9 p.m. Saturday.
Come closer.
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I'm going to tell you an astounding story.
The bold, the adventurous, the lovers, the schemers, the valiant and the villainous.
And now, it's stupendous, it's colossal, it's bigger than life.
Yeah, but what's the story about?
Every story has the same ending.
The salty story of a two-fisted guy who wanted to own his own boat more than anything in the world.
Against this fascinating background is woven the story of an imperishable love
and the enthralling saga of six desperate people.
All mixed up with Peter Beauchamp.
Monday mornings at 9.30, here on WBAI.
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Stay off the roads.
It's very, very slippery.
It takes very long periods of time to get places.
In fact, I almost didn't make it here tonight.
And if more people stay off the road, I'll be able to make it back home a lot quicker.
Off the Hook is next.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The telephone keeps ringing.
So I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a cough.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bum, dilly, bum.
But the flesh, despite the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum, dilly, bum.
Bum, dilly, bum.
Good evening to one and all.
This is Emanuel Goldstein.
The program is off the hook, and yes, we somehow made it on the air tonight.
It's getting very treacherous out there, and things are not moving as fast as they should, obviously.
So stay inside, listen to the radio, learn a few things, and give us a call, too.
We have some very important news, and we're going to be sharing that with you in just a couple of minutes.
We have a special guest on the phone, and we have some mail to read from you, our listeners.
First, I'd like to tell you about an experience.
This past week, I've been away.
I wasn't here last week because I was in the Computer's Freedom and Privacy Conference, which took place in San Francisco.
And being there was quite a revelation in itself.
Just meeting a lot of people that, well, you don't meet except for online.
You know, a lot of people you just talk to, and they're just names, just names on a computer screen.
It's kind of weird.
I don't know how many people out there experience this on a day-to-day basis.
But it's something a lot of us don't experience.
And that's kind of sad because this is the 90s.
These are the way relationships are being forged by talking on computer screens.
It's really something else.
And I was fortunate enough to meet a lot of these people face-to-face for the first time.
Then some of them for the second and third time.
Some of them for too many times, actually.
But it's always an eye-opener.
And we talked about the future of telecommunications, the future of computers, the future of privacy.
The various threats that face us.
And you know, we mixed with law enforcement people, civil libertarians, hackers, anarchists.
All kinds of people, together.
Thousands of miles.
And we listened, you know?
We talked to each other.
We listened to each other.
We didn't mock each other all too much.
I demonstrated a blue box in front of FBI agents, and a whole lot of other people at the same time.
Showed how easy it is to listen to private phone calls on scanners.
Relatively simple things, but sometimes the gravity doesn't impress itself upon people until they see it for themselves.
A lot of people have spent years talking about blue boxes, but never actually heard what they sound like.
Little simple things like that add so much.
Just like little simple things like actually talking to people, they wind up meaning a lot.
And, in that vein, I went someplace.
Someplace where I spent a lot of time.
Many years of my life.
I don't know about many years, but a lot of time.
I spent a lot of time on a computer system known as The Well, which is in a place called Sausalito.
You know, the place they named the cookies after.
Sausalito, California.
It's kind of this resort community.
I don't really know why they're there, but...
I was invited down to look at the place, to see The Well.
To see this computer system where I had met so many people, where I had argued with so many people.
The gateway.
People from all over the world send me mail there, and that's...
That's how I keep in touch with people.
That's where I store files and important documents that I need.
That's where I learn about Grateful Dead concerts.
Electronic Frontier Foundation happenings.
Hacker news.
Any possible topic you can think of, you can find out on this computer system.
And there's always about 60 people online.
You can always have a real-time chat with somebody.
You can always just share information.
See how everyone is doing.
And you develop this real sense of community.
Sense of caring, almost.
Sense of caring, even though they're just names on the screen.
And...
I guess I didn't really know what to expect going down to this place.
You know, I don't know if I expected a...
Whole room full of busy people.
Jumping around.
Frenzied activity.
Buzzing machines.
I didn't know what to expect.
But I do know...
I was surprised by what I saw.
What I saw...
Was a closet.
A closet with...
A box.
A box.
That was the well.
One box was the computer.
Another box was...
One of the hard drives.
And a couple more of those.
Then there were the modems.
And the internet links.
And CompuServe.
And all that.
But that was it.
It was a closet.
A couple of boxes in the closet.
And that...
Is where we've been spending our time.
It was all going on inside these little boxes.
