that there's no expectation of privacy in public places.
	The problem with that logic, when you start putting cameras everywhere and linking them into these vast networks, though, is that at some point it becomes like having A little guy in a raincoat holding a clipboard following everyone around.
	Yep.
	Only a technical version of that.
	Where every place, anytime you step out your door, you are immediately subject to tracking wherever you go.
	There are systems in England now, they have systems that are reading license plates as people come and go from London to tax them appropriately.
	Those kind of systems are starting to pop up here too that read license plates.
	You start to have a situation where you can't leave your house without having all your movements followed.
	I don't think people would put up with that if they were being followed by real human beings, recording everything they did.
	Every store you went to, everywhere you drove.
	But because it's done with technology, because it's done with cameras, we're supposed to be less concerned about it.
	Well, how concerned should we be?
	Well, I think we should be very concerned.
	That's not to say that the legitimate interests of law enforcement in terms of catching criminals and stopping terrorism, these are very important things.
	The problem is that we don't want to, proverbially here, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
	We could create an extremely secure society through technology if we want to.
	That will not be a free society, however.
	It will be very different from the United States of America That we've been pledging allegiance to all these years.
	Now, if people want to do that, that will be their decision.
	I think that that's something we haven't thought about enough.
	Well, so far, the, I'll take the safety over, uh, um, uh, you know, what, what is it?
	Uh, safety over, uh, Anyway, people are giving away their privacy in droves, and they're hardly even thinking about it.
	It's just sort of something, you know, when you go to the airport, you understand why you get taken apart.
	So far, people are very much accepting it.
	Lauren?
	Yeah, they're accepting it, but I think part of the reason is that they don't necessarily understand the Fundamentals of what's going on.
	For example, you go to the airport and you can get into a lot of trouble for having a pair of tweezers.
	Yes.
	But you're allowed to bring on board your sharp pens, your umbrella, liquids in your suitcase that might be anything.
	All manner of things that are much more serious weapons.
	So airport security, like most security, is largely a subject of, is largely an issue of perception.
	The perception of security is at least as important as the reality of it.
	And it's been that way with airport security all along.
	It's understandable why that happens, but that doesn't make it any more honest.
	Are you saying the security that we now have at airports is only a perception?
	Largely, yeah.
	If someone really wants to get through with something that can do damage, they can do it.
	They want to give their lives to take others, they can do it.
	Yes.
	Lauren, hold on.
	Alright, we're going to go to the phone shortly, and I... Oh, this one's a tough one.
	Really a tough one.
	Let's see what you all do with it.
	that lauren weinstein is my guest in of course this is close to coast a m
	something happened in the what it is name exactly
	there's a man with a gun over there telling me
	i've got to beware Yeah.
	I think it's time we stop.
	Children, watch that sound.
	Everybody look what's going down.
	There's battle lines being drawn.
	Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
	young people speak in their minds are getting so much resistance
	from behind every time we stop
	hey, what's that sound?
	everybody look what's going down to talk with Art Bell
	call the wildcard line at area code The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
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	From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	Isn't it strange, everybody?
	How words written 40 or 50 years ago still apply perfectly today.
	Warren Weinstein.
	Weinstein is my guest and yeah, we're gonna light up the phones and you've got plenty to ask about.
	I suppose it's a natural evolution that we're going through.
	Lauren Weinstein is my guest, and we're talking about issues of privacy as it relates to the Internet, OG, your automobile, your own face on a camera somewhere.
	In other words, the totality of your life being followed.
	Every step you take, every move you make being followed.
	Lauren, welcome back.
	One more thing I want to ask you about, and then we're going to go to the phone.
	It's going to be very interesting to see how people react to all of this, understanding all of this.
	There are reports, rumors perhaps, a myth perhaps, that there are people working on machines That literally can determine, for example, if you are a terrorist or a criminal or have dark thoughts, or in other words, some machine that can in some way detect brainwaves and virtually read your mind.
	Is there anything like that?
	I'm sorry to report that, yeah, there is technology like that that has been developed.
	Level of accuracy is a matter of some dispute, but it is in its infancy, and it is an area that people are watching very closely.
	The way it works, it's called, generically, it's called brain fingerprinting.
	Brain printing, different ways.
	But it operates on the theory that if, for example, you have seen something, you have been in a murder scene, Yes.
	Where the public has not been.
