Hey, what's the story?
You haven't gotten your pledge in yet.
Can't you give me a story?
All right.
Tell my public that everybody in New York is suing me for something.
Right.
A little matter of some unpaid bills.
But you shouldn't have to be responsible for my half of the money.
I won't.
I won't.
As a matter of fact, I'm just going to see your boss.
Tell Jabba that I've got his money.
Yeah, but this time, I've got the money.
I don't have it with me.
Tell Jabba.
One second, flyboy.
Your friend has to settle up.
What do you mean, settle up?
Around these parts, when a man loses in poker, he's expected to pay up.
Oh, I mean to.
I will, I will.
You will not.
All right.
WBAI needs you to make good on your pledge.
I'm not going to.
Well, that's going to screw things up for sure.
And, of course, the IntelliDial people say that's nonsense.
So, we have a mystery on our hands.
9x offers a service called Crippled Caller ID, but they don't talk about it very much,
and they don't really understand why they offer it.
And neither do I.
We have, apart from music that comes in very suddenly,
we have a very fascinating story that just came in.
Actually, it just came in to us, but it was out over the past, I'd say, week or so,
from the Los Angeles Times.
And this is an historic story.
Historic because it's so incredibly bad
that, unfortunately, the reaction I think most people will have
is to throw their radio onto the ground and stomp on it.
But I'm just the bearer of bad news.
I'm not the person that wrote it.
Much more appropriate if you were to burn a copy of the Los Angeles Times,
but I realize people probably don't have access to that.
Perhaps a package of lard or something sent to the author would be more appropriate.
I don't know. I'm not going to make suggestions here.
That's entirely up to you.
This story was called Computer at Nuclear Lab Used for Access to Porn.
And it was written by Adam S. Baumann, who happens to be a Times staff writer.
And this appeared on Tuesday, July 12, page 1.
Yeah, page 1.
Let's look at a little bit of this.
Well, I guess trash is the harshest word I can use right now.
Dramatically illustrating the security problems
posed by the rapid growth of the Internet computer network,
one of the nation's three nuclear weapons labs confirmed Monday
that computer hackers were using its computers
to store and distribute hardcore pornography.
I don't know if very many of you heard about this story from the beginning.
I'll read the story, then I'll explain a little bit.
Embarrassed officials at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
which conducts a great deal of classified research
and has highly sophisticated security procedures,
said the incident was among the most serious breaches of computer security
at the lab in Livermore, California.
The computer, which was shut down after a Times reporter
investigating Internet hacking alerted lab officials,
contained more than 1,000 pornographic images.
That's right.
It was believed to be the largest illicit stockpile of hardcore pornography
ever found on the computer network.
Now, listen to this paragraph, because it's very important.
Computer hackers once were primarily mischief makers
aiming to prove their computer prowess,
and they devoted their efforts to disrupting computer systems
at large organizations or stealing technical information.
That's what we're all about.
But today, a new breed of hackers has developed methods
for seizing partial control of Internet-linked computers
and using them to store and distribute pornography,
stolen computer software, and electronic information,
often for profit. That's right.
We store pornographic pictures to make a profit off of them.
Bet you didn't know that about us.
Yeah, computer hackers do that.
We take computer images, we store them on a computer,
and then we sell time to stare at our screens,
or we charge people sort of a toll, if you will,
to get onto the Internet to look at these pornographic images.
That's what we're all about. It's all profit.
Profit motive. That's what hackers exist for.
Ah, what nonsense.
This story is basically getting all of the facts wrong,
every single one of them.
This was about somebody who worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
storing computer gifs, computer-generated images, pictures, if you will,
and having access to other people on the Internet.
But the author makes it seem as if hackers have formed
a pornographic ring and are selling stolen pictures
or stolen software or what have you.
It's utter nonsense.
Continue just a little bit to see how much you can take.
The Internet, a network of networks
originally designed to connect computers
at universities and government research labs,
has grown dramatically in size and technical sophistication
in recent years.
It is now used by many businesses and individual computer users
and is often viewed as the prototype
for the information superhighway of the future.
But the Internet has an underside
where so-called pirates with code names such as
Mr. Smut, Acid Flux, and The Cowboy
The Cowboy, oh my God!
traffic in illegal or illegally obtained electronic information.
The structure of the Internet means that such pirates
can carry out their crimes from almost anywhere in the world
and that tracing them is nearly impossible.
The FBI, late last week, confirmed that it was investigating
software piracy on the Internet.
Well, how about that?
A Times reporter, another Times reporter,
there's this fleet of Times reporters out there
doing good for the nation,
discovered a number of sites at prestigious institutions
that were being used to distribute stolen software,
including one in the office of the UC Berkeley Chancellor
and another at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Pirate sites which carry exotic monikers
such as Three Days Till Death,
Impact of Chaos, and Field of Dreams
can generally be found only by highly sophisticated computer users
who are well-schooled in the intricacies of the Internet.
That is, FTP, FSP, Telnet, Finger,
exotic commands like that, you know, real sophisticated stuff.
The pirates use, oh, we're pirates now, by the way,
for this part of the story.
The pirates use a new and relatively obscure method
for transferring information known as the File Service Protocol
and they often change the location of their sites
every few weeks to avoid detection.
And stupid reporters, too, I might point out.
Pirates also have their own chat lines,
a series of channels within a service called the Internet Relay Chat.
Nothing but pirates in there.
An elaborate pecking order determines
who will be allowed to take part in these conversations.
Newcomers can often wangle their way in
if they have a particularly hot piece of software to offer.
Well, I don't know how many of you took part in our experiment
over the last few weeks where we gave access to IRC
right here on BAI, live over the airwaves.
But I don't know how many of you had to wangle your way in there.
I think pretty much it was wide open
and anybody could say whatever they pleased
and we all know what a threat that can be.
Garden-variety copyrighted software is known as WERS,
spelled with a Z, on these channels,
while especially good software is called Cool, K-E-W-L.
This guy knows the lingo better than any of us.
And brand-new software that has not even reached stores
is called Zero Day Software.
Zero Day Software.
At the Lawrence Berkeley Pirate Site,
the offerings last week included Power Japanese,
which retails for $395.
I'm sure that was a hot commodity for us hackers
who probably made a mint off that.