There were people there.
Even...
As I stood there gazing at this thing.
They were interacting.
They were downloading files.
They were sending mail.
People having fun.
Having fights.
Living their lives.
Right there.
In that box.
In that closet.
In that resort town in California.
People from all over the world.
Passed through that box.
I can't say this is something I should be surprised by.
But I am.
It's just...
Startling to realize that it all boils down to something so small and compact.
Unexpected.
Unexpected.
And...
You know we need to...
Get into more places like that.
Where...
Our lives can just...
Merge inside little tiny boxes.
It doesn't take much space.
It doesn't take much effort.
It just takes a desire to want to communicate and trade information.
And do all that kind of thing.
Well I really don't know where to...
Where to go from there you know.
You find out the place you've been hanging out for years is a box.
A little tiny box.
I don't know.
It's just...
Whew.
Real life seems a whole lot different than it did before.
And that's...
That's what I learned going to California.
Well no.
That's not all I learned.
That I'm living in a box.
I...
You know it's like that episode of Star Trek.
You know where...
Where Professor Moriarty comes out from the holodeck.
And they wind up putting him...
Into this world that he thinks is real.
He believes he actually escaped from the Enterprise.
And is...
Exploring space on his own.
But in actuality.
He's in this...
Little holodeck created environment.
Which...
You can hold in your hand.
He's inside this little tiny box.
And...
He thinks it's real.
So while I think it's important to get into this.
You know to...
Enjoy it for the utmost.
It's also important not to...
Be fooled by it.
Not to replace real life...
Not to replace real life...
With...
Little tiny boxes.
Yeah.
That's what I learned.
Alright.
Let's take a look at some mail.
Then we'll get into the big...
News of the...
Of the decade.
Yeah.
Why not?
It's pretty big news.
We'll get into that in just a moment.
First...
Let's take a look at some random samplings of mail...
That we've been getting into off the hook.
By the way...
If you want to send us mail...
Our address is...
Off the hook.
Care of.
WBAI.
505 8th Avenue.
New York, New York.
10018.
This letter comes from...
Centiport, New York.
Dear Mr. Goldstein.
I have been appalled by the invasion of privacy...
With our telephone.
From your program...
Clear off the hook.
Well actually it's called off the hook.
But I like the sound of that.
Clear off the hook.
But from that program...
I believe you said that...
Star 6-7 or...
1-1-6-7 will stop...
ID at the other end.
I had had the phone company...
Put a stop on my calls going out.
I thought.
But...
Then I found out that the receiving party...
Can, without knowing the number...
Press a button and get you back.
At least for the last call that came in.
I was shocked.
Well...
What he wants...
What this particular person wants to know is...
Does the call become identified with the first ring of the telephone...
Before the answering machine comes into play?
And he finishes...
I likened what was going on to 1984.
He likened what was going on to 1984.
And then it came to me that...
The enemy of Big Brother was you.
Well...
My friend from Cineport...
The enemy of Big Brother is us.
And everybody that is out there that is aware...
Awake...
Willing to ask some questions.
And you ask a very good question...
And the answer...
Is that...
After a single ring...
Anybody can call you back.
It's as simple as that.
Now...
I've been doing some research into that.
It's called the Star 6ix9ine feature.
Another one of those telephone company rip-offs.
Because you dial Star 6ix9ine to call the last person that called you...
For only 75 cents.
Plus the cost of the call.
I mean...
I don't know how they're able to get away with charging 75 cents for...
For something that takes no effort on their part.
It's built into the network.
But that's beside the point.
It's an invasion of privacy.
To a lot of us.
To make a phone call.
And then instantly be able to be called back by the person we called.
Sometimes you don't want to be able to do that.
And it's not just for nefarious reasons.
It's not just because you want to threaten somebody.
Or make a bomb threat or whatnot.
Sometimes you really don't want people to be able to call you back.
You know...
Let's say you call...
I don't know...
Macy's or something.
You don't want them to call you back and harass you.
Supposing you have a fight with somebody because they're obnoxious.
Supposing...
Okay.
Here we go.
Supposing you call Radio Shack.
Everybody can identify with this.
Everybody can identify with this.
You call Radio Shack and they just ask you all these questions.
All these stupid questions that they don't ever stop.
They interrogate you.
I've never been to a retail market that asks so many probing questions.
Who are you?
What's your phone number?
What are you going to do with this?
Oh, what line of work are you in?
