...wants Americans to see him as a less threatening figure.
Well, Howard Kurtz, we are out of time, and I just can't thank you enough.
The book, WBAA listeners and KPFK and Los Angeles listeners,
is Spin Cycle by Howard Kurtz at Downton Paperback,
and it is a must-read.
You've just got to get this book.
Howard, again, thank you very much.
Mike, I've enjoyed it.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, once again, we're at the end of the show.
I am so happy to, well, I'm just so happy to be here
and able to do this and perform.
It feels like a pretty good service.
Next week is going to be a remarkable show,
so it's not one you're going to want to miss.
So, having said that, I love you guys.
Go, hello, suave, todo mundo.
Hasta la semana que viene.
This is almost too good to be true, but here it is.
On Thursday, December 17th, from 6 to 8.30 p.m.,
three of the world's leading historians, Dr. Jan Carew, Dr. Ivan Van Sertema,
and our very own William Lauren Katz will all meet right here
at WBAI's new studios at 120 Wall Street for a holiday book party.
We urge you to join us to celebrate these great historians and humanitarians.
Celebrate WBAI and our effort to promote a people's history and global humanitarianism.
Books will be available, refreshments will be on hand,
and whenever BAI people get together, we always have a great time.
We're asking a $20 donation to benefit WBAI.
Please call Karen for reservations and more information.
The number is 212-209-2828.
That's area code 212-209-2828.
See you at the book party.
And it's time for the off-the-hook party now.
It's 8 o'clock, 8.01 actually, on a Tuesday night.
Time 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 cough
It couldn't get much worse
But if they could, they would
Bum-dilly-bum
But I best expect the worst
I hope that's understood
Bum-dilly-bum!
Bum-dilly-bum
and a very good evening to one and all the program is off the hook and we have some
late breaking news we haven't been on for a couple of weeks we were preempted last week because of
that last minute three-hour special on slavery uh but this week we have a action-packed hour for you
so stay tuned
why do you try to cheat and trap the people under your feet don't you know it is wrong
don't you know it is wrong
but you better stop
it is the wrong
your life still treating deceit
it's such a small small game
don't you know it is wrong
don't you know it is wrong
you better stop
it is the wrong
and speaking of lying stealing cheating deceiving brings up the name of agent steel uh who's
somebody that has been on the run in the hacker world from the authorities for number of weeks
and uh kevin polson joins us on the line with the latest update on the story of the fugitive hacker
how you doing good how about you pretty good now you said a couple of weeks ago on this show that
uh you had no doubt he would be caught pretty uh pretty soon and you were right he got caught
yeah it's good to recall you said there was some sort of pool going and i guess i
too late to get in on that yeah well yeah it's just as well i lost big time i thought he'd make it
until the first of the year but uh this goes to show so now what foreign country what foreign
country was he finally found in he was studio city california well it's a foreign country to
many of us but uh i guess not as foreign as as we had thought yeah they do they speak english and
they drive on the right side of the road he was uh captured uh last friday night uh shortly
before 6 p.m by united states marshals who had been tipped off to his whereabouts by uh
an associate of his on the sunset strip interesting now uh i understand that the
marshals who were uh who eventually wound up capturing him had actually been in touch with
him via email is that true yeah and that's that's what led to his uh swift capture uh normally uh
supervised release uh violator doesn't get a real high priority among the marshals they tend to go
after the uh the violent criminals but in his case they uh they knew about his website they'd been
checking it out uh he was making public statements there uh to the effect that he was uh overseas
elsewhere there were public statements where he'd said that he was working for the cia
and uh that he uh didn't really care if he got caught or not and um they uh and he had a lot of
pictures of himself up on his website so they just sort of found that uh arrogant i think and uh made
it more of a personal mission than anything else to uh to bring him down so uh shortly before in fact
just a couple days before his capture one of the marshals uh said that he had uh sent peterson
email saying um we're coming and hell's with us hell's coming with us yeah uh peterson according
to the marshals peterson had received the email and mentioned it to them he just didn't know that
it was from the marshals wow so now this uh for those people who don't know uh justin peterson
uh was a federal informant who helped to uh get kevin mitnick uh captured or actually to to start the
whole chain of events that wound up getting him captured uh in addition he uh he was involved with
people like you as well uh kevin and and uh and ron austin and all kinds of other people it seems
yeah i knew him uh many many years ago uh back in the early 90s but apparently it wasn't anybody in
the hacker world who helped turn him in it was somebody in the club scene yeah that's that's where he
uh has the highest profile that's where people know him the best and uh he's been there forever
he has lots of enemies there and he didn't exactly keep a low profile while he was on the run
i think the number of people actually knew where he was was probably pretty substantial
and it was inevitable that one of them would drop a dime on him and uh sort of ironic well now that
he has been captured do you think that's going to affect the mitnick case at all i don't think so
like i said the last time i was on your show neither side is likely to use peterson as a witness
um it's you know it sort of sums up his character that he was telling people he was out of country
out of the country and then was uh captured about a mile from hollywood um he doesn't have a lot of
credibility well and in a piece of mail that we got uh a little bit before airtime he said that
he had just gotten back from being out of the country when he was captured yeah no doubt
so uh while there's and he probably had just gotten back from his uh covert operations with the cia as
uh-huh now even um uh the maximum penalty for what he has done now uh for for eluding capture
and going on the run uh it's something a few months right yeah he's looking at five to eleven months
under the guidelines um after which the judge might have the option of putting him back on supervised
release which means he'll be a probation officer but will be once again insisting that he get a job
and uh you may very well see uh see this happen again it's interesting that the contrast uh kevin
mitnick going on the run uh no bail no uh no trial for four years um this guy goes on the run after
committing real crime stealing real money doing things like that and we're talking only a few months
seems kind of disproportionate doesn't it well um there are two factors i mean one peterson obviously
was a government informant at one time um the people that are that are dealing with him now that are
prosecuting him now once uh sat around the table joking with him back when he was helping them with
metnick and other cases and then the other factor is there's no evidence at this point that he was