	That if you are shown a photo of that place, your brain will react to seeing that photo again, seeing that place again.
	Where an ordinary person who hadn't been there wouldn't react that way.
	And this will be a physical reaction in the brain that can be detected through a special, you know, through a particular brain wave reaction that could be recorded.
	And when this particular wave appears, this particular electrical pattern appears, that would, according to these systems, be proof that you had been there before.
	Similarly, the idea is that if you were shown pictures of terrorist activity, for example, and if you were of that ilk, your brain would react in a certain way.
	You couldn't stop it.
	You couldn't prevent it.
	There'd be no way to control your thoughts.
	It would be at a subconscious level.
	And that also would be indicated to these systems.
	This is very much at the bleeding edge of these technologies, but it appears that there may actually be some reality to this, and that it is definitely not a science fiction sort of concept.
	All of this, if you really consider what it means, is rather difficult to digest.
	And as you pointed out, I guess our children are going to look back on perhaps our generation as the last of the great privacy.
	Back in a day when a person actually had the expectation of privacy, and that day will just be gone.
	But remember that in the future, these kids, the people that grow up then, Won't even really know what they have lost.
	Yeah.
	That's the really sad part about it.
	They will grow up in a world where the very concept of privacy is just antiquated and meaningless.
	And most people won't even know that there's something missing.
	Well, when these future generations, I mean, at some point, this antiquated legal system that you talked about and reality are going to collide heavily And how do you leave the Fourth Amendment intact, its wording, and maybe some of the other amendments, for that matter?
	You can't leave it there any longer.
	You've got to change that, don't you?
	Otherwise, we don't even have a resemblance to reality any longer in legal or Yeah, I think it has to be changed.
	I mean, it would have to be changed to cause the sorts of negative things to happen that we're talking about.
	But that goes on already.
	I mean, that's how the Supreme Court works.
	It reinterprets the Constitution based on the existing world.
	And I would expect that to continue happening if there's a sense in society That people want to give up privacy, that they want a different kind of society where privacy is no longer important, and where a sort of what I'll call a police state mentality would be considered preferable.
	That may be a decision people will make, and I think the courts will eventually go along with that if people go that way.
	Yes, but an interpretation can only go so far.
	When our privacy rights really are completely gone, then the Fourth Amendment has no meaning at all, and it will have to be Redacted or changed or something?
	Well, but remember privacy per se isn't really in there.
	Exactly.
	There is no specific amendment that addresses privacy.
	And everything that we have that relates to privacy in law is based on interpretations and broad definitions.
	So those could be narrowed down.
	As a society, we make the decision that we're not interested in privacy.
	I think the courts will find a way to meet our wishes in that regard.
	All right, here we go.
	First time caller line, you're on the air with Loren Weinstein.
	Hi.
	How you doing, Art?
	All right, sir.
	Is Loren talking this machine that will measure brain waves to detect guilt, anything related to that machinery I've been hearing about in the last year regarding Tells that your face is flushed that you are lying because blood is rushing to your eyeball and forehead area?
	Actually, it does broadly enter into the same area because it does have to do with biometric measurements of looking for physical changes in the body that you can't control.
	And changes in your blood vessels.
	Even if you're a terrorist?
	Excuse me?
	I mean, even if you're a terrorist, the kind of person who is a cold-blooded, his mind is made up killer.
	Yeah.
	The theory behind these systems, and you can believe it or not, it has yet to be demonstrated rigorously, is that there are certain biological functions that you can't control.
	I mean, that's supposed to be the theory behind polygraphs, behind lie detectors.
	Now, we know those can be beaten by some people.
	It may prove to be the case that people can beat these other systems, too.
	But at the moment, the claims are that they can't be beat.
	We shall see.
	While we're on the subject of lie detectors, Lauren, I am curious.
	I've always been curious about this.
	I've always heard, oh, you know, there are people who can beat them.
	Are there really?
	And how prolific are these people?
	How many people can beat lie detectors, for example?
	Do you know?
	Any figures on that?
	I don't have statistics on it.
	I mean, one of the problems, of course, is that if someone's really good at beating a lie detector, you wouldn't know that they beat it.
	Yeah.
	You would just think that they passed it.
	Yeah.
	So the only time you know someone beat a lie detector is if they pass the test and then later on you found out they were lying.
	Otherwise it just looks like a normal pass.
	So it's hard to get statistics on that.
