work to be done and we need your ideas we can't do it alone thanks Barbara
Fisher Tom Wayland and all of you out there for listening to we the people
good night
we are the drum night drum and we will be coming to you starting September 10th
on alternating late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning 330 a.m. to 6 a.m.
with news views and you we are the drum and you are the rhythm of the drum
it's just about eight o'clock time for off the hook
Oh
and a very good evening to everybody the program is off the hooks Emmanuel
Goldstein with you tonight and bringing up today and all the latest happenings
going on in cyberspace that's right computer hacking and phone
freaking and fun things like that here's a story from the Daily News which came
out a couple of days ago I think this sort of brings everything into
perspective an army soldier has been charged with espionage for allegedly
hacking into military computer systems and giving national defense secrets to
the Chinese yeah private Eric you know has been jailed since June 26 the
Fayetteville Observer Times has reported he could face life in prison if
convicted he was charged with espionage damaging military property larceny and
breaking into government computer systems according to army documents
obtained by the newspaper the charges alleged he gave secret computer passwords
relating to the national defense to a Chinese citizen that could mean just a
bout anything army officials released few details about the case and you know
was a member of the 35th signal brigade who worked with computers and
communications satellites at Fort Bragg you know his lawyer said the 20 year old
soldier was a patriot trying to show his superiors there were problems with an
expensive supposedly impenetrable system well that sounds familiar
yeah you know his family maintains that he was just trying to point out a
weakness in security and showed his superiors what he was doing and for that
he faces life in prison this is even this is even worse than Bernie S so we're
going to be looking into that story coming out of Fort Bragg in the weeks
ahead but better think twice before you go out to show the military that their
computer systems are insecure they may take it the wrong way speaking of taking
things the wrong way got our hands on the actual document that everybody has
been has been quoting in the media computer attacks at Department of
Defense pose increasing risks you know the old 250,000 hacker scenario here's
what it actually says estimates of the number of computer attacks are based on
vulnerability analysis and assessment program under this program defense
information security agency personnel attempt to penetrate computer systems of
various military service and defense agency sites via the Internet since the
program's inception in 1992 conducted 38,000 attacks on defense computer
systems to test how well they were protected he says successfully gained
access 65% of the time of the successful attacks only 988 or about 4% were
detected by the target organizations of those detected only 267 attacks or
roughly 27% were reported to DISA therefore only about one in 150
successful attacks drew an active defensive response from the
organizations being tested they used these numbers to calculate that there
must be 250,000 hackers out there and of those of those 65% were successful now
keep in mind these are these are Defense Department employees that are trying this
in the first place they know a few of the holes they know a few of the of the
defaults of the bugs things like that and it's just amazing they would
actually use this to to calculate how many real hackers there are and that
everybody would believe them 38,000 attacks 24,700 of which succeed 988
detected 267 reported so they reached the conclusion that 23,712 went undetected
ninety-six percent the Air Force conducts similar vulnerability
assessments according to this document its data shows better success in
detecting and reacting to attacks than DISA's data however defense officials
generally acknowledge that because the Air Force's computer emergency response
team resources are larger and more experienced they have had better success
in detecting and reacting to attacks than either the Navy or the Army
DISA also maintains data on officially reported attacks now here's a these are
the real attacks defense installations reported 53 attacks in 1992 115 in 1993
255 in 1994 and 559 in 1995 quite a bit different from the figures we've been
we've been given but because they weren't able to detect their own
intrusions they're kind of saying that well there must be the same failure rate
so therefore there's an army of 250,000 hackers it's it's pretty simple I guess
to understand yeah okay and finally we have this story about the new telephones
that are coming brand new telephone service new kind of cellular it's
something we've known about for quite some time called PCS it's right personal
communication services and what it means basically these phones are a lot lower
power than than cellular phones which means they have to have more antennas
and these antennas have to be closer to the street because people in cities will
be walking around the street on them you notice that's not happening in New York
City but if you go to virtually any other city in the in the world people
everywhere talking to themselves on these phones walking up and down streets
it looks pretty silly but that's that seems to be what's happening not in New
York though because of the high rates and also the the crowded service where
you keep running into interference and getting knocked off and horrible things
like that but this there's a company called on the point communications and
they're among the first that will be bringing this new form of wireless
telephone service to the city I believe Sprint is also involved and possibly MCI
and other companies what they're doing is they're they're mounting antennas all
over the city about six six or less stories from from the ground and there's
an article in the New York Times this was dated Monday August 19th if you want
a good representation of how it all works as a diagram of how the phone
calls are made a person makes a call using a PCS phone the phones look like
cellular phones but are smaller and use digital technology they also happen to
be a lot more secure in other words you can't just tune in like you can with
cellular phones a PCS antenna picks up the signal most of the antennas will be
attached to buildings at the third or fourth floor to provide the best
reception for people at street level a base station in or on the building
