49% of Americans feel things are going in the right direction.
That's the variable that does not vary very much.
1,180 likely voters chose a 5% vote.
You have an absolute cafeteria of voters.
You can choose almost any flavor, any size you want.
It's still early, although getting later.
When the Democrats hold their national convention in Chicago,
there'll be plenty of conventional wisdom on the airwaves,
but not on unconventional coverage.
I'm Norman Solomon.
And I'm Julie Likes.
Direct from Chicago, you'll hear voices and views
that rarely make it into the mainstream media.
Tune in to unconventional coverage.
Unconventional coverage, August 26th through 30th,
on this radio station.
Well, it's really beginning here.
Tuesday, August 27th at 2 p.m.
and only on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
And it's eight o'clock at night on Tuesday.
This is WBAI New York time for Off the Hook.
People think it's all about raids and prison and large fines
payable to the federal government.
But what they forget is the pleasure of it.
Otherwise, we wouldn't do it.
After all, we're not stupid.
At least, we're not that stupid.
I chose khaki.
Khaki.
You hear they hacked the defense department?
Not the defense department, the Department of Justice.
Yeah, what do you think of that?
That must have been why when I was riding on over here
the American flag was at half-staff at the Empire State Building.
The American flag of the Empire State Building was at half-staff?
Yeah, that must be why.
I didn't know that.
Where is the American flag on the Empire State Building?
The one that hangs right over the entrance that says Empire State Building.
Oh, gosh, I don't go that way, so I don't see it.
Wow.
Well, there are flags at half-staff all over the place
because of the plane crash.
Oh, is that why?
That's why the Empire State Building four weeks later or three weeks later would be doing that.
Oh, okay.
I don't know, maybe.
Who knows?
The Empire State Building always does weird things.
They always go strange colors for strange reasons.
Yeah.
They ought to light it in blacklight one night, you know?
I think that would be really cool.
That would be neat.
Yeah.
So you have the Department of Justice webpage there, don't you?
Yeah.
It's quite a mess, a big mess.
Somebody told me to connect to it, and by the time I got to it, it was too late.
But I do have a copy of it.
And, in fact, we're going to be putting a copy of it on our webpage at 2600.
So if you check that in the next day or so, you should see the uncensored version of what it is that they said.
Because that copy I gave you, which came off MSNDC's website, is censored.
All the naughty words aren't in it.
How do you hack a website, Barber?
Well, you'd hack a website the same way you'd hack any other site,
only you'd locate the actual HTML files and change them with something more interesting.
But how do you get in?
What, you mean in general?
Yeah, how do you get in?
Are they logging in somehow through the web, or are they logging into the actual machine?
Oh, no, they're actually logging into the machine.
So they actually call the Defense Department computer a DOJ computer.
Well, perhaps.
I mean, in the past, in fact, not too distant past,
there have been security holes in various web tools that people use on their websites.
So it's not entirely impossible to gain access to a particular Unix machine on the net through their website.
Hmm.
Are there any hints you can give to people running websites that this embarrassing thing does not happen to them?
Well, I mean, this kind of thing can always happen.
I mean, if somebody wants publicity, I think people are going to start putting two and two together.
They said, the Department of Justice had this wonderful quote saying that
the only way to really prevent this is to just make it inaccessible.
Yeah.
I think that's a bit extreme, don't you?
I mean, can't they have some security in place that makes it a little bit...
Well, they could make it a bit better.
I think the only way to really make it foolproof is to get rid of all the fools.
Yeah, I think so.
I think that's one way to do it.
But, you know, who are the fools here, the administrators?
What could they have done to prevent this?
Well, I mean, in most cases, if you look at a cross-section of the whole problem,
there's a problem on the part of the administrators who are just too lazy or too ill-adapted at dealing with security practically.
On the other hand, there's also to blame the vendors, actual people that sell them the products and so on.
So what products are notoriously insecure?
Notoriously insecure?
Yes.
Well, if you want to talk in terms of Unisys, you think that'll catch on as a new word?
Unisys?
Unisys. More than one Unix.
Okay, I get it. I thought you were saying Unisys or something.
No. Oh, yeah, we'll go back to Unixes then.
Unix-i, I would think.
Unix-i, really?
I don't know.
Okay. Well, fairly recently there have been...
Unix-systems.
Unix-systems?
Yes.
Okay.
There have been a slew of security holes in your favorite operating system, Linux.
Linux.
Linux, Linux, the guy's name is Linus or Linus or whatever you want to say.
Linux.
Linux.
Whatever, whatever.
Whichever it is.
The L word.
The L-NUX operating system, okay?
Okay.
And there have been a whole slew of security holes ranging from being able to use mount and umount to get root and all kinds of embarrassing things like that.
That is pretty embarrassing.
Yeah, I'd say if I was somebody who was putting my name on a product like that, I'd be pretty embarrassed.
Right.
Linus, if you're out there, you have some explaining to do.
But fiber at 2600.com.
Yeah.
That's where to address it to.
So, yeah, I mean something like that you can't necessarily foresee.
I mean all the administrators in the world who, you know, if they weren't actually sitting down knocking around the operating system with all their spare time.
And that's not something they're going to find by accident.
Right.
So something like that, it's more or less a first-come, first-served basis.
Who's going to find out the information first before the people that can use it for bad are going to find it out.
So, I mean, it's sort of a tug of war on security.
Now, is this thing that they did on DOJ, is that going to be something that's going to happen again?
I see it as something that's going to occur, I think it's going to recur frequently.
I mean if you recall the hacker's movie site.
Right.
That was hacked.
Right.
Was it the same basic thing that they did?
Well, it's the same modus operandi of getting into the machine and changing the HTML and the graphics files.
And if a site happens to be particularly popular or politically motivated, it's going to serve somebody, obviously they're going to have a purpose in wanting to do this.