Ugh.
And they do the same thing over the telephone.
You know, it's obnoxious.
So, let's say you have enough.
And you decide that you're going to tell this person about themselves.
And you do.
And you feel good.
And you hang up the phone.
And then your phone rings back and these twerps are able to call you back again.
I mean...
It shouldn't be like that.
You can't even tell somebody off on the phone anymore without them having the last word.
That's what Star 6ix9ine does.
And you can't block it.
No, no, no.
You cannot block Star 6ix9ine despite what the phone company says.
Yes, they have, at the behest of the Public Service Commission and programs like this and outraged consumers everywhere,
they have put what they define as a Star 6ix9ine block.
And the only thing that that is is something that prints four X's on the local itemization of your telephone bill
in place of the last four digits of your telephone number.
So, they can't look at your telephone number on their local itemization.
Well, that's just great.
But the fact of the matter is they can still call you back.
And if they get your answering machine and you're one of those people that believes in putting their telephone number on the answering machine,
they've got your number anyway.
But, in any event, they're able to call you back.
Now, if that's something that everybody wants, so be it.
But I don't recall people being asked if this is what they want.
So, that information, it's not the same as caller ID.
That information is sent as soon as a telephone call is made.
You can block your number from being sent in New York telephone, that is,
by dialing Star 6ix7ine or 1167 for caller ID.
That won't block Star 6ix9ine from calling you back.
But, the flip side of that is that if you've already blocked caller ID on all calls from your phone,
when you dial Star 6ix7ine, instead of disabling it, you will enable it.
And you won't be able to tell.
That's one of the ways they try to make it difficult for you.
Keep writing letters.
Keep complaining.
Talk to the Public Service Commission.
Talk to your elected representatives.
We ain't licked yet.
Here's a letter from Irene of New York.
Dear friends at Off the Hook, I really enjoy your show a lot.
It is extremely informative.
In light of what happened at the World Trade Center,
I take very seriously the breakdown of communications that can occur during a disaster.
I was intrigued by your suggestion to take up ham radio.
How does one get started in ham radio?
I would appreciate it if you could send me information about getting started in ham radio.
I would really be starting from scratch.
My only experience with radio was in college over ten years ago at the college radio station.
Are there any good books, magazines, or clubs for ham radio operators in the city?
Well, regretfully, Irene, we can't respond individually to all these requests we get for information and, you know, various topics.
So we'll try to respond over the air, and hopefully a word will get to you somehow.
If you're not listening.
And it's very easy to get involved in ham radio.
It's kind of an elitist club.
All right?
And I don't mean that in a bad sense.
Because I can understand why they have to be elitist.
But make no mistake about it.
Ham radio organizations are elitist.
They have to keep the losers out.
It's important to do that.
I understand it.
You don't want ham radios to become like CBs.
So you have to have a certain amount of testing to weed out the non-serious people from the people that are really into it.
And that's why to use ham radio, you have to have a license.
And you can get a technician's license fairly easily.
There's a book.
And if you can slip into Radio Shack.
Yes.
You can slip into Radio Shack and slip out without being pinned to the wall.
Well, more power to you.
There's a book in there that is good for taking the test.
It's a study guide.
There's other books, too.
There's a place in Manhattan, Barry Electronics.
They sell lots of ham radios and ham radio publications, CQ, popular communications.
There's all kinds.
Monitoring times.
And they'll give you all kinds of information on ham radio, on radio in general, on theory.
And there's books, magazines, all kinds of things.
So check those two places out.
Barry Electronics is down on Broadway.
Radio Shack is everywhere.
And scanners are plentiful.
You can get scanners that are nonstop, that go from below the AM dial into the gigahertz.
And you can hear cellular phone calls.
It's not illegal yet to buy these scanners.
It is illegal to listen.
Don't ask me why these laws get passed.
And if things go the way they're going within the year, it will be illegal to buy them.
Probably illegal to possess them, too.
Who knows?
We're moving into a period of insanity, I think.
So hopefully that addresses that particular question.
Ham radios are invaluable in times of stress.
Here's a letter that was sent to us from New Jersey.
It's not a letter to us.
It's a letter to our listener from Bell Atlantic.
Dear customer, New Jersey Bell continuously reviews its billing accuracy.
As part of this effort, we have discovered that your telephone line, and they give the telephone number,
your telephone line is equipped for touch-tone dialing capability.