	But there are lots of documented cases of people, I mean some of the biggest spies who have been convicted in this country passed numerous lie detector tests.
	So there's absolute clear evidence that some people are just not going to cooperate physically with those systems.
	And of course there's interpretation involved in reading a polygraph also, so you get a number of things that can vary.
	But there are a lot of people who consider polygraphs to be basically voodoo, and not really be science at all.
	It's interesting that polygraph results are generally not acceptable in court, But they are used by, for example, our security agencies for screening purposes.
	Now, why they're good enough for one and not for the other, you can read that either way, but that technology does have a lot of people who don't really believe in it.
	That's one thing for certain.
	Okay, Wildcard Line, you're on air with Loren Weinstein.
	Hi.
	Yes, this is Matt from 1170, and I really do not understand how you Would say that a computer could tell if someone was lying or not.
	A machine could in any way, any way decide whether or tell you about a person's emotions or anything physical about a person.
	How can a machine with another human interpreting it Anything about that person.
	That's a good question, Loren.
	Exactly how does that occur?
	Well, if you buy the arguments of the people who are promoting these new systems, let's talk about the brain fingerprinting one.
	Sure.
	That's certainly the one that's the scariest to me, when I think about the ramifications of something like that for privacy in the future.
	The theory is, what we're being told, is that this is something that's fundamental in the structure of the brain.
	And that when you see, when you are presented with a photo of something that makes you react in certain ways, or a scene that you've seen before, you can't control how your brain is going to react, not at the level that these machines are looking at.
	If that's true, then that kind of system will be vastly more accurate than a polygraph, which is actually just looking for variations in much Broader kinds of things, respiration.
	So it will replace the polygraph?
	Oh, if the brain fingerprinting systems pan out, I'm sure they'll replace polygraphs.
	Now the question is going to be, how are these systems going to be controlled?
	Are employers going to be able to use it?
	Can they sit you down and say, look, we're missing Five gallons of paint from the stock room?
	Are you the one that took it?
	I mean, it's going to be like Captain Cleeg on the Kane Mutiny trying to find the missing strawberries.
	Are they going to wheel out the brain scanner willy-nilly without appropriate legal controls on it?
	It would change the world.
	Let's back up a little bit in biometric identification.
	For example, in a lot of modern movies, you see people required to stare into a machine, and the machine reads their iris or their eyeball or whatever it does.
	Right.
	How good is that?
	There's two ways those things are done.
	There's retinal scans that require basically more cooperation from the user, because you've got to get closer to the scanning device.
	And then there's iris scans, which can be done actually at a distance, because if you just get a good shot of the eye, you can look at the patterns in the iris, which are supposed to be unique.
	The claim, again, is that both of those systems are supposed to be foolproof.
	Now, we originally heard the same thing about that regarding fingerprint biometric systems, and then a researcher discovered that he could fool virtually every fingerprint scanner on the market using a high-tech piece of material called gummy bears.
	And he was able to build fake fingers using gummy bears.
	Later, he found even better cheap materials.
	He could even simulate the temperature of the finger in case the scanners were looking for that.
	He was able to beat basically all of them.
	So there's a lot of question about the reliability of even iris scans and retinal scans.
	But the funny part about it is, and I mean funny, not funny, haha, is that Again, we talked about this a little earlier.
	Even if you have a biometric match, that doesn't mean that the information you have is related to that, and that person means anything.
	Another really creepy part about biometrics, that people don't think about a lot, is what happens if your information is compromised somehow?
	Right?
	Right.
	It's screwed up.
	It's compromised.
	What are you going to do?
	As an individual who's been hurt by this, Are you going to go out and get a new retina?
	A new iris?
	Perhaps new fingers?
	I mean, the problem with biometric measures is, if they're compromised, you can't change them.
	It's not like a password.
	You're up the creek.
	That's it.
	You could become a non-person.
	If the world evolved to where it was using all of these things, you could virtually Disappear, as far as the system is concerned.
	Into the Twilight Zone.
	Brother.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Loren Weinstein.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	Yes.
	Yeah, this is Mark.
	I'm just south of Cincinnati, Ohio, right now.
	Okay, and on a cell phone, right?
	Yes, sir, I am.
	Let's see, that'd be 26.4 miles south of Cincinnati, if our readings are right here.
	Go ahead.
	Just kidding.
	I have a quick comment and a question.
