[00:00.000 --> 00:02.840]  ...because of the restrictions, but he does get everything.
[00:03.140 --> 00:12.640]  Now, I believe we have some former prisoners right here in the studio, or whatever room we want to call this thing.
[00:13.740 --> 00:19.580]  And you may be wondering why we have these little walls put up on stage.
[00:19.740 --> 00:20.720]  Well, there's a reason for that.
[00:22.160 --> 00:33.480]  When you're sent to prison and you're released, lots of times they kind of want to keep control of you after you get out of prison, and they make all these restrictions on things you can and cannot do.
[00:33.820 --> 00:38.840]  And one of the things you cannot do is converse with other people who have been in prison.
[00:39.040 --> 00:51.780]  So the only way we could bring you this panel tonight would be if these people that are here have no knowledge of the other people that are there and are at no risk whatsoever of communicating with them.
[00:51.860 --> 00:59.280]  So I ask for cooperation in this, that people are not communicating between the two of these people.
[01:00.020 --> 01:01.600]  Let's see if they're here.
[01:03.180 --> 01:05.500]  Okay, over there on the left I see Bernie S.
[01:06.480 --> 01:08.060]  And he is approaching the stage.
[01:08.280 --> 01:08.940]  Bernie S.
[01:09.440 --> 01:11.380]  Welcome to Beyond HOPE.
[01:13.760 --> 01:16.800]  And of course we've been following your case for quite some time.
[01:17.880 --> 01:22.920]  And you can settle in there while I walk over to this side here and try not to listen to anything I say.
[01:24.960 --> 01:32.760]  On this side over here we have Phiber Optik, who during the last HOPE conference was imprisoned.
[01:32.940 --> 01:34.920]  In fact we heard from him on the telephone.
[01:35.740 --> 01:38.280]  And are you going to stand up or are you just going to sit over there?
[01:38.420 --> 01:38.500]  Okay.
[01:39.100 --> 01:41.400]  Come over to the stage here.
[01:47.000 --> 01:47.840]  Don't look this way.
[01:48.020 --> 01:48.780]  Don't look this way.
[01:48.940 --> 01:48.960]  Sit.
[01:49.260 --> 01:49.380]  Okay.
[01:49.440 --> 01:49.900]  Look that way.
[01:50.000 --> 01:50.180]  Yes.
[01:50.380 --> 01:51.040]  Look straight ahead.
[01:52.040 --> 02:00.720]  Now any questions that either of you have, please direct towards me and the audience members.
[02:01.280 --> 02:08.860]  We're going to start with a brief statement by Bernie as to what happened to him over the past few years.
[02:09.360 --> 02:12.660]  And then we'll get the same from Phiber Optik.
[02:12.820 --> 02:17.480]  And I'll tell you Phiber Optik when I want that statement from you since you're not supposed to listen to Bernie.
[02:18.800 --> 02:20.260]  Well, you don't even know he's there.
[02:20.620 --> 02:21.360]  Go ahead, Bernie.
[02:22.220 --> 02:22.440]  Hello.
[02:23.620 --> 02:24.260]  How are you doing?
[02:26.500 --> 02:26.960]  Go ahead.
[02:27.060 --> 02:28.080]  I'm glad I'm up here on the stage.
[02:28.220 --> 02:28.780]  Just you and me.
[02:32.380 --> 02:33.260]  What do you want me to say?
[02:33.960 --> 02:41.300]  Well, tell us when you first went into prison and why and how long it took you to get out of prison.
[02:41.860 --> 02:44.500]  I know this story can take hours to tell.
[02:44.740 --> 02:45.640]  Well, I want to abbreviate.
[02:45.700 --> 02:48.500]  Basically, we're looking for a very, very brief synopsis here.
[02:48.620 --> 02:52.280]  And we'll get into more details and take some questions afterwards.
[02:52.820 --> 02:53.100]  Okay.
[02:53.800 --> 03:14.020]  In March of 94, I was arrested at gunpoint by six Secret Service and Haverford Police Department detectives while I was replacing a hard drive in a lady friend's computer at the time.
[03:15.900 --> 03:23.440]  She was rather surprised to see six guys come to her door after she put her children to bed.
[03:23.600 --> 03:29.120]  And six guys came bursting in with guns drawn and ran upstairs and pointed them at me and told me to freeze.
[03:29.800 --> 03:36.640]  So, I was kind of taken aback, thrown to the floor, and handcuffed.
[03:37.160 --> 03:40.480]  And I asked what I was charged with and I wasn't told immediately.
[03:44.120 --> 03:55.480]  I was interrogated by a Secret Service agent and really declined to say much to him, continually asking for my lawyer who I was told that I was not permitted to call.
[03:57.280 --> 03:59.020]  My rights were read to me, however, though.
[04:00.020 --> 04:04.060]  And spent the night in a holding cell in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
[04:05.100 --> 04:11.600]  And next morning taken to prison where my bail was set at $100,000.
[04:12.500 --> 04:18.520]  I was charged with the possession of a modified touch-tone dialer.
[04:18.800 --> 04:21.180]  You can buy a touch-tone dialer at any Radio Shack store.
[04:21.480 --> 04:25.840]  And it was modified with a different crystal, which can also be purchased at any Radio Shack store.
[04:27.300 --> 04:30.560]  Two parts anybody can buy anywhere in the country.
[04:32.240 --> 04:33.940]  I was charged with the possession of that.
[04:40.270 --> 04:40.950]  I'm on it.
[04:41.510 --> 04:41.890]  Thank you.
[04:46.140 --> 04:47.380]  I hope that it's not a bad omen.
[04:49.360 --> 04:50.700]  Just hold it right there, Emmanuel.
[04:50.700 --> 04:51.040]  That's good.
[04:53.820 --> 04:56.380]  I think we lost the... Can we have a maintenance crew up here, please?
[04:58.340 --> 04:59.420]  A legal emergency.
[05:04.220 --> 05:05.480]  How about some more gaffer's tape?
[05:05.620 --> 05:06.680]  More gaffer's tape, please.
[05:08.120 --> 05:08.580]  Thank you.
[05:09.500 --> 05:10.860]  My bail was set at $100,000.
[05:10.980 --> 05:13.520]  And I was, as I said, charged with two things.
[05:13.640 --> 05:17.680]  A possession of the actual, the technical description of the crime.
[05:17.860 --> 05:23.140]  It was a Pennsylvania misdemeanor 2, possession of a device for theft of telecommunication services.
[05:25.060 --> 05:29.840]  And the other charge I was charged with was a felony 3, unauthorized use of a computer.
[05:31.240 --> 05:33.740]  That charge wasn't really described well in the arrest warrant.
[05:37.960 --> 05:40.460]  I feel like there's a sword of Damocles over my head.
[05:43.020 --> 05:45.160]  So I was arraigned the next morning.
[05:45.640 --> 05:51.820]  And the local judge saw no evidence at all, even though it wasn't even his job to find any evidence.
[05:52.240 --> 05:56.140]  He saw that there was nothing in the affidavit that said I'd accessed any computer at all.
[05:57.560 --> 06:17.020]  The police department's argument was that because I had something that could modify tone dialer and because the telephone system and the telephones are connected to the computer network that's largely controlled by computers, that using such a device would constitute unauthorized access to a computer.
[06:17.260 --> 06:21.640]  Even though there was no allegation in the affidavit or the arrest warrant that I used a Red Box.
[06:23.360 --> 06:29.280]  So anyway, the judge said, well, I can't even arraign him on this felony charge because there's nothing even presented in the warrant for it.
[06:29.400 --> 06:37.000]  So I was left with a misdemeanor 2 charge, but the bail was still set at $100,000, which I didn't happen to have on hand at the time.
[06:38.300 --> 06:42.800]  So I was taken to a Delaware County Prison, a rather filthy place.
[06:43.500 --> 07:01.880]  And my preliminary hearing was delayed twice and I was there for over a month before I finally had my preliminary hearing, at which point the state dropped its charge and the Secret Service announced, who showed up at the hearing, announced they were going to file federal charges against me.
[07:02.500 --> 07:17.460]  And at that time I was charged by the Secret Service officially with possession of, well, actually the crime was Title 18, Section 1029A6B, which I had never heard of and my attorney had never heard of.
[07:18.320 --> 07:22.600]  And the reason we had never heard of it was because the law was so new it had not been published in the law books yet.
[07:23.260 --> 07:25.400]  Turns out I was the first person in the country charged with it.
[07:25.980 --> 07:41.320]  And after some research we found out that it said that it's now a federal felony to possess hardware or software for the modification of telecommunications instruments for the unauthorized access to telecommunications services.
[07:42.180 --> 08:03.140]  And all the criminal complaint from the Feds said that that equipment consisted of an IBM laptop computer, various cables, and a computer disk which contained an application that allowed someone to to program cellular telephones.
[08:03.320 --> 08:07.200]  I programmed them with new phone numbers and electronic serial numbers.
[08:07.380 --> 08:15.980]  There was no allegation in the criminal complaint that I had used this to program any cellular phones at all for any purpose.
[08:16.700 --> 08:19.560]  But I did meet the definition of the statute.
[08:20.220 --> 08:32.300]  So I was transported by the Secret Service, arrested at the prison after I was taken back there from the preliminary hearing and taken by the Secret Service back to Philadelphia where the federal building is.
[08:33.260 --> 08:36.600]  And this was a week after the Oklahoma City bombing.
[08:37.720 --> 08:42.620]  And as we pulled into the building, all these lights started going off and sirens going off.
[08:43.100 --> 08:48.340]  Apparently there was a bomb threat against the building as I came in with them.
[08:48.480 --> 08:49.800]  I was handcuffed in the backseat.
[08:50.180 --> 08:55.460]  So we had to leave the building and wait outside a couple blocks away for two hours while the building was evacuated.
[08:55.640 --> 09:00.360]  Apparently there were a lot of copycat bomb threats at the time right after the Oklahoma City thing.
[09:01.440 --> 09:02.940]  So we waited for about two hours.
[09:04.040 --> 09:11.280]  And finally I was taken back in the building and processed by the Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals.
[09:12.840 --> 09:20.640]  Agent Thomas Varney with the United States Secret Service unsuccessfully fingerprinted me 16 times.
[09:21.000 --> 09:22.780]  I was actually cooperating with him.
[09:22.920 --> 09:23.920]  But he couldn't seem to get it right.
[09:24.500 --> 09:28.600]  And after the 17th attempt he said, well, that's going to have to be good enough.
[09:28.760 --> 09:30.040]  And he just threw all the other ones in the trash.
[09:30.180 --> 09:30.900]  He was pretty disgusted.
[09:32.000 --> 09:36.220]  My legal papers and notes, defense notes were confiscated by him.
[09:36.500 --> 09:40.120]  And I was told that my attorney could pick them up from him later.
[09:41.280 --> 09:44.080]  And I was taken before a federal judge.
[09:45.800 --> 09:58.960]  This judge had just gotten back into his chambers after having to evacuate the building for two hours hours while the place was searched for a bomb, which was a false bomb threat apparently, fortunately.
[10:00.800 --> 10:03.720]  And Secret Service's first argument was that I was a danger.
[10:03.860 --> 10:09.460]  The only reason they can hold you without bail is if you're a threat to the community or if you're at risk of flight.
[10:09.940 --> 10:25.320]  Well, the Secret Service argued that because some of the books in my house, I had about 2,000 books, because some of them, I think the count was three, but they didn't say how many, three of the 2,000 books I'd had were about how explosives were made.
[10:26.120 --> 10:33.000]  And when the judge heard that, he lowered his glasses and looked at me and said, no bail.
[10:34.220 --> 10:41.440]  It was a tenuous time for government officials and I think they were all pretty paranoid about explosives.
[10:41.680 --> 10:43.060]  I'm not a bomb builder.
[10:43.320 --> 10:49.460]  I read all kinds of strange texts, but that was the bad time to be caught with the wrong kinds of books.
[10:49.640 --> 10:53.280]  I didn't know it was illegal or dangerous to have books, but apparently it is now.
[10:54.240 --> 10:57.260]  So I was locked in a holding cell at the U.S.
[10:57.480 --> 11:01.160]  Marshals there at the building waiting to be transported to the federal facility in Fairton, New Jersey.
[11:02.620 --> 11:13.140]  And while I was in the holding cell, there were some other prisoners there who told me that during the time that the building had been evacuated because of the bomb threat, that they'd been left in the cell.
[11:14.220 --> 11:14.880]  And the U.S. Marshals had evacuated it with everyone else.
[11:17.440 --> 11:19.420]  And the prisoners were just left in there.
[11:19.560 --> 11:22.940]  So if there had been a bomb, they would have been amongst the rubble, I guess.
[11:23.760 --> 11:29.900]  So a couple of hours later, we were transported in an armored van a couple of hours away to Fairton, New Jersey.
[11:30.100 --> 11:33.660]  And it was a pretty amazing sight seeing this facility.
[11:34.180 --> 11:51.020]  It had very high, looked like a 14-foot high razor wire ensconced fences, two of them about 10 feet apart, with all kinds of electronic sensors on them, surrounding a big facility.
[11:51.160 --> 11:55.580]  It kind of looked like a college campus, except all the buildings were heavily armored.
[11:56.580 --> 11:58.980]  And I was brought in there.
[11:59.180 --> 12:00.440]  It was pretty imposing looking.
[12:01.280 --> 12:06.320]  And that began my seven-month period in federal prison.
[12:06.520 --> 12:08.120]  And I had a very high school.
[12:08.120 --> 12:08.980]  And I was just wondering, how are we doing on time, Emmanuel?
[12:11.320 --> 12:11.680]  Emmanuel?
[12:12.400 --> 12:13.100]  Yeah, I'm sorry.
[12:13.300 --> 12:15.120]  How are we doing on time?
[12:15.240 --> 12:16.180]  Are you falling asleep there?
[12:16.340 --> 12:17.060]  No, I'm fine.
[12:17.260 --> 12:19.660]  It's just that you've been through a lot.
[12:20.160 --> 12:25.960]  And we need to just get a really sketchy outline of what it is that you went through.
[12:26.180 --> 12:31.980]  Because, well, there are more things that we have to talk about that you don't have to know about.
[12:32.180 --> 12:34.660]  How about just talking about some of the experiences I had in prison?
[12:34.900 --> 12:36.920]  Well, if you could just give us a timeline.
[12:37.540 --> 12:37.580]  Okay.
[12:37.740 --> 12:44.500]  When you were first arrested, and when you were finally released, and what it was that you were arrested for and released for.
[12:45.460 --> 12:48.380]  And then we can move on to some more detail in just a little bit.
[12:48.520 --> 12:48.740]  Okay.
[12:49.420 --> 12:50.260]  Very sketchy.
[12:50.560 --> 12:53.580]  I was... I spent a few months there.
[12:53.740 --> 12:58.940]  And I was held in the facility that's reserved for pretrial inmates.
[12:59.160 --> 13:02.420]  And everyone there has to wear orange jumpsuits.
[13:04.080 --> 13:05.900]  Were called carrots by the guards.
[13:06.580 --> 13:08.180]  Because we look like carrots running around.