We are not, however, billing you for the applicable monthly service charge of 99 cents plus tax.
If you do not want touch-tone dialing capability or have any questions concerning this manner,
please call a service representative on our toll-free number.
And they give the numbers and all that kind of thing.
Please note that if you choose not to retain touch-tone service,
you will not be able to make outgoing calls from telephone sets that have touch-tone dialing capability only.
If we do not hear from you by December 7, 1992,
we will assume that you want touch-tone service,
and we will begin billing the monthly service charge as of that date.
Well, my friends, that is illegal.
You can't do that.
You can't bill people for things that they have not asked for.
Now, this letter does not say that the person is using touch-tones.
They simply say your line is equipped for touch-tone dialing capability,
as is everybody's telephone line is equipped for that.
The phone company simply tells its computer to ignore your touch-tones,
and they take that particular ability away.
Everybody is equipped for it, though.
And to say that you're equipped for it, and therefore you should pay for it.
It's completely illegal.
This is worse than New York Telephone.
New York Telephone at least tells you this and says,
if you don't comply with our demands,
we're going to tell our dial tone to ignore your touch-tones.
But New Jersey Bell says,
if you don't comply with our demands,
we're going to impose them upon you.
How do they get away with it?
They get away with it because we let them.
Now, if everybody listening were to call their local phone company tomorrow,
New York Telephone, New Jersey Bell, Southern New England Telephone,
and tell them,
take those touch-tones off my line.
Well, what would happen?
And the phone company would suddenly not be making all these $0.99 a month, $1.50 a month charges for absolutely nothing.
Because it is absolutely nothing.
There is no service being provided.
The only thing that's being provided is a continuation of the basic service that everybody has.
If you don't pay the fee,
your service will be disrupted.
It's blackmail.
Plain and simple.
Now, if everybody were to suddenly refuse to accept that blackmail,
well then,
the phone company would be left without all this money,
wondering if maybe it was time to stop charging people for nothing.
After all, what have they got to lose?
Something to consider,
and it's not hard to survive without touch-tones,
and it does take so much longer for those calls to go through on the telephone network.
Not that it matters to us so much,
but it does matter to the phone company.
Imagine a million people suddenly using Pulse instead of touch-tone.
They'd survive,
but the phone company would have all these people on the line for longer
without being connected to anything.
I think that's poetic justice.
Well, enough about what I think.
We've got an important announcement to come your way.
Stay tuned and give us a phone call,
212-279-3400.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm Daniel Goldstein with you talking about high tech and low intelligence, the sometimes fatal combination of the two, but sometimes things work out.
We've been talking about the Steve Jackson case for quite a while now.

It should happen in this country.
Well, it did.
Steve Jackson took the Secret Service to court.
The trial took place in late January of this year.
And last Friday, a verdict was handed down in Austin, Texas.
And my friend, Steve Jackson has won his case against the Secret Service.
Now, what I find particularly appalling here is that this happened on Friday.
Today is Wednesday, and I'll bet not one of you have read about it in a newspaper.
He won against the Secret Service.
Now, we have Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the phone, and he's going to fill us in as to the particulars.
Mike?
Well, the particulars of the case are basically that there were three different federal statutes or sets of statutes that Steve was suing under, and he won under two of them.
The three statutes are, in effect, the Wiretap Act, the original Title III federal statute that limits the government's ability to wiretap.
In the middle 80s, that law was expanded to include the interception of electronic communications, that is, e-mail.
Under that particular provision, Steve and the other plaintiffs did not win, because the judge interpreted the government's seizure of the Steve Jackson Games bulletin board system and the electronic mail on it as more like the taking of stored communications than like the true interception of communications.
But under a second part of the federal law called the stored communications chapter of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, that's also an offense, and the Secret Service lost under that federal statutory scheme.
The judge in Austin held that Steve Jackson and the other users of the system had had their right to privacy in their electronic mail violated by the federal agents, the Secret Service, who had taken the Steve Jackson Games bulletin board system, which was called Illuminati BBS.
The third law that was applied in this case, and under which Steve Jackson and the other plaintiffs won, was the Privacy Protection Act of 1980.
And that law limits the ability of government to do a standard search and seizure of a publisher.
The reason for the existence of that law is that the Supreme Court had held in the late 80s that it was perfectly okay for law enforcement agents to come into a newsroom with a search warrant and seize reporters' notes and maybe find out who their sources are.