	You were talking about black boxes earlier.
	I'm a third-generation truck driver.
	I can remember back in the mid to late 80s, companies could purchase these black boxes and put them in trucks and monitor how their drivers drove their trucks.
	And I remember my father and my grandfather just throwing an absolute fit over it.
	And nowadays, with all the companies having satellite communications, I can look at my little keyboard over here I see how I'm driving my own truck, and it's become the North.
	So it's, you know, it's one of those deals.
	But my question is, I'm kind of out of the loop when it comes to computers and Internet doing the job that I do, but I keep hearing about this spyware.
	Oh, yes.
	And my question is, you know, who uses it?
	What's its purpose?
	And what could it be used for other than what it's designed for?
	All right.
	No, good question.
	Spyware, Lauren.
	Let's cover it.
	Yeah, spyware.
	Broadly defined is any software that's in your computer that is sending information out to someone else somewhere without your knowledge and or permission.
	Right.
	What's common?
	And what's common is especially, well the most common perhaps you could say the most benign version of these is systems where you get some software that says it's free but it gives you ads that are relevant to you perhaps But the way it determines that is by tracking what websites you visit, sending that information off over the internet to some server somewhere, where decisions are made about what ads to send back to you.
	That's perhaps the most benign, though a lot of people find that very objectionable anyway.
	And at its worst?
	At the worst, it could do anything to your computer, transmit the entire contents of your disks, change any information, put child pornography on your Computer that you don't know is there.
	Anything you can imagine in your darkest nightmares.
	Because once one of these programs has access to your computer, because of the way computers are designed now and the operating systems, it has total access.
	And you could download one of these spyware systems, particularly the nefarious ones that could monitor everything you do.
	They can see your screen.
	They can see the keys you type.
	It could be hidden in any program you download.
	It's almost impossible to know what they're doing unless you have software that is watching the internet connection very carefully to look for data traffic moving in and out of your computer that shouldn't be there.
	But to the normal person, the lights are blinking, you're not paying attention, you don't know what data is moving.
	So the possibilities are really endless.
	So it goes all the way from sort of benign to disastrous, you end up in jail.
	And the protection against this would be a program that would watch the data going both ways, really.
	But how would it delineate?
	It might delineate only in the amount of data being sent, but surely it can't look at the nature of the data, so how reliable could that be?
	There are commercial programs that Attempt to detect spyware to varying degrees of success.
	And part of the way they do that is to look for traffic that shouldn't be there.
	So for example, if you're looking at a website, just looking at a simple website, it would be considered odd for there to be this kind of strange flow of data associated every time you change pages going off to some server unrelated to the site you're looking at.
	Right.
	Now determining that In a final kind of way, it is very complicated and error-prone.
	But what tends to happen is over time, people learn where the bad spyware is, and then they can look for those servers.
	They can say, if traffic's going out to this server, you know you've got a problem.
	Why is this traffic going to Croatia when you're looking at a site in Silicon Valley?
	That kind of thing.
	Are there any laws that protect against that?
	In general, At this point, there has been very little in the legal system to protect you from this.
	The Federal Trade Commission has been actively working in this area now, and I expect we will see more protections, but again, keep in mind that that can only work domestically.
	The Federal Trade Commission, U.S.
	government agencies only have domestic authority, and these kinds of problems can easily be international in nature and can come from places Where there is very little concern about protecting people in these regards.
	Like from China, right?
	China or anywhere.
	All right, hold on.
	Trying to give you an idea of the world you're living in right now.
	How do you like it?
	Lauren Weinstein is my guest, and in the middle of the night, in the middle of a hot one, this is Coast to Coast AM.
	I'm Art Bell.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from East of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
	800-893-0903. From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM
	You are getting a glimpse this morning of the kind of world that's coming.
	Really, part of it's already here, but the rest is coming.
	and if it doesn't send a little chill down your spine, well then you're just not listening.
	So, how do you like the glimpse of the world you're in and the world that's coming?
	Lauren Weinstein, once again.
	Lauren, what's on your website?
	Well, there's two websites of possible interest.
	On the Vortex.com website, there's the Privacy Forum, which discusses a lot of these privacy issues, some related to the Internet and some more broad, even non-technical privacy issues.
	And the other is the pfir.org website for people for internet responsibility.
	And we are trying to create people who will be responsible with the internet.
	Right.
	Or at least get existing people to do it.
