I don't know what, are they playing music behind themselves?
Yes.
They got a whole thing going on.
They're doing everything, music and talk.
That's because you don't know what's happening.
You know what's happening?
It might, why don't you check?
It might be an Alien 3 where the black guy was lecturing the guys.
It's like a black station.
I think so.
Howard don't know nothing.
Hey, we know Howard.
Howard don't know nothing.
Howard don't know nothing.
It's quite obvious.
That was night shift, Howard.
Thursday mornings from 3.30 a.m. till 6 a.m.
WBAI 99.5 FM.
Night shift, Howard.
Get in a turn.
Yeah, yeah.
Hello, you're on the air.
Anyway, let's get on.
Are you ready?
Yeah, I'm ready.
I'm ready.
Are you ready?
I think we're going to do another thing.
That's it.
All right.
I have no idea what that was.
I don't know what was going on.
It was entertaining, though.
Do you know what time it is?
It's 10 o'clock on a Wednesday night, and that means it's time for Off the Hook.
All right.
Here we go.
the program is off the hook where we talk about the latest innovations in technology,
the latest threats to your privacy and all kinds of fun things that can happen to any one of us
and most likely is happening to you right now even though you don't even know it.
There is some good news but not very much of it this week. I guess we have to focus on bad news.
Well the good news I guess is that we're going to be doing mostly phone calls tonight so if
you're one of those people that is always fretting that you can't get in until 10 30,
well you can get in pretty soon so give us a call 212-279-3400. It's one of our
caller catch-up shows where you can pretty much spout your views on whatever you feel
like spouting them on. But first I'm going to spout my views on a couple of things.
Some things that have been in the paper recently which involve some very disturbing things. I don't
know if you have seen the news over the past week you may have seen reference to this. There
was coverage, there was not a lot of coverage, but there was some coverage of this computer
quote-unquote pornography case. A husband and wife from California were convicted on July 28th
of distributing pornography via computer in a case that raises questions about how to apply
community standards, the community standards tests of federal obscenity law to the information
superhighway. I'm not sure how many of you remember a few years ago we had Robert Thomas
on this radio program. He had been raided by local police out in California and eventually the
charges were dropped because it was found that he was not distributing anything that was illegal.
He was not distributing things to minors. He was simply running an adult oriented bulletin board.
Well get this, what happened to him now is that he was he was called by somebody in Memphis,
Tennessee. Now keep in mind this guy's bulletin board is in California. It was called by somebody
in Memphis, Tennessee and because people in Memphis, Tennessee are kind of well I don't want
to say it but well let's just say it's not a renaissance city. All right because of that
he was charged with transmitting computer pornography. Now he didn't call Memphis,
Tennessee. Memphis, Tennessee called him yet he was charged and convicted of 11 counts of
transmitting obscenity through interstate phone lines through this computer bulletin board. Each
count carries up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine so he's facing 55 years in prison.
It's probably not going to be 55 years in prison but it shouldn't be a day in prison. I mean this
is something community standards in the city in which he lives allows him to do this. Now somebody
in Memphis, Tennessee on their own volition decides to call this bulletin board and he's
charged with violating their community standards. Now it's only half the story. The other half of
the story is that the people in Memphis, Tennessee that called him were guess what
people that wanted to convict him. A postal inspector of all people. A postal inspector
testified that he had joined the bulletin board under a false name and had received sexually
explicit pictures in his computer in Memphis. He asked for it. He called up and he asked for it and
he got it and he prosecuted the guy that gave it to him and because the case was tried in Memphis,
Tennessee it wasn't too hard to find a jury to say yeah that's uh that's obscene that's illegal
that should be outlawed death penalty all the way. During the week-long trial jurors were shown
photographs carried over the Thomas's bulletin board featuring scenes of bestiality and other
sexual fetishes. The images were available for a fee to computer users around the world.
The defense argued unsuccessfully before trial that prosecutors had shopped around for a place
to try uh try this case looking for a city where a conservative jury might be found.
This case would never have gone to trial in California said the defense lawyer and uh
obviously they're planning to appeal. Think about it. Think about what this means to any one of us.
Any one of us running a bulletin board or doing anything that involves transmitting material to a
different place. A place where maybe different values are inherent. I mean you can extend it
way beyond the bulletin board. You can extend this to the telephone. You can extend this to
letters in the mail if you want to be really ridiculous about this.
It's uh it's tragic that this has to happen in this particular case. Unfortunately we can't
speak with Robert Thomas now. He's got his hands full but we wish him well and we'll be keeping
an eye on this. This is another thing we'll be addressing at the HOPE conference too so
we hope to see a lot of you there. Another thing we're going to be addressing is something that
may be happening tomorrow. Yes that's right. Keep your eyes on the media tomorrow because
you might see something really really scary. I was in touch with a few people in DC. There
are some rumors going around that sometime tomorrow there's going to be an announcement made.
I feel the whole city listening now. Yes there's going to be an announcement made tomorrow sometime
that the national ID card that we talked about a few weeks ago is going to be implemented on a
test basis in those states that have been hurt the most by illegal immigration which would include
California, Texas, Florida, maybe North Dakota, who knows. Those places where all the illegal people
just scurry across our border and rob us of all our liberties.
Yeah so now that's the excuse for implementing this so-called national identity card which
the Department of Immigration and Naturalization wants to do supposedly. Maybe there are other
people behind this but if this happens what will the reaction be? I can't imagine anybody
supporting this. I can't imagine the right supporting this. I can't imagine the left
supporting this. I don't know what's going through this administration's mind sometimes when they
introduce things like the clipper chip, digital telephony bill, and national ID cards. What is
wrong with them? I mean we should be going ahead surging forward on things like
national health and justice and education and freedom and all those neat things. Instead these
Orwellian concepts which we don't need. There's been no reasonable cause for them and even if
there were a cause for them is it worth sacrificing our liberties? Is it really necessary? That's the
question we have to keep asking ourselves. So that's something that's not good, something bad,
something we need to keep our eyes on. So watch the media tomorrow. This may just be a rumor,
maybe this won't happen but there are people down in D.C. that seem to be pushing for this.
So again we'll have more on that. We're going to have a whole panel on that particular subject
because we expect it to be a reality by the time the conference starts which is a week from this
weekend. It's really coming up on us fast and we also, this is good news, the only good news of
the week, for those of you that are old timers and used to read TAP magazine, TAP being the
predecessor to 2600, started by the yippies and helped out by Abby Hoffman among many others.
Well Cheshire Catalyst, Richard Cheshire, the last editor of TAP magazine will be coming up to Hope
and telling us all about the history of TAP, telling various stories and maybe showing us
some things that we've never seen before. So again if you want information on Hope the number to call
is 516-751-2600. However, don't listen to that message entirely. You'll get an answering machine
telling you how to pre-register. It's too late to pre-register. Do not pre-register because there
is not enough time for you to mail us something and for us to mail you something back. So just
come to the door and it'll be worth the extra five bucks I think for coming to the door instead
of mailing it through the U.S. Postal Service. All right that's pretty much all I have to say.
