Prejudices of the Detroit polyglot population awaited the new army of war workers.
Subversive organizers and native Nazi artists took to soapboxes outside a dozen war plants.
I'd rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work beside a Negro on the assembly line.
Detroit was dynamite.
The fistfight on the Belle Isle Bridge set off the fuse.
By the dawn of Monday, June 21st, Detroit blew up.
An open letter on race hatred, 1943 Peabody Award winner, on this Saturday's Golden Age of Radio, 7 to 9 o'clock.
World War II radio drama, until it's over, over here.
And in the great factories of Detroit, which proudly claims the title of Arsenal of Democracy, few men worked that day.
From bloody dawn to bloody dawn.
And it's 9 o'clock in the evening on a Wednesday night.
Time for Off the Hook on WBAI New York.
The telephone keeps ringing
So I ripped it off the wall
I cut myself while shaving
Now I can't make a cough
It couldn't get much worse
But if they could, they would
But Billy Bump were the best
Expect the worst
I hope that's understood
Bonding me, go!
And this is Off the Hook,
the program that deals with technology,
computer hackers,
and other assorted mischief
in the high-tech world.
This is Emanuel Goldstein.
We're together until 10 o'clock.
And tonight we might have a special guest.
We're not going to say for sure if we are
because we're not 100% certain ourselves.
And we just don't want everybody to go crazy
and panic and that kind of thing.
Speaking of going crazy and panicking,
I'd like to step outside the normal boundaries
of the program for just a couple of minutes
to relate what went on at the 2600 meeting last Friday.
A week ago, things seemed calm, you know,
throughout the country.
Things seemed rather normal.
But within the course of a few hours
and certainly over the course of the last week,
we see just how easy it is for all of that
to suddenly go away.
And of course, I'm referring to the events of Los Angeles,
the Rodney King verdict,
which was announced about one week ago
and all hell broke loose in Los Angeles that night.
Now, at the 2600 meeting on Friday night,
we were in a city filled with rumors.
And consequently, the attendance of hackers
and other curious onlookers was down quite a bit.
CityCore Center was closing up all of its shops.
People were running home, literally.
And all kinds of reports of horror stories,
ANS and flames,
Penn Station being stormed by thousands of people
and Port Authority shut down.
All kinds of rumors were being spread around.
And of course, we tried to find out from the payphones
what exactly was going on
and really weren't able to get through to anything.
It's very interesting when you take a group of people
such as ourselves
and pit them against something like this,
an uncertain situation.
We had scanners.
We were listening to the police radios,
which technically, you know, is illegal.
If you're driving in a car,
you're not supposed to be able to listen to police scanners.
I don't quite know the reasoning behind that.
But suffice to say that we bent the law a little bit that night
because we wanted to find out
just what in the world was going on.
And we heard of reports of quote-unquote trouble
in Tompkins Square Park
and 14th Street, Union Square, places like that.
And the voices on the radio were becoming increasingly,
well, less radio-ish and more human.
They were losing what they call protocol
and speaking English.
And you know when they start speaking English
that something is up.
And certainly things were happening.
Downtown in the village,
as anybody that was down there on Friday night knows,
everything closed down.
24-hour shops shut down at the latest at 11 o'clock.
At around 7.30 or so,
there was a march down 8th Street
heading westbound from Tompkins Square
through Astor Place
and over towards Broadway and 6th Avenue.
And that's when probably things were at their peak.
Now, I happen to be online
at that famous automatic teller machine
on Broadway,
the one where everybody lines up into the street.
I don't know if it's because
it's such a popular machine
and everybody loves it so much
or because maybe it's the only machine around
for a mile.
One of those reasons,
everybody's always crowded into that little vestibule there
and lined up out into the street sometimes,
as was the case in this particular instance
where things seemed rather calm
and everybody was going about their business,
although there was this specter
of something bad on the horizon.
We didn't know.
And, you know,
riots aren't really something that you plan out.
They're supposed to be spontaneous.
If you want to have a decent riot,
you've got to be spontaneous about it.
No good sending out invitations
and things like that.
So, online at the ATM,
waiting and waiting,
everybody patient,
everybody knowing something's going on outside
but not quite sure what.
And then we were gestured at
by people in the street,
kind of a warning gesture
as in get your asses out of here
as quickly as you possibly can.
And so I went outside
to see just what that was all about
and saw this mob of people,
mob of people heading westbound on 8th Street.
And I said,
oh boy,
this sure looks interesting
because you could see
that they were
a shouting mob of people,
you know,
people that,
a group of people throwing things.
We didn't know what they were throwing.
It could have been
paper bags rolled up into balls.
It could have been balls.
It could have been rocks.
Who knows?
We didn't know.
They were far away
and they were approaching.
And there were people running,
running towards us.
And all of a sudden,
you realize how quickly
something can get out of control.
We warned the people
in the bank machine,
said, you know,
maybe this isn't the best time
to get money.
And the machine cleared out
like you just wouldn't believe.
The line just went away
and people evaporated
into the street.
At that time,
the crowd started passing us.
This was right on Broadway.
And panic ensued.
Not a tremendous amount of panic,
but enough panic
so that you could sense
that control was about to be lost.
About that time,
police cars started coming down
the street at full force.
Some were driving down the sidewalk
at 40 miles an hour at least.
