News Items
The payphone ripoff continues with the blessing of the Federal Communications Commission. It's expected that payphone rates will soar thanks to the new FCC ruling which deregulates them. In logic that we cannot grasp, the FCC ruled that long distance companies must immediately give payphone companies 28.4 cents for every call to an 800 number, as well as calling card and 950 calls. This stupidity will result in all kinds of surcharges for basic services as well as increased rates for local and long distance payphone calls. Some companies, such as Sprint, plan on blocking certain 800 calls from payphones. It's a known fact that greed tends to screw up telecommunications. It's a real shame to see the FCC help it along.
Greed was apparently the motivation behind Sprint's recent rate change (it predated the FCC action). They had been offering a 25 cents a minute phone card with no surcharge. After snagging a bunch of customers who were fed up with paying extra surcharges for making a simple phone call, they quietly changed their pricing to 30 cents a minute and a 30 cent surcharge per call! They'll probably be about as quiet when it comes to telling everyone how many customers they wound up losing.
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone wanting to put up a controversial web page that America Online is not the place to do it. Serial killers may no longer put up pages according to AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose, nor will any user be allowed to link to such pages. "We believe in a person's right to speak," she explains, "but we don't believe individuals have a right to force us to associate with that speech."
Wandering around on www.govtech.com you can really get a sense as to how the other side thinks. Check out these excerpts from Computer Evidence Processing by Michael R. Anderson. This document is a how-to for law enforcement involved in raiding houses and seizing computers. One section is entitled "Assume That Every Computer Has Been Rigged To Destroy Evidence." Raiders are advised not to operate a suspect's computer until a full backup is made. "Normal computer backups won't do - a full bit stream backup is necessary." Also, it's advised that everything always be taken since vital evidence may be tied to "special" hardware. "Encrypted files can cause you serious grief, and finding a password scrawled on a desk or on a calendar can help make your case." In the case of actually turning off the system when seizing it, all kinds of concerns are raised. "To preserve the image on the screen, a quick photograph of the screen display may be appropriate. Then a decision has to be made as to whether or not the computer will be unplugged from the wall or shut down systematically based on the requirements of the operating system... Usually, networked computers should be shut down following normal shutdown procedures as dictated by the operating system involved. Usually, stand-alone computers can be unplugged as long as background processes are not active, e.g. disk defragmentation." Probably the most fascinating part of this document is the concern over destroying evidence. Investigators are warned not to run any programs on the computer since temporary files could be: created that could overwrite evidence. Even using the keyboard can be dangerous since "one wrong press of a key can trigger destructive memory resident programs that may have been planted on the computer." It is suggested that pictures be taken of the exact configuration of the computer system from all different angles, wires clearly marked so they get plugged back into the tight places, and the computer clearly marked as evidence so other employees don't screw the whole thing up by playing around with it. Apparently that's been a problem.
"A destructive process can be initiated in a heartbeat and the results can be disastrous," the document warns. "Consider using a subterfuge to remove the operator from the computer to eliminate the possibility of them destroying potential evidence. Raid planning is very important, and this is especially true if the probability of destructive processes exist. Watch out for 'burn boxes' at the raid site which might be rigged to incinerate floppy diskettes and Zip disks." Now there's a cool thing to pick up at CompUSA. Finally, a couple of handy tips for those law enforcement people determined to screw up: "Avoid storing the computer components near the police car radio. The magnetic field created by the operating radio may be strong enough to destroy evidence. A word to the wise - don't transport the seized computer in the trunk on top of the radio transmitter."
Get ready for more confusion. The new 7-digit carrier access codes we've been warning you about are set to become mandatory in January. 10XXX becomes 101XXXX (initially 1010XXX). This oughta be fun.
As reported in our last issue, one has to be careful when calling Omnipoint GSM phone exchanges since *67 is ignored on all calls that go to voicemail. As reported in an article in this issue, this is not because of ANI but Caller ID. So how can you protect yourself? For starters, here is a current list of Omnipoint exchanges throughout the country - calling them could reveal your number even if you've blocked it:
But this info is pretty useless if someone forwards a regular phone line to one of these exchanges. There is no way you would ever know you were going to an Omnipoint exchange in that case. One possible protection is to recognize the voice mail system that Omnipoint uses. Here are some distinguishing characteristics: if you don't speak after the beep, the recording will say "Your message is too short." Hitting 1 during the outgoing message will allow you to send a numeric page, 2 a text page through an operator, 3 will send a "callback number," 7 will say "Please begin recording at the tone," 8 will allow you to send a fax, and 0 will either transfer you to a referral extension or get an Omnipoint recording. Hitting * allows you to enter a password, hitting # skips the outgoing message. (All new Omnipoint accounts have no password initially. The voice mail system itself can be accessed at XXX-XXX-MAIL in all Omnipoint exchanges.) We've also noticed that dialing *67 or *82 before dialing one of the MAIL numbers within the same state always gets you a reorder as if those commands were somehow confusing the Omnipoint switch. If this is somehow related to the capturing of Caller ID, it's possible that blocked calls are only captured if they come from the same state.
Sprint PCS uses CDMA technology as opposed to GSM. We don't have a whole lot of info on them right now but we do know that they aren't capturing blocked numbers. We also know that they too use the MAIL suffix on their voice mail system and that the default password that many subscribers don't change is, you guessed it, SPRINT. Two of their exchanges are 917-701 and 917-805.
There's a fair amount of 2600-related mischief in the air recently. Pager traffic from none other than the White House was leaked to us and, in response to Draconian laws and proposals to make listening to certain frequencies illegal, we decided to release this to the mainstream media. The purpose was to demonstrate how absurd a unenforceable such laws are. The real way to protect privacy is through encryption, something law enforcement wants kept quiet since they would still be allowed to listen to the "illegal" frequencies to gather information easily. It's time we started fighting back.
Some other anonymous sort went and changed a sign in the subway to read like our one of our covers. According to the Associated Press, "electronic signs telling subway riders to 'Watch Your Step' and 'Have a Great Day' were flashing the message 'The Hacker Quarterly' and 'Volume Fourteen, Number Three' instead" during a recent morning rush hour. Apparently word is getting out that we're short on cover ideas...
And add to this the various mischief caused by Beyond HOPE. Just ask the Empire State Building, Singapore, and Kmart for starters. And, of course, there were those Beyond HOPE stickers that looked just like the NYNEX signs on payphones. We're told that was the final straw that made Bell Atlantic decide to take over NYNEX. That's unconfirmed.