2600 Flash
A 414 is Silenced - Others Indicted
Twenty-one year old Gerald Wondra of West Allis, Wisconsin, was placed on two years' probation after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor counts involving computer cracking. Wondra, a member of The 414s, was accused of gaining access last summer to computers at the Security Pacific National Bank in Los Angeles and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, by using Telenet.
U.S. District Judge Terence T. Evans, in handing down the sentence, said, "It's important to send a message to Mr. Wondra and all others that this is a serious offense... with serious consequences." In other words, someone might go to jail the next time.
That next time may be coming soon. Four indictments were handed down on May 7th against people who allegedly were hacking the Telemail system last year. The four are located in California, Iowa, Illinois, and New York. Each is being charged with up to ten counts of wire fraud. Reliable sources say this is the first time that the wire fraud charge has been used to prosecute computer hackers.
Long-Distance Option Timetable
On July 15, Charleston, West Virginia will become the first city in the United States to offer Equal Access to alternate long-distance companies. Equal Access is part of the (((court-ordered))) breakup of the Bell System - most parts of the country should have it within three years.
What the people in Charleston will do is decide on a long-distance company they want to use. Every long-distance call they make will then be billed through that company. If the company they picked isn't AT&T, they can still use AT&T by notifying an operator first.
The main advantage here for the other companies is that they will no longer be getting inferior lines and that customers with rotary dial phones will be able to use their system without installing extra equipment.
Some cities and when they'll be doing this: Minneapolis, August 19; Mobile, Alabama, August 27; Indianapolis, August 30; Houston and Chicago, August 31; Milwaukee, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Detroit, September 1.
INTELPOST an Astronomical Failure
INTELPOST was announced in 1978 by the U.S. Postal Service as an experiment to test delivery of electronic messages overseas by satellite. It was supposed to give businesses and individuals a quick, cheap way to send letters abroad from five major cities: New York, Washington, Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco.
The service is quick enough. But it is far from cheap. At a cost to the sender of $5 a page, customer reaction was predictable - to everyone but the Postal Service, that is.
A report issued by investigators for a House Government Operations Subcommittee says, "To date, INTELPOST has been a complete failure. Through the end of 1983, cumulative INTELPOST revenues were $58,080. No zeroes have been omitted from this figure... A service that generated so little revenue must be considered a failure by any measure of performance."
Since 1978, development, testing, and operation of INTELPOST have cost $6.2 million. This means the system has taken in less than one percent of its cost.
The House investigators were particularly exasperated at the Postal Service's lack of the most elementary records. It couldn't even tell them the number of messages' that had been sent by INTELPOST. The investigators wrote, "The committee is mystified that the Postal Service has not routinely compiled and made use of this basic management information."
The bottom line: the committee urges the board of governors to "terminate INTELPOST as soon as practicable."
Victory for Wiretap Victims
A $1.75 million settlement has tentatively been reached in a police wiretapping case involving more than 1000 plaintiffs and the city of New Haven, Connecticut [see "Wiretap City" in 2600, March 1984]. The settlement still needs the approval of two city boards and a Federal judge.
"This is a complete, 100 percent victory," said John Williams, the coordinating counsel for the 1,233 plaintiffs. He said the settlement provides each plaintiff with at least $1,000 and as much as $6,000.
Bank Records Aren't So Private
How much information should a bank divulge over the telephone about a customer's accounts? That question came up recently when a Manhattan real estate broker called a major bank's customer service number and, in less than two minutes, was told exactly how much a client had on deposit at a branch on the Upper West Side.
"That's information of the most confidential nature," said Gary Walker of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. "It shouldn't be given out without your permission, and probably not over the phone at all."
The bank the broker called, Citibank, says it does not routinely release detailed information about accounts by telephone and says it makes disclosures to outsiders only with the customer's written consent. In this particular case, Citibank said the customer service representative might have believed that the broker had the client's permission to obtain the balances.
But two weeks later, the same customer telephoned the bank and quickly obtained the balance in his checking account. The service representative asked when and where the customer had made his last deposit, saying the information was needed "for security reasons." As a test, the customer said he had deposited a check in the cash machine at Penn Station - Citibank has no machine there - and deliberately overstated the size of his last deposit. Despite the erroneous information, the bank's representative promptly told the customer how much money he had.
Norma Rollins, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that one of her group's priorities for 1984 was a state law prohibiting unauthorized disclosures by banks. She said, "Banks can tell a pretty good story of your life - where you've been, what you've been spending. If you go to the corner liquor store every week to cash a check for spending money, think about what someone could say about your life style if they think you're spending $150 a week on booze."