3 p.m., word of mouth, we'll be taking your call.
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the night flight on 99.5 FM WBAI New York City. He's a stone monkey conceived by heaven 300 years
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immortality. The Monkey King, from Martha Senator's radio adaptation of the original to Fred Ho's
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Ten o'clock, time for Off the Hook.
I cut myself while shaving. Now I can't make a cough. It couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would. For Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. For Billy Bone.
And good evening, everybody. This is Emanuel Goldstein, the program coordinator for the
program is Off the Hook, where we journey into cyberspace and emerge, hopefully, with our sanity intact at the end of the hour. It's going to be tough this week because there's a lot of lunacy going on out there. Let's start with the lunacy we're familiar with.
Yes, we're into day 22 of the quest for ISDN.
Now, if you recall, we started this almost a month ago, well, 22 days ago, I guess. FiberOptic and myself decided to go out and get us an ISDN line, actually two ISDN lines, for the benefit of people that might just be tuning in for the first time. ISDN line, Fiber.
ISDN line.
Yeah, what's so great about it? Why do we need one of these things?
Because we want more bandwidth.
We can do more than one thing at a time.
Sure, exactly. We want to be able to connect to multiple things at once. We want to do voice and data and video all at the same time.
Right, and that's what the 90s is supposed to be all about. That's what the future of technology is supposed to be all about. And that's what we want it to be all about. So we called up 9X, this was 22 days ago, and asked them to install ISDN for us.
And now, here we are, well into April, and you know, it still has not happened for either one of us.
To update you on my situation, I got a rather tearful phone call from a 9X representative on Friday, who said they understood that I was impatient and that I might even be upset by now, but there was really nothing they could do because they were not getting a phone call back from the engineering department.
And he said, the only way we can work this is by fax and by phone. Those are the only two instruments they can use there. They don't speak in person.
And the person said, until this department gets back to me, there's really nothing I can do. I really apologize for these people, but that's the way it is.
And they promised, they swore, they made a solemn resolution that they'd get back to me whenever they learned something.
Well, today's Wednesday, they have not learned anything, they haven't gotten back to me, and I'm pretty much in the same boat I was in the last few weeks.
Anything new for you?
Well, you sound pretty miffed there.
I am pretty miffed. Why shouldn't I be miffed? I mean, this is like, you know, living in some third world country or something where you have to wait most of your lifetime to get a phone line put in.
So I don't know how much longer this is going to go on for. I want to be able to experiment with this. I want to be able to play around.
But, I don't know, there's nothing on the horizon. How about you?
Well, I was most recently told by my representative that she was going to be in and out of her office in the coming weeks.
And that she left me the name of someone else there who I could check in with.
And the thing with me is that I wanted to order a low speed packet, which is a particular service that gives you access to X25 services.
Right.
Which is not unlike using something like, say, Telenet, only you're doing it over your ISDN connection on your D channel.
Right.
And she said that she had to check for the availability of that, which didn't really make much sense since it's supposed to be available where ISDN is available.
Right. It's a part of ISDN.
Right.
So, according to the product manager, of which there is one for like the entire state, she was supposed to hear back from this person, whom she never did.
And now I'm told that nothing is new. So, I'm like, okay, well, why don't we start the order?
If we're waiting on the availability of something that should be available, why don't I just order normal ISDN service while we're waiting?
And I was talking to her late in the day because it turns out that it's better to talk to these ISDN ordering people after business hours.
I find it's better to talk to them at home.
Oh, well.
That's if you're able to get their numbers.
So, she said she would try to get the wheels in motion in ordering the ISDN service.
And that, like I said, that I could check in with her assistant person.
I don't know if it's her assistant or just someone who's going to be there more often than she will.
And that's how it was left.
That was Monday.
You've gotten nowhere either.
No.
Okay.
Now, you know, a few weeks ago we had appointments. We had dates of installation.
And now we don't even have that.
No.
They robbed even that from us.
Yeah.
So, there's no indication of anything happening.
I'm really going to try.
I'm going to be aggressive this week.
I'm going to make some really angry, bitter phone calls.
And, you know, see just what's up.
Well, we should mention the FCC.
Mention the FCC.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Keep in mind, we're regulated by the FCC, so let's not let our emotions...
The FCC wants to double the price of ISDN.
Yeah.
Because they're saying that it's actually cheaper to order ISDN and get phone service
where you're actually getting effectively what could be two phone lines over a single line.
And they're saying that that can't be cheaper than a single line.
Why not?
Because apparently they don't seem to understand the difference between analog and digital.
So, we can't have things get cheaper over time.
Things have to get more expensive.
No, they'd rather make them more expensive, yeah.
I see.
So, is this move gathering a lot of support?
Well, the FCC seems to think so because they're the only ones that need to say yes.
But, obviously, the phone companies don't like it because I'm sure lots of people are going to cancel ISDN service
and a lot more that probably would have ordered it aren't.
I know that I'd surely have second thoughts about ordering it if it cost twice as much as it did.
Right.
So, it's still up in the air at this point in time, so we'll see what happens.
Okay.
That's the update as far as the quest for ISDN this week goes.
But we'll be back next week with, gosh, it'll be day 29 by then.
Hopefully, we'll have something in the works.
And then once we get it, we can actually start playing with it and we can tell people what happens when you use it.
But just trying to get it, that's the hard thing.
Buying a house takes less time than this.
Anyway, that's part of what we are going to talk about tonight.
The majority of the show, though, will focus on some disturbing things going on.
Last week, we mentioned how we tried to visit Bernie S. in prison down in Philadelphia and were unsuccessful.
Well, this week, we were more successful.
We actually were able to get down there.
Myself and a friend went yesterday, last evening, and that's when you have nighttime visiting hours.
It sounds like a really good idea to have nighttime visiting hours where you can visit people between 7 and 10 p.m.
It's convenient.
Well, it's not that convenient.
First of all, you have to get down there, which is a pain, but there's nothing they can do about that.
Once you get there, though, it was nothing like visiting you in prison, Fiber.
It really was completely different from that situation.
Visiting you in the slammer was basically almost pleasant because they were polite.
