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Coming up next, Off The Hook with Emanuel Goldstein, please stay tuned.
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This has been a public service announcement by WBAI on behalf of the New York City Police
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And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI, where the time is 8 o'clock, and that means
it's time once again for Off The Hook.
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, from Diddley Bond, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Diddley Bond.
I hope that's understood, from Diddley Bond.
And a very good evening to everybody out there.
It's another edition of Off The Hook here on WBAI in New York, from our brand new studios.
Actually our brand new interim studios, because next week we'll be moving to our permanent
facility just a few feet over.
And you may hear a few glitches and things that aren't supposed to be happening, because
we're kind of doubling up on facilities and things like that.
So that's just the nature of radio sometimes.
You're not even supposed to know what's happening, and we won't bring it to your attention.
Our phone number, our new phone number, is 212-209-2900, and for those of you listening
on the internet in various parts of the world, of course, don't forget, our country code
is one.
We have some exciting, interesting, and revealing news in the world of hackers and technology
enthusiasts, telephone systems, things like that.
It's weird, these new studios, people walk by, you know, you can see out the window and
you see people walking by and they stare at you like you're some kind of animal.
Hi, how you doing?
Not used to that.
You know, the old studios, we just looked at a wall, and I don't know if I like being
on display like this.
We'll see.
We'll see how it works out.
Okay, here are some news.
Some news.
Look at that.
Look at that.
We should charge admission.
What is that, like a Boy Scout troop or something going by?
Okay, I don't know.
We need to definitely establish some guidelines here.
Okay, there are bits of news from all around the world, and it's interesting as always,
but we have one bit of news which I consider to be a bombshell.
Yes, that's right, a bombshell.
We don't do this very often, and of course, we're not going to tell you the bombshell
immediately.
We're going to tell it to you within about five or ten minutes, so be prepared.
Call your friends, loved ones, because you'll be, in the words of the Daily News, shocked
by this.
Okay, now just the ordinary news.
How about this?
Turkish hackers, yeah, they exist.
A Turkish court gave a teenager a ten-month suspended jail sentence for making comments
on the internet criticizing rough police treatment of a group of blind protestors,
according to a court official.
In a landmark case, 18-year-old Amre Erzaz was charged with publicly insulting state
security forces after comments he made on TurkNet's online daily forum last December.
Does this not remind you of the Bernie S. case somehow, insulting the state security
forces?
According to an officer at Istanbul's Beyoglu Court, I can confirm that he was sentenced
to ten months for publicly insulting the police force, but his sentence was suspended for
five years.
It doesn't make any sense, does it?
He was sentenced to ten months, but it was suspended for five years.
I guess if he doesn't do anything for five years, he doesn't have to worry about the
ten months, or something like that.
Anyway, the case is the first to pit users of the decentralized communications highway
against Turkish security forces who traditionally broke little dissent, if any.
But you see, the wonderful thing about the internet is that you don't have to be in Turkey
to criticize the Turkish security forces.
And I'm sure people all around the world, as they did in the case of Indonesia, will
be more than happy to say whatever it is they want about those people.
Just keep watching.
I'm sure you'll see something.
The Indian nuclear weapons site was hacked.
Hear about this?
Someone actually was able to get into that particular site and cause a bit of havoc.
A group of hackers broke into the local area network of India's Bada Atomic Research Center,
known as BARC, and they copied five megabytes worth of data, including email between scientists
and files from India's nuclear research program.
Pretty amazing what people are up to.
Well, what else do we have here?
Involving Kevin Mitnick information.
There are, of course, Free Kevin stickers going up left and right all over the country.
But they're also going up on websites all over the place.
Some of which may not know they're going up.
If you go to a site called www.freestats.com, F-R-E-E-S-T-A-T-S dot com, I'm not sure what
that is, but I don't think it's a Mitnick liberation site, but it is now.
So if you go there, you select the graphic marked sample stats, and click the button
for main page stats, you'll see a nice little message there concerning Kevin Mitnick, which
I think is pretty neat, you know, that the word is getting out in ways like that.
Many companies are using internet sites secretly to collect information about visitors, according
to a new government survey, and this survey is likely to prompt new restrictions.
According to people familiar with the study, which was carried out by the FTC, Federal
Trade Commission, it delivers a bleak assessment of the Clinton administration's policy of
allowing internet companies to police privacy themselves.
It's going to be a major indictment of the lack of privacy online, said Jeff Chester,
executive director of the Nonprofit Center for Media Education in Washington.
It puts the administration in a real dilemma because it appears that self-regulation is
abysmally ineffective.
The FTC spent months surveying data collection and privacy practices at 1,400 sites on the
internet's World Wide Web as part of an effort to assess the self-regulation policy.
The report also documents continued efforts by companies to collect information from children
without getting permission from parents, and that is likely to prompt an immediate response
from the FTC, which last summer issued a warning to firms about such abuses.
An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment on the report until it is issued.
The Clinton administration, in a policy issued in July 1997, asked industry leaders to respect
privacy rights on the internet by fully disclosing how personal data would be used and disseminated.
Congress has also followed the privacy debate closely and could jump into the fray with
legislation imposing new restrictions.
That could take some time, warned Andrew Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project.
Oops, got a message here.
A lot of people are asking me questions when I'm on the air.
My God.
Our net people have to throw in some questions about the stories here.
I'll answer your questions after the show.
How's that?
All right, where was I?
Now that I've been totally thrown off base here.
I'd like to know how many people are on the internet.
That's something that I could actually report to people.
