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Those women laughing in the window do not sound like air conditioners on the brink.
Wednesday, March 8th, International Women's Day, 24 hours of women's programming here
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Find your own voice and use it. Use your own voice and find it. Find your own voice and
use it. Use your own voice and find it. Jane Porteous.
And a very good evening to everybody. This is about to be off the hook here on WBAI New York.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call. It couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would.
I hope that's understood.
And good evening, everybody. This is Emanuel Goldstein here for another edition of Off the Hook,
where we talk about the latest in the world of, dare I say it, cyberspace and the latest rumblings from Big Brother
and all kinds of other assorted fine folk. We're going to have a special guest tonight.
We'll be talking a little bit about the Mitnick case as it continues.
Yes, it's gotten even more bizarre, so stay tuned. You may not believe what you hear.
I think you're breaking through another dimension.
I'm going to send him to outer space to find another race.
I'm going to send him to outer space to find another race.
To find another race.
I'm going to send him to outer space to find another race.
I think you're breaking through another dimension.
Hey, close attention.
I think you're breaking through another dimension.
Hey, close attention.
I think you're breaking through another dimension.
Well, it may not be outer space, but it's cyberspace, I guess.
We're here tonight continuing our discussion about Kevin Mitnick and cyber-sleuths, cyber-outlaws,
cyber-nonsense.
That's what it's all about.
And speaking of nonsense, we have some interesting media stuff that happened over the past week.
I'm going to read something from the Wall Street Journal, which is in itself a rather
silly thing that happened last week.
And we'll keep critiquing it, I guess, as things go on.
This is an article that appeared, what is this, February 24th.
This actually appeared before 60 Minutes came on.
When 60 Minutes explored the netherworld of computer hackers, its intrepid reporters got
a little more than they bargained for, and less.
CBS's venerable news magazine plans to air a story on computer crime this Sunday.
Television is about pictures, and the producers needed a good one.
How about getting a company to let its computers come under attack from a real hacker on camera?
Checkpoint Software Technologies, a Tel Aviv company that sells supposedly hacker-proof
security systems, agreed to pose as victim.
But where to find a hacker?
Well, they traveled around the world.
And finally, 60 Minutes approached a one-time member of the infamous cyber gang Masters of Deception.
He, in turn, approached a hacker pal known only by the alias Gnome Chomsky.
Not the one you hear on this radio station a lot.
You're surprised by that, aren't you?
Well, the cyber duel was set for a recent Saturday morning in New York.
60 Minutes cameras were trained on famed correspondent Mike Wallace
and Checkpoint vice president David Bloomberg in one corner,
and on the unknown hacker in another side of the same room.
Totally unrealistic, but this is television.
The hacker was disguised in a felt flat-rimmed hat and a bandit mask.
He looked like Zorro.
I wore that outfit for Halloween last year, Mr. Bloomberg says.
But before the hacking could begin, Mr. Bloomberg received a call from Checkpoint engineers in Israel.
The company's computers had been under real and massive attack all night.
Unknown hackers had tried to bust into Checkpoint computers via the Internet more than 60,000 times.
Apparently, word of the staged assault had leaked out the day before
when 60 Minutes visited the lobby of New York's Citicorp Center, a hacker haunt,
where they gathered once a month to trade tricks.
That's what we do. We trade tricks there.
We're gathering this Friday to trade a few tricks, so maybe you want to come by.
Cameras rolling, the producers told Checkpoint's Mr. Bloomberg to proceed as he normally would,
and that basically meant making a bunch of phone calls.
The Zorro-bedecked hacker tried his own break-in but didn't succeed.
Nor did any of the break-in attempts the night before, Checkpoint maintains,
and so the high drama or lack of it ultimately was edited out of the story.
Says Mr. Wallace, it didn't translate well for television.
Well, we learned quite a bit over these past few weeks.
What exactly does translate well for television?
We've been talking about the 60 Minutes piece ever since they filmed for it in early January.
Fiber, they cut you out completely.
I was totally cut out. I guess I just wasn't criminal enough for the piece.
I think you came off very well not being on the piece at all because it was a slander piece, basically,
because they wanted to find something bad within that, and that was obvious from the way they questioned us.
Remember what they were talking about at the meeting?
They were saying pictures of bestiality. Mike Wallace was talking to us.
Mike Wallace was transfixed on pictures of women and donkeys.
He was mesmerized. That's right. He said, I saw donkeys.
I saw donkeys and I saw dogs, and he was totally flipped out by that.
So we told him, look, all the animals were probably consenting anyway.
It didn't really matter. This is the net. People trade things around.
We expect it fully to be portrayed as people that sanction pedophilia and bestiality and all that kind of thing,
and, yeah, that's what we really stand for.
But I guess they couldn't find enough dirt on that, so they just sort of dropped that whole point,
and they found this other whole angle to explore that needs to be regulated.
The net has to be regulated. Nobody's running it.
What do you think of the way they finally wound up doing it?
What can I say? It was completely boneheading.
They saw that they weren't—I mean, you were in it for what, a total of about five or ten seconds, Tops?
Five or ten seconds.
I think John Lee really ruled the show.
Yeah, I think the show was more about that particular actor.
And then who's that hamster guy from Kroll Associates?
Well, I won't say some of the comments that have been passed around the Internet about that,
but it was interesting, some of the things he was saying.
I'll just put it that way.
Rather interesting take on things.
Real interesting.
They made it like the hackers are out to destroy everything,
like we're out to take down the systems, and absolutely nothing is there to stop us.
It's just a really horrible, scary situation.
Yeah, well, I feel the need to mention—
I think we have to bring back our friend's checkpoint for a moment here, just to clarify.
Yeah, let's clarify that.
Let's clarify something here.
Let's clarify a few things.
Okay.
First of all, checkpoint was infiltrated.
Second of all, from a friend of mine who we will only refer to as BS, not because of—
You sure about that?
Yeah, well, his initials are BS.
That's unfortunate.
And BS works at a major service provider, Internet service provider.
Okay.
And BS conveyed to me when I mentioned while this was happening, this checkpoint thing,
I mentioned the name to him, and he said,
they came to us peddling their snake oil, and we sent them on their way.
And basically what the thick of it was, according to Mr. S,
was that they sent an American and an Israeli to their offices
and attempted to get them to support this security tool with their customers.
And BS had nothing doing.
And he actually went out of his way, or would have anyway, even if he didn't have to,
to make sure that this product did not continually show its face at said company.
And the thing we should bear in mind is that firewalls today,
just a mere word turns my stomach because it's turned into what antiviral software was for the 80s,
firewalls are for the 90s.
They're smoke and mirrors.
They're snake oil.
They're like these little peddlers going around selling elixirs to fix everything.
Cure all ills, so to speak, on the net.
And corporations are just eating it right up.
And Checkpoint exemplifies this nonsense.
