And that's it. Friday from 5 to 9 and Saturday and Sunday from 11 to 6. Sure, I'll meet you
there. You're gonna love it. We can all meet there. Take the number 1 or the number 9 train
or the 104 bus to 116th Street and Broadway. Better hurry.
And it's just about 10 o'clock and for some reason we have a loud hum. We'll figure that
out and then we'll be back with Off the Hook.
It couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would.
Bundledly bound for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bundledly bound.
And a very good evening to one and all. This is Off the Hook with no hums in the background.
But we know how we did it and we can do it again. But we're not going to because we've got a lot of
things to talk about tonight. A lot of high-tech issues. A lot of disturbing events as we always
talk about. And of course we want to take your listener phone calls. But first, let's see what's
going on in the world. Yes, it's been a busy week as most weeks tend to be. But with the holidays
coming up, things get a little bit more frantic, you know. And people out there are running around
a little faster than they usually are. But it's all part of the mayhem we're accustomed to here
in New York. And let's see what's going on in the rest of the world. Information Week reports that
someone described as a disgruntled former employee. It seems like there's never any other
kind. But disgruntled former employee of the Toronto Stock Exchange telephoned a local TV
station newsroom and claimed that he had placed a computer virus in the exchange computer system,
which was due to activate at 9 30 the following morning. An all-night search of the system did
not review any infection and trading proceeded on the following trading day without interruption.
Now, I guess stories like this are becoming more and more commonplace as people believe whatever
they're told over the phone that computer virus can wipe out things. And it's just so easy to
put into place. But the most interesting thing about this story, I think, which is entitled
Toronto Stock Exchange Virus Scare, is that it comes from a magazine that's coming out in January
1993. Hasn't even happened yet. That's the dateline of that story. All right, something else.
And this is, this is something that I think will start happening to more and more of us. It happened
to me this past week. Not quite like this. I'll tell you how it happened to me, but I'll bet it
happened to you at some point or it will happen to you at some point. In the November 23rd edition
of the Ottawa Citizen, there's a story attributed to the South Ham Star and Net. The story talks
about the problems of one Stephen Reed. There appears to be two people by that name with the
same birthday living in the same city. That city being Montreal. The story talks about the usual
identity mix-up and problems well known to people who listen to this radio program. The scary part
is the quote attributed to Lieutenant Gerard Blouin of the Montreal Police. He said this,
It's up to him to change his name somehow. If he can modify his name just by adding a middle
initial or something, it would help him. So somehow it's now, it's now up to the person.
If there's a mix-up in the computer, it's up to them to resolve things. If, if your credit gets
messed up, it's up to you to fix it. Not up to the credit agencies. If a criminal has your name,
it's up to you to change your name. Seems simple enough. Okay, and another story along those lines
comes from England. This occurred back in the mid-80s. The Data Protection Act had recently
come into force and that provided people whose biographies, various details of their lives are
stored in databases with certain rights. They, they had certain rights because they were stored,
they had electronic information stored about them. The people became known as data subjects
and they like referring to people as subjects over there, but they became known as data subjects and
they had certain special rights. Okay, so the scenario is a woman applied for a job with a
local council. She thought she was ideally suited and was quite surprised to be turned down.
Her friend, who already worked for the council, investigated for her and found out
that for the job concern, the council made a routine check with the Police National Computer,
known as PNC. We don't want criminals in certain positions of trust. The PNC had claimed that she
had been convicted for shoplifting. Now, this woman had no criminal record, so she sent her nominal
fee to the PNC people and asked for her record. Yeah, she still had to pay to find out, but she
did it. What she got was the record of another person with the same name who had been convicted
back in the 60s. And since she had been denied employment on the basis of the false statement
made about her, she decided to take the PNC people to court and obtain compensation as allowed for
in the DPA, Data Protection Act. But the police lawyers came out with a very interesting twist
of logic here. Data subjects are indeed entitled to compensation for losses caused
by misrepresentation of their records. But in this case, the woman was not a data subject.
The other woman, the one who had the criminal record, was a data subject because she was the
one that was in the computer. But this woman who had been denied something based on that
information was not in the computer. Therefore, she was not a data subject. She couldn't have
been misrepresented. She was entitled to no compensation, and the police won the case.
What do you think of that? No matter how advanced we get into the computer age,
it's always possible to perform some legal maneuvers that
make ice hockey look like you're standing still. Okay, what else is going on in the world?
This is, uh, well, I guess I'll tell you my story now since it's kind of similar to that.
Paying for something at a store I go to many, many, many times with a check. Now,
I've recently started going to this store. I'm not going to give out details because,
oh, there'd be a whole lot of retribution involved if I did. But a certain store
that sells certain things that I used to get at a mom-and-pop type of store. But the problem with a
mom-and-pop type of store is that it wasn't as cheap, and it wasn't open late, and it wasn't
open at all on Sundays. And this happened on a Sunday where I went to this discount place. Let's
just put it that way. I went to this discount place and got up to the front and, you know,
showed my license, showed my special little card that makes me a member of that place,
which I don't understand the point of since everybody has to be a member of that place,
and anybody can be a member of the place. I don't know what the point of it is.
But I showed all that information, and their computer would not accept my check.
Now, I've been there dozens and dozens of times, and I had more than enough to cover the check.
Yet they told me that this particular service they subscribe to, known as SCAN,
a nationwide service that does something with the magic numbers at the bottom of your check and
tells people what your intentions really are. The SCAN people said not to accept the check,
and they blindly believed it. They couldn't tell me why. They just said, well,
maybe you wrote a lot of checks today. I hadn't written a check for a week.
Well, maybe there's not enough money in your account. No, there's plenty.
The thing is, I couldn't get around that. They would not bypass the computer in any way. They
would not contact a human being, and they could not give me a reason why this was happening. All
they could say was, sorry. Well, I called the SCAN people the next day and had them on the phone for
quite some time. I had to read my motor vehicle license number six different times. Now, I don't
know how it is in other states, but in New York State, your license number is... it's longer than
any number I think I've ever seen in my life. I can't imagine why. We don't have that many people
in the whole world to justify such a number, but it must be about 14 or 15 or maybe even 20 digits
long. And invariably, when I was reading it over the phones, they missed a digit, so I had to start
from scratch, and they said it was wrong. Can you imagine that? Being told your driver's license
number is wrong? So, after finally getting it to the right person, who then transferred me to
another person who wanted me to read it all over again, they finally figured out what was wrong.