You didn't have to really do anything.
It was sort of like just going to a room and seeing somebody.
What was unpleasant was realizing that the people you were seeing were in prison.
But in this particular case, it was like going to prison yourself.
We got there.
First of all, the person at the checkpoint, Charlie, said that he already had a visitor, so they'd have to see if they could squeeze us in.
We drive all the way from New York, and they're trying to tell us, well, you may not be able to get in to see this person.
I mean, these are visiting hours.
What do you think visiting hours are for?
Of course, you should let people see the person.
So right away, they're trying to cast some sort of doubt as to whether we would be permitted to get inside and see this person.
So once we passed that particular hurdle, we were able to actually walk into the facility itself.
It looks like a huge church, actually.
It's a monolithic tower that fills you with dread and awe at the same time.
We got in, and we had to empty our pockets.
Now, this is the weird thing.
We weren't allowed to go in with anything in our pockets.
We weren't allowed to wear more than one article of clothing over our bodies.
So in other words, we had to leave our jackets and any kind of shirt we were wearing over our initial shirts sitting on a hanger.
It was pretty crazy.
We couldn't bring keys in, couldn't bring change in, couldn't bring money, couldn't bring beepers, nothing, nothing at all.
So we had to leave everything out there with the assurance that we would all be safe.
And then we had to submit to a body search, which is something that never happened when I visited Fiber in prison.
And then after all that was over, we got to walk past the bars.
Yeah, it was actually bars, and the bars slid shut behind us and made that clanking sound.
And yeah, there we were in a big room where all the prisoners were meeting with their families and friends.
And it was really kind of strange because you sat at this bench, and they were very clear as to where you were supposed to sit.
Again, it wasn't anything like your prison.
You were assigned a particular part of the room.
We were, I think, 18 by the window, and you had to sit by there.
Of course, it's not labeled clearly, so you always wind up in the wrong place, and they yell at you for being in the wrong place.
You have to sit in a chair.
To call it a chair is really kind of weird.
It's a circular object about hand size, I would say.
And you're supposed to sit on that and face the prisoner who sits on a similar type of object facing the other way,
and there's a little table in between you.
Actually, there's a long, long table covering the whole row, and he sits on one end, and you sit on the other.
And you are permitted one hour. That's it.
Even though the visiting hours are from 7 to 10, you're only allowed to be in there for one hour.
In our case, for some reason, they cut it short.
We were only allowed to be in there 40 minutes, which was pretty annoying in and of itself.
But that was nothing compared to the story that I heard from him.
It was basically, from start to finish, he took up just about all the time just talking to us about what happened to him,
which was unfortunate.
There wasn't really enough time for any kind of back-and-forth dialogue.
Basically, in case you're not familiar with the story,
that Bernie S. was discovered in a parking lot of a 7-Eleven in broad daylight
selling crystals to some people from Florida in a van.
They initially reported it.
Hang on one second.
Hello?
Anyone there?
Anyone there? Okay.
Sorry about that.
That may have been Bernie S.
We're trying to get a telephone link with him.
Basically, it was thought to be a drug deal in the works.
The police were called, and they swarmed on this 7-Eleven in the middle of the day.
Instead of finding drugs, they found something that they thought was a lot more sinister.
They found computer equipment, chips, books.
Books such as the one I have here called the Whole Spy Catalog.
Naturally, they assumed that this person was up to something evil.
At that particular point in time, they took away some of the crystals.
These are crystals that can be used in radio shack dialers to turn them into red boxes.
It's perfectly legal to sell these chips.
At least, it was up until this point.
I'm going to read you something from the Whole Spy Catalog,
which is what led these people to come to Philadelphia to buy these crystals in the first place.
Replacement crystals are sold for legitimate reasons only by Electronic Design Systems of Haverton, Pennsylvania.
They give the address.
That's basically what these people saw in the book.
That's what brought them up to Pennsylvania.
I imagine they were up in Pennsylvania for some other reason.
To drive all the way up there to buy crystals seems kind of silly.
Because it's easy to get.
You can get it from all kinds of ordering places.
Mouser Electronics, I believe, Digikey, places like that.
In and of itself, there was nothing illegal going on.
However, that didn't stop the police from two days later bursting into the home of a friend of Bernie S.'s
and arresting him right there and then.
Hang on. This might be him again.
Hello?
Eric?
Yes.
I can't transfer him.
You cannot transfer?
No. He needs to call you collect.
Okay. I'm afraid we're not going to be able to take collect calls here.
Because the prison phone hangs up if I try to do it.
Prison phone hangs up.
Okay. You're live on the air now, by the way.
Okay.
So I just figured you should be telling people what we're trying to do.
We're trying to transfer Bernie S. over here.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Is he trying to dial while he still has Bernie on the phone?
No. You're hitting flash and you're dialing the number, right?
Yeah. The prison system, you can't transfer.
You just call waiting or put him on hold or anything.
It knows and hangs up.
Okay. Tell you what. Is he going to call back?
I'm on the other ear with him right now.
Okay. Have him record something, a statement perhaps, that we can then play back over the air.
Can you do that?
Uh...
There should be a little button there to record.
Okay.
And then just tell him that basically he can speak his story.
And when that's done, you can call us with that and then play that.
And that's really the best we can do right now.
Okay.
All right?
Will do.
Thanks.
Okay. We tried.
We tried to have some phone trickery.
That worked with you when you were in prison.
We were able to transfer calls.
You just couldn't dial while you were on the line or else it would hang up.
How does it know?
Well, you know people are listening all the time.
Yeah. It could be somebody listening or maybe it just looks to hear a loud click.
Mm-hmm.
That could be it.
Anyway.
So, assuming he's not going to tell the whole story all over again when we get his message,
to keep it short, he basically was arrested two days later or maybe it was one day later
by local police and an agent of the Secret Service.
Now, if you look at the affidavit that was put out at the time,
there's actually a section in there where the Secret Service takes the local police to a pay phone
and demonstrates to them how a red box works.
And they say in this affidavit that there is no other purpose for this device
than to make fraudulent phone calls.
There is no other purpose for these crystals but to make fraudulent red boxes.