Just keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Our phone number is 212-279-3400
and we'll take your phone calls, any questions, any comments, any experiences that have happened
to you over the past week or however long it's been since you called in. Good evening you're
on the air. Hi it's your favorite caller again. Oh it certainly is. Yeah I just wanted to mention
one thing. There is a song, I know you like telephone songs, I don't know if you're going
to have this at the whole conference, but there is a song by the Beastie Boys. It's a new song,
it's called, it's actually an album and it's a title track, it's called Ill Communication.
You don't strike me as the Beastie Boys type. No I, well, I don't really listen to it but
since it's about telephones and everything, you know, but anyway. I guess yeah you sacrificed
your values. You should listen to that. What's it called? What about the tape that I gave you?
You know I, yeah, you gave us a tape and I listened to the tape and well I mean I have a
couple of words of advice. It's an interesting tape. I mean you have some phone noises in there
but when you're recording noise off the phone it's probably best not to be making all kinds of
comments and talking and laughing in the background while things are happening.
You got to remember that was like 10-15 years ago. Yeah you were a little kid then. Yeah. Yeah
I recognized your voice even then as a little kid but it's an interesting tape. I don't have it with
me right now. I want to keep it safe. All right well you're going to have it at the conference.
Oh well I'm going to give it to you and you're going to have it at the conference but I like
the telephone song where you were banging the pots and pans. I thought that was pretty interesting.
Yeah that was, you know, that's something I think people need to hear. I just want to mention two
things. I've noticed that on certain pay phones you cannot dial certain carrier access codes.
In other words, on one pay phone you cannot dial 10222 for MCI. You'll get a recording saying you
can't complete the number. Really? And yeah. And then another pay phone you'll be able to
and then you won't be able to dial NITT on certain pay phones. Well keep in mind that
every telephone. I'm talking about 9x pay phones. Right. Every telephone is really a computer
terminal. I'm talking about 9x. I'm talking about 9x2. Every telephone is a computer terminal. The
equivalent of it. It can be programmed to do certain things. They can program one phone not
to accept the 7 key if they wanted to. You know, they can do anything like that because it's all
controlled by computers. I got to mention something. It's not difficult. At work our PBX, the guy who
runs the phones and the PBX and everything, he didn't know that you can block 411. I was trying
to tell him that, you know, you see, I amazed him because I knew about phones and everything.
He was talking about, I was talking back to him about how you can make a free phone call
within the system by using the call completion feature. So I told him to block the call
completion feature. You can block the call completion feature which is basically when
you dial information and they say, well they say to connect to this number press 1. By the way,
if you're still on the line we're going to charge you $0.35 for it. Right, but you could block it
and just make it say the number. Really? I didn't know you could block that. Yeah. Okay, so did you
tell them to block that or information entirely? Yeah. Did you or didn't you? Yes, I did tell them.
To block information or just the call completion? Not to block information, to block the call
completion feature. I see. And on 555-1212? That's the same thing. Will you get call completion on
that? Yeah. But if you block it on 411 it would block them both. No, no, you block it in 9x, not in the system.
I see. Okay, now I believe this national, it's starting to be implemented, national call
completion. Yeah, I know. So I don't think you'd be blocking that if you blocked it with 9x. Actually,
we're not able to get national operator, I mean, you know, AT&T. You're not able to get, what if
you ask New York Telephone for AT&T? Uh, you can't get on 9x. You can't dial 0. Oh, you can't dial 0? No.
It's one of those things where you, each station gets a little bill. Uh-huh. Well, what if you want
to make an operator-assisted call? Well, you can't. You can't make a collect call? No. Okay, well, some
things I guess you just have to live with. Yeah, true. Okay, anything else? Um, let's see, what else?
Uh, I guess, no, I guess not. Okay, well, I suppose we'll see you at the 2600 meeting on Friday. No, I'm not.
I'm going to be in Philadelphia meeting. Oh, okay, well, I'll make some phone calls to them just to
Oh, wow! Okay, I'm sure you'll meet lots of interesting people down there. Okay, bye, man. All right, take care.
Get on the phone to Philadelphia quick.
Oh, boy, um, yeah, there is a meeting, there's meetings everywhere, uh, this, um, this Friday, but the one here
is at, uh, City Corps Center at 5 p.m. by the pay phones. We don't meet with the corporate executives,
but sometimes they come downstairs and meet with us. And 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., this is the last meeting
before HOPE, for whatever happens at HOPE happens. So, 212-279-3400. Good evening, you're on the air.
Yes, hello. Hi. Daniel, hi, uh, fantastic show. Well, it just started. I don't know if it's quite reached
the fantastic level yet. It's, it's getting there. On an ongoing basis. Yeah, it's, oh, okay, ongoing. I can
accept that. A supporter and member of the station. Well, thank you, we appreciate that. Um, I wanted to tell you
about something and get your comment. I don't know if it has to do with phones, but it has to do with
electronic security. I, um, have a Visa account with Bank One, which is one of the major, uh,
credit card issuers in the country. And they sent me this thing in the mail where they want me to
sign up to use my credit card in ATM machines to get cash out of ATMs on my, uh, Visa card.
And there's this little mailer you're supposed to mail back and, uh, to request a PIN for your
account, a personal access identification number, personal identification number. And it seems to me
like this, like, is the most unsecure thing I've ever seen. It's a three, uh, panel paper. You're
supposed to fold it in three and, uh, tape it and then mail it back to them. So it's like the size
of a postcard on the, on the address addressed to them. It says, um, bank card associates attention
security. Oh, great. On the back of it, on the other side, in other words, it has a little blurb
explaining personal identification number, how you can use your PIN to get cash, cash with your
credit card. So you select your PIN and then you advertise to the world that you've selected your
PIN and it's in the mail now. Someone has to do is open it up. If you have to write in your credit
card account number and the PIN. Oh, the whole shebang then. Yeah. Okay. I said to myself, I'm
not sending this in. Anybody can get this out of the mail and they'll have my account number and
my PIN too. That's, that's certainly true. And, uh, if you, um, this is, uh, I mean, as bizarre
as I do, what do you think of this? Is this unsecure? I mean, can someone use this? Of
course it's insecure. Is there a way you can, without even opening the envelope, peer through
it? Sometimes you can do that and just read through the paper. I think so, because it just
folds. Is there any kind of dark marking over where you would write your PIN? No. Yeah. That's,
uh, I would not use that system. I'd also give them a call and say, you know, you guys are morons.