Somebody, somewhere in the country, had a similar bank number to my bank number. Obviously, the bank
itself was different, but the account number was similar, if not the same. Now, why they don't have
provisions to prevent that kind of thing from happening, and why it's impossible to talk to a
human being when you're in the middle of trying to conclude a transaction, is something that I'll
probably never know. And I am going to try and go back to that mom-and-pop store if they're still
in business. I just wish they'd be open on Sundays. All right, let's look at the rest of the news.
This is rather disturbing. There's another bulletin board case going on.
This comes from the Risks Digest, as does the other bits of news we've been reading.
This is from Akron, Ohio. You may already know about the BBS Sting six months ago in Monroe Falls, Ohio.
That was for disseminating matter harmful to juveniles. Those charges were dropped for lack of
evidence, and now a trial date of January 4th, 1993, has been set after new felony charges were filed,
although the pre-trial hearing revealed no proof that any illegal content ever went out over the
BBS, nor was any found on it. For those unfamiliar with the case, here's a brief summary. In May 1992,
someone told Monroe Falls police they thought minors could have been getting access to adult
materials over the Akron Anomaly BBS. Police began a two-month investigation. They found a small
number of adult files in the non-adult area. The system operator says he made a clerical error,
causing those files to be overlooked. Normally, adult files were moved to a limited access area
with proof of age required, like a photo stat of a driver's license. Police had no proof that any
minor had actually accessed those files, so police logged on to the BBS using a fictitious account,
started to download, and borrowed a 15-year-old boy just long enough to press the return key.
And he had no knowledge what this was all about. Just got snagged off the street and said,
hey, press return. Thank you. Goodbye. What a strange world we live in. Police then obtained
a search warrant and seized Lair's BBS system, something we're quite familiar with here.
Eleven days later, police arrested and charged system operator Mark Lair with disseminating
matter harmful to juveniles, which is a misdemeanor usually used on bookstore owners
who sell the wrong book to a minor. However, since the case involved a computer, police added
a felony charge of possession of criminal tools, a criminal tool being a computer system.
Note that criminal tool statutes were originally intended for specialized tools such as burglar's
tools or hacking paraphernalia used by criminal specialists. All that is in quotes, of course.
The word tool implies deliberate use to commit a crime, whereas the evidence shows, at most,
an oversight. This raises the constitutional issue of equal protection under the
14th Amendment. Why should a computer hobbyist be charged with a felony
when anyone else would be charged with a misdemeanor?
Well, the pretrial hearing, the judge warned the prosecutor that they'd need a lot more evidence
than this to convict. However, the judge did allow the case to be referred to a Summit County
grand jury, though there was no proof the SysOp had actually disseminated or even intended to
disseminate any adult material recklessly with knowledge of its character or intent or content,
rather, as the statute requires. The SysOp, in fact, had a long history of removing such
content from the non-adult area whenever he became aware of it. This came out at the hearing.
The prosecution then went on a fishing expedition, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer of July
21st. Police Chief Stahl said computer experts with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation
are reviewing the hundreds of computer files seized from Lehrer's home. Stahl said it's
possible that some of the games and movies are being accessed in violation of copyright laws.
Obviously, the police believe they have carte blanche to search unrelated personal files
simply by lumping all the floppies and files in with the computer as a criminal tool. We've seen
the same things with hackers, where personal files and unfinished manuscripts and just about
everything that belongs to somebody is gone through, and they say it all has something to
do with whatever it is they're investigating because it's all part of the computer.
That raises constitutional issues of whether this search and seizure was legal.
That's a precedent which, if not challenged, has far-reaching implications for every computer
owner. Also, BBS access was not sold for money. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports,
the BBS wasn't a business, but rather a free community service, running on Lehrer's own
computer, although extra time on the system could be had for a donation to help offset some of the
operating costs. 98% of the data on the BBS consisted of shareware programs, utilities,
electronic mail, things like that. The police chief also stated, I'm not saying it's obscene
because I'm not getting into that battle, but it's certainly not appropriate for kids,
especially without parental permission. Note the police chief's admission that obscenity
wasn't an issue at the time the warrant was issued. Here, the case radically changes direction.
The charges above were dropped. However, while searching the 600 floppy disks seized along with
the BBS, police found five picture files they think could be depictions of borderline underage
women, although poor picture quality makes it difficult to tell. The SysOp had removed these
unsolicited files from the BBS hard drive after a user uploaded them. However, he didn't think to
destroy the floppy disk backup, which was tossed into a cardboard box with hundreds of others.
This backup was made before he erased the files off the hard drive. The prosecution, lacking any
other charges that would stick, is using these several floppy disks to charge the system operator
with two new second-degree felonies, pandering obscenity involving a minor and pandering sexually
oriented matter involving a minor. Then we get into kiddie porn, prison sentences of up to 25 years.
While the prosecution produced no evidence the files were ever pandered, there's no solid expert
testimony that the pictures depict minors, all they've got is the opinion of a local pediatrician.
All five pictures have such poor resolution that there's no way to tell for sure to what extent
makeup or retouching was used. A digitized image doesn't have the fine shadings or dot density of
a photograph, which means there's very little detail on which to base an expert opinion.
The digitization process also modifies and distorts the image during compression.
The prosecutor is offered to plea bargain these charges down to possession of child porn,
which is a fourth-degree felony sex crime punishable by one year in prison.
The system operator refuses to plead guilty to a sex crime. Mark Lehrer had discarded the images
for which the city of Monroe Falls adamantly demands a felony conviction.
This means the first pandering case involving a bulletin board system is going to trial
in one month on January 4th. And it's something that we'll be keeping an eye on here
at Off the Hook. And we might even be talking to some of the people involved here.
If you want more information you can contact Mark Lehrer at CompuServe. His account is
71756,2116 and the internet address comes out to 71756.2116 at CompuServe.com.
And you can also reach him by modem, area code 216-688-6383
or post office box 275 Monroe Falls, Ohio 44262. It's important to keep up to date on
this and to get the word out. So if you had not heard about this story before, tell somebody else
about it. These are the kind of things that might not be making front page of the New York Times or
ABC World News tonight, but maybe they should be. The reaction to all that comes from Phil Karn.