	And that has a lot of position papers and discussions of the specific kinds of topics we've been talking about.
	Some privacy, security, who's going to control the internet, spyware, hacking, all these kinds of concerns.
	How we hope to deal with it.
	It also has an announcement for our Preventing the Internet Meltdown Conference, which is next month here in Los Angeles, where we'll be bringing together people to try to come up with specific action plans to try to make some of this stuff better.
	So even though I think we're looking at a very dark future, we are still trying to at least hold off the day of reckoning when it comes to that.
	Make things a little bit better for now.
	And whether we'll succeed or not, we'll find out.
	But I think it's worth the battle in any case.
	Well, if you were a, knowing all you know, Lauren, if you were of dictatorial power, and you could mandate what would and would not happen with reference to the Internet, even other privacy issues, what would you mandate in a perfect world?
	I don't think I can answer that question, because part of the reason we're bringing these groups together, these people together, is to try to figure out exactly what the right way to answer that question would be.
	I do believe that it has to do with, the answer has to do with balance.
	You can't really operate this kind of environment without some input from government.
	On the other hand, it has become apparent that Too much input from government can have lots of negative impact as well.
	That's right.
	Well, in the legal system we use the measure of what a reasonable person might do.
	Is that probably applicable here?
	I think it may well be applicable if we assume enough exposure and understanding of the issues and technology involved.
	Unfortunately, if people Uh, haven't had the time, and this is what usually happens.
	People have lives.
	They're busy.
	They don't have the time to read all the fine print and the... That's right.
	...and the click-through licenses and all these sorts of things.
	Uh, so they have to make their decisions on a lot of cases based on hype.
	And then you don't necessarily get good decisions.
	But if people had the true story, and that's why I'm so glad that you've devoted this show to this topic tonight, this morning.
	Uh, it's this kind of discussion That helps to give people enough to go out there and look for more if they're interested and really get to understand these issues, and that's where we can really start to move in what I think would be the right direction.
	Otherwise, it's head in the sand, huh?
	Otherwise, it's just head in the sand and meltdown.
	Alright, first time caller line.
	You're on the air with Lauren Weinstein.
	Hi.
	Hi, my name's Barb.
	I'm calling from Erie County, New York, WBEN area.
	Hi, Barb.
	Hi, I love your show and you have a terrific voice.
	Thank you.
	And while my life has been a living H-E-L-L since February 16th of 2004, I had a co-worker create profiles on pornographic internet sites with my name, address, everything, social security number, phone number.
	I have trucks going by my house beeping the horn continually.
	I've reported it to every single police agency in Erie County all the way up to the FBI.
	They're quote-unquote conducting an investigation which apparently is solved.
	The person is a self-professed member of the Aryan Nations and allegedly the Ku Klux Klan.
	I've had, and he's also a gun freak, I've also had my identity stolen by the same individual, and I've been slammed for probably $1,500 worth of cell phone calls.
	That's why I'm on prepay now.
	Oh my god, alright, well that's enough right there, Lauren.
	There's a big time victim.
	I mean, that's unimaginable.
	Somebody goes and creates a profile for you on all kinds of porn sites.
	Yeah, and part of the reason things like that are possible is that a lot of sites don't do reasonable verification of information.
	I mean, if, for example, someone is creating a profile and has an address and a phone number and an email, there are certain reasonable steps, there's that word reasonable again, that could be taken to at least do rudimentary checking of that information to make sure it's valid and, you know, call the person back, make sure it's really them.
	There's things you can do, but unfortunately a lot of sites don't even try to do the minor thing.
	What can you do to undo the kind of thing that's been done to this young lady?
	How do you undo it?
	Once it's spread, once it's gone from the original source to other entities, it's very, very difficult.
	If credit reports and things like that have been damaged, then it's possible to go to the credit reporting agencies and there are mechanisms for correcting those.
	But in general, this is one of those situations where once the data has been corrupted, it can be damaged for a long time.
	And incidentally, this is worth thinking about when we talk about trusted databases and trying to decide who might be a terrorist and who might not.
	There's a lot of bad data out there, sometimes because of accidents, sometimes because, as in this person's case, someone purposely planted bad information.
	In this case, it was financial information, but you can imagine how Other kinds of information could be manipulated in the same way.
	So it's very dangerous to have too much faith in these databases because you can see that the information can be often far from accurate.