OK, it appears that certain kinds of abuses are occurring and not being self-regulated,
but no matter, it's going to take a while for policymakers in government, business,
and the public to get their hands around this.
Privacy concerns arise on the internet because whenever a person using web browsing software
visits a site, the site can collect information about the person.
Some sites explicitly ask users to register or fill out questionnaires, while others collect
data surreptitiously using an internet technology called cookies.
Real and imagined privacy violations are feeding public sentiment in favor of reform.
LexisNexis was deluged with protests in 1996 after word spread that the database company
was selling personal information, such as social security numbers, over the internet.
The question is, do we need more regulation or do we need just some common sense as far
as what can be allowed and what cannot be allowed?
Privacy on the internet.
That story came from Reuters.
And finally we have stories out of the former Czechoslovakian part of the country, part
of the world, rather.
And there is a group over there called, I don't know how to pronounce this, CZERT.
So I won't pronounce it.
But they're a group of Czech and Slovak hackers and they continue to ravage the net, claiming
over 200 hacked websites.
Oh, they give pronunciation here, which is nice.
It's pronounced Chert.
Chert, which sounds like the Czech word cert, spelled the same way as our computer emergency
response team, CERT.
And over there, though, it means devil or demon.
Do you know that?
Yeah, that's something I'm sure they didn't want to get out.
36 of these hacks, 23...
Now, OK, this is something.
They have a name for the Czech Republic, which is much better than the Czech Republic.
When they split up Czechoslovakia, I always wondered, you know, Slovakia is obvious, but
what are they going to call the Czech part, you know, the Czech part?
Well, they call it the Czech Republic, which I think is stupid.
Now they have a name for it.
Czechia.
Yes.
So 36 of these hacks, 23 were in Czechia and 13 were in Slovakia.
And there were a total of 28 sites hacked, with seven sites twice repeatedly hacked and
one site thrice repeatedly hacked.
And they include hacks of the Czech Army, a bank, a web chat site where hackers posted
a list of alleged software pirates, a search engine site, a magazine for police ISPs.
This is interesting.
A little animated E-man sauntered across the screen and peed on the ISP's logo.
You know, I've seen him.
I've seen that same guy doing that to lots of other things, so I think they just copied
it from something else.
There were a couple of daily news sites, a press agency.
They delivered their own news story.
A computer magazine site, UNICEF site.
That was already hacked.
Software vendor sites, schools, various ministries and more.
Some of the latest hacks have boldly taunted the police captain who is solely responsible
for catching the hackers.
One guy over there.
The latest one took place on May 16th, featured a picture purported to be that of the police
captain.
It was indeed the picture of a pleasant and compassionate looking sea captain kind of
a guy.
Featured on packages of Captain Igloo frozen fish sticks.
Yeah.
That's what's going on over in the Czechoslovakian part of the world.
So yeah, hacking is everywhere.
Turkey, Czechia, Slovakia, and of course the United States.
And here is our blockbuster of a story.
Something that I think is going to annoy and outrage people all over the place.
We just found out about this yesterday.
Skeet Orich, who is playing the lead in the current film Ride with the Devil for Universal,
will next star in, guess what?
Takedown, the story of real life computer hacker Kevin Mitnick that Joe Chappelle is
helming for Millennium Films and Miramax's label Dimension.
The biopic, which I guess implies that it's true, is the second of three projects that
Chappelle will direct under his three-picture deal with Dimension.
Written by David Newman, Howard Rodman, and John Danza, Takedown is the first of several
films that will be co-financed and co-distributed by Millennium and Dimension.
Based on New York Times reporter John Markoff's best-selling book of the same name,
Takedown tells the story of how Mitnick was tracked down by high-tech genius
Utomo Shimomura, who will be played by Russell Wong.
You may know Russell Wong from the Joy Luck Club.
That's nothing compared to what's going to happen when he becomes affiliated with Takedown.
Markoff teamed with Shimomura to tell the story, which was acquired by Miramax.
Do you know how much money these guys have made by telling the story of Kevin Mitnick
while he sits in prison, waiting for a trial?
I mean, it's going to be four years before he even gets a trial, and they're making films.
They're making films that will tell the true story without a word from him,
and show him committing crimes that he has not even been proven to have committed.
I mean, this is crazy. How can they get away with this?
I really would like to know. If there's any film people or lawyers or things like that out there,
I'd like to know what exactly is going on here.
They can actually go out there and make a film about somebody who has not been proven guilty yet,
and tell fictitious stories with that person's real name,
without even consulting, getting permission, anything like that.
It's pretty outrageous. We're in the process of looking into this.
They're going to be filming this movie, Takedown, in late July.
They're going to be filming it in North Carolina, which, as you may recall,
is where Kevin Mitnick was caught.
I imagine they'll be filming at the apartment complex where he actually got caught,
just to add realism, I suppose.
But I have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that there are going to be a number of people
in North Carolina at that particular time of the year
who will take a very keen interest in how this film actually comes out.
I have nothing against films being made, fictitious films of all sorts.
Tell whatever story you want. But this is supposedly based on reality.
When you read the book Takedown, which was really very fictitious in my eyes,
but was sold as the truth,
having a film come out with that perception of what Kevin Mitnick is, who he is,
that is going to be what everybody in the United States and the world sees him as.
John Marcos' fiction of who Kevin Mitnick is, the person he never even spoke to,
will become fact. There will be films to support exactly what it is that he says.
And the really ironic thing is that Kevin is accused of all these things,
accused of being a quote-unquote dark side hacker, a malicious person,
never been accused of doing anything malicious, never been accused of taking money,
making money from his talents in any way.