They're going to get themselves a lot of publicity.
And if nothing else, make the people that they hacked into look very foolish.
Yes, yes.
I'm very angry too.
I believe you have some quotes there.
Some DOJ people saying that it's a rather serious matter in their eyes.
Yes, like you were saying about the only way to make a site foolproof is to make it not available to the public.
They seem to firmly believe in that.
And, of course, as the largest law firm in the nation, I didn't know they thought of themselves as a law firm.
No, you're quoting the hacked website.
Oh, really?
Yes, why don't you read that.
Okay, as the largest law firm in the nation, the Department of Justice serves to punish all who don't agree with the moral standards set forth by President Bill, in parentheses, Clinton.
It's close to what they say, but it's not word for word.
Anything and anyone different must be jailed.
Yes, I think they do say that.
Yes.
But, yes, it was really a very political thing.
And for that reason, I kind of like it because it's something with a message.
These aren't people who just went and vandalized a website.
Right.
They actually had something in mind.
You may not agree with everything they say, but at least somebody put a little bit of thought into this.
Yes, the Nazi flag.
Yes, that's very offensive to a lot of people, but it definitely gets home a point that they're trying to make as far as the dangers of these freedom curtailments that are taking place now.
Well, I liked on your site where you have the Secret Service news, where you first open up the page, the first thing you get is the old Nazi Schutzstaffel SS.
Not many people recognize that, actually.
Really?
Yes.
I'm pretty sure the Secret Service does because I'm sure they've become familiar with it over the years.
People don't recognize that. That's kind of scary.
Speaking of the Secret Service, a couple of things.
First of all, before Bernie S. calls, hopefully he'll be able to call tonight.
He sort of vanished, and we're not sure what became of him.
But last week we were talking to Rob Bernstein, who is a reporter that made the mistake of faxing him, faxing Bernie S. a story.
And as a result, Bernie S. got thrown into maximum because receiving a fax, apparently, is some sort of a crime that nobody knew about.
Well, what happened since then, Bernie had been found guilty of a class 1 offense, which is equivalent to murder, while he was in a minimum security prison.
So what they did was they sent him back to max. He served 19 days out of a 10-day sentence of that.
And then he filed an appeal. Well, the appeal was turned down very quickly.
He then filed a grievance because he didn't think he was being treated fairly.
Now, when you file a grievance, there's all kinds of repercussions, and the repercussions started almost immediately.
I was on the phone with him when this happened, in fact.
He was handed a notice saying that he was found to be in violation of the policy saying how many books and magazines he could have.
Oh, I violated that plenty of times.
Yeah, but all of his material was about to be confiscated.
And this happened while I was on the phone. They handed him a piece of paper saying this.
So we had someone come down to visit him this weekend so that they could take the material from him.
And apparently there were a few more pieces that he was, I guess, going to give to other prisoners or something.
And he was called into an office at, I think, 8 o'clock on Sunday, which was the deadline he was given by the end of Sunday.
And they said that you still haven't complied with this, so therefore we're writing you up for a class 2 offense.
Not quite as bad as murder, but definitely something that's not looked upon nicely when parole comes up, which it really should have by now.
So he said, it's 8 o'clock. The day is not over yet.
And they said, well, we consider the day to be over now.
Basically, they just say whatever they say goes.
So they said, look, if you plead guilty to this, we promise not to send you back to Max.
And he said, I'm not going to plead guilty to this because I didn't do it.
I'm not guilty of it. I still have four hours to take care of this.
And they said, fine, but if we find a single thing, anything, in the time ahead, we will definitely send you back to Max.
So basically, they are totally screwing around with him, and they will do anything they can to hurt him at this point.
And for what? Because he's, I don't know. Why?
I guess individuals really stand out to the degree where you want to hurt them when you're a prison official.
But the thing that really gets me is that a reporter recently was talking to Secret Service agent Tom Barney.
And one of the things that Barney said was, so how is Ed doing anyway?
You know, this fake concern, how is Ed doing?
I mean, damn it, this guy knows how he's doing.
He sent him to federal, well, first he sent him to federal prison. That wasn't good enough.
Then he sent him to this other barbaric place.
I mean, I think he's got a pretty good idea how he's doing.
And I think they also hear the things that we're saying week after week here.
So to kind of divorce yourself from all the crap that's happened as a direct result of your actions,
I think stinks almost as much as the actions themselves.
So that's the way they're trying to get out of this, by feigning ignorance.
It's just not going to wash.
We have some knowledge of our own.
We found out that that very same Secret Service agent, Tom Barney,
has been assigned to President Clinton's detail in Chicago next week at the Democratic Convention.
And it's going to be very interesting because I happen to know there's going to be quite a few protesters at some point.
And, you know, it's going to be a first.
The first time ever that a president at a convention has protesters around him,
but the people protesting him are protesting the Secret Service agent that's guarding him instead.
That's kind of interesting, don't you think?
Yeah, I think that's probably one of the first times that a Secret Service agent is going to be recognized on spot.
That's right. And he will be recognized.
I know he doesn't like to have his picture taken.
I know that was like the heart of most of this, that Secret Service agents had their pictures taken.
Well, guess what?
When you're this famous, you're going to have your picture taken an awful lot.
Just look for the guy picking his nose, right?
Right. Well, actually, I don't think it was Barney that was doing it.
Oh, really?
Who knows? We'll find out all his little habits and he'll be on national television.
He'll be everywhere.
But if you're going to Chicago, if you're going to be part of the convention,
or if you know people in Chicago, please spread the word about this.
You have the right to protest things that you think are unfair.
And if this isn't unfair, I'd like to know what is.
So Tom Barney will be part of that, part of the Secret Service detail.
And I think they're staying at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago.
That's not confirmed. I'm pretty sure that's true.
And they'll be doing all kinds of presidential things.