committing any crimes while he was on the run um the only thing that he's being charged with is
violating the supervised release by walking away from the halfway house
mm-hmm that is uh it's been quite a story uh how did you uh get word of it i believe you're the
only person that's actually reported this on the net so far um yeah i i've been covering the
peterson case since he first went to court uh uh several months ago uh for refusing to get a job
so i i've been following it closely and i've cultivated some sources uh-huh interesting now
there's another uh i say you're the only person who uh who's written about it because so far you're
the only person who's actually written a story concerning his his capture uh however there was a
story uh very recently um in the washington post having to do with uh with agent steel justin peterson
and i'd just like to read a little bit of that and also uh bring in one of our our web people who
uh got a sort of involved in this story micah out in uh california um let me read from this uh from
this story written by renee sanchez agent steel is on the run again his real name is justin peterson
and back when he was at the top of his trade he did what stars here do prowl the bars of sunset strip
live large always get the girl it hardly mattered that he was a thief a computer hacker who tapped
his keyboard until it led him to other people's riches of course that's all what computer hackers
do uh in hollywood charm and a rebel's pose go a long way and peterson whose codename in cyberspace
is agent steel he had both but now a few years after being jailed for an array of clever computer
crimes peterson 38 years old is a fugitive for the second time he is fleeing the authorities
whom he once helped to catch some of the nation's other notorious computer hackers peterson bolted
from a halfway house here weeks ago while serving the final part of a sentence for schemes that
included electronically swiping 150 000 from a bank he also rigged local radio call-in contest through
his computer to guarantee that his phone number would be the winner uh so far kevin is is everything
pretty much accurate here um if you get to an accurate part i'll let you know well how about
the part about swiping 150 000 from a bank did that actually happen uh he tried he did not succeed at
that he was uh he was captured the last time he was a fugitive while that plan was still in progress
um and uh i i did appreciate the way the washington post gave peterson credit for my crime
well yes uh giving credit where it's due is not really one of their attributes uh according to jay
lickman uh peterson's former attorney he is an unusual person he has uh talents yes that's that's
how he always put an uh in a sentence when you're a lawyer that really makes you look good uh the hunt
for peterson keep in mind this was written before he was captured the hunt for peterson is part of a
larger battle that california law enforcement officials are waging against computer hackers
who seem as attracted to the west as the outlaws of old i don't know where they're going with that
computer hackers sort of migrating to the west like cowboys uh computer use is higher than in many
other states could have something to do with silicon valley i don't know that's my my interpretation
and by all accounts hacking is on the rise we're dealing with more pranks and more sophisticated
schemes said chris painter an assistant u.s attorney in los angeles who specializes in computer crimes
now here goes the interesting part and this is what we're going to be focusing on federal agents in
los angeles recently busted a ring of hackers who were phone freaking which is of course slang for
sabotaging a person's phone service with extreme measures such as forwarding their calls somewhere
so their line never rings that's all that phone freakers do no doubt about that yes uh now the
interesting part next spring kevin mitnick the only hacker ever to make the fbi's 10 most wanted list
faces trial in california on charges that include stealing thousands of credit card numbers
now with that i'd like to bring in micah from california micah you with us yes hello man how you doing
now uh you actually talked to this reporter about this story i know a lot of us read that that one
sentence and were incensed that first of all just to set the record straight everyone has seen the
indictment the indictments on the website there was nothing in there mentioning stealing credit card
numbers and here it is in the washington post where they actually say this how in the world you
talk to the reporter yeah how does a reporter for the washington post manage to get something
so wrong well he uh told me for starters that he used a uh an old washington post article from
uh february 1995 as his uh primary reference and then he also spoke to the federal prosecutor's
office now february painter february 1995 that was when mitnick was captured right and all of the
news stories came from a single source john markoff of the new york times john markoff of the new york
times was the person who who originally made the allegation that uh he had stolen all these credit
card numbers because he had a file in his netcom account that was a copy of of all these credit
card numbers which a lot of people had uh now from that they they just assume that that's part of the
indictment without checking well it's even better than that because later in the conversation he uh
i had him actually read me part of that article that he was referring to and he actually realized
that that article didn't support what he said about being charged with credit card numbers
rather than it mentioned that he was accused of having the list um i i really tried to impress upon
him some of the uh the importance of making certain distinctions um it seems almost trivial probably to
him the difference between saying that he's charged with stealing credit card numbers versus
his actual indictment and uh and he he really um he thought he was doing mitnick a favor by saying
thousands of credit card numbers instead of the number of twenty thousand which is what the
prosecution had told him and uh he told me that he has no bias against kevin and didn't have an agenda
but i think he realized the errors of his ways when i pointed out that painter's office definitely has an
agenda and that by taking them at their word he helped facilitate it kevin polston any surprise
and how the washington post can can do something like this well emmanuel i will not be a party to
any media bashing um this is uh unfortunately this is the way it works a lot of the time people uh
people in the press will write stories based in large part on um on stories that were written before
and sometimes they will even add to them um and so it uh becomes like it becomes like a twisted game
of telephone where uh where the message changes with each retelling um i believe ap was the first
to report that mitnick had been on uh the fbi's 10 most wanted list which is certainly not true
um i guess it surprises me that this came from the washington post but um then again you know this
sort of thing can happen anywhere well you know i'll also point out that they misspelled my name
did they yeah wow well i think they misspelled peterson's name too which uh which happens quite
a bit but you know i was surprised back in 95 when i saw the times doing the things they were doing
with the mitny case and you know leaving out the word allegedly in many places not revealing the
relationship of john markoff to all of this uh it was dismaying to see the same basic uh
