Thank you very much.
Hi, you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York. It's time once again for Off the Hook.
I hope that's understood. Bundy, let's go!
There's no peace, creep, by any sense of the word, and you can call them people flower
children and this and that. Some of them people was loaded on some drugs that it's just too bad
we wasn't loaded on.
Shrieking violet bakes the scene in the formal garden of the queen. Bloody Mary, so contrary, how do your flowers smell?
Like pederastic priests and hypocrites, burning in the pits of hell.
You are the butterfly, I am the honeybee. You stop to smell the roses, then you drown in the poison of my sting.
You fight to keep your sanity, then you fall into a deep narcotic sin.
Slipping to a dream without a care, you can see hell flowers everywhere. A scent of evil fills the air, you can taste the magic if you dare.
Diseases and affidavits, valium and prostitutes. Miracles and violets, put aloud in a circus test.
Everything beautiful contains a rainbow flower, so it's not a sin to come in through a hidden door.
Hell flower, Satan's power, no more beautiful by the hour.
You feed on a horse, and you free our hearts, with the essence of the souls that you devour.
Hi, I am Princess Samantha, and I am surrounded by a sea of flowers.
There are daisies, and daffodils, and dandelions.
The roses are the flowers. They are so pretty, and they make me so happy.
I'm so tired. I wish we could be together, but I'm too tired.
Oh my God, I feel so happy. Oh, that's lovely.
Would you like one of my flowers?
Send into a dream without a care. You can see hell flowers everywhere.
The scent of evil fills the air. You can taste the magic if you dare.
Those nice, gentle flowers. You have to come and visit us.
Morning glory tells the story of hell flowers throughout history.
Growing like weeds in the garden of Eden, where the masters spoke to me.
Soon as you get down through the tulips, with a kiss that will end your infamy.
Let me drag your teeth right through the mud, in the flowerbeds of your symphony.
With sweet, euphoric flowers, green, and every size of shape and form.
And as the centuries take you past, and I am the demon upon this land.
Hell flower, Satan's power. You grow more beautiful by the hour.
If I could, I would destroy this world, and build something beautiful that we can call ours.
Hell flower, Satan's power. You grow more beautiful by the hour.
With sweet, euphoric flowers, green, and every size of shape and form.
And as the centuries take you past, and I am the demon upon this land.
With sweet, euphoric flowers, green, and every size of shape and form.
And as the centuries take you past, and I am the demon upon this land.
Uh, watch out, you there?
Okay, you see, this is exactly what I'm talking about. This is what I mean.
Phone's not working. People not being around.
Ah, what are you gonna do?
Okay, well, we'll try and hook up with him a little later.
Don't know how that could have gotten messed up, but hey, that's the nature of technology.
It's for things not to work right.
I was in a traffic jam before. Underneath a sign that said,
Normal traffic conditions. No tie-ups ahead.
And nobody was moving. Everybody was admiring the sign.
That's just the way it goes, I guess.
Well, we had our demonstrations last Friday, and boy, what an amazing turn of events that was.
You also have to bear with me because my voice sounds all distorted through my ears.
And I know, you know, sometimes it sounds distorted in real life,
but in this particular case, these headphones are kinda wrong.
And, uh...
Yeah, yeah, okay.
I can't take that call now, unfortunately, because I'm on the air!
No one ever calls me. No one ever calls me unless I'm on the air.
And everybody calls. Everybody says, uh,
Hey, what are you doing? What are you up to?
Well, I'm on the radio, so that's what I'm doing right now.
Okay, so as far as what's going on in the world,
well, we had the demonstrations on Friday.
Lots and lots of people showed up in New York.
We had people showing up in all different cities throughout the country, throughout the world, in fact.
But, you know, even better than...
Sorry about that. Even better than me talking about it,
I think we should let the WBAI news department talk about it,
because they wanted the few media outlets here in New York that actually managed to show up.
So this is the report that played on the air Friday night.
Now, keep in mind, I've never played a cassette deck on the air before,
so this may not work.
Let's see.
No, of course it didn't work. Okay, I'm going to press it myself.
Let's try that. There we are.
Today at federal courthouses around the country,
protesters gathered to bring attention to the case of an alleged computer hacker
who's been in jail for four years, yet has never had a trial or a bail hearing.
WBAI's Heather Pettinato was at the federal court in Manhattan and files this report.
Free Devin! Free Devin! Free Devin! Free Devin!
Simultaneously, protesters in 14 cities around the country and in Moscow
were rallying for the release of Kevin Mitnick,
a computer hacker who was taken into federal custody on February 15, 1995.
Mitnick is accused of saying he was someone else on the phone
and then gaining possession of the software of major cellular phone corporations.
Emanuel Goldstein, an organizer of today's protest,
said that Mitnick's imprisonment is an outrage.
This is not a violent criminal. This is not somebody who stole anything.
This is simply somebody who was a little bit too curious,
who delved into some corporate secrets,
but didn't display them to the competition or do anything harmful.
He was just curious. That's what this boils down to.
Mitnick will be sentenced on June 14 when the judge will either recommend more prison time
or immediate release to a halfway house.
In addition, Goldstein says the authorities want to impose severe restrictions on Mitnick
for at least three years after the end of his prison term.
He won't be allowed to use a cellular telephone.
He won't be allowed to be anywhere near any kind of technology.
Basically regulations that are being given by people who know absolutely nothing about technology.
Mitnick's supporters say he's never been accused of violent stealing
or causing any sort of physical damage,
but he's been treated far worse than any violent criminal.
And also they point out that even the Oklahoma City Bombers had a bail hearing.
Yet the cellular phone companies claim Mitnick caused millions of dollars in undocumented damages
when even the prosecution admits he did nothing more than look at their software.
Goldstein says his goal is to make more and more people aware of this growing problem.