Of course, we all know that's not true.
When you say that having possession of tones is illegal, that's a very scary precedent to set.
Anyway, for the past few weeks, he was imprisoned on those charges.
By the way, when they came to the house, he was telling us some incredible stories there.
First of all, if you read the affidavit, it makes it seem like he was lying about where he lived.
If you read the affidavit, they say that he told them that he lived in one particular place
and when they arrived at that place, they found that he had moved out months ago.
That's not what happened.
What happened was they asked him for his phone number.
He handed them a business card that had the phone number on it
and they asked him a very simple question, where does this phone number go?
The phone number goes to that house.
He answered the question exactly as they asked but no time did they ask him, where do you live?
Another thing which is very interesting, he told them that he did not want his car to be searched.
He said, I don't want my car to be rifled through.
I would appreciate you not going through things like that.
Well, he turns around five minutes later and guess what, they're going through his car.
And so he walked over to them and of course the police are telling him to freeze, to not move
but he says, I have to talk to this officer here.
I said I didn't want you going through my car, why are you going through my car?
He said, oh, you said not to rifle through your car.
We're not rifling, we're just searching.
And he said, look, I don't want you in my car at all.
So please, stop doing this.
The policeman then goes to the other, the supervising cop on the scene
and says that this person has withdrawn his permission.
And he said, I never gave permission in the first place.
So of course they wound up searching things anyway.
They went through the van, the van of people that came from Florida.
They turned that upside down.
Apparently they were looking for drugs.
Couldn't find anything illegal in the van at all.
They sent those people on their way.
And then just as the van was leaving, just as the van was leaving,
one of the cops says to the other, didn't you want that book that was in there?
And the cop says, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the whole spy catalog.
Stop, you know, give us that, we want that.
In the affidavit they make it seem as if that book was in Bernie S.'s car.
It's a trivial point, but it just goes to show how they don't really get the facts right.
The book was in the van to start with
and that's why they met up with Bernie S. to get a hold of those crystals.
Okay, so he's in prison now for several weeks on charges of possession of a red box
because they found one of these modified dollars on his person.
Keep in mind he was never accused of making an illegal phone call,
never observed doing anything of the sort,
just having a device that emitted a single tone five times.
That's something that he was held for $100,000 on.
Well, as of two days ago, all of those charges were dropped.
Every single one of those state charges, there were only two charges.
Initially he was charged also with two counts of access, illegally accessing a computer.
The reason for that, we found out that that was because the phone company,
this is a Secret Service explanation, the phone company was defined as a large computer
and by accessing the computer with the red box,
you could be said to be making an illegal access to a computer type of a thing.
Of course, there was no evidence that he had ever done that in the first place,
so there was one judge that just refused to indict him on that
and those two charges were taken off right away.
Well, what happened after that, there were two charges left,
two charges of possession of a red box.
Those charges were dropped two days ago, but then simultaneously replaced
with two federal charges from the Secret Service,
charging him with possession of equipment that could be used to modify cellular phones.
Apparently they looked through everything and decided that they had a better shot going through that.
What I'm going to do now is read you the article from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
This is yesterday's paper.
Federal charges of telecommunication fraud were filed.
This was on Monday against Edward Cummings, who was Bernie S.
The man arrested last month after Haverford police found him in a 7-Eleven parking lot
with devices for making free calls from pay phones.
In Haverford District Court, the Commonwealth dropped all state charges against him.
He was then brought to Philadelphia to be charged federally with illegal use of access devices.
Actually, he was not brought to Philadelphia because obviously he was still in the other prison.
The federal charge in Cummings' case refers to phone cloning.
Said Secret Service agent in charge, Ernie Cunn.
This crime involves stealing the number of a legal cellular phone
and linking it to a second illegal phone.
The illegal user then gets free calls until authorities or the rightful phone user discover the fraud.
In a raid last month on a Villanova home where Cummings had been staying,
police found several hundred speed dialers, computer software, cellular phones,
thousands of computer chips and crystals, as well as books describing computer crimes, hacking, and bomb making.
We were working that case along with Haverford, and from that time until now,
we were able to gather additional evidence which gives us a fairly strong case.
That's going to the Secret Service.
Of course, obviously they also were able to realize that the case they had was completely bogus,
which is why they dropped it.
They wouldn't elaborate on the new evidence, saying they did not want to jeopardize the ongoing investigation.
This is interesting, too.
In district court, Cummings talked often with his lawyer before a scheduled hearing.
At one point, though, when he tried to move next to his attorney, the constable yelled,
Sit down. I'm going to sit next to my attorney, Cummings said.
No, you may not, the constable said.
He was not allowed to sit next to his lawyer, and this is kind of interesting, too.
Take this for whatever it's worth. I don't quite understand it myself.
When the prosecutors were reading some of the charges against him,
the judge in this particular case made eye contact with Bernie S.
and held two fingers up to his head and made a motion like he was pulling a trigger.
Now, what does that mean, and why is a judge doing that?
I'm sure a couple of people saw him doing that,
and very ominous as to what exactly is going on here.
So we have a case where they are trying to say that mere possession of software,
mere possession of hardware, means that you're guilty of whatever you can do with that hardware and software.
According to this criminal complaint,
This is in violation of Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1029A6B.
All right, let's see if we have anything here.
You're on the air. Is anything going on?
Well, I have Ed on my other ear.
Unfortunately, we cannot freeway any kind of call waiting features or anything because the phone disconnects.
Yeah, that's unfortunate.
So I have him on my other ear, so I'll have to translate anything that you want to ask him.
Okay, well, did you get anything on tape from him?
No, no. He felt that this might be better.
Okay. How about an address to write to him, first of all? Is that possible?
Ed, do you have an address?
Yes.
Okay, do you have an address that people can write to you at?
Have an address.
Conference room.
Okay.
Okay, he said it.
What are we getting?
Yes.
We're getting interference of a sort I've never heard before.
Okay.
I don't know what that is. Is that coming from your end or from our end?
I don't know. Eric?
Go ahead.
Okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to call you back on the other line there.
What? Eric?
I'm going to call you back on the other line there, and you're going to try to conference these two lines together.