misrepresentation of facts taking place in the washington post now but but you as a reporter
you do this kind of thing you you you research a story aren't there certain ways of preventing
things like this from happening um a lot of publications have strict rules on what you can
use as a primary source um wired magazine for example will not allow you to use media or previous
media reports as a source um you have to go directly to somebody um that you can quote about
in order to use it um i don't know if the washington post has similar guidelines apparently they
don't they uh they uh they have to write a lot of stories every day maybe they just don't have the
time um for my own part whether i'm writing for you know a magazine or zdtv at www.cybercrime.com
i um i always try to go to uh you know a legal document or or somebody involved in whatever it
is i'm reporting on just to avoid that whole thing and break the chain of uh misinformation
maybe you could clear something up for us once and for all was kevin mitnick on the fbi's 10 most
wanted list you know kevin mitnick was never on the fbi's 10 most wanted so how come that is the
one thing i see reported more than anything that he was he was the only hacker ever to make the fbi's
10 most wanted i see that every place i think you and i both know and it is john litman reported
um there uh the fbi wasn't even particularly interested in metnick for a very long time
while he was uh supposedly a fugitive he was certainly not on the most wanted list as far
as i know the only way that rumor came about is uh a misreading of one of uh the new york times
early headlines about metnick where they called him a most wanted computer thief
uh that that was probably true among computer thieves whatever that means um metnick uh probably
was uh one of the most wanted just because there are so few of them
interesting carrie is joining us now from uh north carolina uh she's also one of our our webmasters
and over the last couple of weeks so we haven't been on the air for a couple of weeks so there's a bit
of catching up to do but uh at the last court appearance uh there was a bit of an outburst by
the judge uh and carrie perhaps you could tell us what what that entailed you know basically she
she said i don't know what mr mitnick's friends have been up to but someone has requested my financial
disclosure reports someone from north carolina meaning me and uh she stated my name and put the
government on notice that if anything happened basically i think she left it open but implied
that i would be responsible now first of all uh just for the sake of the listeners carrie what what
what possessed you to go out there and actually request this this information isn't this top secret
stuff no it's perfectly harmless stuff it's actually public information it's uh no credit reports or
anything like that um just basically a list of the companies that she owns stock in and um
there's some very vague estimations of the amount of investments i guess but it's in huge ranges like
less than fifteen thousand dollars so really i don't think there's anything in there that could
be used for harassment but she perceived it that way so she gets notified whenever somebody does this
all the judges do yeah but it sounded like she got notified in court at that moment the way that she
uh she reacted i'm not sure whether she did or not she should have been notified before that but
it's possible the government could have been copied on it when my request was sent in and that way the
prosecution could have had a copy of it so now are you expecting some kind of investigation or action
are you uh living in fear now no i i'm hoping nothing will come of it um i suppose it could if one of the
companies goes bankrupt or something maybe they'll blame me
uh-huh wow uh it just seems i i don't know maybe this is this is a typical reaction from a judge but uh
i don't know to me it just seemed a little bit uh strong and also why would she assume that kevin mitnick
even knew anything about it exactly she i i got an email from a lawyer actually um and he said i'm trying to find what he said
um it seems unreasonable to rant from the bench over someone's simple execution of the public's
right to know or to demonstrate a presumption of malicious intent against an unknown person
the paranoia the paranoia might suggest that the judge's comments stem from the nature of the
particular case before her and i think that's true i think she's paranoid of what kevin's friends
might do i guess such paranoia of the hacker community is something that we shouldn't really
be surprised of uh after all we can do anything and we can take down any uh any federal organization
we want we've got that hacker national congress out there somewhere lobbying for us and all kinds of
things like that uh then there are the phone freaks who routinely forward people's phones that they
miss all their goals yeah that's all they do right um happens all the time i wasn't at that court hearing
myself um um carrie were you there no i'm uh i'm not sure i i heard from people that were there that it wasn't
exactly a rant that it was more like she just wanted the prosecution to be aware of it in case anything happened
in the future but even that much is probably a concern that a judge wouldn't have had if it hadn't been a uh hacker case
well i had someone and someone who was in the courtroom described it to me and it sounded as though she was
not not overtly maybe angry or losing her temper but she was upset about it
well it is kind of um worrisome and i'm hoping it doesn't um hurt kevin in any way that people are
making these requests i mean it's perfectly legal legitimate thing to do uh but i just uh i get the
sense that she really is is fearing anything that uh that can happen as a result of of technology
implications things like that so um just something we should uh keep an eye on now also we should report
a very important fact that came out of that uh uh that hearing or the one the next day actually uh the trial
which was originally scheduled for january 19th has been postponed uh was it till april 20th
does anybody know for sure yes april 20th okay uh kevin i'd like to ask you what
what do you think the implications of uh postponing the trial for for that long period of time are
um i don't know if really there are any implications i mean i think this is something we all saw coming
um the uh both sides had been totally focused on plea negotiations and um the uh the government
had been late turning over discovery and apparently according to them the defense hadn't been pushing
them for the discovery because they both thought that they had a plea agreement that was going to come
through um if if randolph wasn't ready for trial uh based on all of that then uh the judge almost had
no choice but to grant him a continuance you know what's what's weird about this son this is the part
i don't really get is that louis de pain is still scheduled to go on trial i believe in january now he
is mostly accused of aiding and abetting kevin mitnick but if kevin mitnick has not yet been tried
how can he be tried for aiding and abetting someone who is still presumed innocent you say it's like it's
kind of a contradiction there um i think he'll he'll be he's charged with i don't think he's
actually charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive um i guess i'd have to check the indictment i know
he's charged with being a co-conspirator and at least one of the crimes that mitnick is charged with
they can make a case for that separately from the metnick trial and uh might actually help the