And the thing we have to bear in mind at the outset,
Checkpoint sells a piece of software, okay?
A firewall is not a piece of software.
A firewall should be...
It's a physical condition.
It should be something based on a marriage of hardware and software
to provide a safe gateway from the outside world protecting the inside.
A piece of software cannot do that because someone can modify that software.
Absolutely.
And I'm aware of the fact that this particular firewall one software, which it's called,
does not check for any particular security mechanisms to be in place.
It'll run on any generic Sunworkstation running SunOS.
If that wasn't bad enough, and I don't want to say myself personally,
but maybe from Mr. Noam Chomsky,
I found out that SendMail, the SendMail that they happen to be running,
SendMail of latest media fame with yet another security hole,
the version of SendMail that they were running on Checkpoint Software's site in Israel
was not version 869, was not version 565.
It was version 4, okay?
So if anyone was going to get into Checkpoint Software's computer,
it was going to be maybe a few thousand of those supposed 60,000 hits
because security holes in SendMail are extremely well-known,
certainly dating back to version 4.
Let me ask you a simple question here.
Is that system still online with that particular version of SendMail?
I haven't checked myself.
I've stayed away from Checkpoint, and I think it's worthy of mention that you and I both know
that 60 Minutes attempted to get in contact with us with a message from Checkpoint.
Yeah, we got this desperate message from them saying, please stop it,
but we didn't even tell anybody.
Apparently, they went around asking everybody to break into this thing,
and then they were surprised when a lot of people tried.
Sure.
I mean, you could only expect people to try to do something that's issued as a challenge.
I mean, if you recall, we were trying to think of what's the motivation,
and I came up with the idea, well, if you put a list of all the companies on the machine
that use firewall software, when it's infiltrated, then they'll have a list of more victims.
And that's a very valuable thing to lose.
So the incentive is there for them to say, okay, we have full support of our software.
We're going to put something that would completely cripple our company in this place,
and if you get that, that means our software is no good.
Right, and obviously I called their bluff.
They wouldn't do that.
I didn't think that they were going to do that for a minute.
No.
In fact, 60 Minutes.
They think that a bunch of hackers are going to be inspired to find a secret message that says,
hey, you found the secret message.
Yeah, you found the secret.
This doesn't do it for me.
I've got better things to do with my time, but I don't know,
maybe there's 60,000 other people out there that don't.
Yeah, well.
Is the challenge still on, or is it officially off?
Yeah, you know, they never did officially call it off.
Checkpoint.com, folks.
All right.
That's what it's called, Checkpoint.com?
Send mail version 4?
It was, anyway.
Well, if it's even still there at all.
What time is it in Israel now?
It must be about 6 in the morning or so.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's early time very well.
Okay, well, it's the start of a business day there, so it's not like you'll be taking advantage of them.
I don't know.
We'll see what happens with that.
But the piece itself was rather funny.
Yeah.
For the most part.
I don't think it was as bad as it could have been.
I think it could have been a lot worse.
What do you think of the way they portrayed the people at Citicorp, the hackers at Citicorp?
Well, I think...
Kind of misguided kids that are just going to destroy the world one day?
Yeah, they showed all these grinning youngsters.
They don't realize the evil that they're perpetuating.
The sheer evil motivating these people.
It's just this evil bleeding from their pores.
Second only to the Satanists.
Oh, sure.
In fact, maybe they're worse than Satan.
At the very end, a lot of people didn't stick around for this.
You had to sit through two other stories to get to it.
But at the very end, they had the final credits.
And that's why they have the little 60 minutes box there.
And they play various excerpts and sometimes things that they didn't show.
And one of them was Mike Wallace just walking around saying,
Oh, what is 2600 anyway?
It's just kind of weird to see that on 60 minutes.
And also, then they focused on a pile of magazines, a pile of 2600s there.
Nothing else.
Just that inside the frame of 60 minutes.
And that was the best part for me, anyway, seeing that.
We're going to try to make a T-shirt out of that, I think.
So, yeah, another media event there.
We seem to have one every week now.
Yeah, it's become a weekly event now.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, did you see the article in the Wall Street Journal?
Yes, I did.
And in fact, I was rather surprised.
And I think the word that I should associate with the word surprised is dismayed.
I wish I could have said I was surprised and impressed, but that wasn't the case.
I spoke with Mr. Sandberg prior to this article coming out,
and I would have expected more because he seems supportive, at least on the telephone.
And I was not expecting it to turn into a rag piece.
You know what that is?
That's social engineering.
They make you think that they're coming from a certain angle,
but in actuality, they're coming from a different angle.
Yeah, or they could always blame it on the editor after you question them why that happened.
Now, I had something really amazing happen to me after this whole Mitnick affair in Los Angeles.
On the Los Angeles Times, I had the most amazing quote attributed to me.
I don't know where they got this.
Basically, I said something like, and the funny thing is I never talked to the Los Angeles Times.
So there was this one sentence, which is something I would have said,
saying that Netcom was wide open, they had their security hole publicized,
but they didn't do anything about it.
And then the next sentence was me saying,
Long live Mitnick, vive la revolution.
Where in the world did they find that?
That is, I mean, that was not posted anywhere.
That was not said by me.
Or better yet, when did you learn French?
Well, I did take French for about 50 years, but never mind that.
I don't understand where they're coming from,
and I'm trying to get an answer out of them right now.
When did I ever say that, or who said that to you?
I think that's one of the more hilarious misquotes I can remember.
Oh boy, I don't know.
This goes to show that when you're on the record with the press,
sometimes you're not really on the record.
There was an interesting piece in this week's Newsweek with Shimomura.
Or as our New York Times buddy Markov calls him, Mr. Spock.
Does he call him that?
He referred to him as being like Mr. Spock in a few articles that I read.
Well, Tsutomu Shimomura, of course, is the amazing hacker of sorts, I guess,
that went and helped track Kevin Mitnick.
And we've been talking about that over the past couple of weeks.
We're going to talk about that tonight as well.
There's an interview with him done by Steve Levy in this week's Newsweek.
And, you know, reading this interview,
I realize this guy makes a lot of sense on a lot of things.
Listen to the answer to this question.
Is there any way that people can protect their information
and secure their transactions on the Internet?
Answer, encryption.
Strong cryptographic techniques, not the Mickey Mouse stuff.
We need to get them deployed.
I mean, I can't agree with that anymore, can you?
That's exactly what we need.
We need to encrypt things, all kinds of things.
We need to get away from this nonsense of registering encryption
and having the government be able to decrypt things
and look at our mail and all that.
So, yeah, there's a lot that this guy says that makes sense.
I think he just didn't understand what Kevin was all about.
And he attributed to Kevin a lot of things that weren't necessarily so.
Case in point, the voicemail.
The voicemail taunting messages that everybody says Kevin left.
Definitely, definitely was not Kevin.
And there are a lot of people in the hacker world that know that for sure,
including the people, of course, that left that message.