And maybe that will work. I don't really know if we can...
Are we getting this? Okay.
Is anyone there?
Yes.
Okay, go ahead.
Did you have an address?
He's being transferred next week to probably a federal prison.
Okay.
So at this time, he doesn't know what his address there will be.
Okay.
I'm going to try and call you on that other line sitting there.
Okay.
And see if we can three-way to there, because that's really the only way we can do this.
All right, we're getting too much interference this way.
Do you want me to conference with that line?
Well, go back to him, wait for the other line to ring, and then we'll try a regular coupling of two phone lines.
Let's see if that works.
Okay.
If it doesn't work, we'll just have to do it some other way some other time.
Okay?
Okay.
All right.
So we're going to try and make that work.
This is very bizarre.
Sorry for all the weird sounds that you're hearing, but sometimes that's the way it works.
It's hard to talk to people when they're in prison.
That's what it boils down to.
Even when you're there, it's hard to talk to them.
All right.
Let's get a dial tone.
Okay.
Okay, let's see if we can actually get through here.
Hello, you're on the air.
Is anyone there?
Oh, the phone picked up, so I'm not sure what's going on here.
It hung up.
How could it do that?
That doesn't make sense.
Let's try it one more time.
Eric.
Yo, are you there?
Yes.
Okay.
Can you do this?
What you have to do is you have to put me on hold.
Okay.
Go to him.
Okay.
And then hit the conference button.
That should work.
I was trying that, and it kept disconnecting his line, but I'll try it.
All right.
Let's try it one more time.
Okay.
Hold on.
Okay.
I am here.
Okay.
Ed, are you there?
Okay.
We're all here.
Ed's got a very loud area there, so he can hardly hear you.
Okay.
If you hit the mute button, he should be able to come in better on our end, so let's try that.
Okay.
Ed, this is Emmanuel.
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Eric, can you hear him at all?
I cannot hear him at all.
He has about 120 screaming men there, so it's very hard for him.
Okay.
I'm not hearing anything from his end.
Okay.
Yeah.
I can hardly hear him, too.
I can hear you, Rob.
Okay.
We're getting him now.
We're getting him now.
So have him say whatever is on his mind right now, and we'll try to boost the audio.
Can you hear Ed now?
Yeah.
We can hear him barely.
Okay.
They can barely hear you, Ed, so you can...
Yes, that'll have to do, so go ahead.
He can hear you a bit, so that'll have to do.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm afraid this isn't working.
We're not getting him.
You're not getting him?
No, we're not.
Is there anything you want to ask him?
Let's go back to the original plan,
and I think really the only way we can do this is if he says something,
gives like a two-minute statement or something on tape,
and then he can call us back and play it for us.
Okay.
All right, that's really the only way this is going to work.
Okay.
Because of the technical difficulties.
All right?
So we expect to hear back from you in about five or ten minutes.
Okay.
All right, thanks.
Sorry for all the technical problems, but that's the nature of being in prison,
as you well know.
Well, let's look at this affidavit a little bit.
So I'll show you some of the things they took at the end.
This is the second time around.
This is when they're charging him with cellular skullduggery, I guess.
He had three cellular telephone cloning computer disks,
a laptop computer that had a cloning software program on the hard drive,
which I confirm by observation, this is the Secret Service agent talking,
a computer cable that would allow for cloning of Motorola brand cellular telephones,
several cellular telephones, some of which had broken plastic
surrounding the electrical connectors to the battery pack.
The breakage of the plastic is a required step before cellular telephones
can be connected to a computer for cloning.
As confirmed by observation.
Absolutely.
A book titled Cellular Hacker's Bible,
and this is a good one,
photographs depicting Cummings selling cellular telephone cloning software
at an unknown event.
Well, I think maybe we know what that event might have been.
That might have been the Hackers on Planet Earth conference, very likely.
And it just goes to show that if you're engaged in a crime,
you don't generally have people take pictures of you doing it.
So obviously, this is something that none of us thought of as a crime,
or simply selling this.
And in fact, we gave this away on WBAI as one of our premiums.
Now, does this mean that those of you that pledged for this are now on a list somewhere?
Well, it's not going to be a list of ours, I can tell you that.
But theoretically, anybody with this particular kind of software is just as guilty.
Now, what is this software?
Well, it allows you to take your cellular telephone and make an extension.
Now, of course, they think the only possible use for this is to use it to sell phone service to other people
and do illegal things that way.
Does that make any sense?
It's completely ridiculous.
I mean, say, for example, that I had a cellular phone with service that I legally paid for,
and I wanted to have a second cellular phone that maybe I would leave at home
and take the other one to work.
And why should I have to pay extra to have some idiot in some store somewhere
do the exact same thing that I could do for free,
at no loss to the cellular phone company,
by just cloning the extra phone that I bought and paid for
with the same electronic serial number and mobile identification number as the first phone?
Right.
Well, the way they are phrasing it, they're making it sound as if the only possible use
is the same basic rationale they had for the Redbox case, which is kind of interesting.
The only possible use for this is something fraudulent.
The thing that doesn't make sense is that all you can do with that software
is make a copy of a phone that you have in your hand,
or you can program a phone that you happen to know the ESN and MIN number for.
It doesn't actually allow you to grab other people's ESNs off the airwaves as they drive by.
It's a piece of software that runs on a computer in your room
whose sole purpose is to copy the electronic serial number in a currently working phone.
Right.
That's all they have, for having software.
I mean, this is what he was advertising.
It's not like he was trying to keep this a secret in any way.
There was no crime that I can see being committed here.
The way they phrase it, though, on or about March 15th, 1995 through March 16th, 1995,
that's one day there, defendant Edward Cummings knowingly and with intent to defraud
had custody, control, and possession of hardware and software used for altering
and modifying telecommunications instruments to obtain unauthorized access to telecommunications services.
They are not going to be able to prove this at all.
What's this intent to defraud business?
I guess they were standing on his left shoulder when he was deciding what to do with this software.
Even in this book, they say very clearly,
replacement crystals are sold for legitimate reasons only.
That's the Redbox material, but that's how his organization worked.
That's how his company worked.