And he's been in prison now for over three years,
while many people have become millionaires by telling his story.
Am I the only person who sees how crazy that is and how something has to be done about it?
So we knew there was a possibility a film was going to be made,
but it didn't actually become reality until last Wednesday.
In fact, we had heard rumors that the project was being scrapped
because the hacker's film didn't do all that well.
If you were annoyed by some of the things said in Hackers, some of the portrayals there,
this is nothing compared to how you will feel when Takedown comes out.
I mean, some of the things that I've heard, which I can't really talk about yet,
are just utterly unbelievable and insulting, in fact, the way things are portrayed.
We're going to get more information.
And if there's anyone out there who can help us get more information,
now is the time to come forward.
You can e-mail us, oth at 2600.com,
and find out, or we can find out from you what it is that you can do to help us.
It's outrageous. It's not nice at all.
I talked to Kevin a couple of days ago, and he's not very happy about this, obviously.
I can't understand how this can be done, how someone can make a film about you
without you having any say in it, or any way of affecting it at all.
They're just going to spread more lies.
It's pretty sad.
All right, so our phone number is 212-209-2900,
if you have any questions or comments on that.
A couple of other things.
Basically, this was the week of SummerCon.
Yes, last week in Atlanta.
A bunch of us went down to Atlanta and sort of met other hacker types
and wound up doing kinds of fun things.
And it was an amazing, I guess, mixture of the minds here,
where you meet people for the first time or for the 20th time or whatever,
and just sort of trade stories, have adventures and things like that.
And it's a yearly event.
This time it took place in Atlanta.
Got to see the CNN building finally.
And wander around various other places.
One of the most interesting things.
I met somebody down there who I had sort of met online.
Actually, not really online.
Sort of met online through fax machines and things like that.
But this is somebody that has sort of been brought into the 2600 world
in kind of a weird way, very weird way.
It came in the form of a threatening letter from another group of lawyers.
You know how we always get these threatening letters from lawyers?
Well, this time it came from a group of lawyers as a result of something on our website.
Yeah, something on our website, www.2600.com.
And this was addressed to one of our, I guess, employees, Kathy Tripod.
Yeah, well, you see, here's the thing.
If you take our phone number, which is 516-751-2600, and you look at it through a reverse look-up,
you'll find that it is registered to two people, actually, Howard and Kathy Tripod.
Who they are is not important.
Their history is really not of interest to anybody, especially in this day and age.
But this letter was addressed to Ms. Kathy Tripod.
They took half of the person that was listed on the reverse look-up of the phone number
and basically sent this threatening letter to that person for some reason.
And the letter is concerning 2600's hacked site for International Churches of Christ.
I don't know if you've seen that one, but we've had some hacked sites in the past.
And this is one of them, one of the more recent ones.
And the letter goes, Dear Ms. Tripod,
We represent the International Churches of Christ in its intellectual property matters.
It has recently come to our attention that you are providing internet service to Justin Rossetti
at http://www.2600.com
slash hacked file spelled with a ph slash church.
As you are likely aware, Mr. Rossetti's unauthorized use of the church's site
is a violation of federal trademark and copyright laws.
As Mr. Rossetti is not affiliated with the church,
he is not authorized to use the trademark International Churches of Christ
nor the copyrighted materials on the church's website.
Now, after reading this amount of this fax that we got,
actually it was a letter too, got it both ways,
I was completely perplexed.
I didn't know who they were talking about at all.
I didn't know who this person was.
Yeah, we have an image of the hacked website on our webpage.
That's it.
Not providing internet service to this person or to anybody else.
By continuing, First, Mr. Rossetti's use of the International Churches of Christ trademark
violates 15 U.S.C. section 1051 and related state law.
Mr. Rossetti's use of our client's trademark has resulted in confusion
with people attempting to access the International Churches of Christ homepage.
Yeah.
Additionally, Mr. Rossetti's use of the International Churches of Christ mark,
despite the addition of the word businesses,
is misleading and is in violation of California state and federal trademark
and unfair competition laws.
This unauthorized use of the International Churches of Christ trademark
has resulted in damage to the church.
Damage.
That's right.
We request that you ensure that Mr. Rossetti rename his homepage
and choose a name which is not likely to cause confusion
with the church's trademarks or homepage.
Further, we request that you ensure that Mr. Rossetti modify the contents of his site
so that the church's copyrighted works are no longer displayed.
At this point, I was beside myself.
It's not his site.
We don't even know who he is.
It's our site.
We put it there.
Why do they think it's this person's site?
Why do they think that we've given somebody access somehow
and allowed them to modify the church's site?
It makes no sense.
This is a letter from somebody who has no idea what they're talking about
as far as what the Internet is and what a webpage is,
who we are, or anything like that.
These people are preaching doctrine of religion and God and all that kind of thing?
I don't know.
If they have as much of an understanding of that as they do of this,
I'd be worried, I'll tell you that.
They concluded by saying they're forwarding a letter,
a copy of this letter to Mr. Rossetti requesting that he voluntarily modify his website
as requested above.
While the International Churches of Christ does not wish to impinge
on Mr. Rossetti's right to free speech,
it cannot ignore his misleading and infringing use of its trademarks
and copyrighted works.
We look forward to your prompt cooperation in this matter
We ask that you respond to this letter by June 1st, 1998
by informing us of the action you have taken to terminate Mr. Rossetti's misleading
and infringing use of my client's trademarks and copyrights.
The International Churches of Christ prefers to avoid legal action,
however, it is essential that it protect its rights to its trademarks and copyrights.