People keep wanting to appear to be hard on crime,
but what they're failing to realize is that a lot of people are in prison now who shouldn't be there.
They're not a threat to society.
So basically anybody who is caught breaking the law in any way must be sent to prison.
That's the mentality.
With that kind of mentality, it's easy to get away with anything.
Lock people away and forget about them.
More updates on Kevin Mitnick's case can be found on the World Wide Web at www.freekevin.com.
For WBAI News, I'm Heather Pettinato.
And much thanks to Heather and the WBAI News team for covering the story.
You know, we told everybody about it.
We told everybody that this was going on, and a few people took us at our word.
A few people actually covered the story.
You saw pieces on ZDTV.
You saw something on WIRED.
You saw a few other media pieces throughout different cities.
But it's amazing how many didn't show up,
how many media people just decided this wasn't worth covering.
Well, a lot of people did show up who thought it was worth covering who are just regular people,
and I think that's where the real credit goes for those of you that actually came down.
And it was great.
It was great meeting all these people, some of them for the first time,
BAI listeners, people from the 2600 crowd, readers,
various other people that just happened to see one of the posters
that somehow made it all throughout the city.
And the same scene was repeated elsewhere, starting in Moscow.
Moscow had the very first of them,
and going all the way up to, I believe, San Francisco was the very last one.
San Francisco, Spokane, Washington, that particular area.
And you can actually start to see some of the pictures that came from, I think, both New York and Moscow.
Porkchop's with us now.
Porkchop, you there?
Here I am.
Okay, great.
So I believe those pictures are going up on the website tonight.
Is that right?
That's right.
Okay, great.
So people can actually see what it looks like in Moscow at a Kevin Mitnick demonstration.
Mm-hmm.
It's pretty cool.
Probably a little closer to 10, 10.30.
Those should be up.
10.30.
Okay.
EST, by the way.
Yeah, Eastern Time, for those of you who are listening in other parts of the world.
The address, www.2600.com slash demo,
or just go to the main page and click on the big demonstration section there.
You were at the demonstration for a while.
What were your impressions?
Well, there were a lot of people there.
That's certainly true.
In New York, I believe there might have even been 50 people there handing out flyers.
We handed out, what was it, 3,000?
We handed out 3,000 flyers.
We kept going to Kinko's.
In fact, that reminds me.
I've got to go back there because they double-charged me.
They kept trying to do that all throughout the day.
They kept charging me for double-sided for some reason.
I don't know why, but I got the little receipt, and I'm going to take care of those people.
But, yes, we had to keep going back and printing them up, and that was a lot of fun.
3,000, that's a lot of people, though.
That's a lot of head turns.
It's a lot of people.
I think we got everybody who walked past the courthouse,
and a lot of people walked past the courthouse.
The cops did not bother us at all.
They were definitely aware of us.
I think they had been notified about us,
but they allowed us to walk back and forth
and hold our banners and flags and various things like that.
I think it worked out really, really nicely.
Nobody really was unreceptive to,
except for one lunatic at the very beginning,
but that was an isolated instance.
You always get hecklers, people who try to get you to react in some way,
but he went back into the Federal Building, and that was the end of him.
No, actually, I think he was just somebody who straggled in from someplace else.
We had skywriting, although I'm not sure how effective it was,
if anybody actually saw it, because we didn't see it.
Supposedly, it was above Central Park.
If anyone out there saw it, please call us, let us know,
because that will determine whether or not we do it again.
It's sort of a makeup for this one.
We'd like to know if anybody actually saw the free cabin,
supposedly uptown, not downtown.
Call in or email us if you can't call in today.
Yeah, oth2600.com.
Let me read you a Reuters report on all the events.
Computer hackers demonstrated in front of federal courthouses nationwide Friday
to protest the treatment of Kevin Mitnick, the online renegade
who has spent most of the past four years in prison.
Mitnick, who was arrested in 1995 and pleaded guilty in March
to wire and computer fraud in one of the best-known computer hacking cases ever,
faces sentencing next week in Los Angeles.
In fact, that sentencing date is Monday,
so that's something else we have to be keeping an eye on.
In fact, I'm thinking we should have sort of an online vigil
where we continuously watch and wait and count down and see what happens.
Of course, it's possible they might postpone it again. Who knows?
But right now it seems to be set in stone for, I believe, 1 p.m. Pacific time
on Monday, June 14th.
Under terms of the plea, Mitnick could be sentenced to 54 months in prison
with much of that credited time served.
Supporters complained that Mitnick's acts,
which included breaking into computers of major networking and cellular telephone companies,
did not merit such harsh punishment.
A dozen Mitnick supporters rallied in front of the U.S. Supreme Court,
passing out flyers to puzzled and bemused tourists.
Actually, I heard more than a dozen people showed up in D.C.,
but maybe at that particular time, that's what was there.
The mostly teenage and 20-something protesters wore T-shirts, buttons,
and bumper stickers calling for Mitnick's release.
The protesters said they generally did not condone Mitnick's acts
or more malicious computer invasions,
but objected to what they called excessive punishment.
We want people to know that this can happen to anybody.
And one protester said that who has to be identified only as Richard.
You never know when they'll come for you.
Bradley Lang, a student from Michigan who flew to Washington
to participate in the demonstration, said Mitnick had been demonized
to set an example to other would-be hackers.
They want to scare the pants off of future hackers, Lang said.
They're making an example of him.
Capitol Police looked on but did not interfere with the protesters.
The protests, which also took place in New York, Chicago, and other cities,
were organized by the magazine 2600, a popular hacker journal.
Isn't that nice of them to call us popular?
That's great, yeah.
Yeah, that's something.
Well, being popular is not... it's not cool, you know?
I guess there's a difference, you know.
You want to be cool, not popular.
You can be hip.
Yeah, I suppose.
Okay, trying to...
Everyone has that, never mind.
Here's the Wired story.
This is kind of funny, actually.