So it's very important that people know about this.
They don't forget.
And don't forget to remind the people that are guilty in this regard.
It's not going to end.
When this whole ordeal is over, people aren't just going to forget about this.
I was looking at the mail.
You know, Bernius has this email account.
And it was simply incredible.
The amount of mail he was getting and from where it's coming.
He got mail from Bosnia.
He was getting mail from all the continents, countries everywhere.
I mean, this guy is known all over the place.
And, you know, one of the things that the Secret Service,
actually Barney said this to a reporter,
was that he believes that the hacker community is taking advantage of Bernius.
You know, making him a martyr.
Sort of using him for their own purposes.
And you have to wonder what kind of mentality would come up with something like that
after what they've done to him.
I mean, you know, if that's not taking advantage of somebody,
I'd sure like to know what is.
You know, to send someone who hasn't even done anything that any of us would consider a crime,
to send them to prison for up to two years in the most squalid of conditions.
And then just go around asking, so, how's he doing?
You know, it's pretty sick.
Okay, we're supposed to hear from Bernius soon.
I hope he calls in.
We were supposed to hear from him last night, actually, and he suddenly disappeared.
So, I don't know.
I don't know.
That happens sometimes.
Sometimes it doesn't mean anything.
Sometimes it means something bad has happened.
So, we'll just keep an eye on the phones and see what happens there.
What else is going on?
There's some sort of a virus.
Actually, I'm going to give this story to you,
because you can sort of cut through the gibberish there.
There's a computer virus scheduled to go off on Thursday called the hair virus.
You haven't heard about this, have you?
No, I haven't.
You could be infected, because people who download lots of pictures on the net
apparently are the prime targets here.
From Usenet news groups, things like that.
Pictures?
Yeah.
I see a lot of worried looks around here.
Yes.
I don't know how they're able to infect you this way,
but apparently some clever person someplace figured it out.
Well, I heard, I don't know how true this is,
but in the past I'd heard that in the newer version of the GIF format
that there was a way that people could supposedly encode commands into,
but I dismissed it as utter nonsense.
It does seem like utter nonsense.
I mean, you're viewing something.
It's like looking at a document.
Well, the thing is that it depends on how the picture's interpreted.
I know that there was an undocumented feature that was found in the newer GIF standard.
I think it was GIF 89, if I'm not mistaken.
Okay.
And it contained a way to play back multiple slides,
so you could actually have a single image file containing multiple images.
Of course, your viewer would have to know this
and know how to play them back in sequence,
but I've never seen any evidence that would actually allow you to encode data
that would be executed at some point as commands.
So it looks like that the virus is highly dependent on that fact,
so it could be either that's true or it's just a panic smoke screen.
Well, it looks like a lot of people are worried.
Well, yeah, I guess they would be because a lot of people look at pictures.
Right, and it's not just that.
It's all kinds of other binary.
In fact, they say that it started on a news group about decoding viruses,
and somebody posted this to decode,
and then someone else posted it to other news groups,
and I don't know, it just sort of got out of control.
It's supposed to happen on Thursday and then a month from now as well.
Yeah.
It says over here that the following messages will—
infected machines will display the following messages before the virus launches.
It says, HD euthanasia by demon emperor,
and it says Hare Krishna spelled wrong,
and it says this three times like a chant, I suppose.
Maybe it also sings to you while it's doing it.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, it's just amazing what—
they don't give any specifics.
All it says is that the virus crashes most machines that it infects,
which isn't particularly descriptive.
Well, I think it crashes them before it actually goes off.
I think that's a clue.
That's an indication.
Yeah.
So if your machine is crashing a lot, who knows?
Who knows what you have there?
It's kind of a scary thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
We've got other news items as well.
I've got something fun.
Actually, you know what?
Let's do this now.
This is something I've been wanting to do for a little bit of time now,
and I think if we can do this before Bernie S. calls,
the time is just about right.
Yes, it's time for another edition of Confuse the Operator.
But in this particular case,
we are not going to be confusing an operator so much
as we're going to be trying to confuse a machine.
But, you know, it's pretty much the same thing these days.
If you find an operator, it's kind of a rarity.
So machines, operators, doesn't really make much of a difference anymore.
Let's see who's out there.
Oh, we've got the friendly dial tone.
So what we're going to do is call a certain 800 number.
And I have to say that if you can translate these little beeps,
more power to you.
Here we go.
Thank you for calling Chase.
Wait a minute.
Hold on, I got the wrong number here.
Got the wrong number.
Hold on, hold on.
Okay, I'm sorry about that.
You know what?
I'm looking at my Visa, actually my MasterCard here.
Is it a MasterCard card or is it MasterCard?
I think it's just a MasterCard.
Okay, but I mean it's not a Visa.
It's a card, but they don't call it Visa card.
Well, it used to be a MasterCharge card.
I don't know.
Whatever it is, I was looking at the back of it,
and they have the Spanish number first.
Really?
You know, I see the point of all those, like, you know,
scared Republicans out there.
You know, we have to take control and make it illegal to do that
because look, we're totally confused here.
Threw us off base totally.
So let's call the English version.
Here we go.
English version of that number.
And we'll see how much fun this can be.
They sure do print those numbers tiny, don't they?
Here we go.
Thank you for calling Chase card member services.
If you are calling from a touch-tone phone, please press 1 now.
If you are calling from a rotary phone, please say 1 now.
You see, you can't not deal with that anymore.
In order to receive faster service from the next available
Chase customer service representative,
please clearly speak each digit of your account number.
You see what I mean?
Okay.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Thank you.
Please stay on the line for customer service assistance.
To ensure the quality of the service we provide,
your call may be monitored or recorded.
Now, I don't know if they got any of that.
Hey, that's the music from the commercial.
I'm curious what they saw, if they saw anything.
I think they're scratching their heads now, wondering what they have.