routes the call calls are handed off from one base station to the next via
controllers as a person moves and the signal travels to a public switching
telephone network that sends the call to the person on the other end so I guess
if you're a building somewhere if you own a building rather you might be
interested in mounting one of these antennas maybe they give you a discount
if you do that hundreds of PCS networks are being built around the nation but
New York City is the largest and potentially the most lucrative PCS
network in order to I can continue here to make it in New York City they they
have to figure out how to construct a wireless network that stretches from
Wall Street to Washington Heights without any holes that means negotiating
with hundreds of landlords co-op boards for rights to put the skateboard size
antennas on window ledges and walls every ten blocks or so and then you have
to persuade suspicious New Yorkers to sign up for a new kind of phone service
from a company they'd never heard of before so that's that's what OmniPoint
is facing also Sprint Spectrum will be entering this market and Cox Enterprises
I believe as well so this will be starting around November you'll start
seeing these new tiny little phones around with better technology more
secure way of making phone calls and cheaper rates from what I understand so
we'll see where that goes where we're gonna go now is some place we went last
week and some place that I think we need to go to again some place that we need
to visit as many times as necessary
yes it's time for another edition of confuse the operator where we reach out
and try and sort of test the the the level of operator awareness after all
operators are running the telephone network which is the if you will lifeline
of this country we need to know that they are alert now we have we have a
particular question that I've been asking people this all day and so far
everyone seems to have gotten it right namely regarding ISDN what does ISDN
stand for does anybody know everybody in this room knows integrated systems
services digital network right which is a system to services okay we seem to be
split on that one but it's okay we're not operators we don't run the phone
company we're not supposed to know this actually you would know
come up to my phone tell us what it is integrated systems digital network okay
that is the official answer we will accept no other answer that is the
official answer so now we do is which operator should know this I would say
the operator should know this okay so let's get the operator which in our case
will be the nine operator
that nine went through this let's try that again
okay that was definitely a nine and there's a zero and there's an echo I
don't know why there's an echo okay I'm gonna I'm gonna lose that line try a
different line let's try this okay any better much better
hopefully this won't be a machine 9x my fan hi yes I'm interested in in your
ISDN service that 9x offers I was wondering if you could tell me what ISDN
stands for I'll connect you with the supervisor thank you very much you're
welcome always be polite when you talk to operators that's lesson number one
because you never know when you might run into an operator yes hi I'm just
trying to find an information about ISDN I was wondering if you could tell me
what ISDN stands for thank you very much
yes ISDN mystical magical phone thing I can't seem to quite get my hands on
running out what ISDN stands for that's that's my goal
operator either operator are you there okay that means we can say stuff or play
music without her hearing
that must be what's going through her mind right now
find out what ISDN okay well let's suffice to say it's not on the tip of
their tongues so let's go to another operator and this one I think would be
more appropriate oh I'll go to information okay can we get a dial tone
our phones don't work anymore we can't get dial tones let's try this one
there we go what a long delay that was getting a dial tone now we're gonna dial
information information should know this welcome to 9x directory assistant oh boy
what city I just really need a question answered what listing no you don't get
it I just need a question answered please just a question thank you which
is worse machines are humans okay what question I'm sorry you're talking to a
recording they don't get it yeah I know I know those recordings are replacing
people aren't they now we're still here oh that's good I was just wondering if
you could answer a question for me I'm trying to find out I'm getting ISDN
phone service I don't know what ISDN stands for and 9x offers it is there
anybody there that knows ISDN yeah I'll give you a supervisor thank you always
good to know where to go afterwards
I hope this isn't the same supervisor
okay well I guess I guess information supervisors aren't the easiest people to
track down maybe other people are asking questions yes hi I'm trying to find out
what ISDN stands for the service that 9x offers do you have that information I
yes okay I'll keep trying other other offices then thanks anyway you're
welcome bye-bye bye-bye like I said always be polite to operators you never
know where you know when one will come in handy again just just for the benefit
of listeners and for any operators that might be listening hoping that they get
called next the correct answer the only correct answer again is it should be
integrated services digital network was that what you said before nope you were
wrong so we've been going about this whole thing and we didn't have the right
answer to start with you imagine we could have been called on this it would
have been the most embarrassing thing ever well you wouldn't be on next week I
was speaking to 9x today they've totally replaced their ISDN management team for
all of 9x they do that every week well apparently yes and they refer to it
today as systems not services to me on the phone as we were talking yes but 9x
didn't invent it did they they have to call it what it what it is they like to
think they did okay fiber optic nice for you to join us hi what does ISDN stand
for integrated services digital network okay so we both agree on this we all
agree on this all right one last shot we're gonna give them one last shot do
you think repair might know what ISDN is yeah I seriously doubt it they actually
would I take that back the night people know what it is what is that echo
getting on that line too okay okay repair tends to know more things thank
you for calling 9x if you have to deal with this to help us expedite your call
listen to the if you want to expedite the call don't list the instructions hit
