Syndicated Thursday provides an opportunity to showcase other Creative Commons works. We try to expose podcasts, speeches, presentations, music, etc that you may not have heard. If you have suggestions for items then send your recommendation to admin at hpr and we'll add it to the queue.

On every page on Hacker Public Radio we acknowledge our roots and so we now play a show that was first aired 10 years and 16 days ago. Although not a typical episode of Radio FreeK America 15 (2002/06/05) - Special Rax-only Episode, it embodies the spirit of RFA.

All the old shows can be found at https://www.oldskoolphreak.com/radio.html and they are well worth a listen

The wikipedia article on RFA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_FreeK_America) has been deleted with the note:
00:16, 12 December 2007 Maxim (talk | contribs) deleted page Radio FreeK America (Deleted because expired WP:PROD; Utterly NN Internet radio stream, defunct since 2004, without one discernible reliable source, no references on the page, and no assertion of notability. using TW)
Fortunately a copy was kept at https://encycl.opentopia.com/term/Radio_FreeK_America.

IF YOU ARE A WIKIPEDIA EDITOR PLEASE CONTACT ADMIN @ HPR

Radio FreeK America was a Hacking and Phreaking related Internet Radio show primarily based out of Arizona and initially hosted by dual_parallel. The title is often abbreviated to RFA in text. The first episode appeared on February 20 2002. It lasted forty five minutes and twelve seconds. The last episode aired on February 20 2004 and lasted two hours, forty two minutes, and twenty nine seconds. During these two years, Radio FreeK America had a total of ninety nine shows (including a lost episode #76, of which no file exists).

Radio FreeK America logo

History

dual_parallel presented the idea for the show to two individuals at the [Phoenix 2600] meeting, Rax and Kondor in December of 2001 or January of 2002. "dual" (as he later came to be known as) recorded the first "segment" of Radio FreeK America (RFA) on 2/2/2002. The first show was "broadcast" via RantRadio on 2/20/2002. The first several episodes were co-hosted by Rax and Kondor.

Throughout the series, other guests such as StankDawg (who would later go on to develop [Binary Revolution],) Meme, Zapperlink, bland_inquisitor, Bi0s, and W1nt3rmut3, as well as a few other notable guests from the Telecommunications Industry, who remained nameless, became common guests and co-hosts.

The show originally was recorded and encoded to mp3 format and released on the website every Wednesday. Around episode nine, streaming began offered by Rant Radio and went out every Tuesday at 19:00 EST.

Radio FreeK America's website, [Old Skool Phreak], features a "Phreak Photo Gallery", "Hacker Art Gallery", text files, video files, and the download section for Radio FreeK America.

The radio show, through its success, inspired many other Internet Radio shows, such as Binary Revolution and Default Radio. Dual attributes the inspiration of the show to other hacker-oriented Internet Radio programs like In the Now, Hacker Mind, Off the Hook, and Rant Radio.

Radio FreeK America had been the home to Project Walmart Freedom, a community effort to explore (in great detail) the inner phone system of Walmart stores, as well as codes, signals, procedures, and terminology usually only known to Walmart employees exclusively. Some information was known only to upper management as well.

Soon after the last episode aired, the website went offline for a brief period of time. Oldskoolphreak.com had been replaced by a website featuring information on phreaking with PDA's. That site had been moved to PDAphreak.biz. (As of September 7 2005 PDAphreak.biz was no longer online.) Oldskoolphreak.com is still maintained by Natas, despite the lack of dual and lack of continuation of RFA.

On the last episode, dual gave his reasons for ending the radio show to start a new one called Hacker Public Radio. This never came to be though, and dual has made very few appearances since.

Content

The theme of Radio FreeK America kept true to the hacking spirit: to learn and explore, as well as keeping knowledge free. The name Radio FreeK America was coined by Rax and has several layers of meaning. The term "FreeK" is spelled with a capital "K" to stand for knowledge, and the term was to be understood as "keep knowledge free", hence "FreeK" or "Free Knowledge". It was a common saying of Rax at the end of the show to say "keep knowledge free." Radio FreeK America is also a play on Radio Free Europe, a broadcasting organization funded by the United States to promote democratic values in other nations. Radio FreeK America sought to inspire and present the values, concepts, and idea of the hacking/phreaking community.

Along with "keep knowledge free" was the tagline "be the media," which was coined by Jello Biafra. Here, dual stresses the necessity of alternative media, and that having only a few sources of media is biased and not effective on covering information from all perspectives. Also, alternative media can be more tailored to suit its audience. With this, dual encouraged more people to start internet radio shows.

The show revolved around the hacking and phreaking scence extensively. Covering issues from wardriving and its off shoots, urban exploration, Linux, computer security, phreaking, freedom of speech, legal issues, some political issues, amateur radio, and anything that could be deemed relevant to the hacking culture abroad.
Dual, from the start, intended to make it a show about the listeners and about the community. The show carried a variety of topics that the hacker community would be interested in. The first episode started with dual playing a recording of a trashing session at a local telco Switch. The show also had a segment at irregular intervals called "Phreak News" where dual would play a 25¢ tone from a red box and speak about issues relevant to the phreaking community. "Dual's Adventures" was a segment just as irregular as Phreak News where dual would talk about opportunities dealing with technology that arose while he was in an urban setting, usually a store.

Urban exploration was also a common part of Radio FreeK America, which often had dual playing his audio-recording adventures into various tunnels and basements. It was also common for dual to make several phone calls per episode to "interesting" numbers to see what could be learned. Calling card information was occasionally given out and posted on the site for the purpose of listeners to use for whatever they felt like. Listeners' email were read at the beginning of nearly episode as well, often with a thanks from dual, and a brief talk about the importance of community action, another driving force behind Radio FreeK America.

Radio FreeK America initiated a fundraiser to send money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, stressing the need to keep knowledge free and keep your right to freedom of speech.

External links

• [Old Skool Phreak, homepage of Radio FreeK America]
• [Mirror site of Radio FreeK America]
• [Binary Revolution Radio]

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