	But you can't unring that bell right now.
	In other words, she might be getting internet solicitations for porn from now until she dies.
	You can deal with the credit cards, you can deal with the credit reports, you can deal with the banks, those kinds of things.
	It's a hassle and a half, but it's doable.
	But in terms of solicitations and things like that, that's going to be more problematic.
	In some cases, when it's physical mail, you can go to the Postal Inspection Service for those kinds of situations.
	They will try to help, but it's a very difficult situation.
	What about law enforcement?
	She said, look, I went to the FBI, that sort of thing.
	Are they equipped to handle the massive amount of things like this that are going on?
	You just said the key words.
	They don't have the facilities.
	They have to focus on on what they consider to be priority issues.
	They don't have the manpower or the resources to deal with this kind of thing, and unfortunately, there really aren't other levels of government that have those facilities either.
	There are sometimes private organizations that will try to help non-profits and things like that, but it's just a very bad scene all around.
	Loyalty.
	Alright.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Lauren Weinstein.
	Hi.
	Yeah, hi Art.
	Hi Lauren.
	I saw a show on television recently where a bunch of college students, computer science majors, took a bunch of off-the-shelf PCs and attempted to form basically a supercomputer out of several units.
	But the point of my question is more, what sort of damage Could a terrorist organization do if they in fact had a supercomputer or something close to it?
	I don't think supercomputers are really on the terrorist agenda.
	The kinds of number crunching that are done for those things are useful for cracking codes, but that's mainly the opposite side of what they're involved with.
	They're useful for weather predictions and things like that, large-scale numerical analysis.
	But I think the kinds of computers that terrorists are more likely to be interested in are just the off-the-shelf PCs running off-the-shelf applications, basically.
	Could I ask you one more thing?
	Do you think as a dissuasion against people writing these viruses and attacking people's computers that such acts could be classified as terrorism?
	It might dissuade them from doing so?
	I think that the problem is that You run the risk when doing that of sweeping into that net a lot of basically immature people who don't really deserve to be classified that way.
	That's not to say that someone that creates a destructive virus and is trying to steal credit card numbers with it and all that kind of thing shouldn't be treated very harshly.
	But you find that a lot of these things are created by 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds Who don't really understand what's going on.
	I don't really see, in terms of the ramifications of what they're doing, I don't see what the benefit would be of classifying something like that as terrorism.
	It's going to have to be handled on a case-by-case basis.
	I have a lot of comments which I'm going to withhold about the 13 and 14 year olds.
	Eaves to the Rockies, you're on the air with Lauren Weinstein.
	Hi.
	Good morning.
	Uh, this is Jane calling from Florida to say that the Nigerian scam is alive and well.
	Oh, I know.
	My husband was one of the big fishes and has been totally addicted for the last two years to the tune of $400,000.
	Oh my God.
	And I, he has destroyed the family, the marriage.
	It's, it's a really bad situation.
	And my question to Lauren is, Uh, what would the repercussions be to my husband were I to report him to the Secret Service or the FBI?
	Well, I'm assuming here that your husband is a victim.
	Yeah, but it sounded that way.
	That's correct.
	Yeah, so I'm not sure what the point would be of you don't normally turn in a victim in something like this, so I may not be understanding.
	Well, I need to put a stop to this and he cannot stop it himself.
	You mean he's addicted to continually answering and sending money?
	90,000, 70,000, up to 400,000.
	My God!
	The retirement package is gone.
	Two things.
	First off, I don't think you would find government agencies interested in this because he is not committing a crime.
	He is the victim of a crime.
	However, and I say this just based on what you're telling me without all the facts of the case, obviously, there may be a situation here where it's possible that his behavior could be classified as incompetent.
	He's a highly educated man.
	May we inquire a little bit?
	I mean, once somebody had been burned, as unlikely as it seems, that somebody would fall for one of those Nigerian scams, why would he continue to fall for it?
	Because he's addicted and he thinks that he's going to be one of the 100,000 that's going to get lucky and $25 million will be put in our bank account.
	It's a disease.
	It's like gambling.
	It's the same kind of thing.
	The documents that are sent look very legal.
	He sends them back and forth to the tune of $85 per mailing.
	Right.
	That's astounding.
	That's astounding.
	So I guess your advice, Loren, is the only... I can't offhand think of anything else.
