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And it's 9 o'clock, which means it's time for Off the Hook.
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.
Bon Dillibon, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bon Dillibon!
This is Off The Hook.
The program we talk about high tech, low intelligence, and a whole lot of fun for one and all.
And one of those places where things are changing rapidly is the eastern part of Germany.
They once told the joke that one half of France was waiting to obtain telephone service, while the other half waited for a dial tone.
That's changed, of course, and so is the phone system in what used to be communist East Germany, where service not so long ago was widely rated D for difficult.
Germany unified, but the telephone system, it was not.
Now the old East German International Country Code 37 is gone, and all of Germany can be reached with the International Country Code 49, which is the old number for West Germany.
Marls Brossag, with German Telecom in Berlin, says technical differences between East and West kept telephone unification from happening quickly.
That's right, because we have to reconstruct nearly everything of the infrastructure, we have to build digital telephone exchanges, we have to remove the old ones, the analog technique, but it's now getting better.
So the next time you're calling friends or relatives in Germany, wherever they may live, remember, one Germany, one international country code, 49.
In Berlin, this is Albert Calvert.
And don't forget it, 49 is the country code for all of Germany now, and every East German city has been reassigned a new city code, which has caused much confusion everywhere.
But we're used to that.
We're going to be talking about caller ID again, as we so often do on this radio program.
We'll have a special look at how it's already working in some parts and what you can expect to see.
Before we do, however, I'd like to step out of the normal mode of the program, which is to talk about these things at great length, for something a bit serious, a bit scary.
A lot of you have been watching the news in the last couple of days, heard about that awful plane crash in Amsterdam,
and, well, it was particularly frightening for me because less than a month ago, I was in that very neighborhood with the people that run the Dutch hacker magazine known as Hacktick,
kind of the Dutch equivalent of 2600.
And the offices there are, I'd say, a couple hundred yards away from the point of impact.
So, as you can imagine, things there are pretty tumultuous and rather scary when you think that you can be going about your daily business and all of a sudden, out of the heavens,
some great monster can just plow into a building and completely destroy life.
It was particularly sad because I've talked about that particular district on this radio program or on this radio station, in any event,
how it's very ethnically mixed, how there's a lot of mixture of races, a lot of people from Suriname and various Caribbean spots,
a lot of Africans, and, of course, a lot of people that have come from various parts of Europe, Eastern European refugees.
Holland is a very nice place for people that are looking for a new beginning in many ways, a new beginning as far as a way of thought, a new beginning economically.
People tend to be more open-minded.
People tend to be less hung up about various things.
And it was that particular community where a lot of happiness was, a lot of children, a lot of people walking around just kind of communing with nature.
Because unlike here, unlike in the United States where we have an apartment complex, you don't see much wildlife.
You don't see things like herons or swans or even ducks.
But there you saw it all. There were ponds. There were forests. There was just about everything for everybody.
And at night, it wasn't dangerous to walk around because, well, my theory on this is because people are not allowed to have guns.
Yeah, they can do drugs. They can have all kinds of sex and do all kinds of crazy things.
But guns, that's just self-defeating.
And the result of that was that you could walk around at night, you could walk through a crowd of drug dealers, and you'd never feel in danger.
And the people there, pretty much mixed, got along well, said hello to one another, and basically took care of each other.
And that's why it's particularly sad when something like this happens.
You don't see that on the television. You don't see what the Balmer district of Amsterdam was like before this.
But to me, it was an enchanted place.
Some place that was extremely happy, extremely mixed culturally.
And I doubt it's ever going to be the same again.
So think about that next time you hear about the numbers going up.
This is not just a faraway disaster that doesn't have any effect on any of us.
Because as far as humanity goes, this pretty much touches us all.
And the fact that the Dutch hackers are in the midst of this, fortunately for me, and for my friends, nobody we know was involved in that.
But when a plane crashes into an apartment building a couple hundred yards away from your house,
you start to realize things can change awfully fast.
Well, to get back to our pedestrian ways of life here, things are changing as well.
Not quite as dramatically, but certainly as emphatically.
We'll be taking phone calls, 212-279-3400.
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The program is Off the Hook.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein.
We're together until 10 o'clock, fighting for education, fighting for all kinds of things,
spreading knowledge and information and gathering experiences as we go along.
That's what I'm told it's all about.
And part of the education that we are trying to instill in people is the insecurity of communications,
whether it's your cellular phone calls, whether it's your regular wired phone calls,
whether it's your spoken words in a crowded room where microphones could be picking you up,
or whether it's mail, electronic mail or physical mail, but particularly electronic mail being sent out over the Internet.