Thank you for calling Chase card member services 24-hour service center.
All of our representatives are assisting other customers.
Please hold for the next available representative.
She sounds like she's in a vacuum tube.
Now, why do they do that?
Why do they put you on hold and then make it seem as if you're getting somewhere,
and then they just give you a recording saying you're still on hold,
and then they play the same music all over again?
Well, your call is valuable to them.
How valuable is it?
They're paying for it, so I don't know.
And, you know, I kind of wish they'd play another tune.
All right, we're going to let this go through like one chorus,
but we're not going to stay on here forever.
You can confuse that guy a lot more if you actually give a valid number.
So I didn't say one, and he still prompted me to continue.
So I don't think he's really looking for one.
I think he's just looking for anything you say.
Not unlike those information operators.
Yeah.
Must be a lot of people calling Chase tonight.
Pleasant, isn't it?
All right, well, I've had enough of this, so let's just call an end to this.
Too bad that they took so long.
Okay, we have Bernie S. calling in,
so we're going to hang up on Citibank, or whatever it is.
Chase, Citibank, all the same thing.
Let's see if Bernie S. is there.
Good evening.
AT&T has a collect call from Bernie S.
at the Butch County Men's Community Correctional Center.
To refuse this call, hang up.
If you accept this call, do not use three-way or call waiting features,
or you will be disconnected.
To accept this call, dial 1 now.
Thank you.
Bernie S.
Yes, I'm here.
How are you?
I've been better.
Yes, well, I certainly know that.
We've just been talking about your case a little bit,
and some of the tribulations that have been going on this week,
and we noticed also that the recording is a little bit different.
You're now calling from the, what was it again?
From the Pennsylvania Butch County Men's County Correctional Center.
It's a mouthful.
I guess I haven't spoken to you on the air for several weeks.
It's been a while.
But I was finally, well after my parole eligibility date came and went,
finally sent over to the minimum security facility.
Apparently it was a maximum security,
because they think somebody who would plead no contest to removing batteries
from a touchdown gun might be, I think, a menace to society,
which is what I was charged with.
So I remained in maximum security up until roughly, I guess about a month ago.
And I was transferred to minimum security, which is where I am now.
But three weeks after I was here,
I was sent back to maximum security for an alleged misconduct.
Actually, we've gone over that whole story.
We have.
We talked about it last week, and we talked about it again this week a little bit.
Unfortunately, I'm not able to pick up your program down here near Philadelphia.
Right.
So I was found guilty of someone sending me a fax,
and that appeal was denied.
And now I'm sending a grievance to the warden.
Right.
We also mentioned the fact that the reading material problem
and the other things that they're harassing you with.
Yeah, right after I requested this grievance form,
within an hour my cell was being shaken down by guards,
and I was written up for having contraband,
the contraband being more than five books or magazines.
And I'm a voracious reader.
Apparently they believe having more than five books or magazines is, again,
a danger to someone somehow.
So I was written up for that.
I was given until this past weekend to have them removed from my cell.
I had some visitors over the weekend on Sunday who I gave all the books to.
I still had some of the magazines,
and I was planning on giving them to other inmates
or throwing them out by the end of the day on Sunday,
which is what the contraband shakedown form indicated I had to do.
Well, around 9 o'clock on Sunday evening I was called into the lieutenant's office
and told that I was officially being found guilty of this misconduct
of having access to books or magazines.
And I tried to explain to him that I planned to get rid of them
before the end of the day, and it was only 9 o'clock, not midnight yet.
And he said, well, he didn't buy that explanation,
and he was finding me guilty.
So I have appealed that decision.
And my concern, I mean, I wouldn't care about these petty things so much,
except they have ramifications.
Ramifications are that it could affect my parole,
that these misconducts keep occurring on my record.
And these aren't misconducts like possessing drugs or weapons
or anything that would endanger any person or people or property
or the security of the institution, but having books.
So it's a sad state of affairs,
and I hope this doesn't have to go to the court level, but it may have to.
Well, I just hope it doesn't happen to any more people,
and I hope it stops happening to you real soon.
Apparently it's not happening to other people.
Having more than five books or magazines is not an uncommon occurrence here.
Well, I was referring to the whole escapade that you're going through.
Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah.
I do believe I'm being targeted in here.
There are a lot of other inmates here who have more than five books or magazines.
And up until this recent incident regarding my getting a fax from a reporter
who was covering my story,
they really didn't pay an awful lot of attention to me
as far as getting written up for any kind of misconduct, which I hadn't been.
But now all of a sudden, having books or magazines is of great concern to them,
and I've been, I believe, harassed since that incident.
Well, I mean, it seems pretty obvious that they consider you somebody
with individual spirit, and that that must be crushed.
I think they're trying to break that spirit,
but apparently they don't know me well enough to realize that that's something that can't be done with me.
Yeah, well, I mean, we're not dealing with rational way of thinking here.
No, it's difficult. I try to explain my situation to other people,
and unless you've gone through this before,
it's very difficult to comprehend living in an environment
where logic and reason are not part of the equation whatsoever.
Fairness is not a consideration.
I don't think the people here are capable of logic.
They just don't use it in their decision-making process.
Well, the logic they use is alien to most free-thinking people.
You ever see the film Cool Hand Luke?
Oh, yeah. What we have here is a failure to communicate.
Yeah, well, it's interesting.
What they did to him after he tried to escape,
which I guess is the equivalent of what you try to do mentally,
was just harass him in all kinds of different ways.
For instance, telling him to dig a huge hole and then having another warden come up and saying,
you know, what's all this dirt doing in my yard? Put it back.
And then they come back to him and say, what's this dirt doing in my hole?
And they just keep that up for a few days until he totally loses all his spirit.
At least they think he does.
But in the end, he proves to be triumphant.