I mean, that's, that's the case with most instances of fraud of various sorts,
whether it be phone fraud or credit card fraud. I mean, not to justify it or anything like that,
but, um, lots of it is based on utter stupidity on the part of the companies. They just simply
do not know the meaning of the word security. And it's very hard. You know, a lot of people,
sometimes they're faced with this choice in life. Do I, do I take the high road or do I
bow to temptation and get everything I want and, and live like people in commercials?
You know, it's kind of hard for some people that, uh, haven't had everything in their lives.
Yeah. Yeah. They make it sound so easy. Oh, you can get cash. They also don't,
you know, mention except in the small print that if you do get cash out of your, uh,
on your visa account, that they're going to charge you a three or 4% service charge.
Oh, it's incredible what they, what they wind up charging. You know, another thing,
and this reminds me of it, um, something that I find really disturbing is,
is the, um, spreading of banks that charge you for using ATMs. Now this is something they
introduced years ago to, to make things, you know, easy for us. They, they, they did everything
possible to get us to use ATMs and now they're charging us for them. And, and they introduced
these, these networks and they, they, they're trying to convince us that, uh, it costs them
lots of money to, to have another bank, uh, give you money instead of your bank. And it's,
it's utter nonsense. It's like phone company logic. It's like a dollar for a lot of banks
right. I mean, if you want to, if you want to take out $10, you know, you pay a dollar every
time you want to take out $10, even charge you if you want to deposit something. That's,
that's just not right. I mean, this is something that, uh, it's easy for them. It's easy for us.
It's quick. There's no humans involved. They don't have to pay somebody to stand there smiling
and giving you money. So, um, that kind of thing is it, it can't be allowed to spread
because we'll get used to it and then we'll just wind up paying fees for nothing. Yeah.
Let me just ask you something real quick on this thing with the pin and the, uh, card.
If the person who is trying to commit fraud does not have your actual card,
but they have your account and your pin, um, how do they go about, not that I'm asking how to do
this, but I'm curious about how, how does the, how do they commit fraud in order to steal money
from your account? Well, okay. It's, it's, uh, it's important to know these things. There's
nothing wrong with asking that, uh, with an account number with a pin. Uh, if they have
the ability to, to make a card, they have everything they need to do that. Uh, that's
why it's very important that you take your receipt whenever you go to, um, to a bank machine
using a credit card because it prints your full credit card number on there. And if the person
is looking over your shoulder or videotaping or whatever, uh, they can simply take your pin and
they'll, they'll be able to make everything work just fine. All right. But keep in mind.
Can it be done by computers too without actually having a physical card? Like if someone gets
computer access? Well, a credit card number is a very valuable thing to have, even though it's a
very simple thing to get. It's, it's usually a 16 digit number. And the only other thing you need
is, is an expiration date, which last I heard in many cases, this may have changed, but in many
cases they don't even check the expiration date. They just ask you for it, but it doesn't really
matter whatever you say, as long as it's not some date in the past. But with those numbers and an
address, which is not hard to get either, uh, or not hard to make up, you simply, um, you simply
are able to, to buy amazing things over the phone and it shouldn't be that simple. What are they
doing about this? I mean, does, do the credit card companies not care if their, uh, cardholders
accounts are violated? It's not that they don't care. It's that they don't have the imagination
to think of a better system, uh, where there's some, um, something a little bit more secure than
just a bunch of numbers on a card. Uh, you know, they, they want to make things as easy as possible
for, for consumers to buy things. You know, if, if you want to buy something on an impulse and
the only thing that you have to do is read 16 digits, you know, what's, what's to stop you? I
mean, you're not going to think that you don't have the money to pay for it. You just have those
magic 16 digits and you can get it the next day. Could it be that they don't care, um, if someone
is fraudulently charging your card because they're going to get the charge anyway. And even
though, you know, it's not a legitimate charge that you make, someone has to pay for it and
they're going to get them. Well, I mean, they, they, they wind up swallowing a lot of the, uh,
the fraud, but apparently it has not reached the stage where it's, it's that much of a threat to
it, to them. I mean, it's that it hurts merchants certainly. Uh, I mean, lots of times merchants
really, really get it from, um, from fraud, uh, more so than the credit card companies.
You know, it can happen that way. So, um, the pressure has to be put on the credit card
companies to, uh, to tighten up their act a little bit. Anyone else out there has bank one
and got this thing, I would suggest that they call up and complain. I'm sure they're not the
only bank that does that. I'm sure it's not. I mean, all kinds of, um, of, uh, institutions like
that don't really think about security. You know, what's interesting though, with credit cards,
this is something I just, uh, I just discovered. Um, I used to go around with a, with a gasoline
card. I had a shell card. Okay. And I, I buy gasoline with my shell card sometimes. Okay.
Plain and simple, same price too. It's, it wasn't any more expensive to pay cash
or to pay credit card. All right. Now I've, I've gotten this offer from shell to have
a master card. So I have this shell master card, which comes from chase Manhattan bank,
and I can take this master card and go to any gas station. So I can go now to a mobile station
and pay for gas with my shell master card from chase Manhattan. And I'm paying the same price.
They have to split it four ways. Now, instead of giving all the money to shell, now they have to
split it between shell mobile master card and chase Manhattan bank. I mean, I feel great every time I
get gas. Now I'm doing my bit to, to, to lessen profits to the evil people. All right. I'll let
you go. Okay. Thanks for calling. I'm sure they're, they're raking it in somehow, but I feel better.
Good evening. You're on the air. Uh, yes, I have a couple of things. Uh, first thing is, uh, where
in the New York city area, can I go out and purchase a used or semi-used cellular phone
at a discount price, uh, without going to cellular one and getting a rape from them?
There's all kinds of places on canal street. I would just walk up and down the canal street.
I'm sure you'll find something at a really phenomenally low price.
Okay. Well, it'd be anybody at hope, uh, the hope conference that'll be vending stuff like that.
Uh, I don't know if anyone's going to be selling cellular phones, but, uh, I'm sure a lot of people
can guide you in that direction and, and show you, you know, things that you can get things,
accessories you might be able to get, and we can certainly tell you where to get, uh, used ones
in the city. Okay. That's about it. And thank you. Uh, the rebel did come up with something good.
I, you know, I'm enjoying, uh, reporting broken, uh, pay phones to the, uh, 800 NYT coin number.
It gives me a sense that nine X is actually doing something about the phones. Are they doing
something about the phones? Well, when you, when you report a phone that's broken, you know,
you go through the voicemail thing and then you report it an hour later, they tell you,
you already have an outstanding request on that phone and it'll be fixed on a certain date.
And is it, I'm waiting, um, I have a phone that's been vandalized in front of the store
that I work in and I'm waiting to see if that phone is going to be fixed on the date they promised.