defense in metnick's case because they get a preview of the government's uh prosecution strategy
and plus they have to prove that it was a crime in the first place oh yes interesting all right
kevin i know you have a deadline you have things to do are you able to stick around or do you need
to go i'm going to take off okay but uh thank you for having me thanks for uh for joining us and
for enlightening us on this and i guess we can look forward to uh to more stories coming from
cybercrime absolutely and that website www.cybercrime.com right that's the one all right
take care all thanks again and that's kevin paulson he's uh left us now we're still on the phone
though with uh with micah from california and carrie from north carolina uh two uh of our webmasters
at 2600 and the kevin mitnick site uh who have been updating people um any uh any new developments
over the past couple of weeks uh things that people might need to know about um well as far
as the uh the post story goes i was able to get an update um a followed up over the weekend with
renee sanchez who uh was unresponsive though he said that he would talk to his editor on monday to
try and get a correction put in um monday of course has come and gone there's been no correction and
despite peterson being captured there's been no follow-up either um i was able to speak to someone
in the la bureau of the post today who informed me that sanchez is out of town on assignment
and in fact all available washington post staff has been reassigned to cover the impeachment issue
so every single washington post reporter is unavailable now because of the impeachment thing
apparently and they're unable to to run any correction or or fix any story that that conveys
blatantly wrong information because of the country is in some sort of a crisis the person i spoke to
says that uh she just knows what she overhears and apparently she overheard that everyone's gone
was this person supposed to be in the office to start with sounded like she was a reporter i mean
i don't get the impression it's a very large office well you're talking to the uh i believe the la
bureau of the washington post which is where this this story was excreted from uh but it's it's just
unbelievable to me that they can they can just do this and not care to get it right i mean clearly
you spoke to the reporter over the weekend uh or before the weekend and um well you spoke on the
phone didn't you right and you you you were able to convince this person that it was completely wrong
the indictment did not say that therefore he was not charged with this crime how can you go and
report in the washington post somebody is charged with a crime when they're not charged with that
crime and then not want to fix it i i sent email i sent faxes made telephone calls even wrote a letter
to the editor i've gotten zero zilch nothing back from the washington post that is how much they care
they do not really give a damn i mean that's that how else do you read something like that well you
see he conceded that it was factually incorrect but he didn't feel very he didn't feel guilty enough
i suppose is the real problem um i guess uh you know these reporters they have a lot to do and
they don't understand the real power that they have here i mean this this story was copied hundreds
of times um in other newspapers that's yeah that is the worst thing because now it's starting to pop
up all over the world and the most ridiculous part was that all the other newspapers that syndicated
it copied it on sunday after peterson had already been caught anyways right so it's really yeah it's
kind of outrageous well you know that also presented the post with a perfect opportunity to correct
the first story by saying here here's an update he was caught and by the way we was totally wrong
we said that mitnick was charged with uh with stealing credit cards credit card numbers he really um
in his own defense he really blamed the federal prosecutors he said um quote
the clear sense that the federal prosecutor was giving me was that the credit card numbers were
part of it it being the uh the net common part of the indictment and so i guess what we have here is
he felt that since since the story was about peterson not mitnick the mitnick part that he mentioned in
one sentence didn't deserve any further research and so he just kind of took the prosecutor's word the
process you just kind of set it aside and i guess if you're that reporter you know you just uh you
don't have time to analyze the indictment let alone read it i just find that kind of uh operation to be
totally i don't know dismaying i guess is the best word i can think of
that that they would care so irresponsible very irresponsible right well uh of course we invite
our listeners to contact the post on their own behalf and uh express uh their concern one way or
the other but i can't imagine how you can back this kind of thing up i mean if we make a mistake
here and someone tells us about it you know we don't hide it we don't not tell people we don't let that
uh opinion not be heard or you know in this case it's not really an opinion as a fact that you know
what they said was was completely wrong for them not to print any of the letters that were sent to
them for them not to acknowledge that that you know the facts were wrong not to call people back
you know it's just a certain kind of uh i don't know superiority that that some elements of the
media seem to have where they they pretty much speak gospel and uh there's no room for error anywhere
well you know we're part of the media too we're uh we we've become part of the media here at bai
and uh we've got power to get the word out to as well so we'd like people to help spread that
around it's up on the website we're going to be uh putting more pressure on the post as well
to uh to acknowledge officially that they were wrong that they're spreading all kinds of
mistruths around of course even if they put a front page article out saying we were wrong that
doesn't undo it because as you mentioned newspapers all over the world are picking up the story and
and printing it verbatim you know and you can't expect them to check all the facts either it's it's
really it's insidious thing you know where you have basically a source of news and everybody else
just sort of echoes the same voice without inserting anything anything at all so it's very sad yeah
and it's also i just think it's funny that they blamed congress they because uh well they're out
they're out chasing down undecided congress members congressmen that's why they uh that's why they
can't correct it so uh blame impeachment right well you know they blame the weather if they could
that's just how uh how they how they work okay uh we're going to try to take some phone calls now
it's rather complicated with all these people on the phone but uh we're going to give it a shot
anyway uh we ask people to please uh keep the uh the topic keep the calls on topic so that we don't
float around too much uh 212-209-2900 is our phone number if you're out of the country of course
country code one we are on real audio as well as 99.5 fm in new york city and um i guess uh we also
have some listener mail what i'd like to do is while the calls are pouring in read a couple of
pieces of of listener mail which means we need the listener mail theme
since when is that the theme
i guess it'll have to do okay after listening to the first half of the december 1st show i have
two suggestions for saying the www at the beginning of a url pronounce it dub dub dub