People who sell these things are not responsible.
They're not interested in what people are going to be doing with them.
They're selling a piece of equipment.
This is not the same thing.
This is not committing a crime.
Committing a crime is committing a crime.
It's rather simple.
This is part of what I see as a very disturbing trend.
You could even tie this to the raid of the spy shops which took place last week as well
where federal authorities raided stores in 24 different cities
saying that they were selling illegal eavesdropping devices.
These are eavesdropping devices that the federal authorities are allowed to have,
but individual people are not allowed to have these, and that's why they're illegal.
You may not have any legitimate purpose for having a small microphone,
say, in a pen or in a lampshade or something like that.
Can you think of a reason why you would want to have something like that
other than to spy on somebody else?
Well, I wish I would have had one when I actually got raided by the feds.
That would be good for that too,
but I'm sure any of us can come up with a whole host of reasons
why you'd want to have something kind of neat like that.
I mean, I've got all kinds of weird devices that allow you to tell
if someone's transmitting a radio near you, to be able to listen to any radio frequency.
All of a sudden these things are being seen as crimes.
Just listening to a frequency is a crime.
Having something that could be used in a bad way is a crime.
All of a sudden it's not good enough that crimes are crimes.
Now something that could lead to a crime is also a crime.
And in the eyes of the average person,
it makes sense because they don't understand the technology at work.
It all comes down to the same basic issue.
You don't understand the technology, you can be led around by the nose forever.
And unfortunately, you become a victim,
but there are other real victims in this too.
And Bernie S. right now is one of them.
Okay, hopefully we'll hear his statement in a couple of minutes.
But while we're waiting for that,
another interesting story,
another chapter in an interesting story,
is that of Kevin Paulson of California.
He got sentenced a couple of days ago, actually on a Monday,
to 51 months in federal prison.
That's the longest sentence for any hacker ever.
And he's also ordered to pay more than $58,000 in restitution.
Now Kevin Paulson was found guilty, or he pleaded guilty actually,
to using computers to rig telephones at three radio stations in 1989 and 1992.
The stations offered prizes for contestants.
His calls reached the studio in a certain order.
Paulson and his friends rigged telephone lines at stations
so they would be the winning callers.
I believe we had somebody call in last week asking how to do that.
51 months in prison for this.
Now of course they won two Porsches,
two giveaways for $20,000, one for $10,000,
and at least two trips to Hawaii.
But that sentence does seem kind of wild.
I mean, when you consider what people convicted of violent crimes are getting,
it's, I don't know, it just seems a bit out of step to me.
Federal sentencing guidelines call for three years,
but the judge gave Paulson an extra 15 months because of the magnitude of his crimes.
This is going to the Los Angeles Times.
Operating under the hacker Monica Dark Dante,
authorities said Paulson jeopardized federal agents
when he broke into a Pacific Bell computer in August 1989
to get information about FBI wiretaps on him.
And that's kind of an interesting take on it.
How do you figure he jeopardized federal agents by checking out a wiretap on him?
Why couldn't you argue that the federal agents were jeopardizing you
by wiretapping you without telling you?
Oh, they probably were, but in this particular case that was legal.
Who knows?
So, okay, he's already served quite a lot of time.
He's been in prison since April 1991.
So I would imagine all that time he served is going to count towards that 51 months,
but that's still going to amount to some more time.
I think that's still up to the judge whether he gets time served or not.
You know, that still doesn't count these espionage charges,
which are pending in California.
He's actually being charged with espionage
because he was able to access something that was deemed classified.
Well, that was the document, if you remember, they said was declassified
and then attempted to reclassify it for purposes of prosecuting him.
Incredible.
So he may not see the light of day for quite some time,
and, of course, there's the Kevin Mitnick story
where he's somewhere in North Carolina
and we don't know what's going to happen to him
or what he's going to be ultimately charged with.
Back to Polson, the judge also placed him on three years of supervised release
after he serves his time and ordered him not to own, use, or work on a computer
or program without permission from his probation officer.
So, Freiberg, you're on probation for three years.
Yes, I am.
Do you have any such restrictions like that?
Other than not being able to leave the state, no, I don't have anything as ridiculous
as not being able to use any kind of computer or program.
It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but when you think about it,
having to ask permission to leave the state for three years
is a restriction a lot of us wouldn't want to have to deal with.
No, it's something that I guess most people just take for granted,
that you know you can leave if you want to.
Okay, well, let's go to the phones since we still don't have that statement coming in.
I don't know if we will be getting it or not.
There might be even further technical problems.
The thing is, with Bernie, yes, he's in a much nastier place than you ever were in.
He's in with murderers, he really is.
He's in the same basic block as murderers, rapists, violent criminals,
except they treat him differently.
They shackle him when they move him back and forth.
He's considered more dangerous than violent criminals.
It's sick, it really is what they're doing here.
Oh, another thing, another nice little side note to this.
He came down with bronchitis while he was in prison,
and he was not too healthy when I saw him yesterday,
and he's not getting treated for it either.
That's another something that should be known.
Okay, we'll try to get you as much information as possible.
Let's go to the phones.
212-279-3400.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Speak up.
Hey, Manuel, Fiverr, what's going on?
How you doing?
Okay, I have two questions, quick ones, but first a note, FYI.
I was told by our friendly Bell Atlantic people over here in New Jersey
that we now have nationwide caller ID.
I was told that it's now working, yes.
Well, I had someone call me from Kentucky and a few other southern states,
and it is showing up on my caller ID box.
Just a note, FYI.
My first question is on low-level ANI.
What's it all about?
Low-level ANI?
Low-level ANI.
ANI is ANI, what's low-level?
It's not like radiation.
Well, from what I've been told, it's an ANI that kicks in
after a certain amount of time of being on a line.
Where did you hear that?
Just through the grapevine.
Well, that's not the place to hear things.
You better check a different grapevine.
Yeah, because that's some rancid grapes you're hearing there.
Well, companies, for instance, smaller companies like, say, Amnex,
I was told that they employ the low-level ANI
because they can't afford the better types that the bigger companies have.
So ANI is ANI, basically.