I couldn't have invented a better reason to encrypt everything on one's computer system
than this. It's sad that it would ever be necessary, but until civilization matures
a little bit more, I don't see much of an alternative. The law is at present an awfully
unreliable safeguard of one's right to personal privacy. Even when one wins, that is when one is
acquitted, one almost always loses. Lost time, personal anguish, diminished reputation and of
course legal fees. You don't get those back when you win, you know. You have to file suit and that
doesn't always work. I agree with John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. I have far more confidence in the ability of physics and mathematics to protect
my privacy than in laws passed by a government that can violate or ignore them at will.
So the lesson to be learned here is encrypt everything.
Unless you want to have your motives gone over with a fine-toothed comb by somebody who doesn't
even understand what they're talking about. And take it from me, the vast majority of
policemen, judges, even lawyers don't understand computer systems. They don't understand the
First Amendment issues that are at issue here. And unfortunately that means the rest of the
general public doesn't really understand either. And that's why we try to get out and spread the
word a bit, educate people, let them know what's really going on out there. And one final story.
This comes from the Los Angeles Times, where they report in the December 3rd edition that
programming errors associated with adding a new Keno game to the California state lottery
apparently caused some wagers made early on November 17th not to be logged into the main
database. As a result, terminals at retail outlets were unable to identify those tickets
as winners. A separate programming oversight caused a similar problem in northern California
on November 23rd, when for part of the day no tickets for any games could be cashed and validated.
Made for some bitter words exchanged. The state controller's office is said to be asking whether
pre-deployment testing of the new software was adequate. Lottery director Sharon Sharp acknowledged
that the lottery pressed G-Tech, the Rhode Island company that operates and maintains its computers,
to get the games online by mid-November, but she insisted there was still time for Keno to be
adequately tested. We felt 110% comfortable. In fact, we could have tested it for three more
months and this still could have happened. Except it wouldn't have happened in November, would it?
The lottery director downplayed the trouble calling programming problems par for the chorus.
Players affected by the troubles took a different view. Naturally, at least one replay winner who
couldn't get his free ticket from the computer was told by the lottery to use a complex by-mail
procedure to collect his winnings. He decided that his time plus 29 cents postage was too much for a
one dollar return. The lottery director said that the system has an elaborate backup system which
ensures that no winner will be lost. Sharp said she has since appointed an internal task force of
computer technicians and auditors to investigate the problems and determine if damages should be
assessed against G-Tech. Another lottery official suggested that operator error may have been
involved. The problems come just three months after the California Lottery Commission approved a change
in the G-Tech contract that decreases by hundreds of thousands of dollars per day
the maximum damages that can be assessed against the company for errors that affect computer
performance. The change was approved without public discussion. Sharp said she proposed the
change because the company was being asked to get the Keno game ready on a short deadline.
What was important was to be able to get the cooperation of our supplier.
The cooperation meant much more than whatever financial windfall you would or you wouldn't
receive from damages, she said. Since its introduction November 16th, Sharp said Keno
has added about seven million dollars a week to lottery revenues. Well, it affects us everywhere,
even lotteries. Lotteries and hospitals and credit reports and phone bills, you name it.
All right, something in the December 7th edition of Computer World might be of interest to those
of you that are listening to a couple of our previous programs. Hacker beware! The word in
the computer underground is to brace yourself for Operation Sun Devil 2, a repeat of the
dragnet that Secret Service agents launched two years ago against suspected electronic bandits.
In recent weeks, law enforcement officials have once again turned up the heat on suspected system
crackers and have even gone as far as breaking up a gathering of computer enthusiasts at a mall
in suburban Washington, D.C. Something we talked about quite a bit here because
it was a 2600 meeting, in fact. They don't mention that here.
And unfortunately, they missed the point too. They missed the point that a public gathering
at a mall was broken up illegally by Secret Service agents and nothing was ever found or
no accusations were ever made. It was just harassment, clear and simple. The kind of
thing you would see in the Soviet Union when people like Sakharov would go around with petitions
and these plainclothes people would come and rough them up a bit. Well, it didn't quite reach that
stage, but it's not that far away from that stage, let me tell you. It'd be nice if somebody got the
story right. Okay, we're here live off the hook. This is Emanuel Goldstein. Fiber-Optic has dropped
in. We have a couple of reader questions and comments and things like that.
This letter comes from Albert of New York. He says he tried calling, but he couldn't get through.
Well, you can try calling now and you will get through because there's about two or three lines
open. 212-279-3400. Can you help me? There used to be a three-digit number that one could dial,
hang up and get to ring your own phone. I had used this several times years ago and learned
that the number has changed regularly. I contacted a New York telephone techie a few
weeks back who advised me that this phone capability has been discontinued.
So, since I cannot take this as gospel, I am hoping that you have this secret way of
getting your own phone to ring without having to ask the often reluctant operator to do the same.
This capability is useful to me when I wish to check out my somewhat defective
Kodafone answering machine. I have an old-fashioned dial phone. Also, perhaps you can
tell me where I might purchase the removable carbon pile mouthpiece that slips into the talk
end of the handset. It has no wire connectors and makes contact by pressure alone. The phone
company will not sell me one. Fiber-Optic, any suggestions on that? Particularly the carbon
element. The carbon element I'm not sure about, but he didn't exactly say what part of the city
he's from or if he's even from the city. I can tell you he's, I'll just show you his address,
don't read it over the air or anything like that, but now you'll know where he is.
Okay. Okay, now you know where he is, so. The city. Yes, pretty much. Yeah.
Well, in Queens and Brooklyn, at least, and I'm sure other parts of the city, you could dial
660 has always been the prefix to ring your phone back, although it's often used in different
combinations. 660 and the last four digits of your phone number is a common way to do it,
to which you'll get a dial tone back, you flash the switch hook, you get a high-pitched tone,
and you hang up, and the phone rings. In Manhattan, though, it seems either not to work,
or I've seen variations where you dial 660 and your entire seven-digit number.
In any event, it's always the same thing. You always get a dial tone back,
flash the switch hook, get another tone, you hang up, and the phone rings.