Of course, they kill him in the end, but that's not the real point.
Thanks for bringing that up, Ivor.
No, but I'm sure everybody in that prison has a sense of just how the guards do that to you.
Yeah, before being sent back to maximum security, I had been on community service detail,
which even though I was not sentenced to perform any community service,
I was told that I was required to do three weeks of manual labor out in the fields.
And that consisted of digging ditches and scrubbing toilets and other menial manual work.
And when I was sent back to maximum security,
and then after serving 19 days in maximum security on a 10-day sentence,
which is ultimately what I received,
when I got back here, I was told that I would have to perform an additional three weeks of manual labor,
which I'd already fulfilled a month ago.
So it's very frustrating, and it seems like it can't be a coincidence
that all these things point towards a series of actions that are consistent with trying to break one's spirit.
And I'm just trying to fight as best I can.
I'm not going to give up.
And again, my main concern is the repercussions of these misconduct reports,
and that is it could affect my staying here.
It could force me to stay here an additional nine months,
because the state parole board considers anyone who's had a misconduct written up about
that they're required to spend an initial nine months in prison.
Well, hopefully they look at what the misconduct actually is.
Receiving the facts, you said it was equivalent to murder, right?
Well, not in your eyes or my eyes or your listeners' eyes, probably.
But it was categorized as a—it's complicated.
It was categorized—I was charged with violating a Class I misconduct, Section 40.
Section 40 is a failure to comply with a community service agreement.
The only community service agreement that I made or signed just said that I would do this community service work for three weeks.
That's considered voluntary, this community service work,
and their definition of voluntary is that if you don't do it, you get sent back to maximum security prison.
So I decided to volunteer.
But the language in the misconduct report simply stated that this fax was sent to me,
and it did not say that I had failed to comply with any community service agreement,
other than just in the initial title of it.
That's what it said.
They did say I, under community service agreement rules D and E,
which are actually community service rules, which would be rule number 49,
failure to follow rules in the inmate handbook.
And rules D and E in the inmate handbook between the community service are
you will not visit with friends or family at the work site,
and you will not use the telephone at the work site to call friends or family.
And the other E is—or D, rather, is failure to perform any task as directed by my supervisor.
But, again, interestingly, in the language of the misconduct report,
it said nowhere that I had failed to perform any task as directed by my supervisor
or that I had used the telephone to contact anyone, let alone a friend or family member.
But my appeal was turned down with that explanation.
When my attorney spoke to the superintendent of the institution last week,
he was informed by this gentleman, Mr. Henderson, that he didn't have to talk to him.
And my attorney said, well, he would have to talk to him in court,
so it might be better if you talk to him now.
So the superintendent advised me to go through the grievance process,
which I'm going through now.
And which has its repercussions for you.
Certainly.
You know, as soon as I requested a grievance form,
my cell was being checked again, and I was written up for having books and magazines.
So there's always a cause-and-effect relationship to things that happen in prison.
Now, Farber, you were in prison a couple of years ago. Does that sound familiar?
Yeah, it sounds all too familiar.
Obviously, the means and methods that they're using on Ed weren't nearly as extreme in my case,
but it sounds like it's for a lot of the same reasons, and they did some of the same things.
I came under scrutiny for having too many books and magazines numerous times.
Farber, did it take you a while to actually believe that there was a cause-and-effect relationship?
It took me many months to finally come to the conclusion that that's what was going on.
I refuse to believe, and I'm still an idealist by heart,
but I refuse to believe that people could be that petty for just requesting a form or something,
or having a book or an extra book would result in some sort of punishment, either formal or informal.
But I can come to no other conclusion at this point.
It's been such a clear pattern at this point.
Did it take you a while to come to that conclusion, or did it hit you right away?
Well, it didn't take a whole long amount of time to figure it out.
I mean, I certainly didn't really understand it immediately,
but after about maybe a month or so, or two months after being there,
I kind of got used to the fact that if you remember in federal prison,
if you have problems with things, you can choose to file BP-9s, 10s, and 11s.
Yes, the old cop-out forms.
Why do they call them cop-out forms, by the way? I've always wondered that.
Oh, why they call them cop-out? I think there's a psychological reason.
I think they want the prisoner to believe that they're copping out to something.
I could never figure out why they called them cop-outs, but that was the official definition of them.
Yeah, there's a whole strange administrative prison lingo going on,
and some of it is obviously psychological.
But in your talking about the repercussions of filing grievances,
it made me think of when people told me that I shouldn't file the BP-9s and things like that,
because they would screw with me even more, which I was finding kind of hard to believe,
because I was being screwed with on a regular basis for a number of things,
like having to blow snow late at night in the middle of a blizzard,
and having to pick up garbage in parking lots and things like that.
Yeah, it sounds familiar.
I remember having to pick up cigarette butts all around the grounds of the institution.
I was in a medium-max security facility with high razor wire fences around me,
but there were a couple of days where I was told I had to pick up cigarette butts all along the grounds,
and it was pretty unpleasant.
But, I mean, it could have been worse. Now I'm digging ditches.
Well, it's really a crazy story that we keep hearing week after week,
and we just hope that the pain and suffering at some point in the very near future comes to an end,
as it should have done a long time ago.
Manuel, can you tell me if you were able to find that information I asked of you yesterday?
Actually, yeah, we looked into the information that you asked about,
and the result is, yeah, but not now, in the past.
In other words, this person was, but is not now?
Exactly.
And you're certain of that, or you got that directly from the source?
Yes, that is a fact.
Okay, that's what I wanted to find out. Thank you.
Everybody else who heard that just disregards some gossip that was spreading back and forth.
Okay, to give out the phone number, 212-279-3400,
if people want to call in with their experiences, anything they want to say to Bernie, perhaps,
anything you want to say to Fiber or myself?
Fiber, I just got my 9X calling card in the mail, and I'm amazed by this.