zero once if you're calling and then hit zero again please hold while we
transfer your call to a service representative that's how you expedite
things
it is 9x repair Francis I have a recording actually I just have a quick
question if you could tell me what ISDN stands for that the service 9x offers do
you have that information I'm just I'm just a customer actually I'm not a
customer because I don't have a phone in the area but I know you offer I'm
calling from New York City well I see the commercials on TV for 9x ISDN
service ISDN no I couldn't get through to that that was all busy I guess a lot
of people are curious about it but I was just wondering if you knew what ISDN
stood for if someone could tell me what it means thank you okay I know what it
means okay it's basically I just want to know what the four letters stand for you
know ISDN a lot of people have those lines now when they have those computers
uh-huh like the modems hookup yeah I like the internet and all that yeah the
data system yeah I've heard about that okay well that's you know really what
they are used for better than regular you know dial tone lines I see there's still a dial tone line
right a lot of people that have like you said the computers and modems they have
more juice to it as they call it more juice yeah yeah let me see what it means
okay ISDN there's no J's in there I'm not saying and there's no J's but I'm
just trying to figure it out on my own I have a book on it but I wasn't
expecting this okay I think I hear her on crosstalk well in any event
yes see we can't really stay stay on forever fiber any any suggestions of
what we should do at this point well how badly do you want to know that they know
I just want to know if somebody out there knows but this is answering a lot
of questions for me because well as you know I haven't had the best of luck with
this particular field over the past year yes hello okay it means integrated
service physical network okay great thank you very much thank you she got it
she got it one operator got it out of all of them and it was the repair
service operator repair wins the competition of this week's confuse the
operator segment I guess we should send them a prize of some sort but if you have
any suggestions as to things you'd like us to confuse operators with please send
them in to off the hook care of WBA I 505 8th Avenue New York New York 1 double
one eight okay enough of that now if I but we have something some new bit of
information that we on what do you have something there oh yeah this is something
cool thing I'm unaware of this yeah actually run in okay tell me about this
a late-breaking news item yeah late-breaking news actually this is a
this is a case of old science meets new science it's a way that you could send
telexes by email and I just thought it was rather neat who sends telexes well
you see you never know when you might find yourself in some institution and
they have a little teletype machine in the corner and you want to you know you
want to play with them now telex dates back and I goes back to 18th century or
something oh my whatever people would send I mean what what is a telex well it
was WX numbers occasionally next to now that's that's Twix that was the next
phase all right you're gonna like you're gonna get some history here all right
telex and got a Twix tell telex was sort of a an outgrowth of telegraph mm-hmm
and sort of the it was sort of Western Union's answer to the modernization of
telegraph okay and essentially all throughout well until modems became
popular anyway and and of course fax machines telex machines are basically
like a little teletype writer you've seen them a lot of time a lot of the
time if you ever been in a news office they still use telex machines like when
they receive associated press wires and UPI and so on that's telex so essentially
if you're ever in one of these places you can find out if you happen to ever
dial into somebody's telex machine which usually operated 110 board you can find
out what somebody's telex ID is and I know this from past experience you hit
ctrl-e and it tells you what their telex ID is and if you ever wanted to send
somebody email this basically through it looks like a gateway that's set up in
conjunction with AT&T mail and Western Union and it actually converts telex
addresses to email and then routes them through a gateway back to the telex
machines over Western Union so I thought it was pretty neat and I could give out
the address the the actual address of the system is MHS as in a message
handling system dash WU for Western Union dot AT&T mail dot com and what you do is the
person that you want to send it to you have to know somebody's eight-digit
telex ID and you put this funky X 500 addressing scheme at the beginning or I
guess it would be X 400 so if you do this on the net right make their little
telex machine type away exactly so if you send them a subscription to say 10,000
newsgroups and all of a sudden their telex machine is going to burn a fuse
is that what you're saying? Unfortunately yeah I don't know of anybody using it for
destructive means but it can be used. It'll probably happen at 110
baud I guess is it still 110 baud? Yeah it's still 110 some of them might be 300 but I
don't think they ever found any reason to make them more than that. Is this the system that is
used for hearing impaired? No no that's TDD. Okay what's the difference? TDD and TTY
the actual TTY machines that the hearing impaired use are they're an odd speed I
forget exactly what the speed is but it's not it's not the same speed as
telex. Okay that's that's pretty interesting. Actually I think it's 50 50
baud somebody somebody might call in and correct us. I just don't understand why
anybody would have you know one of these machines still so if someone out there
has one please call us and tell us why you have one. And how much they're still
paying Western Union? Yeah they're slow they're big they take up lots of paper
and you have to pay a lot more for them. Well they have smaller ones now didn't
they have they have one at a Stony Brook don't they? They have I guess so. Yeah
they get the AP newswire. Oh you're talking about things that are sent
over news wires and things like that well that's a that's a lot faster than
110 that's more like you know 2400 maybe at least. It's a dot matrix printer it's
like an okie data printer and that's that's how news is delivered to most
newsrooms. Yeah it replaced the old the old TTYs that made that newsroom sound
and now newsrooms just sound like dot matrix printers going all the time.