Well, you know, I'll tell you, I've had some experiences in the last week. I've had experiences
every week now for about a year with, with nine X fixing things. I've had a line, which coincidentally
enough is, is the line I use for modem connections. And this is a line that for some reason has
little bursts of static, which knocked me completely off the modem. Now trying to tell
this to nine X is, is like trying to explain something in Swahili to somebody because they
simply cannot, first of all, they don't know what a modem is. Okay. And then they test the line when
you call and they say, well, it's testing clear. Now it must be your fault. And I'm trying to tell
them, you know, this is something that happens sporadically. There's something rubbing together
in the trees. Maybe your, your wires across them. They're not always a cross, but sometimes they
touch and there's a problem. And that's when I get knocked off four times, I had to file a repair
request before somebody came out and, um, they, they made a valiant attempt to fix the problem
finally. And they made it better, but they didn't quite fix it. I've had the exact same problem with
nine X except I had am radio on my line. Yeah, that can be a problem. I think I know what,
what can cause that it's, it's the length of your cable. And I didn't, I, you didn't even
need a radio with the, the quality of the broadcast that's coming into my home. I had
nine X in my house, five different times. They'll tell me it's my equipment, it's my equipment.
And they say, they plug in this butt set and he says, it's fine. You don't hear it right here.
And I said, well, I don't have 200 bucks to go out and buy a butt set to make all my phone calls
with. Can you please do something about the radio on a line? They fixed me up. I have, uh, like
three different suppressors on each line. And, uh, now it's, it's, I can live with it now, but,
uh, what was the station? It was, uh, WABC broadcasting out of a city Island.
So you got Bob Grant on your phone, huh? Exactly. Wow. Well, I pity you. That's nine X for you.
Yeah. That's probably some, uh, subtle propaganda ploy. Good. It's when you call repair, you call
six one one and they don't, they don't believe that something's actually broken and something's
wrong with your phone because you're calling in, you're calling on that number and they don't
believe you that something's wrong. And they say, well, okay, you know, we'll send someone out.
If you ever want to have a night of fun, call six one one. And when they ask you what phone
number you want to report out of service, say six one one. You can go around for quite a while with
that one. I have to give that a try. Okay. Thanks for calling. Good night. By the way, at hope,
we're going to have a, uh, I think I might've mentioned this last week. We're having a social
engineering contest where I don't know how exactly how we're going to do this yet, but we're going to
get an operator on the phone up there on the podium and anybody who wants to try can talk to
the operator and get her to do whatever it is that's not obscene. That is, um, within reason
shut down the whole system or transfer you for free over to Tahiti or something, whatever it is
you, uh, you think you can get away with, see how far you can go. It's all part of social engineering.
It might not be AT&T. Maybe we'll do sprint. I don't know. We'll do various operators and see
what we can get them to do. Um, in the past, people have done all kinds of strange things
with operators, uh, had them turn off their consoles. One person, I heard this one. One
person actually, um, uh, got the operator to go take, this was a, um, an AOS service,
alternate operator service. One of the sleazy companies, they got them to take their console
down to a C prompt in DOS. The operator was saying, well, what do I do now? I have a C prompt
and the person was saying, okay, well, you, you, you type a directory here and you pipe it to this
file and, uh, and you, you, okay, you turn off the back of the computer now and you just had
to picture what was going on in that operator room after this, uh, this poor person was over.
All in the name of fun though. I mean, it's, it's, it's called job training of one sort or another.
212-279-3400. Good evening. You're on. Yeah. Hi, I'm enjoying your show as usual. Thanks.
Uh, in regards to the last caller who was asking about, uh, where he could buy a cellular phone,
uh, and perhaps of interest to other people. I just attended the police department
property auction today. Oh, you know, I heard about that. They sell a lot of electronic equipment.
Uh, unfortunately, you basically need to take off two weekdays in order to attend it. You view
the equipment on a Monday and it's auctioned the following Wednesday, but I did attend it.
And, uh, what I saw was a lot of cellular phones. Some, I don't know much about them,
but there were some pretty old and clunky looking ones and some very new compact looking ones and
all the, all the familiar name brands you'd see. And they were, went in lots of between
individual phones or you'd buy six at once. And the prices were as low as $25 for a phone.
And I imagine these are all drug contraband. That's what I would imagine. Yeah. A lot of
beepers. Uh, lots of beepers. They have so many that they only sell them in lots of about 50.
You can start a beeper company. Yeah, that's what I think. There were people bidding on them and
they were going for about a thousand dollars for maybe 50 beepers. Thousand dollars for 50 beepers.
Yeah. Including, uh, you know, digital alphanumeric ones and stuff. They also have
some computer equipment and other office equipment. It's kind of interesting to check out.
Yeah. How often does this happen? Uh, it's irregular. It's about once a month. Uh,
the next one, actually, I know the date. The next one is September 12th is a Monday.
That's when you view the merchandise. It's in a warehouse in Long Island city. And then the
following Wednesday, I guess it'd be the 14th. You bid on the products at a police headquarters
in downtown Manhattan. And, uh, you know, like I said, I guess some people get some good deals,
other things people bid and it gets expensive. Uh, uh, anyway, interesting stuff to check out.
They sell cars too. Yeah. Yeah. They sell the cars, they sell bicycles, uh, sporting goods,
tools, and, uh, all sorts of strange stuff. Medical equipment, uh, heart monitors.
Somehow they got in the hands of the police. Oh yeah. Heart monitors. One has to wonder.
Yeah. So, uh, it'll be announced always announced in the times and, uh, the daily news on the
Sunday before the auction. Yeah. And like the help wanted section, they have announcements.
And don't forget those, uh, telephone company auctions happen every now and then too. That's
how 2600 got its telephone company van. Oh, never heard of that. You can see it. Hope actually,
we'll be playing around with that, but yeah, it's, uh, you can get all kinds of, you can get
cherry pickers. You can get, uh, all kinds of trucks that they, that they use cars to regular
phone company cars, but the customer service reps really beat on those cars. So, uh, yeah,
same with, uh, used city cars, I think they, yeah, but, uh, anyway, just pass that on.
Okay. Good information. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Take care. Good evening. You're on
anybody there? Yeah. Hello? Yes, go ahead. Let me turn my radio down. All right. How are you
doing tonight? Oh, we're just fine. Yeah. A couple of things I want to make about the thing with the
nationwide card for this. I think the government should enforce the laws. They have totally
against that. I don't think they can do it because it goes against the constitution.
What, uh, what part of the constitution? Well, the constitution said you can't
stop people and ask for an ID, except if you think they're committing a crime.
Uh-huh. Well, these days, I think the government thinks we're all committing crimes, but, um,
what, what part of the constitution is that? I don't know which amendment it is, but
if you're walking down the street and a cop would ask you for an ID, you don't have to show him an
ID only if there's a crime in progress, or he thinks you were involved in crime. They just
want to ask for an ID. You can't do that. Uh-huh. Uh, second thing is, uh, I heard the fellow
talking about the pages last week and, uh, yes, there's some good programs out there that allow
you to interface to an R7000 and a computer allow you to read off the various different, uh, codes.