for maximum efficiency i don't know i don't know what do you guys think about that one dub dub dub
i feel like an idiot saying that uh yeah isn't that the uh warner brothers network theme
what's that is it i don't know dancing frog doesn't he say that does he say that the dub dub wb
yeah yeah well that voice just coming in out of nowhere is isaac who has just landed from queens
of course how do you guys say it out there in queens oh way out across the east river uh we're
still using www uh-huh well you know someone someone else said um uh actually the same letter
writer says don't say it at all like your guest suggested since both internet explorer and netscape
can figure it out if you leave out the www that's not true that's not true well if you leave out the
www and the dot com dot net dot org or whatever the uh the suffix is there it'll figure it out by
just kind of throwing together as many combinations as possible but yeah if you leave out the first
www and you put dot com it's not gonna work i don't understand what you just said if you if you leave
out if you leave out everything if you were to just type yahoo y-a-h-o-o okay the browser will put
in the www and the dot com if yahoo dot com say didn't exist it would try dot net then it would
try dot org and it'll just keep trying something if you try twenty six hundred dot com you're not
going to get www correct if you supply the suffix yourself the browser won't like start throwing
are you saying if you type twenty six hundred it's going to work it will work really that's also but
that's dependent on uh your own dns configuration yeah another another place it might be alias to it or
it might be set up to work there too i don't i mean you guys who have access to the net right now
you might want to try typing twenty six hundred to see if that works i don't think it's going to
work it'll work really depending on your browser it'll work okay well i don't think it's going to
work on my browser moving on to uh i i gotta vote down the dub dub dub thing i just say it go ahead
say it you sound stupid well nobody doesn't sound stupid when i say that i don't know i just try it
doesn't work if you don't put in you put in the suffix but not the prefix it doesn't work
what if you just type twenty six hundred does that work um it should okay that that i'd like
to know takes longer though yeah uh okay i've just gotten absolute proof that it is not impossible
to get normal non-hacking people to sympathize with hackers i was listening to the december
first episode of like when they call them episodes you know it's like cliffhanger episodes
the weekly series um december first episode of off the hook in my school's library people listen
to off the hook in their school's library i mean i think that's pretty cool you know they go there
on their lunch break or you know cut class or something and wind up in the library and they're
listening to off the hook it's not bad hey kids how you doing it's no longer a quiet place then
well what if they're wearing headphones you can do that well then other people don't hear
this person had to be using speakers if other people were hearing that's true all right i don't
know exactly what the situation was anyway one of the librarians asked what i was listening to and
who kevin was i explained and she not only listened which is rare for anyone in authority at my
school but she also understood what the problem was and sided with kevin she even asked if i had
a copy of 2600 she could see she read it and thought it was pretty cool now this is a librarian
this is a librarian the moral is they can be taught well sometimes you know the moral is that they
actually have a clue before you reach them you know some people have not been uh desensitized to
injustice and they're willing to listen to to people around them even if they are mere kids in the
school i think that's pretty cool when you find people like that of course most times that does not
happen as this next letter uh will aptly tell us okay here we go i was just wondering if uh
i this person also had a question about the january 1st meeting 2600 meetings is there going to be one
well they fall on january 1st it's really up to the individual meeting if they're going to be on
january 1st or january 8th well what about new york you know i'm not sure yet because i'm not sure
if city corp is closed i think it might be closed on january 1st so that'd be interesting if city
corp is closed and i guess we have to have it on the 8th but other places you know the ones that
like meet in open fields they can just be out there on the 1st without a problem we have meetings all
over the place that's true in poland we have a meeting in poland and you have to bring a certain
color book at the because you know they're not as wide open and democratic as we are here so they
have to sort of hide a little bit and and the way they know a hacker is somebody who carries a
certain color book so if you look at the next issue 2600 you'll see that interesting yeah we'll
definitely look for that anyway so uh again check with your local meeting for that um i'd like to
mention yet another example of school administration stupidity about a year ago one of my friends created
a web page on his own service provider space that consisted of rather biting opinions about a certain
science teacher both him and i had yeah however by no means was this considered slanderous since the
contents of the page were clearly stated as opinion anyway some student got hold of the web page's
address through a search engine and found it to be funny so he proceeded with his aol browser to
print out the page and bring it to school uh-oh at which point he passed the printout around the
classroom in which the teacher aforementioned taught one of the more moralistic students felt it was her
duty to give the printout to the teacher the teacher brought it to the principal the principal
called the police the police called the feds the feds called the executioners and that's the end of the
story now uh it it made it as far as the principal but um the principal then interrogated every student
in every class that had the teacher this is amazing what they spend their time doing i was called down
several times as a possible suspect because i was fingered as someone who knew something about
computers as you all know that's a curse nowadays that is a curse i was threatened with suspension
you should see the way this person spelled suspension not one t but two does that say
something about the writer as a student actually if you if you pronounce this you can pronounce it
suspend tension suspended yeah that's not bad which might be a term they have in that school
for really serious suspension i don't know but anyway he was threatened with that and even expulsion
if i did not confess to it now that would be interesting to try and uh deal with in a court of law
so far as uh violation of first amendment rights did they uh did they mention the age or grade
um i don't believe they do i don't believe it's mentioned anywhere in this in this letter but i get
the feeling that it's a high school but it could be a junior high school i doubt it's an elementary
school but you know it could also be a college and and micah you're a college student so you have
some knowledge of college injustice right yeah well they've they've been pretty good as far as uh
when you say what you want outside i know uh here at a mover in chico there's actually there's a
website where uh where there's just a message board where you can look up different professors