A recent survey in the U.K. asked two questions.
And those of you who are on the Internet should think about this.
Question one.
Have you sent or received confidential or sensitive information by electronic mail?
The number of people who said yes was 75%.
And the second question.
Was the material encrypted or protected in any way?
91% said no.
And that is something to think about when you consider that encryption is about as standard,
or should be as standard as, say, sealing a letter on an envelope of something you send through the post office.
Would you send a sheet of paper through the post office with all your personal thoughts on it?
No.
Yet, you'd send a personal message sailing out over the computer networks for everybody to see.
Not just individual people, but law enforcement agencies and the like.
If you perhaps might express some kind of interest in child pornography or drugs or anything else that is considered unacceptable these days,
you could be a target of various sorts.
There's an interesting story that is circulating.
That does sound horrible, doesn't it?
Let me reach over there and clean off that needle.
There we go.
That's better.
Sorry about that.
That happens occasionally.
Finally, this is a story that's been circulating in various corners of the globe.
Forwarded to us by Bruce Sterling, who's going to be on this program next week.
He's got a book coming out called The Hacker Crackdown.
And it will be released, I believe, a week from tomorrow on October 15th.
So you'll want to be watching for that.
But this story comes from the Toronto Sun.
And it's called Hacker Cripples 911 System.
And it's kind of hard to read it this way over the air.
But what follows that is a colon in the word cop.
So basically what it says is Hacker Cripples 911 System.
Cop.
And what that means is a cop says Hacker Cripples 911 System.
You know, it's New York Post style of logic.
But this is actually the Toronto Sun.
And I'll read you the story and go off on tirades along the way.
Metro Police have unplugged a teenage, quote-unquote, computer expert, unquote, yes,
who infiltrated Metro's 911 system and sent emergency workers on wild goose chases.
Now, I should point out that a computer expert is defined by Metro Police as anyone who has a computer.
They might not admit that, but that is their definition.
On one occasion, the youth managed to, quote-unquote,
monopolize the 911 system from a home computer, said Detective Willie Johnston.
I would imagine monopolize is their definition of the word call.
But that's something else.
According to him, it was shut down for all of Metro.
While police, fire, and ambulance people were chasing these false emergencies,
maybe they were needed elsewhere.
That made us angry.
This is reading like a children's story here.
Yes, that made us angry, he added.
Staff Sergeant Mike Sales said the youth cracked a, quote-unquote,
sophisticated security shield by routing computer transmissions through large systems in the U.S.
The translation of that means he was able to reroute phone calls through what is known as extenders or various other ways of masking where you're coming from.
It's extremely easy to do this.
You don't have to be an expert.
You just have to be a moron, and it's a lot easier to be a moron than an expert.
Major crime unit detectives enlisted the help of computer experts and Bell Canada security officers as they tracked the prankster.
I'll read that sentence again, and you tell me what it has to do with computer hackers.
In July, a youth placed numerous 911 calls reporting medical emergencies, which proved false.
Here's another sentence that has absolutely nothing to do with computer hackers.
On August 30th, emergency crews in three municipalities were simultaneously dispatched to a shooting on a street, which existed in all three regions.
Right, and the conclusion to all this is the 15-year-old was arrested at his North York high school yesterday and charged with theft of telecommunications.
24 counts of mischief.
10 counts of conveying a false message.
I'd sure like to know how else he could be prosecuted for conveying a false message.
But what we have here, folks, is a simple case of somebody pranking 911.
And the fact that he had a computer means that a hacker did it.
And the fact that a hacker did it means that hackers cripple the 911 system.
And so you see how the logic works.
It's so easy to understand and so easy to abuse.
Ah, but now, there's more.
New York Telephone is introducing caller ID.
But you know what?
They're not calling it caller ID.
If you look in your phone bill this month, most of you should have gotten this particular piece of paper.
They're not calling it caller ID.
They're calling it call ID.
God knows why.
They apparently feel that that will work better.
Yeah, it will work better.
The New York State Public Service Commission recently ruled that New York Telephone could begin offering call ID.
The service lets you see the phone number of an incoming call on a special display device attached to your phone.
You must purchase this device separately in order for the service to work.
New York Telephone does not sell the device.
Now, here's the good part.
New York Telephone will begin offering call ID service in November next month in Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Beacon, and the surrounding Mid-Hudson area, Rockland,
and in parts of Nassau, Suffolk, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.