As well as IBM DOS 6.3 and a game called Alien Legacy,
which is not yet available in stores.
Sandy Merola, Deputy Director of Information and Computing at the Berkeley Lab,
said the pirate site was shut down last week
after the Times investigation revealed its existence.
Merola said the Department of Energy,
which oversees lab operations as well as the FBI,
had been notified of the incident.
Here's the good part.
At Lawrence Livermore, officials said Monday they believe
at least one lab employee was involved in the pornography ring,
along with an undetermined number of outside collaborators.
Chuck Cole, Deputy Associate Director of Computing at the lab,
said that nearly 2,000 megabytes of unauthorized graphic images
have been found in a Livermore laboratory computer.
He confirmed that they were pornographic,
speaking for the entire community and state.
Remember, pornography is an obscenity as judged by community standards.
From what I understand, these are simply naked women.
Anyway, the employee has been placed on investigatory leave
and his or her security badge confiscated while an investigation is underway.
It was unclear whether the pornographic images were being sold
or how many people had gained access to them.
The pictures were sufficiently graphic
that they could be considered obscene by courts in some jurisdictions,
in which case transmitting them over the Internet might be illegal.
Now, a word on that.
There are some jurisdictions that would consider a fully clothed person obscene,
that would consider this radio program obscene,
that would certainly consider this radio station obscene.
We're talking about jurisdictions that put a satellite TV company
in New York City out of business because X-rated films
were somehow coming down from the sky
and going into the open arms of certain backwoods satellite receivers.
That was an incursion in their limited mind frame
and they used that to put a company out of business in a distant city.
So yeah, the Internet, if it's going to be looked at in that way,
anything you say on the Internet will be illegal.
Anything.
And anything you transmit, any pictures, it's a pretty scary thing.
And it's also a pretty scary thing when reporters like this
can just get all the facts so completely wrong,
their editors don't question them, it goes out as gospel
and the average American believes that's what it's all about.
Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, July 12th, 1994.
The author is Adam S. Baumann.
Giving you all the information.
Go out there and find out the facts
and if corrections are necessary, I suggest you correct people that need corrected.
Well, anyway, that's what's going on as far as that goes.
A related story, related only because it has something to do with hackers.
According to the Daily News of last Sunday,
for several months the Pentagon has been unable to locate hackers
tapping into its unclassified computer system.
Okay.
Now, I don't know how they know they're unable to locate them
when they can't locate them, but they say they're unable to
and they're panicking now.
And hackers are taking control of the Defense Department.
All right.
We have a letter I'd like to read.
I'm going to fade this down.
You know, this is going on much, much longer than I seem to recall on the record.
That's part of what CDs are all about.
You kind of want to stretch things out as long as you can, but that's enough.
Thank you.
Here's a letter from Brooklyn.
And I'll just read the first name of the person.
After I read the letter, that is.
Dear Mr. Goldstein, I think that hacking is just trespassing
and if these people are so clever, why don't they work within the system
and get a job at Bell Labs or something?
Hacking doesn't make you cool, it sends you to prison.
There is an intriguing aspect to it, but the young men, it's predominantly that,
who are involved in this aren't trying to keep corrupt capitalism in check.
Instead, they are just showing off their cyberspace abilities
or trying to make a fast buck by breaking codes or stealing software or both.
Sincerely, Lisa.
Well, Lisa, a degree of what you say is true.
There are a lot of people out there just showing off.
But I also think you might be reading some of these newspaper stories
and taking it a little bit too seriously.
I don't know where you would get the idea that hackers are out to make a fast buck,
unless you're reading stories like the one I just read.
You'll find that hackers are rather bad at making fast bucks or even slow bucks
because they spend a lot of their time going after things
which most people don't think are very fruitful at all,
wasting a lot of time monotonously repeating tasks
and playing with PCs and other people's computers.
Namely, it's about exploration.
It's about figuring things out for the first time and sharing information,
spending time with a bunch of losers in most people's eyes.
That's not my view, certainly, but that's what a lot of people seem to think.
Now, getting a job at Bell Labs is all fine and good,
and a number of hackers already work at Bell Labs,
but that's not the answer for everybody.
A lot of people can't work within such a structured environment.
A lot of people cannot work within anything having to do with a phone company
for various obvious reasons.
But one thing you should keep in mind,
hacking is more than just trespassing.
Hacking is discovering,
and there is nothing wrong with discovering things,
finding out things, and sharing them,
despite what you're told by these large corporations that say this is wrong.
Well, they say it's wrong because they feel particularly vulnerable to it,
and they're vulnerable to it because they don't have security on their own systems.
They don't have adequate security, and they're wide open,
and their secrets, which involve all of us, are prone to anybody's eyes.
So that's something that I think deserves to be shown,
and if hackers are the ones to get there first, I'd prefer that,
rather than have somebody like a telemarketer,
or a corporate spy, or a real spy,
or an alien from another planet, or anybody like that get to it first,
because they're not likely to tell us.
They're not likely to get caught,
and explain to people just how it works.
They're not likely to leak it to us here at Off The Hook, or 2600,
and give us the opportunity to tell everybody.
I mean, they really hate that,
but that's what it's all about, freedom of information.
But by all means, get involved, ask questions,
and come to the HOPE Conference.
Yes, that's right.
Good opportunity to get a plug in there,
and good opportunity to lead into what our program is about tonight.
We have the topics, a lot of the topics, not all of them,
but a lot of the topics are out, as it is,
and we are organizing a program,
as some of you, most of you must know by now,
Hackers on Planet Earth will be taking place
Saturday, August 13th, and Sunday, August 14th,
right here in New York City, at the Hotel Pennsylvania.
If you want to pre-register, you have to do it by the 31st.
That is, you have to postmark it by the 31st,
and since I think that's a Sunday,
it probably should be the 30th.
So what you should do is call 516-751-2600
to get full information on registration,
or if you're on the Internet, email to this address.
Ready? Okay.
Info at hope.net.
Info at hope.net,
and it will automatically spit back the entire program at you.
So if you've emailed there before, there's new information on there now.
It'll tell you all the things that we're planning.
And I can go over some of that here now,
and then we'll go into detail on one of these topics.
Maybe more.