And basically, in Manhattan, either it'll work or it doesn't work. I've found a lot of times
it simply doesn't work. Well, when you say it doesn't work, though, it works, we just don't
know what it is. I mean, don't they have to have a way to ring the phone back? No, it's called
calling the operator. I don't understand why this person is saying the often reluctant operator.
If I was going to page someone to pay phone, and I was in Manhattan, I wouldn't even bother
dialing 660, because I know that more often than not, there's no way to make it work.
I'd just dial zero and tell the operator to ring me back. She's more than happy.
Well, I don't know about the operators you talk to, but I've gotten many reluctant operators that
either never call back or claim not to know what I'm talking about sometimes. They can be pretty
spiteful sometimes. No, it's never happened to me. I guess I'm blessed.
Could be. But if a phone guy comes to your house, and he has to test the line, doesn't he have to
have a way to make it ring back? Oh, you should call the operator.
That's really the only way they do it, huh? Apart from 660. In fact, I've noticed a lot
of linemen just use the operator and don't even bother with 660.
Well, you know, there is another way, and if you have 3-way, you can make the phone ring back.
Yeah, that's true. How would that work? You have to...
If you call someone, anyone, it's actually the hold feature on 3-way. You call anyone,
and then you simply hang up the phone. Right.
You actually, no, I'm sorry. You click over first.
You click over first. You're getting about the first person, and you hang up,
and that first person will ring back. Yeah. You get your stuttering dial tone
that goes steady when you click over. Right.
And then rather than just calling a third party, you hang up.
But you do have to connect to something. Yeah, you have to connect to something.
Even if it's only ringing, as long as you can click over and hang up, your phone will ring.
Of course, it's only if you have 3-way. Well, in any event, if you suspect that
there is a way of doing that, you can somehow con a lineman into getting into your house,
and you can get a pen register or a radio shack thing that they don't sell anymore that
records all the numbers that are dialed on your phone line. You can see what they dial.
That's really the only way. I think you're giving them too much mysticism there.
Well, I'm just saying it's not easy. You're going to have to go to some work to find out
what it is. It's either that or threaten somebody with physical violence if they don't tell you.
Rest assured, though, if 660 is not available, there's nothing else going on.
They're just using the operator. Well, it seems sad that such a
neat service is so hard to use. I guess they'll probably sell it as some kind of feature at some
point. Ring back your own phone. Only for $5 a month, you can have this amazing,
never thought of before service. Why is it that the phone company never tells you about
turning call waiting off? I saw this whole big brochure about call waiting and how great it is.
They don't tell you to dial star 7-0 if you want to turn it off.
Well, I think in 9X's case, they were probably debating whether or not they were going to charge
for it. Bell Atlantic charges for it, by the way. They do?
Yeah, they call it tone block, as if you're actually doing something by dialing star 70.
How much do they charge? I couldn't tell you.
That's swine. I really don't know.
They charge you for a separate service. Incredible.
I always wondered what would happen if you called up Bell Atlantic and you wanted to
subscribe to tone block if you didn't have call waiting.
Yeah, I just want the tone block. I don't want the call waiting.
I wonder what they'd say. They'd probably sell it to you.
I'm sure they would. They probably would.
They'd sell touch tone service if you didn't have a touch tone phone.
You could dial star 70 to your heart's content. You'll get your dial tone back.
I just like to dial star 70. I just like to hear that little flashing dial tone.
It's pretty funny.
Well, anyway, as far as the carbon element, really the best thing I can suggest is just
swap it out of another phone. You can find phones like that. Go to garage sales.
People are always selling the old Bell system phones for like a dollar or something.
You can find some pretty neat models that way. Most of them are Pulse,
but the carbon element doesn't care.
You just might try going to a telephone store, not an AT&T store,
but a store that sells nothing but telephones. They do exist in some places,
and they might be able to help you out.
Something just to note, though, about the older carbon elements.
If you pick up an old carbon element and you notice it doesn't seem to be working all too well,
smack it a few times to loosen up the carbon particles inside.
Yeah, smack it upside a table or a wall or something like that.
You can't hurt it. You really can't hurt it, and it does make a big difference.
Well, we're going to mosey on over to the phones now.
Our phone number is 212-279-3400, and we're on until 11 o'clock,
answering questions about telephones, computers, security, privacy,
the First Amendment, Big Brother, and whatever else comes up.
Good evening.
Hi, good evening.
How you doing?
Hi, I have a question, and it's kind of a hypothetical question.
Okay.
Okay, like if I have a modem, and I'm calling a bulletin board...
That is hypothetical.
Yeah, and my modem is V32-biz type, and your modem on your bulletin board is V32-biz type.
Can we communicate at the highest transmission rate?
Yeah, you should be able to handshake at 14,400 bits per second.
But the people on the computer show that I have to have the same brand of modem.
No, that's not true. If it's a V32-biz modem at both ends,
then you get a handshake at V32-biz.
There's various different brands of V32-biz modem,
but it's the standard that makes the difference, not the manufacturer.
Do you think communicating at that speed is that practical?
I mean, does that happen all the time, or is it usually always falling back to a false, you know...
Well, it all depends on how clear your transmission path is,
how clear your phone line is.
You can't expect it to stay that clear all the time,
but that's why you also use an error correction protocol.
Your V42-biz is your error correction and compression protocol,
and that'll make up for any transmission loss that you'll have due to quality.
Thank you.
Okay, thanks for calling.
And you know, I'd like to actually demonstrate for people
something that a lot of people ask questions about,
namely modems, what modems sound like, what modems actually mean, things like that.
You call up various things on the telephone, and you hear different sounds,
and of course the operators never know what it is.
They can't tell you if it's a fax machine, or if it's a modem,
or what kind of modem it is.
To this day, if you call an operator and you ask her to check a busy signal,
and the busy signal turns out to be a computer,
they'll say the phone is out of order.
That's right, they'll say the phone is out of order, even though it's not.
I've heard them say fax, too.
They say...
I've actually heard an operator say, oh, it's a fax machine.
When they're calling a modem.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's not that hard to realize why they would make that mistake.
It is kind of a similar tone.
Let me call a fax machine, you can hear for yourself what that sounds like,
in case there's people out there that have never heard a fax machine before.
Well, this is your lucky day, because we're going to call live here on the radio
a genuine fax machine.
So, take a listen to this.
Now, it's getting upset now, because it doesn't hear anything on my end.