[13:09.100 --> 13:16.720]  And they don't have all the same privileges that people who were designated to that facility have, apparently.
[13:16.900 --> 13:20.120]  They don't have the same access to the law library and that sort of thing, ironically.
[13:20.960 --> 13:26.680]  But I managed to get some access to the law library, which wasn't a bad library, but there was not much guidance on how to use it.
[13:27.260 --> 13:29.980]  I witnessed two stabbings, one of them fatal.
[13:30.900 --> 13:34.800]  Numerous fights, which ended in severe injury.
[13:37.520 --> 13:38.920]  What else did I see?
[13:39.460 --> 13:50.480]  I was housed in the same housing unit with murderers, arsonists, drug kingpins, organized crime figures.
[13:50.640 --> 13:58.860]  At the time, there was a celebrated case in Philadelphia of a big organized crime bust.
[13:59.100 --> 14:01.820]  And I was held with those fellows.
[14:02.340 --> 14:03.440]  That was kind of interesting.
[14:03.840 --> 14:06.540]  One thing I will say about federal prison, there's a lot of interesting people there.
[14:08.680 --> 14:09.820]  For better or worse.
[14:12.060 --> 14:17.600]  I accidentally dropped a garbage can lid on the head of this organized crime family.
[14:18.160 --> 14:24.620]  One day, off the second tier, I was throwing out some banana peels that my cellmate kept leaving in the cell.
[14:25.100 --> 14:30.080]  And I balanced the lid on the ledge and apparently fell off about ten feet and hit this guy in the head.
[14:30.320 --> 14:33.960]  I thought my troubles were over then, that I was going to be dead the next day.
[14:35.800 --> 14:38.580]  And he started screaming at me in Sicilian.
[14:38.820 --> 14:48.560]  And his bodyguard there, who was also arrested with him, intervened and said that I wasn't really trying to hurt him intentionally.
[14:48.860 --> 14:50.140]  And that blew over.
[14:50.920 --> 14:52.680]  But it was a scary situation.
[14:54.920 --> 15:00.420]  After a few months, I was going through various hearings that were basically unsuccessful in getting me out on bail.
[15:02.480 --> 15:05.940]  It looked as if the government had a good case against me.
[15:06.120 --> 15:09.460]  I did possess this stuff and there was no way around it.
[15:09.620 --> 15:12.580]  There was no allegation I had misused this material in any way.
[15:12.800 --> 15:14.300]  Bernie, what was this stuff?
[15:14.500 --> 15:19.820]  This stuff was a laptop computer, software, cables.
[15:20.540 --> 15:25.220]  And then later they tacked on another charge, possession of the touch-tone dialer that had been modified.
[15:25.460 --> 15:26.600]  Those were the charges.
[15:26.740 --> 15:32.200]  The charges were not that I had used any of this material in any way, shape, or form to commit any other crime.
[15:32.440 --> 15:32.980]  But just...
[15:32.980 --> 15:35.140]  Was there anything unusual about the stuff that you had?
[15:35.440 --> 15:39.520]  Well, it was not unusual to anybody in this room probably.
[15:39.960 --> 15:45.840]  This is software that was available to anyone that attended HOPE here in New York three years ago.
[15:46.060 --> 15:49.300]  Because I gave that software free away to people there.
[15:49.300 --> 15:50.960]  And even spoke about its use.
[15:51.840 --> 15:55.860]  It could be used to have more than one telephone in the same number.
[15:56.040 --> 15:59.040]  If you had one phone account, you could have several cellular phones on that.
[15:59.200 --> 16:05.620]  It did not, contrary to what the government argued, give you the ability to steal telephone service from another person.
[16:05.620 --> 16:11.920]  Because it didn't enable you to access someone else's account codes or electronic serial numbers.
[16:12.100 --> 16:13.720]  But that's another subject.
[16:13.720 --> 16:19.640]  The government is very good at being disingenuous when they represent the facts in these cases.
[16:19.860 --> 16:21.240]  And that was one of those instances.
[16:21.520 --> 16:22.700]  So nothing was terribly unusual.
[16:22.840 --> 16:26.320]  You could buy any of this stuff really at any computer or electronic store.
[16:26.600 --> 16:28.980]  And the software is readily downloadable over the Internet.
[16:31.700 --> 16:45.560]  But honestly, about a couple of weeks before my trial date, my attorney, who I spoke with on a pretty regular basis, told me that the prosecuting attorney, the U.S.
[16:45.620 --> 16:56.060]  attorney in my case, confided in him that the real reason that I was in jail was not because of crystals or laptop computers or telephone dialers.
[16:56.260 --> 17:03.800]  It was because of what they found in my personal files at my home, which consisted of hundreds of subjects.
[17:04.220 --> 17:08.180]  One file folder of which contained information about the United States Secret Service.
[17:08.520 --> 17:16.340]  And that included photographs of some of their undercover agents who served the Philadelphia area.
[17:16.340 --> 17:22.640]  Those photographs had some months before ended up on television after I took them to a 2600 meeting.
[17:23.940 --> 17:28.140]  And a Fox television news crew showed up and broadcast them on the air.
[17:28.260 --> 17:31.580]  We thought it was kind of funny at the time, but I guess the Secret Service did.
[17:31.680 --> 17:33.660]  And one of the pictures had one of the agents picking their nose.
[17:33.820 --> 17:35.340]  It's available on the 2600 website.
[17:37.720 --> 17:39.880]  So you were arrested in, was it March?
[17:39.880 --> 17:41.520]  I was arrested March 15th.
[17:41.960 --> 17:42.360]  1995.
[17:42.940 --> 17:43.320]  1995.
[17:43.320 --> 17:49.880]  And by the time you were released, you had been sentenced to how long for the offense of having that technology?
[17:50.200 --> 17:55.160]  Well, the statutory maximum is 15 years in prison for this.
[17:55.160 --> 18:03.600]  But the guidelines, a few years ago the federal judges were constrained as far as their flexibility and what they could sentence people to.
[18:04.500 --> 18:11.800]  Because I guess the House and Senate Republicans were upset that people were getting out earlier than they should in some cases.
[18:11.800 --> 18:15.800]  So they had some truth and sentencing legislation passed.
[18:16.080 --> 18:24.760]  Which basically said that the government will put together a book with guidelines that the judges have to follow.
[18:24.980 --> 18:29.060]  Like in certain circumstances the sentence has to be this long or this short sort of thing.
[18:29.800 --> 18:39.860]  And the statute I was charged with, even though it was a brand new statute and I was the first person in the country charged with violating it, it was called a fraud statute.
[18:40.160 --> 18:51.280]  But because there was no fraud alleged to have occurred, i.e., the government admitted in their reports that there were no victims in the case, that there was no money involved at all.
[18:51.540 --> 18:56.660]  Because it was a fraud case and there was no money involved, the maximum time they could have given me was six months.
[18:56.820 --> 19:00.560]  It was a zero to six month range that was in the sentencing guidelines.
[19:01.080 --> 19:03.880]  So six months had come and gone.
[19:04.420 --> 19:10.820]  And I was like, here I am, passed what the government recommends that I should, the government sentencing guidelines say it should be in for.
[19:12.960 --> 19:17.540]  So I had an evidence suppression hearing because I felt some of the evidence was seized illegally.
[19:18.400 --> 19:19.620]  But that was struck down.
[19:20.200 --> 19:24.000]  And the next day my lawyer said, listen, the wind is just not blowing the right way.
[19:24.000 --> 19:27.360]  You are better off pleading guilty to violating this statute.
[19:28.920 --> 19:37.880]  But we will make a special plea called a Zudick plea, which will allow you to withdraw that guilty plea, which is very difficult or impossible to do in federal cases.
[19:38.020 --> 19:40.540]  They usually want you to... a guilty plea is etched in stone.
[19:40.980 --> 19:51.340]  But because this is a new statute, and I was arguing that the wording of the statute, which is very vague, was so vague that it was unconstitutionally vague.
[19:51.340 --> 19:54.420]  And it didn't specify what conduct was really being prohibited.
[19:54.600 --> 19:57.340]  It didn't specify what modified or altered meant.
[19:57.960 --> 20:00.280]  Or what a telecommunications device was.
[20:00.400 --> 20:04.940]  Or even who had the power to say what is authorized and what is not authorized.
[20:05.080 --> 20:07.380]  And so far as access to telecommunications services.
[20:10.300 --> 20:19.700]  So I plead guilty with the understanding that I could withdraw my plea and file a challenge in the third circuit.
[20:22.760 --> 20:27.800]  And for some reason, I wasn't sentenced right away to my time served.
[20:27.940 --> 20:29.500]  I ended up spending another month in prison.
[20:29.860 --> 20:44.860]  And it turns out that when I finally did go before the judge for sentencing, the government was arguing that because the offense involved more than minimal planning, according to them, that I deserved an additional enhancement to that sentence.
[20:45.240 --> 20:48.060]  In the federal sentencing guidelines, there's all these enhancements.
[20:48.180 --> 20:50.160]  Like if there's a gun involved, there's an enhancement.
[20:50.320 --> 20:52.500]  But I have no guns in my house, so that wasn't an issue.
[20:53.260 --> 20:55.940]  There's like 20 or 30 enhancements they have, they call them.
[20:56.300 --> 20:56.840]  Nice word.
[20:57.900 --> 21:10.260]  One of them is if there's more than one victim, if there's multiple victims, or if there was more than minimal planning in the offense, there were no victims, they said there were no victims, that you can get an additional two months tacked on to your sentence.
[21:10.580 --> 21:20.380]  Well, it turns out that all the planning that they said was involved in my offense occurred prior to the enactment of the legislation that I was charged with violating.
[21:20.600 --> 21:23.880]  But still the judge bought the argument and I received a seven-month sentence.
[21:24.360 --> 21:28.220]  So I served the extra time and was released.
[21:29.260 --> 21:29.680]  But...
[21:29.680 --> 21:30.700]  And your troubles were over?
[21:31.080 --> 21:32.340]  Well, I thought they were.
[21:33.880 --> 21:42.160]  Unfortunately, about two years before that, I was convicted of a misdemeanor in a small town a couple hours from Philadelphia.
[21:42.640 --> 21:45.420]  The misdemeanor was a tampering with evidence charge.
[21:45.620 --> 21:55.020]  It involved... I was with a couple of friends and we were questioned by police about a tone dialer that were in our possession.
[21:55.400 --> 22:06.560]  And we were released, but after we were released, the police discovered that the the instruction sheets on how to modify these tone dialers disappeared.
[22:08.540 --> 22:10.360]  And they wanted to know what happened to them.
[22:10.640 --> 22:11.980]  The batteries disappeared too.
[22:13.460 --> 22:16.580]  That thing dragged out for a few months back in 92 and 93.
[22:16.800 --> 22:19.040]  And I eventually pled no contest to it.
[22:19.080 --> 22:21.460]  It was not I who removed the instruction sheets of the batteries.
[22:21.740 --> 22:27.120]  But I was not about to rat out my two friends or two acquaintances who were with me at the time.
[22:27.540 --> 22:31.280]  So, Bernie, I hate to rush you through this, but we do have other things to get to.
[22:31.280 --> 22:35.020]  But basically what happened was the Secret Service found out about this.
[22:35.140 --> 22:35.440]  Yeah.
[22:35.440 --> 22:37.080]  This minor thing happened a few years ago.
[22:37.220 --> 22:43.940]  They used that to say that you had violated your probation by being arrested in 1995.
[22:44.400 --> 22:49.900]  The federal conviction constituted violation of probation for that previous misdemeanor charge.
[22:49.900 --> 23:00.000]  And the state guideline was that in that situation, because it was such a minor misdemeanor charge, that you should just get probation again or up to three months in prison.
[23:00.180 --> 23:11.140]  But the Secret Service showed up at this small-town courtroom and said a lot of things that made me sound like, in the words of the judge, one step above a terrorist.
[23:11.720 --> 23:13.280]  And that's what the judge said.
[23:14.980 --> 23:16.820]  Does that mean you're more dangerous than a terrorist?
[23:16.940 --> 23:18.020]  I was trying to figure that out.
[23:18.160 --> 23:21.880]  Whether that meant I was more dangerous than a terrorist or slightly less dangerous than a terrorist.
[23:22.060 --> 23:30.180]  But in any case, it made quite an impact on the judge because those were his words that he said that the Secret Service painted me as being someone one step above a terrorist.
[23:30.860 --> 23:46.480]  Even though there was nothing dangerous found in my house, the only thing that could have been conceivably dangerous was what the Secret Service described as C4 plastic explosives, which they admitted turned out to be dental putty because the previous owner of the house turned out to be a dentist and there was all these old things in the basement.
[23:47.740 --> 24:00.260]  But they said that while the Secret Service claimed that while it tested not as C4, the fact that it might have been concerned them greatly and a lot of other misrepresentations like that.
[24:00.460 --> 24:14.760]  So I received a 6 to 24 month additional sentence for this tampering with evidence charge, which the district attorney up there said as far as he was concerned it was a victimless crime, the disappearance of these instruction sheets.
[24:15.080 --> 24:21.020]  The same kind of instruction sheets that are printed in 2600 magazine and on the Internet.
[24:21.600 --> 24:26.820]  And after that I was transferred to various other maximum security facilities.
[24:27.040 --> 24:32.580]  The strange thing in my case is that I was sent around into five different maximum security prisons.
[24:33.640 --> 24:49.780]  At that point, when I was reincarcerated for that misdemeanor 2 charge, which on the severity scale is equivalent to scattering rubbish in Pennsylvania as far as the crime scoring, my bail was set at $250,000 cash bail.
[24:50.460 --> 24:53.900]  They say cash bail, that means you can't put up 10% security for it.
[24:53.920 --> 25:03.160]  So it was really the equivalent of two and a half million dollars bail for what the sentencing guidelines called for probation.
[25:04.100 --> 25:10.420]  But the Secret Service apparently has a lot of influence over judges, especially judges in small towns.
[25:10.640 --> 25:37.480]  And the Secret Service took advantage of that influence and managed to get me sent to not only a fairly bad county prison, but because my bail was set at the equivalent of two and a half million dollars, locked in the same small wing with multiple murderers and rapists and some really nasty characters.
[25:37.920 --> 25:40.680]  So that began another whole ordeal.
[25:40.900 --> 25:45.060]  I was then later transferred to two or three other maximum security facilities.
[25:45.920 --> 25:51.620]  And near the end of that whole thing, something happened that I discussed yesterday.
[25:51.740 --> 25:52.880]  I won't go into the details about it.
[25:53.480 --> 25:55.660]  I filed for various reasons.
[25:55.740 --> 26:02.140]  I filed a grievance against the assistant warden at one of these facilities for a violation of my rights in one situation.
[26:02.400 --> 26:21.000]  And as a result of doing that, instead of facing the facts in the case, that warden had me transferred to a, like the Supermax facility up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where in less than 12 hours, I was severely beaten by another inmate who had just been locked up.
[26:21.220 --> 26:30.740]  I don't think the Secret Service orchestrated that, but the fact that I was sent to this extremely high security facility, I think had something to do with it.