And it was a site
I'd never quite seen before
where police cars were doing that.
And I realized that
the sidewalks were designed
so that cars can drive down them
in times of emergency
because they didn't hit anything.
No people, I don't think.
And they were making
pretty good speed
and that was their way
of getting around all the cars.
One of the most unusual things,
though, that I saw
downtown that night
was a yellow cab
pulling up
and pouring out of the cab
were policemen
in full riot gear.
Apparently they had
hailed a cab someplace
with their helmets
and everything
and gone
and taken it downtown.
It was the weirdest sight
I'd ever seen
and it didn't look like
they tipped the guy
very well either.
But the important thing is
things kind of
calmed down after a while
on their own accord.
There didn't seem to be
a massive show of force
to the degree that
there was brutality
or anything like that.
Not that I had heard of anyway.
And people were able
to vent their anger
as well they should
and New York was calm.
Quiet, abandoned, but calm.
It also goes to show you
that the things
that we take for granted,
whether it be
our communication systems,
our computer systems,
or society in general,
they are very fragile
and it doesn't take much
to get a crisis started.
And just like
other countries
where we turn on the news
and we see rioting
in the streets,
we see army troops
stationed on every corner
guarding against uprisings,
you see the same thing here.
All it takes
is a little bit of pushing
and we reach
the exact same stage.
It happened in Los Angeles.
I saw a picture
in the paper the other day.
A truck filled with troops
watching as school kids
pass by on their way
to school.
And it's something
that you say to yourself,
hey, this is America.
We're supposed to be
so far above that
kind of thing.
But we're never,
we're never far away
from the breakdown
of society
and from hearing
what people have to say
and what angers people.
And you know,
if there's reason
for the incredible force
of these demonstrations,
and the violence
and the anger,
it's because people
haven't been speaking
for all this time.
Think of it,
12 years
since Reagan was elected.
And a lot of you know
what's happened
in those 12 years.
To have all that
bottle up inside of you
and have it come out now,
that's a dangerous thing.
It's a real dangerous thing.
And it will be interesting
to see what the future holds
because things certainly
aren't going to get better
in the present state.
You hear the blame
for all this
has been put on the Democrats
back in the 1960s.
They created the welfare state
and they're responsible
for all of this.
And that sounds to me
like a dying argument.
The argument of somebody
who's cornered
and has no place else
to lash out at.
It will be very interesting
to see what happens
in the future.
Now, as you know,
all kinds of things
were cut off,
limited,
including telephone calls
to Los Angeles
during the riots.
It wasn't really difficult
to get through,
but at one point,
about 50% of all calls
were being blocked
at the request
of the local phone companies
there,
both GTE
and the local
bell operating companies.
And AT&T was preventing
at least half of the calls,
I believe at one point,
it was up to
three-quarters of the calls
from getting through.
And that might have added
to some of the concern
and might have prevented
some clogged lines
from occurring as well.
But for the most part,
technology held up okay
unless it was completely destroyed
as did happen in some cases.
Future weeks will be bringing you
the aftermath
of all that kind of thing
plus anything else
that might happen
between now and then
because this story
is by no means over.
Now then,
to get on to
other items
that have been happening,
we've talked about
the FBI proposal
to monitor all
digital phone communications
of the future.
Something that concerns
quite a bit of people,
something that we've
spent a good amount
of time on here.
This is a letter
from Don Parker
of SRI International
in support
of the FBI proposal.
He says,
the intercept law
proposed by the FBI
is in need
of the full support
of the cyberspace community
but requires some additions
that are disturbingly absent.
The proposed amendment
to the Communications Act
of 1934
is necessary
to perpetuate
an essential capability
of law enforcement
to protect the public
from crime
and particularly
to protect the privacy
of individuals
whose personal information
is communicated.
Now,
I'm going to step in here
for a second.
It's interesting
how something
that basically
is concerned
with eavesdropping,
listening in,
is being done
for the protection
of privacy.
You know,
it's that
doublespeak argument again.
This is,
war is peace,
freedom is slavery,
and monitoring
is for privacy.
Anyway,
he says that he hopes
organizations
such as EFF
and CPSR,
Computer Professionals
with Social Responsibility,
can address
these particular shortcomings
that are needed
to protect
all the stakeholders
from unauthorized use
and misuse
of the interception capability.
In other words,
people that can access
whatever the FBI
has installed
into these phone systems.
What's going to limit it
to just the FBI?
It's just legal
interceptions as well.
Clearly,
access and usage
security controls
are needed.
In addition,
recording of all
intercept activity
is needed
for audit
and evidential purposes.
Finally,
only the FCC
rulemaking proceedings
should be kept secret
that would aid
and abet
unauthorized persons
to abuse
the capability
to use the intercept
capability
for bad purposes.
Some detailed information
about the auditing
and safeguarding
must not be revealed.
So,
in order to protect
the secrecy
of this particular system,
the hearings
should be closed
to the public
in Don Parker's view.
It's a very dangerous idea
to introduce something
so sweeping,
so totally complete,
and then not to tell people
what's going on.
I think we have the right
to know
how this system works
and hopefully people
will try and find out
exactly what it is
they're proposing.
technically.
We already know
what it is
on the moral grounds,
and it doesn't
pass muster so far.