But that in turn is being replaced by more intelligent systems where you just
print out what you need onto a laser printer and there's no sound at all. So
when they crank up the newsroom sound on the radio you know the all-news station
you don't hear anything anymore and that's why. Well for the technologically
impaired they still have telex is still around. Yeah you know for a long time in
fact I don't know if you ever watched Channel 5 News back before before the
Fox days I think. They used to crank up the sound of a newsroom and it was this
repeating loop that only went about 10 seconds and I don't think they realized
how silly it sounded. In fact 1010 WINS used to do that. I don't think they do it
anymore. They had a teletype going in the background. Yeah yeah you sort of ask
yourself you know there's a kind of radio station that still has teletypes
really the kind of station is going to go out and pursue a news story you know.
Well you have to wonder what kind of people are running it. So they they
actually got rid of that I think. Yeah it's nice and modern sounding now. Okay
nice and quiet. Yes so that's the story with with TTYs and TWXs and TDDs and
things like that. All right interesting. Well one of our one of our listeners one
of our actually this this showed up on our our brand new voicemail system. Have
you heard our voicemail system yet? I don't know if I've heard it recently.
Okay well you should hear this. Let me grab another dial tone. You can reach it at
area code 5 1 6 4 7 3 2 6 2 6. And many people are confused by the way the phone
is picked up so don't be confused when you hear this.
That's confusing.
If you'd like to make a call please hang up and try again. If you need help stay
on the line and a hacker will assist you shortly. Yes so that's the 2600 voice
BBS. That's our voice BBS system and we have all kinds of fun things like that.
In there people are making all kinds of discoveries and playing around with
things and one of one of the people in there I guess we'll just call him Jake
for now made a discovery by misdialing and that discovery was the 959 exchange
which we've known about for some time. Oh yeah. Where you get I guess all kinds of
test recordings and things like that. Well look what happens. I'm just gonna
grab a line at random here. Look what happens. You know these lines are all
fouled up tonight. All kinds of weird noises. Okay that sounds like a nice one.
We're going to dial 959 plus four digits. Listen to what happens.
279 3 4 0 4. Yeah it's what do you call that recording? I call that a ANAC number.
An ANAC number. Somehow all the ANACs have been transferred over to 959 within
New York City anyway. We've tested this in a few places in New York and it seems
to work everywhere. It doesn't work on the island. I'm not sure if it works in 718
but for some reason they're all showing up there and you heard that touch tone.
Let's let's get that back again. If you I think that's a star. Yeah. If you hit a
pound sign. Is it only a pound sign or any key? Only a pound. Okay. Before it starts
reading the number. Hit a pound sign as soon as you hear the star and listen to
what happens. They give you your phone number in touch tone. Right. Now why
would anybody want that? If a lineman's standing up on a pole and he has a test
set that can decode touch tones like those little flip-top craft access
terminals then they're actually programmed to do ANAC and read back
the number. Interesting. And convert it and display it on the screen. Now that's
a different voice. I believe if we if we call our regular ANAC number which is
9-5-8 and in some places 5-1-1. Let's see what we hear when we do that. Might be the
same voice. Might be a totally different voice. 2-7-9-3-4-0-3. Okay. So a different voice
there. Let's see if 5-1-1 works for us because it works in many places. No I don't
think it will work. We're sorry your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please
check the number and dial again. Or ask a hacker to help you. Okay so that's
that's the story with that new discovery there. The kinds of discoveries that we
make every week. 9-5-9 plus four digits. What I'd like to know though is how did
this guy know that he misdialed? I mean to dial a number he got the third number
wrong. He was dialing 9-5 something else but I mean how did he know to go back
and dial 9-5-9 again? You know when you dial the wrong number usually you know
you just dialed again. But he must have redialed but then he was able to find
out what number it was he dialed. Maybe he's got a phone that displays what
number you dial. That must be. Or he can read touch tones with his ear.
Which you can do right? Yeah but I mean even if it was me then as soon as I
heard that I hit the wrong button I would hang up and redial. You mean you
listen every time you dial you listen to make sure the tones match what you were
dialing? Yeah sure. Wow. No because well I have one of those phones that has the
keypad on the receiver. Uh-huh. So sometimes I dial without looking. You dial
blind? Yeah. I see. You ever use one of those those
co-cut phones where you dial touch tones and the touch tones don't match? Yeah
they scramble them so they sound all goofy. Why do they do that? I have
absolutely no idea. And obviously the phone company isn't hearing that or the
number would never go through. That would be fun though to scramble numbers and have
everybody's numbers. You have to sort of figure out a little puzzle before you
can dial anything. Only intelligent people can use the phone. For the
duration of this call one will be two. Yes just remember that. Yeah. You have
something else? Yeah actually this really crummy magazine called Telecom or as
they like to call it tele.com and it's their summer reading special. Are they tele.com on the net?