what students have written about them and uh they're pretty good about that but yeah we have our
our own fair share of fascism over here uh new network policies coming out to uh
really kind of cripple the resnet system trying to make it a lot less useful things like uh enabling
port security so you can only have one machine and one ip in each room and uh and they don't
mind if you run rather you're allowed to run servers as long as it isn't dedicated and i know we've had
lots of cases in uh california universities of uh things like in ucla where the acceptable use policy
specifically uh prohibits open source or the use of open source on the network or any linux
that's that's kind of funny that's rather curious yeah they're um they didn't actually change the
network policy when someone changed it when someone challenged it rather but uh there was a case it's
on a nerdherder.com i can get the url for that well i think we should contact some people from uh the
organizations that that put out these operating systems to see how they feel about being you know
blacklisted like this i think the reaction might be kind of interesting let me continue with this uh
this story here with this letter uh my friend wrongly assuming that he had first amendment rights
went down to the office and admitted to making the page but said he had nothing to do with its
distribution within the school now keep in mind those of you listening this was a page that was
not done on school computers was done you know at someone's private account it's simply an opinion
of a school teacher the principal proceeded to suspend him for five days for making a web page
containing opinions created outside class on his own time because it quote contained harassing material
about the said teacher unquote i was also called down to the office again because she the principal
believed i was still involved and questioned during a class that i was supposed to be taking a test in
essentially what it all boils down to is the unconstitutionality under which schools operate by
i can understand weapons rules and such but the right of free speech being eliminated is unacceptable
furthermore my locker was searched my issues of 2600 were confiscated as contraband as well as my
my graphing calculator which had some games on it and my notebook which contained nothing more than the
phone numbers of the principal's office and voicemail numbers which happened to be printed in huge
bold print on the front of the student handbook um i proceeded to uh uh to accuse them of theft of
personal property at which point they told me that the issues of 2600 had been destroyed along with
my notebook and the memory had been erased on my calculator but i could have it back
what more can i say about their utter lack of knowledge about computers and hacker society in
general well their complete disregard for this individual's rights are more of my primary concern i
would definitely see if i couldn't get in touch with the aclu or someplace similar uh possibly go down
to a bookstore and pick up the aclu's uh student handbook um i mean this this person's rights were
basically uh trampled over there was a book that uh was out a number of years ago i remember when i
was in high school i had a copy of this and boy was i was i marked as a result of that it was called
the rights of students basically the aclu and other organizations sort of put out the series of
books the rights of x rights of women the rights minorities rights of students and it told you what you
were able to do what you were not able to do and through that book we were able to figure out we put
out an underground newspaper uh in my high school and we were able to figure out a way to get the
school to pay for it really so that's how good that book was to me so yeah there's there's uh there's
all kinds of uh little things that you need to know i think there has to be some organization there
really should be i don't know of a particular website out there that just goes over rights of
students but there should be one if there isn't and i'm sure some of these people that go through this
kind of thing can get together compare stories but it's important to have firm ground to stand on
you know if uh if you are in fact dealing drugs and you're complaining about not having freedom
of speech it's going to be a lot harder for people to take you seriously you have to really
be standing on some firm ground here and not be up to some criminal activity you know that that you're
complaining about being harassed for um we want to hear from people who are actually having their
rights violated uh like this person here i would definitely pursue that uh see if you can't even get the
media involved as much as we uh belittle and berate the media uh present or former company
excluded of course well remember the media is a tool and you have every right to use that tool as much
as anybody else also in this day and age you have every uh every prospect of becoming part of that
media through the web through the net various means you know you you have to you have to be forceful
though it's a lot harder to get access to radio you know 10 20 years ago it's a lot easier for
people to actually you know get shows on college radio stations these days a lot harder stations
are being you know wiped out taken over by npr or just closed down turned into 10 watt you know
stations that nobody can listen to you know you need to uh demand your rights yeah it seems that by the
uh by the school's reasoning that girl who showed it to the teacher should uh be the one who was
harassing him you know i don't see uh the student showing it to the teacher she's the one who uh
who print who well i guess she didn't print it out but she showed it to him she started a whole
lot of trouble yeah all right final letter here i'm listening to the december 1st show of off the
hook and i would like to say that rebel is a nut i am i could just stop right there i guess but uh
he goes on he goes on to justify it i am in the u.s navy and would like to say it's comforting to
think people in the u.s navy are sitting around saying hey rebel's a nut i would like to say that that
we have ballistic missile subs that can sit off the coast of the u.s and fire missiles around the
world if that's not long range i would like to know what is um i believe he's referring to rebel's
comment that there are no more there are no more icbms in the united states yeah that's interesting
however we can take heart in knowing that those missiles are under the control of two separate
people and must be manually launched after the receipt of an eam emergency action message
other than that i like to say i love your show i hope to be able to get it uh in japan or if you
have access to a computer you certainly can and they also close by saying i hope you didn't get
a ticket and that's true you know uh last time we left everybody uh it was a bit of a crisis
situation where uh my car was downstairs i stumbled down the stairs a double speed parking meter and
we'd run out of money we forgot to go down during the middle of the show that put money back in
fortunately we made it in time there was no ticket and everyone's happy unless i got a ticket and
somebody took it which has happened it it's actually happened a real way to cause confusion just run
down the street and take everybody's ticket and then you can be assured there'll be court battles
in months years to come but uh i'm not giving anybody ideas on that it's rather you know and it's an
honor system you put the ticket on the windshield wiper and you just assume it's going to stay there