Well, I met Mr. Rossetti down in Atlanta at summer camp
and it was interesting because he got a copy of this,
it was addressed to him and his late father,
which was also an interesting thing that they did.
And I asked him, what is your connection with these people?
Did you by chance have something to do with the hacking of the page
and this is their way of getting back at you somehow?
Now listen to this, the story is that when the page was hacked
and when we put the page up on our site,
he went to their page, their real page, the one that wasn't hacked,
where they have a little feedback section.
And he left them a little message saying,
hey guys, you know, I agree with what those people did.
I think that you're a cult taking advantage of people, etc., etc.
He basically expressed his opinion on the page that they have
for people to express their opinions on.
And because of that, he has now been targeted as their prime enemy.
And whenever anything goes wrong, apparently he is the one to blame.
Well, I don't know. I don't think that's fair.
So hopefully our lack of response and our reading of this on the air tonight
will ensure that they erase his name and put in our name instead,
so that we can bring what they do next to as many people as possible.
I mean, you know, a hacked web page is an annoyance, okay?
But you move on, you recover from it.
It's history. It's in the archives. Their web page is not hacked.
It's simply a photograph, a picture, a snapshot of what happened in the past.
You can't change history, much as these people would like to try.
The web page remains, and it will stay up there.
www.2600.com slash hacked files, spelled with a ph, slash church.
Look forward to further correspondence.
All right, so that's been an interesting week.
We've got that. We've got the Mitnick film. We've got SummerCon.
I went down to, drove all the way down to Atlanta with a bunch of people.
And, you know, the Sprint PCS phones, they work up until about Washington, D.C.,
and then they go dead. Isaac, you can attest to that, right?
Yeah, well, I went on and on about that last week.
You went way on and on about that, yeah.
Well, now, here's something interesting.
In Virginia, there's another company that you can roam with on Sprint PCS.
Yeah, so I don't remember the name.
I don't remember the name, either, because it has such a boring-sounding name that I couldn't,
and plus, they muffled it during their error messages.
I tried making a phone call on there, but they said that I had to dial pound roam,
pound 7626, yeah, 7626, in order to turn on roaming.
And I called that number, and, of course, I got the same error message
saying that I had to dial that number to turn on roaming.
I never got anywhere.
I called the operator, 611 or something like that,
and I asked them, what do I have to do to use this phone in your area?
And they said, you can't.
You just can't do it at all.
We don't have an agreement with Sprint PCS.
And I was kind of perplexed by that.
Well, why does my phone, you know, go on and say, yeah.
It says Sprint PCS on it, too, when you're down there,
but it's not Sprint PCS, which I think is kind of silly.
They had no answer for me.
They said the only way I could make a phone call was to use a calling card,
which kind of defeats the whole purpose of having an affordable phone in the first place.
So it was pretty much useless.
But, you know, in D.C., this is interesting.
In D.C., both my GSM and my CDMA phones worked at the same time,
and they both were being provided service by the same company.
Really?
One was Sprint PCS, one was Sprint Spectrum.
Oh, that's interesting.
Sprint is competing against itself.
Itself.
Yeah, in D.C.
So that was kind of neat.
My phone, instead of saying OmniPoint on it, said Sprint.
And then as I journeyed further down into North Carolina,
it suddenly started saying Bell South.
Bell South GSM service.
And that was kind of cool.
And keep in mind, the whole way down, I could do things like send e-mail to people
and get weather forecasts and occasionally make and receive phone calls.
I don't know what kind of rates I'm paying.
I'm sure I'll find out and have a horrible tantrum about that.
And then when we finally hit Atlanta, it changed to Powertel, your favorite people.
Oh, yes.
So I was pretty much covered throughout by GSM.
These guys, CDMA, Sprint PCS, I wasn't very happy with them
because they just didn't have much coverage.
Plus, the phone is stupid.
It doesn't change the name of the company to reflect what the company is,
whereas GSM does do that.
And I was just a lot more impressed with the way it worked.
So that was my little adventure there as far as journeying around with a phone.
Okay, let's take some phone calls.
212...
I almost gave the wrong number out.
I don't want to do that anymore.
It's not that number.
It's 212-209-2900.
That's our new phone number.
And I see we have phones ringing in a strange part of the phone.
So I imagine...
Look at that.
They all moved.
Everything moved at the same time.
Whoa, that's pretty weird.
As I move the microphone around.
Let's see what we can accomplish here.
Now, keep in mind we have some technical glitches that will be happening
as a result of our being an interim studio.
Let's go over here.
Good evening.
Is anyone there?
No.
No, that's not a voice.
That's an electronic something or other.
Okay, we're going to hang up on that,
and we'll move on to the next one, which I think is over here.
Good evening.
Hello.
Ah, we have a human.
Yes, how are you?
Where are you calling from?
Doug from New York.
New York, New York City.
Yes.
Well, that's good.
That's good.
Now, how is our signal coming through from our new facilities?
It's coming very well.
That's good.
I have an old, I'd rather say a cheap boom box that I'm listening to you with.
So it's a little bad, my boom box.
But, yeah, you're coming very well.
I just got word from our Internet coordinator.
What's that letter in German, U with two little dots over it?
The umlaut?
Well, umlaut is what you put over it.
Those are the two dots.
Yeah, those are the two dots.
What's the letter called?
I have no idea.
Okay, well, it's that letter followed by 85 listeners.
I don't know what that means.
Is that some sort of mathematical term?
Not that I know of.
We have U dot dot 85 listeners.
So maybe they could clarify exactly what that is.
We have some listeners apparently on the Internet, which is good.
So what is on your mind, Calder?