And it'll try that a couple more times, and it'll just get angry and hang up.
Okay, so we get the general idea of what a fax machine sounds like.
So, try to ingrain that into your head, and you won't have any trouble in the future.
Okay, now, let's move on to a 2400 baud modem, which is pretty much the low-end standard these
days.
Yes, 2400 bits per second.
Okay, we'll get into that a little bit later, but let's try this one here.
I guess I shouldn't dial it.
Oops, I dialed the wrong one.
Can you believe that?
I am so confused.
Okay, here we go.
We're going to hear a 2400 bits per second modem, which some people might incorrectly
refer to as a 2400 baud modem.
It's busy.
You're going to have to give me a better number than that.
Yeah, can you believe this?
Well, that's a busy signal, folks.
That's the one I called, yeah.
Yeah, it's very busy.
It's not getting any clearer.
Okay, fortunately, we have another 2400 baud modem we're going to call.
I'm sorry, I said it again, 2400 bps modem that we're going to call as a replacement
to that as soon as we get that particular number.
Okay, all right, here we go.
Here we go.
Now, even I know that's not a 2400 baud modem.
I know that for a fact that that connects to 2400.
Well, I've never heard one that sounds like this before.
Yeah, it didn't do the two tones.
You should be the answer with the two tones.
No, that's not right.
All right, I have one in my head.
I'm going to try this one.
Whoops.
Okay, now we're going to try another 2400 baud modem, which is busy.
This is getting crazy.
Is everybody calling computers out there?
Okay, I've got another one.
I've got one more in my head, and if this one is busy, I'm going to shoot myself.
Okay, let's try this one.
It's a very useful demonstration if you're actually able to hear them.
Well, that's bad because it's supposed to answer after one ring.
Do you have any other 2400 baud modems in your head?
I'll try another.
You are supposed to be one of the world's most dangerous hackers,
so I would imagine you have lots of numbers in your head.
Okay, this is rapidly turning into a forest here.
Okay, well, try to remember what the fax machine sounded like,
and try to remember what the other modem sounded like.
Okay, you're sure about that?
Yeah.
All right, here we go.
Okay, that's the effect we wanted to get across.
The two tones.
Now, what do those two tones mean?
Any idea?
Oh, well, the second one is the normal carrier.
I'm not particularly sure.
I'm sure someone out there could check the CCITT standard.
If anyone knows what that first tone is, I'd like to know.
I always assumed, and I was corrected this past week,
that that first tone was for higher baud rates, higher BPS rates.
Now, this is what a 9600 baud modem sounds like.
96 BPS.
I can't do it.
I can't do it, but 96 BPS modem sounds like.
Well, at least one particular type, anyway.
Yeah, but you'll know right away, if you hear this,
that this is a high-speed modem.
Listen carefully.
Okay, did you hear those clicks?
Those clicks while the first tone was playing somehow indicate 9600.
I'm not quite sure why or how, but if you hear those clicks,
that means that that's a high-speed modem.
Although it might not necessarily mean that.
Well, for all intents and purposes, it should.
But that's that's a good point.
It's a good point.
It's a good point.
It's a good point.
for all intents and purposes it should.
But that's kind of a very rough guide
to how it works out there.
Any questions?
Good.
Let's go back to the phones.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Hey, finally got through.
Good show.
A couple things.
Number one, a buddy of mine told me
that when he was using the phones over at Port Authority,
or I guess Penn Station, he was real careful
to try and cover up the touchpads
while he was doing his dialing.
And yet, within just a matter of hours,
MCI cut his calling card
because people started making calls off that number
to the Caribbean and really far away places.
And it happened to him once before,
so he was careful about it.
It still happened to him.
That's incredible.
They might have a tap or something on a phone there.
That's what it would appear to be.
He said that there were guys who just were hanging around
and appeared to be looking really careful
at what he was doing, but he took a lot of precaution.
He suspected that maybe there were people above him,
you know, on some of the higher levels
that could look down.
He's not one of these people that says to himself
the numbers as he's dialing them, is he?
No.
Okay.
Because a lot of times,
that could be a danger sign there.
I can't think how they did it,
but there must be a method.
Maybe they used binoculars
and are spying from up on top or something like that.
If you want something interesting,
go over to the Amtrak station over in Penn Station.
Right, right.
On the upper level,
you'll see a phone up there that has a guard,
a guard over the, you know,
a metal guard over the touch-tone pad
coming out perpendicular to the phone.
It looks really bizarre.
You're supposed to put your hand in there
and dial the number
and nobody to the left or right can see.
Okay.
It looks like something the Army thought up,
but maybe it's the phone of the future.
Just over there, I was just there tonight,
where there are red warning signs
that are attached to the phones
saying be very careful as you dial
because people are watching.
That's right.
Yeah, the same general area.
I've only seen one phone like that.
And for some reason,
they always have the whole area roped off as a crime scene.
I don't know why that is, but they.
Well, what I usually do is I usually dial using
sort of like an adding machine stuff
where I just use all three fingers
and just quickly knock off a number.
So, the other thing is this,
when I use star six six,
I usually keep getting all this recording saying,
the number that you dialed
cannot be reached through this method.
Please, if you know the number,
as if I know the number,
dial the number.
So that's the one thing.
Well, it could be somebody who's calling you
from out of the area that has a particular feature
in your particular area.
Where are you calling from?
Queens.
Queens.
Well, Queens is fairly new to that.
I imagine a much bigger.
I'm not dialing from Queens to Queens.
I'm typically dialing to someone saying,
I suspect that it's probably Brooklyn.
I know it doesn't work if I star six six to Manhattan,
but that's one thing.
The other thing is this,
have you noticed that the telephone company,
the recording such as those three tones,
you have reached the wrong number?
Yeah.
But those recordings are very loud,
particularly in comparison to the other locales
in the country.
Well, of course, this is New York.
There's that to consider.
It really depends on where they were recorded
and what mood the person was in when they recorded it,
and also your equipment too.
It's just a mechanical recording.
Uh-huh.
Okay, what the hell.
A buddy of mine said he's gonna be calling you tonight.
I don't know if he did or not,
so for whatever it's worth,
I'm just gonna try and ask you his question.
Okay.
Introduce him to your show.
He apparently has found out that there is,
what he said, was 16 volts on his line.