[26:30.940 --> 26:38.920]  I spent seven hours in major surgery, had 52 stitches stitched into me.
[26:39.720 --> 26:46.080]  Got a titanium bar in my left arm now and multiple pieces of metal in my jaw, which was fractured in three places.
[26:46.700 --> 26:47.180]  And...
[26:47.180 --> 26:50.600]  While you were being operated on, you were handcuffed to the hospital bed.
[26:50.720 --> 26:55.640]  I was not only handcuffed, but my ankles were shackled to the gurney in the operating room.
[26:57.380 --> 27:04.700]  And that's the last thing I remember before I went unconscious after the, after the general, after the general anesthesia.
[27:04.980 --> 27:23.240]  And when I woke up, you know, the next day after coming out of the coma-like condition that general anesthesia gives you, puts you in, I was, I found myself also still handcuffed and shackled to the gurney in the recovery room.
[27:23.660 --> 27:38.840]  So I couldn't even adjust the, the oxygen mask that was on my face that like, was like pinching my nose because I was shackled and handcuffed and the guard didn't seem very responsive as far as my, my complaints.
[27:39.000 --> 27:50.240]  He was just more interested in watching sitcoms on the TV and playing them very loudly, which prevented me from, from sleeping after I awoke out of my anesthesia.
[27:50.580 --> 27:58.100]  But the nurses felt that they couldn't do much about it because he was a prison guard and he could do what he wanted in there.
[27:58.680 --> 28:13.580]  So, uh, at that point, uh, your magazine and your readers and listeners to your radio program, I think, got so upset about what was happening that, uh, uh, the campaign that you helped mount, um, eventually got me released.
[28:13.740 --> 28:17.940]  I was already past my parole date at that point but hadn't been interviewed yet for some mysterious reason.
[28:18.400 --> 28:23.300]  And, uh, I think if it weren't for those injuries, I wouldn't have gotten out when I did.
[28:24.100 --> 28:43.580]  Um, uh, the, the, uh, protests that were planned and the, the, the, the torrent of faxes and phone calls to, uh, prison officials and politicians that, that were worked in that part of Pennsylvania, I think, played a big part in, in the judge signing an emergency order that if I really,
[28:43.640 --> 28:45.140]  I'd be released for medical reasons.
[28:45.460 --> 28:47.120]  And my jaws were wired shut.
[28:47.240 --> 28:47.840]  I couldn't speak.
[28:47.980 --> 28:49.500]  I couldn't, couldn't eat food.
[28:49.800 --> 28:55.180]  I had to, you know, drip liquids into my mouth and let them seep through the gaps in my teeth.
[28:56.120 --> 29:07.700]  Um, mind you, right after surgery, um, after getting out of the hospital and, and thrown into an infectious disease ward in the prison, uh, where people with tuberculosis and hepatitis are, were routinely held.
[29:08.800 --> 29:19.400]  I didn't know that broken jaws and arms were infectious, but, or at least I didn't know they were contagious, but, um, government, the, uh, prison officials apparently put everybody in the same, same category that way.
[29:19.700 --> 29:22.080]  Um, I wasn't even given any pain reliever.
[29:22.340 --> 29:26.340]  The, in the hospital I was on morphine for one day, then taken back to the prison.
[29:27.080 --> 29:31.420]  And, uh, against both of my surgeon's orders, I was not given any pain medication.
[29:31.960 --> 29:40.340]  And, uh, I think that was the worst part of my experience is, uh, I remember lying in bed with, uh, multiple fractures, uh, without any pain reliever.
[29:40.860 --> 29:44.180]  And, uh, I learned the true meaning of physical pain, then.
[29:45.180 --> 29:50.520]  Um, I got pretty depressed, then, too, because I couldn't eat, and the guards would bring me solid food.
[29:50.700 --> 29:53.660]  Uh, the first night, they brought me a stuffed pepper to eat.
[29:54.360 --> 30:03.900]  And, uh, I, I couldn't even eat, uh, because of the pain, but, uh, even if I had any appetite, which I didn't, um, there's no way I could have eaten a stuffed pepper.
[30:04.100 --> 30:05.860]  It was, my jaws were completely wired shut.
[30:05.960 --> 30:08.480]  The best I could do was, uh, sip like chicken broth.
[30:08.480 --> 30:12.800]  And it was, uh, it was a full 24 hours before they brought me any liquid food.
[30:13.560 --> 30:25.320]  So, uh, anyhow, it was about a week, a week or so after that, that, uh, your, uh, your efforts and the efforts of, uh, your listeners to your radio program and, and to the readers of your magazine and to the, uh, mailing list and news group you set up, um, made enough impact to get me released.
[30:28.780 --> 30:33.240]  So I was released and, uh, took me about a month to recover from the, not totally recover.
[30:33.400 --> 30:36.300]  I can't, this is about as much as I can straighten my left arm out.
[30:37.140 --> 30:38.600]  Um, straighten my other arm out fine.
[30:38.780 --> 30:42.640]  But that's, that's where the titanium bar is and the, where the joint was damaged.
[30:43.060 --> 30:46.580]  And, uh, I can't open my mouth as much as I would like to.
[30:47.540 --> 30:50.260]  But, um, I'm glad to be alive and I'm glad to be out.
[30:50.480 --> 30:53.320]  And, uh, I'm happily living in Philadelphia now.
[30:53.920 --> 30:56.500]  Um, have a good job, have a nice apartment.
[30:56.840 --> 30:59.200]  And, uh, trying to put this whole thing behind me.
[30:59.320 --> 31:03.600]  But, what I'm, what I'm afraid of most is this happening to someone else.
[31:03.980 --> 31:10.860]  Um, being incarcerated and going through the hell I went through for, uh, uh, something the government admitted there were no victims in.
[31:11.480 --> 31:13.740]  And not one dime's worth of fraud occurring in.
[31:14.000 --> 31:17.480]  Well, the real reason was because you embarrassed some secret service agents.
[31:17.860 --> 31:18.080]  I mean...
[31:18.080 --> 31:23.180]  Yeah, this, this again was not, was, was confirmed by the prosecuting attorney who told my attorney.
[31:23.420 --> 31:28.680]  And my attorney worked with this prosecutor as a federal prosecutor himself for four years.
[31:30.260 --> 31:33.100]  After four years, I think he saw the light and became a defense attorney.
[31:33.680 --> 31:36.740]  And my attorney also has a very good reputation.
[31:36.940 --> 31:42.180]  He argued, he successfully argued a case before the United States Supreme Court at one time also.
[31:42.920 --> 31:45.320]  So he's no, uh, first attorney was terrible.
[31:45.500 --> 31:46.040]  I fired him.
[31:46.200 --> 31:51.200]  But this attorney that I had, uh, a couple months into my case, Kenneth Trujillo, out of Philadelphia.
[31:51.840 --> 31:53.400]  So it's a, really a good attorney.
[31:54.560 --> 32:00.100]  And, uh, his argument again was that I challenged the constitution, uh, constitutionality of the law.
[32:00.640 --> 32:14.340]  Which we did, but unfortunately he said he had the appeal he filed had to be kind of a bare bones, uh, appeal because he didn't have the financial resources and neither did I to put his full staff on it.
[32:15.200 --> 32:22.460]  Um, one thing you'll learn if you ever go through a federal or any kind of other criminal case, especially federal, you need a lot of money.
[32:22.580 --> 32:28.640]  And when I'm saying a lot of money, you need on the order of tens of thousands of dollars to mount an effective campaign.
[32:28.860 --> 32:36.680]  The government, uh, usually spends that much money in prosecuting the case, if not more, uh, that's your tax money.
[32:37.280 --> 32:41.620]  Um, and they have, you know, the best expert witnesses that money can buy.
[32:42.640 --> 32:48.280]  And, uh, in order to combat those witnesses, you have to hire your own expert witnesses, which are very expensive.
[32:49.140 --> 32:58.120]  Um, you need to have a staff of, of, of technically well-versed, uh, lawyers to go over all the case law.
[32:58.220 --> 33:01.760]  In my case, there was very little case law because it was the first person in the country charged with this thing.
[33:02.940 --> 33:11.320]  But, um, bottom line is my appeal was turned down because, uh, as my lawyer explained to me, he said they, uh, they rubber stamped it.
[33:11.400 --> 33:14.560]  They swallowed the, the government's argument whole.
[33:14.680 --> 33:15.660]  He said they swallowed it whole.
[33:16.140 --> 33:20.360]  And, uh, I'd like to make that, that appeal available to people.
[33:20.620 --> 33:37.300]  Um, I'll get it, I'll get a post on the internet sometime soon, but it goes into a lot of the details of why the statute is so vague that it could literally be used selectively to probably incarcerate most of the people in this room.
[33:37.460 --> 33:38.740]  I'm not saying that's going to happen.
[33:38.860 --> 33:40.940]  In fact, I, I don't think it's going to happen.
[33:41.500 --> 33:47.420]  Um, but when you have a vague law like that, it opens the possibility for abuse.
[33:47.740 --> 33:58.740]  And in my case, with the Secret Service, according to my prosecutor who confided to my attorney, this, uh, she was heavily pressured by the Secret Service to vigorously prosecute this case.
[33:59.320 --> 34:04.080]  And she said the real reason I was in prison was, again, because of the information I had in my files.
[34:04.620 --> 34:17.540]  Uh, also two Secret Service agents visited, uh, visited the individual who gave me these photographs and told him, and I'll, uh, I'll quote them, uh, nobody fucks with the Secret Service without us fucking with them.
[34:17.780 --> 34:21.240]  And with 2,000 agents, we're the biggest gang in town.
[34:21.900 --> 34:27.100]  And that's a quote, uh, the individual gave me those photographs that he was visited, and that's what they told him.
[34:27.540 --> 34:30.160]  So, uh, he closed his business and moved to California.
[34:31.420 --> 34:33.540]  And, uh, they didn't charge him, fortunately.
[34:33.860 --> 34:36.880]  All he did was give me some photographs, but that's a whole nother story.
[34:37.080 --> 34:37.420]  So...
[34:37.420 --> 34:44.460]  Well, Bernie, we, we, I, I think all of us here feel that, uh, we're very fortunate to have you here with us after all that.
[34:45.700 --> 34:48.520]  I really doubt I would have been able to maintain my sanity.
[34:49.040 --> 34:54.080]  Um, I went through a period of depression while I was, uh, incarcerated, especially after my injuries.
[34:54.620 --> 35:06.480]  And, uh, if I didn't know that a lot of people didn't care and were sending me mail, uh, telling me to hang in there, that they were following my case, I, uh, I probably would have gone into an abyss that I might not have ever climbed out of.
[35:06.580 --> 35:14.100]  So, uh, I was looking at some of the, uh, printouts you'd, uh, you'd given me of, uh, of the news group, uh, postings.
[35:14.100 --> 35:19.880]  And, uh, I, uh, actually shed a couple of tears looking that over that stuff a couple of days ago.
[35:20.080 --> 35:23.400]  I, I kind of shelved all that stuff because it was just so painful dealing with the whole situation.
[35:23.560 --> 35:24.520]  I didn't want to think about it much.
[35:24.680 --> 35:26.700]  I tried to kind of forget about the whole experience.
[35:27.120 --> 35:31.060]  But, uh, in preparing for, uh, for this conference, I dug all the stuff out and started reading it.
[35:31.160 --> 35:37.220]  And I was just so touched that people felt so strongly about what was happening to me as being wrong.
[35:37.460 --> 35:39.940]  And, uh, I'm never going to forget that.
[35:40.180 --> 35:49.760]  Um, that's one thing I can tell people, uh, if you know anyone who's going through something like this, uh, they're going to need all the support, moral and emotional support you can muster.
[35:50.100 --> 35:53.940]  Because, uh, it's a, it's a rough experience to go through.
[35:54.120 --> 36:03.560]  It's, uh, the best description I could manage to come up with for your radio program once was, uh, uh, it's like a combination of, uh, Alice in Wonderland and Franz Kafka.
[36:03.980 --> 36:08.640]  Uh, because nothing in that, in the world of the criminal justice system really is logical.
[36:08.920 --> 36:14.000]  Um, logic, compassion, and common sense simply aren't even part of the equation.
[36:14.700 --> 36:19.180]  Um, and if that doesn't seem to make sense to you, then just ask someone who's gone through it.
[36:19.360 --> 36:22.280]  And they'll, they'll tell you the same thing.
[36:22.540 --> 36:24.080]  So, thank you, everybody.
[36:24.340 --> 36:33.380]  All of you people who, who followed my case, who wrote me, who didn't write me, but were just there for me, uh, morally, just, uh, in private.
[36:33.500 --> 36:38.500]  All the good vibes you sent me, I think, got through those thick steel walls.
[36:39.120 --> 36:41.400]  And, uh, it made the difference for me.
[36:41.400 --> 36:42.160]  Thank you very much.
[36:49.460 --> 36:52.260]  Okay, Bernie, we're gonna put you on hold for just a little bit.
[36:52.540 --> 36:55.220]  Uh, there is a third case tonight to discuss.
[36:55.700 --> 36:58.220]  And, um, I believe he's still there.
[36:58.660 --> 36:59.100]  Okay.
[37:00.000 --> 37:02.060]  Phiber Optik is, uh, to my right.
[37:02.940 --> 37:04.540]  Uh, welcome, Phiber.
[37:05.400 --> 37:05.980]  Thank you.
[37:06.160 --> 37:06.420]  Thank you.
[37:08.240 --> 37:12.540]  Now, three years ago, at the first HOPE conference, Phiber Optik was in prison.
[37:12.940 --> 37:16.340]  A lot of us felt very badly having a conference without him being able to attend.
[37:16.920 --> 37:25.520]  And, um, we were brightened a little bit by having him, uh, call us live for the first time, uh, in the closing night of that conference.
[37:26.000 --> 37:30.060]  And we were actually able to, to talk to him, ask him some questions, things like that.
[37:30.300 --> 37:31.540]  This year, it's much better.
[37:31.660 --> 37:32.440]  This year, he's here.
[37:32.700 --> 37:33.800]  Still under some restrictions.
[37:34.460 --> 37:38.520]  But, um, well, let's, let's just hear, hear your story now.
[37:39.600 --> 37:40.680]  When did it all begin?
[37:40.960 --> 37:42.280]  Oh, where, where should I begin?
[37:42.280 --> 37:44.520]  Uh, there's, there's a lot I can say.
[37:45.100 --> 37:47.500]  Begin where you went wrong in the eyes of the government.
[37:48.180 --> 37:49.520]  Begin where I went wrong.
[37:49.700 --> 37:49.960]  Okay.
[37:50.660 --> 37:53.220]  Um, I was, I was about nine.
[37:53.620 --> 38:02.540]  No, um, I went wrong when in, um, January of 1990, uh, was, was probably the turning point of events.
[38:03.320 --> 38:12.280]  On, um, January 24th, I remember, um, that evening I was coming home from, uh, an internship that I had in high school.