Believe it or not,
we're going to have an opening address,
and the opening address is going to be
by an ex-Central Intelligence Agency employee.
Robert Steele, who's been on this radio program,
is going to be welcoming hackers to New York,
and I think you'll find his comments
very enlightening, very interesting, refreshing.
It's good to have people who have been on the other side
who have seen the light
and are willing to come back and talk about it.
All right.
As we've mentioned before,
we're going to be talking about the New York City MetroCard.
Oh, this is interesting.
I got my hands on an employee MetroCard.
Don't ask how I did it, really. Don't ask.
An employee New York City MetroCard.
They're slightly different.
They are, for all intents and purposes, unlimited passes.
This one was expired.
And as I ran it through the MetroCard reader,
it said,
card expired.
And then it told me when the last trip was.
It gave the date and it gave the time.
Date and time of the last trip.
Now, I don't think that information is stored on the card.
That's even more information to write on the card
every time you swipe it through.
I strongly believe, and we're trying to prove this still,
that the information is stored on a central database
and occasionally downloaded and uploaded
to various station computers.
And every now and then it does a batch update.
Still trying to decode that card.
No one has come through yet with the ability to do that.
So we're going to keep trying,
and hopefully at the HOPE Conference we'll be doing that.
This is our description of the panel we'll be having there.
New York City has just introduced a brand-new fare card system
for mass transit, one unlike any other in the United States.
We've been gathering data on this system for some time now,
and hackers all over the world are trying to figure out ways of cracking it.
Unlike most other mass transit card systems,
this one uses master databases.
We will read the cards, duplicate them,
and make every attempt to defeat the system.
By the end of HOPE, we will have either cracked it or deemed it secure.
If your participation is encouraged,
we expect to have representatives of the MTA on hand
to answer questions and keep a nervous eye on us.
Some other things.
The Chaos Computer Club.
For many years now, Germany's Chaos Computer Club
has been making headlines all over the world for all kinds of mischief.
But as with all things, there is much, much more to the story.
For the first time ever, the CCC will be in this country
to answer questions and share information of all sorts.
Social engineering.
By far one of the most effective ways of getting information
is the art of social engineering.
You will see some live social engineering,
get tips on what not to do,
hear some great legendary tales from the masters,
and listen to social engineering tapes of the past.
And you are welcome to participate in our social engineering contest.
We give you an operator, and you go as far as you can.
Yeah.
An update on the Italian hacker crackdown.
Recently, one of the largest computer raids in history
took place in Italy, focusing its attention on Phytonet.
The investigation and the overall oppressive atmosphere are continuing.
And we'll have an update from an eyewitness.
This is interesting.
Doug Platt of Select Tech
will be walking around the HOPE Conference
wearing and demonstrating a computer of his own design
that will be connected live to the Internet
via wireless technology.
Doug will be reporting live in the HOPE Conference
via the Internet as he walks around.
That should be quite interesting right there.
You can also learn all about Full Disclosure,
a magazine many consider to be as dangerous as 2600.
There will be free copies available.
And on Sunday at 8 p.m., there will be a live call-in show
from HOPE to Full Disclosure Live.
And that takes place on International Shortwave
at 5810 kilohertz.
So that's going to be something kind of interesting.
And how about this?
Cellular. Cellular information.
How is it done? How is it really done?
We've all heard about cellular phone cloning,
but how many of us have had the guts to actually do it ourselves?
Well, probably quite a few. It's relatively easy.
But as with any technological trick,
there is a multitude of misinformation being handed out.
That won't happen here, as the true experts will be on hand
to demonstrate cloning and answer questions.
We will show how cloning is not just for criminals
and how you can clone a phone on your own PC.
Cellular software to do this will be made available for free,
and you'll also see firsthand the risks of using a cellular phone.
And we don't mean brain cancer, because that'll take a few years.
We'll show you the risks right there and then.
Some other panels include Linux, Hacktic, malicious users.
How do hackers handle malicious users?
That's going to be very interesting.
Phone boxing of various sorts.
Authors of computer pieces. Computer hacker pieces, that is.
We'll have all kinds of people on that one.
The history of 2600. That's right, the history of 2600.
How did it all start? How did it almost never happen at all?
Are our phones tapped? What's the craziest letter we ever got?
Who are the people behind the names?
How many lawsuits have we been threatened with?
What do the covers mean? Where is it all leading?
That kind of stuff.
And legal issues, cryptography.
And that's only the beginning. We have a lot more coming in.
Plus, the topic we're going to be talking about tonight.
Fun with pagers.
Have you ever had the opportunity to monitor the pager of your choice,
seeing each and every page as it comes over, alphanumeric included?
You will.
The entire city of New York is wide open,
and we'll demonstrate exactly how it's done.
More pager tricks and little-known facts will be presented.
And that will be hosted by Thomas Eicham,
who happens to be here in the studio tonight.
Thomas, welcome to the program.
Good evening, Emanuel.
And you're going to be designing this whole thing
through a regular PC and a board, right?
Yes, all commercially available equipment.
All right. And what is the actual idea?
You snatch the signal out of the sky and...
Basically, that's what you do.
You snatch the signal out of the sky,
and the equipment will read the digital code
that every pager is assigned.
That's known as the cap code, right?
Yes, it's known as the cap code.
And then the information that's being sent along with the cap code,
such as the phone number of the person who is paging you,
or, in the case of the new alphanumeric pagers,
the actual message being sent.
That could be a lot of fun, just to sit there
and read the alphanumeric messages being sent over.
Now, as far as sending an alphanumeric message, though,
you need to talk to an operator, right?
There are two different systems available.
The first system requires you to call an operator,
at which point the operator will ask you
for the pager's cap code and the message.
There is also another system up and running
where you can call in via a computer modem
and then enter in the cap code in your message via modem.
I see.
Let's demonstrate to people what a pager sounds like.
I know you've all heard of pagers.
By the way, do you ever hear this on the television set,
or in the movies?
Do you ever hear this?
That's not a pager going off.
That's somebody turning a pager on and turning a pager off.
That's all that is.
So if you hear that, that's not somebody being paged.
That's Hollywood's cheap way of doing it, and it's not real.
We're going to demonstrate the real thing to you.
I know why they don't do it.