The Wired people, as we play the hip music,
the Wired people, they always got to put something in
that's kind of like sullen, you know what I mean?
It's kind of like putting you down in some snide way, you know?
They're always bitchy about it.
I don't know why that is, but every Wired story I've ever seen,
they've always been that.
And see if...
Portia, why don't you see if you can find the point in the story
when they do that, okay?
Just speak up when you hear that part.
In 15 American cities and Moscow,
demonstrators staged protests Friday
against the continued imprisonment of Kevin Mitnick,
jailed after pleading guilty to seven counts of wire and computer fraud.
Wasn't he jailed before he pleaded guilty?
That's a very good point.
I didn't even catch that, but yeah, you're absolutely right.
Of course, he was jailed way before he pleaded guilty.
He was jailed back in 1995.
He pleaded guilty in 1999.
So yeah, that's a bit of a...
That's a bit of a mis-fact there.
Okay.
Just don't call him a celebrity cracker, growled Mackey,
the webmaster for 2600, the hacker group magazine
that organized the events.
The funny thing about that is that we've always noticed...
In fact, I was talking to Mackey about this a couple of weeks ago,
in every article about Kevin Mitnick,
they insist on calling him a celebrity cracker
because that's a little terminology they've coined
to make sure they don't call him a hacker
because that would annoy people
who don't like that word used for people who are in jail.
So of course, they didn't use the word celebrity cracker in the story
except to quote somebody saying it.
So they actually managed to get it in there anyway.
That's pretty funny.
That's actually clever.
Hats off to Wired for that one.
Armed with yellow Free Kevin stickers and flyers
describing Mitnick's case,
Mackey and nearly 20 other Mitnick supporters
battled the miserable San Francisco wind
to fight for the cause.
We're getting the word out to the worldwide and national consciousness
about Mitnick's sentencing, said Marek Powell,
a pink-haired member of the local hacker collective New Hack City.
Clad in an I Love Feds t-shirt,
Powell said that although his own cyber tomfoolery
has been strictly within the law,
he sympathized with Mitnick's imprisonment.
As far as protests go,
Mitnick's demonstration was relatively low-key.
The attendees cheered as a low-flying airplane went by
trailing a banner that said
Free Kevin Mitnick, www.freekevin.com.
But after seven or eight more passes,
the enthusiasm waned.
Uh-oh. There we go.
That's it, right there.
Now, come on. A plane passes by, right?
And, you know, it has a sign on there,
and you wave enthusiastically.
Are you really expected to wave just as enthusiastically
the eighth time it goes by?
Come on, already!
We'd have to be a bunch of morons to keep that up.
But, of course, yeah, enthusiasm kind of wanes
after the same thing happens eight times.
I hate to tell them that.
It would to me.
Sorry?
It would to me.
Yeah, yeah.
In fact, the first time I read this story,
I was a lot more excited about it than now.
Some in the group had followed Mitnick's plight
from the beginning, but others were just there
to be part of an anti-government staging.
Robin, a self-proclaimed anarchist
and network administrator with a partially shaved head
and a plethora of piercings,
said he was in attendance because
it was a strike back at the government.
Sorry?
Never mind.
But others, like Perry McNulty,
said Mitnick was a study in civil rights.
It's not just a hacker in jail, said McNulty,
who has followed Mitnick's case for about a year.
A lot of civil rights have been violated.
It could happen to any one of us.
And, you know, there was a piece on ZDTV as well,
and you can see this.
If you can find your way around their website,
it's really tough for a lot of people to do that,
but there's a piece somewhere in there
that's in real video that is a duplicate
of the piece they ran on their evening news
on Friday and throughout the weekend.
And in that piece, there was one, I guess,
two people, actually, who showed up,
which I thought was really amazing.
And this is the kind of thing that inspires me so much.
But a mother drove her son over 200 miles
just to be at that demonstration
because she was so impressed with what he had shown her
about the Kevin Mitnick case over the past year.
And that's the real reason we're out there,
is to reach people in that way
and just open up the lines of communication
I just thought that was so cool how somebody did that.
Again, in D.C., we hear somebody flew all the way from Michigan
to be there as well.
I mean, that's...
You can't ignore things like that.
You really can't.
Any stories on your end, Bortchop, from...
Regarding the demonstrations?
Yes.
Hmm, let's see.
We did encounter one policeman
who ran up in front of us and said,
Please don't take photographs of the federal building.
That picture came out very well, too, yes.
Yes, it came out pretty well.
We asked him why, as he was running away.
He ran pretty fast, too, that guy.
What? Excuse me?
He was running pretty fast.
He was running pretty fast.
Well, we asked him, and he said just one word, terrorist.
That's what he said? I didn't hear him say that.
He said that?
He said it on the tape.
Wow.
I could hear it later.
What interested me is that supposedly
the federal courthouses had all received a warning
that there were going to be protesters
for Kevin Mitnick's cause and so on and so forth.
Do you think they would expect cameras and so on
to be there of the media and of smaller media as well?
But still, up one came and asked us to stop filming.
So we filmed him instead for a few frames.
Well, you know, it's like I said before.
You can't go and tell people
there's a building in the middle of the city.
That's just not right.
I don't know how people can expect
to actually pull that one off.
Unlike when I was there taking pictures a few days earlier
to sort of test the waters,
apart from that one instance,
they really didn't step in and try to be unreasonable.
I think that was reflected throughout the country as well.
And even in Moscow.
Even in Moscow, there's a picture up on the website,
or really up on the website a little later tonight,
of the Moscow police reading the brochure.
I mean, that's really incredible.
They printed that out from the website
and handed it out to people in Moscow,
and within minutes, the police were reading it.
It was kind of cool, I guess.
Here's a story from ZDNet.
We'll be taking phone calls to 212-209-2900.
Supporters of convicted computer hacker...