I have no I didn't check. I sure hope so. But this is their August issue their
summer reading special and it features true crime stories. True crime. Yeah and
in here we have a story about our very own Ed Cummings. Nothing worse than a
fake crime story. Yeah and the name of this article is dial F for felony. Mm-hmm.
And it it puts Ed in extremely a favorable light. I'll read you the
subtitle. Okay. No one knows how much money Ed Cummings cost phone companies
and almost everyone is afraid to guess. So you can imagine what the tone of the
article is after that little lead in. Mm-hmm. Interesting. You read the whole
thing? No I just just looked at a choice parts of it but it basically it does the
recap of Ed in the parking lot at 7-eleven and the whole van incident.
Right. With the police and so if anybody can find this I don't remember ever
seeing this on any stands anywhere. I'm sure I'm sure it's around and one of
those yeah I mean you find those magazines in various like I think Tower
would have it or Hudson News or any of those places down there. If anybody is
possessed enough to want to order it it's put out by McGraw-Hill. I've heard
of him. Yeah. Well maybe maybe there's a phone number on the inside or something?
Oh let's see. Well you know it's tele.com it's got to be that anyway. Yeah. For them
to actually say that on the front. Yeah they have a fax number if you want to
fax them a... What good is a fax number? Oh free subscription it's one of those things. Free
subscriptions to those people who are qualified. Yeah. Right. Which all you have
to do is fill out one of these things and lie. If you want to say you're a
technical person of some sort. Right. Well I mean they pay for it with all the ads.
Yeah. That's where magazines make their money. I don't know why all magazines
aren't like that. Well because some magazines don't like to take out ads
from from all these people. Yeah but there's plenty of magazines that have
plenty of ads and you still have to pay money. It'll be nice if time where we're
free to everybody who qualified. Yeah. But well it's weird because you get those
time offers in the mail and you know you get it for like 20 bucks a year whereas
if you go out to the newsstands you pay like you know thousands of dollars a
year or whatever it costs and that's just it's absurd that they can offer
such you know widely disparate you know differentials and cost. But so do you
say it's a favorable article? No I say it's an unfavorable article. You were being
sarcastic. Yeah I was being sarcastic. Well there aren't very many favorable
articles yet. We're still looking for the one in Internet Underground which is a
magazine I have not been able to find yet and that's that's the story that of
course started all the trouble when Ed received the facts and was placed back
into Maximum. He's I haven't heard from him in a little while. He's he's back in
the minimum area which he called from last week. I do know he was being
harassed mercilessly by the guards. They woke him up at two in the morning one
day demanding to know where his computer was. What? Yeah this is this is a bizarre
story. Apparently somebody somebody faxed something on his behalf. He asked him to
fax something to the to the prison officials you know some sort of an
appeals form or something that needed to be received by a certain date. Right. So he
had somebody I believe somebody in New York faxed the information to them which
you know is not that big a deal that's what people do. But since the fax was
received late at night these guards were convinced that that Ed had somehow from
his prison cell managed to both make a phone call and use a computer to fax
something to the prison. You know I mean this is they just threw him in Maximum
and and threatened him with nine more months in prison because of an illegal
fax that somebody else sent. Is that you know do they really think he's going to
go out and smuggle a computer into a prison and fax something to the prison
and raise all this attention? You know it's it's it's really ridiculous. Well of
course they think that. Mm-hmm they do they did. Yeah yeah. But I think this was
one thing they couldn't they couldn't really pursue because it was just so
ridiculous but they they they did harass him quite a lot and I don't know what's
happened since then. There have been all kinds of you know bad things happening. I
do know we talked about this last week with the Tom Varney situation in Chicago
the Secret Service agent that that put Bernie ass away. We've it's amazing how
much information we're getting from people that are emailing us and seeing
the website. But basically we reported last week that he was assigned to
presidential detail at the Democratic Convention which we thought was kind of
odd for somebody in such a controversial light I guess to be to be promoted to
something so prestigious. Well it seems actually he's doing just regular security.
I don't know if he was supposed to do regular security the whole time or if
God forbid he got demoted. But he is on the floor of the convention doing all
kinds of basic basic security work and should be some interesting pictures
coming out. There's there's people out there that are that are basically taping
every single channel waiting to catch a glimpse of him doing something
unfavorable. You know you know how how Secret Service agents react to having
their picture taken. Well on national TV you can't really help it can you? So
that's what we know so far that he's he's still there and is on the floor
doing some sort of security work. So we'll see what happens. If any any
protesters show up or if people forward more information to us. The website
www.2600.com has a more thorough story on there and of course you can mail us
at OTH off the hook at 2600.com. Our phone number here 212-279-3400.
If people want to give us a call you're most welcome to and share your stories
your feelings your ideas your viewpoints on basic things that have
been going on. So I guess I guess we should go to the phones. Sure. All right.