And the 20,000 credit card numbers.
Again, a file that was available for months and months and months.
Kevin did not take that file.
Kevin was simply one person that had a copy of it,
if, in fact, it was he that had that copy in the first place.
Everything else that they said in this particular round of charges
is similarly flawed in some way.
If Kevin had access to Shimomura's machine at all,
he was certainly not the only person that did.
And everybody, everybody has said that there was no damage done.
There was no criminal intent of the sort where you make any kind of money
or benefit in any way.
So how you think somebody like that should go to prison, I don't know.
I don't follow that logic at all.
I think it begs the question.
Consider the fact that if we now know,
and many of us have known for well over a decade,
that inheriting the Internet protocol is a flaw that would allow one
to hijack any traffic on the Internet and gain access to any computer they wanted to,
barring send-mail holes, which crop up on the order of maybe one every year or two.
But you figure that, given the fact, or given that fact, rather,
in theory anyone could have been on any machine at all, including the well.
Why does it have to have been Kevin?
Absolutely.
Considering that, that has been something that's been around in theory for 10 years?
Well, it's been known about at least as far back as some of the security guys at Bellcore
and even Robert Morris had mentioned.
And that's at least 10 years ago, if not longer.
I mean, obviously the problem has existed as long as the Internet has,
which is closer to 20 years.
Now, the story has gotten even more bizarre since last week.
Last week we left it where Kevin was still locked up in North Carolina,
and nobody had really heard from him.
People were questioning John Markoff's journalistic integrity
by participating in the actual capture.
I found out since that Markoff has been known to be a good friend of Shima Morris for many years.
Yeah, I didn't know that either.
Yeah, that's an interesting twist on this.
Yeah, I read that recently.
So when he wrote the story in early January about the spoofing, which we read here on the air,
it was about Shima Morris, it was about a good friend of his.
Then this good friend of his alleges that Mitnick was the person responsible.
Markoff joins with his good friend and helps track down Mitnick, writes a story about that.
Are we talking about Mr. DiCicco?
Lenny.
No, no, no.
I know who Lenny is, but no, his good friend Shima Morris.
He went down with him to go to North Carolina and track down Mitnick, supposedly.
Okay, I got it.
As far as I know, DiCicco had nothing to do with this.
So then he writes the story, as far as that goes, with all this insider knowledge,
but the disturbing part was, and this is what Kevin was most concerned about during that last week,
was the fact that he knew that Markoff was doing something with the authorities to help track him down.
Well, here's what gets even more interesting.
Last week, after we got off the air, we found out that John Markoff had just signed a contract to do a book for $750,000.
Now, it gets really kind of weird here, because here you have a journalist that now is benefiting,
becoming a virtual millionaire by writing this story.
All fine and good, you know, people can benefit from writing good stories and all that,
but how much of this story is real and how much is concocted for the sake of selling a story?
Everything we've heard about Kevin Mitnick seems to have come from this one source.
It seems to have come from John Markoff.
Now, you can believe it's true or you cannot believe it's true,
but the fact of the matter is that he never even talked to Kevin Mitnick.
Never talked to him at all.
Never even saw him in person until he was arraigned in North Carolina.
So it's quite possible, especially given to the hysteria that surrounds Kevin Mitnick wherever he goes,
that some of it is wrong, that maybe a lot of it is wrong.
We have a special guest with us tonight.
Brock Meeks is on the line from Washington, D.C.
Brock, you with us?
I'm here.
Okay, what do you take on all this?
Is this the most incredible story we've seen in a while?
Well, you know, I think that you really nailed it when you talked about
the relationship between Markoff and Shimomura,
and something that you just left me with my jaw open is that
I had realized that even with Markoff's previous books on cyberpunks,
that he has never talked to Mitnick.
That's amazing.
I mean, as you said, he's written all this stuff.
The public at large, what it knows of Mitnick is largely from Markoff's writings,
and if he has never talked to Mitnick,
you can be damn sure that a lot of the stuff that's in the details are wrong,
or at least are not totally correct.
Yeah, that's the unfortunate, obvious fact there.
I know one thing Kevin did.
He wrote a piece for us back in, I think it was our Summer 91 issue,
where he commented on why he didn't talk to Katie Heffner or John Markoff
in the making of the book Cyberpunk,
and he felt that if he talked to them, he should be compensated for his time,
because he was, after all, helping them write a book,
and, you know, that's traditional.
They didn't want to do it, according to Kevin,
because they felt it would taint his objectivity,
which strikes me as kind of a weird way of phrasing something like that.
The whole thing about Markoff being in on the investigation, which he denies.
He says that there's nothing that he gave to the investigators
that they couldn't find out from his book,
which I don't know whether to believe or not.
Now, Markoff got great press out of it.
He got the inside scoop, and he was down there
watching them put the handcuffs on him and stuff like that.
Traditionally, that has not been the job of a journalist.
However, I don't think that we should always stick to traditional journalistic norms.
Certainly, I don't do that with Cyber Wire Dispatch.
But it would be nice if John Markoff would come out of hiding
and at least explain himself with something that he hasn't done.
You know, I think that what we're seeing here,
there's a much broader issue that's going on,
and one that disturbs me greatly,
and that is what I call this kind of creeping high-tech vigilantism.
You know, the stuff that Shimomura did in tracking down Mitnick in cyberspace,
if I tried to do that same type of thing,
trying to track down a guy that broke into my house, I'd be arrested.
There's no way that I can go out.
I mean, you can't get a posse up anymore.
You can't go and hunt.
Yeah, just try it. It doesn't work.
It doesn't work, and yet we're seeing cyber salutes.
We're seeing the Software Publishers Association on NPR just two days ago.
The Software Publishers Association, the guy, Baruch, whatever his name was,
was on there bragging about their hotline where people can call in,
that people are encouraged to call in and rat out their companies.
And this guy, Baruch, admitted to NPR that the majority of people that call
and rat out their companies and say, you know,
you should come and investigate these guys, they're copying all this software,
are, quote, ex-employees who are looking for revenge.
And Baruch said, and most of them get it.
What the hell is that teaching people?
I mean, I just can't believe it.
I mean, it's even transferring down to kids.
You know, this is Nazi type of stuff where the brown shirts,
you know, the little Nazi versions of the Boy Scouts,
these kids were encouraged to rat on their parents.
I mean, and I don't know why, well, I'm in an outrage about it,
but it just seems to be slipping past everybody's head.
Yeah, and that's just one sad thing that's happening in these days.
Baruch, tell us, what's your take on the situation in Finland
with the anonymous mail server?
This is, you know, something that, again, you,
it's something that was in the back of my mind, like,
this guy should probably be careful.
I mean, Finland, you would think that this guy was going to be protected.