At least,
not in my opinion.
Here's a reply
from Joel Upchurch.
What I disagree with
is that it's a
bad thing
for police authorities
to be curtailed
by advances
in technology
when it comes to
tapping into
phone conversations.
It seems to me
that if tapping
a phone conversation
is difficult
and expensive
and the funding
for such efforts
comes out of the budget
of the police agency
involved,
then it is far more likely
that such tapping
will be used
with restraint
than if using it
is cheap
and easy.
If anything,
I'm worried that technology
is going too far
in the other direction.
I suspect that
the major cost
of any phone tap
isn't the cost
of placing the tap
and recording
the conversations
but in paying
people to listen
to them.
It reminds me
of Bucharest
in Romania
when they uncovered
the Securitat offices
and saw all the cassettes
that had been recorded
over the years
of Romanian citizens
and they had never
been listened to
because there was
just so much.
Oh, there was a lot
of monitoring going on
but where were
the monitors?
They couldn't find
enough of them.
Anyway, to continue,
it isn't collecting data
that is expensive
but analyzing it.
With the advent
of computer voice recognition
in the next few years,
it is quite possible
that this cost
will decrease drastically
maybe by an order
of magnitude
or more
as the technology improves.
I keep asking myself,
how is the FBI proposal
different
from one that would
require audio
and video surveillance
equipment be placed
in every home
at the expense
of the homeowner?
Even if there were
strict controls
to make sure
the equipment
was never used
without a court order,
I doubt that most
people would approve
of it.
What if the FBI
required me
not to seal my envelopes
since it would
inhibit their ability
to surreptitiously
read my mail?
It's not so much
the idea that they
want me to pay for it,
it's the idea
that they want me
to pay to give them
capabilities that I'd
be willing to pay
for them not to have.
That letter from
Joel Upchurch.
A lot of reaction
against this proposal
is coming in,
but people need
to be educated,
people need to write
letters to the
New York Times,
to the various
weekly magazines
that the vast majority
of the American
public reads.
Because this is
something that
once installed
will never be
taken away.
Let's talk about
some foul-ups
and blunders
and things like that.
A software bug
in a crucial
FAA computer,
one that programmers
had identified
and had planned
to fix,
acted up recently
before they could
get to it,
shutting down
the computer
and disrupting
Northern California
air traffic
for about
two and a half
hours.
A spokesman
for the Federal
Aviation Administration
said a backup
computer system
immediately kicked in
and that while
departing flights
were held back
at many airports,
no planes in the air
during the shutdown
were ever endangered.
At least,
not as long
as they stayed
in the air.
And then the
Oakland Air Routing
Traffic Control
Center in
Fremont, California
had receivers
for 12 of its
50 radio frequencies
go dead
on April 17th.
The partial outage
lasted for about
1.5 hours,
delayed 36
outgoing flights
from San Francisco,
seven from Oakland
and one from
San Jose.
The reason was
undetermined.
And something I
don't have in front
of me but I
heard about was
some sort of a
foul up in a
weather computer
in Oklahoma.
A blizzard warning
was issued earlier
this week.
Temperatures were
in the 50s,
I believe.
Not exactly conducive
for a blizzard but
the warning was
issued anyway and
nobody knows why
or how but had
something to do
with the computer.
That's all they're
saying at the
moment.
All right,
here's something
out of Hawaii.
Three weeks ago
most of the
mainland switched
to daylight
savings time in
Hawaii and
unbeknownst to
city transportation
officials a
microchip controlling
traffic signals on
the, oh boy,
Kalanaleel Highway
or something like
that contained the
program written on
the mainland that
contained an
automatic conversion
to daylight savings
time.
So, on Monday,
April 6th, the
timing for peak
traffic hours kicked
in an hour earlier
throwing signals
off.
Signals that were
changing in 200
second cycles began
to change in 185
second cycles.
That's only a 15
second difference and
it only lasted an
hour but that was
enough to mess up
morning rush hour
traffic which is
pretty bad on that
highway.
So, if you ever
want to completely
foul up something in
a city, go for the
traffic lights and
it's a guaranteed
way of doing it
except in New York
where it happens
anyway.
And, you know, it
reminds me of
something about a
year and a half ago
when a major cable
was cut accidentally
by a workman who
went down a manhole
cover.
He cut this cable and
all of a sudden just
about all of AT&T's
northeastern traffic
was out.
That's right,
completely out,
completely wiped
away and I
ventured over there,
it was in New
Jersey, and took a
look at this manhole
and it was so
nondescript, so
average looking.
This poor guy went
down there and he
was hiding too, he
didn't want to talk
to anybody, he was
in a trailer,
accidentally cuts
this little tiny
fiber optic cable
and since there's no
redundancy or no
backup system,
everything gets
wiped out just like
that.
it's simply amazing
how they design
these things sometimes
and how more of
these incidents
aren't occurring
virtually every day.
Alright,
advancements in
technology.
Foodmaster Supermarkets
is pleased to
announce a new
electronic payment
system to be used
for making purchases
at three of their
Foodmaster stores,
that's throughout
Massachusetts.
Foodmaster is
excited to be the
first in the area
to offer this new
service to its
customers.
This, by the way,
is an advertisement
so in case it sounds
kind of propagandized,
that's the reason.