Good evening. You're on the air. Yes. Hello. Yes. You're on delay so turn your
radio down. Yes. Right. Getting it. Yeah. You're gonna get very confused if you do
that. We'll get confused too. Okay. Here we go. Did I just say that? I have a special
report from American Telephone Consumers Council that on September 1st a number
of communities in your listening area will receive a slight reduction of a
dollar thirty seven a month plus the tax excuse me that will be reduced if you
have flat rate service in these nine X areas. This is a permanent change. This is
a change that's guaranteed for the next four years. Okay. Buffalo got a bigger
reduction a year ago and that will last for five years. Is this is this related
to the fact that 9x was recently cited for having the worst service in the
country. No no. This was a deal that was made a number of months ago when 9x was
asking for a major half a billion dollar rate increase. And as we people who are
in the case looked over the information it looked like with their laying planning
to lay off thousands of workers and everything they would have a profit not
a reason for having a rate increase. Right. And let me ask you something. Were
you surprised that at the revelation this I guess this past week about the
fact that 9x has been devolving in virtually every single department. Does
that surprise you at all. Oh yes. I mean it doesn't surprise me. I know that hold
on just that's 9x calling now. Yes it doesn't surprise surprise me because we
knew that part of their plan was to you know lay off a lot of people arranged
for them to take early retirement that kind of thing. And you think that's a
direct result of them laying off all these people that's why their service
has has gone down so much. Oh well yes we issued a warning at that time we try to
remind all the people who are involved in the case that there was a service
crisis in 1960 or so. That was so. Can you hold on just a minute. I'm sorry. I imagine that's a very busy time over
there. OK 212-279-3400. OK. Hello. Yes go ahead. What happened then was that we had such a fantastic service. You're getting more calls than we are. Hello. Yes. I'm on the radio right now. And the phone. OK well. Yes. Let me just tell you. Sorry. Can you basically tell us how people can get a hold of your organization because I'm sure there's
some listener interest in that. Yes. 2 1 2 9 8 7 5 5 1 4. OK. Apparently a lot of people have that number already but I guess more people will be calling. And what is your organization does. Well we usually represent the municipalities and so forth and trade union unions and great hearings where there are. OK. Well it sounds like you're doing a great job. Yeah. So I keep it up and look in the paper if you have
the. Well if you could identify where you are. And you'll see whether you or ask your operator or your business office if you're eligible for the rate reduction that's taking place September 1st. Somehow I think my operator won't know but but I'll try. Oh but they'll the business office. No not the operator the business. OK. Thank you very much. Take care. You know that's one operator weren't able to call us the business office but that's because they're closed. They close at 8 o'clock and that's when we go on the air.
Well that's a coincidence. AT&T though is open 24 hours a day. In fact all the long distance companies are open 24 hours and I suspect when 9x tries to enter the long distance market that they will be forced to stay open 24 hours as well. 2 1 2 2 7 9 3 4 100. Good evening. You're on the air. Go ahead. Hello. Yes. This is Emmanuel Goldstein. That's right. You're on the air. Yes. OK. You tried to stump the operators a little while ago. Now I'll stump the phone expert. OK. Ready to be stumped.
Explain this. OK. This happened two times. I made a call from a pay phone to a regular non-cellular phone. Did you call this a few weeks ago. Yes. And you couldn't answer it then. And I haven't had any answer since then. So maybe now you've learned. Have you done it again since then. No I haven't tried it since then. But I believe we asked you to try it again under different circumstances like calling different phones. Well first of all tell us what the problem is so we can recap the listeners.
Yes. I call from a pay phone and I got the cellular message. Welcome to AT&T Wireless Services. Instead of just connecting with the regular phone. So you call from a regular pay phone to what you thought was a regular telephone. Yes. In a house a business what.
No this was from a school actually. Well I guess you could say a business a school to a house. OK. But it was a pay phone in the school. Yeah. OK. And you were calling to a house and you got the AT&T welcome to AT&T Wireless. Wireless. OK. And you did this on more than one occasion. And I believe we asked you to try to call different numbers like similar numbers if you got the same thing and to try calling that number from a different number as well.
Oh no. Well that no that number works for many other numbers. It's only this particular pay phone that does it. But I didn't try from that pay phone again. It's a 9x pay phone. Yeah. Yeah. And you're just dialing you're putting a quarter in and you're dialing that way. Mm hmm. Did this happen on the same day or did this. Oh it happened. Oh well about a week. The two incidents were like within a week apart. And what happens when you stay on the line. Does it just hang up on you or does it connect you to something. No no it just disconnects. Just disconnects. Yes.
It never connects to the other phone. Well I mean I would say that the pay phone probably has nothing to do with it. It's got to have something to do with with with routing. What do you think. I would I would just recommend calling different numbers on the same pay phone and see if they react the same way. Did you call the numbers on that same pay phone. No no I haven't. Well I haven't had access to that phone in a little while.
So it's possible that the pay phone just you know routes calls wrong or just you know I don't know. I've seen weird things happen with pay phones before where they just connect you to the wrong number or they give you the wrong rate or they they even make calls for free. You know if you call a certain place. There was a pay phone once at a major. I don't give it out. But a major college campus in the Stony Brook area. And basically. All right.