[38:13.180 --> 38:22.800]  And, um, I was hanging out with a friend of mine, uh, actually a bunch of friends of mine, uh, from, from, uh, my old neighborhood where, where my parents live in Queens.
[38:24.000 --> 38:30.300]  And, um, one of my friends said, uh, something really strange is going on around, uh, around your house.
[38:30.460 --> 38:35.440]  There's all these, uh, vans and cars pulled up, uh, in the front and around the back.
[38:35.840 --> 38:38.040]  Um, so I thought that was kind of odd.
[38:38.860 --> 38:41.460]  Uh, eventually I went home.
[38:41.760 --> 38:44.340]  Um, it was, it was about dinner time and I was kind of hungry.
[38:44.860 --> 38:52.580]  And, uh, I walked in the door and, uh, I didn't see anybody and I walked into the kitchen and, uh, my, my mom was on the telephone.
[38:53.600 --> 39:00.480]  And, uh, before I could ask her what, you know, what was going on, there was, uh, a knock on the door.
[39:01.300 --> 39:19.860]  And so I walked back to the front door and I opened the door and, uh, it was, there was some secret service agent person's body filling the doorway, uh, and explaining that, um, they had, uh, already, uh, seized all my things and that they wanted to question me and they had been waiting outside.
[39:20.880 --> 39:34.500]  Um, they came in and they proceeded to, uh, sit down with a couple of people from, uh, NYNEX and, uh, and an individual from, from Bellcore, uh, in New Jersey.
[39:35.440 --> 39:43.340]  Um, and my, uh, my parents were really upset that they were trying to, uh, question me.
[39:43.440 --> 39:44.640]  I was 17 at the time.
[39:44.800 --> 39:46.400]  I was, uh, I was a minor.
[39:47.160 --> 39:50.780]  And, um, I obviously didn't have any, any attorney present.
[39:51.680 --> 40:14.040]  Um, from what I could tell of what they were saying before, uh, my parents asked them to leave, was, uh, they were aware of the fact that I had, uh, broken into various systems at, uh, within NYNEX, uh, switching systems, things of that nature that, uh, they were really upset about.
[40:15.140 --> 40:22.780]  And, um, as far as the Bellcore guy, I think he was just there as, uh, an on-site expert looking over things.
[40:23.320 --> 40:26.660]  And so they were, so they knew what they were taking or something like that.
[40:27.640 --> 40:35.780]  Um, although, um, I had actually had access to Bellcore machines in, uh, in the mid-'80s.
[40:35.840 --> 40:37.500]  I was never actually charged for it.
[40:37.960 --> 40:41.660]  But, um, I mean, they, they, they had all that evidence.
[40:41.860 --> 40:45.920]  And they, they chose to charge me with whatever I guess they thought was, was going to stick.
[40:46.260 --> 40:57.460]  Um, the interesting thing was, um, they accused me of having crashed the AT&T long distance network, which, uh, at that time had never happened before.
[40:58.100 --> 41:00.840]  Fortunately, since then, it's happened about three more times.
[41:01.380 --> 41:05.340]  Um, or I guess, unfortunately, depending who your long distance company is.
[41:06.380 --> 41:08.940]  But, at that time, it had never happened before.
[41:09.160 --> 41:13.180]  So, um, they were, they were really upset about it and all worked up.
[41:14.040 --> 41:24.300]  Uh, it was, um, it was, I think, around, uh, January 15th of 1990, around Martin Luther King Day, that it actually happened.
[41:24.700 --> 41:31.780]  And AT&T soon afterwards, made it known that it was, um, their own screw-up.
[41:32.220 --> 41:36.480]  But the, the Secret Service didn't really, uh, acknowledge that fact.
[41:36.620 --> 41:41.000]  So, they were, they were accusing me of having caused millions of dollars worth of damage.
[41:41.320 --> 41:45.080]  And they kept, every time we asked them, they would make up a different dollar amount.
[41:45.320 --> 41:51.680]  So, it became, uh, pretty apparent that, uh, they didn't know why they were there or what they were talking about.
[41:52.420 --> 42:00.000]  The, uh, obviously the people, people that knew the most about what was going on were, were the, uh, the people from NYNEX and Bellcore.
[42:01.480 --> 42:07.520]  But, um, they didn't really ask me as, uh, nearly as many questions as they probably would have wanted to.
[42:07.920 --> 42:10.220]  Uh, which was, uh, lucky for me.
[42:11.000 --> 42:27.640]  Because, uh, it, it's, uh, it's an unfortunate knee-jerk response that, uh, when you're, when you're doing all this stuff and you finally meet the people that are behind it, your first reaction is that you want to tell them everything.
[42:28.120 --> 42:31.380]  Because you want them to know where, where everything's screwed up.
[42:32.160 --> 42:40.020]  So, uh, the, the, the obvious problem with that is that you, you, you'd automatically incriminate yourself in, in all kinds of horrible ways.
[42:40.340 --> 42:45.160]  So, fortunately, uh, they didn't get the chance to ask me all the, all the, all kinds of questions.
[42:45.660 --> 42:49.480]  And so, I, I didn't, I didn't end up incriminating myself in any way.
[42:50.740 --> 43:04.580]  Um, they, um, they left us with a really vague copy of, uh, all the things that they had taken, which, you know, was basically anything conceivable that, that might possibly be electronic.
[43:05.240 --> 43:15.100]  Um, including, uh, things that they perceived to be storage medium, uh, including, uh, videotapes and things like that, cassette tapes.
[43:16.460 --> 43:29.900]  Um, I, uh, I got a hold of, uh, a couple of the, uh, the other guys that I was actually, you know, involved in the, these activities with, uh, to find out what had happened.
[43:30.000 --> 43:33.320]  And apparently the same things had happened to them, uh, simultaneously.
[43:33.380 --> 43:43.200]  In fact, the, uh, the, the agents, uh, conducting these, uh, searches and seizures were calling each other from between the houses.
[43:43.200 --> 43:50.000]  It was actually a synchronized raid because they were concerned that we would notify the other, uh, that this was happening.
[43:50.780 --> 44:04.900]  Um, but it was, um, that was, that was a pretty, uh, harrowing experience, but it was also, um, uh, pretty confusing experience because we were rather young at the time when it happened.
[44:05.220 --> 44:07.380]  We didn't really know, uh, what to make of it.
[44:07.580 --> 44:21.460]  And, uh, there was a lot of, uh, media exposure at a time when, uh, hackers weren't really getting very, very much, uh, media attention, not nearly as much as they do today.
[44:22.380 --> 44:33.500]  So all of us as a whole in general, we're really starved for, for attention to, to, to just get, get the word out about, you know, what it is we do and who we are.
[44:35.100 --> 44:42.580]  So in some ways, I think we saw, um, getting, getting busted as an opportunity to tell our story.
[44:43.800 --> 44:56.260]  And unfortunately, in a lot of ways that, that, that worked against us because, uh, the, uh, the media was, was, uh, greatly biased in the, in the direction of, of the government.
[44:57.440 --> 45:01.120]  Um, excuse me.
[45:07.470 --> 45:13.550]  What, what ended up happening is, um, does anybody else hear a hum when I'm talking?
[45:15.750 --> 45:17.810]  Manuel, why, why is it humming while I'm talking?
[45:18.210 --> 45:19.210]  I'm not in charge of the hum.
[45:19.330 --> 45:19.890]  Maybe our sound person knows that.
[45:19.890 --> 45:21.290]  I'm getting serious feedback.
[45:27.400 --> 45:27.800]  Okay.
[45:27.940 --> 45:29.900]  We might be the only ones hearing the hum, so.
[45:30.920 --> 45:31.320]  Okay.
[45:31.320 --> 45:31.800]  All right.
[45:31.860 --> 45:34.040]  I'll try moving the, the mic, uh, further away.
[45:35.340 --> 45:35.940]  Um, anyway.
[45:40.980 --> 45:45.240]  After they left, we basically didn't hear from them for, uh, for another year.
[45:45.980 --> 45:57.380]  And what had happened in the process, since I was, uh, a minor, they, uh, they dropped it, they dropped the charges to, uh, state charge.
[45:57.880 --> 46:03.760]  And the, uh, the state charge was, um, I don't, I don't even remember what it was anymore.
[46:03.760 --> 46:06.320]  It was, it was a, uh, it was something really minor.
[46:06.320 --> 46:10.140]  Um, it was a, uh, it was a misdemeanor.
[46:10.620 --> 46:12.900]  And I was charged as a youthful offender.
[46:15.160 --> 46:22.080]  Um, and I was basically ordered to do, I think it was something like 30 hours of community service.
[46:22.080 --> 46:23.680]  It was something really, really minor.
[46:23.880 --> 46:26.400]  And it was over and done with fairly quickly.
[46:27.580 --> 46:43.720]  Um, now, uh, that year, the year of, uh, 1991, and really the whole time after, uh, what initially happened, uh, we were so involved in what it was that we were doing.
[46:44.240 --> 46:53.960]  And we were so convinced that since we had just been busted, that we knew everything that they could possibly do to us.
[46:54.220 --> 46:59.440]  So, it was almost as if we were, uh, led into a false sense of relief.
[47:00.060 --> 47:05.280]  It's like, you, you know, you're, for 10 years, you're living on the edge as a little kid.
[47:05.480 --> 47:13.180]  And you figure, you know, at any given moment, you know, there could be a knock on the door, or, or, you know, some, some federal agents might bust in.
[47:13.180 --> 47:16.080]  And then, all of a sudden, it actually happens.
[47:16.940 --> 47:21.460]  It's, it's almost, psychologically, it's almost like you convince yourself, well, okay, now the worst is over.
[47:21.660 --> 47:23.860]  I can go back to what I was doing before this happened.
[47:26.480 --> 47:34.880]  So, essentially, um, we, uh, changed, uh, to, to a certain degree, we changed our, uh, method of operation.
[47:36.200 --> 47:40.960]  And, um, redirected our focus on, uh, slightly different endeavors.
[47:40.960 --> 47:47.760]  Uh, and for the following year, 1991, we were, uh, extremely successful in what it was we were doing.
[47:48.540 --> 47:55.000]  Um, towards the, uh, towards the end of that year, uh, trouble resurfaced.
[47:55.860 --> 47:59.040]  And it was actually the day before Pearl Harbor Day.
[47:59.060 --> 48:02.140]  It was December 6th, 1991.
[48:03.060 --> 48:07.920]  Um, the, uh, I, it was, um, a peculiar night.
[48:08.240 --> 48:13.200]  I remember, um, going to sleep at about four or five in the morning.
[48:13.860 --> 48:16.260]  Uh, it was the winter, so it was still dark out.
[48:17.080 --> 48:20.340]  And, uh, the, uh, the neighbor's dogs were making a lot of noise.
[48:20.340 --> 48:26.120]  And the, uh, the neighbor's car alarm in the back driveway behind my parents' house kept going off.
[48:26.380 --> 48:27.540]  We thought that was kind of peculiar.
[48:27.980 --> 48:29.440]  But nothing out of the ordinary.
[48:30.360 --> 48:32.820]  Um, so, anyway, I went to sleep.
[48:33.920 --> 48:36.560]  And I just passed out because I was really tired.
[48:36.700 --> 48:38.700]  I'd been up packing all night.
[48:39.260 --> 48:49.780]  And, um, in the morning at about, uh, I think at about 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning, um, the strangest thing happened.
[48:50.400 --> 48:56.860]  I was, uh, I was awoken by, uh, two FBI agents, guns drawn in my room.
[48:57.760 --> 49:13.500]  And, um, they, they didn't seem very amused, but the worst part is that I didn't really take them very seriously initially and, uh, tried to go back to sleep because I figured that, you know, it's just completely ridiculous that something like that could be happening.
[49:14.820 --> 49:19.240]  But, um, they, they, they, they weren't really amused.
[49:19.460 --> 49:25.420]  And, um, they, uh, they pulled the, uh, they pulled the covers off me.
[49:25.600 --> 49:26.640]  They pulled the sheets off.
[49:27.340 --> 49:30.960]  And, um, I, I normally sleep in my underwears.
[49:30.960 --> 49:36.940]  And, uh, they, they asked me if, if, uh, if I had a pair of pants I could throw on.
[49:37.200 --> 49:43.360]  And I, uh, motioned across the room, still half awake, and they tossed me a pair of jeans, which I put on.
[49:43.920 --> 49:47.720]  And, um, they, they marched me, uh, down the stairs.
[49:48.200 --> 49:57.180]  And on my way down, uh, down the stairs, I noticed that the house was filled with scurrying agents like cockroaches.
[49:57.180 --> 50:05.160]  There were FBI and secret service agents scurrying in and out of every room on every floor.
[50:05.400 --> 50:06.720]  It was, it was unbelievable.
[50:07.040 --> 50:08.540]  It was, it was like E.T.
[50:08.780 --> 50:10.600]  was dying in my parents' house or something.
[50:11.180 --> 50:12.980]  There was, there were just, they were everywhere.
[50:13.520 --> 50:15.680]  It was like they had it sealed off.
[50:16.060 --> 50:22.320]  Apparently what had happened, um, and I never heard them coming, is, um, they entered through the back door.
[50:22.540 --> 50:26.280]  They went through, um, my parents' backyard and they, they had a battering ram.
[50:26.780 --> 50:30.040]  And they, they literally just busted in the back door.
[50:30.940 --> 50:33.720]  And, uh, snuck upstairs, I'm sure very quietly.
[50:34.100 --> 50:38.580]  Even though they claimed that they knocked, no one answered, and then they proceeded to break in.
[50:39.260 --> 50:41.900]  Um, which is, which is, you know, always the case.
[50:42.980 --> 50:46.020]  But, um, they, uh...
[50:46.020 --> 50:46.800]  They came
[52:05.060 --> 52:08.780]  with, uh, search lines that were not yet signed by anybody.
[52:19.300 --> 52:23.400]  The case is the search line was delivered while they were already signed.
[52:23.840 --> 52:27.640]  So they literally broke the wall and, like, busted into the house.
[52:28.820 --> 52:30.620]  Well, the first time, they knocked,
[52:36.700 --> 52:38.920]  because they didn't have a signature.
[52:39.480 --> 52:42.600]  The, uh, the second time, in 91, they just proceeded to break in.
[53:08.870 --> 53:15.250]  So, um, they had, they had a number of Secret Service trainees, which I think
[53:29.190 --> 53:30.310]  was very exciting.
[53:30.630 --> 53:30.630]  And
[53:33.730 --> 53:37.750]  so, so, I, that was, that was kind of surreal.
[53:38.610 --> 53:39.030]  That, you know.
[53:47.670 --> 53:49.210]  But, uh, so, they, uh,
[56:21.380 --> 56:21.600]  they...
[56:22.160 --> 56:28.980]  One of, one of the people from the media, I, at this point, I had already, I had already met with a lot of media people and knew many of them that were there.
[56:29.360 --> 56:31.920]  And, uh, one of them handed me a copy of the indictment.
[56:32.400 --> 56:36.840]  And, um, while the, the, uh, the indictment was still happening.
[56:37.280 --> 56:40.120]  Or, rather, while this press conference was still happening.