But last year, when I was covering FBI Director Louis Freeh
like a blanket and was showing up every single place I could,
that he was speaking, I was showing up every place that he was there,
and I kept hearing little bits and pieces of this much broader story,
and I found out that, you know, Freeh was going overseas,
talking to every single law enforcement agency that he could,
and so it is no wonder that, you know, it was, in a large part,
it was an American-led or American pressure that, you know,
put it on the Finnish police to break into this guy's computer
and put pressure on him to give up the name of this guy.
So what we're seeing is these kind of strong-arm tactics in the United States,
at least in the electronic realm, being pushed on other countries,
and nobody is safe.
Well, now, what do you think would have happened
if the remailer had been able to encrypt its cross-referencing
so that there would be no way to find out who Person A really was?
Well, then I think that they would have just been...
They may have gotten a lot more mean,
but they would have taken his whole machine.
I mean, they would have taken it lock, stock, and barrel.
But it would have done them no good.
There would be no way they could decrypt that.
Well, you would hope there would be no way they could decrypt it.
Uh-huh. You think they would have employed every...
They would have brought it back, shipped it back to the NSA,
and, you know, ran the craze against it. I don't know.
And they'd go that far, you think?
Yeah, I think so. I think so.
That is incredible.
What do you think people like us should be doing at this point?
Well, I think we should be trying to use, like you were mentioning earlier,
that we should be trying to use as strong an encryption as possible.
Now, we chant this over and over like a mantra,
but I think you would be appalled at the small number of people
that are actually using any kind of robust encryption.
I mean, it's like, for a long time, people kept saying,
wear your safety belts and wear your safety belts.
Nobody does it.
And I think that we really somehow have to kind of launch
some kind of effort to tell people...
Well, you know how it is, Brock.
In this particular nation, we don't do something
unless we're told that we have to or we'll face some sort of penalty.
People didn't start wearing seatbelts until it was made into a law,
and you actually faced a penalty if you didn't wear a seatbelt.
Common sense things like that.
I don't think we're ever going to see the day, though, where encryption is mandatory.
Well, we don't want to see the day when encryption is mandatory,
because that would come from the government,
and if it's going to be mandatory, then the government's going to tell us
what encryption we can use.
And then, of course, we're not going to do that,
and then we'll automatically all become outlaws.
But I think that what's going to happen is,
if we're not forced to use encryption,
then some kind of incident is going to happen.
I mean, cyberspace is becoming more and more a buzzword
that we're seeing in the media,
and there is going to be, quote-unquote,
an event that's going to wake people up,
and then we'll see.
When that kind of thing happens, when some kind of disaster happens
or some kind of really egregious privacy invasion happens,
then maybe that will shake people up.
Do you use PGP, Brock?
Yes, I do.
I've used it more in the past few weeks, I think,
than I've ever used it in my life.
I actually contributed a chapter to a book
that was written by Simon Garfinkel on the use of PGP,
so that's how I started getting into it.
Uh-huh.
May I ask what version you use?
The latest version.
262?
I believe that's it.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, because there was some confusion as to
some versions weren't supposed to be used in this country,
some versions weren't supposed to be used overseas.
Do you know what that was all about?
Well, not exactly,
but I know that there are, that the latest version,
in fact, probably the last couple of versions,
you can't, even though you can download them from other countries,
you cannot, it's not allowed to go outside of the United States,
which is something that's being worked on right now.
There are Democratic bills in Congress right now
that are targeting those ridiculous encryption, those encryption bans.
Uh-huh.
But they don't have a prayer because they're Democratic,
they're being launched by Democratic congressmen,
and in the Republican-controlled House and Senate,
they don't have a prayer.
Interesting.
We're on the phone with Brock Meeks,
who's a reporter for Cyber Wire Dispatch,
working for other organizations too?
Yeah, I'm the Washington bureau chief also
for a publication called Interactive Week,
and I'm also a contributing writer for Wired Magazine.
Okay, great.
So if you have any questions for Brock
or comments on the Mitnick case or anything else that's happening,
give us a call at 212-279-3400.
Program is off the hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here, FiberOptic over there.
And I guess we can just launch into some phone calls,
see what's going on.
Good evening, you're on the radio.
Yeah, hello?
Go ahead.
Yeah, I'm sorry that this question's not exactly on the topic,
but I've been waiting about two weeks to ask it.
I'm shopping around for a computer,
and I have a question about modems.
What is the hardware specification that I need to look for in a modem
to know that it is able to work with call ID data, or do they all?
I could recommend a particular brand, if you like,
that I know that definitely does.
Well, I'm looking at the Presario line,
and they claim that it does,
but they also claim that it has a full duplex speakerphone,
and I've never seen any modem that has that.
Isn't a Presario a computer?
Yeah, I mean, but it's a package that comes with the modem, so.
Never buy a package deal that gives you a modem.
If you want a couple of suggestions about modems
that actually come with caller ID available on them,
and second of all, buy an external modem.
You'll thank me later.
Two modems to look into, ZyXL, that's Z-Y-X-E-L,
and the newer Suprafax modems from Supra.
Now, why do you say buy an external modem?
I agree with you, but why do you say it?
For numerous reasons.
A, you don't waste a slot in your computer.
Okay.
B, novices don't have to worry about such complicated things as IRQ numbers,
and C, you know that the modem's working properly
because not only are you waiting to hear the speaker turn on,
but you can see lights that display the status of the modem.
Well, I can see. I have to open my computer up and scroll all over the floor,
but that's how I do it, and yeah, I can see if it's connected or not.
But yeah, I agree, I agree. An external modem is much better.
You know, the internal modem that I have can't go,
the dial speed can't go below, I think it's 50 milliseconds,
which is incredibly slow.
I like to go down to around 30 milliseconds,
sometimes even lower than that if the switch can handle it.
It spits out the touch tones in just one blurp, and that's it.
I guess that's the best sound I can make for it.
That's a call. Let's go on to another one.
Good evening. You're on.
Hello. Concerning the Vixel modem, what is the command string to accept caller ID data?
Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you,
but it's certainly in the manual that comes with the modem.
Hello?
Yeah.
Oh, it just really cut off there.
Another thing, too, that 1-800-ANI is?
Yes.
Shooting a DTM-FC kind of, like, blows you off to a while with a poof type of sound,
like the old chorus bars when they would release.
Really? You blew a C at it, huh?
Wow.
A bouncy C.
Okay, and did you go anywhere after that?
No, just the way it disconnected sounded like a PBX,
like some PBXs would disconnect with that poof type of sound.
Really?
It's not like the usual click, it's like the old, it's an old PBX type of, you know, release.
You've heard a lot of clicks in your time, I can tell.
Yeah, you know, sometimes I know which particular systems, by the way, would click.
What begs the question, did A, B, or D do anything?
No, not that I know of.
Well, you had someone else do that, or did you try all the tones yourself?
I tried myself in a better location.
Uh-huh.
Okay, well, continue experimenting.
Who knows what else you'll find.
Did you try it after the voice started talking or before?