Correct, yes. We've been experimenting with that over the past week,
and about the only word we can use to describe it is information overload. There is, there's so
much traffic out there that just trying to see what's going on is, you have to be able to read
at 9600 baud. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta, basically, you gotta load it in and then pull it out as you,
slowly. You can't do it real time. There's too much information.
Right, that's why you need a computer. You have to sort of store the information,
sort it, and then, uh, interpret it. If you want to find someone, if you know somebody's
page, if you, if you know, if you know somebody's page number, you can find their cap code,
if you know what company they're with, and then you can listen to it. Yeah, very easy. You tune
to the frequency, you beep them with a string, and you look at the cap code next to the string.
Right. And then you... How many people there with R7000s? I'm sorry? You know an R7000? It's an
ICOM receiver. Yeah, yeah. I don't have one myself, but... My own one's a pretty good receiver. Yeah.
You can't buy them anymore. I have a, um, a Kenwood R2000 is what I have. That's okay,
it has an IF output. Yeah. Uh, you're going to have that stuff on display? We'll have some of
it, yes. In fact, we'll have quite a bit. Uh, people like Mr. ICOM, Bernie S., they're coming,
and they're bringing all kinds of equipment, so, uh... When does it start? Uh, okay, the, um,
the actual conference begins at noon on Saturday. However, registration will be before then, about
10 o'clock, I would imagine. And, um, if you're setting up with the network, the Ethernet, or
want to help out technically, come by Friday night, anytime after 5 p.m. That's at the Hotel
Pennsylvania on 7th Avenue and 33rd. Might stop by. I'm a ham operator. Great. Well, we can
certainly use people like that. All right. All right, thanks for calling. Good job, by the way.
Thank you. Bye. Take care. It's amazing. We, um, we've been having meetings as far as, uh,
this, this conference goes, and it's just incredible how many people are out there,
and what they have access to. You know, that's, that's what the whole hacking community is all
about. Uh, people have access to these huge machines that you wouldn't expect human beings
to own, and, uh, reams of cable, and just technical knowledge that, uh, is, is absolutely
unbelievable. So when we put all that together, it's going to be, uh, it's going to be something
better than Woodstock, I can tell you that. Well, better than the new Woodstock, anyway.
Good evening. You're on the air. Hi. How you doing? I'm calling, uh, to find out if there's
any information about, um, bands putting out their music through the, through computers and,
and telephone lines, and that possibly taking over the recording industry. Well, I do know that, um,
with various mediums such, such as, uh, digital audio tape, you can bypass record company
distribution entirely, and certainly when this whole ISDN information superhighway thing gets
to the individual level, uh, people theoretically will be able to do things like send video, send
audio, um, very easily. You know, not, not the clumsy way we do it today, but, uh, extremely,
you want the new, um, um, Stone Temple Pilots album, you just simply send it over the phone
line, and you get it in digital sound. Now, that can be a problem if you're looking to make a
profit off each and every individual copy that, that is sold out there, um, and you look upon
this as a threat. However, it can be a, the greatest thing imaginable to a, a band that's
starting out and has no record company distribution, or has had a fight with a record company, or
doesn't get along with MTV. Uh, you simply distribute it on the net yourself, and people
who want to get it, get it. So you don't know of anyone that's doing that yet? I don't, I don't
know. I'm, I'm sure people are experimenting with it. I don't know specifically of people that are
doing that, but I'm sure it's, it's happening, and I'm sure it's going to happen a lot more,
and it's, it's going to be very difficult not to have that happen if, if this technology keeps,
uh, progressing. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks for calling. Bye. There's always two sides
to these things. People will say, well, that's a threat, that's a threat to, uh, you know, to our
profits and everything like that. It's not a threat, though, if, if you always have a way
of making people want to get the original. It's like software, and what we're, what we're sort
of moving into is, uh, a world where data can be copied, and everything is data, everything is
digital. Now, does that mean that, uh, we have to somehow figure out ways of imposing fees for
copying everything from music to video to, uh, to the latest version of WordPerfect? We can. We can
try to do that. It's going to be a losing battle, or we can try and make it so that a lot of people
have access, and those that can afford to and want the originals will buy them, and hopefully everybody
is, is kept in business, and everybody has access not only to receive, but to send information.
Good evening, you're on the air. Hello? Yes, go ahead. Yeah, uh, I wanted to discuss the CIX with you on the net.
Yes, uh, okay, why don't you explain that to us? Okay, well, it's something called, if I'm not
mistaken, the Commercial Internet Exchange. Correct. And, uh, apparently it's a number of
fairly large internet providers that have gotten together and decided to charge for use of the net
on a flat rate basis. I believe an extra ten thousand dollars a year? That is my understanding.
Yeah. What I'm wondering is, what do you think about the possibility of thinking of these
companies in terms of a utility? And they're basically tolling what should be a national
highway, so to speak, uh, and taking private, uh, tolls off anybody who wants to use it if they want
to get on this supposed national highway. Well, you see, the problem with utilities is that they
inherently don't have any competition. You see, and there's only one utility, a cable TV company,
a water company, a gas company, and you're stuck with them. So I don't know if that's the right
road to take to think of internet providers as utilities. I think you'll get better service and
more varied service by having lots of different ones, but that doesn't mean we have to cripple
them with, uh, with excessive fees like this. Because the smaller companies are going to be
paying. Are they not inviting regulation? Well, they very well might be, but certainly the smaller
companies aren't. You know, the smaller companies have to pay this ten thousand dollars as well as
as the huge companies like CompuServe. Which makes it extremely, basically they're protecting
their turf. That means smaller companies can get started. Uh-huh. If the big ones can afford ten
thousand, it'll pay and happily be on it and keep all the small ones from from forming new competitive
forces. That's right. This could be the beginning of the end of what the internet was all about.
I certainly hope not, and I think there should be a strong reaction against this.
But of course that means basically taking over, in a sense, private lines and, in a sense,
nationalizing them. Uh-huh. Which is rather un-American. Yeah, it's, uh, you run into some
sticky issues on that, I know. But this is something where, for the first time, individual
people have access to to something that's virtually unlimited. And I don't know what the big push is
to limit it, you know? I mean, who is who is not happy with the way it is now? It's a
commons problem. If it's free and totally free to everyone, then eventually it becomes polluted and
overused. So in a sense, some charge, maybe down the road, would be necessary. But it should be
metered, in some sense, so that you can't just pump megabytes, huge megabytes, onto the net.
I don't know, to me it seems like an attempt to control something which they're afraid of.
They don't know where it's going to go, and they don't want to watch and see where it goes.
Well, the CIX is clearly an attempt to throttle the competition. Big boys are getting together
and they're going to make it our little club and not let anyone else in, essentially.
Have you seen any organized opposition to this? Not really.
I haven't either, and I'm wondering why not.