[56:40.580 --> 56:50.240]  Um, me and, me and a couple of friends went over to, um, one of the federal buildings where they, uh, where they assign, um, legal counsel.
[56:51.140 --> 57:00.740]  Um, which, um, in the federal system is, is, uh, slightly different from, uh, from a, um, public defender.
[57:01.600 --> 57:05.720]  It's, uh, it's similar, but it's a higher classification of attorney.
[57:06.040 --> 57:09.580]  Um, which is provided through what's known as the Criminal Justice Act.
[57:09.800 --> 57:12.780]  Because, at that time, I was, I was, uh, 18.
[57:13.120 --> 57:16.220]  I certainly wasn't working and didn't have the money to hire an attorney.
[57:16.960 --> 57:24.140]  Um, we went over to the building and, uh, went to apply for, uh, for a court-appointed attorney.
[57:24.140 --> 57:34.900]  And the, um, the person behind the desk, um, couldn't find any record of, of the fact that I was in any kind of legal trouble whatsoever.
[57:34.900 --> 57:41.220]  And was questioning why, in fact, I was, I was, uh, registering myself for, for legal aid.
[57:41.220 --> 57:48.340]  And I was trying to explain to her that I was, at this very moment, being indicted in the building right across the way.
[57:48.880 --> 57:50.800]  And that, that only confused her.
[57:51.140 --> 57:53.720]  And it was, it just didn't work out.
[57:56.160 --> 58:01.100]  Um, so we went back to the building, uh, where they were holding the press conference.
[58:01.140 --> 58:02.580]  And we could hear what they were saying.
[58:03.060 --> 58:06.680]  And a lot of the media people just didn't understand why this was such a big deal.
[58:07.500 --> 58:09.020]  Um, and neither did I, really.
[58:09.020 --> 58:14.460]  Um, the, uh, the government was trying to make it sound like it was, it was the end of the world.
[58:15.760 --> 58:21.360]  But, um, the, uh, the media was really looking for where the actual damage was.
[58:21.520 --> 58:26.240]  Which there wasn't really any, um, any, any real conceivable damage.
[58:26.480 --> 58:30.140]  Other, may, other than maybe the damage to the pride of the corporations involved.
[58:31.120 --> 58:44.300]  Um, so, so, uh, at the, at the end of the press conference, um, uh, one of the, the people that walked over to me actually turned out to be the, uh, the assistant US attorney.
[58:44.660 --> 58:48.400]  And gave me his card and said that, uh, I would have to get in touch with him.
[58:48.840 --> 58:57.360]  And also, the, uh, Secret Service agent in charge of the case, uh, also came over and said that, um, I...
[58:57.360 --> 59:01.340]  that they were, they were giving me the option to surrender myself.
[59:02.620 --> 59:09.820]  And, uh, and, uh, and that they, they weren't gonna take me into custody because I was not, apparently I was not a violent person.
[59:10.660 --> 59:11.760]  Or, or, or so they thought.
[59:12.340 --> 59:19.900]  Um, so, um, I got, got in touch with whoever else, you know, wasn't there and wasn't aware that all this was happening.
[59:19.900 --> 59:25.180]  And I told them basically that we had to surrender ourselves or else they were gonna come after us.
[59:25.680 --> 59:30.220]  Um, by, by a given date, which I think was, was within a week.
[59:30.980 --> 59:41.340]  And we basically had to go down out of our own free will and, uh, get processed by the, uh, Secret Service, at the Secret Service headquarters, which is at 6th World Trade Center.
[59:42.120 --> 59:49.000]  And, um, by, we had to get processed by the FBI, which you don't actually go to the FBI headquarters.
[59:49.480 --> 59:57.540]  Um, which I could tell you where it is, but they probably wouldn't like that very much because people don't normally go there or rather people aren't supposed to know where it is.
[59:58.000 --> 01:00:02.180]  Um, but the FBI actually has you processed by the U.S.
[01:00:02.340 --> 01:00:02.600]  Marshal.
[01:00:03.280 --> 01:00:04.220]  So, and the U.S.
[01:00:04.340 --> 01:00:08.140]  Marshal was actually, uh, in the basement of the, uh, of the court building.
[01:00:08.940 --> 01:00:14.700]  And, uh, so when I say processed, I mean you're basically fingerprinted and photographed and all that, all that nonsense.
[01:00:15.500 --> 01:00:22.600]  Um, the, uh, the funny thing is when I went to be processed in, uh, the U.S.
[01:00:22.800 --> 01:00:32.820]  Marshal's office, um, this was around the time that they had just caught the, uh, the guys who had bombed the World Trade Center.
[01:00:33.460 --> 01:00:35.540]  And they were waiting in there, too.
[01:00:36.020 --> 01:00:46.740]  So, I'm basically standing there and there's like, you know, there's these half dozen Arab guys that are just, you know, babbling to each other in, you know, in Arabic.
[01:00:47.480 --> 01:00:53.040]  And they're just looking at me like, you know, like, like I should die for some reason.
[01:00:53.040 --> 01:00:56.740]  I guess because I wasn't, you know, I wasn't Islamic or something.
[01:00:57.380 --> 01:01:00.280]  Um, and, uh, so that made me feel really uncomfortable.
[01:01:00.280 --> 01:01:03.380]  But there was, uh, again, there was something really surreal about that.
[01:01:04.020 --> 01:01:08.480]  Um, so eventually they, they took them in.
[01:01:08.820 --> 01:01:10.940]  And, uh, they, they took them into a cell.
[01:01:13.040 --> 01:01:16.900]  And they, uh, they seemed to be, uh, completely indifferent to what was going on.
[01:01:23.230 --> 01:01:34.870]  And, um, ultimately I was, um, I was fingerprinted and photographed and, uh, and then released.
[01:01:37.570 --> 01:01:47.230]  And then, um, some time had passed and, sorry, I'm really thirsty.
[01:01:47.930 --> 01:01:48.530]  Um,
[01:01:54.020 --> 01:01:55.640]  some time passed after that.
[01:01:55.840 --> 01:02:00.640]  And, uh, I'm trying to remember exactly how, how much time.
[01:02:01.620 --> 01:02:04.380]  Um, but, one second.
[01:02:08.710 --> 01:02:10.310]  Whose throat is dry in here?
[01:02:10.850 --> 01:02:11.610]  Is it me?
[01:02:12.390 --> 01:02:13.770]  It's really dry in here.
[01:02:17.040 --> 01:02:18.080]  Do you need some water?
[01:02:18.480 --> 01:02:19.820]  I got some water over here.
[01:02:19.960 --> 01:02:21.620]  I'm just, I'm just guzzling some down.
[01:02:21.860 --> 01:02:22.680]  Because I'm choking.
[01:02:26.870 --> 01:02:33.070]  Barbara, if, if you could zip through your whole prison career, uh, in, about the next three minutes, that would be really nice.
[01:02:33.270 --> 01:02:34.370]  Because we should take some questions.
[01:02:36.010 --> 01:02:36.510]  All right.
[01:02:36.650 --> 01:02:38.230]  Let's, let's, let's fast forward a little bit.
[01:02:39.050 --> 01:02:52.530]  Um, which basically what I was getting to is that, uh, some time had passed and we were notified by mail, all of us, that, um, we were, uh, well, okay.
[01:02:52.610 --> 01:02:53.770]  I got to the indictment part.
[01:02:53.890 --> 01:02:54.510]  We were indicted.
[01:02:54.610 --> 01:02:55.470]  We were processed.
[01:02:56.390 --> 01:03:07.910]  Um, we went through, uh, the whole mess of, uh, initially, uh, some of us wanted to go to trial and others that were wanted, uh, for more counts in the indictment did not want to go to trial.
[01:03:08.250 --> 01:03:12.930]  So, um, we were immediately divided amongst ourselves.
[01:03:13.290 --> 01:03:32.750]  Um, because obviously those of us who had only one or two charges didn't want to, um, necessarily be held under the, uh, uh, held under the, the same, um, responsibility, uh, for, for what had happened as, as the people that were charged with, with, uh,
[01:03:33.630 --> 01:03:34.550]  the bulk of the indictment.
[01:03:35.510 --> 01:03:40.270]  So, that, that really divided us and, uh, it got really ugly, uh, after a while.
[01:03:40.810 --> 01:03:58.090]  I was the only remaining person who had not pled guilty and was preparing to go to trial and just ultimately just threw in the towel because I, uh, had weighed the risk, had, had gotten all the discovery material provided to me of all the evidence that was collected.
[01:03:58.510 --> 01:04:10.030]  And I just said that, uh, I was facing, uh, uh, a conspiracy charge, which carried, uh, two to five years in prison and, um, a quarter of a million dollars in fines.
[01:04:10.070 --> 01:04:22.870]  And in addition to that, I was facing a second charge, uh, unauthorized access to federal interest computers, which was also a felony and carried the same penalty, two to five years and $250,000 in fines.
[01:04:23.430 --> 01:04:40.690]  So, um, even if I was able to convince the jury that one of those things wasn't true and they convicted me and the other, then I would still go to, go to prison for five years and I, I would be a really poor man when I got out.
[01:04:41.690 --> 01:04:44.290]  So, uh, that really didn't seem worth it.
[01:04:44.730 --> 01:04:48.050]  So, ultimately I ended up pleading guilty.
[01:04:48.690 --> 01:04:54.430]  Um, I was notified by mail along with everyone else when we were supposed to report to prison.
[01:04:55.110 --> 01:05:01.130]  Um, and basically, uh, of course this is uh, assuming that we were already sentenced, which we were.
[01:05:01.590 --> 01:05:11.650]  And, uh, I was quickly sentenced to, uh, to a year and a day, uh, 600 hours of community service and three years of, uh, supervised release.
[01:05:13.070 --> 01:05:23.310]  And, um, I was, uh, supposed to report to prison in, uh, I believe it was 1994, in, uh, January of 1994.
[01:05:24.430 --> 01:05:31.050]  And the, the irony of the whole thing is, um, we went out and, uh, stayed at Bernie's that weekend.
[01:05:32.130 --> 01:05:35.290]  And, uh, we never would have imagined.
[01:05:36.390 --> 01:05:42.490]  We, we never would have imagined at that time, uh, that, that one day I would be free and Bernie would be in prison.
[01:05:43.250 --> 01:05:45.470]  Um, never, never really crossed our minds.
[01:05:46.130 --> 01:05:53.590]  But, um, basically me and Emmanuel and a couple other of our friends, um, drove out and, uh, had a weekend at Bernie's.
[01:05:53.710 --> 01:05:53.910]  Exactly.
[01:05:57.790 --> 01:05:58.290]  Um...
[01:05:58.290 --> 01:05:59.150]  Snowstorm!
[01:05:59.910 --> 01:06:00.410]  Yeah.
[01:06:00.690 --> 01:06:02.830]  There was, um, there was a great snowstorm.
[01:06:02.990 --> 01:06:03.490]  Ice storm.
[01:06:03.570 --> 01:06:08.450]  A great, a great and terrible ice storm that swept through Philadelphia.
[01:06:09.350 --> 01:06:15.450]  And it was, it was amazing because there were just blankets of ice on everything.
[01:06:15.710 --> 01:06:16.330]  On cars.
[01:06:16.630 --> 01:06:18.250]  They didn't even look like cars anymore.
[01:06:18.430 --> 01:06:22.310]  They just looked like lumps, of, of, of, of snow and ice.
[01:06:22.690 --> 01:06:25.450]  And all the bushes and shrubs were frozen solid.
[01:06:25.870 --> 01:06:28.730]  And the streets were just sheets of, sheets of ice.
[01:06:28.930 --> 01:06:33.510]  We had to crawl through the streets of Philadelphia to, uh, to, uh, to find a place to eat.
[01:06:33.730 --> 01:06:34.910]  We couldn't stand upright.
[01:06:34.930 --> 01:06:35.570]  It was that slippery.
[01:06:35.850 --> 01:06:41.910]  The governor declared, uh, declared a state of emergency and, and said that no one could legally drive on the streets.
[01:06:42.830 --> 01:06:44.370]  So we were in a, we had a, we had a problem.
[01:06:45.350 --> 01:06:45.710]  Yeah.
[01:06:45.810 --> 01:06:46.810]  Phiber had to get to prison.
[01:06:46.990 --> 01:06:49.070]  And the governor said, you couldn't.
[01:06:49.190 --> 01:06:50.430]  And the fed said, you had to.
[01:06:52.210 --> 01:06:52.570]  Yeah.
[01:06:52.590 --> 01:06:57.070]  The, the real problem was I was supposed to report to prison at a particular date.
[01:06:57.550 --> 01:06:59.610]  And, uh, all, all the roads were closed.
[01:07:00.370 --> 01:07:07.530]  And, uh, basically we, uh, we had, well, Bernie had contacted the prison and, you know, told them, hey, the roads are closed.
[01:07:07.670 --> 01:07:11.790]  How was, uh, how was I supposed to, uh, report to prison?
[01:07:11.950 --> 01:07:12.730]  And they said, oh, don't worry.
[01:07:12.850 --> 01:07:14.410]  Just, uh, come, come tomorrow.
[01:07:14.630 --> 01:07:16.030]  And then the next day, come tomorrow.
[01:07:16.230 --> 01:07:17.830]  Just come as soon as the roads are open.
[01:07:18.730 --> 01:07:24.470]  And, uh, we ended up actually getting there late on, um, I think it was either a Friday or a Saturday night.
[01:07:24.610 --> 01:07:25.310]  Saturday night.
[01:07:25.570 --> 01:07:25.710]  Yeah.
[01:07:26.150 --> 01:07:42.730]  And, uh, unfortunately, and, um, something that they didn't reveal to us was that, uh, there's nobody to process you as a, uh, as a, a new inmate, uh, on the weekend.
[01:07:42.970 --> 01:07:55.970]  So I was actually, uh, taken into the, uh, the medium security prison, um, that is actually, that is attached to the, um, the, the prison work camp that I was supposed to go to.
[01:07:56.850 --> 01:08:06.930]  Um, and, uh, I was taken to, uh, I was taken to, uh, to a place, uh, known as the hole, which I'm sure you've, you've seen in movies on television.
[01:08:07.270 --> 01:08:12.690]  The only difference is that when you're put in the hole in real life, you're not naked.
[01:08:13.010 --> 01:08:14.410]  There aren't rats running around.
[01:08:14.510 --> 01:08:15.910]  Well, sometimes there's rats running around.
[01:08:16.070 --> 01:08:16.850]  I shouldn't say that.
[01:08:17.430 --> 01:08:19.250]  Um, in the place that I was at, there were not.
[01:08:19.470 --> 01:08:23.850]  But, uh, you're not naked and you're not laying on the floor in your own urine in the dark.
[01:08:24.070 --> 01:08:25.630]  So that part is a little different.
[01:08:25.930 --> 01:08:29.510]  But, um, it is, uh, it is equally as depressing.
[01:08:30.130 --> 01:08:36.190]  And I was in this isolation for, uh, about, um, about a, uh, day and a half.