Actually, they say convicted computer criminal Kevin Mitnick
will take to the streets Friday
in an effort to influence his sentencing.
That's even worse than Celebrity Cracker, isn't it?
ZDNN people. Computer criminal.
Well, it has that criminal sound to it, you know?
Mitnick, who has spent 4 years in prison without bail,
pleaded guilty to 5 of 25 charges,
including 1 hacking offense earlier this year.
You know, that's how they can never get it straight.
Is it 5? Is it 7?
You know, it's kind of crazy there.
He'll be sentenced on June 14.
The demonstrations organized by New York-based hacker magazine 2600
contend that the Mitnick trial has been less the containment
of a dangerous information age criminal
than a witch hunt designed to discourage illegal hacking.
Organizers say they want the case's Los Angeles judge
to release Mitnick immediately to a halfway house
rather than impose the months of imprisonment
prosecutors are asking for.
Demonstrators will rally...
Actually, demonstrators did rally
around federal courthouses in 15 U.S. cities
as well as the U.S. embassy in Moscow
to hand out informational flyers
and show their support for Mitnick's early release.
Actually, this isn't so much an early release.
This is a way of sentencing.
Basically, the sentencing can go one of two ways.
Either time in prison or time in a halfway house.
That's how it's been explained to me as far as the way it can go.
And that's pretty much it for that story.
I think you get the idea.
They went well. They went very well.
And for those of you who were there for the first time,
I'd like to hear from as many of you as possible
on the phones tonight, 212-209-2900.
Let us know how it felt to be at the demonstration,
especially those young people who were there,
maybe never participated in something like this before.
And that goes nationwide, too, because I know a lot of people
listening from different parts of the country.
In fact, Porsche, how many people are online right now?
Give me about 20 seconds, and I'll find out for you.
Okay.
We are broadcasting, of course, on www.2600.com,
as we do every week at this time, as well as 99.5 FM.
There are 83 listeners on Real Audio,
and if MP3's running, I'm not sure,
and it can sort of disappear today.
Anybody can just send me the number of MP3 listeners.
I'll give that out, too.
But it's 83 listeners right now on Real Audio.
Okay, I want to try something before we take some phone calls.
Somebody emailed me this.
As you know, 646 will be starting pretty soon,
as the New York area code.
In fact, it's scheduled for July, and they have a test number.
They have a test number.
Do you have a dial tone?
Okay.
Let's see if our switch is set up to handle this.
Number is 646-674-9999.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
We're sorry.
The number you are calling cannot receive calls at this time.
Please call again later.
Hmm, interesting.
That's not your point.
Well, you know, let's get back at those AT&T operators for last week.
Beep.
Let's confuse them some more.
Beep.
Beep.
And let's call this number collect and see what happens.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
I'll bet they don't even know the area code exists.
And we're not going to tell them, are we?
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
I'm sorry.
Your call cannot be completed as dialed.
Please check the number and try your call again
or ask your operator for assistance.
Thank you.
It's kind of funny how that's the message you get when you call an operator.
Used to be the operator would come on and say,
Sir, there's a problem with your number.
Can I help you?
But no, they just give you a recording.
Because there's only about 10 people working at AT&T now, you know.
They've downsized so much, replaced everybody with computers and recordings.
There's just no chance of actually getting a human.
Here's another story that came from the same person actually that sent this in.
Saying that they got a piece of email,
and a few people might have seen this too,
a piece of email that basically has the message in it saying,
to be removed from our list, call 1-473-408-8465.
And what that is, that's an international call.
It winds up costing a lot of money.
I think it's Grenada.
And that's how they make their money.
By people calling these very far away numbers,
being charged a huge amount,
and these people splitting the profits.
In this case, Grenada Phone Company's cable and wireless.
And they've got some sort of sleazoid deal there,
where they actually trick people into doing this.
It used to be that, you know, you'd call 011,
and something would click in your head saying,
hey, I'm calling international.
But now, with all these nutso area codes that don't look like area codes,
you never know.
Unless you have memorized all of them,
or unless you call AT&T and pay a dollar to find out what area code it is,
you may never find out where you're calling until you get the phone bill.
Unbelievable.
I'll send a letter, and we'll take some calls.
If you have recently received a port scan of any type from this particular address,
I won't give out the address to save them the embarrassment.
Please disregard it.
I have given a friend an account for programming and compiling,
and he decided to port scan www.2600.com.
He no longer has an account.
Sorry, I just wanted to let you know that this was the case.
It's funny to me how someone would take something so seriously.
PortShop, how badly would something like that hurt us?
Not badly at all.
They might find something out, which, by the way, they won't.
Anybody who wants to port scan www.2600.com right now is welcome to try.
Yeah, we fixed it.
We fixed the problem we had where basically all you had to do
was hit return at the login prompt and be logged in as root.
Right, yeah, that was the problem.
It's pretty silly of us to leave that there.
But that's gone, and I think everything else is gone too.
So go ahead, have fun.
It's funny because people do get kicked out of school for things like that.
They get kicked out of school for port scanning
or for printing out a password file or copying a password file,
which is world-readable.
So it's kind of silly that somebody would actually take disciplinary action
against someone for doing something like that to us
when we don't care at all.
Well, that kind of stuff is logged.
We don't pay much attention to it
since there really can't be anything done from information from a port scan.
You just find out which services a machine might be answering for,
such as mail or even IRC in some cases.
In our case, it's World Wide Web on RPC and SSH.
And neither of those really do much that's all that interesting
that somebody could take advantage of.
Well, there are some SSH things going on,
but I think we've got all those patched, hopefully.
Which allows people to log in over encrypted channels,
as in Telnet, just a lot safer.
That's true.
Although the hullabaloo recently overhacked websites,
I think people might be taking this a little bit more seriously than they need to.
Again, if someone hacks a website, you fix the problem, you move on.
That's really it.