Yeah, yeah, actually right after.
I figured, well, you know, it's like, is there something behind here?
And it's just like, da-da-da.
Wow.
Boy, you move fast.
All right, thanks for the call.
Okay, bye.
Makes you wonder the kind of people that are out there doing such cold-blooded things,
blowing something off of the C.
Brock, let me ask you something.
Have you used a program that's widely available on the net now called iPhone?
Yes, I have.
What do you think of that?
Well, I think that it's a nice little toy.
I mean, it's like see you, see me.
I just recently trashed all my PC stuff and went to a Mac.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is describe what the program is to our listeners who might not know.
Well, it allows you to, using pretty accessible hardware,
to use the Internet link as a long-distance phone.
I mean, it actually reminds me of about ten years ago trying to make telephone calls to Hawaii
when they had really piss-poor echo canceling on the satellite links,
and you would have to listen to your voice and then have to talk back.
There's this kind of delay, but you know, the dancing works.
Now, it's really incredible in the implications.
Basically, what we have here, you click on a little icon on your computer,
you connect to your designated service,
and then you simply run this program, you point to a name,
and if they're sitting by their computer, they'll see a little icon of a phone ringing.
They'll hear a little ringing noise, and if they choose to answer,
they will be able to talk to you through their microphone.
You'll be able to hear them through your speaker and vice versa,
and it's like using a telephone.
It's not quite as good. There's no two-way conversation really going on.
You can't both talk at the same time, but it's getting pretty close.
I mean, we were talking to people in Hong Kong, people in Australia.
They're just, you know, your little icon rings.
You don't know who's on the other end.
People are just calling for the sake of calling.
The very first time I used it, this is kind of a weird story
because I didn't know what I was doing.
Apparently, the default for the program is set up so it auto-answers.
So here I am. I'm clicking on this program for the first time,
and I swear, less than three seconds after I get the thing loaded,
my little phone starts ringing, and I'm on the phone with a friend of mine
asking him, what do I do now? How do I turn this thing off?
And he's telling me, you know, they can hear everything you're saying.
There's nothing I could do about it because I didn't know how I could turn it off,
so all I could do was whisper to my friend on the real phone,
what do I do now? These people are listening to me.
They're in my house, and I can't stop it.
I was afraid I had to turn the computer off or something,
but it was pretty weird.
But after I got over the initial fear, it was really neat.
Now, of course, the free version that you get on the net has a 90-second limit,
which is kind of a bit much to deal with.
And, of course, if the other person has a limit,
they both sort of keep going off and interfering with your phone call.
But most of the conversations I've had haven't really lasted more than about 30 seconds anyway.
Freiberg, what do you think of this?
From what I've heard, anyway, about the way the program works,
at least in how people know that you're now accessible on iPhone,
is that one or more channels, I've heard, are set up on IRC,
where it advertises the fact that you are, in fact,
using your iPhone program at the moment and that you can be dialed up.
At least I've heard this.
The other thing is that, like you were saying,
iPhone presently only operates at half-duplex,
which is a lot more like a CB than a telephone.
And the reason why it works so effectively is that, in essence,
it's buffering up everything that's being said and then played back in near real-time.
The problem with the net, obviously, is that you have net lag.
When you try to use things like C-U-C-Me or one or two other popular programs,
they're trying to do full-duplex in real-time.
And obviously, if you're using a 14.4 modem, it sounds like crap,
because there's all kinds of delays and net lag,
depending on how far away the person is that you're trying to talk to.
But if you're using a 28.8, I understand there's very little delay at all.
If you're using a 28.8, it's much better.
The thing that people should experiment with,
if they're having really bad delay,
they should understand that on any high-speed modem,
if you're using a compression and an error correction protocol known as V42BIS,
formerly CCITT, now ITU,
in V42BIS, there's a compression and a packetizing algorithm.
The packetizing algorithm is called LAPM,
and the compression algorithm that's in use is known as Lempel-Ziv.
Well, what all that technical mumbo-jumbo basically means is that
it tries to compress the data as well as it can.
If that data is already highly digital and somewhat random by nature,
then there isn't very much left to compress,
and you'll actually suffer a hit in performance and throughput.
What I've been telling people who ask me,
who are complaining that they have really crappy-sounding audio and see you see me,
I tell them to experiment with disabling error correction on their modem,
which is usually just one or two AT commands on a Hayes-compatible modem.
What you want to do, in essence, is eliminate any delays
that you might introduce into the connection on your own modem.
Once you do that, the only thing left is the net lag.
Obviously, if it's no fun to use at 14.4, you can try at 28.8 or get ISDN.
Right. Let's look at the social implications of this program.
Here we have something that allows people,
much like the net has allowed people to communicate for virtually nothing,
now you can really emulate what a telephone does.
We're not quite at the stage yet,
but I have a feeling we're taking a very big step towards that,
and one day we will accomplish this, one day fairly soon,
where you can just get on the net and talk to somebody
in whatever part of the world you want to talk to who also happens to be on the net.
Now, I don't know about you, but if I were a phone company,
I'd be pretty worried right now,
because all of a sudden people are figuring out ways to communicate where they don't need you.
They don't need to pay the huge fees that the phone companies charge.
Brock, any thoughts on that?
Well, I don't think that the phone companies,
which are the seven baby bells,
which are among the top 50 largest companies in the world,
are too worried about the iPhone on the internet.
And I think that they're not going to be worried about it.
They're much more worried about the cellular phone companies,
the new wireless companies that are coming out,
and more worried about AT&T getting into their local loop.
And the reason that I can be so sure about that
is because for the same type of reason
that the telephone companies, it seems to me,
ignore publications like 2600.
I mean, they're out there and they're aware of them,
but 2600 publishes, does a service, it seems to me,
to the telecommunications industry
by giving a game plan to these companies,
telling them where their technology is failing,
and saying, look, you guys, go out and pass these holes.
And you and I have talked about this before.
But they exude this kind of incredible arrogance
where they just figure that they can blow it off, just ignore it.
And so I think it's the same type of thing,
that they're not going to be worried about this iPhone stuff,
that they're too arrogant.
I really don't think that this type of global communication
or global internet telephone is going to pose too much of a threat to them.
I think that the technology has to go a long ways.
What I think we do have to be careful about,
and even though this technology is great and it's wonderful,
and I think, like you said,
that it poses some interesting social implications,
is that when interesting social implications begin to gain speed,
what happens?
Governments start to get interested.
And when governments start to get really interested
in the social implications of things like the internet,
that can only lead to that R word, regulation.
And I think we've got to be really careful
to keep a watch that governments don't step in and say,
well, this is becoming too socially valuable or too on the loose.
We're going to have to step in here and do something.
I think that's what we have to watch out for.
But they'll disguise that under a different language, of course.
They'll make a crisis out of it so that the average person will say,
oh, we have to regulate this
because there's all kinds of illegal activity going on,
there's bestiality and pedophilia going on, and that.