[01:08:39.370 --> 01:08:53.990]  Which, um, I found, uh, rather maddening because the only thing you, the only thing you really have to do is, um, look at the halogen, uh, spotlights outside your really tiny window.
[01:08:54.890 --> 01:09:02.350]  Or, uh, you could read the scratchings on the wall that were made by some other unfortunate person, uh, who was there before you.
[01:09:03.390 --> 01:09:14.870]  Um, and you, you kind of feel like you're in the, uh, the Twilight Zone episode where, where Roddy McDowell is in the room that looks like a perfect replica of, like, a 1960s living room.
[01:09:15.270 --> 01:09:22.030]  Except, uh, they, they open up the front wall and it's people looking in through a piece of glass and he's actually in a zoo on a foreign planet.
[01:09:22.770 --> 01:09:26.490]  Um, you, you kind of feel like that because they feed you through a little hole in the door.
[01:09:26.850 --> 01:09:29.930]  They actually unlock and they shove a tray of food through.
[01:09:33.230 --> 01:09:33.630]  Um,
[01:09:38.470 --> 01:09:38.950]  excuse me.
[01:10:18.720 --> 01:10:19.300]  Thank you.
[01:10:19.480 --> 01:10:19.760]  Thank you.
[01:10:19.900 --> 01:10:20.660]  That's, that's good water.
[01:10:21.560 --> 01:10:23.880]  Um, there's still some left outside, you know.
[01:10:24.120 --> 01:10:24.480]  Okay.
[01:10:24.680 --> 01:10:26.540]  Well, it's not, I got a few more gulps left.
[01:10:26.720 --> 01:10:29.120]  It's just very dry up here talking for so long.
[01:10:29.540 --> 01:10:33.280]  Anyway, um, where was I?
[01:10:33.440 --> 01:10:34.500]  Oh, being fed through a hole.
[01:10:34.760 --> 01:10:34.840]  Yeah.
[01:10:35.360 --> 01:10:43.760]  Um, so ultimately, um, I, I, I got the, uh, the same carrot suit that, uh, Bernie had, had described.
[01:10:44.800 --> 01:10:55.320]  And, um, I was marched around between buildings in the snow with, um, with these really thin, uh, rubber-soled shoes.
[01:10:55.660 --> 01:10:56.700]  And I was extremely cold.
[01:10:57.700 --> 01:11:05.280]  And, uh, I, I often joke around with friends of mine, because when you're, you're actually stripped down naked when you first get there.
[01:11:07.100 --> 01:11:15.820]  And one of the things that, uh, that they, that they ask you to, well, they, they do, they tell you to do two really funny things with, uh, with your privates.
[01:11:16.360 --> 01:11:23.440]  And, uh, one, one of the things that they tell you, and this is the exact lingo that they use, they tell you to lift your sack.
[01:11:24.380 --> 01:11:27.340]  And then they tell you to turn around and spread your cheeks.
[01:11:27.900 --> 01:11:36.920]  And, uh, which is something that makes you feel extremely uncomfortable, especially because, uh, the two guys telling you to do it are hillbillies from, from the mountains of Pennsylvania.
[01:11:42.500 --> 01:11:46.400]  So, um, that was, uh, that was a very, uh, peculiar experience.
[01:11:47.240 --> 01:11:52.920]  Um, luckily I, uh, I left the room with my manhood intact.
[01:11:53.400 --> 01:11:55.780]  And, um, I was given a, thank you.
[01:11:59.900 --> 01:12:01.960]  I was given, I was given a fresh supply of water.
[01:12:02.140 --> 01:12:10.940]  No, I, I, uh, was given a, uh, I was given, I was given one of these, uh, very same, uh, carrot suits, orange jumpsuit.
[01:12:11.480 --> 01:12:14.800]  And I was sent to, um, uh, building to be photographed.
[01:12:15.520 --> 01:12:32.540]  And, um, the really funny part was that it was a Polaroid camera, which are the easiest cameras in the world to use because you load the film, you snap the picture, you pull out the film, you peel off the paper, and you have yourself a picture.
[01:12:32.960 --> 01:12:39.940]  Well, for whatever reason, these two particularly swift gentlemen had horrible trouble doing this.
[01:12:40.600 --> 01:12:56.760]  And, um, they succeeded in repeatedly putting the film in backwards, not having the camera plugged in when they snapped the film, pulled out the film, and ripped the paper off to reveal a glob of acid on the paper that didn't really look very much like me.
[01:12:57.040 --> 01:13:03.620]  So, um, I was, uh, I was in the, uh, the picture taking session for, for quite some time.
[01:13:04.600 --> 01:13:17.880]  Ultimately, they were able to, uh, successfully photograph me, uh, give me a number, have me repeat the number back to them, which was my inmate number, and, uh, fingerprint me, and, uh, and the whole nine yards.
[01:13:18.380 --> 01:13:24.480]  Um, and by then it was probably, uh, I, I estimated about two or three in the morning, and I was getting pretty tired.
[01:13:25.780 --> 01:13:29.980]  Um, let's see.
[01:13:30.180 --> 01:13:31.440]  What happened next?
[01:13:31.860 --> 01:13:40.100]  Um, well, okay, by, by this time I was, I was living in the hole for the remainder of the weekend after I had been processed.
[01:13:40.960 --> 01:14:03.560]  Um, after eating, um, something that they claimed was food, and, uh, because of the fact that I was, I was already under an, an incredible, uh, degree of stress, um, on Monday morning, late Monday morning, uh, I wasn't feeling too good, so I decided I was going to walk over to the toilet and proceed to vomit all over it,
[01:14:03.680 --> 01:14:05.900]  which made me feel a whole lot better at the time.
[01:14:06.780 --> 01:14:28.840]  Um, and then I was, uh, I was, sometime later I was escorted out of, uh, out of the hole, and, um, taken over to, uh, to some other building, and given a, uh, a change of clothes, because, um, in the, uh, in the, in the prison camp, you don't actually wear the,
[01:14:28.840 --> 01:14:30.480]  the orange jumpsuit thing anymore.
[01:14:30.700 --> 01:14:43.020]  You wear, um, what looks like clothes that weren't good enough to be used on Gomer Pyle, because they, they were, they were defective or too cheaply made or something.
[01:14:43.360 --> 01:14:55.700]  But, um, but they're basically, uh, khaki shirts and khaki pants, and, uh, and some, uh, steel-toed boots, uh, which was the, the standard issue, prison wear.
[01:14:56.020 --> 01:15:07.960]  So, um, I, I still have to laugh when I, when I see people in the street that are, you know, wearing, uh, Levi's, uh, cotton dockers or something like that, because I, I think they look like they just came out of prison.
[01:15:08.260 --> 01:15:10.560]  It just looks ridiculous to me.
[01:15:11.040 --> 01:15:13.660]  And anywhere, and anybody wearing tan or khaki.
[01:15:14.040 --> 01:15:26.820]  Um, but anyway, um, that's, that's, that's what, uh, you normally wore when you were, uh, doing work or, um, when, uh, when you, when you had, uh, visits from, uh, from the outside.
[01:15:27.540 --> 01:15:34.600]  Uh, otherwise you could, you could, uh, you could wear sweatpants, which you had to purchase, or, uh, or t-shirts and so on.
[01:15:35.460 --> 01:15:35.680]  Um,
[01:15:38.760 --> 01:15:54.020]  I guess this is where, if things aren't strange enough already, this, this is, uh, the point where things get really strange because, um, prison life, if you want to actually refer to it as life, is, um, extremely peculiar.
[01:15:54.940 --> 01:16:06.340]  Um, there's, there's this whole other language that people use, uh, in reference to various things that you're either familiar or totally unfamiliar with.
[01:16:07.100 --> 01:16:19.960]  Um, some of the language is actually a hybrid of, that's really made up of the, uh, the predominant, um, places that the majority of inmates are from.
[01:16:20.220 --> 01:16:43.420]  So, for example, a lot of, a lot of the slang that's spoken in prison is kind of a hybrid between, uh, New York City, New Jersey, um, Philadelphia, and, um, a couple other places, and kind of fused together along with this other long-standing prison lingo that apparently people take with them when they're transferred from prison to prison.
[01:16:44.140 --> 01:16:54.800]  And, uh, some of the words are, uh, or, uh, I guess prisoner, um, were coined by prisoners, but other terms apparently were, uh, coined by the Bureau of Prisons.
[01:16:55.320 --> 01:17:07.700]  And if you don't really pay attention, pretty soon you start to realize that a lot of these terms were, were, were made up, um, with some kind of psychological reasoning behind them.
[01:17:08.100 --> 01:17:11.220]  Um, like, for, I'm trying to think of some really good examples.
[01:17:12.220 --> 01:17:31.000]  Um, okay, for, let's say, for example, you're having a problem with another inmate, or with, um, the, the person that you're working for, or whatever, whatever the problem may be, you, uh, you fill out a form, uh, and what this form is actually called,
[01:17:31.000 --> 01:17:32.940]  it's known as a cop-out.
[01:17:33.860 --> 01:17:37.420]  And you say, okay, a cop-out, I need to fill out a cop-out.
[01:17:37.760 --> 01:17:39.980]  What, am I, am I copping out in some way?
[01:17:40.080 --> 01:17:40.920]  I don't really understand.
[01:17:41.300 --> 01:17:51.040]  So, there's like, there's this really weird psychological thing going on that's sort of subconsciously imposed upon you the entire time that you're there.
[01:17:51.640 --> 01:18:07.120]  Um, not to mention, um, the fact that there are, uh, there are, there are, uh, what's known as, uh, counts, um, at, at regular intervals, uh, not counting emergency fog counts.
[01:18:07.940 --> 01:18:16.040]  Um, counts are basically head counts, where, um, everybody has to return to their bunk, and they have to be accounted for.
[01:18:16.720 --> 01:18:35.040]  And then you really see what type of person actually qualifies for, uh, uh, for, uh, for a, uh, for a corrections officer is, um, the person who, who failed basic arithmetic in kindergarten, because, um, you'd be surprised how many times they have to recount.
[01:18:35.280 --> 01:18:47.500]  Basically, the way it works is they have two CO's, or what, what the inmates call them is, ironically enough, they call them HACKS, H-A-C-K-S, HACKS.
[01:18:48.220 --> 01:18:53.920]  And, um, I'm not really sure what the origin of, of, of, of that is, why they're called HACKS.
[01:18:54.520 --> 01:19:00.840]  Um, I've, I've heard some, uh, some really playful acronyms of, uh, what it could stand for.
[01:19:00.980 --> 01:19:05.860]  One of them is, uh, huge asshole carrying keys, is, uh, is one such acronym.
[01:19:08.220 --> 01:19:17.600]  But, um, basically, a couple of the older guys, when I first got there, uh, took me in and showed me the ropes about, you know, things you need to know, uh, when you're in prison.
[01:19:18.080 --> 01:19:29.340]  Um, for example, you, you learn very quickly that the only thing that you're ever going to hear in prison that makes a jingling noise is one of these huge assholes carrying keys.
[01:19:29.860 --> 01:19:34.780]  So, um, you want to make sure that you're not doing anything that you're not supposed to be doing.
[01:19:35.040 --> 01:19:42.440]  Uh, if you, by any chance, um, happen to hear, uh, the, the sound of, of keys jingling.
[01:19:42.860 --> 01:19:45.200]  Um, that, that's something you learn right away.
[01:19:45.860 --> 01:19:59.300]  Um, there's, there's other, other various things that are, that are particularly strange that you, that you, that you, you find out about right away, um, that you wouldn't really assume on the outside, that really make no sense.
[01:19:59.780 --> 01:20:10.160]  Um, for example, it's a mortal sin, uh, if you're in the dining hall to actually reach over someone else's tray with food on it.
[01:20:10.340 --> 01:20:13.240]  I can never really figure out why that was.
[01:20:13.680 --> 01:20:23.320]  The, the only thing I could think of is, is, is maybe they're afraid that some kind of like diseased flesh was going to fall off your body into their food or something like that.
[01:20:23.440 --> 01:20:31.800]  I never really could, could understand that, but I don't know if it's some weird prison superstition or, or something else, but it's just very strange.
[01:20:32.780 --> 01:20:37.460]  Um, I'm trying to think of, uh, some of the other things.
[01:20:37.580 --> 01:20:57.280]  Oh, um, you're, you're familiarized with, um, there are, uh, if you ever have a problem, which you never should have a problem because basically anybody who, any inmate who does have a problem, um, is putting themselves at risk as a troublemaker and somebody who's going to be shook down every,
[01:20:57.320 --> 01:20:59.700]  every so often and more often than not.
[01:21:00.320 --> 01:21:04.660]  Shakedowns are, uh, something that are, that's done on a fairly regular basis.
[01:21:05.020 --> 01:21:18.240]  Uh, they basically go to your locker where you have, uh, your, your personal belongings and they open it up and they proceed to rifle through all your things looking for what's known as contraband.
[01:21:18.500 --> 01:21:20.580]  And contraband could be most anything.
[01:21:21.560 --> 01:21:32.280]  Um, yeah, I, I can't really give you any examples because, because it could literally be anything at all that, that you're not supposed to have.
[01:21:32.440 --> 01:21:36.160]  And the list is endless and they can literally just make it up as they go along.
[01:21:36.480 --> 01:21:42.280]  Like you, one day you, you, maybe you, you shouldn't be having too many paper clips or something.
[01:21:42.480 --> 01:21:47.600]  Or another day you have one too many pairs of socks and that's considered contraband.
[01:21:47.780 --> 01:21:49.520]  You got in trouble for having too many books.
[01:21:49.860 --> 01:21:50.480]  What's that?
[01:21:50.760 --> 01:21:52.260]  You got in trouble for having too many books.
[01:21:52.420 --> 01:22:02.780]  Yeah, actually, um, it's also, uh, uh, a terrible thing and, and, and a horrible transgression against the Bureau of Prisons to have too many books to read.
[01:22:03.540 --> 01:22:07.880]  And, um, I could never really, uh, grasp what the reasoning was behind that.
[01:22:08.420 --> 01:22:22.340]  But, um, initially when I first got there, I was sent so many books, uh, from people on the outside that, um, that I was told that I had too many books and I had to get rid of, uh, most of them or else they were going to be confiscated.
[01:22:22.840 --> 01:22:28.460]  So, uh, rather than letting the prison keep them, I ended up, uh, getting a box and mailing them home.
[01:22:29.580 --> 01:22:38.960]  But, um, I could, I could literally go on and on and on about all, all the really bizarre things that, that, uh, that occur in these places.
[01:22:39.280 --> 01:22:45.300]  But, uh, I think, um, let me ask Emmanuel if you think it's appropriate now to start taking some questions.
[01:22:45.620 --> 01:22:49.440]  Yes, uh, people could line up in the usual spot where we take questions.
[01:22:49.800 --> 01:22:51.600]  Uh, no pushing and shoving this time.
[01:22:51.760 --> 01:22:53.300]  Just nice and orderly.
[01:22:53.880 --> 01:22:57.160]  Uh, and Phiber, maybe we could fast forward to the day that you were released.
[01:22:57.260 --> 01:22:57.920]  What was that like?