No word of Westchester or Manhattan.
But during the next few years, call ID will become available in more and more areas.
If you're in an area where call ID is available and you call someone who has call ID service,
your phone number will be displayed whether or not you have call ID and whether or not your number is listed in the telephone directory.
Since there may be times when you don't want the person you call to know that number, to know your number,
New York Telephone offers two types of number restrictions.
That is, two ways of preventing display of your number to a call ID subscriber.
They're called per-call restrict and all-call restrict.
Basically, you can restrict it each and every time you make a phone call or you can restrict it all the time.
And basically, as a toggle switch, you can access it by dialing star 6-7 or 1-1-6-7 if you don't have a touchtone phone.
And that will either allow your number to be sent if you have all-call restrict,
or if you don't have all-call restrict, it will block your number from being sent for that one time.
And if you use that particular function, the call ID customer who is receiving your call
will see the letter P or the word private on his or her display device.
Now, according to New York Telephone, we already have placed per-call restrict on your line.
If you would like all-call restrict instead, you must request it either by signing and mailing the form
included in this month's bill or by calling your New York Telephone service representative
whose number is on page 1 of your bill.
There's no charge for either per-call or all-call restrict.
Per-call restrict is not available on party line and on some hotel and motel phones.
Only all-call restrict is available to party line customers, and it must be requested by calling
the business office, and all customers on the party line must agree to the all-call restrict choice.
Now, they give you a couple of little pointers here, things to consider in deciding on your number
restrict options.
Keep in mind, the phone company is very, very intent on having everybody subscribe to caller ID.
It doesn't do you much good if people have blocking, right?
The service suddenly becomes rather worthless to them.
But the question we have to ask as consumers is, do we want to change the rules at this stage?
Do we want our number to be transmitted all the time whenever we make a phone call?
Just today, I made a phone call to somebody, and I really didn't want my phone number to be
transmitted because I didn't want them to call me back.
So, I had to go through elaborate means to make sure that this would be the case.
Now, do we want to make it harder and harder for people to not tell who they are?
There's a difference between masking your identity and shouting it out.
There's a big difference between those two worlds, and where do we want to be between them?
Anyway, here are the pointers.
There may be times when you do want the person you call to know your number, such as when certain
emergency services are called.
With all call restrict, the number will not be displayed to call ID subscribers if the
caller is unaware of the star 6-7 or 1-1-6-7 code, or forgets to dial it, or misdials it.
However, I don't have to tell a lot of you that most emergency services, particularly those
that use Enhanced 911, do not use the same technology, so that is a moot point.
There may also be times when you do not want the person you call to know your number.
For example, you may not want the person you call to use your phone number to call you
back or to identify you.
It's basically the same sentence twice.
I don't know why they don't give an example of that, but let's say you call someone who's
completely insane, and you don't want them to call you back and harass you for the rest
of your lives and possibly track you down and kill you like a dog, or another kind of
animal, whatever.
They don't give you that example, but you have to sort of figure that out for yourself.
With per call restrict, the number will be displayed to a call ID subscriber if the caller
forgets to dial the code, misdials it, or is unaware of it.
If you choose to restrict display of your number with either per call or all call restrict,
you should be aware that some call ID customers may choose not to answer your call.
Ooh, that's pretty scary.
Also, this is something we've been pointing out many times on this program, when you call
certain numbers, such as some 800 or 900 numbers, or 911 in certain parts of the state,
the person you called may learn your number through a different technology, and neither
per call, all call restrict, or God himself will prevent your number from being displayed
in these cases.
Only a private telephone is the dream that has now come within reach of millions of Chinese.
They have the money, yet most of them can do nothing but put in an application, get on
a waiting list, and complain about the inefficiency of public telephone services.
According to Wenjie, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications plans to change all
that by the end of the century.
Guoqinhua is standing at the hot office of the Beijing City Telephone Company, filling out
an application form.
He's among the 70,000 customers who are on the waiting list to have a private telephone
installed.
I need a telephone badly because the place where my wife works is far from our new house, and
she must keep in touch with the babysitter.
Besides, my family and relations are all living in the south, so a telephone would be very convenient.
Convenient as it is, a private telephone takes months or even years to be installed, and it
costs more than 5,000 yuan.
Public telephones are not all that cheap or convenient either.
One, Zhen Sheng, works as a purchasing agent for a large electronics company in a nearby province.
It's really inconvenient.
I spend an hour to get to the long-distance call office to make a long-distance call.