but of course uh you never know what's going to happen in new york very true okay so that's uh
that's the letter uh the letters for this week and so much for the letter theme all right let's try
to take some phone calls 212-209-2900 the program is off the hook emmanuel goldstein here uh we have
micah out in california and carrie you're still there with us in north carolina yep okay great and
of course we have isaac over there on the other side of the room and you have a package which we
might be opening later on so uh let's see if we have any interesting phone calls here first
and let's go to this this this one has rebel written all over it just the way it's flashing
yeah look at that look at that yes you might be right but you know maybe we should give him equal
time all right let's let's see what we can do good evening you're on the air
hi emmanuel calling from chicago he's calling from chicago there's no way see that that proves it
wasn't caller id we don't have caller id here there's no way i could have known that was him
it's just it's a sense if you will it's instinct i'm calling from the 315 wait a minute not 315
315 is 773 new york 773 that's one of those wacky ones that's right and speaking of area codes i was
just in phoenix arizona well that's an area code city well but wait a minute i was down by the mexican
border and when i wait well phoenix mexican border no no i was on my way to phoenix but i was near
like el paso texas okay so i wanted to call mexico i just thought the good you know what are the
costs to call mexico you know you can call mexico from new york what no no wait a minute guess how
much at&t charges from a payphone right at the border to call the same as they would they would
charge from the canadian border to call mexico it's the same rate yeah but wait no wait wait a
minute you know how much it is to call okay tell me how much is it three dollars and
fifty cents and how much would it be from here from here would be i think like five dollars or
something i haven't i'll bet it would be three dollars and fifty cents too maybe maybe but
anyway what's your point well my point is that why they charge so much if you're just calling
it's just like calling from manhattan to northern new jersey yeah but you notice that when you call
from manhattan to to another state they charge you more money than if you call from manhattan to
brooklyn you know it might be it might be nearer geographically but you're going over borders
now also in mexico when i was in mexico they have what to dial out their o-one-one is zero zero in
other words most countries it is most countries it is zero zero really yeah exactly i think all of
europe is zero zero oh i didn't know that yeah zero zero country code city code a number yeah it's i
think it's only the united states and canada with zero one one but any of our international
dial zero one is the local in other words if you're calling within mexico like from let's say
the northern mexico to southern mexico it's zero one and then the city code and number
interesting yeah and also um let's see what else when i was in oh i was traveling and at motel six and
super eight motels they have a you're going in style aren't you yeah
yeah yeah style a super eight and motel six there's a phone where you can make in the lobby
at most super eights and motel six throughout the country you can make sweet phone calls just have
the operator dial the number for you get the local get their long distance operator at t and t or it's
usually like operators like sprinter mci uh-huh and you can just have them bill it to the phone you're
calling from that's uh fascinating news there rebel but uh we have to move on is there anything else
you'd like to close with is there going to be a 2600 meeting on january 1st well we already addressed
that issue i guess you weren't listening to the show let's address it to the listen here from chicago
let's address it to the orders in new york city that there is there going to be a 2600 because not
everybody was at the 2600 meeting well we didn't decide then we we still haven't decided basically if
the city court building is closed on january 1st i guess we'll have to have it the week after that
right unless it's like sunny and balmy outside and we can all hang out in the street but you know
it's probably not going to be on january 1st all right thanks for calling nice hearing your
cheery voice as as always i'm sorry i was going to ask him why he was touring the united states but
i decided against it it's not really a tour it's more like a a race okay and he's ahead for the
moment but i think we're closing in on him i was just going to call him a nut uh yeah but then then
we'd have to give more equal time to that's true to uh counter that let's take another phone call
good evening i'm sorry good evening you're on the air speak up please could you give me any
information about our services that allow you to um use your email account and actually put in
one plus the the number that you that you uh of a fax machine actually literally fax from an email
account i just had just heard about something like that but i couldn't get any specifics and
i was wondering if you knew anything well you want to basically be able to from your account
mail something and have it show up as a fax well someone had just told me i didn't know if this
person was joking or just had a vivid imagination but they said that they had found a free service
that they read about in the magazine where uh this person also has a free email account that also
allows you to to have a free voicemail in your email account so what what this service has supposedly
done it's another free service like a free email account like hotmail and all that if you write
uh uh in a certain protocol on the address uh you can literally fax via your email account
uh whatever you've put in the in the uh body of of your your email whatever you can actually have
that sent literally as a fax to a fax machine and i was just wondering if you have actually ever
heard of anything like that i've i've heard theoretically that i don't know any specifics
isaac have you heard that wouldn't surprise me at all i mean uh so it's basically just as though you
were printing out uh the email some service is just making the call and spitting it out someone's
fax machine oh it wouldn't surprise me at all what would be really interesting is if uh someone was
able to have a service where you could receive faxes say it converts it into a pdf file and then like
shoots it over to the person's email account that would be very cool i heard i have heard of a service
like that you've heard of that as well yes but i can't guarantee it was a pdf obviously but i've heard
of a service like that but i've been getting a plethora of free services uh uh you know everyone's
been getting free email but now i've gotten a place where i get free voicemail and now this is like the
creme de la creme where i can actually if this is actually true i did try it out on my phone i
don't have a fax machine but i did when i put uh turned on my x machine i did i did get the beep beep
but i i didn't have the fax to to actually verify it but uh uh if this is true now it seems like you
can just i got a free website free email uh uh literally just just have everything free nowadays
it's a little yes so this just seemed like the icing on the cake now i don't i can just get free
faxes for my free email and fax off my free um uh home page well there's always there's always a
cost somewhere along the line like you're probably faxing a big fat ad every time that uh you know