It's not a big federal case, whether it's 2600, whether it's the Senate.
It's the nature of computers.
And you just have to figure out what you did wrong,
restore from the backups, start over again.
It's the way it goes, the way it always has been.
All right, 212-209-2900, you're the first call.
Good evening.
Hi, Manuel.
Why are you always the first call?
That's what I just don't get.
I pick random numbers.
I bring in different phone lines from other exchanges,
and you still are always there.
Would you like me to...
I give up.
How about that?
I surrender.
You win.
It's over.
All right, let's move on.
Would you like to...
What?
All right, go ahead.
Would you like for me to call an AT&T operator
and demonstrate about the 646 thing?
Yeah, okay, sure.
I'd love to hear you harass a poor AT&T operator.
Okay, hold on.
As long as it's not me.
Go right ahead.
This should be interesting.
All right, can you hear me still?
Yeah.
Here you go.
My wish did not come true.
I got a call, 101-0288.
It used to be you just got 102-088.
You know, there's another one of those things,
101-6-something, and they give you free calls.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, what's this?
They give you free calls under a minute, I hear.
That's what I heard.
101-06-something.
Well, continue with your call.
Okay.
You hung up?
What?
Just keep going.
Okay.
We only have so long to live, you know.
AT&T, please hold for operator assistance.
AT&T, how may I help you?
Yes, I was wondering where the 646 area code is
and if it's an area code and where it might be.
That information is now provided by
AT&T 00-INFO-DIRECTORY-SERVICE.
One moment, please, while I connect you.
Whoa!
That was a recording.
That was a recording.
Yeah, I told you that they'd have a recording.
Can you believe they don't even ask anymore?
Right, exactly.
Wow.
And they're a dollar poorer.
Yeah, you probably got charged the minute she started saying that.
Well, probably.
Well, we'll find out, I guess, in a month
when you call us back to tell us what your phone bill is.
Right.
And AT&T still puts their number closer.
Let me demonstrate.
Uh-oh.
Dial 1-0-102-88.
Uh-huh.
Plus zero and a number.
Yeah, but you're calling from your house.
And a number.
Listen to this.
Anybody could do this.
But you're calling from your house.
Hold on.
AT&T, please enter your calling card number.
You could just press zero.
This is AT&T.
Please say, collect, calling card, third number.
Third number.
Well, I guess.
Third number.
Please enter the area code and number that you wish to bill this call to now.
All right, I'm going to pick up the phone for this one.
You better not bill it to anybody I know.
No, no, no.
All right.
In fact, for that matter,
don't bill it to any poor, innocent person out there.
No, no.
Because we all know this is possible.
Well, you know, if you do, they're going to.
Listen to the listener.
Thank you for using AT&T.
No, of course I'll hang up and not let the phone go through.
Yeah, okay, but the point is, you're calling from your house.
Your number shows up on their phone bill.
That's how they justify this.
But not only can I do this from my house,
but you could do it from any other person's house.
Yeah, but you can't do it from a pay phone.
You can't do it from a pay phone, correct?
You can't do it from a pay phone.
You can't do it from a cold car.
You could do it from your house.
You could do it from a hotel.
Instead of paying for your phone call
so then you can check out, dial and direct.
Just do this.
Maybe make a third number call like this.
Charge it to anyone.
Or you could just, you know.
Well, charge it to AT&T.
Do that, all right?
But don't charge it to poor people
that will be all confused by weird numbers
with a hotel as the originating number showing up.
Right.
All right, well, thanks for that insight.
Basically, it's the same insight we showed five years ago
when that was happening then, too.
But let's move on.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hey, how you doing?
Okay.
What's your address?
What's our address of what?
The radio station?
No, no, the web address.
Ah, for the Kevin Mitnick?
Yes, sir.
www.2600.com
slash demo for the demonstration info
or www.freekevin.com
for all the Mitnick information.
Okay, thanks.
Okay.
Good night.
Thanks.
Actually, we give out that information over the air anyway,
so we'll probably give it out before the show ends.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, I was at that demo.
Were you?
I enjoyed it.
Yeah?
I enjoyed handing out flyers
to the people who were dressed in suits.
Yes, I was definitely.
What kind of reaction did you get from those people?
Quite often, what I got was,
no bail?
What do you mean, no bail?
And then, because what I would say was,
I held 4 years without bail and without a trial,
no bail, no bail hearing, 4 years,
and people would pick up on that and go,
how can somebody be held 4 years without a bail hearing?
They literally would say that.
I found that interesting
to see that they were at that level of information
about something that's relatively esoteric.
Can this happen in this country?
Yeah, that was kind of what was being said a little bit of.
And then what I was also doing
was getting people to take the flyer by saying,
pass it out back at the office
to the people who were dressed like they were coming from an office.
So that was good.
But what was really interesting
was to be handing it to the obvious law enforcement personnel.
That was a kick.
You know, there were these 2 guys there.
I think, Portchop, you saw them,
the 2 guys there that were so federal-looking.
There was nothing like it.
I didn't think they made feds like that anymore.
What's the best way to describe them?
I mean, the sunglasses, obviously.
The sunglasses were, of course, a mirror, always a mirror.
They were rather big, and they had the suits.
They didn't have any necks, did they?
What I noticed, too, yeah, I saw those 2 guys.
I think I know the 2 guys you're talking about.
They were dressed in tight-fitting suits.
But what I tried to get these people to acknowledge
was that he was being held in federal court
and that while he was accused of these things,
he was held without bail before he was convicted,
held without bail and without a bail hearing.
So I was trying to use that to get him to take it.
What else was going on?
Basically, though, there were people who would look twice at him,
and then they'd see the banner on it where it said,
Free Kevin, and they'd go, first of all, the stereotypical, who's Kevin?
And then the next thing would be, what do you mean held without bail
and without a bail hearing?