Usually, I report to my company at least three times a week, see what a price I have to pay.
Although complaints are loud and mounting, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications
sees it in a different light.
Official Xu Shan Yan attributes the slow growth of telecommunications to the size of China's
population.
Take the ownership percentage, for example.
In 1980, there was less than one telephone for every 200 Chinese.
We spent 10 years tripling that figure.
Xu Shan Yan says that after careful research and analysis, the Ministry has launched a number
of projects to ease the pressure.
They have been incorporated into the Ministry's eighth five-year plan.
By the year 2000, there will be five telephones for every hundred Chinese.
This figure is based on the country's estimated population of 12 billion or more.
Xu Shan Yan says the present difficulties are inevitable in a developing country, especially
one as large as ours.
However, Xu stresses that the Ministry will do its best to light up the switchboards and
create a telecommunications boom.
Summer jobs are unusual for Chinese college students.
Okay, okay.
We don't want to hear about that.
That's the news from China.
The problems people are having with phones everywhere makes our problems pale by comparison,
but there are problems nonetheless.
For instance, over in Europe and many parts of the world, it's seen as an invasion of privacy
to have itemized billing.
That's right.
They don't want people to see.
They want the phone company to even know what numbers they're dialing.
They don't want a piece of paper to exist with that information on it.
But here in this country, we pretty much take that for granted.
We've come to accept it, and we will come to accept caller ID or call ID or whatever they
decide to call it, and we'll take that for granted as well if that is what we want.
And that's what we have to find out from the people out there.
Let's answer some phones.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yes.
Hi.
Go ahead.
Hi.
I have some things to ask you and tell you.
Let me just go in here.
First, I want to tell you about a new thing I discovered.
Go ahead.
It's called 511.
And what it does here on my 5ESS, where I am in part of Queens, it's like a 958.
It gives you your phone number, but the difference is it's just a different voice.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I think you called last week to tell us about 311.
You're advancing slowly up the phone, aren't you?
Actually, no.
311 gives you the touch zones, and I just played with the phone just to see what 511 and 711
and 811 does.
Uh-huh.
Well, now, having played with that myself, I can tell you that some people get different
things with those particular numbers.
I know that 311 in some places actually is treated as an exchange in the 718 area code,
which is kind of an odd exchange.
The 511 thing does not work on an electronic switch or in some other area.
Well, I think in some...
What part of 718 are you in?
718-225 exchange.
Well, for those of us that don't have numbers in our heads, what name does that place convey?
Oh, it's in Bayside, Queens.
Bayside, Queens.
Okay.
I would say that the central office that serves Bayside, Queens has two, what are known
as ANAC numbers, automated number announcement, which you can usually get by dialing 958.
You have the choice of dialing 958 or 511 and hearing two different computers tell you
the same thing.
Right.
That's great.
I mean, most people don't have that luxury, but you do.
I have one other question.
Does a Redbox work on a CoCod phone?
No, it does not because all the intelligence is in the CoCod, in the customer-owned coin-operated
telephone.
And it's, you know, with the regular New York telephone payphone, all the intelligence
is in the central office and that's where you're routing things.
A Redbox, for those of you that don't know, is a box that imitates quarters.
In other words, it sends those little magical tones and makes the phone company think that
you actually put a quarter in.
Right.
But they're changing that, obviously.
Right.
We've got Fiberoptic in the studio.
He's got something to say on that matter.
I wanted to ask you about what you were saying about this 311 and 511.
I'm just curious.
Does Star 67 work in your area yet?
Star 67, the thing about the...
Yeah, you should get a pulsing dial tone that goes steady.
Star 67 is call ID block and it doesn't work.
That's the other thing I was going to tell you.
No, it does not.
I have tried it because I've gotten my phone bill and I've tried it and it does not work.
See, because what I thought was interesting was when I was in California last year, 311
did exactly the same thing as you described.
Right.
And I've yet to find out what exactly it's there for.
That's what I'd like to know.
I'm also in Queens.
In my area, I'm on a 5ESS as well.
And 311 simply waits for four more digits and 711 doesn't work at all.
Right.
But whatever you dial, 311 plus four more numbers, it simply gives you a recording that
the number's not in service.
Right.
What we're all doing here is exploring those places that some people don't want us to explore,
but we're exploring them anyway and finding out what they do.
And sometimes you'll find some pretty incredible things.
I mean, different central offices do different things.
I noticed last time you said that 800 numbers are, that you could divide 800,
they should divide 800 numbers for businesses and residential numbers.