And in effect, in effect, both prevent people from talking to newspapers and prevent publications from publishing, because if they take the materials that are being prepared for publication, you certainly may limit the ability of the publisher to publish.
Well, Congress didn't like that Supreme Court decision, so they passed a law in response to it called the Privacy Protection Act of 1980.
And that law says that normally federal agents, when they're seeking this kind of material, have to proceed using a subpoena rather than a search warrant.
The reason a subpoena procedure is preferable is that it allows the people who are being demanded to produce certain materials the right to go to court and challenge the government order in front of a judge.
So that is a very useful thing if the issue with a publication is whether they should turn over something that may reveal their sources or that may reveal information that they prefer to keep secret and tell publication
or if it would require them to turn over information without which they could not publish.
So, two out of three is pretty good.
And one of the important things about the case is that since Steve Jackson and the other plaintiffs won on multiple grounds, it makes it a lot harder to reverse.
So, I think it's a pretty good day.
Or at least I should say Friday was a good day when this was announced.
And we've been feeling pretty good about the outcome of this decision.
We think the judge did recognize that an injustice had occurred and ruled accordingly.
Now, tell us something about the damages.
Are legal fees being paid for?
And is Steve getting damages out of this?
The judge has made clear that as the prevailing party, Steve and the other plaintiffs are entitled to the payment of their legal fees.
As a practical matter,
The lawyers who have worked for this case will get paid, but also the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has paid for part of the case, will get some percentage of its money back.
So, that's the legal fees, which are somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000.
There's also, on top of that, there's $50,000 in damages that go to Steve Jackson games because of the loss of profits, thanks to the search and seizure, which occurred in 1990.
And each of the plaintiffs, Stefan O'Sullivan, Elizabeth McCoy, and Walter Milliken, is to receive $1,000 each.
The reason for the size of that amount is that that's limited by the statute.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act says that when you have your privacy rights and email violated, you can get your attorney's fees back, but the amount of money that you get is set by statute.
In this case, it's $1,000.
Now, each of these plaintiffs, could each of the users of Steve's board have potentially been a plaintiff?
I think a lot more of the users could have been, yes.
I think that quite possibly, we now have the advantage of hindsight when we look back at the case and see how it could have been conducted,
but it seems apparent that we could have conducted it as some kind of a class action and had all of the plaintiffs who had email seized pursue the case.
That would have been an interesting case.
And I think perhaps the next major email privacy case will probably, you know, if it follows from a BBS seizure, may well be a class action.
I know I'm going to recommend it.
Well, how many users were there on Steve's board?
More than 100, but I don't know how many more.
It could be several hundred.
So if it was several hundred users and they had all filed complaints, they could have each gotten $1,000 out of this, is that right?
That's correct.
Fascinating.
So as it stands now, it looks like this case has cost the Secret Service, I'd say, well over $300,000.
Is that right?
I think that's a good ballpark figure.
Do you think that's going to weigh heavily?
I forget, although strictly speaking, they don't have to pay for their attorney's fees, it also costs the government a lot of money to defend them.
I see.
Now, do you think this is going to have much of an effect on the future of the Secret Service in hacker cases?
Well, I think it may even have a broader effect than that.
I think the fact that these laws have been deemed to apply in searches and seizures of bulletin board systems and electronic mail means that every federal agency that is considering doing a search and seizure of a BBS
or of a system that carries electronic mail, you know, most Unix systems at least pass through electronic mail,
every agency that's going to do that is going to look hard at its procedure and see whether they have told the authorizing magistrate who's going to approve the search warrant
that email is involved or that people's communication and privacy rights are involved or that a publication potentially is involved.
And I think that means that the law enforcement agencies have been put on notice.
They're going to have to be more careful.
Now, we have a case that's shaping in Washington, D.C. concerning the harassment at the 2600 meeting there.
Do you think this will have any effect on proceedings there?
Well, I think the legal issues are fairly different for the most part, because in that case, you know, as you know,
it wasn't that there were communications occurring on a computer at that meeting.
It's the case that people were talking about computers and talking about the phone system and so on when they were meeting.
I think the only issue that they really have in common is that in both cases the government had looked at certain kinds of communications about computer security
and telephone security and telephone security and ways to sidestep that security and looked upon them as something threatening or conspiratorial,
when in fact probably the worst you could say about them is that, you know, people had an interest in computer security,
but not that people were actually planning to invade anybody's systems.