Any customer who
has a Yankee 24
Baybank or Express
24 ATM card can
utilize this system.
The customer at the
point of checkout
simply passes their
card through the
magnetic reader
located at the
checkout and punches
in their secret ID
number and the
transaction is
automatically processed.
Foodmaster is
pleased to be
working in conjunction
with Yankee 24,
Baybank, and
Manta Systems,
Division of Bypass,
and this new
system will be
available through
the month of April.
It'll be starting
to be available then.
Now here's a comment
from Ruth Bork
off the Risks
Computer Digest.
Although the language
carefully and slightly
hints otherwise,
I assume the service
is optional.
The usual obvious
risks apply here,
such as pin protection,
both external and
internal,
sale to others of
both the customers'
names and or their
buying habits and
multi-bank information.
And there's also
a new twist here.
Banks never
retiring of
riding herd on
their yet-to-succeed
debit card pursuits
are now putting
this pressure on
with attractions
via one of the
consumers' most
vulnerable points,
the basic staple
of food.
I wonder if
supermarket check
cashing will
shortly become
more complicated.
And, continuing
along, some of
the other great
advances of
technology, and
this one is rather
frightening, folks.
Rather frightening
here, those of you
with cellular phone
calls, or cellular
telephones, rather,
who receive cellular
phone calls
occasionally,
hopefully.
Listen to this
particular incident
by Brian Cush.
He said,
While traveling
through Georgia
recently, my
cellular phone rang.
Since I was roaming,
I was not expecting
a call.
When I answered it,
it was a recording
welcoming me to
Bell South Mobility,
and offering
instructions on
using their service.
I've had this
happen before, and
didn't think anything
about it, but today
I started to think.
If the cellular phone
company could sense
that I had come
into their area,
that means they
could track my
movements all over
the country on a
carrier-by-carrier
basis.
They might even be
able to track me
within a city area
by which antenna
was picking up my
signal.
The scary
premonition there
of future
services.
It gets even
scarier when you
listen to what
Phil Brown, who's a
project engineer
with GTE Mobile
Communications, has
to say about this.
Not only could the
cellular phone
company track one's
movement all over
the country, although
with great difficulty
and expense using
today's switches, it
is an active industry
goal for the next
generation of
technology.
Call delivery, making
your phone ring when
someone dials your
number regardless of
your geographic location
and serving carrier of
the moment, is an
integral part of the
standard being
developed for
inter-switch
communication.
It's also seen as a
key to making
personal communications
networks work.
What happened to you
in Georgia is the
result of a feature
known as autonomous
registration by which
the serving switch
instructs a mobile
unit to register and
is transmitting its
identity information
including mobile phone
number and serial
number as soon as
radio contact is
established as indicated
on the mobile's
handset display by the
service light or
service bars.
When the system
detected that you were
a roamer, it placed
a call to your phone
and played the
recorded greeting for
your edification,
although, I don't
know, Bell South's
policy, it's quite
unlikely you were
charged for this call.
Furthermore, automatic
vehicle location
services, known as
AVL, are also seen as
highly desirable by a
significant subgroup
of wireless communication
users, truckers, and
victims of car thieves
come immediately to mind.
There are companies
that claim to be able
to determine the
position of a mobile
unit in a cell site to
within 100 feet using
only the received 800
megahertz radio signal.
That is a frightening
claim there.
The technology, though,
at this point, at this
point, is unreliable and
expensive.
The most popular solution
is to marry a global
positioning system known
as GPS, one of those
receivers to a cellular
phone or other
wireless terminal, but
this is both proprietary
and also expensive.
As long as the user
retains the ability to
disappear by turning the
phone off, I see the
benefit as outweighing the
risk in this form of
network tracking.
I squirm a lot when I
read about beacons placed
in every car for
automatic toll collection
and vehicle monitoring
because these specialized
systems exist solely for
the purpose of tracking
and accounting.
And does anyone really
expect there to be an
off switch on such a
device that's there for
tracking and accounting?
I don't think so.
It's one thing to choose
to be tracked, quite
another to have an eye in
the sky checking up on
you.
But maybe it's something
we ought to start getting
used to.
All right.
And to wrap that up,
another story about this
very same thing from
Kevin Paul Herbert.
He says, I was talking to
my mother yesterday about
a new device that she had
installed in her car,
required, required now by
the insurance company in
order to insure the car at
full value.
The device tracks the
location of the car with
sufficient resolution to
even give the driving
speed.
We're not getting here.
It's getting that advanced
that they can give you the
driving speed.
That is most frightening
as far as I can see.
In any event, the device
tracks the location of the
car with sufficient
resolution to give driving
speed.
He says, my father called
up the service to test it
out and they said where my
mother was driving as well
as indicating that she was
driving 30 in a 35.
If she did not get this
locating device, her
insurer would have only
insured the car at up to
50% of the car's value.
She didn't know anything
about how this data could
be disclosed.
She hadn't really thought
about it.
Okay, that's the advancements
of technology for this week
here on Off the Hook.
We do have a special guest and
he's going to be arriving
momentarily.
So, stay tuned.
Meanwhile, we'll be taking
phone calls as well.
212-279-3400.
Live Extraordial.
.
.
.
.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And I kind of shrugged it off.
Two weeks later, he calls me back again.