Hooked into his line.
He doesn't know what to make of it or what to say or do.
Wait, the phone company advised him this and that's it?
They're not gonna do anything else?
I got it straight.
If I got it straight from him,
he kind of like ran this by me quickly.
He said he's expecting some repair people to come out,
but in the meantime, they said,
well, we think that you probably have people
who are hooked into your line or something,
so you might wanna be careful what you say.
Did the phone company find this out themselves?
Or did he find it out?
He found this out, and I'm not sure how he found it out.
Maybe it was through the phone company or just what.
I'm not sure.
Wow, that's...
16 volts sound like, I mean, that's pretty high, isn't it?
If someone hooked onto your line,
you'd have less voltage on your line, not more,
if not the same.
I think it'd be a drop, not an increase.
Yeah, besides that, the battery feed for a phone line
is negative 48 volts DC.
I don't know where he's getting this 16 volts from.
I hope it's not a case of a customer knowing too much
and seeing things that aren't there.
Maybe he'll get through to you and ask the question.
Yeah, that sounds pretty odd.
It's very odd, but I'm pretty sure I heard him say plus 16.
Well, keep us updated.
I wanna see how this one turns out.
Good, thanks a lot.
Okay, bye.
It could be the mode on the meter is set to the wrong scale
or something like that,
but there's all kinds of possibilities.
I have a feeling, I have a feeling I know
who this next call is, but I'm not sure.
Not 100% sure, but let's find out.
Good evening.
Hi, I have a question for Dr. Kaku.
No, no, that wasn't the person.
It's incredible how people keep calling for that show
two hours after it's off.
Once we had a call for Mishu Kaku's show on Friday,
person apparently had been trying for two days
to get through.
I guess I have to admire that kind of spirit.
Good evening.
All right, I'm the guy
that the previous guy was talking about.
Really?
Yeah.
Are you really, are you just saying that because you know?
I'm serious.
I knew his voice and I couldn't believe that here I am
and he knows that I'm on this line too.
So I could tell you what the story is.
The odds are very slim against both of you getting through,
especially almost consecutively.
Yeah, yeah, I knew it would happen though
because it just, it had happened.
I'm a new listener to the show.
So what I did actually, the issue concerns privacy
and what I did, I talked to somebody who said
that the average voltage across the terminals
on my phone should be anywhere from eight to 12 volts
when it's off hook.
And I went with a VOM, put it on a 60 volt range
and checked the voltage and it was 15 volts,
not 16, it was 15.
And what they were telling me was that it's possible
that if there's a voltage drop,
somebody could be tapping my line.
But if there's a voltage increase,
it could mean that somebody's adding something to my line.
Maybe this is how come my phone bill has been so much.
Is that possible?
I think you're really looking at things
that simply aren't there.
12, 15, a three volt difference is really not gonna make,
as I said to the previous guy,
the battery feed on a phone line is negative 48 volts DC.
Well, when I have it on hook,
I do get like a 50 volt reading.
That's proper and when you pick up the phone,
it should be anywhere between 12 and 16.
Okay, so somebody's telling me something different.
I just wondered, well, I guess when it comes
to privacy in terms of people tapping a line,
is it possible really to find out
if somebody's tapping the line just looking at voltage
or are there-
If you're really that concerned,
if someone's gonna be tapping your phone,
you're not gonna know about it.
Yeah, it's too easy to find that way, you see.
All right, what about if you use something like a scrambler,
which I've seen around where if two people have them
on both ends and it scrambles the conversation
so that somebody really couldn't tap it,
is it still tappable?
You know what I'm talking about?
Other than it being a really nice novel toy,
you're not offering yourself
any sort of security whatsoever.
Well, I'd say he's getting some security against maybe-
Maybe a passive- The crudest.
Yeah, the crudest of people.
The crudest of passive eavesdroppers, maybe.
Do you suspect that people would wanna eavesdrop
on your conversations?
I really don't know, but just in terms
of the privacy issue, I thought it would be important to know.
So these things, I mean, they go for like $750 a pair.
At least- Don't even bother.
Yeah.
That's a real ripoff scam there,
just playing on people's fears.
The thing that I would be concerned about
if it's known to happen in your neighborhood, maybe,
probably not though, is people clipping
onto other people's phone lines,
whether it's in the back of an apartment building
or in the basement.
Usually that's where it's a commonplace.
Someone would take a handset or just a phone line,
a telephone, with alligator clips,
and clip onto someone's phone line
in the basement of an apartment building
and make calls overseas and things.
If that's how you're getting,
if you're actually getting charges on your bill
that aren't yours, I'd-
Well, that's one thing also.
Is it possible, do you know of any sources
for an SMDR type of unit that I could hook up onto my phone
so I could tell that all the calls that I made
are the calls that they show on the bill?
Yeah, as Emmanuel here mentioned,
Radio Shack doesn't sell theirs anymore.
Although-
There's a lot of pressure from the FBI to stop
because theirs was actually as good
as the FBI's pen registers.
But you might look in some old electronics magazines,
maybe somebody's gotten tired of theirs
and they wanna sell it.
It's called the CPA 1000.
And Radio Shack used to sell that for about $69.
Well, aside from that,
it's not a very complex piece of equipment.
I couldn't picture anyone selling it
for more than a couple of hundred dollars.
In fact, it's simple enough to-
You know, we should go into business
and sell those things.
You could just sell them, yeah.
They're easy enough to construct.
It's not something that's very complicated
to just decode touchstones
and print them out on a little paper tape.
They sell those things to motels and hotels
because they have to bill their guests.
Right, right.
And they have to bill them
before the phone bill arrives, obviously.
Yeah.
Let me ask you this.
Do you know if there's any truth
to the statement that fiber optic lines can't be tapped?
No, there's no truth whatsoever to that, really.
Because I figured, you know,
it's not an electronic signal.
It's this, you know-
No, well, very basically,
without going into too much detail,
one could, well, one couldn't tap a fiber optic cable
as easily as one could tap a twisted pair
of copper wire, for instance.
On a twisted pair,
you could just do a simple inductive tap
where you just wrap a wire around the outside
or even hold it next to another pair of wires,
which has to do with the reasons
why we have such things as crosstalk
on normal phone lines.
But once you have the proper equipment, though,
is it not easy then?