It's very hard to get a pager to go off exactly at the right moment.
But come on, we should have some realism here.
All right, let's get our dial tone.
Have our dial tone there?
We're going to dial a pager.
We'll dial a pager that belongs to us,
rather than annoy somebody,
and show how it works.
Take a listen.
Okay, those three beeps mean it's time for you to enter something
in a touch-tone phone.
I entered 1, 2, 3, 4,
and I hit a pound sign to tell it I'm finished.
Okay, that means that I've now successfully sent the page.
And what's happening now?
Right now, the system is waiting for a spot of open air time.
Generally, when you call on the system and you put in your page request,
it's put into a queue,
and when the system gets to your specific page,
it then sends it out over the air.
Okay, so here it is.
That's what it sounds like.
That's the whole thing.
Isn't that exciting?
And there's my page, 1, 2, 3, 4.
That is incredible.
Now, there's different kinds of pagers.
As you said, there's voice paging,
where your voice can actually come out of somebody's pager.
There's a voice paging system where you go to a voice mailbox.
I guess I can demonstrate that one, too,
because that one is something I have right available here.
Most of them are in the 917 area code,
so you can, I guess, explore there if you want.
Okay, so now that's going to spew forth with some words for a while,
and when that's finished, I'll be able to leave my own message.
Is that correct?
Yes.
All right, and then after I leave my message,
the same exact thing will happen,
except I'll get a different kind of code.
Yes, you will.
Okay, now it's asking me to leave a message,
and I'm leaving a message.
I'm going to leave a message.
I'm going to leave a message.
Now it's asking me to leave a message,
and I'm leaving my message on a particular voicemail system
that is hooked into the pager,
which is the same paging company that I just used before.
Usually the messages are very short.
You can't say very much before it cuts you off.
I think it's about 20 seconds, usually.
Usually about a minute is the maximum time they allow.
Your message has exceeded the maximum time.
The message already entered has been recorded.
We are hanging up.
Bye.
Okay, so they're gone,
and now it's the same process as being repeated.
It's taking my notification of a message,
looking for available space,
and it's going to send that over various transmitters
throughout the tri-state area.
Yes.
Okay, like the Empire State Building, I think, is one area,
and there's sites all the way down to Philadelphia and up to Albany.
Yes.
Ah, different beep.
Okay, that indicates I have a voicemail message,
and if I click the thing, it'll show me the number to call.
Yeah, I just remembered something about this.
This will beep every five minutes until I get that message,
so I'd better go in there and get the message right away,
otherwise it's going to annoy us for quite some time.
So you do that by calling the number itself,
and then once the message starts playing,
you hit a certain key.
Hello, you've reached 20.
Please enter your security code.
And then you enter your 95-digit security code.
You have one message.
Please enter three to receive your message.
Let's do it.
Now it's asking me to leave a message,
and I'm leaving my message on a particular voicemail system
that is hooked into the pager,
which is the same paging company that I just used before.
Usually the messages are very short.
You can't say very much before it cuts you off.
I think it's about 20 seconds usually.
Usually about a minute is the maximum time they allow.
Please enter three to erase, five to keep, seven to repeat,
or two for the time and date of your message.
You have no more messages.
Please enter your command.
Now I don't know if you heard this,
but during that message I could hear crosstalk.
You have no more messages.
She'll go away, don't worry.
I heard beeps, I heard tones.
You have no more messages.
I'll just keep her low.
Please enter your command.
So is there a reason for that?
You have no more messages.
That's generally due to the ancient quality of the phone lines
that are going into the paging computer.
The crosstalk is more of an effect of the phone company
than of the pager company.
I see.
So we have pagers all over the place now.
A lot of people are using them.
What kind of frequencies are we talking about?
They're all over.
They're typically in the VHF and UHF bands.
They go as far down as 30 megahertz,
and now the new pagers are up.
30 megahertz? That's CB.
No, CB is between 26.9 and 27.4.
Okay, but it's close to CB.
It's very close to CB.
That's really low.
I didn't know it went that low.
The high end is actually above cellular in around 930 megahertz.
Now the new systems which are coming into use
with the new personal communication systems,
those will actually be running up in the gigahertz range,
and when they finally get the system installed,
you'll have essentially nation or even worldwide coverage with your pager.
As it stands right now, for those willing to pay the money,
you can get nationwide coverage on your paging system.
Is that really nationwide coverage, even in remote areas,
or is it just big cities?
It's generally restricted to big cities.
The way the system works is your page is picked up in your home area,
and it is then sent out via satellite to other cities who receive your page
and then send it out over their local paging systems.
I see.
Now let's talk a little bit about what's going to be happening at Hope with these pagers.
What does this board, this computer that we have,
what does that give us the capability of doing?
Is it simply scanning one particular person, scanning the entire city, what?
The system will give you the capability to monitor a paging frequency
and be able to receive all the paging requests that are being sent out on that frequency.
I see.
So we'll be able to see their particular cap code, which is their identification,
and any numbers that are keyed in?
That's correct.
Any alphanumeric messages that are keyed in?
We could scan everybody in that frequency, or we can just simply eliminate it to one person?
Wherever you take it, once you have the person's frequency is just about anywhere,
you can scan the entire frequency and get anyone's page that comes out on that frequency,
or you can narrow it down to a single person or group of people.
You can narrow it down to a specific phone number that's being paged.
So you can look at everybody that got paged with a particular number?
Yes.
And then take it from there?
On the alphanumeric pages, you can even do the old alleged NSA trick
and scan for certain words.
Absolutely.
Now, we're talking with Thomas Lycom, who is an expert on pagers, scanners, radio things of all sorts.
So if you have any questions, now is a good time to give us a call at 212-279-3400.
I'm sure he can answer just about anything having to do with this kind of communication.
We're not the first people to discover this, obviously.
I imagine law enforcement knows all about this.
Do you think a lot of our pages are being monitored like this?
We're being scanned ourselves?
Pager interception is a common intelligence-gathering technique.
Used by who?
Whoever wants to use it.
Do you think it's used by local police, by federal authorities?
I would say the federal agencies are using it.
The local police might not be able to afford the equipment.
However, there are a lot of minor little tricks here and there that you can do to intercept pagers.