A comment I'd like to make is regarding cookies and identification,
especially when you go to sites and they ask you to register.
At least to me, the simplest solution I have found is most of the time
I give completely inaccurate information.
I log on as a woman who is in her 50s, who makes about a half a million dollars a year.
I give a bogus e-mail and you get registered.
That way, who cares whether they're registering you or not?
Well, now, they are able to get your computer that you're coming from, right?
Who cares?
The computer only has a cookie on it.
True, true.
And the cookie simply will have basic information
that someone at the particular computer has logged on.
It does not say that my computer, which is Dell,
doesn't say whether I'm male, female, young or old.
Right.
Have you gotten any kind of junk mail as a result of any of this?
No.
Okay.
Because the e-mail address they give, say for example, AOL,
I don't use AOL.
Okay.
Well, it sounds like you have the system figured out there.
Yeah.
So, you know, you say Doug or Mary at AOL.com,
which the system recognizes as it's configured as an e-mail address.
The system would recognize it as an address and register you.
They have no way of checking whether it's an accurate e-mail address or not.
That's it.
Okay.
Well, that's a simple but effective way of getting around the invasion of privacy.
Have you gone to the Anonymizer site, though, and seen what they know about you?
No.
I always suggest people do this.
Go to www.anonymizer.com, which I believe is A-N-O-N-Y-M-I-Z-E-R,
and there's a button there that you can click on that will tell you everything
that they were able to figure out about you by you going there.
And some of it's kind of scary, you know,
because they're right on the money in various things,
and it has to do with, you know, what site you're coming in from
and various other things like that.
Really?
Yeah.
They're showing you exactly what everybody else can see, except they're telling you.
So what's Anonymizer?
A-N-O-N-Y-M-I-Z-E-R.com.
Y-M-I-Z-E-R.
I sure will.
Okay.
Okay.
Good luck.
Thank you.
Thanks for calling.
Our number is 212-209-2900.
Let's see what this new message has to say here.
Okay, we have about 85 to 90 listeners.
The umlaut was a tilde.
It was a tilde.
Okay.
Is it a strange ASCII translation there?
That's a strange ASCII translation.
That's right.
I've never seen a tilde on my OmniPoint phone.
And apparently it was trying to say approximately.
Approximately.
All right.
That's good.
So if there are any other people out there.
Well, of course, I can't talk to the people who aren't listening,
so we have capacity for more.
But we just started getting back onto the net on a regular basis,
so hopefully we'll build from here.
212-279.
Oh, I keep doing it.
I keep doing it.
I almost just said 279-3400.
That's our old phone number.
Don't call that number because you won't get anywhere.
You won't get anybody.
Call 209-2900.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Good evening, Emmanuel.
How are you doing?
Okay.
I'm kind of new to the scene, but I had surfed into the 2300.com site,
and I was wondering, are you going to do another Beyond Hope
or another conference or anything like that up in New York?
Well, it's not going to be this year.
I can tell you that much.
Okay.
That's all I can say at the moment.
But, you know, we have not said that we will never do something like that again.
I can say that as well.
Okay.
And also I read Cyberpunk by John Markoff.
That was the first book where he started saying things about Kevin Mitnick,
who he didn't talk to then and he hasn't talked to now.
Right.
And it's kind of funny seeing what you're talking about,
that they never talk to him, but yet they're going to do this whole movie about him,
and even some of the things that they have in the book, it just doesn't make sense.
And the thing is, both Markoff and Shimomura have sold the rights to the story now.
They've sold them to Miramax.
They've made a tidy sum.
They have no, you know, they're going to say that it's not up to them anymore,
what happens in the film, it's not their fault.
They've given the story to Miramax.
Who knows what they're going to do with it?
Right.
And I think that we have a right to see what it is that they're going to be saying,
because this is not, you know, a fictitious, wild fantasy here.
This is something that there's, it's called a biopic.
Right.
I don't have a dictionary, but I'm not sure what the exact definition of biopic is,
but it sounds like it's something that's sort of biographical.
And, yes, I'm sure Satomo Shimomura is going to be giving all the information about,
you know, what was in his various meals that he had that day,
and all the other things that he kept a record of.
But at the same time, he's also going to be spreading lies about Kevin Mitnick,
and considering that he's sitting in a cell, has not even gone to trial yet,
that can be extremely harmful, extremely damaging,
and it's going to paint a very bad picture in the eyes of people who have not heard anything about this case.
At the same time, though, I think this is an opportunity to get the word out as to what the real story is,
and to make sure people know that the things that they're seeing are fabrications,
and, you know, to find out what the whole Free Kevin Mitnick, you know, movement is all about.
Right.
So what would be another good book besides Cyberpunk, just to get another side of the story?
Well, I would say The Fugitive Game is the best of the Mitnick books.
It's written by John Litman, and what's good about that book is that it also, it sort of covers the takedown book.
You know, it covers the Mitnick story, but it also covers the way that takedown was put together.
And I think that's something that's, you know, that's very important to do.
Another book I would recommend is Charles Platt's Anarchy Online, which kind of covers that as well.
You might have some trouble finding that, but if you do some web searches, I'm sure you'll track that one down as well.
Okay, thanks a lot.
All right, take care.
Okay, bye.
212-209-2900.
There, I said it.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, hello.
How you doing?
Gosh, I thought the call would be...
You have to turn down your radio a little bit, otherwise we'll get...
I thought the call would be screened beforehand, but I guess we're live.
No, we don't screen people here.
Oh, I follow you.
Well, let me cut to the chase.
Okay.
I had a little, like, visitor on my monitor when I was working late one night.