I asked him about that number he gave me.
He said that was the special test number of loop, and that's when I started getting interested
in all that.
Uh-huh.
And what year is this?
69.
That late?
I always thought it was earlier in the 60s.
Nope.
69.
Really?
And now, what has changed with the technology since then?
Obviously, that 2,600 hertz tone, which is what the Captain Crunch whistle was.
About 1979 until about 1984, the phone company switched over from in-band signaling to out-of-band
signaling.
Okay.
Now, for the listeners, could you explain out-of-band signaling?
Out-of-band signaling is where the call setup is done not over the same wire pair that you
use with your voice, but over a special data channel, which is inaccessible for phone hackers.
Back in the earlier days, one would send 2,600 hertz down the phone line, which would then
be detected by the toll-switching equipment, would disconnect you from the number you had
been connected to, at which time you would then be on an open trunk line, and then you
would use the blue box, or 2,600 whistle, to dial a call that way.
Back before 1970, it was possible to call an 800 number that terminated in Little Rock, Arkansas,
and use the Captain Crunch whistle to make a call.
And then Little Rock, Arkansas, got cut over to the multi-frequency tones, at which time
that was then the norm.
Uh-huh.
And that's true blue boxing, though, using the multi-frequency tones, correct?
Right.
Now, this doesn't work at all anymore?
I think in 1984, the last American exchange cut over to CCIS, or CC, or whatever it is,
for out-of-band signaling.
I believe at that point there might have been a few end offices, or some small offices up
in northern Canada that might have been boxable, but I don't really know.
Uh-huh.
I'm told it's still possible to parts of remote Canada, and maybe even some parts in the United
States, too.
I've heard rumors of things like that that are still possible.
It might be possible.
Uh-huh.
But it's a lot easier to call in blue box from anywhere outside the country now.
Well, it's also possible, is it not, to call one of those toll-free numbers that go to another
country and then use their phone system from that, correct?
That's what people have been telling me.
Recently, I've been getting a lot of calls from phone hackers or computer hackers on the
Alliance conference.
Uh-huh.
I'm, I'm, someone in the past have discouraged them from calling me, but because of my presence
on the IRC internet chat and other conferences, I've been a little bit more open about it,
and I always try to, try to tell people and discourage them from doing it as much as I
can.
The biggest problem I see, and this is from hackers that have called me, is that a lot of
hackers now have been telling me that if they ever get busted and thrown in jail, if they're
going to have hacker lessons in prison and teach all the prisoners how to do it.
Interesting concept.
Yeah, I thought so too, and I said, well, you know, you got to do what you got to do to
do your time, and I, and I, and I advised them that, that if they ever found out that they
were hackers to, to do what they say, they want information to give it to them, because
if they don't, their time in prison is going to be made extremely miserable, I am speaking
from experience, because that has happened to me.
Now, when did that happen, and what were the circumstances of you being in prison?
I was, uh, in one of my busts in 77 in Pennsylvania.
I was going to Northampton County in Easton, Pennsylvania, where I served four months there.
And at that time, I was, um, approached by some pretty heavy-looking dudes who had seen
the TV news, me on the TV news about my arrest and, and incarceration, and they said, oh,
you're the phone hacker type.
Why don't you tell me how you do that?
And I says, okay.
Knowing, or, or kind of, you know, half thinking that these guys probably wouldn't really go
up and check on this, I sort of gave them information that really wasn't true, and that
turned out to be my demise.
Uh, suffice to say, I'm still reeling from the shock of the, uh, physical torture I had
as a result of me not giving them that information.
So from that point on, I haven't been resisting anybody asking me these questions.
That's quite a story.
Now, what was it that, that got you in prison in the first place, just making free phone
calls?
Well, yeah, that was basically what I was charged with.
And they, they, they mixed you in with these, uh, these hoods.
Exactly.
And it turns out that these guys in prison seem to have a lot of knowledge that, uh, and
they actually checked up on the information that I'd given them.
And they seem to be a lot very, a lot more knowledgeable than I had originally expected them to be.
I believe that this person was in for heavy drug dealing and was, um, doing 15 years.
And, um, on a drug-related charge.
And he wanted very much to get access to the computer systems in Washington, D.C.
And I had to tell him how to do that.
That's, uh, you bring up a very interesting point where if you, if you mix hackers together
with, uh, with criminals, with, uh, real criminals.
That can make for some extremely dangerous situations in the future.
Certainly can.
You consider, like, this guy, Morris, who unleashed the internet worm, did this with very, with,
you know, with a very, I, I admit it was, it was reasonably clever Unix hack.
And I'm sure that, that there is a possibility that there's not going to be that many people
in prison that are going to know how to do that.
But what if that information got out to the underground and this guy, Morris, did something
like, like, remove all the files from root directory to every, every system on the internet?
What would that happen?
That cause, rather than having a little program come up and be infiltrating through and slowing
the systems down, having something come up and actually remove data files, that would
have been extremely catastrophic.
Yeah, and then through a network, something like that could, uh...
They would not have existed.
That's certainly true.
Do you think, uh, hackers have changed since, uh, the early days?
I think they, I think they are becoming a lot more, um, a lot more militant in ways to
say that they, they are, they definitely have a lot more animosity toward the authority figures
than they have in the past.