You don't need to spend the money to get the equipment that we'll be demonstrating at the HOPE conference.
Okay. Let's take some phone calls to see who's out there.
Any questions for Thomas Lycom? Any questions about anything else?
Good evening. You're on the air.
I have a question for your guest.
That is, I notice now, or either one of you, whichever, can answer.
I notice now that you're claiming there's these new digital cellular phones
that supposedly are more untappable or something of that sort.
Do you know anything about to what degree that's true?
The new digital cellular system will, at current,
provide a little more privacy against casual listeners than the current system.
Than the analog system? Is that what the current system is?
Yes. The current system is using analog. It's using FM transmission.
The new system will be using digital pulse code modulation
in which the voice is turned into a digital computer signal and then sent over the air.
Well, now, wouldn't I just simply need some sort of a decoder?
Well, like I said, as of current, because there are no decoders available,
it will offer a little bit better security.
But the one thing you have to remember about anything that goes over the radio,
and that is, if it goes over the radio, you might as well shout it from a rooftop.
Very true. But you say there's no decoders available. Isn't every telephone a decoder?
Again, there hasn't really been any experimentation or really any systems out there available commercially yet.
I'm sure that once the systems get out there,
then you'll start seeing the security level go down as people begin to experiment with it
and see what it can do and find out what the loopholes are.
Now, what kind of bandwidth are they using on the cellular digital?
Is it the same as the regular phone, like 8K samples per second or something with standard PCM?
Or is it some different frequency?
I would imagine you can probably compress a lot more signal if it's digital.
Well, your current voice standards for telecommunications are about 3 kHz wide,
which of course fits perfectly in a standard analog FM carrier.
There are several different systems which they're currently working on.
Various companies are working on different systems, and each one has a different specification.
No one really knows as of yet what the definitive standard is going to be.
So if I were in the market to get a cellular phone, would the digital one be a way to go?
Well, I would say, myself personally, the current system is not something you want.
So anything from the future, barring clipper chip that is, would be preferable, cheaper,
and probably more secure, but it may not yet exist.
Okay.
I'm sorry, that probably isn't very helpful.
I notice Motorola is now pushing this big phone that will do dual analog and digital.
I guess there's some other people on the way, or I don't know.
All right, well, thanks for the call.
All right, thank you.
Good luck.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Oh, hi.
You're harder to get in touch with than Chairman G.
Let me just slow my radio.
I have a few questions.
First, I'm considering subscribing to 2600.
I just, I'm sure, you know, it's a silly question, but no one's ever really mentioned it before.
Are the, is your mailing list secured?
I mean, do you give it to?
Well, let me tell you something.
That's the most asked question that we have ever faced.
Everybody asks that question.
I can tell you the mailing list is secure.
We don't give it out to anybody.
But there could be all kinds of radar and satellite equipment outside the office that beam it up to a spaceship or something.
Oh, come on.
But I can tell you we don't show it to anybody.
Is that in a plain brown wrapper like the sex magazines?
We send it in a brown envelope, yeah.
Okay, another question, another like sort of pseudo silly question, but, you know, it's one of those nights.
Could you also explain the reasons for your pseudonym?
I mean, you're always, you know, you're at there, but somehow, to me at least, there's a credibility lack when you refuse to use your real name.
Well, why don't you tell me what a real name is?
The name on your birth certificate, you know.
Now, why is that a real name and the name that you feel fits you?
Okay, well, I mean, if you want to get legalistic, I mean, you can change your name to anything you want to.
Actually, I don't want to get legalistic.
I mean, is Emmanuel Goldstein the name that you use in all your legal and social, you know, interactions or just for this radio show?
Well, it's the name I use.
I mean, it's the name I use for virtually everything.
But it's not done for purposes of deception or anything.
Absolutely not.
No, if I want to deceive somebody, I'm not going to boast about it or advertise it.
Nobody will know.
I'm sorry?
It's done to make a point?
It's done because that's what I'm comfortable with.
That's how, that's what I, Mr. Eichmann has something to say on this subject.
Well, what's in a name?
I mean, a name is just a name.
According to common law, you can go under any name you want to use as long as. . .
That is not done for the purposes of fraud and deception.
Well, I don't see anyone defrauding anyone here.
Traditionally, ever since the days of the early ARPANET and the old MIT hackers back in the 60s,
you always chose a colorful nom de plume or pseudonym, as it were.
It's kind of like a nickname.
It says more about you.
Psychoanalytical tie-in between the hacker personality and subculture.
I mean, sort of like the whole cyberpunk world.
The long-distance companies.
I mean, because I keep occasionally changing, because every time I change to Sprint or MCI,
AT&T tries to bribe me by mailing me a $15 or $50 check to switch back.
It's not like I switch back when I'm offered money or free stuff from other companies.
I'm very curious about that myself.
Are there records of this, or is there some legal limit as to how often you can switch?
Well, sir, the worst thing that can happen is that they just won't mail you any more money.
That's really the worst thing.
You won't be breaking any law by changing your long-distance company.
Are you signing something that says you will not change your long-distance company again?
When you read the fine print, when you endorse and cash the check,
that gives them the right to switch over, but you're not saying you agree to stay with them.
But, you know, all this liberal Jewish guilt and brand loyalty.
I mean, if you can't believe in AT&T and McDonald's, what can you believe in?
Have a good conference, and I hope to hear Fiber on the show in, what, three months?
No, he had nothing to do with that.
He's been trying to use it, and it just doesn't work.
I'm curious, what's his favorite food?
Like, as soon as you guys take him out of jail,
does he have, like, a computer-related type of food he likes?
Well, there are so many.
Basically, anything that is edible, believe me, is on the list,
because nothing in that place really is edible.
It's all starchy.
It's like, imagine being in a high school cafeteria, like, for your entire life.
I really love your righteous indignation and all the mischief you guys make.
You give me courage by osmosis.
Okay, anyway, take care. Bye.
Thanks for calling.
I feel particularly righteous tonight.
But his phone system crashed, and now he has to make phone calls collect.
The advantage to that is he can call any number now,
but he has to call collect, and it's made through an automated system
that announces the name of the phone company,
and you won't necessarily know it's him.
Now, get this.
The name of the phone company that is serving the prison is Locktell.