Most of the 800 numbers are business numbers, so I don't know if that would be...
Well, there are a lot of, you see, there's a move afoot to get people to have 800 numbers
so that they can give it to their college kids to call home rather than having to enter a PIN
and, you know, a huge 14-digit number.
They can just call a certain 800 number and it just goes there.
You know, lots of companies are offering that.
MCI has their personal 800 numbers, and I'm sure you're going to see a lot of that in the future.
Now, if you call either 718 or 212, 890-9901, it's going to give you a recording about a one CD office.
I don't know what that means.
Well, I might be able to explain that.
There's something that's known as a community dial office, CDO, which is a term that's been around for a few decades now.
It usually indicates that it's a very, very small unmanned office that's placed in a highly rural area.
So it's very possible that this is just a very small exchange that's solely for the purpose of 890.
It's a New York telephone, not business office, but everything office type of exchange.
Yeah, I'm aware of 890.
It's got all sorts of repair service and test numbers in it.
Right, because you can dial any number from anywhere in the state.
Right.
And that's what I was wondering.
By the way, kind of a sad note to pass along here.
I've been asked to tell people that the 718-762 crossbar office has been retired, has been replaced by a digital switch.
Well, it wasn't replaced.
It was just moved over.
Well, it doesn't work anymore either way.
Yeah.
All the prefixes that were formally on, I think it was a number one or a number five crossbar.
One of those deep baritone rings.
Yeah.
You won't hear that anymore there.
Yeah.
Well, that's it as far as that goes.
Thanks for the information.
Let's move on to another phone call here.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Okay.
One thing.
Can you give the address for 2600?
I'll give you the address and the phone number.
It's 2600 P.O. Box 752.
And that's in Middle Island.
Two words.
New York.
Two more words.
And 11953 is a zip code.
Telephone number 516-751-2600.
Okay.
So if anybody wanted to subscribe or whatever.
Ask questions, whatever.
Yes.
Okay.
That would be fine.
To get to my positive point, I'd like to take up a little bit of an issue with you.
The way you described the so-called prankster in Florida, it seems to me that you sort of
make too much light of it.
I think that hacking a 911 switchboard is a lot more than just a mere prank.
Well, okay.
The thing is, using the word hacking, I think, is incorrect here.
Because what we have here is, I'm not mocking the actual thing that was done.
I think it's horrible to play with 911 at all, to prank that.
But to have a newspaper come out and say that somebody calling up 911 repeatedly is hacking is absurd.
And that's what I'm making fun of here because it's, you know, typical of how the media distorts what hacking is.
Hacking is not going around calling people and making trouble.
Just because somebody has a computer and gets their computer to annoy somebody does not make that person a hacker.
Well, this was an abusive hacker, I would say.
Well, where is the hacking?
Because he had the sophistication to reroute the phone call so he couldn't be...
There's no sophistication required.
It's very simple to do that.
He can easily learn that from anybody.
Hacking requires a bit of knowledge, a bit of ingenuity.
And I see none of that here.
So you're defending the term against a slur?
Basically, yeah.
I think I'm always doing that.
Well, I hope that you end up being right.
The other thing, I'd like to just put forth a little bit of a vision here.
I could see a future in which there's a planetary fiber optic link-up that's all over.
Every household, every business, and the transmission would be video, you know, audio, the whole thing.
Data transmission.
And it would be totally interactive on all levels.
And the thing that makes that work for me is that access to it would be totally free.
In other words, nobody charges you any money to walk down the street.
You know, the street is paid for by a collective taxation system.
Nobody charges you money to drink out of a water fountain in a public park.
In other words, there needs to be a public access on a planetary level of this kind of fiber optic link.
And I think that in the future, in the positive future, that's going to be the case.
And the data processing necessary and the storage, I mean, the technology is almost...
There are hints now of, like, three-dimensional light storage using crystals
and using molecular phase changes to store information.
Like, you know, bytes per square centimeter.
It's just incredible.
Well, you know, it sounds kind of like Star Trek, actually.
But, you know, I agree that we're moving in that direction.
I'd like to see it happen.
I don't know if it's going to be as good a picture as you paint.
I'd certainly like it to be.
But right now, all I know is that people want to charge tolls in the Queensborough Bridge.
So they do charge you for moving from place A to place B a lot of times.
Right, but that's not a technological problem.
That's a social problem having to do with greed and short-sighted stupidity.
Right.
We're going to have plenty of that in the computer world as well.