[01:22:58.080 --> 01:22:59.080]  When I was released?
[01:22:59.420 --> 01:23:01.740]  Um, it's very, very interesting.
[01:23:02.720 --> 01:23:22.600]  Um, once, once you're there that long, the interesting thing is anybody who's, who's, um, whose sentence was for a couple of months, you don't really get that much respect in prison because anybody whose sentence was that short usually is an informant of some sort or another.
[01:23:23.040 --> 01:23:25.940]  Because, or otherwise, why would your sentence be that short?
[01:23:26.180 --> 01:23:35.740]  It's, it's usually, it's highly unlikely that somebody, um, is sentenced to only a couple of months, uh, if they were even warranted, um, a prison term.
[01:23:36.660 --> 01:23:46.060]  The fact that I was there for a year, um, greatly helped my, uh, my inter-inmate relationships.
[01:23:46.800 --> 01:24:00.540]  And, uh, the, the, the other thing was, um, the fact that the media was, uh, so intent on, on going to interview me on, uh, in prison all the time, uh, before long, everyone knew me.
[01:24:00.700 --> 01:24:02.900]  So, uh, that, that really worked in my favor.
[01:24:03.700 --> 01:24:14.380]  And, um, I, uh, wasn't really, uh, screwed around with very often, uh, by the, uh, the prison staff and, uh, not at all by any of the inmates.
[01:24:14.520 --> 01:24:20.200]  In fact, um, most of the, uh, majority of the inmates that I knew were extremely friendly, uh, with me.
[01:24:20.820 --> 01:24:31.460]  And, um, it's, uh, it's strange that, uh, when you're there for, uh, for such a long time, uh, you, you just kind of get accustomed to the way things are.
[01:24:32.360 --> 01:24:44.100]  And, uh, when, uh, when, uh, somebody that you know that's been with you the whole time, uh, actually leaves, you're really glad that he's leaving and finally going home.
[01:24:44.240 --> 01:24:51.620]  But at the same time, you're, you're kind of sad to see him go because, you know, it's one less person that you can play gin with or something like that.
[01:24:51.860 --> 01:24:57.880]  And that, that may seem kind of funny, but you, you really, you really, uh, zero in on, on the simple things.
[01:24:58.220 --> 01:25:11.380]  Because you lose so much in prison that, that, um, it's little things like a card game or, or, uh, just, just, you know, a simple conversation with somebody that you, you know, that you, that you, uh, smoke a cigarette with.
[01:25:11.880 --> 01:25:13.600]  Things like that become really important.
[01:25:14.600 --> 01:25:19.980]  And, um, by the time it was, it was time for me to actually leave and, and go home.
[01:25:20.120 --> 01:25:34.880]  It rather, rather, uh, snuck up on me and took me by surprise because, again, you don't really feel like it's time to go home because after you're there for just about a year, um, you're, you get kind of used to being there.
[01:25:35.540 --> 01:25:51.880]  And, uh, you still don't like being there, but, um, you know that you can either come to terms with your, your current situation or else you can, you know, make believe that you're insane or maybe you are going insane.
[01:25:52.120 --> 01:26:00.100]  And then, you know, you, you can, you can go to the prison doctor and get medicated with all kinds of crazy antidepressants, which a lot of people there actually did.
[01:26:00.480 --> 01:26:10.780]  Um, which I had absolutely no intention of, of doing because, uh, um, let, let's just say the, the prison medical plan is not one that you'd want to actually apply for.
[01:26:11.400 --> 01:26:18.080]  So, uh, one, one thing you want to make sure you, that, that you don't do when you're in prison is actually get sick.
[01:26:18.620 --> 01:26:36.540]  Um, but, um, anyway, by the time it was, it was, uh, it was my time to go, um, and, and I should add that I actually refused to apply for a halfway house, which, um, a lot of people actually respected me for as well.
[01:26:36.680 --> 01:26:43.060]  I, I had made up my mind that it if I was going to apply for halfway house, I was going to them needing something.
[01:26:43.260 --> 01:26:51.520]  And the entire time I was there, I made sure that I never went to anyone who was one of the prison staff needing anything from them.
[01:26:52.460 --> 01:27:01.560]  And I, when I actually walked out of prison, I wanted to be where I left, I walked out the door and went home.
[01:27:01.800 --> 01:27:11.360]  I didn't want to be going from one prison to, you know, to a halfway house, which is kind of like you're on the outside, but you're still highly restricted.
[01:27:11.680 --> 01:27:32.580]  So I actually opted, um, out of my own free will, to, um, to forgo the, uh, halfway house, which they kind of dangle in front of you like a carrot because, um, they, they try to, uh, blackmail inmates into, you know, doing certain things or, or, uh, putting them in,
[01:27:32.580 --> 01:27:38.860]  in, uh, really sticky situations, uh, getting all their hopes built up that they can leave early if they get a halfway house early.
[01:27:39.300 --> 01:27:45.460]  Um, but, uh, I, I just convinced myself early on that I wasn't gonna be, I wasn't gonna fall into that trap.
[01:27:45.760 --> 01:27:51.220]  And I actually ended up staying in prison until, um, uh, towards the end of November.
[01:27:51.920 --> 01:27:54.300]  Um, just, just before Thanksgiving, actually.
[01:27:54.700 --> 01:27:57.480]  Uh, so luckily I got out just before the holidays.
[01:27:57.480 --> 01:28:02.540]  So I was able to have both Thanksgiving and Christmas at home, uh, which, which was great.
[01:28:03.160 --> 01:28:09.500]  Um, but again, it was, it was, uh, it was a really peculiar experience going back home again.
[01:28:10.460 --> 01:28:31.560]  Um, I remember, uh, my, uh, my girlfriend at the time, uh, picked me up from prison and, um, we, uh, we went to town and I had something to eat and I remember that, um, I remember what I ordered in, in the restaurant.
[01:28:31.780 --> 01:28:36.200]  It felt really strange to be in, in the restaurant because she had brought me a change of clothes.
[01:28:36.360 --> 01:28:46.760]  We went to a hotel and I had a shower and, um, we, uh, it was, it felt really weird to have money again because in prison obviously you don't have, you don't have money.
[01:28:47.400 --> 01:29:04.740]  Um, and to actually sit in a restaurant and decide what it was I wanted to eat and never mind that, but being out in a wide open space and just being able to, you know, walk anywhere I, I damn well pleased, which, which was really confusing at first and,
[01:29:04.740 --> 01:29:07.400]  and was confusing for a number of weeks afterwards.
[01:29:08.100 --> 01:29:20.680]  Um, I remember I ordered a, uh, a grilled chicken sandwich with French fries and a Coke and, um, oh, and before that I think I had some kind of soup.
[01:29:21.440 --> 01:29:26.780]  And for whatever reason I remember it was, it was the best damn food I'd ever eaten.
[01:29:27.740 --> 01:29:32.420]  And the funny thing about that is that, uh, prison food all tastes the same.
[01:29:33.320 --> 01:29:37.120]  Um, the number one thing that you eat in prison is beans.
[01:29:37.800 --> 01:29:45.160]  And, um, everybody eats beans and everybody's constantly farting all the time because of that fact.
[01:29:45.300 --> 01:29:55.500]  And to make matters worse, the guys that, uh, that weight lift, um, and spend a lot of time, uh, body building, they, um, they steal eggs from the kitchen.
[01:29:55.680 --> 01:30:04.840]  And so they're constantly eating hard boiled eggs and eating, you know, meals that are constantly involving beans in some way, shape or form.
[01:30:05.020 --> 01:30:08.320]  So they're even more deadly than everybody else.
[01:30:10.060 --> 01:30:14.640]  So, um, so I remember the, the, that was the first food that I ate.
[01:30:15.340 --> 01:30:24.000]  Um, and then, um, I remember for, uh, for dinner, uh, I, my parents had asked me, you know, what it was that I had wanted for, for dinner, uh, when I got back.
[01:30:24.600 --> 01:30:36.400]  And, um, I, I told them on the way back, I wanted to get, uh, pizza from, uh, the favorite neighborhood pizzeria on the way back as sort of, uh, a, uh, a late lunch, um, which we did.
[01:30:36.580 --> 01:30:46.240]  And then, um, for dinner, I remember, um, my, uh, my parents made lasagna, which was amazing when I, when I got out of prison.
[01:30:46.560 --> 01:30:49.760]  Um, in prison, they actually have lasagna.
[01:30:50.440 --> 01:31:02.680]  Um, if, if there is anyone in the audience who's, who, uh, knows what prison lasagna is made out of, um, then you'll understand why, why, why I'm laughing.
[01:31:03.360 --> 01:31:08.900]  Um, if there's anyone who doesn't, um, I'll turn your stomach by telling you.
[01:31:09.440 --> 01:31:15.720]  Basically it's, um, government issue lasagna noodles, whatever the hell those are.
[01:31:16.180 --> 01:31:27.500]  And, um, they're basically, uh, filled with, um, cottage cheese and, um, chopped turkey meat.
[01:31:28.920 --> 01:31:35.540]  And, uh, and of course, uh, topped with your favorite government grade tomato sauce.
[01:31:36.200 --> 01:31:42.200]  So you can imagine that, uh, it was, it was a hot time in the, uh, in the cafeteria when they served lasagna.
[01:31:43.620 --> 01:31:49.760]  Um, so it was, it was great to, uh, get home and, and, you know, and eat mom and dad's lasagna again.
[01:31:50.780 --> 01:31:57.840]  Um, that, uh, that was, that was probably the, uh, the most, uh, one of the most exciting things that, that had happened the day, the day I was released.
[01:31:58.200 --> 01:32:02.160]  The other strange thing is that, um, everything and everyone looked smaller.
[01:32:02.820 --> 01:32:04.960]  And, uh, I wasn't really sure why that was.
[01:32:05.200 --> 01:32:25.280]  Um, I think that, uh, I had grown so accustomed to, uh, living in, uh, sort of a, uh, a military environment where you live in like an open barracks, um, in, uh, open cells, um, where there's, um, a couple of, uh, couple of dozen cells in this, uh, wide open barracks with,
[01:32:25.280 --> 01:32:34.780]  um, uh, double, uh, you know, bunk, bunk beds on both sides of the barracks with a long narrow walkway going down the middle.
[01:32:35.220 --> 01:32:41.560]  And you're just basically used to this open space and really no privacy whatsoever.
[01:32:42.040 --> 01:32:51.560]  So, um, I think whenever I felt like I was in a room or in a confined space, it actually felt smaller than it was, which was, uh, kind of, kind of confusing for a while.
[01:32:52.440 --> 01:32:59.660]  But, um, so anyway, that's, uh, that was how, how things were to the point, to the point that I got released.
[01:32:59.820 --> 01:33:08.660]  And, uh, I, I admit that I'm, uh, I'm a recovering ex-con and, uh, I think I'm doing a fairly good job of it.
[01:33:08.960 --> 01:33:20.940]  I'm certainly in, you know, in a lot better shape mentally now than, than, than I probably was, uh, when I was first released or released or even when I, when I first went to prison for that matter.
[01:33:21.680 --> 01:33:23.460]  But, um, let's take some questions.
[01:33:24.200 --> 01:33:24.640]  All right.
[01:33:25.040 --> 01:33:30.520]  Let me just point out, uh, for those of you giving questions, you have to address your questions to either Farber or Bernie S.
[01:33:30.800 --> 01:33:31.760]  But not both.
[01:33:32.720 --> 01:33:33.120]  Because...
[01:33:33.120 --> 01:33:33.720]  No problem.
[01:33:34.100 --> 01:33:35.680]  They can't have any risk of communicating with each other.
[01:33:35.680 --> 01:33:37.700]  We can ask a question twice then, right?
[01:33:38.160 --> 01:33:39.880]  If you have to, yes, ask it twice.
[01:33:40.460 --> 01:33:42.360]  Independently, referring to some anonymous person.
[01:33:42.680 --> 01:33:43.080]  Okay.
[01:33:43.560 --> 01:33:44.040]  All right.
[01:33:44.160 --> 01:33:46.040]  My first question will be a little like that.
[01:33:46.040 --> 01:33:47.160]  Uh, Bernie.
[01:33:47.780 --> 01:33:56.740]  I noticed that, um, you said that you weren't read your rights, uh, initially for, actually for a number of days, I think.
[01:33:56.980 --> 01:34:00.660]  And also, um, what was it?
[01:34:00.780 --> 01:34:06.680]  You also had asked to speak to your lawyer and were denied that right initially, um, and were just ignored.
[01:34:06.980 --> 01:34:26.480]  And I also, uh, heard that similar stuff happened to another hacker who, um, mentioned that he, uh, he was asking to, ask, er, that when his house was raided, there was a search warrant that wasn't even signed, or search warrants arrived late.
[01:34:27.100 --> 01:34:34.560]  Um, are people in, uh, having had some legal experience with all this stuff, are people in this kind of a position who are treated this way?
[01:34:35.220 --> 01:34:38.020]  That's government breaking the law as far as I understand it.
[01:34:38.120 --> 01:34:42.440]  Are you able to sue for punitive damages in, in that circumstance?
[01:34:47.950 --> 01:34:48.510]  Microphone.
[01:34:50.810 --> 01:34:51.370]  Bernie?
[01:34:51.370 --> 01:34:54.350]  About three years ago, I would have, I would have thought so.
[01:34:54.630 --> 01:34:57.870]  But, uh, I was pretty naive in, in, in assuming that.
[01:34:58.210 --> 01:35:17.330]  Um, apparently, these, these, these kinds of, uh, blatant violations of civil rights are, are routine in, uh, in law enforcement investigations, particularly so when, when, when there are, uh, uh, local, local law enforcement agents, as opposed to federal.
[01:35:17.950 --> 01:35:24.010]  Um, the feds seem reasonably professional, although very good liars, very professional liars, in, in a lot of respect.
[01:35:24.790 --> 01:35:33.530]  Um, the, my, my original arrest, um, was by a consortium of local and federal law enforcement officers.
[01:35:34.170 --> 01:35:40.070]  Um, I, I did say, no, it's not true that my rights were not right, read to me when I was arrested.
[01:35:40.190 --> 01:35:41.650]  When I was arrested, they were not read to me.
[01:35:41.990 --> 01:35:45.150]  Um, it was several hours later that they were read to me.
[01:35:45.370 --> 01:35:47.610]  Um, I did say that my rights were read to me then.
[01:35:47.830 --> 01:35:49.310]  Um, when I was speaking earlier.
[01:35:50.030 --> 01:35:52.570]  But, uh, I was not permitted to have my attorney.
[01:35:53.170 --> 01:36:00.750]  Um, they were all very excited there at the police station when the secret service was questioning me and One of the detectives from the local law enforcement agency was questioning me.
[01:36:02.010 --> 01:36:03.870]  Because I wasn't going to tell them where I lived.
[01:36:03.950 --> 01:36:05.210]  I wasn't arrested at my home.
[01:36:05.310 --> 01:36:08.510]  I was at a friend's house and they coincidentally saw my vehicle.
[01:36:08.710 --> 01:36:09.610]  It was a bad coincidence.