What is with these people at 9X?
They're the biggest bunch of boneheads I think I've ever seen.
They just sent me a card, right?
Now, basically, it's bad enough that they used my phone number, okay,
and then put four digits at the end of it,
unlike all the other ones that put 14 random digits so people can't guess it.
But they used to send the card that had the pin on it.
Now they send me a card that has everything except the pin on it.
I know my phone number.
They don't have to send me a card that just has my phone number on it.
What's the point?
It doesn't make any sense.
So I have this card now that has my phone number on it and a big magnetic strip,
which I've never, ever had the opportunity to use.
There's no phones that take magnetic strips near me.
So what gives?
Do you have any suggestions as to what else to do with this?
I guess put it in your matchbox or something.
Why do they do this?
Why didn't they print the card with the pin on it like they did before without a phone number?
No, because then if you lose the card, then they have to pin it.
Nobody knows what the phone number is, though.
Yeah, but it has your name on it.
Well, they don't have to put my name on it either.
You know, they don't have to do that.
In case you forget your name.
Yeah, there you go.
I can't figure these people out.
But I did get some good results from 9X.
You know how we're always complaining about those pay phones,
how they cut you off when you hit too many digits?
Right.
Well, there's the new ones that say they're cutting you off.
They say no additional dialing allowed, which we've complained long and hard about.
And they seem to have changed some of them to at least allow more,
although they should allow unlimited dialing of any sort.
But the old ones, in the middle of dialing, you know, a very unpredictable pattern.
They'll just simply make this little ding noise and then they'll get your dial tone back.
Yeah.
And then on top of that, when you get the dial tone back when you hang up the phone,
you have a dial tone.
Then when you pick up the phone, the dial tone goes away.
It sort of like reverses for a little while.
And you have to stand there like an idiot with your finger on the, whatever you call that thing.
Switch hook.
Switch hook, thank you.
And you have to stand there for like 10 seconds waiting for it to reset.
Yeah, you have to synchronize the switch hook.
It's the silliest thing.
So I made up my mind, okay?
There's this one phone on a corner that I use a lot.
And it was happening to me almost every time I used it.
And I was, you should have seen me, I was going hysterical on that corner.
People were staring at me.
And I just made it my life's mission.
No matter how many phone calls it took, I was going to get them to do something about this.
So I called repair not once, not twice, about four or five times.
And I just kept saying, look, this is the problem.
And, you know, I called before and I just made a real pest of myself.
And, you know, I went there a couple of days ago.
It's a brand new keypad on that thing.
And it works like a charm.
Wow.
So all they have to do, whenever you have that problem,
they have to replace the keypad with something or maybe the insides of the phone too.
And then it works.
Works beautifully.
Affirmative action.
Yeah, well, I guess that's one way of looking at it.
But they have to be prompted.
You have to constantly remind them to do this.
So this is then apparently a hardware problem with the phones?
It seems to be some sort of a design flaw of some sort because it happens to so many of them
that, you know, it seems to be something built into the switching, you know.
They're probably reluctant to go to replacing this mechanism in all the phones.
It's just only if you bother them a lot will they go to the trouble.
That's right.
You have to bother them a lot.
That's really what it boils down to.
Now, I saw a phone that had been totally ripped apart downtown over by 14th Street.
Somebody, I don't know what happened to it, but the inner mechanisms were visible.
And one of the things I saw inside was a little LCD screen.
Do you have any idea what that was, Fiber?
Oh, yeah, sure.
In fact, before they came out with the co-cut version of the 9X phones,
the newer phones that you couldn't red box on,
the ones made by, is that company Mars, I think, in New Jersey.
Mars, yes.
And they had a really, they had a small LCD screen inside that made it really easy
for the payphone service people to, for example, do simple tests on the phone,
take a tally of how much money is in the phone, and so forth.
That's what the screen is essentially for.
I see.
By the way, I left you some voicemail a couple days ago about this message I got from 9X
concerning me failing my ISDN.
Right, yeah, the loop qualification.
That's what I've been meaning to tell you.
They left me this message saying that I failed my ISDN, what was it again?
Loop.
Loop qualification, yeah.
Now, this is for a second ISDN line I've been trying to get.
Now, I already, I don't think they know I already have ISDN.
How could I fail the test?
No, well, it's on a line-by-line basis.
But they say I'm not going to get it now because I failed.
I did something.
No, you're not going to get it on that line.
You can ask them to do, see, the first step, whenever you order ISDN,
the very first step that's done is they do what's known as a loop qualification.
And what that is is that they test the attenuation of the line,
how much loss there is, what the quality of the actual copper is.
And on the particular line in question,
the line that they said the loop qualification failed for you,
the line quality outside isn't good enough quality to carry digital data.
Well, then they should change it, shouldn't they?
I mean, can't they change the cable pair or whatever?
I doubt they're going to run a fresh line all the way out to you just because.
But it's not my fault that the line is bad.
No, it's not your fault.
So why am I being penalized?
Well, I mean, that's their rules.
I mean, you could complain to a higher power.
That's their rules.
Their rules are if they have inferior equipment, I get to suffer.
That's their rules.
I mean, I try complaining.
In your case, I think to save yourself a lot of headache, you should probably complain.
Save myself headache?
This has been going on for six months.
I've already had the headache.
Well, save yourself further headache.
I don't think that's possible.
Okay, well.
I think I'm going to get a headache no matter what I do.
What I'd suggest then is if you want to complain about it, at the same time you complain,
order ISDN and convert a different line.
And they'll do a loop qualification on a different line.
I think they know what I was trying to do on that line.
I was trying to combine a little calling plan with something.
Yeah, right.
But, you know, I don't know.
It doesn't sound right to me.
It sounds very fishy the way you do it.
Well, if you could get somebody completely different, have them do a fresh loop qualification,
maybe the first one was really a ploy to discourage you.