The other question I'd like to ask you, do you see a positive aspect to having an amendment to the Constitution on privacy?
What kind of an amendment?
Something that says, for instance, like with the caller ID, I have no objection to the concepts,
but I think that no business should be allowed to cut off their caller ID.
Any time a business calls, they should have to be sort of introducing themselves.
They shouldn't be able to be called anonymously by a business.
And in contrast, I think that businesses should not have the access.
A business should not be able to have caller ID.
You should be able to call a business anonymously, if you see what I'm saying.
Right, or an agency or anything, a governmental bureau.
Right, but any time you call another person, why would you want to hide?
Why would you want to anonymously hide your identity?
I mean, to me that seems like knocking on someone's door in disguise.
Well, I mean, first of all, you know, to announce your intentions constantly, I don't know if that's...
I don't subscribe to Ed Meese's way of looking at this, where if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about.
I don't have anything to hide per se, but that doesn't mean I want to announce my whole agenda for the day.
Today I will go here and I will go there and I'll visit this person and go over there.
You know, sometimes when you call somebody on the phone, supposing you're arguing with somebody and, you know, you just want to say you're sorry or something like that.
Do you think the person is ever going to pick up the phone to allow you to do that if they think that you're being a complete imbecile and, you know, can't possibly change?
I'll just hang up on you when you want to hear your voice.
Well, you know, you can talk pretty quickly and get somebody to listen further.
But, you know, we're going to have a lot of social problems that we haven't had before with caller ID.
And there has to be a way around it or, you know, the phone will cease to be a viable means of communication.
Those are very subtle things you're saying, but as far as privacy goes, I think that any time, like when you call a business with an 800 number and they get your phone number, I think that should be illegal.
I feel that's an invasion of my privacy.
Well, then they will counter that by saying you're calling them and they're paying for the call.
They have every right to know who calls them.
And you just, if you don't want to, you don't, well, I don't, I use 800 calls at a minimum for just that purpose.
Or you can call them from a pay phone, I guess.
Or through an operator.
Yeah.
But I just think that the ability to collect data on people, I mean, someone just wrote a book about how we got a hold of Dan Quayle's credit records.
Right.
You know, I'm sure you've heard of that.
I mean, that should not be possible to do.
And if anybody should do that, there should be a criminal, that person should go to jail in my view.
I mean, I don't want anybody doing that to me.
I assume you mean further than just Dan Quayle.
You mean that kind of protection for everybody.
Because if you can collect enough data on somebody, what their habits are, what they buy, how much money they have,
you can create a pretty good picture of who that person is, what they're like, what they don't like.
Yeah, of course.
But don't make the mistake of thinking that the person that does this is the problem,
because the person that does this is simply taking advantage of a problem that's still going to be there,
even if you do throw him in jail.
You see, whether it's for his own amusement or for his own profit,
the problem is that this information is there and it's accessible to millions of people.
But you're saying encryption is the key, right?
Well, I'm saying not having credit files on everybody that's so widely available to virtually any employee of a store that has a TRW account.
It's incredibly easy.
It seems like the only way to defend yourself against this stuff is to become your own little expert in it,
which is why I'm asking about 2,600.
I mean, it's almost a matter of if everybody's carrying a gun, then you might as well carry one, too.
Well, it's sort of, you know, and I find that some of the NRA people sort of have the same attitude as some hackers,
as far as you've got to, you know, you've got to take care of yourself.
But that's pretty much where it stops.
But it is something that a lot of people have taken an interest in, though, and it's a good thing as well.
Anyway, ideally, all information should flow freely.
And I think that the fruits of that kind of a culture, we can't even imagine what can come out of that.
Take care.
All right. Thanks for calling.
Invite him as a guest.
All right.
You're going to be yelling on the phone before you even answer.
Good evening.
Yeah, hi.
I wanted to just cover a couple of points on the caller ID.
Yeah.
First of all, you talked about toggling the caller ID setting.
You said there was a certain way you could, a certain set of digits that you could dial and toggle a setting.
Star 6-7 or 1-1-6-7.
Okay. How do you know what the setting is to begin with?
That's a good question.
Now, they give an 800 number out, and we called this 800 number before, and it doesn't actually do anything.
Not yet, anyway.
Supposedly, it's going to tell you.
It's 1-800-722-2300.
You can call that, and it will supposedly tell you what the status of your line is.
I see.
Okay.
So you could tell what you're starting at.
Okay.
All you really do, you're not toggling anything.
You're just disabling it for the duration of that call.