Well, yeah, on a fiber optic line, though,
I've heard rumors to which there's really no truth in,
but the simplest way I could think of
is to have to actually interrupt
the fiber optic cable at some point,
to actually have to cut it and splice into it,
so that you have your apparatus
in between one end and coming out the other.
Yeah, once you do that,
don't you mess up the fiber optic line?
No, if you do that,
you could just passively look at what's going through
and feed it back out the other end.
You'd just simply need a fiber optic transceiver
that's gonna receive what's coming in
and mimic it right back out the other side.
Okay, so if all this can happen,
what can be done for privacy
if I don't want somebody else to hear my conversation?
You know, and I'm talking to somebody on the phone,
is there anything that you know of
that is really out there,
or is it just the government
who has all the equipment to detect it?
To be honest, sir,
Regretfully enough, if someone wants to, they can.
Between cellular phones, mobile phones,
your local loop and satellites,
there's so many opportunities
to listen in on what you're doing.
You know, phones are not to be considered secure.
Yeah, I mean, us, for who we are,
have given up on telephones long ago
as any source of privacy whatsoever.
We live our lives assuming everything we say
is being listened to,
and that's really, I guess,
kind of unhealthy to live like that, but.
Do it now, that's for sure.
Yeah, well, yeah, of course,
now it's being broadcast over the air,
but probably, you know, most people consent to that.
Yeah.
Anyway, thanks for calling,
and good luck, let us know what happens.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Privacy is definitely an issue
that has got a lot of people concerned in the 90s.
We'll just have to see what technology brings,
if it will move the advantage back to the consumer
or over to the watchers.
Good evening.
Yes, good evening.
I'd like to find out how I would get a subscription
to HackTech.
HackTech, okay, that's the Dutch hacker magazine,
and I can give you a phone number.
I don't have their address off the top of my head,
but their phone number is, of course, in Holland.
You would dial 011, then a country code of 31,
a city code of 20,
and then the number is 600-1480,
and hit a pound sign at the end
just to make the phone company happy,
and you'll get a voicemail system
that speaks in Dutch and English,
and you just hear the information there.
It won't be too expensive to call over there,
especially if you do it at night.
Okay, thank you very much.
Okay.
Good night.
Good night.
You know, some people don't know
that 011 goes overseas, I hear.
Yeah.
That's something to find out about,
but yes, 011 does go overseas, folks,
and 900 numbers can be expensive,
and I hear even 800 numbers can be expensive,
but we'll get into that some other time.
Good evening.
Hello.
How you doing?
What?
How are you doing?
Oh, fine, how are you?
Oh, I'm just fine.
What's on your mind?
Oh, let me turn off the radio.
That's what's confusing me.
Okay.
Anyway, I was glad to hear the mating call
of the fax machine,
and the question was,
well, not really a question,
but something I'm sure you've discussed,
because I called the phone company
and asked if one could order all the phone directories
in New York State, and they said you couldn't
because that had gotten too expensive.
Well, I understand.
When they took away the information service
free for all of New York State,
what they were required to give in return
was free directories to anywhere in the state,
and they've gone back on that.
I'll bet soon they'll charge you for local directories, too,
unless people speak out.
The other thing I always argue with operator
and tell them to tell their management,
I guess I should call the Public Service Commission,
if that's the correct body,
is that if you go to a public phone
and they have simply forgotten for any reason,
for any reason you can't make the call
because they've blocked it,
you know that slot comes?
Yeah.
You know where the coin slot gets blocked?
Usually it's, or often it's because the phone company
hasn't bothered to come around and get its money.
My argument is if the phone company
hasn't bothered to pick up its money
or for any other reason can't provide you
with service that you're willing to pay for,
then they shouldn't allow you free calls from that phone
until they come around and fix it.
Uh-huh.
And they, of course, you know,
they can't make enough money and they,
you know, or call the Public Service Commission.
Well, you know, the phone companies, as a rule,
seem to be trying to phase out coin phones.
I know that the number of New York Telephone coin phones
in New York City has dropped, I think,
almost 50% in the past 10 years.
Some of that, not all of it, has been replaced by CoCuts.
Some coin phones are being converted
into credit card phones, which is simply-
That's because people who don't have credit cards
can't use them.
Right, it's simply covering up the coin slots
and turning it into something else.
There are moving parts.
They don't want to have to service the moving parts.
And really, it's what we pay for, but they seem to be-
And we shouldn't have to pay for it.
If they have the phone there and they've simply come around
and not come around and done the adequate service job,
you know, I mean, I'm willing to put my quarter in.
They won't let me put it in
because they haven't collected their money.
Yeah. Won't let me make a call.
Yeah, you know, I haven't seen that problem
as much as I've seen the problem
of phones just not working at all.
I guess it's more likely in Manhattan, isn't it?
Yeah.
You know, because when I go into Manhattan
and I'm, say, on the east side or something,
I find that's frequently what happens to me.
Uh-huh.
You know?
Well, that's why, you know,
9-5-0s were always a good option,
but unfortunately those are being phased out, too,
because apparently they were too good an option.
But I want 9-5-0s.
That allowed you to use a special code of up to,
between five and, say, 10 digits
and have it billed to another account
of another phone company,
and you would pay the charge of a local call,
no surcharge.
Yeah.
These days, if you use a calling card,
you have to pay a surcharge,
which is absurd because surcharge implies
you're getting something extra.
Yeah.
And if you're using a calling card,
you're using it for what it does,
not for anything extra.
Well, I'd have to pay more
if I told them to charge it to my home number.
Yeah, right.
There's a surcharge for that, too, I believe.
Well, if you're lucky,
the operator will just charge you
the normal charge to your home number.
Uh-huh.
But that's if you're lucky.
But I really think they ought to have to provide service
if the only reason you can't make a call
you're willing to pay for
is the equipment's not operating.
You know?
Yeah, it's something that I think
should be dealt with somehow.
I think the Public Service Commission
probably is the best form for that.
Yeah, I think you're right.
The credit card thing is bad
that they should limit it to credit cards.
If they made a coin slot additional,
that would be better.
Yeah, well, all phones can do credit cards.
Oh, they can?
Of course, yeah.
All phones can do that.
So there's no reason to have
just a credit card phone and nothing else.
Calling cards, not credit cards.