you send somebody a fax and that's going to annoy them and then they get put on lists and they get
all kinds of junk faxes they don't want to get you know it's everything is done for a reason and uh
you know there's no such thing as a free lunch i hate to say anyway thanks for the call uh isaac you've
got um you've got a package you want to pass that thing over here yes uh a couple of weeks
ago we talked about this uh correct it is a this is an mre mre yes now what does mre stand uh it's a
meal ready to eat uh the u.s military has been handing these out to gis uh so they can meet their
daily nutritional requirements this thing in a bag is ready to eat you're trying to tell that well you
see you have to add water this is this is for after after the year 2000 when we all have to
live those will survive yeah okay and this is what we're going to be eating well not necessarily
the first thing i pulled out of here is a napkin and it looks like a a spork it that is definitely
a spork you also have a spoon half fork yes you have a you have a packet of salt a packet of
pepper this it's okay if i open it not saving it first well i was planning on eating it for dinner
tonight but you're a very strange person isaac thank you but uh well you can't let a perfectly
good mre go to waste at any rate there is a perfectly good one here all right we have uh
looks like a pack of pure sugar here yes by the courtesy of the boc packaging corporation
no fortune on the back or anything like that then we have heart smart non-dairy creamer
heart smart heart smart registered trademark uh that's kind of kosher too that's kind of cool
um and we also have gourmet instant coffee 100 pure coffee in a little tiny package here
manufactured by mark lynn industries of bremen georgia uh okay and uh you're supposed to empty
this into a cup and add boiling water how do you get the boiling water out of a mre well that that's
the one thing you have to add to the mre uh how do you get boiling water in a nuclear fallout shelter
well you have to add water to it um the later models now this is kind of interesting uh each year
they actually release a different uh upgraded mre got a napkin here it looks kind of like european
toilet paper and uh they act uh that the older mres actually gave you a little bit of toilet paper as
well just a little bit huh well you had a few squares folded over that's going to be the most
difficult thing to to deal with down there uh okay we have a little package of pepper here
contains dustless black pepper bacteria treated gee whiz all right and one uh a couple final
packets here we've got uh looks like iodized salt also courtesy of the bach corporation and a moist
towelette oh i was worried that they wouldn't include the moist towelette but but you must be
cleanly on the front lines okay now that's that's the first thing here yes uh and the reason we're
racing through this is because we only have about a minute or two to uh go through this entire mre
so let's see what else we have in here oh this looks pretty tempting it's a cardboard box
chicken breast fillet you know they spell fillet wrong isn't it only one elm fillet uh this is a
fillet i don't know with rib meat seasoned chunked and formed and grilled oh yeah they're they're
fairly explicit this is really disgusting looking it's it's it's just uh how would you describe this
it's a a pouch with a fillet in it which you have to add water which i believe is a fillet in it
it could be anything well if you squeeze a little it's it's kind of someone's internal organ just like
okay i'm gonna just give that back to you okay thank you don't really want to have that near
me it's really tasty uh what else do we have in here oh this looks kind of nice a fudge brownie
cake which looks exactly the same as that internal organ i just handed you uh it doesn't really say
anything else other than that you can't see any of this it's all in this plastic wrapping vacuum
packed freeze dry all right and uh what do we have here beverage base powder lemon lime what in
the world we're supposed to do with this uh you add it to half a canteen of water okay and you drink
it actually uh if you continue to read the instructions there uh you're supposed to let
your chemically treated water from some unknown water source sit for half an hour before you add the
lemon lime dissolve contents of the 34 gram envelope in 12 ounces half canteen cup of cold water allow
water just chemically purified to stand 30 minutes before adding beverage powder yes oh these are these
are words to live by all right um that's not over yet there's still more we have grape jelly i guess
that's one of the needs of life uh well it goes with another package oh there's something else still
that works with the jelly okay and this is the last uh package crackers wow a big
wax thing of crackers you can't see the crackers either you just see the package
i'm looking forward to 2000 i'll tell you that right now and uh well these aren't this isn't your
only option for feeding but uh this came out of my own little personal store where does one get mres
around here uh you don't uh basically most of the major suppliers uh that you can get mres from
uh their warehouses are cleaned out because of 2000 because of people panicking over 2000 so you can
expect more of that we can already write our our obituaries now because we're too late we haven't been
doing this since 1960 so uh all right well i've already accepted it so so there all right uh micah
and carrie want to thank you for joining us and and talking about the whole mitnick case and and the
implications thereof thank you all right well uh we'll be in touch i guess over the next couple of
weeks and uh until then this is manuel goldstein for off the hook still wrapping that up well yes uh
the final words i suppose would be bon appetit yeah well i'm gonna watch uh see if you actually
eat that i'll report back next week see if uh actually uh fulfill that promise until then this
is manuel goldstein we'll have more details on year 2000 probably next week as well as any uh changes
in the mitnick case and any other case any other uh bits of injustice that are being passed around
so until then stay free and be technologically aware good night
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off the wall i cut myself while shaving now i can't make a
cough it couldn't get much worse but if they could they would
bon dilly bum for the best expect the worst i hope that's understood
bon dilly bum
bon dilly bum
bon dilly bum
bon bah
bon
I was arrested by immigration officers
and basically I was asked to provide future cooperation.
Across America, more than a score of Muslims
are being held in prison without charge.
Why is the Immigration Service selecting these individuals?
Why is secret evidence permitted in our courts today?
In the coming weeks, beginning December 1st,
WBAI's Tahrir will speak with these prisoners
and civil rights attorneys about abuses
against our Muslim community.
Tune in Tuesdays at 9 p.m. to follow this investigation.
That's from 9 to 10 p.m. starting Tuesday, December 1st
on 99.5 FM, listener-sponsored radio in New York.
This is almost too good to be true, but here it is.
On Thursday, December 17th from 6 to 8.30 p.m.,
three of the world's leading historians,
Dr. Jan Carew, Dr. Ivan Van Sertema,
and our very own William Lauren Katz
will all meet right here at WBAI's new studios
at 120 Wall Street for a holiday book party.
We urge you to join us to celebrate these.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you.