It's not like a switch going up and down.
That gets to my second question.
Now, you said that there were two possibilities.
You said that either you can have your line always blocked, or you can have it selectively blocked.
Now, let's say you choose always blocked.
Can you then selectively unblock?
Yes.
Yes.
And I don't believe that's available everywhere.
I don't believe all the phone companies give you that.
They sort of penalize you.
They say, okay, we'll give you all call blocking.
But that means that you're never going to be able to unblock it, and that nobody's going
to know your phone number.
And sometimes people will chastise you for this.
But if that's what you want, go ahead.
That's what I was wondering when they were doing that.
But you're saying they're not going to do that.
They're going to allow you to unblock if you want to.
So that switch will allow you to do that, but you do have to be aware of that, the star-6-7.
Right.
Now, on the 800 numbers, what is the rationale for, I can understand on a 900 number, obviously,
where you're being charged for the call.
But on an 800 number, why is it that they can get your number?
What kind of special equipment do they have to have, first of all?
Well, it's a different technology.
It's called ANI, Automatic Number Identification.
And it allows, there's several ways of doing it.
You can either get it on the bill once a month and see who called you, or you can get it instantaneously
and cross-reference it to any customer accounts you might have.
Some companies will say it's so that they can serve their customers better.
They can see that a customer is calling, and they can instantly have the information up for them
before they even pick up the phone.
Others will say it's to counter any kind of pranking.
For instance, if you call an 800 number and hang up repeatedly, they're going to have to keep paying for those calls,
and they're going to want to know who's doing that so they can stop it or call you back and scare you.
Well, wouldn't they have to get the telephone company involved in something like that anyway
so that the phone company is going to know, could at least trace your call?
No, the phone company are the ones that are sending the 800 company your number.
I know that.
But I'm saying if they did not do it, they could still find out if there was somebody pulling pranks.
They could still determine through their own technology who the prankster was.
Not really, no.
You can only trace a call while it's happening, not afterwards.
And they'd have no reason to pick any one person to look at his phone records to see if he was calling this number.
Well, I guess what I'm saying is that internally they must have that information.
But the fact that they have it internally in their own files doesn't mean they have to share it with a private company.
Well, yeah.
Of course, somewhere on someone's message accounting, it's recording the fact that he called that 800 number.
But he's simply one in a million and they'd have no reason to look at him if they have no suspicion.
But I think it's gotten to the point where it's an accepted practice now if you call an 800 number,
that they have the right and now they have the technology to know almost instantly, if not more than that,
who's calling them and from where, maybe even more than that.
Yeah, well, you know, I'll tell you one reason.
Your other caller didn't seem to have a problem with that, but I do.
I mean, let's say you call up one of the radio shows.
Let's say your radio show was an 800 number.
Now, with the directories they have available now, once you have a phone number,
you can back into somebody's name, address, you can find out exactly who is calling you.
So you're no longer, your anonymity is blown.
Right. As long as you know that, though, you can take measures to, you know, to bypass that.
You can call through an operator or you can go through somebody else's number somehow
or you can do it from a pay phone.
Yeah, we're going to a pay phone. I mean, that's a pain in the neck.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is.
What other way could you do it from your own home phone?
Going through an operator. There's no charge for that.
But again, I don't know how long that's going to last because it seems to me like it's just a bit of technology
they have to counter and they'll be able to send your number along even if you do go through an operator.
It's times like this where you need to know how to how to hack the phone system so that you can.
This is a case of a legitimate use of hacking where you're not out to make money.
You're not out to take advantage of somebody.
You're simply out to protect your identity if that's what you want to do.
Maybe you want to call a company.
You only have an 800 number and you don't want them to be calling you back.
Right.
I mean, I did this once. I made a pledge to a I won't embarrass them by saying who they are.
But I made a pledge to a local public television station that will remain anonymous.
And I called one of their 900 numbers, which, you know, basically conveys the same information as an 800 number,
you know, just to make one of those one time pledges of 10 or 15 dollars.
And the result of that was over the next six months, I was bombarded with calls on a private phone line from these people saying,
please contribute more money.
Unbelievable.
You're able to get them get the line and then just call back mercilessly.
It's you know, I would like to be able to do something like that and protect my identity somehow.
That's got to be stopped.
Anyway, thanks a lot.
OK, thanks for calling.
A lot of people out there concerned with privacy.
It's a good thing to to see because once privacy is taken away, it's gone for good.
Because when you when you grow up without something, you don't know what you're missing.