	The only way that something like this could be controlled would be to demonstrate that he is not behaving in a way that a rational person would behave, and that there are avenues that can be taken in terms of courts and rulings that could be made to put controls on what he can do with the bank account and such.
	I think that might be the only avenue to explore.
	Boy, of all the calls, I thought we might... That's a very sad situation, and I wish I had something better to say about that, a better solution.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Loren Weinstein.
	Hi.
	Hi, thanks, Mark, for taking my call.
	Hi, Loren.
	Hi.
	I've subscribed to your newsletter for quite some time now.
	This poor lady, I mean, my first thought would be to write back to those people and say that If you attack my husband one more time, there's going to be a lot of enforcement action taken.
	They just disappeared into the woods.
	I know, they're using so many different IP numbers.
	My question is on a very basic level, and that is the 800-pound gorilla that nobody has talked about, the dial-ups, the high-speed modems that neuter your operating system and Well, what do you mean neuter your operating system?
	Well, what they do is they take your files of security stuff and put it in a separate folder in Windows Explorer and they make it a bare operating system so that Uh, they have complete access to what you're doing and then you have to go in and redo it.
	On top of that, uh, in their contract, it says that it could damage your computer and they would have no responsibility for that.
	On top of that, Uh, there are address books, there are, uh, his version of Internet Explorer.
	Alright, well I, rather than addressing, I, I, you know, I don't want to... His version of Internet Explorer.
	Alright, well I, rather than addressing, I, I, you know, I don't want to hurl around names here, but, uh, what about what he's saying, Loren?
	Yeah, I, I think what he's talking about is, is, is sort of the, the, uh, a case of the, uh, everyone wants to control the defaults on, on the computer kind of situation.
	Right.
	The different vendors of these things, whoever they happen to be, the competing ISPs and everything else, they all want to control the computer.
	And so what tends to happen is when you install their stuff, it basically takes over everything, in some cases undoes important things that you had set up.
	Yes.
	That doesn't only happen with modems and things, it also happens with various programs to play audio and video.
	You install a new one, and it just takes over All those other ones that you had installed.
	The thing is, though, that you're not reading the fine print, because as you install that application, it virtually tells you it's going to take these kinds of files and take over.
	And if you don't read it, which most people don't, I mean, they just keep clicking next, then you're doing it to yourself, really.
	It's a matter of reading in most cases, isn't it?
	In a lot of cases it is explained, but in some of those cases it is explained in a legalese that a lot of people don't really understand what it's saying.
	It's often not put in a very clear-cut way.
	But I think it would be reasonable for people to assume that it's not necessary for each program to completely take over the system.
	This is one of those kind of, well, if we can do it, let's do it, kind of philosophies in these software packages that can be very annoying to users, at least.
	It is amazing, and I know exactly what you're talking about.
	One more, perhaps.
	International Line, you're on the air with Loren Weinstein.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Going once, going twice.
	Hello?
	Yes.
	Yeah, it's Chris.
	Listen, I wanted to know something about The pass-through laws that exist concerning banking laws and how certain machines and operating systems and languages at the bank cannot be corrupted.
	How can it be applied to Internet?
	And not only that, what about Ordonance laws?
	You know, the ancient laws of the Europeans that would not allow certain, you know, images of people around the idolatry thing.
	And only that, what about policing the Internet with some sort of quantum shift cop or cabal or something like that that can look into it by means of pass-through laws and sort of overcome all of this battle daunt?
	Lauren?
	Well, I think that the basic answer to that is that we need to look very carefully at both the technical side, which is part of what he's talking about there, and the legal side of how the Internet is going to be controlled and governed.
	And we don't know what the right answers to that really are going to be.
	So your websites are to determine these things?
	We're trying to start working it out, yeah.
	Are you the only ones working on this?
	No, by no means.
	There's lots of people working on it.
	Part of the reason we're doing this is My partner in PFIR and myself have been involved in the network for so long that our perspective, I think, is pretty useful on a lot of these issues.
	But we're just two of many who are working on these.
	But we hope by bringing a lot of people together from these other organizations, we'll be able to make considerable progress.
	Well, you sure have been of great value on this program this morning, and we're way out of time.
	So, my friend, thank you.
	It's been a pleasure.
	Thank you, sir.
	Good night.
	Good night.
	You can read more on his website.
	We've got a link on postcoastam.com.
	Everybody, y'all have a good night, and I'll see you later on this night.

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