Um, the kind of hackers, for instance, that I grew up and hung out with in my time 20 years
ago, these kinds of hackers were just innocent, mostly blind kids.
That we're just looking for a place to have a social meeting together.
Blind kids don't get out in the, in the real world too much.
They're pretty much at home all the time unless they have a sighted person to lead them around
and take them out to places and meet people.
So they, they look for alternative ways to, um, to socialize.
And they do this over conferences or over party lines.
And they just, they, they, they figure out how to make party lines on the, uh, by, by opening
up, uh, sleeves on old step offices or doing this and that to, uh, to make these conferences.
And that's how they socialize.
That's their median.
That's their meeting place.
And when something gets taken away from them, they just go out and look for others.
They only want to just socialize and not, they don't have very much destructive, um, mindset.
But now, a lot of these hackers, uh, like the people in New York, for instance, that are,
that are selling times to people, uh, and making calls to the Dominican Republic.
I believe I heard something on the well about that.
Well, are those people hackers in your definition?
Well, these people are probably not hackers.
These people have probably gotten their codes from hackers.
Uh-huh.
So it's, it's sort of what you were saying before about criminals getting information from hackers.
Oh, that's, yeah.
It could be dangerous.
And it all, it's all the bottom line of this whole thing that I'm trying to bring to light
out in the open.
And this is important for, and that is the concept of technology transfer.
We all know how bad technology transfer can happen.
You know, what, what, what can happen if technology gets in the wrong hands?
And so, um, incarcerating hackers and putting them in jail.
It's just going to make things worse.
Because what's happening now is that these hackers that have access to this wealth of
information are getting put right in the same cell with the very people that you want to
keep away from them.
You want not to have access to that information.
I mean, prisons are supposed to be reasonably controlled environments.
Well, they are to a certain extent.
But on the other side of those bars, there's nothing the authorities can do.
You're in a cell with another guy, or you're in the exercise yard, or you're down in the gym,
and you're sitting around talking and bullshitting to your friends and stuff like that.
And so these people, okay, have got unrestricted on what they can say.
The guards aren't going to be listening to what you say in the yard.
They're going to be up out of the way, keeping control of the situation.
So there's plenty of opportunity for that technology transfer to take place.
Now, we're talking with Captain Crunch, one of the original Blue Boxers.
I'd like to ask what you're up to presently.
Presently, what I'm doing is I'm organizing on the Internet through the well and the programmers' network.
And some of the things that we're doing is we're providing a forum for having discussion groups
on what we've dubbed now Project Forest,
which is I'm laying down the seeds to plant and set up a series of working groups
to enhance the computer programming languages that are currently out there
into putting a lot of tools and utilities on the Internet
to be accessed for free by the Internet users.
And my home base is on a system called the well,
and we have a conference on there where people can log into the well.
And, for instance, we've got a lot of companies that do drug testing,
and we've got a complete list of all the companies that do drug testing.
And this is being published on a weekly basis from another individual,
and we collaborate with these people and make it known to other programmers
which companies do drug testing and other social issues related to companies
and how well they pay their programmers, how soon they pay their programmers, et cetera.
And this might be a good opportunity to give out your Internet address
if people are interested in getting information from you and also the number for the well.
I'm on the well, and it's crunch at signwell.sf.ca.us.
I have an alternate Internet address as well, and that's crunch at netcom.com.
Okay, and you can reach the well data by calling every code 415-332-6106
and registering online there.
And you register online by typing new user, give them all the billing information,
send your check into the well, or give them your MasterCard or Visa, and you're on.
From that point, you can take advantage of the forums that we have for computer programmers.
These are mostly contractor programmers or independent software writers
who are just working alone to put out products either as commercial products
or as freeware or shareware or other programs.
And we encourage all students that are taking computer science at colleges
to join on these conferences as part of their curricular activities in school.
A lot of the people that are currently part of the Project Forest are CS major people
that are writing or working on papers, and at the same time they're working on papers,
I'm giving a lot of guidance on how to set up and design software using object-oriented techniques.
It's not like you have Carl waiting coming in there.
If I'm going to get that, why don't you go to a break? I'll be right back.
Okay, we're going to go to a phone call, actually.
Just a second.
Just pop back in whenever you feel like it.
Our number is 212-279-3400.
We've got Captain Crunch on the line speaking to us from California,
one of the original Blue Boxers.
And we're on for another 15 minutes.
Let's see if there's any questions, comments, observations out there.
Good evening. You're on the air.
One comment and one question, one on your earlier news story.
There's a large number of street crime cars that are disguised as taxi cabs that the police use.
And it's always occurred to me when I was driving a cab that you could somehow figure out the pattern on their licenses.
You know, the roof lights have a code that's a number, letter, number, number.
That's a very good point.
In fact, I do know that there are cars that are owned by the police department that are taxis,
but they use for surveillance purposes.
If I had been thinking, I was too busy thinking of protecting myself,
but I should have run up to that cab and gotten its license plate or the number up on top.
It's both now.
The plate number and the top number are the same, as is the medallion number.
That's true. That's true.
Well, you might be the person to answer a question that I've had.
I've noticed some of those license plates sometimes have a little subscript one on them.
Do you know what those mean?