That's right, Locktell out of Pennsylvania.
If anybody knows anything about these people, I'd like to know about them.
That seems almost too weird to be true.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yeah, hi. I have a question for your guest.
Sure.
My shortwave radio has an FM band down to 76 megahertz,
and there's lots of sounds like pager noise.
I was wondering if your guest could answer what is going on at the 76 megahertz on the FM band.
Okay, 76 megahertz is used for point-to-point links, what they call fixed operation.
It's the frequency band that they use to get from one transmitter to the other transmitter.
So what you're actually hearing on 76 megahertz is a fixed link
going from the central paging computer off to a remote transmitter.
And what type of information would you get out of it if you would tap into it?
You would get all the pages that are going out on that paging system.
So it's just another paging system?
It's not a different paging system.
It's an auxiliary link that's used by the paging company to get to their various transmitters in a given area.
Now, the things on shortwave that sound like airplanes, you know what I'm talking about?
What are those? Those crazy things, crazy data transmissions.
There's all sorts of different data being sent out over shortwave.
HAMS use one type, your press services and governmental services use another type.
So you could tap into a press service with the radio?
Oh, yes.
How would you do that?
Again, that's even simpler than pagers because those systems have been in use since the Second World War.
All it really requires is a $2 integrated circuit and any type of terminal,
and you can receive press services, embassy communications, HAM radio operators,
which are a very useful source of information as to what's going on in a particular area.
There's a lot of stuff out on shortwave.
Okay. Thanks for the call, sir.
Thank you.
Take care.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yes, I just wanted to tell you I run an open BBS, and I did some reverse hacking on a prankster.
Basically, this guy was coming in and just macro obscene lettering everybody
and just loading up every possible base with racial and obscene macros.
So I caught him at it, and I didn't do much, except when he logged off, I just took my system offline,
waited a day, and then star-69'd him, engaged in some inane conversation, and then asked for a phone log.
I put the time to the phone number, which I'd never seen before, so obviously that was him.
I used a reverse phone book, and then I found out who he was.
Wow. Now, that's, of course, because he was stupid enough not to block his number.
Well, star-69, can you block that?
Yes, you can. You can dial star-67 before, and all you'll get is their exchange,
and then I think four zeros instead of the actual number and local itemization.
Somebody doing that would be stupid.
Well, congratulations on tracking the person down. So did you manage to stop it?
Yeah, it stopped.
And you were able to stop it?
The only alternative was to close the board and make it just a little difficult to get in,
and since it is a very small board, and he was just chasing people down, trying to really bug them,
but finally when he called again, I just said, I know who you are.
And that put an end to it?
Oh, sure.
So you were able to stop this without calling in the feds, without locking people away?
That's right. I just asked for the phone log, and just said I wanted it to check the calls that were going through,
and I wanted to make sure if he was calling or in my house.
When you say phone log, you mean local itemization, right?
Well, I called up my local office, and I just said, I want an itemized list,
and they said, well, that would take about a month or so, and I told them for what time period,
and since I had personally logged the exact time that I had called back,
I just checked for that time, and whoops, there was the number, and then you just go to reverse.
You get resources for reverse phone log, and I need a phone book, and there's the address, there's the name.
Bingo, you got him.
Many times when things like this happen, you just have to finger the person and scare them a little bit,
and that puts an end to it in most cases.
Well, he was doing it to quite a few people, and they all found out.
Oh, really?
Well, that'll certainly put an end to it then.
Yeah.
Just a word to the wise.
Okay.
Thanks for sharing it.
Sure.
Take care.
Good evening.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Hi.
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, responding for just a second.
You better turn that down.
It's going to confuse everybody.
It came back.
Sorry.
That last caller, not only was the person dim-witted enough to not conceal his number,
but also had a listed number, or it would not have turned up in the reverse directory.
That is true.
Another caller, the one poor man there who first thought that it might be illegal to keep switching constantly
between long-distance carriers was certainly a character, and the idea he seemed to feel that AT&T are next to God,
that they are less generally, if not, let's say, entirely corrupt, less deceptive in business practices than any of the other companies,
though he may have a point in that they seem to be the only ones who send you money incentives to switch.
The others, apparently even MCI and Sprint, the other big boys, will slam you away from AT&T or your other company
by falsely claiming to your local company that they've been authorized to do so.
I would be happy to send you, Mr. Goldstein, a copy of some of those things from the front of the local phone books
off the microfilm at the library showing the exchange names over the years that we discussed earlier.
Oh, yeah. That would be great. That would be wonderful.
Give me a fax number where I could fax them to you.
Okay. The fax number we have is area code 516-474-2677.
And if you want to mail anything to us, you can do that right here, WBAI, off the hook,
Air of WBAI, 505 8th Avenue, New York, New York, 10018.
Not 5th Avenue, but...
No, not 5th Avenue, 8th Avenue.
Wouldn't stuff to Box 2600 out on the island there reach you more directly?
Well, it's not Box 2600. It's Box 752, which belongs to 2600 in Middle Island, New York, and that's 11953.
Right. And wouldn't...
I feel like giving out my social security number now.
Oh, but wouldn't stuff to the Box 752 Middle Island reach you more directly than via BAI,
where they've got different boxes for...
Well, yeah, technically it could, but not always.
Depends. You know, it depends where I am at a certain time.
Sometimes I'm here, sometimes I'm there.
Okay. Let you go.
All right. Thanks for your call.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Fascinating, all the old exchanges.
What was 279?
I forgot what 279 was, but every exchange had something it stood for,
and I guess we can read them all on the air one night.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi. I had a question for you, guest.
I was wondering, what is the modulation mode that is used in these digital pages?
I have one of the Universal M7000 teletype decoders, and I know the new one decodes these codes.
I was just wondering what mode of modulation they use.
Okay. Your pagers use standard FM modulation,
and the digital data is sent via what's called frequency shift keying,
where the actual frequency of the paging transmitter is shifted to represent either a digital 1 or a digital 0,
which is how they send their message.
Okay. What type of board rate is that, then?
There are different board rates depending on what system you're running with and what type of protocol
the paging transmitter is sending out.
I see. Okay.