So there was a level of interest where people were curious
about the relatively technical nature of what was going on in the case.
And I just found that very interesting,
and I enjoyed being at the demo.
What I enjoyed, I think, the most was finding out that there were 2 courthouses.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're sorry about that.
We sent people to the wrong address.
But that's because that's what they told us.
They told us 500 Pearl Street and basically Foley Square.
We thought they were the same place, but they weren't.
But people figured it out in the end,
and we went to get people occasionally, and sometimes it happened.
And what I also noticed, and we might use this for future actions,
was that the instant that you folks broke out the boom microphone in the video cam,
that's when everybody started slowing down as they were walking by
and standing on the sidewalk.
That was something I was noticing very, very carefully,
was that everything changed when it appeared as though
quote-unquote conventional media were on the scene,
even though it was us doing it, whoever was running the video cam.
But still, that's what shifted a lot of people's perception.
And then a crowd started being drawn by the sidewalk.
Now, of course, nobody was up on a soapbox giving their view of the case,
but it was very interesting because then people were noticing,
and then they had stopped, so that's when we jumped on them
and handed them a flyer and said, hey, check it out.
Let me tell you something.
If you ever want to impress people, get a boom microphone.
It works every time.
You don't have to have a camera.
Just have a boom mic and point it out,
and all of a sudden people treat you with respect.
Yeah, and the guy was holding the mic up over the head,
and, you know, it looked very professional,
and people were walking by, oh, look, Channel 4 News.
Oh, boy.
But all in all, I just wanted to say thanks for putting that together.
Thanks for having those flyers out.
How many do you think we handed out?
3,000.
I know because we made three runs for 1,000 copies each.
Wow.
Did you find when you were handing them out
that very many people knew who Kevin was, or did any people know who Kevin was?
Only two, and that was, you know how we got the rush out of the courthouse
when they were coming down the channel there?
Uh-huh.
And where, you know, just the whole court unloaded,
and that's when we handed out a whole bunch.
It was like 4, 430, something like that?
Uh-huh.
That's when I found I was getting the most, as they were walking away,
there'd be a step or two away, I'd go, oh, I heard about this Mitnick guy.
Of course, where they probably heard about it was in all these inaccurate reports,
but nonetheless, they did know the man, and they knew about the case.
So that was a step forward.
As long as it got them to think a little bit
and got them to talk about it at the water cooler on Monday or whatever.
Yeah, what was really interesting was in leaving the demo,
as things were winding down, I was especially keen on looking around
to see if there were a whole bunch of flyers that were trashed.
Mm-hmm.
There weren't.
Yeah.
I found that very interesting.
We were pretty careful to make sure that none of them ended up on the ground,
but I don't think very many people threw them on the ground.
I know.
I didn't pick up any.
Yeah.
And only as I hit the subway did I see some in a bike basket,
you know, as people were headed down to the subway.
There were like three of them.
Uh-huh.
But, I mean, literally, I was looking all over the street as I was walking back to the subway,
and no flyers were anywhere.
I thought that very interesting.
We found the same thing also at the Miramax protest last year.
Is that right?
And we found the same thing outside theaters when we were talking about the takedown film,
both in New York and Hollywood.
People are generally interested and receptive to what it is we're saying,
and they're interested in hearing more.
I think that's something that the federal government has to listen to,
the fact that, you know, the people themselves, people themselves think this is wrong,
and come on already, let's end this nightmare
and let's see what we can do for the future to make sure this never happens again.
Yeah.
And then just for your listeners,
it was interesting looking at the report by that guy Kevin Poulsen on ZDNet.
Yes, who got off bail.
I'm sorry, got off probation the day before.
Yes.
He was very happy.
He showed up at the San Francisco meeting and the San Francisco demonstration.
So we're glad he's completely free of the federal clutches now.
Sure.
What I was going to mention was the talkback section that's attached to his article.
Uh-huh.
And just reading through that is very interesting,
because as people are pointing out, some people claim,
hey, who are you, yokels, the guy's a criminal, he belongs in jail, yada, yada, yada.
What was interesting was to see the responses of people who then wrote to the forum saying,
while he may be a criminal, the crimes he's accused of are one thing,
his treatment is entirely another thing.
And they're saying, I read one thing where the person was saying that it's not somebody who is a,
I don't know, what did they say?
There was some word they used where they, it's not so much that he's a great guy,
but the fact of the matter is that if he's accused of a crime, that's one thing,
but why not a bail hearing?
Why aren't they giving him evidence?
And that's all the kind of. . .
How about the evidence that was uncovered as far as the hundreds of millions of dollars claimed in damages
where we were asking some very legitimate questions, well, let's see some documentation,
how come that was never released to the stockholders, et cetera, et cetera,
and the federal government's response was to simply put a lid on it,
not put any more information out until sentencing day when Kevin will have absolutely no chance
to defend himself against whatever craziness they come out with.
I think that tells us something, the fact that they got so angry and nervous
when that information was revealed.
Maybe it's all a big, fat lie.
And that's what I'm really curious about seeing is I remember reading on 2600.com
that there were questions being raised of the SEC,
and I'm really curious to see what they have to say.
Yeah, I'd like to see that too.
Well, thanks. Take some more calls.
Okay, thanks for calling. Thanks for showing up.
Okay, that's something wrong with that line.
Okay, there we go. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hey, Emmanuel. It's Tommy Pickles.
Okay.
From that entertainment network that you both know of.
Ah, yes, yes.
And I don't believe they were at the demonstration, though, were they?
They weren't at the demonstration?
No, they were not.
That's what the question I was going to ask.
Yeah.
Because I called, you know, the newswoman that we both know
that gave us the presents, me and Porkchop.
Yes.
And she said, oh, thanks for the info,
but I thought she was going to come down with the camera,
and I guess she didn't, which is a shame,
because I would like to see that clip also.
Too bad, you know.
Yeah, too bad.