So, of course, we have to control things, right?
The next thing you know, we'll have Director Lewis Freeh
saying that we have people using iPhones to plot the World Trade Center.
Well, they use their vocal cords, too.
I guess we have to regulate those.
All right. I hope I didn't give people ideas.
Let's take another phone call. 212-279-3400.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Oh, hey. Let me turn the radio down.
Okay.
Two questions right on the topics that you're on.
Oh, great. What a change of pace.
All right.
Number one, my job gave me a cool little laptop and I have CompuServe.
How can I get into CompuServe and get somewhere else to play?
Well, I think it's called Telnet, right?
Because you want to get out of CompuServe to get somewhere else, I think.
Doesn't CompuServe still not have Internet access?
That's correct.
They don't have Internet access still.
To my knowledge, they still do not.
Right.
Sir, where are you located?
New Jersey.
New Jersey.
What I suggest the best thing for you to do is to forget about CompuServe.
Is it a free, unlimited account?
Hello?
Yeah. Is it a free, unlimited account?
No.
Okay. Then forget about it.
All right.
Well, if anybody that you care for pays for it, forget about it,
because you will wind up paying too much, I think.
Okay.
What you need to do is just get regular access to the Internet,
either through a local provider or through a local school that gives accounts to students.
Can I get that with my regular communication software? I have ReachOut.
Well, it doesn't have to do with the software.
It has to do with who you connect to with the software.
Okay.
We're talking about a typical PC-compatible laptop, right?
It's a Toshiba satellite.
Oh.
Then you could use anything from ProCom to Telex to Telemate.
There's a large variety of communication software you can use.
And a lot of it you can find on the Internet just lying around.
Okay. Second question.
For cellular service, who is a good long-distance company that gives you reasonable rates?
Reasonable rates and cellular in the same sentence.
That's something.
Wow.
Well, first of all, all the cellular companies contract with long-distance companies.
So it's not the long-distance company that's giving you the cellular service.
When you get a long-distance carrier with your cellular service,
you're just getting regular long-distance rates.
You're not getting cellular long-distance.
And of the top three major long-distance companies, AT&T, MCI, and Sprint,
none of them are that different in price unless you happen to hit on a special promotion,
which most of them seem to have going on at any particular time.
But those special promotions go away.
They don't apply to cellular. I tried it.
Hmm. Well, uh...
The point is that they're not that much different in price.
Between AT&T and Sprint, which is the cheapest, we're talking literally three cents.
There's somebody else. It's called NOS Communications.
Yeah.
And I got on board with them.
And what they do is they base it on mileage and distance from your initiation point to your destination.
And depending on how many miles it is, they have a rating system.
So like a call from here to Virginia during peak times winds up being like 32 cents a minute.
Off-peak is like 26.
And you still have to pay, though, for calls that people make to you, right?
Nobody has the number. I don't give it out.
Okay. Well, uh...
But yes, to answer your question.
Now, what kind of things, just out of curiosity, what kind of things do you use your cellular phone for?
It's a business phone.
Uh-huh. So you discuss business over the cellular phone.
Yeah. I'm a traveling salesman.
You know how easy it is to listen in on those things, right?
I do.
Okay. As long as you know the risks, that's what I try to get through to people.
I do. But, you know, it's a business phone, and like I have to have it.
So, you know, if something happens, you know, I'll just call them up, explain what happened,
and call my company, tell them what happened, and, you know, let them handle it from there.
But, you know, I have to have it.
But I was really thinking in terms of trying to find a long-distance company or long-distance carrier
that I can use along with Bell Atlantic that I can try to get these rates down a little bit more.
Well, you know, with Bell Atlantic, you're allowed to choose your own long-distance carrier.
Right.
But with the opposite provider in that area, you don't have any choice.
Like when you get a cellular one service, you're automatically pre-subscribed to a long-distance carrier
if they're like the B-side carrier.
Yeah. With Bell Atlantic, there was like maybe 10 or 12 different companies you could choose from.
Yeah. That's mandated by the FCC.
The other cellular carrier in that same market, because it's a duopoly,
there's only two cellular carriers in each market.
The other one is not under those FCC guidelines, and they will pre-subscribe you.
You have no choice in a long-distance carrier.
I see.
Okay.
All right. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for calling.
Bye.
Yeah, I was curious about what he said about referring to mileage as some special deal.
All long-distance cost is based on mileage if you're not talking about any kind of special deal.
Well, AT&T has deals.
All the companies have deals where it's a certain set rate per minute, no matter where you call within the United States.
Right, but I'm saying forgetting those deals, which usually are only for certain times or for a certain number of hours a month,
barring that, normal long-distance service is based on mileage.
So I don't understand where he was claiming this was some kind of special deal based on mileage.
Well, I think we're going to see less and less mileage talk in the future as things just get closer and closer together.
They'll be basically a per-minute charge, perhaps, but that doesn't matter what you're doing.
If he calls next door or down the block, obviously it's well under a mile.
Does that mean the call's free? I don't think so.
No.
Let's go to another phone call.
Good evening. You're on.
Oh!
Yes, go ahead.
Hi. I just have a comment about the 60 Minutes show that I was on.
Uh-huh.
I also agree with you that they made hackers seem evil, but they also made them seem like good criminals
that have nothing better to do during their lives than just break into your credit card number.
Right, yeah, we sit around just thinking of ways to do things like that.
Oh, really? They seem to have good references. I don't know where they would come up with something like that.
Well, I'll tell you, they come up with it because that is what gets them viewers, okay?
Do you ever read the New York Post?
Yeah.
Okay, well, I think you understand what I mean.
The screaming headline on the front cover, that's what you need to attract attention.
It doesn't matter if it's true. It doesn't matter if it's accurate or if it causes somebody harm.
The important thing is to get people's attention, to get them in some sort of an outrage where they say,
something has to be done about this.
It doesn't really matter if it's accurate or not. It's just got to get their attention.
That's what the whole media game is all about.
Yeah, I know. It's just like a scare tactic, I'm thinking.
Uh-huh. Well, the unfortunate part about this is that it's giving people, a lot of people,
the wrong idea about what hackers are all about,
and the thing is they can be learning so much from them and benefiting in so many ways.
It's also posing a wrong idea about the Internet.
Oh, yeah, I know. People will see the Internet as something evil, something unregulated, anarchistic,
and they'll avoid it when they shouldn't be.
Uh-huh. Are you on the Internet?
And you feel perfectly safe there, right?
Uh-huh. No, you should never do that on any particular system.
Uh-huh. Okay, well, thanks for calling.
Yeah, sure, thanks a lot.
Take care.
Before I leave, is this going to be on the air?
It's on the air right now.
Oh, okay. I'd just like to make a shout-out to my friend Mudder and Vertigo. Hi, guys.
Okay. If you run to your radio in seven seconds, you'll hear the end of that.