I'm a writer.
And anyway, I took preemptive measures.
As it turned out, I think both of my lines have been...
This ties into the telephone company.
Okay.
It's a central issue, and I was hoping you could help me out with it.
You had a visitor on your terminal.
Well, it's worse than that.
All my faxes...
You know how a fax can be pulled?
Okay.
Right?
Even if you're not...
Like, if you're disconnected from your computer, if you're just set up as you have your fax directly from your telephone line.
Right.
You have it from a remote location.
Right, right, right.
So it can be pulled remotely.
But the thing is, is that there's this particular, I don't want to say the manufacturer,
and they had this technology on their device that will flash a number if you're being remotely...
Someone's ghosting your faxes.
Okay.
Your communications.
And it will flash for just a second.
But on your transaction report, it will print the number that you actually dialed,
so there's no record of it unless you catch it, the visual.
Well, there's this number up in Worcester, Massachusetts, and I've contacted the people at AT&T,
I've contacted the people in New Jersey, you know, all the analysts and detectors,
just to see how far it would go, because I'm writing a really hot story right now,
and I think I'm implicated in something.
Is this part of the story?
Is this part of the story?
This number, bring it around.
Yeah.
You know, and I did kind of a crisscross reference and all that kind of thing.
Right.
But it ties into a large institution of some sort in Worcester, Mass., I don't know,
and I won't tell you, well, I mean, do you know anyone who could help me out?
I'm trying to find out where this leads to, because I got their number.
Okay.
I'm not entirely sure what's happening here.
I think my lines are bugged.
That's what I'm trying to tell you, but it's just a –
Where did you get this number from?
The number in Worcester, Mass., just –
It flashed on my – this little new gizmo that I have on my fax device.
Caller ID?
Was it caller ID?
Well, it's not caller ID, but it effectively works that way.
Okay, so basically it's the number of the fax machine that's calling you,
which is set at that fax machine.
No, that's not what I'm saying to you.
Okay.
I'm saying that I can communicate internationally with my fax device.
I can receive faxes.
I can send faxes.
However, once that number is entered into my fax device,
what happens is that the transmission goes through and it shows the report.
But if you're not standing over the fax device, you don't see it flash another number.
And I see it flash this number, and it corresponds to a number in Worcester, Mass.,
Now, tell me about this report that you're supposed to get.
Well, you're on anything.
On any device, when you send, you get a transmission report.
Okay, you get a transmission report.
If you select it as one of your options according to your documentation.
Now, it should tell you the number that you called or the number that called you, right?
Right, and it does.
So you would think, just based on the transaction report,
that you've communicated correctly to that.
I wanted to communicate with these people encryptically to begin with,
but what is happening is I've discovered that there's some other party
that's privy to my correspondences, and I'm really irritated.
And you discovered this by seeing that number flash in the transmission report?
Yes, for just an instant.
Okay.
That's odd.
I mean, is it always the same number?
Yeah.
And when I call that number, I fax them a tongue-in-cheek letter.
The point is it's a fax device.
It's a dedicated fax line.
And when I did some investigation through various fundamental channels,
I found out that it's some sort of corporation or entity,
but it's ambiguous.
They can't put their finger on it.
And I've had the supposed experts at the phone company,
and I checked a couple of directories.
I went to the library and all this and that.
So I did as much research as I can, and I'm really irritated right now.
Has this been happening for as long as you've had your fax machine?
No, it happened because they sent out a signal or something two weeks ago
and killed my fancy fax device, and I bought this new one.
It's a little teepee, and the little teepee has this feature on it
that the other, you know, it zonked out my other device.
But this one, it just, you know, it picked it up, and it flashes it.
So I'm really irritated, and I'm thinking that, you know,
there's got to be a way to circumvent their cloak and dagger kind of thing,
because obviously it's a real number, and obviously it's a fax number.
Well, here's a thought.
Do you think that maybe somehow when you got that new fax machine
that they somehow supplied you with that fax machine?
No, yeah, I went through all that in the documentation to check out
whether there was something already, you know, filed away,
and I went through, and, you know, you can save numbers and this kind of thing.
I cleared the whole thing.
No, no, I went through the whole procedure, tried everything again,
you know, back to square one.
Okay, how about this?
I reprogrammed my device.
How about this?
Take your fax machine to a totally different phone number.
See if the same thing happens.
I tried that.
What happened?
Nothing.
What, you didn't get a phone number at all?
No, no.
It's only on your phone line that it does this?
It's only on my phone line.
Wow.
So it's my phone lines, or something's going on with my phone lines.
Uh-huh.
And I'm irritated, and I thought maybe you guys, well,
I'm sure there's a way to do something.
Well, you know, we'd need to know more, like,
what this mysterious institution is up in Worcester, Massachusetts,
and things like that, you know.
Yeah, it's area code 508.
Okay, that narrows it down a little bit.
Well, I guess, you know,
let's see if anybody else is having similar types of things.
Have you guys ever used Data Fellows?
They are the people, SSH and Secure.
Yeah, we know about them.
They're pretty good, I think.
Well, what if I wanted to communicate with you guys?
Open channel or encrypted or what?
Encrypted.
Encrypted.
Well, okay.
If you e-mail us, we can send you a PGP key.
What do you think of PGP?
Well, it's not like the thing that comes out of Finland.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, the thing that came out of Finland doesn't exist anymore.
Yes, it does.
You can get it because it doesn't come under the mandate.
They're an exception.
You're talking about what, the anonymous re-mailer?
No, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Okay.
Well, thanks very much for that admission, and thanks for calling.