They're going to have to wait for the next trial.
Yeah.
The next demonstration.
But, I mean, tell us something about media.
Media people just basically, you know, they have priorities.
Yeah, well, that's too bad,
and I keep her filled in with all the updates and stuff like that
because, of course, she's so busy with the music and the entertainment.
I keep her busy with the Hacker, the Freaker news and stuff like that.
I'm very happy BAI showed up, though.
I'm very happy that...
Well, that's good, and they did a good piece on it.
Yeah, one of the better pieces I've heard,
and, you know, it's...
Did you hear anything about...
It is possible.
...the summer con people?
I heard...
I have an update from Atlanta.
If you hang on a moment, I'll find it.
So say something else while I'm trying to find it.
Yeah, they were supposed to have a good one, you know,
especially since they were putting it on their website,
and there was supposedly a convention going down there.
Yeah, summer con.
I wonder how well they did down there.
Summer con was the convention, and that did actually take place.
Since you're stretching for coverage here...
Yeah, go ahead for a second.
I'll tell you a little funny thing about a boom mic going way back to that.
I found it, by the way. Go ahead.
Okay, well, I'll finish up.
Well, that's the funny thing.
Maybe we should all buy boom mics now.
Yeah, if you're in the middle of all the media in the world...
And you don't want a camera pointed at you.
Okay, one at a time, guys.
Support job. Go ahead.
Oh, sorry.
If you're in the middle of a horde of media
and you do not want a camera pointed at you,
all you have to do is carry a boom mic,
and you will not be caught in the cameras.
That's right. That's right.
They'd hate seeing boom mics in coverage.
That's the reaction that camera operators have.
Okay, here we go.
Here's the report from Atlanta.
The free Kevin demo went fine in Atlanta, Georgia.
We got the stickers and pins just in time.
We sent stickers and pins to all the demonstrations,
so that sort of worked out very nicely.
Then made our way up to the courthouse.
Most of our turnout was due to the fact
that SummerCon was going on in Atlanta that weekend.
We handed out many flyers.
A good amount of the passing traffic would honk or wave,
but at minimum, look.
The police were very casual.
They only asked us to stand in front of some barriers.
They got some flyers from us to put in their reports.
Evidently, they have to file reports
on any protests in front of federal buildings.
CNN showed up, and they interviewed us.
They were very positive.
I'm not sure if we'll make the error, though.
The correspondent told me that the footage
was not for headline news that day,
but it was going to be edited for a sidebar story.
So who knows when that's going to pop up?
I am not sure how that will turn out.
One thing of note about the demo,
we found that people in suits
were much less likely to take a flyer.
Everyone would ask what it was about,
but suits would not take the flyers.
The minorities were the most likely to take a flyer
and ask questions about the demonstration.
In fact, there was one African-American female
that put a Free Kevin sticker right on her car.
At the demonstration, we talked about
how interesting it would be if the black community
took up the cause of Kevin Mitnick.
I doubt we'll hear much from Al Sharpton on the issue,
but at least we were able to find an audience
and demographic outside of what we expected.
Well, you know, that is true,
and I think you have to ask yourself why.
Why is that true?
I think when you have a sense of injustice,
when you have a sense of what this system
is really capable of,
you tend to be a lot more open to other cases,
other instances of injustice,
other people that may have gotten
the raw end of the deal.
And hopefully that won't be lost on hackers as well,
because we certainly are getting
the short end of the stick on this
and many other cases where people
are being locked away for years.
We've been covering it here on this radio station,
on this program, since 1988,
and I have to say, 11 years later,
we're no further along in the justice field.
We're certainly further along technically.
We're certainly further along as a community,
but the same lousy things are still happening,
and it's getting worse, in fact.
All right, well, thanks for all the info,
and I'm sorry for the lack of media, of course,
but that'll improve as we come closer to a close here.
So I'll just keep on passing the word,
and I'll see you at the next meeting.
Okay, thanks for calling.
Let's take another call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello, Emmanuel, this is Telefreak,
the kid on the skateboard.
Oh, you know, you did us so much good.
You're the guy that handed out more flyers
than anybody put together.
Yeah, thanks.
Thank you for showing up and for doing all that.
Yeah, no problem, anything for Kevin.
I mean, he's...
I suppose he might do the same for me, so...
Yeah, I think he would.
I think he definitely would.
A friend of mine, Shea Guarava,
I can't really pronounce the last, second name,
but he said that he did see the free Kevin
over Central Park.
He was sitting on his roof, and he said he saw that.
Well, actually, he was in Brooklyn.
I got the e-mail from him.
He was in Brooklyn, and he said
that he saw two letters of it.
Oh.
What I want to know is,
does anybody see the words free Kevin?
That's all I want to know,
because if not, we can maybe arrange
to have a make-up done on that.
Because it was kind of...
It was a clear day up to a point,
then it got kind of windy and cloudy
right about the time we wanted to do that, so...
But, you know, of all the things not to have worked out,
that's the thing I really care about the least.
We wanted to make sure people showed up.
We wanted to make sure that the message got out,
the reception was good, we weren't harassed.
All of that happened.
It made a big difference,
and I know Kevin's very happy about it.
Los Angeles, I believe...
I have to find the Los Angeles report.
I'm almost certain that Kevin's father showed up there.
I know in Las Vegas, Kevin's grandmother
showed up to the demonstration there.
It's wonderful.
Yeah, and that means so much, just knowing that...
Yeah, Kevin's father was there.
In fact, here's the report from Los Angeles.
We got started a little late,
and with a small group,
it wound up with about 12 or 13 people,
including Kevin's dad.
As soon as we set up three LAPD types
pulled up to babysit us,
I approached them and gave them a flyer,
which, surprisingly, they took.
There wasn't a hell of a lot of foot traffic,
so we didn't hand out all of our flyers,
but the plane with the Free Kevin banner
was a definite plus.