Emmanuel, do you already have an ISDN line at that location?
Yes, I do.
Okay, so it's not a question of the distance being too far.
What's the customary distance limit?
It's 18,000 feet.
Okay.
Which is about what?
Apparently you're not more than 18,000 feet from the CO, central office.
No, it's not a problem.
No, I moved in next door to the CO to avoid these problems.
It's probably a defect or some minor, too much inductance or something on the line between.
It's not a problem with the other line you're having.
Or maybe possum are just chewing on the cable or something.
Exactly.
It's just something with the outside plant.
And I would think that, I don't know, there's probably no regulatory requirement that they have to fix a problem with a line to provide ISDN service.
Is that right, Fiber?
Yeah.
Like I said, I think what Emmanuel should do is, if nothing else, start off by calling the president's helpline.
Just get your name registered with a complaint.
Oh, my name is registered already.
It's up on a wall.
All right.
Let's throw darts at it, I think.
Let's take some phone calls.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Hi, guys.
It's a pleasure to be back with you.
Briefly, myself, I have a court date of my own to face tomorrow.
And I'm recovering from a suicide attempt, but I'm better.
Anyway, two things.
First, Bernie, how is your health?
Because I remember a while ago you had that bronchitis or whatever it was.
And are you eating regularly and exercising?
Have you lost a lot of weight?
You know, what's going on with that?
I'm in better health than I was then.
That went away some time ago.
Right now it's just my emotions and nerves that are being toyed with.
And that's arguably better or worse than a physical ailment.
Are they feeding you and are you maintaining your weight?
Yeah, that's somewhat better here at the Minimum Security Prison,
which I was just moved here to here last week.
It's the same food, but they prepare it a little better in larger quantities.
Well, I mean, fiber, no offense,
but Emanuel said near the end of your prison term
you were sort of imagining that they were putting drugs in your food
and you were sort of freaking out a bit.
So, Bernie, at least you haven't gotten to that point, right?
And you do when you're in this environment.
When did I say that?
No, no, no.
What a lot of us were wondering in prison
is if they were possibly slipping stuff into the food and the water
to make people more docile.
Okay.
But that's really, I mean, even, you know.
That sounds really paranoid, but for someone who's,
until you're in this situation and are subjected to all kinds of abuse
by the prison administrators, which seems to be universal,
you really begin to wonder these things.
I don't think it's really paranoia.
You really come to the point where you can reach no other conclusion
than to think X, you know.
And I think it's an experience everybody should go through,
not because I would wish it on anybody else,
but just to give everybody the insight of what really goes on in the criminal justice system.
It's appalling.
Well, I mean, tomorrow I have to ride the D train,
so that's as close as I want to come to that experience.
He's always putting down the D train.
No.
Always the D train.
No, no.
Oh, I was going to say, oh, yeah, Bernie,
so at this point is there sort of a minimum release date
or is everything like in flux?
My minimum release date was two and a half months ago.
I mean, no, as of now, that extra nine months at this point.
Oh, it's not been decided yet.
That's the other thing.
Because last week Emmanuel was saying you have like possibly two of those extra nine-month things
or is it just one?
No, just one at this point.
Oh, okay.
Well, if I get it, here's the thing.
This misconduct of having the extra books or magazines,
that's a Class 2 misconduct.
It's not classified as a Class 1 misconduct, which the receiving of fax was,
and it was in the same category as murder, assaulting an officer,
having a deadly weapon, that sort of thing.
I guess receiving a fax is considered to be just as,
even though it wasn't even one of the rules, they just said I used a telephone,
which wasn't true at all.
Do you still have that lawyer who a few months ago you were saying
really wasn't doing that much for you because you can't pay him anymore or something?
It's not that simple.
I still have him, and he spoke with prison administrators here last week
and basically said that if he doesn't see this resolved satisfactorily,
he will take this to federal court.
So he's working on my behalf.
He's not working on my behalf as much as he would or as much as any lawyer would
if I had a lot of money.
But given my financial circumstances.
What about someone like Ron Cooby and the late William Kunstler's organization?
Oh, that would be great.
It doesn't seem to have been much interest in my case
from various organizations like that.
I'll tell you what would really help at this point
is if we could get someone who has Lexis access,
legitimate Lexis access, because there are all kinds of court things,
and this is both in the case of Bernie and Kevin Mitnick.
Having access to those legal cases makes a big difference.
So Bernie, you're not being beaten or anything.
I mean, it hasn't gotten to that point.
No, at this point it's all mental torture.
I was never in a situation where I was physically deprived of medical care several times.
I'm worried about you.
I'm surviving.
Hopefully you'll be able to call the show every week.
Well, I hope so.
I get enough exercise.
I walk around the exercise track they have here.
You can do yoga and meditation in your cell, right?
I've tried that, although it's so noisy in the cell block.
It's very difficult to concentrate on.
Do you still have your television?
I got it back.
When I was sent back to maximum security,
it was not permitted to bring my television with me,
even though it was already approved by the first prison,
even though these prisons are right next to each other
and they're all operated by the same people.
That's part of the punishment.
You have to buy another television set.
But when I got sent back to minimum security again,
I had access to it.
So I have a television.
I really don't watch it that often because I'm a TV nut.
When you get out, I'm sure you can write sort of a brilliant,
sardonic, Holland Ellison type of satirical piece.
So all of this will be fuel when you're out.
This is a better book than I think any other Hacker story that has come out yet.
I have one last question.
I'll let someone else call for Fiber or Emmanuel.
What can you give me in terms of the lowdown
on these so-called voice-altering telephones
that they sell like the sharper image?
It says it can make your voice, if you're a man, sound like a woman.
But would that also fool like those voice identification things
like for auto-dial and stuff like that?
I've seen a few phones that do things like that.