Interesting calls we get on the new phone number.
I don't know.
Maybe these are calls that are intended for, you know,
for the old people that had this number.
I don't know.
But if anybody out there has had problems with an organization,
a mysterious organization up in Worcester, Massachusetts,
this is the place to let us know.
We will be happy to investigate,
and we want to thank people for sharing their stories.
Look for that story to appear in whatever it is he's writing at some point.
I'm definitely looking forward to the miniseries.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Hey.
How are you doing?
This is Corey from Wisconsin.
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
How are you doing?
Oshkosh, actually.
You know, I was in Oshkosh once.
You must have a lot of trouble, like, pronouncing things with a name like that.
Oshkosh?
Yeah.
Or Meeko, my last name?
You don't have to give us all your information.
But, no, Oshkosh, it's kind of a weird name.
Yeah.
That's all.
Well, everything's weird up here in Wisconsin.
Well, you're known for cheese up there, right?
Yeah.
We do enjoy cheese a lot up here.
You're probably sick of hearing that.
Anyway, so how is our signal coming in on the Internet there?
Really good, actually.
I just got the new version of RealAudioPlayer for Linux,
and we just got it up and running before the show, and it's sounding pretty good.
Great.
Okay, so what's on your mind tonight?
We just wanted to call and tell you we were just all sitting around listening here,
and we called that Sprint PCS number that has the supposed slamming door security whole thing.
Oh, the slamming door number.
Yeah, that was from a few weeks ago.
And the slamming door is gone, but the thing still works.
Does it?
Yeah, you press one, and then you press one again,
and it just says enter a number for verification, and it doesn't verify anything.
And you can check anybody's bill?
Anyone's.
That's really something.
Do you have the telephone number so our listeners can have some fun after the show?
It's 1-88-211-4727.
888-211-4727?
Yep, that's it.
All right.
Well, okay, greetings to everybody out there in Oshkosh.
Yeah.
And keep listening.
All right, see you later.
Take care.
Bye.
I believe you had a misadventure with Sprint PCS last week during the show.
Yes.
Where I basically advised you to go out and get 500 free minutes for that newest promotion of weekends and nights.
And you went out there, and you were chastised severely by them for even attempting to do this on the current planet you had.
Now, is there an update to this story?
Well, I called back.
Interesting thing, I dialed star 2, and I'm a little overdue on my bill.
And as soon as I called star 2, bingo, somebody actually picked up.
That's how you get attention.
Usually you have to wait 25 minutes to talk to a human.
You don't pay your bill, you talk to a human immediately.
Right away.
Right away.
It's incredible.
I dealt with that, and I got to the actual administration, and they added it.
They just added it.
They just go, yes, we can do that.
As long as you pay the bill.
Exactly.
Just give us some money, and we'll give you whatever you want.
We'll give you anything you want.
That's an interesting approach.
It was interesting.
So you have 500 minutes free now.
500 nights and weekends.
That's nice.
Feel free to call me.
I had to give up my long distance to do that.
I had 1,000 long distance minutes for like 20 bucks or something like that.
And they made you trade.
They made me trade.
In order to get my 500 free weekends and nights, I have to stop paying the 20 bucks
and have to pay 15 cents a minute now for long distance.
Which isn't that bad, but I kind of miss not having 1,000 minutes.
It just sounds so cool.
The troubles we have to go through.
All right.
212, 209, 2900.
All these lights.
I see three different colored lights.
I don't know what they mean.
One is orange, one is green, one is red.
I think the green one is what I should be picking up.
So let's go for that one there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
I can barely hear you.
Speak up a bit.
A few things.
Okay.
You're going to have to speak a little bit.
You there?
Yeah.
Oh, boy.
Okay.
This must be the magic line that is all messed up.
I guess.
I don't know.
Okay.
You're going to have to just make it quick because we can barely hear you.
Okay.
I hear there's going to be a pirate radio station in New York City, lower Manhattan.
You hear there's going to be a pirate radio station in lower Manhattan.
Well, that's entirely possible.
There was a pirate station there.
It was Steel This Radio.
I don't know if they're still around.
88.7, I think.
What?
87.9, I got.
87.9.
Okay.
That's right at the very beginning of the FM dial.
Sometimes they put things there.
There's a station on the air now?
I don't know.
I have one that's not digital, so it's a little hard to.
Okay.
So it's probably way down there.
How do you know it's pirate?
It got on BBS.
Oh, it's on a BBS.
Okay.
I saw a BBS message.
Okay.
And.
Make it quick because.
Okay, I also get this fax number calling me.
You have a fax number calling you?
Yeah, like 3 in the morning.
At 3 in the morning.
And how do you know.
I don't have a fax line.
How do you know it's a fax?
You hear all these beeps, you know.
Okay.
It probably is a fax if you hear, you know, not fax tones, but just beeps indicating that
it's trying to reach.
Is it always the same time of night?
Around the same time.
Does it try back again every five minutes?
No.
It just tries once?
I don't know.
It just gets.
We just disconnect the phone.
Uh-huh.
Do you try things like star 69?
No, I just try that.
Try star 69 because that might work.
You know, you might get something right away.
If you have caller ID, you might see the number that way.
If that doesn't work, what you have to do is just contact your call annoyance bureau
of your local phone company, and they are supposed to track it down,
track down the owner, especially if you have an exact time.
That makes it very easy to do.
They'll track down those people and tell them to stop doing that.
They won't tell you who the people are, but they will stop the calls,
and that's what they're there for.
Don't waste your time with star 57.
That's a big waste of money, $1.50 to report an annoying call.