And that's pretty much it from LA.
A couple things on some of the people
I was handing out flyers to.
Many people, especially the police officers,
and like the person from San Francisco, I believe, said,
the minorities also,
they tend to take a look at it more often
than regular people.
And also...
Even cab drivers.
We had a cab driver put Free Kevin over the word taxi.
Yeah, I saw the picture.
That was pretty cool.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, what else?
There was one flyer I handed out,
me and Suze.
We really drifted off maybe a block or two away.
We handed out a flyer to a lady,
and she was like,
Oh, Kevin Minnick.
And I was like,
Yeah, I'm probably the one you most hate,
or something like that.
And that kind of struck me oddly.
She walked away too fast.
What do you think she meant by that?
I'm assuming she's some kind of lawyer
who hates Kevin or something.
But she left with the flyer, right?
Yes, she did.
But she walked away without answering,
I asked her who she was exactly,
and she just walked away quickly.
Besides that, everything went great on Friday.
So hopefully Kevin will be released
and everything will be going good.
Okay.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks so much for being a part of it.
Yeah.
Okay, we have this report from Maine.
That's right, Maine, the state up north.
And you know what?
I just lost it.
Ah, here we go.
The Maine Free Kevin demonstration went well,
almost without incident.
I was putting up,
this is from the coordinator,
I was pulling up flyers and lampposts, etc.
On my way back,
the first of my fellow demonstrators arrived.
We set up his video camera.
Unfortunately, the first tape got eaten.
Isn't that always the way?
By the way, if you were at a meeting
and you have video footage,
please send us a copy of it.
Try to send us as good a copy as possible
because we would like to consider it
for inclusion in the documentary we're making.
We later got another tape.
That one was not eaten, presumably.
During the course of the demonstration,
we distributed 380 flyers.
I think that's pretty good.
Maine is not that big, after all.
The only incident was when I was returning
from the poster hanging.
I was approached by a man, plain clothes.
He asked for a flyer.
I began giving our normal spiel.
He asked how many of us would be demonstrating today.
I replied, eight.
He then turned and yelled to a police cruiser
across the way,
Hey, Kevin, we got eight.
Hey, Kevin?
I'll bet he wanted a sticker, too.
I thought this was a little strange
but didn't worry about it
because we weren't doing anything wrong.
A few minutes later, the same man came back
wearing a U.S. Marshal jacket.
I thought this was interesting.
We talked for about 45 minutes.
He was a nice guy.
I think truly interested in our cause.
He then realized we had video of him,
so we watched the video again.
We got about 15 seconds of him
digging in his nose with his finger.
That's what got Bernie S. in prison.
I'm not talking like a scratch.
He was really digging there.
Too bad he was a nice guy.
If he wasn't, I would distribute it on the net
with the tech star tax dollars at work.
That's what happened over in Maine.
Pretty good showing there.
Let's take another call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Emmanuel Goldstein.
Hey, how are you doing?
It's been a long time.
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
How have you been?
For the last three weeks,
I've been home with a nervous breakdown.
I mean, it keeps repeating,
insomnia, loss of appetite.
I go through the first stage
of the Tibet Book of the Dead.
Well, that would do it.
I'm getting better.
I mean, you know, I'm resilient.
I keep bouncing back for some karmic reason.
Just two brief things.
I know you're getting close to going off.
Yes.
I obviously wasn't at a demonstration
because I'm not into crowds.
I mean, I can't even make eye contact
with people on the street.
I'm so, like, weird and paranoid.
But I must congratulate you
for having the courage and balls
to, you know, stand up for your convictions
and to go in the face of, you know,
the fascist tide.
So I want to give you a big kudos from the Bronx.
And the second thing is,
I know you're making the documentary.
Believe it or not,
I'm also going to be featured in a movie
along with Monroe about BAI.
And I just announced its world premiere.
Go right ahead.
Monroe is in a film?
Yes.
It's called Airtime Rights.
It's done by a British NYU film student
called Stephen Hutchinson.
Uh-huh.
And it's going to air next Friday night
June 18th at 7 p.m.
at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School,
which for people who don't know
is on 12th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue.
And they're going to show that film again
called Airtime Rights
along with other NYU student films.
And Monroe will be there.
Bob Fass from WBAI will be there.
And if I'm not too crazy
and hopefully with the right pharmaceutical help,
I'll be there.
You can at least stand outside
and greet people as they walk by.
Yeah, it's a 20-minute film.
And for people who don't know,
my first name is Mark.
I'm featured for 5 minutes,
and the rest of the 20 minutes is about Monroe
and people's reaction to him
and his mishugas and that kind of stuff.
I'm thinking it might be a good double feature
along with your documentary on Kevin Sunday,
but who knows?
Well, except ours won't be done anywhere near Sunday.
No, no, this is a week from Friday.
Well, even then.
Okay, whatever happens...
It's going to need ways longer.
How's fiber optic? I really miss him.
Last I heard, he's doing pretty good.
Does he still have that goatee and that slick hair?
That I'm not sure.
You probably have to ask the feds about that.
Okay, but again, I was there with you in spirit,
and you guys keep making trouble,
but keep it safe, okay?
Okay.
Hey, thanks for the good thoughts.
You got it. Bye-bye.
All right.
And that's going to do it for us tonight.
Again, thanks very much to everybody who showed up
and was a part of this throughout the world.
It really did make a big difference.
The next stop on our journey is Monday,
Monday, June 14th, sentencing.
Keep checking www.2600.com.
We'll try to keep you updated over there
as far as how that goes, when it happens,
and we'll find out just what, if any, effect
the demonstration's had.
If it goes badly, then we don't give up.
We keep going.
We keep figuring out ways to keep the pressure on,
and you'll hear about it here on Off the Hook.
Until next week, it's Emanuel Goldstein.
Have a good night.
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