Oh, the other thing I wanted to just mention, to manually mention about those signals that sound like airplanes,
I think they're multiplexed radio teletype signals, about 8 or 12 channels all running together,
and they have that droning buzz sort of sound.
It's an amazing, amazing sound. It's an amazing sound.
I spend many an evening just listening to that.
Yeah. They have a weird, hypnotic sound to them.
I have a teletype decoder that can decode those.
Occasionally, you get some press stations, but most of them are encrypted.
Yeah. I don't really care about that.
You just get that, a lava lamp, and some Christmas lights, and you're set for the night.
Yeah. Okay. Have a good evening.
Thanks for calling. Let's see if we can squeeze in one more.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi. BR9 was Bryant 9.
Oh, thank you very much.
Since the third letter, the Y, B-R-Y-A-N-T, and the digit 9 are on the, I should say, not on the same keypad button,
but in the same hole on the dial, it could conceivably, I don't have it right in front of me,
have been one of the original three-letter exchanges used from when dial service was introduced in New York in 1922,
first place in the world, I think, through 1931, when they were already running out of digits
and had to switch from three letters to two letters and one digit, and then a dash and four or occasionally five more digits.
In other words, it could have been B-R-Y, so your number would have been Bryant 3-400, B-R-Y-3-400.
Okay. We're out of time, though, but thanks very much for telling us that.
All right.
Take care.
Thank you.
Well, that's going to pretty much do it for us here tonight.
This has been Off the Hook, and we've been here with Thomas Icahn, who will be at the HOPE Conference,
answering more questions having to do with scanners and pagers and things like that,
but with the added advantage of having actual things to show you to play with and to experiment with.
That's what's going to be happening August 13th and 14th.
Again, if you want registration information, please call 516-751-2600.
Thanks for stopping in, and thanks to everybody who called in.
We'll be back again next week with another exciting edition of Off the Hook, so make sure that you're around for that.
Stay tuned for a rebroadcast of the evening news.
It's coming up next here on WBAI-New York.
Good night.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
I couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
I'll do it all for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
I'll do it now.
Good evening.
In the news tonight, a look at how people with disabilities are faring in the debate over health care reform.
We hear from one of the nation's more prominent journalists speaking on the plight of people of color in the nation's newsrooms.
And in New York, one civic organization wants to hire the homeless,
but advocates for the homeless say the group only wants to treat the homeless like slaves.
With these and other stories, I'm Jose Santiago in New York with Julie Drizzen in Washington,
and this is the news for Wednesday, July 27, 1994.
First to Washington for the Pacifica National News.
Bosnian Serbs have apologized for ambushing a United Nations fuel convoy today.
Two British soldiers and a civilian were injured when the Serbs fired on a British fuel tanker,
and it burst into flames just outside of Sarajevo.
The Serbs have sent their apology to the U.N. Peacekeeping Command,
saying they mistook the trucks for a Bosnian government convoy.
The Serbs have also cut off the only commercial route into Sarajevo.
In a letter to the United Nations Security Council,
Bosnia's president said Serbs have threatened to block U.N. convoys if Serb prisoners were not released by Sunday.
U.N. officials are expecting up to 3,000 American troops to arrive in Goma Zaire Thursday.
Defense Secretary William Perry today said the U.S. has 750 people on the ground,
and that number could go up to 4,000 by next week.
Some troops may be sent to the Rwandan capital of Kigali.
U.N. officials hope the U.S. presence will encourage Rwandans to return to their homes
and other countries to commit more forces to the relief effort.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees wants American soldiers to carry out mass burials on sick sites around Goma.
Reports say cholera and other disease has claimed at least 18,000 lives so far.
As Israeli authorities ask governments and capitals across the world for their support in protecting Jewish targets,
British security, or the lack of it, has been on the firing line for the last 12 hours.
Moira Ashford reports from London.
In Israel, the acting British ambassador was summoned to the Israeli foreign ministry
to be informed of Jewish concern over the security lapses in London.
And Israel's military attaché in London was even blunter, telling Israeli radio the police and security services blundered.
The first bomb exploded near the Israeli embassy just after midday yesterday,
and the second late last night outside a Jewish fundraising organization in north London.
Some accounts of the embassy bombing hold that the well-dressed woman seen leaving the car,
which exploded a few seconds later, was actually stopped by police,
but allowed on her way when she said she was only going shopping.
Today, British police put strength and security on more than 100 buildings with Jewish connections.
But the head of London's Metropolitan Police warned that these types of bombings are close to suicide bombing
and far more difficult to prevent.
The accusation from Jewish organizations that their warnings have gone unheeded
were reinforced this afternoon when Britain's foreign office admitted that on the 18th of July,
the same day that the bomb exploded in a Jewish organization in Argentina,
they had received a warning from the board of deputies of British Jews.
This is Moira Ashford for Pacifica Network News in London.
The Natural Resources Defense Council is asking Americans to continue to think before they drink.
A report released in Washington today says the country's water systems are still unsafe
for nearly 50 million people in the U.S.
The council's Eric Olson.
We are releasing shocking new EPA data that indicates that one out of five Americans
drank water that was either more contaminated than EPA's health standards allow
with toxic chemicals or microbes
or was inadequately treated for such chemicals or microbes in the years 1992 and 1993.
Olson says there's no reason for Americans to drink water contaminated with toxic chemicals,
microbes and other pollutants since water in the U.S. can be made safe for about $25 a year per household.
A Michigan judge who granted custody of a child to the father
because the mother puts her daughter in daycare,
today decided to let the toddler stay with the mother while she files an appeal.
Cynthia Ingle has more.
This morning, Maycomb County, Michigan, Circuit Court Judge Raymond Cation
signed a child custody transfer order,
but is giving Jennifer Ireland 15 days to appeal his decision
before she must hand over three-year-old Miranda to her father.
Ireland is a Michigan University student who puts her daughter in daycare.
On Monday, Cation decided to take custody away from the mom,
saying the daycare issue was pivotal in his decision.
National Organization for Women's Kim Gandy says this presents a lose-lose situation for women.
If you work to support your child because you're not getting child support,
as she was not in this case, then you're a bad mother and you're going to lose custody.
If you go to school to better yourself so that you will have some hope of being able
to provide support for your child in the future because you're not getting child support,
then you're a bad mother.