Uh, well, it's the little guys. There may not be enough of them out there that know about it yet.
Well, I think word is spreading. I mean, I've heard about this. I have not heard about this
from the big guys. I've heard about it from the little guys. The little guys can't do anything
about it, because you need some kind of regulation to force the issue, because otherwise it's private
property and they're well within their rights to do whatever they want on their own lines.
Uh-huh.
Anyways, I just thought I'd put it out for discussion. Thank you very much.
Okay, thanks for calling.
Okay, then.
Actually, we have a little guy here. The owner-operator of escape.com,
Roman Kazan. How does this affect you?
Well, we're all going to have to pay $10,000 a year or our routing will be turned off to
the entire internet. Well, not to...
When you say all, you don't mean us. You mean companies.
Let's say Netcom is part of this CIX, as well as other large companies.
Well, Netcom has 10,000 million users.
Yeah, and well, our routing will be turned off to those companies also.
Basically, their network, our users won't be able to connect to.
I see.
What they're saying is that all the small people can stay together,
but if you want to talk to the big guys, you've got to pay $10,000.
That's correct.
What about the big guys? Do they have to pay to contact you guys?
They have to pay $10,000, but $10,000 means nothing to them.
$10,000 means a lot more to me than it means to a multi-million dollar company.
There is rumor that they are going to lower the price to people who use less bandwidth.
What's to stop them from making $20,000 next year?
There's rumors that it's going down, though.
Okay, well, I don't think it's a very good sign.
It's scary.
Yeah, it's very scary, especially with people like you running businesses like this.
When I first heard about it, I was very scared.
Yeah, I remember that night.
Well, okay.
Thanks for filling us in on that.
People, keep an eye on that because that's the kind of thing that could be a threat to
the way things are now.
A lot of us don't yet have access to the way things are now.
We kind of like it to stay that way so that you do get access.
One of the things we're going to try to do at the conference is give people access.
In other words, what's going to happen is everybody that comes to the conference will
walk in and they'll get an internet address, which will be good for two days on the HopeNet
machine.
You can basically do internet things and see what it's like and then decide for yourself
whether that's what you want or whether you want something where you pay more money and
have less services.
I don't know, but then again, I'm biased.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi, Emanuel.
I'm a live subscriber but a first-time listener.
I really love the show.
Well, thanks.
A couple of comments.
One about a previous caller who was talking about the Constitution prohibiting a national
ID card.
What I think he's slightly misremembering is a Supreme Court case from about five years
ago.
The police stopped, I believe in California, a guy in dreadlocks and asked him for ID and
when he couldn't.
I remember that guy.
It was a sus law of some sort, right?
I don't really know.
Suspicion of something.
Suspicion of doing something.
This is the guy that walked around his neighborhood all the time.
Yeah.
I believe that was it.
Yeah.
And when he couldn't produce ID, they cuffed him, locked him up overnight or something
along those lines.
And essentially, the Supreme Court ruled that non-possession of an ID is not a crime.
But, yeah, frankly,
And incidentally, we'll be there Friday before the conference to help you guys set up a couple
other things.
A follow-up on a letter that you published of mine from a couple years ago on making
phone calls from dedicated telephones, such as that you find in airports to dial hotels
and limos.
Bank phones.
Bank phones, yes.
I'm probably responsible for Citibank changing their entire phone system, which they're doing
branch by branch lately.
Two years ago, when some other correspondent first reported this, I realized that Citibank
had that sort of phones and exploited it mercilessly.
And I'd like to apologize to anybody else who used them that I'm now screwing over because
of Citibank changing their phones.
Don't you think you should be apologizing to Citibank?
Come on.
They're out there.
They're listening.
They're waiting.
No, frankly, my girlfriend used to work for them and in a rather high position, and she
got screwed over soundly by them.
I'd rather not go into details because it could identify her and thereby me, but.
No, I think they have so many people that they screwed over.
I don't think they'd ever identify them.
And finally, I have a question sort of about the Hope Conference, which is I've been reading
Alt 2600 on the net, and there's a fairly well, there's some interest in MetroCard,
the New York City Transit Authority's new fare card.
That's right.
And I was wondering, are you going to have any experts there speaking about it?
Well, we've gathered some information.
We have some data, some technical manuals of various sorts that we've obtained, and
we're going to have people look at them and try to analyze the system and see if it's
a secure system.
OK.
Do you have anyone who actually works for the Transit Authority?
Not as of yet.
You do now.
I happen to be a railroad clerk, which is what the average public talks about as token
sellers.
Wow.
And I work at a MetroCard station.
I'm not about to identify myself further.
Boy, I've been waiting for a call like this.
So you actually, you sort of make the MetroCard?
More or less, yeah.
Yeah, and there's a lot of misinformation on Alt 2600 about it.
OK, fill us in, please.
We're listening.
Well, the most common misconception is, first of all, no passback.
That was an original feature, but they eliminated that.
What passback is, is you use it once, and then you pass it to someone else and use it
again.
If it's on an unlimited basis, in other words, a card good for a month, a week, a year, that
makes sense.
But since MetroCard is on a cost-per-ride basis, you put X amount of dollars on the
card, and each time you go through the turnstiles, it takes $1.25 off, that makes no sense.
In fact, MetroCard is convenient for people who would go traveling with a group or with
their family.
So the passback feature, the no passback feature is non-existent.
You know, I've noticed that when I use a MetroCard, for some reason, people have no
difficulty at all saying, oh, could you swipe that again for me, please?
You know, it's like you don't give them a token, but for some reason, swiping the card
twice, they don't think of that as you giving them $1.25.
Well, what you are doing is exactly that.
Yeah, it does work.
But how about the thing where you swipe it too fast once on one turnstile, you go to
the next one, you get charged twice?
Yeah, there are innumerable software glitches in it.
The best one is when the bulk of the stations went online on the same day, and it turns
out that due to a programming error, if you signed on more than one person simultaneously,
you're supposed to be able to sign several railroad clerks on at once on your token booth
computer to allow them to encode fare cards each on their own account, because as the
public also doesn't know, railroad clerks are responsible for their own monies.
If we're short, you're not screwing the transit authority by screwing us, you're
screwing us personally.
So consequently, they keep the accounts separate.
But the early software glitch was that if more than one railroad clerk signed on the
token booth computer before a certain date, it froze the computer completely.
You could not encode cards, decode cards, anything.
Boy, that still doesn't happen now.
Yeah, that was a time flaw.
They contacted us and said, you'll be able to do this after a certain date and time,
don't do it beforehand.
There are many, many other flaws in it, which are just too innumerable to mention.
The computer itself is rather interesting.
It's in a stainless steel case.
It has what looks to be standard cables coming out.
But there's no way to get to any sort of prompt.
And in fact, there's no way to sign on by keyboard only.
Signing on is done by a MetroCard-like card in the possession of the railroad clerk or
supervisor.