[01:36:10.190 --> 01:36:11.850]  It was just a few blocks from the police station.
[01:36:11.930 --> 01:36:13.770]  I didn't know there was an arrest warrant out for me.
[01:36:15.450 --> 01:36:24.430]  But so the address they had in their records wasn't the address where I was living because I had just moved a couple of weeks before that.
[01:36:25.010 --> 01:36:27.370]  And they demanded to know where I lived.
[01:36:27.530 --> 01:36:29.290]  And I said, well, I'd like to talk to my attorney.
[01:36:29.490 --> 01:36:30.910]  They said, well, you don't have that option.
[01:36:31.050 --> 01:36:34.890]  You have to tell us your address first before we'll let you talk to your attorney.
[01:36:35.330 --> 01:36:41.810]  Well, the reason I wanted to talk to my attorney is I wanted my attorney to be there present in my home while the search was taking place.
[01:36:42.030 --> 01:36:46.710]  Because I knew that there was going to be some funny stuff going on and he should be there.
[01:36:46.870 --> 01:36:51.930]  Well, bottom line is they all night spent scurrying around.
[01:36:52.610 --> 01:36:55.810]  They finally figured out where I did actually live.
[01:36:56.490 --> 01:37:02.850]  And a strange thing, the day before I was arrested, my pager went off with my home phone number, which is very strange because I didn't live with anyone.
[01:37:03.410 --> 01:37:05.730]  And I never did figure out what was that.
[01:37:05.830 --> 01:37:19.310]  But they confiscated my pager and went through the numbers and did a reverse lookup on it and found that one of the numbers on my pager was, and they checked out all the addresses of all the numbers on my pager and ended up at this one place.
[01:37:19.650 --> 01:37:26.410]  My roommate at the place where I was living at that time let them in because he was scared to death.
[01:37:26.510 --> 01:37:28.130]  A secret service shows up at your door.
[01:37:28.410 --> 01:37:33.190]  And they proceeded, without a search warrant of my home, to search the entire house.
[01:37:33.450 --> 01:37:38.230]  Not just areas where my roommate gave them permission to search.
[01:37:38.330 --> 01:37:39.510]  There's federal case law on this.
[01:37:42.190 --> 01:37:50.750]  In an apartment situation, a roommate is not authorized to give permission to law enforcement officers to search another person's bedroom sort of thing.
[01:37:50.890 --> 01:37:52.450]  Well, they just ransacked the whole place.
[01:37:53.970 --> 01:38:00.470]  The next morning, they came back with an official search warrant listing all the items that they already listed the night before on the things that were there.
[01:38:01.210 --> 01:38:08.230]  This was basically rubber stamped by a local judge in Villanova, Pennsylvania, where I was living.
[01:38:09.470 --> 01:38:13.710]  And later, the police denied having been there twice.
[01:38:14.070 --> 01:38:19.770]  My roommate, after all this show was over, told me that they were there the night before.
[01:38:19.910 --> 01:38:20.630]  They threatened him.
[01:38:20.770 --> 01:38:27.330]  They threatened him with jail because he had an extra, he had a non-licensed copy of X-wing fighter on his home computer.
[01:38:27.670 --> 01:38:32.510]  And they said that if he didn't cooperate, they were going to arrest him for having pirated software on his computer.
[01:38:33.170 --> 01:38:34.830]  So, they do these tricks.
[01:38:34.990 --> 01:38:36.090]  And I think these are pretty routine.
[01:38:36.570 --> 01:38:43.750]  But, you know, the courts are extremely biased towards the law enforcement community.
[01:38:44.490 --> 01:38:47.150]  And, uh, just your word against theirs.
[01:38:47.530 --> 01:38:49.570]  And, uh, so, no.
[01:38:49.830 --> 01:38:52.130]  It's not realistic to try to sue them for these things.
[01:38:52.890 --> 01:38:53.250]  Okay.
[01:38:53.570 --> 01:39:00.310]  I guess the picture is, in your case, they were just really very determined to screw you.
[01:39:01.010 --> 01:39:02.030]  Well, I don't think it's to screw.
[01:39:02.170 --> 01:39:07.250]  It's just they want to, um, they just want to do a bang-up job, I guess.
[01:39:07.370 --> 01:39:13.130]  And in this case, the Secret Service was heavily pushing the prosecution because of, apparently, a personal issue.
[01:39:13.590 --> 01:39:19.330]  Um, when I was arrested by the Secret Service after the state charges dropped, um, they told me they'd taken a lot...
[01:39:19.330 --> 01:39:27.930]  One of the two agents picking me up at the county prison who took me to the federal building was one of the two agents pictured in the, uh, in the photographs, picking their noses, which ended up on television.
[01:39:28.150 --> 01:39:29.590]  He told me he took a lot of heat for that.
[01:39:29.930 --> 01:39:37.870]  Uh, and he made me aware in no uncertain terms that this was, uh, this was, um, this, this was, uh, getting even.
[01:39:37.970 --> 01:39:40.830]  He didn't say that, but it was clear to me that that was his tone of voice.
[01:39:41.690 --> 01:39:49.510]  So, how did you initially, how, what you were charged for, ultimately, how did that come to their attention?
[01:39:50.010 --> 01:39:52.930]  They couldn't just see these pictures on TV and decide...
[01:39:53.530 --> 01:39:54.230]  No, no, definitely not.
[01:39:54.250 --> 01:39:55.330]  ...we're gonna go arrest this guy.
[01:39:55.730 --> 01:40:00.650]  How did, how did, uh, it come to their attention that you had a modified tone dialer and software?
[01:40:01.430 --> 01:40:02.590]  That's a, that's a very good question.
[01:40:02.830 --> 01:40:05.510]  It's, it's, it's, it's, there was a lot of twists and turns in all this.
[01:40:05.670 --> 01:40:12.350]  They were not aware that I had anything to do with these photographs being on television, until my home was searched and they found those photographs.
[01:40:12.690 --> 01:40:23.290]  The reason the Secret Service was involved in the first place in the case is because the local police confiscated from me a box of crystals and unmodified tone dialers that was in my possession.
[01:40:23.470 --> 01:40:26.830]  I was, a couple of guys had called me and said, well, I want to buy some of these crystals.
[01:40:26.970 --> 01:40:31.510]  They'd read, they'd read in some book that, uh, I was selling these crystals mail or for $5.
[01:40:32.450 --> 01:40:35.830]  And, uh, is that how you came to the attention of local law enforcement?
[01:40:36.090 --> 01:40:39.250]  Not because I was selling them in, in, uh, this sounds been selling them for years.
[01:40:39.410 --> 01:40:42.410]  But a couple of guys called me and said, uh, well, meet me at the 7-Eleven.
[01:40:42.570 --> 01:40:44.510]  I want to buy, buy a few of these crystals from you.
[01:40:44.770 --> 01:40:47.770]  So I was going over across the street from the 7-Eleven was a post office.
[01:40:47.830 --> 01:40:48.990]  I had to go over to get my mail anyway.
[01:40:49.170 --> 01:40:52.570]  So I went over there and, uh, I was selling some crystals there.
[01:40:52.830 --> 01:40:58.630]  And the, some neighbor called in apparently and thought, I think it was a drug deal going down or, or a police officer saw it.
[01:40:58.990 --> 01:41:02.230]  And the, the, the affidavit said that they, it was a suspected drug deal going down.
[01:41:02.950 --> 01:41:11.770]  So, uh, police, 13 police officers showed up at the scene and they detained us all for two hours while they, while they just searched our vehicles against my consent, I might add.
[01:41:11.890 --> 01:41:13.350]  There was no probable cause to search it.
[01:41:13.810 --> 01:41:15.530]  Um, they denied that later as well.
[01:41:15.790 --> 01:41:18.090]  And the box was seized without my consent.
[01:41:18.250 --> 01:41:23.610]  And they did not know it was in the box at the time, which was in violation of, of, uh, of law.
[01:41:23.930 --> 01:41:31.110]  But, uh, later on, uh, even though the police report said that the box was confiscated, they testified under oath that, uh, it was given to them with consent.
[01:41:31.450 --> 01:41:32.970]  But the judge still went along with them.
[01:41:33.110 --> 01:41:35.550]  It's, it's, it's amazing that this stuff happens and they get away with it.
[01:41:35.650 --> 01:41:36.470]  But they do routinely.
[01:41:37.510 --> 01:41:40.930]  Okay, let's try to get to the, some other questions because we're rapidly running out of time.
[01:41:41.150 --> 01:41:41.830]  No problem.
[01:41:42.370 --> 01:41:42.870]  Uh, all right.
[01:41:43.230 --> 01:41:44.230]  Is that Captain Crunch?
[01:41:45.110 --> 01:41:45.470]  Yeah.
[01:41:46.030 --> 01:41:46.410]  How you doing?
[01:41:51.260 --> 01:41:52.760]  And who is your question directed towards?
[01:41:52.920 --> 01:41:53.160]  Mark.
[01:41:54.220 --> 01:41:54.620]  Go ahead.
[01:41:54.640 --> 01:41:55.260]  Phiber Optik.
[01:41:56.400 --> 01:41:59.720]  Has anybody contacted you while you've been in jail?
[01:41:59.720 --> 01:42:07.480]  To ask you for technical information while you were there?
[01:42:07.920 --> 01:42:15.220]  Actually, no, no, nobody, nobody really ever approached me to, to do anything for them.
[01:42:15.500 --> 01:42:21.580]  Like, I mean, people, people in general didn't really understand what it is that I did.
[01:42:21.800 --> 01:42:29.960]  They, they understood that I did something along the lines of, of breaking into computers, kind of like in war games or something like that.
[01:42:30.360 --> 01:42:37.460]  You know, it's like without an analogy to refer to, they didn't really know what it was that I did.
[01:42:37.820 --> 01:42:46.420]  And if they did have half an idea of what I did, they weren't really sure, you know, how that would help them out in any way.
[01:42:46.740 --> 01:42:56.520]  I mean, in general, no, people didn't really ask me to, to do anything like make phone calls for them or anything like that.
[01:42:57.260 --> 01:42:57.900]  Right.
[01:42:57.900 --> 01:43:08.500]  Yeah, because when I was in, in prison, I was approached by a number of individuals who were very knowledgeable in phone technology.
[01:43:09.320 --> 01:43:13.720]  And I thought maybe that you might run across some of the same people as well.
[01:43:13.900 --> 01:43:14.200]  Thank you.
[01:43:17.300 --> 01:43:18.820]  Okay, this will be our last question.
[01:43:19.000 --> 01:43:19.240]  Go ahead.
[01:43:20.120 --> 01:43:28.300]  Phiber, I'd like to, I'd like to find out some information on the conditions of your release and what kind of restrictions you're still under.
[01:43:29.360 --> 01:43:36.780]  I'm not under any restrictions that are outside the scope of ordinary supervised release.
[01:43:36.780 --> 01:43:44.740]  There's nothing in my supervised release that has anything to do with computer or technological restrictions.
[01:43:45.240 --> 01:43:51.380]  I can't associate with any known felons, which is a regular restriction.
[01:43:52.020 --> 01:43:58.620]  I can't travel without permission out of the state, which is a typical restriction.
[01:43:58.620 --> 01:44:12.120]  I don't have any kind of weird restrictions like some of the things they've been trying to pull on people recently, like not being able to use the internet or anything like that.
[01:44:12.580 --> 01:44:13.840]  There's nothing like that.
[01:44:16.280 --> 01:44:20.080]  Okay, I want to thank both of you for being here today.
[01:44:20.400 --> 01:44:24.000]  Emmanuel, I wanted to say one quick thing before we wrap this up.
[01:44:27.340 --> 01:44:52.620]  In Mark's case, and fortunately it didn't happen in, well actually it did happen in my case and in Mark's case, a lot of, the reason a lot of people go to federal prison and other county prisons, aside from what they're charged with doing, the prosecution's cases are often made much easier because of informants or people who come forward with information about the defendant.
[01:44:52.620 --> 01:44:55.880]  I know that happened in Mark's case and it did happen in mine as well.
[01:44:56.520 --> 01:44:58.120]  I want to give you some quick statistics.
[01:44:58.520 --> 01:45:01.760]  In the federal prisons, in the U.S.
[01:45:02.280 --> 01:45:13.100]  federal judicial system, 97% of the cases that are brought forward, 97% of indictments result in convictions.
[01:45:13.540 --> 01:45:15.320]  That's a phenomenal success rate.
[01:45:16.180 --> 01:45:20.640]  95% of those cases never make it to trial.
[01:45:21.600 --> 01:45:23.460]  And that should tell you a couple of things.
[01:45:23.840 --> 01:45:30.480]  And that is that a whole lot of prosecutions are being meted out without trials.
[01:45:30.480 --> 01:45:52.820]  And the reason for that is that the federal sentences are potentially so long that people get really scared that they're going to spend, you know, years and years in prison and will generally rat out anybody that are involved in any kind of activity that the government feels is illegal.
[01:45:52.820 --> 01:45:56.800]  And we'll get off with minimal or no sentence at all.
[01:45:58.940 --> 01:46:11.840]  I just want to tell people that, you know, a lot of people are going to jail unnecessarily as a result of people not just learning to, say, talk to my lawyer.
[01:46:12.640 --> 01:46:13.760]  It's really unfortunate.
[01:46:14.020 --> 01:46:21.400]  We wouldn't have this kind of conviction rate on hackers or other people, for that matter, maybe who should be in prison.
[01:46:21.560 --> 01:46:38.540]  But in any case, in these kind of crimes where there's, like, when there are no victims involved, no one is hurt, the hacking community really needs to learn this, that everyone will be best served in this community by simply not ratting out their fellow hackers.
[01:46:42.480 --> 01:46:46.140]  Over the past few years, over the past few years, this has gotten a lot worse.
[01:46:47.400 --> 01:46:50.760]  People seem to be stumbling over each other to rat each other out.
[01:46:50.980 --> 01:46:54.120]  And we're all losers as a result of this.
[01:46:54.280 --> 01:46:59.580]  And we'll, you know, maybe one person will serve less time, but it's extremely self-serving.
[01:46:59.940 --> 01:47:03.180]  And, you know, you have to hang together in all this.
[01:47:04.220 --> 01:47:07.800]  So I just wanted to make that statement because it's a disturbing trend.
[01:47:09.220 --> 01:47:10.980]  And people need to learn this.
[01:47:12.880 --> 01:47:13.360]  Okay.
[01:47:13.820 --> 01:47:18.860]  I just want to say the two of you are probably two of the most inspirational people in my life.
[01:47:19.380 --> 01:47:21.120]  I'm proud to have you both as friends.
[01:47:21.140 --> 01:47:26.040]  And I'm really glad that both of you are out today with us here.
[01:47:26.260 --> 01:47:27.720]  Thanks so much for being with us.
[01:47:36.150 --> 01:47:43.710]  And coming up next, we'll be having the r00t panel, followed by the grand finale to Beyond Hull.
[01:47:43.910 --> 01:47:45.670]  So don't wander away.
[01:47:45.670 --> 01:47:46.350]  The r00t panel...