They've run out of the medallion numbers to issue so that people who have more than one taxicab
belonging to a particular, like Mini Fleet or something like that, are given a subscript.
So you can be 1H-22-1, 1H-22-2.
I see.
1H-22-3, like that.
Interesting.
They used to be TA or TB license plates, and then they would be TC would be the Taxi Commission license plates,
which would be a lot of the unmarked cars that go around.
It used to also be that every single taxicab had a different company name on it, too.
Right.
That went away a few years ago.
Right. I don't know what happened with that, because I stopped driving, but...
There were hundreds of different company names.
And each cab, in fact, each fleet would have, each cab would have a, or each two cabs would
have a different company name.
Even in a large fleet of 100 cabs, there would actually be 50 different companies, I think,
for insurance purposes, or so that a lawsuit couldn't proceed beyond the value of the corporation
that owned two taxis.
And one more thing, just to exhaust the knowledge that I have of taxis, I've heard that there
are only 14 checker cabs left in the whole city.
Uh-huh.
I didn't know that.
That sounds right, though.
That's a dying breed, which hopefully will come back someday.
And any other points you wanted to make?
Just my question.
From what you said earlier about the surveillance thing, it sounds like what they're really
trying to set up, if I understood you right, is a central office situation where they can
actually dial into any call they feel like listening to?
Well, as far as where it is located, that's not really clear yet, anyway.
But you have the basics right.
It's something that they can tap into from any place and retrieve information.
What's this, REMOB?
We're talking about the FBI proposal, the digital surveillance.
Yeah, yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, it's very recent.
That is hogwash.
Uh-huh.
That is absolute hogwash.
The FBI proposal, you mean?
What's that?
The FBI proposal.
Yes.
I read that, and I almost threw up on my computer screen.
Yeah, that's something you've got to watch for.
Let's, uh...
I want to go over and live in the Soviet Union.
Yeah, well, uh, they're lagging behind us in technology, and that might be a good thing,
actually.
212-279-3400.
Let's take another phone call.
We have Captain Crunch on the line from California.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, hi.
I was wondering, have you heard of a book called In the Absence of the Sacred by Charimander?
I haven't read it.
I've heard that title.
I don't know in what context, though.
If you didn't mind, there's a couple of paragraphs in your introduction.
Okay.
That speak to what you were saying earlier.
Are they short paragraphs?
Uh, take a couple of minutes.
Well, we'll start now, then.
Okay.
As we will see, the idea that technology is neutral in itself is not neutral.
It directly serves the interests of the people who benefit from our inability to see where
this technology is headed.
I only began to glimpse the problem during the 1960s when I saw how excited our society
became about the presumed potentials of television.
Activists, like everyone else, saw the technology opportunistically and began to vie with other
segments of society for their 20 seconds on the network news.
A kind of war developed for access to this powerful new instrument that spoke pictures into
the brains of whole populations.
But the outcome was predetermined.
We should have realized there was a foregone conclusion that TV technology would inevitably
be controlled by corporations, the government, and the military.
Because of the technology's geographic scale, its cost, the astounding power of its imagery,
and its ability to homogenize thought, behavior, and culture, large corporations found television
uniquely efficient for ingraining a way of life that served and still serves their interests.
And in times of natural crisis, the government and military find TV a perfect instrument for
the centralized control of information and consciousness.
Witness the Gulf War, and I think that's a very good example.
Yes.
Meanwhile, all of the contenders for control of the medium have effectively fallen by the
wayside.
Now we have the frenzy of computers, which in theory can empower individuals and small
groups and produce a new information democracy.
In fact, as we shall see in Chapter 4, the issue of who benefits most from computers was
already settled when they were invented.
Computers like television are far more valuable and helpful to the military, to multinational
corporations, to international banking, to governments, and to institutions of surveillance
and control, all of whom use this technology on a scale and with a speed that are beyond our
imaginings.
Then they will ever be to you and me.
Computers have made it possible to instantaneously move staggering amounts of capital, information,
and equipment throughout the world, giving unprecedented power to the largest institutions on the
earth.
In fact, computers make these institutions possible.
Meanwhile, we use our personal computers to edit our copy and hook into our information
networks and believe that this makes us more powerful.
That's it.
Let me just ask you something.
Now, what you're reading seems to say it's a foregone conclusion that military and government
will always have control over technology.
Do you think it's possible for individuals to wrest that control and control technology
themselves and for that purposes?
Well, I think the...
Well, I think the...
That's happening now.
That's...
Yeah, I see examples of that, particularly with what Captain Crunch is doing out there.
Do you think it's hopeless?
Well, the point that he's saying is that just by its very nature and why it exists, I suppose,
is, in other words, it's the corporations that, you know, computers develop.
It's sort of like a medium that, like, television is taking over for the mass brainwashing, if
you want to call it.
I mean, it's such a powerful instrument and the money to use it behind it.
I mean, we don't own the phone line.
Somebody else, a giant corporation does.
And we're sort of like beholden unto that.
And, you know, we don't own our own stations.
We don't own our telephone companies.
We have to go into that system and they control it.
That's a good point.
In fact, it brings back something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago when I was exploring
a local central office that was upgrading and had a phone line, which I pay for.
You know, I pay for these phone lines.
And I figure it's, you know, it's within our rights to look at the equipment and see how
it works and see what our phone lines actually look like.