I think in both cases we have the same governmental agency, namely the Secret Service, misbehaving and seeing things that aren't there.
And in both cases I think they were rather surprised to see the people that they did this to fight back.
I think they're very surprised.
I think there's a tendency on the part of law enforcement, and in particular on the part of federal agents,
to say, to believe that they can do no wrong or that they so rarely do wrong that they don't have to think about it very hard.
The fact is, one of the reasons most people don't sue when their systems are seized is that, you know,
it generally takes money to do a civil law seat.
And the cost of suing to get your equipment back may be more than the cost of the equipment.
So this is a purely economic decision.
A lot of people can't fight back.
And so this gives the government a false sense of security.
They think, well, we're not doing any wrong, nobody's suing us.
But if people aren't suing because, you know, it's an expensive proposition,
and, by the way, if they're potential defendants, you know,
if they were the targets of the investigation, they may not want to rock the boat.
Are you at all disappointed by Steve not getting the full amount that he was asking for in damages?
Well, we, not, I would say no, I'm not disappointed.
I don't think Steve is either.
I think everybody would have liked to see Steve receive a lot of money.
And I think one of the reasons we would is that we, you know,
I think everybody who's had to work with Steve in this case admires him and admires how principled he is.
But, you know, you should remember that the reason that we asked for a large amount of money and damages
and even punitive damages is that we wanted the case not to be easily settled.
We wanted it to be a large number so that if they did decide they had to settle the case,
the settlement itself would be a big enough dollar amount to make a statement.
And so I feel comfortable with the fact that the judge tried to make a realistic determination
of the amount of damages that Steve and his company suffered
and tried to come up with an amount that remedied that damage.
I think we're pretty happy overall.
So you think the $50,000, approximately $50,000 is a realistic figure then?
I think it's a realistic figure.
It's lower than we had projected.
But I think it's realistic because, you know, to a certain extent,
when you're talking about how much profits a company would have made if such and such hadn't happened,
you're speculating.
And, you know, you can make a guess about how profitable a company was going to be,
you know, if they had their publication schedule damaged.
But, you know, you can never know that for sure.
It's a different universe from the one we live in.
Plus, if you also add in that famous Secret Service argument that they actually helped Steve Jackson
by giving him so much publicity,
you could even drive down the number a little bit more if you follow that logic, I guess.
Yeah, you could.
But the judge did not really do that.
The judge noted that Steve had acted on his own to try and leverage the publicity into further sales.
But he specifically said that he found that the Secret Service's publicity about the Secret Service rate in itself
did not help the company.
And it was kind of an outrageous argument for the government to make.
But, you know, I wish I could say that you never heard outrageous arguments in a courtroom.
Well, it seemed like the judge jumped on that particular one right away.
He said, are you actually saying that the government helps companies by rating them?
I had a lot of trouble saying that with a straight face.
So the government's record isn't all that great as far as these kind of prosecutions.
We have the NIDORF case, which ended in them withdrawing their case.
Of course, Craig wasn't as lucky as Steve as far as getting legal fees paid.
But you have the Steve Jackson case.
You have all kinds of other things coming up where the government is being challenged.
What do you think all this portends?
Well, I think it shows that people are increasingly having the sense that the government is out of line
when it uses these kinds of heavy-handed tactics.
And I think people also have the sense that the government is misunderstanding a lot of what it thinks is going on.
You know, Steve Jackson was never even remotely associated personally with any kind of computer intrusion
or any kind of computer crime.
In fact, I'd say my computer knowledge is probably better than Steve's.
I always thought it was funny that he used DOS machines since I preferred Macintoshes.
And that word perfect was his word processor of choice.
I thought, you know, he's just a user.
But the fact is, whether Steve had particular computer knowledge or not wasn't a factor.
You know, the government looked at the kinds of things he did.
They looked at the manuscript of the GURPS cyberpunk role-playing game and said that's a manual for computer crime.
They actually built probable cause for the search warrant on the fact that one of Steve Jackson's employees
explained what Kermit was on another bulletin board system.
Now, I think it's a pretty strange world indeed when explaining what Kermit is, you know, turns you into a suspect.
And I think that that's at least one kind of mistake the Secret Service is not likely to make again.
All right, we're going to open up the telephones.
Before we do, I'd just like to ask you one thing as far as the one particular part that Steve was not victorious in.
Could you go into that just a little bit?
They didn't see something as interception, I believe.
Right, right.