And privacy is something that I think we've always held pretty held in pretty high esteem.
Good evening.
Nobody there.
Good evening.
Hi.
I'm calling because I wanted to get some more information on something you said last week.
OK.
The CNA.
CNA.
CNA.
Yeah.
Customer name and address.
The reverse phone book.
Yeah.
What purpose does that serve?
What is that?
You know what?
Actually, fiber optic can probably answer this better.
The legitimate purpose of CNA.
I mean, I know computer hackers all over the place like to use CNA to find out they have
a phone number.
They want to find out who it belongs to or an address that belongs to the phone number
or a phone number that belongs to an address.
But who really uses CNA?
Well, originally, due to its popularity over the years of people that shouldn't have the
number finding out what it is, anyone would have a PIN, whether they were law enforcement
or they were just subscribed to the service.
And they would call up the CNA number, customer name and address.
And they would give these people their PIN number.
And then they'd be allowed to make numerous requests by telephone number.
And the operator would read them the name and address, provided the number was listed
in their computers.
Mm-hmm.
Does that answer your question?
Well, you said something about the number being printed in the upcoming issue of a magazine.
Right.
Well, we're going to print the number for the Detroit one, which is a computerized one.
It's open 24 hours a day.
And it does give out unlisted phone numbers.
It does give out the names of unlisted phone numbers.
And that will be in the autumn issue of 2600.
Okay.
And I don't have a subscription to 2600.
Is there a way to get 2600 without a subscription?
Yeah.
It's on newsstands all over the place.
In fact, it's amazing.
I found that a lot of people are very interested in reading 2600, very interested in reading
information like this without subscribing.
And I guess in a way they think that's safer to do it that way.
The mailing list isn't looked at by anybody.
You know, it's not open to federal scrutiny or anything like that.
So you can have our assurances that it's safe.
But if you do want to do it that way, you're going to get it later.
You're going to get it, you know, it won't be as up to date, but you'll get it all the
same.
And it's available all around the city and in many cities around the world.
Okay.
2600 comes out how often?
Quarterly.
Quarterly.
And you're talking about the autumn issue.
Right.
And I might make note at this point that the autumn issue this year is actually coming
out in the autumn, which is a very, it's looked upon as a very good thing back at the office
because last year it came out in the winter.
Oh.
And do you expect that to hit the newsstands around when?
It's being mailed on the 15th.
So expect it by the end of the month at the newsstands.
Okay.
Thanks a lot.
Okay.
And I think we're having an earthquake in the studio.
Is that it?
You okay over there?
Okay.
Claude kind of backed into, what was that, the transmitter over there?
Okay.
We're still on the air.
Good evening.
Hi.
Good evening, Emmanuel.
How are you, Mr. Optic?
One...
Go ahead.
Turn down your radio, though.
You'll get awfully confused, and so will we.
Okay.
Very quick question for the uneducated masses.
How, again, can you avoid having your number viewed by someone that has a caller ID box?
What is the one that allows you, what's the process that allows you to always have your number not show?
Okay.
To always do it, you have to go through the phone company.
And, you know, I don't know what the default setting is.
I guess if you don't tell them anything, they'll probably just give you, they won't give you any blocking whatsoever.
Yeah, the default is no blocking.
Which I think is pretty annoying.
I think people should request to have their number sent.
So, if you wanted all your calls blocked, if you wanted to block your number on all the calls you make, you have to tell them you want all call blocking.
Otherwise, if you do have your number sent, you have to block it yourself manually with each call by dialing either star six seven or one one six seven before the call.
Ben, if I understand you correctly, there might come a time in the not too distant future where the technology will allow for, let's say, private corporations or, you know, public entities to bypass this caller ID with another type of system that could still access your number.
Well, it all depends on how exactly the data is sent.
And we're still studying, you know, exactly what is sent over the phone lines and whether that data is sent even if you request it not to be sent.
You know, you have to trust the phone company an awful lot in this instance.
Well, you have to trust them.
And that's something I've always had trouble with.
Me too.
Yeah.
Once again, thank you very much.
And your show is great as usual.
Okay, thanks for calling.
And we are pretty much out of time.
I want to thank fiber optic for for coming in and giving his expertise and stay tuned for the personal computer show.
The program has been off the hook and it will be again next week.
So stay tuned, stay interested and stay safe.
There's a lot of things out there, a lot of puzzles to be solved.
And that's what we're all here for.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein.
See you next week.
Good night.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Hi, this is Larry Gutenberg.