Yeah, either your switch has the ability to send ANI, which all do,
and the receiving end has the ability to receive it, or it doesn't.
And that's done when the call is originated and no time afterwards.
Okay.
My second question is on a book, How to Get Anything on Anyone.
Have you ever heard about it?
It's one of those books that if the cops catch on you,
you can get in a lot of trouble.
But yeah, yeah, I've heard of it.
Any good, or is it not worth the paper?
It's interesting to read.
There are some tips in there, yes.
And just to follow up on what you've been talking about,
is there anything being done about what's going on?
Is there any funds being put together or any kind of defense to stop this fascist type?
Well, right now we're trying to get the word out,
and of course this is a step in doing that.
We're trying to get it out on the net.
We're trying to get the ACLU interested.
We're trying to get the Electronic Frontier Foundation interested.
All of this involves work.
All of this involves a lot of people speaking out.
So the best thing you can do is just tell more people about it.
If you have access to anything, just get the word out that these things are happening.
It's really scary thinking about just being in possession of certain things
would imply that you would be breaking the law.
I could see that spiraling out of control into a lot of other areas.
It's real scary.
I think it has spiraled out of control already.
And when you expand it to include software, that's such a nebulous zone right there.
So any one of us can have something on us which could be used in a bad way.
That doesn't make us guilty of the worst possible crime you can commit
with that particular bit of information.
Yes, I agree.
All right.
Keep up the great work and keep spreading the word.
Okay, thanks for calling.
An interesting side note.
Experimentation continues even with these evil happenings.
While Bernie S. is in prison, he has been making collect phone calls
to various people in the Pennsylvania area,
and they have noted that even though he's dialing zero plus
and going through an operator, his number is showing up on their caller ID boxes.
So that's something to take note of.
Zero plus and the number still goes through, at least in Pennsylvania.
We don't know about over here yet because we have not yet checked it out on caller ID.
Do you want me to read this from the latest issue of Mired Magazine
or whatever this thing is called?
This is something from Bruce Sterling.
I still read most of the computer crime journalism that's out there,
and I'll tell you one thing about it.
There's way, way too much blather going on about teenage computer intruders
and nowhere near enough coverage of computer cops.
Computer cops are at least a hundred times more interesting
than sneaky teenagers with codes and cards.
A guy like Calton Fitzpatrick, a telecom crime instructor
at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia,
should be a hundred times more famous than some wretched hacker kid
like Mark Abene, which would be you.
Yeah, that would be me.
Yeah.
Well, any comment on that?
Well, that was a rather nasty statement, don't you think?
It was.
Pretty unfounded.
Unfounded, yeah. Wretched.
Well, anyway.
212-279-3400.
Good evening. You're on.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Good evening. You're on.
Hello.
Ah, yes. You nasty hacker kid, you. How are you doing?
Okay.
Meant to turn it down.
No, don't turn it up. Turn it down.
Okay.
Yeah, I agree with you that, you know, things have gotten pretty bad.
And I'm just wondering, you know, what comes next,
because if they can make a sound illegal,
you know, the next thing, they can make a song illegal.
What about that, your theme song?
You know, suppose you had some sounds in there
that could do nasty things to a telephone.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, there are rumors of a new theme on the horizon.
That's all I have to say.
There are rumors of a new theme that will be arriving soon.
Well, I certainly won't be spreading those rumors.
No, don't spread those rumors.
No, we wouldn't want anybody to find out about it.
Everybody listening now, keep that quiet.
We'll all keep it quiet.
Thank you.
Look, you mentioned the other week about digital.
You were using a credit card, and you had to sign your name digitally?
Yeah, I had to sign my name within the box on a receipt
that was still attached to the machine,
so my signature was transmitted over the phone line somehow.
What's to prevent them from recording that?
In other words, how do you know, from this point on,
if somebody says to you, well, we have your signature, here it is,
how can you determine it's your signature on any particular piece of paper
once your signature and 30,000 copies of it are digitized
and floating around the computers of whatever credit card company?
I don't see how you can determine that.
Therein lies the threat.
Yeah, exactly.
So, one last thing.
You were talking about the new free phone area code, the 888?
Yes.
And you said the next one was going to be 887, 886.
That's not how it works.
Okay, how does it work?
It's going to be 888, then 877, then 866.
In other words, if the first digit is 8
and the next two digits are the same as each other,
that's a free area code.
Oh, really?
Well, that makes more sense.
What about 899?
What happened to that one?
899, for some reason, is not going to be used yet.
I think it's on the list.
I had heard the opposite.
I had heard it was going to be 88X,
but your version makes more sense, I have to admit.
They'll probably leave out 811, too,
because that's similar to all the 11 codes.
Right.
Okay, well, that should be in place within the next year, actually.
They should start using 888, which is going to be a real fun area code.
I was reading Telecom Digest.
There's a lot of flak going around about people who claim they own,
like, the word flowers or the word collect or what have you.
Yeah, what's going to happen with the 1-800-COLLECT people?
Who's going to be 888-COLLECT?
You're going to have to either get the same number twice for all these companies
or there will be some real competition there.
Oh, wait.
I'm getting confused now.
Did I hear on your show about 1-800-ATT-CALL?
Probably, we've talked about it.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, CALL-ATT.
I don't know whether I heard that somewhere else
and was going to tell you about it or whatever,
but that's the one that they refer you back to MCI.
Okay.
All right, thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
We've got an interesting little fact here.
Let's see if we can get a clean phone line.
Remember that MCI?
What was that MCI number?
1-800-CALL-INFO, was it?
What, the one with the sounds of summer?
No, no, no, the one that was all controversial
because it was an 800 number providing information access,
and they charge you 75 cents.
It doesn't ring a bell.
It's a big story.
It's a big story, only a few weeks ago, a few months ago.
Yeah, you call 1-800-CALL-INFO.
Right.
It was information service, and for 75 cents,
you get a number anywhere in the country.
You just simply say,
I need a number in Dallas or whatever, and you give them.
It takes them a long time to look it up,
but eventually they find it, and then they bill you 75 cents.
Now, the objection was that people were calling it directly,
1-800 number, and just being billed back to their number,
unlike most services where you have to give a credit card
or something like that.