Well, remember that, you know, wiretaps are normally against the law,
and the only way the government gets to do a wiretap is if they have special approval from a judge.
It's called an authorization order.
Well, the issue here was whether by seizing the computer,
which had a lot of electronic mail that some, you know,
that some of the users had not been able to read thanks to the seizure,
that could be described as an interception because they had taken the communication, you know,
at a time between the time it was sent and the time it was received.
I know that Sharon Beckman, who's a lawyer now working in Chicago,
who drafted the initial complaint,
and she and I discussed this issue a lot when we were working up the case to begin with two and a half years ago.
And interception, it seemed, you know, it seemed very clear that we could get stored communications,
but we thought that some of the conduct could be described as the interception of electronic communications,
and we thought it was worth putting that claim into the case.
I think that if the government chooses to appeal the case on other grounds,
we may raise this issue of interception again.
And this is all pretty speculative because at this point the government hasn't decided to appeal,
and we, of course, have made no firm decision about how we'd respond to an appeal except that we would respond.
But I think the interception issue is still pretty valid, even if we didn't win on it this time.
Okay. Now, as far as the decision itself, is that going to be made available to the public?
Yeah. I have gotten a clean copy of the decision from Pete Kennedy,
who's the lawyer in Austin, Texas, who handled almost all of the trial.
And we're going to try and set up a scanner and scan it in and make it available that way.
Great. Okay. Well, we'll certainly keep people informed as to how they can get copies that way.
Incidentally, in the spring issue of 2600, we have a day-by-day article of the Steve Jackson trial,
and we even have courtroom sketches, which are kind of amusing.
So that'll be the first issue that those of you that pledged during the last pledge drive at WBAI will get.
As part of your subscription here from WBAI.
All right. We're going to go to the...
That reminds me.
Yes.
That reminds me, Emmanuel.
I need to renew my subscription.
Oh, yes.
You certainly do, because if you don't, you get some kind of a threat in the mail, I think.
Yeah, I don't want a threat.
No, you don't want that. Nobody does.
We don't like sending them either.
But in any event, our telephone lines are now open.
212-279-3400.
We have Mike Godwin from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the line.
And to sum up, Steve Jackson games have won their case against the Secret Service.
Their legal fees will be paid.
Steve Jackson will receive about $50,000 for lost profits,
and each plaintiff in the case will also receive $1,000 as well.
If you have any questions, now is the time to ask them.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening. You're on.
Hello?
Okay, let's go to another one.
Good evening. You're on.
Hi. I'd like to, well, congratulate Steve Jackson and the people with him for winning the case.
Okay, congratulations. I've been accepted.
Now, do you have a question?
Well, the thing is, it's a little off the subject, but it's quick.
I saw a cold-card phone that was across the street.
It was in front of a store.
And across the way, on the sidewalk, there was a New York telephone pay phone.
And I think, I can't really prove this, but I had some suspicion,
because the New York telephone pay phone seems to be broken every day,
like there's no dial tone or whatever.
I wonder if the people who own that store, who own the cold-card,
is breaking the New York telephone pay phone on purpose
so that people have to use their cold-card phone.
Well, I don't know how you can accuse people of that unless you have some sort of evidence.
If, you know.
I mean, you might be giving people ideas here, but I don't see how, you know,
unless you have evidence you can even say that.
Well, that's true.
I mean, it just seems obvious only because the pay phone is broken every day
that I see it and use it, because I always report it.
Have you ever dealt with New York telephone repair service?
No, no, no.
I dialed 1-800-NEW-YORK-TELCOIN.
Okay, well, either one of those is just as bad as the next,
and it's almost impossible to get things fixed sometimes.
I tell you that from experience.
It seems that they fix it one day, and then the next day it's broken,
and then I report it again, and they fix it, and then the next day it's broken.
It's been going on for like a week or so.
Well, I can't explain why that is.
It could be, you know, some kind of bizarre pay phone that just likes to get broken all the time.
It could be there's a neighborhood lunatic that preys on pay phones.
I don't know.
There's all kinds of reasons, but, you know, it's hard to determine.
Maybe you should stake out the phone and see what happens to it.
Okay?
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
All right.
Let's go to another call.
Good evening.
Hello.
How are you doing?
Hi.
Am I on the air now?
Yes, you are.
Okay.
I have a question.
I don't have a great background in e-mail, in electronic jurisprudence.
I have a sort of a general background in First Amendment law and some international human rights.