And in fact, supervisors and technicians, there are two keyholes on the token booth
computer, one for each, which allows them to access a different set of menus.
Do they have to hold the keys at the same time?
No, no, no, no, no.
Like on Star Trek?
One keyhole for supervisors to access the supervisor's menu, which allows them limited
things, and a different keyhole for the technician to access his menu and also allows him to
open up the stainless steel case.
Now, when someone comes to you and says they want a MetroCard, without giving us specific
passwords or anything like that, what is it that you wind up typing on the display there?
Okay, there's really no password.
When you sign on, you swipe a MetroCard-like card, an employee card, and then the computer
will ask you for your PIN number.
Once you do that, you then go to the fare card menu, you re-enter your PIN number, and
at that point, if you stay in that menu, you can access as many cards as you like.
In fact, they tell clerks, if you go to the bathroom, if you go out to lunch, make sure
you get out of that menu.
Otherwise, the other clerk in the booth, your lunch relief, or anybody else who happens
to be left in the booth, because booths are never left unmanned if they're open, anybody
else can encode as many fare cards as they like.
Millions and billions, theoretically.
So, okay, so you're saying that you swipe two cards and you swipe a MasterCard?
One card originally, when you come in, and then as people come up and say, give me a
MetroCard for $5, give me a MetroCard for $10, you swipe their card to encode it.
So do you only swipe your card at the very beginning of your shift?
Your card at the very beginning.
I see, so you don't do that every time you have a customer?
No, you don't.
Okay, so then, okay, you take a card out of the stack, and these cards all have those
numbers printed on them already, the serial numbers and the batch numbers?
They have printed on the back, printed, physically, visibly printed, expiration date,
serial number, and a batch number.
Encoded on them are the type of card, whether it's pre-encoded for $15, or whether it's
non-pre-encoded, which is a fancy way of saying blank, expiration date, type of card,
serial number, and information on its last use.
As MetroCard users will know, if you go to the MetroCard reader or passenger information
unit, the freestanding, narrow metal boxes near the token booth, and swipe your card
through, it will tell you where you were last at, and at what time and date.
Actually, it doesn't do that unless the card is expired.
Oh really, it doesn't?
Because we got our hands on an employee card that was expired that was basically a free
pass.
You could use any time, but it expired, and it told us when the last use was.
But on a card that's current, it simply tells you the value.
That's fascinating, because that employee card, no employee card should have been expired.
It's a white card, is it not?
Yeah, it was a white card.
Okay, you may not have gotten an employee card.
You may have gotten a card out of the training center.
They look identical.
Okay, I can tell you exactly what it said.
Actually, I seem to have lost it.
Well, I have it somewhere.
We can discuss this at HOPE.
Yeah, I'm sure we'll have lengthy discussions about this.
Yeah.
But is there anything that would indicate to you that...
You mentioned that some cards are already encoded with the value?
Because I saw one...
You can get $15 cards.
They're wrapped up in plastic, and in fact, the transit authority, since in about four
years they're supposed to get off of tokens and on to fare cards entirely, they're trying
to sell them in non-transit outlets, coffee shops, newspaper stands, etc.
So, I mean, the plan is to go away from tokens entirely.
Yeah, we realize that.
Yeah.
But the theory we're kicking around here is that when you pick up the card and you slide
it through the machine, you're not actually encoding the card, but you're simply sending
that serial number to whatever computer it is that keeps track of all this and assigning
a value to it.
And then whenever you use that card, it checks that number and says, okay, this amount of
money is attached to that number.
Does that sound reasonable?
There is some evidence for that.
There recently have been a number of promotions whereby they handed out blank fare cards to
passengers, and the idea was that if you would actually encode the card and use it in that
station, they would post the next week a list of serial numbers and you'd win either a $100
or a $25 MetroCard.
But the thing was, you had to either do both of those, or allegedly do both of those.
They told you to do both of those.
Or you had to write on a postcard the serial number.
So there's some evidence that the serial number is transmitted to a central computer.
There are a lot of rumors floating around in the TA that if you, say, for example, identically
encode two cards, in other words, you make yourself a card reader writer, if you identically
encode two cards and use one and then attempt to use the second one, that it will be rejected.
However, there's no empirical evidence that I know of, and the source is nebulous at best.
We have yet to be able to successfully read one of these cards.
It's using some kind of strange format we're not familiar with.
So if you know anybody that knows how to read these...
Can I suggest that you don't necessarily have to know how to read it?
I presume it's not encrypted.
It's just in a weird format.
All you really need to have is a sample space with some regular information on it.
Well, may I suggest that what you do is simply go to a booth with a stack of $5 bills
and buy...
Do this overnight.
I mean, we are busy at times.
And just buy $5 MetroCards.
If you have any luck, they'll have consecutive serial numbers on them.
That's true.
They will.
And although the time field will be different,
and hopefully you'll be able to pick it out one way or another,
there will be only a limited number of different pieces of information on the card.
So you'll be able to figure out, to some extent, at least a little more information off it.
And if the theory that the card is never actually written to is correct,
then the time thing is actually in the computer and won't be written to the card.
So the only thing there will be the serial number, the batch number, and maybe the expiration date.
Yeah, when a card is read either by the clerk in the booth to add money to it,
or by the passenger at the little swipe thing right outside the clerk's window
in order to check after money has been added, only a limited field comes up.
Expiration date, last use, if any, type of card, either pre-encoded with $15,
or non-pre-encoded, which means it was encoded in the booth.
There's a field that says bus slash subway, and it always says three.
I have no idea what that means.
There's a couple other fields.
I might take some Polaroids of the computer screen and show those around at Hope.
Great.
There's also a theory going around that the magnetic strip is not actually a magnetic strip.
We tried to erase it here, and we couldn't do it.
We're thinking maybe it's a barcode.
That's an interesting thought.
Which would explain why we can't read it with a credit card reader, too.
Do you guys have a powerful magnet?
We have what's known as a bulk eraser here at the radio station.
Basically, you stick a cassette on this thing, push a button, and it's gone in a second.
Um, I was thinking you might try screwing up magnetically some fare cards,
getting them to me, and I might try encoding them.
That would tell us whether or not they're magnetic.
Okay.
Well, we should be prepared for all kinds of experimentation.
That's what this whole thing's going to be about.
And at the beginning of Hope, we're going to kind of present what we know at the end of Hope.
Maybe we'll crack the whole system, or maybe we'll just say, this is a good system.
Well, frankly, as far as I can tell, it's probably, if anyone has any venal,
mercenary, or criminal ideas, it's probably easier just to make artificial tokens.
Well, I'm sure the Transit Authority would be happy to hear that.
Uh, probably not.
Well, they're phasing out tokens, aren't they?
Yes, they are.
Yeah.
I believe the main computer center for those interested in
jumping in garbage cans or whatever is at J Street in Brooklyn.
Is that right?