The Women and the Law Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School,
which represents Ireland, says it plans to appeal the decision
and will file a stay to the custody transfer order.
The stay would allow Miranda to stay with her mom during the appeals process.
For Pacifica Network News, I'm Cynthia Ingle.
And those are the stories topping the news.
[♪upbeat music playing♪ and applause♪
And this morning, President Clinton used the occasion to pitch his health care bill
before a gathering of disability activists at the White House.
President Clinton told the group that health care reform was the key
to finishing the work started by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Pacifica's Don Rush was there and has this report.
Now! Now! Now!
As thousands of disabilities advocates chanted their demand for health care now,
the President and First Lady marked the fourth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
There are 49 million Americans with disabilities in this country.
35% are without health care coverage.
And health care reform is seen as a key element to complete the promise of the act.
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
We have agreed to accommodate the needs of Americans with disabilities
in our businesses and in our stores.
Why don't we now accommodate the needs of all Americans,
including those with disabilities, to have real health care reform
at this point in our country's history.
And President Clinton used the anniversary to call for passage of his health care reform legislation.
Let's do what works. Let's complete the work of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Let's say to the whole world, this is one country that knows we don't have a person to waste
and we're going into the next century with all of our people arm in arm.
God bless you. Thank you very much.
The latest push by the White House comes as House Democratic leaders circulated a draft bill.
It would require employers to share the cost of health care insurance for their employees.
Disabilities advocates complained that while the ADA eliminates discrimination in the workplace,
many are discouraged from getting a job.
Mary Beth Schumacher with the Independent Living Center in Ohio.
They won't go for employment because their health problems won't permit them to work
without having some type of insurance coverage, so it's very much needed.
Besides the employer mandates, there is the coverage itself,
particularly long-term care and personal medical attention.
Judy Humon is Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation.
One of the important aspects of the Clinton plan and a number of the other plans that are moving forward
is the long-term care provision, which provides rehabilitative services,
but it also provides for durable medical equipment,
and it also provides for personal assistance services or attendance services.
But many critics are not very impressed with the measures on Capitol Hill, including the Clinton plan.
I think the plans that are in Congress right now are a joke
for the disabled and for other people with real medical needs.
David Himmelstein is with the National Health Program Studies based in Boston
and is a supporter of the single-payer plan.
They leave out coverage of a lot of the key services for people with disabilities.
Long-term care, home care services have, at best, incredibly skimpy coverage in these things.
A lot of drugs are left uncovered in most of the plans,
and also people who aren't wealthy get shunted into lower-tier care,
and most people with disabilities are not wealthy.
They end up in the budget-priced plan that's run by a corporation
much more interested in its own profits than in its patients.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, protesters were handing out $100 bill-like leaflets.
Health care for all! Health care for all!
On the front was a picture of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole,
who has been resistant to much of the health care reform efforts,
and the protest was organized by Citizen Action.
The demonstrators were calling for a single-payer system.
I'm a single parent. I have a brain tumor, and my job ends in six months.
After that, I have no health insurance.
Senator Dole is blocking the way. We have to have the single-payer plan.
We want to have a demonstration to let people know
we want the same thing that the Congress has for health care.
But while single-payer is still alive in Congress, it is not expected to pass.
Don Rush, Pacifica Network News, Washington.
Don Rush, Pacifica Network News, Washington.
Don Rush, Pacifica Network News, Washington.
Structural adjustment. It sounds like something a chiropractor would do.
But it's a term used for policies designed by the World Bank,
supposedly to help poor nations pay back their debts.
Developing countries around the world owe a phenomenal $1.7 trillion
to industrialized nations, commercial banks, and multilateral development organizations.
The World Bank promises to help those with debts,
but only if borrowing nations restructure their economies.
On this, the 50th birthday of the World Bank,
Pacifica's Mark Bevis continues our series with this report
on what structural adjustment has meant for the world's poor,
the people the bank says it wants to help.
Structural adjustment policy didn't begin when the bank did back in 1944.
It started in the early 1980s, when banks around the world worried
they weren't going to see any of the money they'd lent to developing nations.
World Bank chief spokesperson Tim Cullen.
The bank has helped countries that are undertaking economic reforms,
countries that have basically run out of money because of a variety of factors,
some of which was they got too heavily indebted,
and that exposed problems in the economies that made them inefficient
and made it very hard for them to really keep their heads above water.
So we've got into what has been a controversial area
of helping them with economic reforms.
The reasons these countries became so indebted are many,
but much of it goes back to the 1970s,
when they were able to borrow a lot of money at variable interest rates,
which at the time were very low.
Well, along came the late 1970s, and interest rates went through the roof,
and those poor countries, scrapped for funds to begin with,
found they couldn't pay the banks back.
The prospect of having so many poor countries default on billions of dollars of loans
worried the world financial markets,
and that worry became what is now called the international debt crisis.
In the early 1980s, the World Bank stepped in,
playing a role different from previous policy,
which had focused on lending money for projects like roads, bridges, and dams.
The bank began offering to loan developing countries money to pay their debts,
but on the banks' terms.
Those poor nations had to restructure their economies.
That meant that they had to become supposedly more efficient and more competitive
by exposing themselves to the international marketplace.
Doug Hellinger, with the Development Group for Alternative Policies,
a critic of the World Bank,
describes some of the hurdles a borrowing country must jump.
Allow foreign investors to come in,
allow foreign products to come in, liberalize trade,
and you streamline your internal production
by privatizing, get the government out,
lower wages, squeeze credit,
don't allow people to get the credit they need to produce,
actually move that credit and foreign exchange into the export sector,
diminish demand generally, fight inflation, keep prices down.
John Ruthroff, with the Center for Democratic Education,
spends a great deal of time working with nongovernmental organizations in Guatemala.
He gives an example of how this structural adjustment process works.
The bank gives out funds in installments.
They don't give it all out at once.
So the first installment might be for a third of the loan.
And the government agrees to do certain things before they get that first installment.
But then between, let's say they agree to submit to the legislature a reform of the tax code.
Then they get the first payment, the first installment.
Then there may be another six months.
Well, before they get the second payment,
they may have to pass that tax code in the legislature.
And then before the third installment, the president has to sign the new law.
But it's a series of steps that the country has to take.