That's really silly.
Okay, good luck with that, and we won't pick up that line again because I think
there's something wrong with the circuitry.
Let's try over here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah.
Speak up a little.
Okay, I have a friend that works for Pacific Bell,
and they just have this new system in their trucks where they can track everywhere they go,
like with GSM, and they can monitor what they're saying.
Now, wait, how are they doing this?
What kind of device?
He's an employee for Pacific Bell, and it's in their trucks.
Okay, it's a device in their trucks.
Yeah.
And it monitors where they are at all times?
Yeah, but it uses a GPS.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
Global positioning.
Yeah, and they're kind of testing it right now,
and he kind of wanted me to help him make it so it doesn't work so they don't use it.
So did you know anything about defeating GPS or anything like that?
Gee whiz.
Isaac, you know anything about this?
Well.
Defeating GPS?
Defeating GPS.
You could pick it up and drop it off a large building.
That doesn't really defeat it.
That breaks it.
Yeah.
That's a kind of defeat.
No, no.
We need a way for it to give out.
Well, what you could do is isolate it from the signal.
If you put it in a small Faraday's cage,
it won't be able to communicate and figure out where the heck it is.
Of course, you know, when you do that, they're going to take notice of it,
and then they'll start watching you all the more.
Well, you know, all of a sudden this van is in Vancouver,
and then it's in the middle of the Pacific,
and now it's somewhere on Venus.
They're going to probably take notice.
See, there's really only one way to deal with things like this.
The technology is not going to fail.
The technology is going to work all too well.
The way to deal with it is to object to it,
to get everybody to object to it,
to refuse to work until they take things like this out.
You know, there's obviously a reason why you don't want to be tracked everywhere you go,
and you have to be able to enunciate that reason in terms of people can understand
how it's an invasion of your privacy and how it's not necessary.
And once you get them doing that,
then you can actually change the policy where they don't do this anymore.
The thing is, though, it's really cheap GPS, like within 100 meters.
And he gets a report every day of where he was,
and most of the time it's on the wrong street, the wrong address and everything.
So they just want you basically to find out approximately
that you didn't go to another town or another state or something like that.
All right.
Well, 100 meters is still enough to determine if you're at 7-Eleven or on a job.
Yeah.
He said one of his friends already got caught
because he worked for like two hours and then went home or something like that.
Well, that's one way of doing it.
They monitor people in all different ways.
They monitor trucks on the highway to see how fast they've gone.
They monitor people with cameras.
It's a sad state of affairs.
We're always spying on each other.
Yeah.
By the way, do you think he'll be going to DEFCON this summer in Las Vegas?
Too early to tell. When is that again?
July 31st, I think, or 28th or something like that.
The end of July.
Not entirely certain right now.
You see, the whole thing with this Mitnick film, it's filming in late July.
So if we have to do things in North Carolina, that's going to be the priority right there.
So when we know more about that, we'll update people.
If it's possible to go to Vegas, that would be fun,
but we have to think about what's important first.
Thanks for calling.
Let's see if we can squeeze in one more.
Let's go over here.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yeah, I have a question.
Go ahead.
I found, like, all my personal information inside a network box.
Does that mean anything?
You found all your personal information in a network box?
You mean a phone box?
Yeah.
Okay, where was this box?
On the side of the street.
Okay. What kind of information are we talking about?
My name, house phone number, and beeper number.
Interesting.
Well, now, is that information in the hands of the phone company to start with?
Probably not my beeper number.
Hmm. Is the phone registered in your name?
What? No, it's not.
It's not registered in your name?
No.
Yet your name was on the piece of paper there?
Yeah, it was a marker on the side.
That's interesting.
I would say, you know, if it was your phone and your name,
they might have just been writing it down so that they knew how to get in touch with you
because there was a problem with the line.
They do that sometimes.
If it's not registered in your name and they put your beeper number on there,
I mean, why would they want your beeper number?
That's kind of crazy.
Yeah, because I really don't get that out,
and it kind of freaked me out.
I'm being opened up, like, whoa, there it is.
Uh-huh.
Well, is it possible that somebody you know is doing this,
someone not affiliated with the phone company?
No, I'm pretty, like, don't give it out that much.
Uh-huh.
So very few people have it.
I thought, I don't know.
Well, I mean, obviously you're opening up this phone box yourself.
Yeah.
Is it possible other people you know are doing the same thing?
Hmm, possible but not likely.
Uh-huh.
I would look into that because it seems very bizarre that the phone company
would write down your beeper number on one of their boxes.
I mean, what are they going to do, prank you with your own beeper?
It seems something like somebody who's not very organized, you know, would do,
and that involves somebody who's not really supposed to be opening those boxes.
I don't know.
It's an interesting problem, but we're out of time,
so we can't really devote any more time to it.
So we'll be back again next week, hopefully from our brand-new studios,
like our permanent studios where everything works.
We have more than one cart machine and all kinds of other possibilities.
Until then, it's Emmanuel Goldstein for Off the Hook.
We'll be updating people on the Kevin Mitnick film as we learn more about it.
If you want to write us, send us email, oth at 2600.com.
I'll give you the address here except I don't know the zip code.
It's 120 Wall Street, New York, New York.
So if you can figure out the zip code.
One thousand five.
Okay, great.
So one thousand five, except I still don't know where my mail goes,
so I'll have to track down my mailbox.
So if you want to send mail there, fine too,
and we'll be back again next week with another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
Until then, have a good night.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Von Diddley Bolt for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Von Diddley Bolt!
And see what we can punch up here.
Aha, here we are, and this is listener-sponsored.