Okay.
I used to do that years ago, and it was a big thrill.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Uh, yes.
Uh, yeah. I was wanting the truth behind this one article from the Rally Tribune, late edition, dated February 17th, 1995, about Kevin Mitnick.
You want the truth, huh?
Yeah, on this one. It says, I'll read the first part to you.
No, no, no. Let me stop you right there.
What you're reading is something that got posted on the net.
There's no truth to it whatsoever. He did not escape.
He was not shot in a hail of bullets.
He did not, you know, turn in everybody in the hacker world.
No, none of that happened.
What happened is what happened several weeks ago.
He was caught in North Carolina.
He is still in prison in Raleigh, and that's really all we know.
And I don't think there is any such newspaper in Raleigh under that name.
That's true, too.
We even investigated that, and we figured if they made up the newspaper name, they probably made up the story.
Yeah, okay, because I just got, you know, I found this.
A friend of mine uploaded this to me, and I was very interested in the article.
Okay, what you have there, that's part of the anarchistic nature of the net.
People post whatever they want, and sometimes people believe it.
But, you know, it's not something we can't deal with.
Oh, okay, so this is just from another fake phony fraud.
Yeah, fake phony fraud. You got it.
All right, thanks for calling.
He sounded disappointed, I guess.
Yeah, that sounded more like, wasn't that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with the hail of bullets, the Bolivians, something like that?
Yeah, I believe so.
But, you know, that's something.
This person forged, you know, a report.
I mean, isn't that some sort of a crime?
You could send somebody to prison for that.
And he did it on a computer, so that must make it ten times worse.
They could be put in front of a firing squad for crying out loud.
Now, if Kevin Mitnick did that, oh, they'd be adding that to the charges.
They'd ream his butt.
Hell, yeah.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hello. I have a problem.
I have a 286 computer with a modem, and I have an old version of ProCom.
What I want to do is I want to be able to talk to my deaf cousin out in California and use my computer as a TTY.
Now, isn't there software that I can get which I can do that with?
There is. I've heard of it.
What's the name of it?
FiberDino?
I don't think you really need specific software.
I think all you'd need to do is connect at the right speed.
And I don't know if, actually, if you're running an old version of ProCom, it might still have it.
Don't modems have a TTY capability?
Well, my modem doesn't.
You know, it has a chat where it splits the screen.
Right.
But it doesn't say anything about TTY.
And when I try to dial my cousin's phone, you know, I get some gibberish coming back.
That's TTY.
Well, I mean, all TTY means is teletype.
What you want to do is match the proper speed and data format.
Well, all TTYs work a certain way.
Right.
All the deaf have that.
So I think they must have some, you know...
Well, now, I know there's TDD service that AT&T offers.
They might be able to give you more information on this as to just how you can interface a computer with it.
And I'm sure, also, if you go to a computer store, you know, a trustworthy one, that is, and ask them,
they can probably help you out there.
Brock, do you know anything about this?
Yeah.
Well, I think Fiber was on the right track.
If you get down, I think it's at...
This thing's operating at 110 bits per second.
I mean, it's pretty standard.
And I think that if you break into the chat mode on ProCom, then it'll work.
But you can also get in touch with groups like Telecommunications for the Deaf.
They're in Maryland.
They're in the phone book under 310 area code.
301.
Telecommunications for the Deaf down in Maryland.
Yeah, and just ask them.
And I know that they're like a clearinghouse.
And if you tell them what you're doing, it won't take more than 10 minutes for them to get you the information.
Okay, we're out of time.
Thanks very much for your call.
Thanks a lot.
Okay, good luck.
And, Brock, I want to thank you very much for stopping in tonight.
How can people get a hold of you if they want more information from you?
They can reach me at Brock, B-R-O-C-K, at Well, W-E-L-L, .com.
So you're on the same Well that Kevin Mitnick was frequenting, hey?
That was it.
Yeah, and of course you can reach me there, too, Emanuel, at the Well, at Well.com.
Fiber, where can we reach you?
You can reach me at Fiber, P-H-I-B-E-R, at Echo.net.
All right, and you can reach us at WBAI, 505 8th Avenue, New York, New York, 10018.
And tune in again next week, next Wednesday night from 10 to 11 for another edition of Off The Hook.
Until then, good night.
See you.
And stay tuned for a rebroadcast of the WBAI Evening News.
Music tonight was from the prodigy and the anarchist from Bhangra.
What is Bhangra music?
We'll be back again next week, next Wednesday night, 10 o'clock.
This is WBAI New York.
Good evening.
In the news tonight, the Supreme Court hears what could become a landmark case on the separation of church and state.
A childhood friend of Governor Pataki urges him not to reinstitute the death penalty.
The governor of Pennsylvania moves a step closer to ordering the execution of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
And in New York City, thousands take to the streets to say no to cuts in Medicaid.
With these and other stories, I'm Jose Santiago in New York with Verna Avery-Brown in Washington.
And this is the news for Wednesday, March 1, 1995.
First to Washington for the Pacifica National News.
The arrest of Raul Salinas, the brother of Mexico's former president,
for ordering the murder of a high-level politician who had been his brother-in-law has shocked the country.
The arrest for the murder of a pre-party leader is being billed in Mexico
as the biggest rupture in the country's political system in decades.
Jana Schroeder has more.
In Mexico, some believe the arrest of Raul Salinas was the only way for current president Ernesto Cedillo
to improve his weak image and to live up to his promises of political reform
and a true separation between the government and the pre-party, now in power for more than 60 years.
But while many are applauding Cedillo, others question if he will truly take the investigation to the highest level,
which means determining if former president Carlos Salinas and his number two man, Jose Cordoba,
were involved in protecting those guilty and obstructing the investigation.
Special prosecutor Pablo Chapa said in a radio interview today
that pre-leader Jose Ruiz Maciel could have gotten in the way of Salinas' political projects.
The former president denies such a motive and insists on his innocence and that of his brother.
The possibility of a connection between the two major murders in Mexico during 1994 has not been discarded.
Both pre-leaders murdered, Ruiz Maciel and the assassinated pre-presidential candidate Luis Colosio,
were known for their positions in favor of major reforms in the party.
For Pacifica Network News in Mexico City, I'm Jana Schroeder.
White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry says the U.S. is still backing former president Salinas
to head the World Trade Organization, but may have to reconsider the situation.
Senate stand in recess until noon on Thursday, March 2nd.
Majority leader Robert Dole today basically conceding on the Senate floor
that Republicans are still short of the 67 votes needed to pass the balanced budget amendment.
Despite intense pressure, both Democratic senators from North Dakota say they will oppose the measure
unless the Social Security trust fund was not used to balance the budget.
Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota says this is not a matter of exempting Social Security,
but of not using Social Security trust fund surpluses to balance an operating budget.
If the head of your company came to you and said,
I found a way to balance the budget around here,
the operating expenses of this company are going to be met in part by using your retirement funds.