Anything you're going to buy in the sharper image is a toy.
And you're going to be vastly overcharged for anything like that.
I can always tell.
Yeah, I mean, it's not.
The voices are actually scrambled.
They're not actually encrypted or securely altered in any way.
There's a lot of complicated things that go on with a human voice.
And if you simply change the pitch,
it's still going to sound like you, only the pitch is lower.
It's not going to change the inflections
or all the subtleties involved in human voice.
There's no way it can make a man sound like a woman
unless the guy's already a female person.
You can't go calling in bomb threats and expect not to be identified.
If the police had a recording of you using one of these things,
they can simply re-manipulate it back to its original form
based on how it sounds.
They'll know which kind of scrambler was used.
And they could bring it back to virtually its original form.
So they're all really bogus.
Have you ever heard of one, Fiverr, that sounded convincing?
I've played with a number of them.
I've actually even seen kits to build voice scramblers.
I mean, they're great for entertainment purposes.
Oh, yeah, they're funny.
But I've played with four or five different models
and built a couple of them from kits,
and I've never been able to get one that sounded like another person.
I always test them out on information operators,
and they never seem to fall for it.
They always know that's a fake voice.
Let's try to squeeze in another call or two.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Thank you for taking my call.
Can you give me some kind of information
about how I can get information on long-distance services
and telephone prepaid cards so you can get the best rate?
You're talking about long-distance services in general or just prepaid cards?
Yeah, for instance, at one point you had said Cable & Wireless
had a good rate for outside calling cards.
Well, they did.
It's pretty hard, if not impossible, to get that particular service,
referring to the 950 service they offer.
That's being phased out.
But there are those other services that claim to offer really, really cheap phone calls
for like $0.09 a minute, no matter what,
as long as you put a carrier access code in front of them.
I have not found anything wrong with those services yet.
I mean, they do seem to work.
They seem to do exactly what they say.
And the complaints I've heard about them seem to be the kinds of complaints
you hear about any phone company, you know,
slight billing errors or things like that.
Nothing really major.
So that's where I would look, you know, at this point in time
because the big players don't seem to be really interested in giving you a good deal.
Right.
And where would you get the names of those services or those companies?
Do you have back issues?
Basically, if you have a list of carrier access codes,
that gives you a list of phone companies.
Also, you can contact the Public Service Commission or the FCC,
and they have lists that they can give you as well.
Right. And with regard to the Public Service?
Well, Consumer Affairs, too, would have that list.
Consumer Affairs in New York?
Right.
Right. With regard to Public Service Commission,
would that be a place where you might be able to address your problem with NYNEX?
Yeah. If you say PSC to NYNEX, they generally work a lot faster.
I do intend on saying that.
Okay. And with regard to Ed, I mean, I can emphasize very tangentially with his difficulty.
Have you written to the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York
and some of the other, quote-unquote, civil rights or human rights organizations?
I have not. People have contacted them on my behalf.
I have brought up the various civil rights violations to prison administrators,
and apparently they completely disregard them,
even though I have plenty of federal case law,
which indicates that all inmates in a country,
which there's now 1.6 million at least, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Prisons.
And for the most part, you've been in state—I mean, not state—
Well, last year I was in federal prison,
and after that I was transferred into two county prisons in Pennsylvania.
There's county, state, and federal prisons. I've never been in a state prison before.
But you haven't been in any private institutions, have you?
I mean, should I say privately?
No, but one of the—the first one I went into last year when this whole ordeal started
is now privately owned and operated by Wackenhut Corporation.
Yeah, that's pretty scary. Those guys, those are mean people.
Yeah, they really are.
Listen, I'm sorry, we're out of time, sir. Thanks for the call.
Thank you so much, and I'll be back to you.
All right.
Have you looked into, Emanuel, the lowest—
what have you found to be the lowest-priced prepaid phone card?
I think that was one of the questions the last caller asked.
I haven't used prepaid phone cards, so I could not tell you.
I just haven't really played around with that at all.
The lowest price one I have ever been able to find was $0.18.
See, $0.18 a minute is too expensive for you.
It is too expensive, but for an emergency thing,
it's not as outrageous as some other fees, other cards you go.
There's no initial call fee, you know, like calling an 800 number.
All right, Bernie, I want to give out your email address again
for people to write to you, bernies at 2600.com.
We will forward the mail to you.
What's your new address at prison now?
My mail address is actually a better way to reach me.
I just recently got an email, but some of it was several months old,
so apparently there's something bottling up the works there.
But my mailing address here is,
send it to my attention, edcumming, C-U-M-M-I-N-G-S,
care of Bucks County, M-C-C-C, as in Mary, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.
And that's at 1730 Southeastern Road, E-A-S-T-O-N,
number C-6-B, as in Charlie 6 Bravo, that's my cell number.
And that is in Doylestown, D-O-Y-L-E-S-T-O-W-N-P-A,
and the zip code is 1-8-9-0-1.
You are permitted to send me books and magazines.
It helps if you're writing materials on the outside.
And actually, if anybody could send me some postage stamps,
that would be very helpful, because I don't have any,
and I can't get out of here to buy any.
They don't sell anything in this place.
So if anybody can send me a few postage stamps, I'll write them back.
Okay, great. Well, we'll talk to you again next week.
Thanks very much, and hang in there.
Thank you.
And that's something.
1.6 million prisoners, 1 in 132 Americans now in prison.
I think we're competing very closely with Russia.
And one week we have the lead, one week they have the lead.
It's a really crazy situation.
Anyway, we'll be updating that in weeks to come.
And we'll be back again next week with another edition of Off the Hook.
Until then, this is Emanuel Goldstein for FiberOptic. Good night.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
I couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
For Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, for Billy Bone.
I hope that's understood, for Billy Bone.
♪
Big feeling off the wall, dirt piling in the hall.