Some people might know where that is. But basically there was a pay phone there that when you called any place in the world it just wouldn't ask for any money. And it's amazing because people knew about this for weeks and you'd think that lines would develop but people were afraid of the phone. They thought that it was a trap of some sort because you know when you go to a phone and make a free phone call someone must know about it. You know eventually you know you have to pay the piper. So phones do weird things sometimes. Yeah I've had phones that return money or you know made free calls and stuff like that but never anything like that.
Nothing like this. But you've never heard of this happening to anyone either. No that's that's weird. What. Basically it would help if you knew what number you were being connected to because there are numbers you can call that will give you that recording. Obviously it's routing to that number for some reason. But we don't know why. And it's probably the central office not the pay phone itself. Yeah. OK. All right. Thanks for calling. Good luck. All right.
You know it's also possible somebody you know messed with the touch tone pad like we were talking about before. Well without more details of his predicament it's possible that space aliens zap the pay phone. Oh yeah. But we kind of need a one or two more details I think. Putting that possibility aside though if you just rewire a couple of things in the phone then you know you'll get all kinds of wrong numbers and you'll get them consistently from that phone. Yeah. But why. I don't know why. Who can explain why people do these things. But they do happen.
Talking about weird phones. I never mentioned this but there was a special phone very special phone for me. That's a place in my heart. I found it in Las Vegas. All right. I'll never forget this. I was walking down in the hotel where they basically it's the hotel that has the thing that shoots you up into space. You know it's it's it's a big tower thing. You get strapped in and they shoot you up at you know from zero to forty five in like a millionth of a second.
And basically you feel like you're in a rocket ship or you think you feel like you're in a rocket ship. It's pretty scary. But that's what the hotel was. You know it's the pathway towards that. And there was all the phones in Las Vegas hotels are co-cuts. All right. They're all they're all the same brand to considering a lot of those companies are in Las Vegas. That's true too. I went to this one phone just picked it at random just like I was picking the slot machines at random and getting getting payoffs. But this this phone was the biggest payoff of all those quarter machines because I threw a quarter in.
I mean I basically I call the number and I threw a quarter in and the quarter came out again. But the phone acted as if I had put the quarter in. So it doesn't take much to realize that all I had to do was keep putting the same quarter in getting it back put it in again. You know it looked like I was I was putting money and it's the it's the ultimate red box. You just keep putting the same quarter in and it comes back out and you know you just keep doing this thing and the call goes through and you can call anywhere in the world.
And it was just the most amazing thing. Now I'm not going to say if I if I took advantage of this. But basically it was kind of a scary thing because you're there in a very populated corridor security people everywhere. Who knows why this phone is doing this. Who knows who knows about it. So you've got to be kind of careful when you're when you're playing around things like that.
But were you near any of those silver bubbles. No you can't go anywhere in Vegas without one of those silver bubbles being visible. You're always on camera. So that's one of the reasons I was kind of like you know hesitant about even using that phone. But it just it basically fell out of the sky. I went to one phone put a quarter in it came back out free calls anywhere. So it was it was pretty weird. I didn't I didn't I didn't do anything.
I just found it. And then you know I just I said wow that's that's kind of cool. All right. So 2 1 2 2 7 9 3 4 and you never know what you're going to find out there. And that goes for our callers too. Good evening. Good evening WBAI. Yes you're on the air. Yeah I got I got out. I just came back from Denver to a hair airport and I was surprised I didn't get asked concerning various things I was carrying with me such as a pocket scanner other various electronic equipment going through the X-ray system.
That's a good question. You know we had all kinds of bizarre electronic equipment going through with us on the way to Vegas and back. And nobody said anything at any time. I mean I don't know if they know what a frequency counter is or you know all these radio scanners and things like that. But it didn't didn't set off any flags. I did read the article until that comment. It's accurate. But you know in the light of you know being able to listen to you guys on the air you know you get to see the better or the different side of the story. You know it's good reading but that's about all.
Uh huh. All right listen thanks for calling. I think we have Bernie S. calling in. All right thanks a lot. All right let's see if we do. Good evening. All right.
AT&T has a collect call from Bernie S. at the Bucks 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 feature or you will be disconnected. To accept this call dial 1 now. Thank you.
Hello Bernie. Hello. Hi. We had I guess we had some routing problems with our phone but I think that's been fixed now. Well I couldn't get through earlier because I was I was locked down in my cell. They were doing an emergency headcount. They thought someone may have escaped. Uh huh. From this prison here. And did they? I don't know. They never tell us. Oh. They don't say one in the bush one in the box things like that. They give you little hints like that. Yeah.
What's we updated people as to your the latest computer slash fax escapade. Has anything else happened since then? Well yesterday morning I was called in to speak with the superintendent of the prison. And he went over the grievance that I'd filed about how I'd been treated. And in my grievance I mentioned that my attorney had told him who's a former federal prosecutor had told him.