What happens if you called it at a pay phone?
Well, you'd have to give a calling card number
or a credit card number.
It's now a pay phone.
It wouldn't bill to a pay phone.
So the FCC ordered that to stop, or temporarily anyway,
until they figured it out,
and I believe now they've moved to a 900 number,
1-900-CALL-INFO.
But 1-800-CALL-INFO still exists,
but I want you to hear something.
Let's get our dial tone back.
C-A-L-L-I-N-F-O.
Actually, you don't need that last O.
C-A-L-L-I-N-F-O.
Don't know why it's taking so long.
C-A-L-L-I-N-F-O.
Well, that should have connected by now.
There seems to be nothing on the line.
Oh, look at that.
A fast busy.
Indicating trouble on the line.
Well, I don't want to waste any more time with this,
but if you call that number, do you know what they say now?
They say,
Thank you for calling 1-800-GET-INFO.
Now, you're calling 1-800-CALL-INFO,
but you're getting GET-INFO.
So, either they're totally misspelling their own service,
or they've gotten two 800 numbers.
And GET-INFO actually is seven digits,
as opposed to CALL-INFO.
So, I don't know.
There's all kinds of changes going on at MCI,
but then they don't admit it's MCI in the first place,
which probably was a wise thing to do.
Good evening, you're on the radio.
Hey, am I on the air?
Yes, you are.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Okay, let me turn this down.
Hey, I have a question on caller ID,
and I'm asking because of the way it affects
where the government gets to prosecute
bulletin board systems.
Okay.
The question is,
what kinds of systems give you the technical capacity
to have caller ID?
Is it just system 7?
Is it just switching systems that have system 7?
Yes, any switching system.
For example, AT&T's 5ESS, Northern Telecom's DMS-100.
Any switching system that's connected
to a signaling system number 7,
signaling network, is capable of caller ID,
and not otherwise.
Now, is system 5 not capable of it at all?
There is no system 5.
Okay.
What is there aside from system 7?
There's system 7 or there's not.
They've never used any other signaling system
in the regional bells.
What was that system called that kept failing,
you know, that was responsible for the AT&T crash?
That was when they first cut over to system 7.
I believe they were saying system 6-something.
Yeah, no, but that was in the AT&T long-distance network,
and that's quite different from the regional bells.
So I guess here's my question.
Is there anywhere in the country
that doesn't have at least the technical capability
of caller ID?
Oh, sure.
There's lots of rural areas
that may not have that capability
that still might be on older electromechanical switches.
There's a number of switches still in New York City
which are not on the SS7 network.
Okay.
Is there some sort of source for finding out
what systems wouldn't have
the technical capability for caller ID?
Well, it's really simple.
If you're on a 5ESS or a DMS-100,
you have the capability.
We're far beyond the point in time
where you're on a digital switch
and you're not SS7 connected.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks very much.
Okay, thanks for your call.
Move on.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hi, Emmanuel.
How are you?
Okay.
I just have a question for Fiber.
This caller ID that's coming nationwide,
I'm curious to know
if the name will also pass with the caller ID.
I'm hearing different things from engineers
and some CO programmers or whatever
from Bell Atlantic and Southern Bell
that the name might not be able to pass.
Is that true?
Well, I have heard that they are planning on releasing
calling name delivery along with caller ID.
Caller ID Deluxe, yeah.
Yeah, or whatever trade name you want to call it.
Okay.
But it was standardized by Bellcore a number of years ago
around the same time they standardized caller ID.
Okay.
I would figure that the regional bells would start
making calling name delivery available
before it became nationwide available.
All right.
I have right now an 800 number through Willtel
with automatic number identification on it.
And there are some areas that...
Well, actually, I have a question for you.
The caller ID, I've got a call.
I used cable and wireless, 10223,
to place a telephone call from the 718956 exchange
when it was analog.
And it transmitted the ANI information
to an area in New Jersey that I had caller ID on.
But then I used 10555 and it didn't transmit.
But my sister, where I had placed the call,
it was 718956, it was not transmitted using Willtel.
She was analog, so I'm curious to find out
how the ANI was passed using cable and wireless,
but it wasn't passed, like, for example, using Willtel
or another carrier that transmits ANI.
Well, that's peculiar because I would think then
that something's broken and not working properly.
Okay, because I know for a fact I had contacted
a friend of mine who was an engineer in 9X,
and she did not have caller ID or any type of class services
like Star 69 or anything.
Right.
And like I said, she was in the 956 exchange,
but I used cable and wireless.
Now, they told me there's two different types of ANI.
I specialize in caller ID, and of course,
I've learned a lot from you about ANI.
But I placed a phone call, like I said,
using cable and wireless, and it was transmitted,
but any other carrier would not transmit.
But she did not have, she was not digital.
She was an analog, and I know that for a fact.
They didn't have any services, and they told me she was analog.
She was a 1A ESS or an ESS 1A,
and the phone number was transmitted using 10223.
Wait, let's backtrack just for a second.
You're saying that you were receiving on caller ID
a call that you placed in an analog office
over a long-distance carrier that's supposed to have ANI?
Yes.
Well, ANI and caller ID are not the same.
Oh, I understand that, but it was ANI into caller ID.
Right, which means that cable and wireless's long-distance network
is converting ANI into caller ID information,
which basically means that they're converting ANI
into a signaling system 7 message.
Okay, but my question to you would be,
how would they get, are they getting the ANI
because of billing purpose,
and they're just taking that information
and rerouting it onto the SS7 network?
Yeah, that's exactly what cable and wireless would be doing,
and for some reason it sounds like, from what you're saying,
that Willtel in this instance did not.
Okay, because we, I don't know if you know,
but pick number 432, LCI International.
There's some phone calls I get here in Southern Belle,
I have caller ID deluxe,
and there's some phone calls I get that Willtel
and cable and wireless, they don't transmit the telephone number,
but LCI International, 432, transmits it.
Or I'll get a phone call where Willtel transmits it,
and LCI and cable and wireless won't.
So it's kind of, you know,
I don't know if it's the central office, the switching system,
if there's a break somewhere.