Oh, that's what I mean by, oh.
Did you mean credit cards, Visa,
and MasterCard and all that?
No, I meant the telephone credit card.
Okay, yeah.
Because some services are using real credit cards as well.
Oh, okay.
All right, thanks for calling, sir.
Thank you, bye.
Gonna try to fit in one more call.
Good evening.
What?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I got two quick questions.
All right.
Is this show repeated overnight
along with the previous show
because I missed the first half?
No, we have real people that come in
and do real shows overnight,
unlike some of those satellite services you might hear
that just repeat things over and over again.
So unfortunately, unless we can find
another frequency to repeat our shows on,
what you hear is what you get only once.
And I read in the Times today
that Bell Atlantic is planning on transmitting
a cable service through their telephone lines.
What kind of video quality can be transmitted
through regular telephone lines?
I'm not familiar with that story.
I've seen reference to those kind of things
coming in the future.
My impression was that it would be good quality
once it finally got perfected.
Did they give a date as to when they were going to start?
That this is a test, you know, a test project.
Uh-huh.
They were approved by the FCC, say.
Something like that.
This probably was in conjunction
with fiber optics and things like that.
So I imagine they would cram a lot in there
and try to make it as high quality as possible.
But again, I don't have the facts,
so I can't really say for sure.
Is there compression involved in that?
Over a normal copper pair, there would be.
Yeah.
But if they were using fiber optics,
they could use it anyway,
but there would be no reason to.
There's plenty of bandwidth.
Okay, thanks a lot.
All right, thanks for calling.
And we are out of time.
And for once, we seem to be ending on time.
The program is off the hook.
I'm Emanuel Goldstein, along with FiberOptic.
And we'll be back again next Wednesday night at 10 o'clock.
Stay tuned next for a repeat of the evening's news.
If you have any questions for Off the Hook,
you can write to us, care of WBAI, 505 8th Avenue,
New York, New York, 10018.
Until next week, stay sane and stay awake.
Good night.
♪ So I ripped it off the wall ♪
♪ I cut myself while shaving ♪
♪ Now I can't make a call ♪
♪ It couldn't get much worse ♪
♪ But if they could, they would ♪
♪ Until they bombed for the best, expect the worst ♪
♪ I hope that's understood, but they didn't know ♪
I was with you guys still.
I remember the town hall concert, the Beacon Theater thing.
And so I'm saying, hello, this is George Carlin, WBAI.
Don't forget the words.
I'm sorry I screwed it up and you had to go to court
and you lost, but I'm still your friend
and I'm going to send some money.
See you later.
Good evening.
In the news tonight, is it NATO to the rescue
and what's left of Yugoslavia?
There are reports that the Justice Department shredders
have been working overtime.
And in New York, hundreds march on the United Nations
on the second anniversary of the election
of ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
With these and other stories, I'm Jenny Bourne in New York
with Verna Avery-Brown in Washington.
And this is the news for today.
I'm Jenny Bourne.
And I'm Verna Avery-Brown.
And I'm Verna Avery-Brown.
And I'm Verna Avery-Brown.
And I'm Verna Avery-Brown.
And this is the news for Wednesday, December 16th, 1992.
First, Mark Beavis in Washington with news headlines.
The Justice Department plans to launch
a full-scale criminal investigation
into the House Bank scandal.
The scandal emerged last year
when it was revealed members of the Congress
routinely wrote bad checks on their House Bank accounts
without paying any penalty.
The federal investigator says he has cleared
most of those implicated in the scandal
of criminal wrongdoing, but he says the acts
of a few members and former members of Congress
warrant a full-scale criminal investigation,
even though no public funds were involved.
Among those who could be targets of the investigation
are Representatives Charles Rangel of New York
and John Conyers of Michigan.
CBS News is reporting Israel's TV news broadcast
has hinted that hundreds of Palestinians
picked up in police sweeps may be expelled from the country.
The Israeli news program showed a graphic
of a Palestinian with the Hebrew word for deportation.
The Palestinians were rounded up
while Israeli authorities searched
for an Israeli soldier kidnapped
by the Hamas Islamic resistance movement.
Hamas had offered to trade the soldier
for their imprisoned leader, but the deadline passed
and the soldier's body was found yesterday.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has warned
Israel will use whatever it can
within the limits of its laws to deal with Hamas.
A white supremacist will face trial a third time
on charges he gunned down a civil rights leader
in the 1960s.
Mike Woolfolk has the story from Jackson, Mississippi.
This afternoon, the long-awaited
Mississippi Supreme Court opinion
on Byron De La Beckwith was handed down,
and in a nutshell, it says Beckwith will stand trial again
for the 1963 murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
Beckwith's attorneys were seeking dismissal
of the case on three grounds.
They were denial of a speedy trial,
denial of due process, and double jeopardy.
But in a 26-page majority opinion,
Justice Armis Hawkins says the court won't consider
the first two grounds and finds no merit in the third.
Meredith Coxwell is one of Beckwith's lawyers.
She says they were prepared for this kind of opinion
and will now get ready for trial.
No word yet on when the trial will begin,
but it's set to take place in DeSoto County
in northern Mississippi.
This will be the third trial for Beckwith
in the Evers murder case.
Medgar Evers was the NAACP's field secretary
when he was gunned down back in 1963.
In Jackson, Mississippi, this is Mike Woolfolk reporting.
American and French troops are in the Somalian city
of Baidoa today.
They're there to provide security for shipments
of relief supplies to the famine-stricken city.
The troops met no resistance.
Relief workers had criticized the US-led force
for moving too slowly to reach Baidoa.
US Special Envoy Robert Oakley was also in Baidoa today.
He predicted a ceasefire agreement
between warring factions would soon begin to have an impact.
This week, residents of four Alaskan communities
along the Bering Sea are meeting with state and local officials
to discuss radiation from a 30-year-old federal project.
Doug Letch has the story.
The educational workshops are necessary because
of residents' concerns that there is a correlation
between the elevated level of sickness
among the people of the region and radioactive isotopes
buried by the government in 1963.
In September, the government revealed
that they had secretly buried about 15,000 pounds
of contaminated soil at Cape Thompson.
The isotopes came from Project Chariot,
a federal effort in the late 50s and early 60s
to build a deepwater port in the Bering Sea.