We're gonna have to speak up because our phone levels are bad tonight. Can you hear me now? Yes we can hear you fine. Just speak up a little bit. I had a face to face meeting with the superintendent of the prison yesterday morning and he told me that my. Are you there? Yeah you know we're getting this this weird feedback which if you are on this end you could probably fix but. It sounded like a baby crying. Yeah we've been getting it all night but just try to ignore it.
Anyway the superintendent told me that if my attorney were to take any legal action it wouldn't it wouldn't be resolved for about six years and I told him I didn't believe him. And he told me to leave his office so I left. He just told you to leave his office because he said he didn't believe him. Yes.
Weird.
Yes I'm sorry.
You really need to fix that.
Yes we certainly do.
If I don't volunteer to do this voluntary hard labor then I'll be locked back up in maximum security prison again. So it's their definition of voluntary.
Do we have any date as to when your parole hearing is going to be?
I did finally get a chance to speak with the state parole representative last Friday and he could not give me any date. He just said that there are several months behind and I reminded him that I should have been released almost three months ago. And he said well you know how it is we're behind. And he didn't seem to be in a mood to talk so I certainly wasn't going to argue with the guy.
Well now at this stage would letters help? Phone calls? I don't want to say faxes.
I really don't know. I feel very closed off in the world. I don't know whether letters would help or hurt honestly. Letters to me can help boost my mood. I don't know if letters to the state parole board or to the prison might backfire and just anger and get someone's ire up and cause them to keep me here even longer.
I seem to be walking on thin ice here as far as exerting my right and still not pissing off the people who run the prison. So it's a tough position to be in.
Are other prisoners there aware of what's going on with you?
Some of them yeah. Most of them are not and I don't talk with most of them about what's going on. I try to keep to myself for the most part. But yeah a few of them are aware of what's happening and the ones who do know about it are in agreement that I'm definitely getting singled out here for reasons they're not quite sure about.
Some of them who have been here for years have told me that this just doesn't happen to other inmates. My cell was shaken down three times last week and that doesn't happen to people. It just never happens here. It happened to me though.
We have to realize that although we don't think you're getting enough attention and there's not enough outrage being expressed over this case, you probably are getting more attention than anybody else there or maybe than anybody else there has ever gotten.
Yeah and I think the prison officials are quite upset about that. I've been told by several prison officials that I have no right to speak with the press at all. I beg to differ with them but they don't seem to understand that the country goes by something called the Constitution and the First Amendment. It's still hanging by its thread but it's still alive I hope.
Actually I think we're ahead of Russia. We keep going back and forth but I think we're actually ahead of them. It's a dubious contest.
I feel like I'm in the gulag although it's not really cold here. Aside from that it's not too different from the gulag. Not that I've been there but I've read Dostoevsky.
Well I could do some letters to cheer me up.
Okay give out the address because we're just about out of time.
Okay please anybody listening if you're writing a letter I'd appreciate some kind words. I get pretty depressed here sometimes.
That's my cell number C6B and that's in Doylestown PA 18901. People can send me writing materials or preferably just personal letters. They tend to cheer me up the most.
Are there more things you can get now that you're in the minimum security place?
Yeah actually people can send me care packages now but I don't want to risk asking for that for sounding like I'm soliciting anything.
And then the risk of somebody listening might send me something inappropriate that could get me in trouble too.
People can send me post stamps I guess. That's pretty non-controversial. I am allowed to have post stamps here unlike the other person where I was being held recently.
So I will try to write back anybody who writes me and I appreciate the support I'm getting out there. I've been here a lot longer than anyone expected and I'm hoping that I get out of here pretty soon.
Okay we also have your email address bernies at 2600.com and people keep in mind when you send mail to that address that unless you give your regular address there's no way Bernie can write you back.
He cannot just hit an R on a console and reply to you. He doesn't have internet access. He gets it forwarded on a print out so if you want to write back make sure you put your address in there.
Bernie I'm sorry we're out of time. We've got an update from the Democratic Convention coming. Where Tom Barney is by the way. I don't know if you know that.
I've heard that rumor.
We have had it confirmed that he is in fact doing security detail there. We're going to hear what's going on from other perspectives of that particular convention. It's coming up at 9 o'clock.
So I guess we'll hear from you again next week.
I'll try to call. I hope we're not locked down for another emergency head count but we'll have to see how it goes.
Okay I'll talk to you before then.
Okay thanks a lot. Bye bye.
That's going to do it for us here this week. Another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
For Fiber Optik this is Emanuel Goldstein. Have yourselves a safe week. Stay awake and let us know what you find out. Take care. Good night.
I hope that's understood. My name is Mel.
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If you are not aware of it Bill Clinton is running for re-election.
Much to many of our dismay but what can you do.
And the convention where he's going to be nominated unless somebody jumps in at the last minute hoping for Eugene McCarthy to show up or George McGovern.
But anyway Bill Clinton will be getting nominated on Thursday night.
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Until that time why don't you feast your ears on this.
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