I think what you're discovering is these little gaps
in Willtel's and cable and wireless's long-distance networks,
where they might not have full SS7 connectivity
all over the country, or from all over the country.
So I think what you're discovering are these little gaps
in availability of SS7.
Okay, another quick question.
I heard through rumor,
I'm trying to hopefully get the facts from you,
that ANI, within a few years, or ANI or whatever,
the operators will start passing on the ANI
into either 800 numbers or a local phone call,
because right now, when you place a collect call
using Willtel 105.550, the area code number,
that transmits your telephone number.
Right.
Also, if you use a Willtel calling card,
you could be anywhere in the country, including Canada,
and it would transmit your ANI using a calling card.
But using any other company, cable and wireless, LCI, whatever,
the information is not passed.
Well, we just mentioned about half an hour ago,
we were someone in Pennsylvania receiving a call from a jail.
Okay.
And obviously that was a zero-plus call with operator assistance.
Correct.
And caller ID information was passed.
Okay.
And that was a zero-plus call.
They weren't using Willtel?
We don't know what...
It was a local call, so they couldn't have been using Willtel.
Yeah.
Okay.
But I think it's pretty obvious what we're moving towards.
We're moving towards a system where every call made
is identified before it gets picked up.
I mean, that's obviously what the intent is.
Every zero-plus call, every long-distance call, every local call.
And it's going to be harder and harder to block that.
But we have to fight and make sure that that right still exists.
Their pick is 833.
I go to a payphone down the street, a regular Southern Bell payphone,
and dial 10833 and zero my area code number locally,
and within the same ladder, and it's a local telephone call
that you usually drop a quarter in and place a phone call,
and that transmits a name and telephone to my caller ID box
from a payphone, say, down the street.
But if I use Southern Bell to place a collect call,
the same thing using BTI to place a collect call,
that information is not passed.
The local phone company doesn't send out that information, but BTI does.
Well, I think it's a matter of time before they all do.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's what we're moving towards.
Well, you know, there's a lot of different...
April 12th, which is, if I'm correct today,
caller ID should have been passed.
There was a federal mandate that April 12th,
nationwide caller ID is supposed to be...
Yeah, I've heard that that's been postponed,
and I've also heard that it's already working,
so it depends really who you talk to,
but I guess the best way is to experiment,
and that's what we'll do over the next week.
We'll experiment to see who's getting numbers and from where.
But we're out of time now,
so we weren't able to get a statement from Bernie S.
I did get in touch back with the office,
and they said that the sound quality was just too poor.
There was too much noise going on back there.
We'll try again next week to work it out somehow,
either on a tape delay or live,
so we can hear directly from Bernie S,
and maybe he can tell us more details to this story
that we weren't able to get to tonight.
Until then, thanks, Fiber, for being here
and answering questions and things.
This is Emanuel Goldstein saying goodnight for this week.
Be back with another edition of Off The Hook next week.
Until then, take care, stay free, goodnight.
The telephone keeps ringing
So I rip it off the wall
I cut myself while shaving
Now I can't make a call
Couldn't get much worse
But if they could, they would
Bundling it on for the best it's worth
I hope that's understood
Bundling it, go!
Good evening.
In the news tonight, 50 years after his death,
we look at the legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Did members of the American Communist Party
spy for the U.S.S.R.?
And in New York, dozens of students are arrested at City College,
while students at Rutgers are maced during a protest there.
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, April 12, 1995.
First to Washington for the Pacifica National News.
Palestinian police today have continued their arrest of Muslim militants
with as many as 300 behind bars.
A Hamas leader has demanded that Yasser Arafat end arrests,
stop the disarmament campaign, and end negotiations with Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel today announced
it's sealing off all the occupied territories for Passover week.
Peretz Kadron has more from Jerusalem.
The festival closure is routine.
It assumes that when businesses are closed for the Jewish holiday,
Palestinians have no cause to come into Israel.
So it's better to keep them out
and forestall terror attacks during this time.
The 10-day closure will keep Palestinian laborers
away from jobs and paychecks in Israel,
further worsening the already desperate plight of the Palestinian population.
Economic hardship is compounded by political strife,
as Palestinian police require registration within one month of all guns,
warning that unlicensed guns will be confiscated.
The move is a belated attempt to salvage faltering peace talks
by reassuring Israel that Palestinian authorities
are acting against the armed Islamist militias
that oppose the peace process
and take credit for bomb attacks on Israeli targets.
But observers doubt that disarming the macho youngsters
who brandish their guns on Gaza streets
will affect the tight-knit little groups
that plan and execute the bomb attacks.
From Jerusalem, this is Peretz Kadron for Pacifica Network News.
Chrysler's largest shareholder today made a surprise bid
to buy all the rest of the auto company's stock.
The $22.8 billion offer is the second-largest takeover bid in U.S. corporate history,
surpassed only by KKR's successful $25 billion offer for RJR Nabisco in 1989.
Oregon's Court of Appeals has upheld a state law
that prevented anti-homosexual measures from taking effect in cities and counties.
Two dozen cities and counties in Oregon have passed anti-gay rights ordinances.
Today's ruling found that Oregon state lawmakers
have the power to override local government actions concerning sexual orientation.
President Clinton today spoke at ceremonies
marking the 50th anniversary of the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I wish President Roosevelt were here.
I wish President Roosevelt were here.
I wish he were just sort of on our shoulder
to deride those who are cynical, those who are skeptical,
those who are negative, and most of all,
those who seek to play on fears to divide us.
This country did not get here
by permitting itself to be divided at critical times
by race, by religion, by region, by income, you name it.
Roosevelt is viewed as the author of the policy
that government should step in to help the everyday American,
a philosophy that is now under attack.
The Wall Street Journal today released its annual report on executive compensation.
The top moneymakers, Carl Reichardt of Wells Fargo,
who received direct compensation of $16.4 million,
and James Cain of Bear Stearns received $14.6 million,
including a bonus of $14.4 million,
the largest bonus found in the Wall Street Journal survey.
A federal judge has ruled that a reported confession
by a daughter of Malcolm X cannot be used against her at trial.