370 J Street is the Transit Authority headquarters, and that would be where the computer would be.
There's a park on one side, and there's a little alley practically behind.
And garbage is pretty much unguarded, as far as I know.
Okay, I'm sure they're calling in reinforcements tonight,
so you might want to check that in nights to come.
I don't think anybody listens to this show.
They barely listen to anything down there.
Well, okay, we'll see what happens as far as that goes.
Thanks very much for a very interesting discussion.
Check your voicemail later tonight.
Okay, and we'll look forward to meeting you at Hope.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Well, that's really about all the time we have.
I mean, that was fascinating.
I was looking for somebody like that that knows something about the new fare cards.
By the way, if that person's still out there, I found the card that I thought I had lost,
the employee card.
It says, for a test only, no free access.
But of course, that's exactly what it gives you, is free access.
Except that it's expired.
So that was kind of interesting.
We'll be doing more about that in weeks to come and at the conference.
Again, that's all the time we have for tonight.
We'll be back again next week.
And of course, those of you that want to meet with hackers and various other interesting people
before the Hope Convention, come to City Corps Center this Friday between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
And we'll be hanging out by the payphones,
doing the usual thing that we do every month, first Friday of the month.
Stay tuned for a rebroadcast of the evening news.
This is Emanuel Goldstein for Off The Hook.
See you next week.
Good night.
Good evening.
In the news tonight, more and more it looks like Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman
is emerging as the fall guy in the Whitewater scandal.
The latest attempt at immigration reform could mean we will all be carrying national ID cards.
And in our region, officials in Patterson, New Jersey, go to the videotape to see if police
overreacted when they fired tear gas into a crowd of World Cup celebrants.
With these and other stories, I'm Jose Santiago in New York with Bernard A.V. Brown in Washington.
And this is the news for Wednesday, August 3, 1994.
First to Washington for the Pacifica National News.
In Port-au-Prince, the bodies of two young men were dumped on a main road last night.
The two appeared to be in their 20s and were both shot in the back of the head.
Since the beginning of this year, more than 400 people have been killed in Haiti.
It's believed the murders are part of a military campaign to stifle
supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Here in the U.S., the Senate today, in a unanimous vote, told President Clinton,
although the U.N. has approved a Haiti invasion, that does not mean he's authorized to invade.
The resolution is non-binding.
White House Press Secretary Dede Meyers says the Clinton administration is keeping in touch with Congress.
The president has made it clear that he intends to act consistent with the War Powers Act
and to consult very closely with Congress on this.
But we do not believe that it requires congressional approval,
although we will work very closely with Congress on this.
The Organization of Caribbean Nations, known as CARICOM,
today came out in support of U.N. military action against Haiti.
Although CARICOM has not said whether it will contribute troops for an invasion,
some nations have said they will take part in a peacekeeping mission
after democracy is restored to Haiti.
More criticism of yesterday's Dominican decision proclaiming Joaquin Balaguer
the winner of May's presidential election.
International monitors in the Dominican Commission had found widespread problems with the balloting,
including the wrongful removal of names from voting rolls.
Hundreds of Dominicans protested the election board's decision in street demonstrations.
The acting Secretary General of the Organization of American States says
he's deeply concerned and is offering to help find a solution to the election problem.
The U.S. has called for new elections.
According to yesterday's announcement, Balaguer won re-election by a narrowed 22,000 votes.
In Lagos, at least three people have been killed in clashes between police and protesters
who are demanding the release of Moshe Rabiola.
Janet Anderson has more on today's events.
Demonstrations have taken place in different parts of Lagos.
There are reports of three people killed.
A body was presented by protesters to the traditional ruler of Lagos
as an example of what was happening.
The demonstrators say the police were responsible.
The police have not commented.
The clashes follow a call by the Nigeria Labor Congress for a general strike
to appeal to the military government to release detained opposition leader Moshe Rabiola.
He draws much of his support from Lagos and the southwest of the country,
which are the areas which have followed the strike call.
Reports from the north and most of the east of Nigeria say people have continued to work.
A senior official of the Labor Congress said the strike has been successful in terms of its effects.
At the trial of Chief Rabiola on charges of treason in the capital Abuja,
the case has been adjourned until the middle of the month.
For Pacifica Network News, this is Janet Anderson in Lagos.
In Bangladesh, controversial author Taslima Nasreen appeared in court today
after being in hiding for the past two months.
The feminist writer is charged with insulting Islam.
A conviction could mean two years in jail.
An Indian newspaper had quoted Nasreen as saying that the Quran, the Islamic holy book,
should be thoroughly revised to protect women's rights.
Nasreen says she was misquoted, but the newspaper is standing by its story.
In today's court appearance, Nasreen wore a scarf, as is worn by traditional Muslim women.
She told reporters she had been afraid of surrendering because of death threats.
Nasreen is now free on bail.
Results from yesterday's primaries are in.
Defying predictions of a close contest, Democrat John Conyers coasted to victory in Michigan,
virtually securing his re-election to Congress.
Missouri Democrats have chosen Alan Wheat as their candidate
to fill the seat of retiring Senator John Danforth.
Representative Wheat is the first African American ever to win a statewide race in Missouri.
Wheat will face off against former Governor John Ashcroft,
who has close ties to the religious right.
And those are the stories topping the news.
It was a full-fledged day of acrimonious testimony on Capitol Hill today over the Whitewater affair.
On the Senate side, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Benson said he knew nothing about the secret meetings with the White House.
On the House side, Roger Altman, his besieged deputy, fended off demands that he resign.
Pacifica's Don Rush has this look at today's developments.
The pressure for the resignation of Treasury official Roger Altman over the Whitewater scandal is intensifying.
After hours of testimony last night before the Senate Banking Committee,
Republicans were clearly not satisfied.
Today, committee member Alphonse D'Amato demanded that Altman quit.
At the committee hearing, the New York Republican blasted Altman
for failing to tell the committee about secret White House meetings on the Whitewater scandal.
He withheld information, information that he had.
He withheld it even when he had an opportunity.
He was advised to correct the record.
And thereafter, he, in addition, answered untruthfully.
But during a hearing of the Banking Committee on the House side,
Altman rejected demands for his resignation.
If I can respond, I said earlier, I don't intend to do that.
Altman temporarily headed up the Resolution Trust Corporation until earlier this year.
The agency was investigating a failed Arkansas savings and loan connected to the Clintons.
During his tenure, Altman and his staff secretly met with top White House officials about the probe.
So far, government investigators have found no legal or ethical violations.
Still, some of the meetings have been described as troubling.
Back at Senate Banking Committee hearings, Washington Democrat Patty Murray
asked Altman's boss, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Benson, about his employees' future.
Do you think anybody should be removed from their job?
I think that whatever happened here was not with the intent to harm.
I think there were some errors in judgment.
But I haven't found anybody that calls them right all the time.
But even Benson was not.