But, of course, they won't let you in to ever see this, to ever see if somebody has attached
a little bit of equipment to your phone line and is monitoring you.
They don't like people to actually see how the technology works.
And I think it's not only something we should see, it's something we have the right to see.
We do pay for this.
And, yes, it may belong to the phone company, but it really belongs to us.
We are the ones that make it possible.
All right, let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
Hi, Emmanuel.
Maybe you can solve a telephone riddle that's been plaguing my uncle.
He moved to an apartment, got a phone number, and started getting crank calls.
He then had his number changed to an unlisted number, and the same people are continuing
to make crank calls.
What possible, you know, explanation can you have for that, even though we're having the
telephone company internal security investigated?
And I'll hang up and listen.
Okay.
Captain Crunch, I think you might be interested in this, too.
I think one of the possibilities is that the people work for the phone company.
Another possibility is that somebody knows somebody that works for the phone company.
Another possibility is that somebody knows how to access the computers.
Well, all of those are certainly possibilities.
I can remember back during the times when I wanted to get a number of, let's say, somebody,
and I already had a working number for this guy, and let's say the next day, and let's say
if I anticipate that this person's going to change his phone number, what I would do would
be social engineer by contacting the switchman and talk switchman talk and getting him to
believe that I was working for the phone company and having him give me the line location for
that number.
Once I got the line location for that number, then I can just get the number from a line
location really easily.
And with that technique, you can also change somebody's number for them.
And if that number's changed to an unlisted number, the line location number is not going
to indicate that that's an unlisted number.
It'll still give me the number.
That's correct.
But there's a couple other things, too.
First of all, you can use that technique to change somebody's number for them without them
even knowing what it is.
Yeah, and that's been done in the past, but not too many people get out of line and do that,
although it's been known.
And there's other techniques, too, hooking into junction boxes.
This person lives in an apartment.
You can go down to the basement and just hook a phone up and find out what the phone number
is that way.
And get it that way.
It's not inconceivable at all.
Yeah, when I was in jail, actually, they had a bank of pay phones, but they had all the
phone numbers taken off so you couldn't get the phone numbers.
So the first thing I did was I dialed 890 or whatever the number was, the code was, for
that area, and I got all of the numbers to all the pay phones, and, boy, that made me
very popular.
Uh-huh.
Until you gave it out, I guess, and they had no use for you after that.
Well, yeah.
Well, what I would do is give it out to the people who would protect me.
Uh-huh.
It's amazing how seven digits protect your life.
Yeah, well, the idea is that in jail, nerds just don't have a place in jail.
When you're dealing with their, it's this rival of the fittest, and these pale, geeky
characters that sit at their computer terminals and don't have big muscles to protect themselves
will wind up being at the low end of the stick in jail when it comes to any dispute or
anything like that, and they get harassed continually, if you then become very good friends with
a very big person and get on his good side, then no one will bother you.
That's the rule of the streets, too.
Yeah, that's true.
Let's see if we can fit in one more phone call, because we're almost out of time.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, Goldstein.
First time caller.
Long time listener.
Okay.
And last week, you were talking pretty much in depth about how cellular phones are pretty
much open for anyone with ears and something to pull it in and out of the air.
Exactly.
I was relating this to my old man.
He lives out on Long Island, and my old man uses a manual typewriter, you know what I
mean?
Uh-huh.
And I tell him about this, and he goes, oh, wait, let me tell you what's been going on.
He's got a cordless phone in this house, in this tract housing in Nassau County, real
close.
And he said he heard a weird click on this phone.
He went to pick it up, and he wasn't sure what was going on.
He thought his phone was broken, so he unplugged it.
And he's listening, and he starts picking up the people right next door to him, who he
hates.
They've got the barking dog.
They don't hold the lawn.
And he's been listening to their conversations for weeks and weeks now, finding out stuff
about them just to find ways to nail them, or just do something real nasty to them
in a way.
So it's kind of weird how this thing has filtered down to the lowest tech person.
I mean, this guy can't even program his VCR.
Well, what you've got there are two similar cordless phones that just happen to be using
the same frequency.
You're not even using a scanner.
I mean, it's so easy.
You don't have to do that.
And it's not cellular on top of that.
He wasn't going out of his way to try to find it.
No, it came to him, and that's an example of how the technology simply is not designed
with the proper precautions in mind.
Okay, we are out of time.
Captain Crunch, I want to thank you very much for being with us tonight, and wish you luck
in your future endeavors.
Sounds like you have quite a few of them, actually.
Anybody that wants to contact Captain Crunch, do you want to give out your address one more
time?
You there?
What's that?
Do you want to give out your internet address one more time?
Yes, my internet address is crunchatwell.sf.ca.us.
We're on a system called The Well in Sausalito.
It's a relatively large online system, much like CompuServe or Bix, and I'm also on Netcom,
crunchatnetcom.com.
Okay, we're going to have to stop there, because we are out of time.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein for Off the Hook.
And I want to thank everybody for listening, for calling in, and for remaining awake and
alert as far as technology goes.
We'll see you again next week during Marathon.
Take care.
I caught myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bumbly Bum, for the best, it's back from worse.
I hope that's understood.
Bumbly Bum!
It's coming.
Thrills like you've never seen before.
Romance that...