I don't think you'd believe that was balancing the budget.
I don't believe that's balancing the budget.
Commenting on the impasse over the constitutional amendment,
House Speaker Newt Gingrich today singled out two Democrats,
Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Dianne Feinstein of California.
It never occurred to me you'd have two senators who lied to their states to get reelected.
I mean, Feinstein just plain lied.
Gingrich also ruled out changing the balanced budget amendment to leave out Social Security,
charging Congress will classify many programs as part of Social Security
so they will not be subject to budget restrictions.
Feinstein has denied lying, saying she's for a balanced budget amendment
as long as Social Security is not included.
Today, a coalition of groups announced they'll be working to educate the American public
about the myths concerning affirmative action.
Jesse Jackson of the National Rainbow Coalition.
It is a myth that white males are being hurt and discriminated against
because of affirmative action programs.
White males are 33% of the population,
but 80% of the tenured professors, 80% of the U.S. House of Representatives,
90% of the U.S. Senate, 92% of the Forbes 400.
We need leadership that will give us the big picture and relieve our fears
so we might have a sense of history and not hysteria and data
and not just fear-driven anecdotes.
Jackson says it's important for people to mobilize against the attacks on affirmative action.
And those are the stories topping the news.
Religious conservatives attempted to pry open the public purse
during arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court today.
At issue is whether a state university can withhold funds from students
who are publishing a religious magazine on campus.
Supporters of the separation of church and state
anticipate a long legal battle by the religious right.
Pacifica's Don Rush has this report.
In 1991, Ronald Rosenberger and other students
sought $5,800 from a Virginia State University
to publish an evangelical Christian magazine.
The school authorities turned them down.
The university said such funding violated the Constitution's separation of church and state.
So the students went to court,
charging that the school had violated their First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
After losing in the lower courts, Rosenberger found himself at the U.S. Supreme Court.
As someone whose viewpoints and opinions are informed by a larger religious framework,
in my case a Christian viewpoint,
why should I be treated differently than everyone else?
The Jewish groups, the Islamic groups, all receive funding at the University of Virginia.
Why should I be singled out and excluded?
Simply because I subscribe to the Christian faith.
The university argues that those other publications are cultural in nature and do not proselytize.
But today, Justice David Souter had this question.
How does the university distinguish between groups expressing religious views
and those trying to push their faith on others?
John Jeffries, who argued the case for the university.
Having a religious view is not the basis for excluding from funding.
What is the basis is a religious activity.
This newspaper is start to finish proselytizing particular religious beliefs.
We have no problem with that activity.
We simply don't want to pay for it.
Jeffries argues that funding would violate the constitutional prohibition
against the establishment of religion by the government.
Chicago law professor Michael McConnell, who argued for the students in the case.
The question is what does establishment mean?
And our contention, and I think well supported by past decisions in the court,
is that an establishment means to give preference to one particular church
or to religion in general as against non-religion,
but it does not require that the government discriminate against religious speakers.
But the religious community is not united on this issue.
Groups siding with the university range from the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA
to the American Jewish Congress.
Brent Walker, attorney for the Baptist Committee on Public Affairs,
said the separation was vital for the survival of the church.
It helps to protect religion and preserve religious liberty
by not getting the church in the state or religious groups in the state
pulled together and tied together in funding schemes.
They both do a lot better if they keep apart in that very significant respect.
In the past, the court has blurred the line between educational institutions and religious groups.
And today, the attorney for the university warned,
if the government purse is opened up, it could have a devastating effect on the entire educational system.
Indeed, this case could affect efforts to use government vouchers
to subsidize students who choose to attend private religious schools.
McConnell, the attorney for the students, dismissed the suggestion,
saying the case would have no effect on the school voucher issue.
But Robert Boston, with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State,
says McConnell and others are pushing just that agenda.
These conservative scholars see it as a one-piece-at-a-time proposition.
They build toward it one step at a time.
And a decision upholding the rights of the students, in this case,
would be one more step along the way toward a system
whereby the government gives aid to religions on a large basis.
In other words, any religious group can get government funding
for education or for other projects as well.
And that is a system that some legal scholars call non-preferentialism.
Money is given to religious groups on a non-preferential basis.
And from our perspective at Americans United, that would force Americans to pay a religious tax.
If it's unconstitutional for the government to establish one church
and force people to pay to support it,
then it's doubly wrong to establish 50 or 100 churches
and force people to support them through their taxes.
And religious conservatives have found a set of allies in the new Republican leadership
who look upon such vouchers with a good deal of favor.
Don Brush, Pacifica Network News, Washington.
Dear Senator Dole,
I am an Oregonian who is writing to you in your capacity
as the ranking Republican in the Senate, the majority leader.
As you know, for almost two years,
the Ethics Committee has been investigating charges against Oregon Senator Bob Packwood
concerning sexual misconduct, tampering with evidence,
and the allegation that he asked a lobbyist to offer his wife a job.
To date, nothing has happened.
Some 3,000 letters like that one flooded the office of Majority Leader Bob Dole today
from Oregonians calling for a public hearing on the Packwood matter.
29 women have come forward to the Ethics Committee
with stories of Packwood's sexual misconduct against them.
Gina Hutton was a campaign chairwoman for Packwood in 1980
when he kissed her sensuously and invited her to his hotel room.
At a press conference today on Capitol Hill, she was among those demanding action.
Those who destroy ideals, who kill hope, and who abuse power should be removed from office.
To the Senate, I ask,
how do we take the issue of sexual harassment and abuse of power seriously
if the testimony of 29 of us isn't taken seriously?
This is what we're asking from the U.S. Senate today.
It's nothing outrageous, nothing unreasonable,
just that you put ethics in front of politics and you take our allegations seriously.
Following the press conference, Pacifica reporter Amy Goodman
caught up with Senator Dole for his response to the letters.
As far as I know, I have no letters, but I'll...
Will there be public hearings?
I'm not on the Ethics Committee. That's a decision made by the Ethics, not by the leadership.
But will you be calling for hearings?
On October 7, 1994, the Ethics Committee issued a statement saying
its staff is preparing a preliminary report.
To date, the committee has made no further statements.
DOLE
Ethics Committee
Ethics Committee
Ethics Committee
Ethics Committee
Ethics Committee
Supporters of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal will meet this weekend
to plan strategy in the event that Pennsylvania moves to execute Jamal.
Yesterday, Republican Governor Tom Ridge, who ran for office on a law and order platform,
signed death warrants for three Pennsylvania death row inmates.
Their executions could take place within the next 30 days.
It is believed that Mumia Abu-Jamal is fifth on the list of death row inmates in Pennsylvania.
The three death warrants signed yesterday could mean that the governor is close to signing
a death warrant for Jamal.
Mumia supporters also report that as of yesterday, legal aid workers who had visited him on a
regular basis have been barred from the prison.