But I suppose, I don't know if the fellow is an expert in law or an expert in e-mail or both.
Well, I probably qualify as both.
Okay.
It's something that kind of evolves, I guess, right?
Right.
Okay.
My concern is I look at First Amendment law in the following framework.
It's like a donut theory where often the most sort of exotic issues are litigated,
like the tinkering jurisprudence of Tinker versus Des Moines,
where they said people could wear black armbands to school,
or they litigate about sort of exotic things.
It's in pornography, or let's say e-mail,
which are issues that aren't likely to sort of upset the social order much.
But the core of freedom of expression, the most important issues,
are just sort of fobbed off without any due process.
It's the sky's the limiting case type thing.
And it seems that whenever in the system they really want to repress speech or invade privacy,
they can just string pull and repress in any way they want.
Although the Hibernians can exclude gays,
political organizations can't exclude police agents at all.
And it seems that whenever we discuss jurisprudential issues like this,
we almost invariably, and I noticed this in law school,
they would lose touch with the way things really are in terms of free speech in society.
It would be merely kind of a way of, you know, obscuring it.
For example, I noticed that no law journal since 1964
has run any extensive article on the jurisprudence,
at least as of 1990, of discrimination on the basis of politics.
Okay, can you turn this into a question somehow?
Well, my question is, have you noticed this problem of the divergence
between freedom of expression in real life and in law
and what strategies might there be for making the legal system really defend civil liberties?
It seems that there's no real way to defend against censorship.
There's the model of Marchetti and Marx where they took a book into court
and when they've ended up printing it, there were blank spaces.
It was a book about the CIA and boldface type for what they tried to censor but couldn't.
It was printed and they just put blank spaces in the pages in the book,
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.
Right, right.
I'll let Mike try to answer the question.
You listen to the radio then.
I think that you're right that, you know,
for every famous case in which the First Amendment is vindicated,
there are certainly lots of cases in which, you know,
even though an individual citizen may have had the right to speak or the right to publish
or the right to freely associate with those he or she wants to associate with,
you know, there are all sorts of cases in which that right is repressed.
You know, the fact is that a policeman on the street has a lot of power
and he's also likely to be very intimidating.
And a lot of people will either self-censor rather than make trouble with a policeman
or with a law enforcement agent,
or maybe they will actually try to insist on their rights and be abused for it.
All I can tell you is that there is,
I think there's a perpetual tension between governmental authority and individual rights
and that the only way that rights are maintained
is for people to make, you know, personal decisions
to express their rights, to not self-censor,
and to fight these fights when they come up.
You know, you're absolutely right to be concerned to recognize
that the fight against censorship
or the fight against government attempts to restrict or repress speech
is an ongoing fight,
and any given victory shouldn't count as a total win for the First Amendment
so long as there are other instances in which censorship takes place.
That said, I think that the First Amendment cases,
you know, do actually lay out some territory of protected speech,
and that over time the fact is that speech does gain protection.
I'll give you an example.
After Brandenburg versus Ohio in the late 60s,
and that was a case in which a Klan leader was judged to be engaging
in constitutionally protected speech
when he was calling for racial hatred and interracial violence.
In that case, you know, the speech was pretty offensive and pretty hateful,
and you're right to say that many of these cases come up
because of, you know, marginal extreme cases.
But I think it's important to stress that these days people tend not to get arrested
just for saying outrageous things.
For the most part, you can hold meetings,
and you can be a member of an extreme right-wing or left-wing group
or a racially separatist or racially antagonistic group,
and you have a right to hold meetings and even to advocate violence
so long as you don't incite anyone to imminent lawless action that is likely to occur.
Well, we had a couple hundred people in New York today
arrested just for standing on a certain street, you know?
This is because of the...
The St. Patrick's state fiasco, yeah.
I think that, you know, that's a real issue.
But, you know, it would be interesting to see whether those turn out to be cases
that actually go to trial.
I think that the New York St. Patrick's Day parade
raises a very interesting issue for people who are First Amendment scholars
because on the one hand, you see that, you know,
there is a group that is being denied a chance to express itself,
gays and lesbians who are Irish who want to participate in the parade.
On the other hand, I think that there is a strong First Amendment interest
on the part of the parade organizers to say,
look, you know, we have freedom of association under the First Amendment.
We should be able to choose who we have in our parade.
Yeah, I agree with you, and I think it's...
There's inherent tension there, and it shows that the First Amendment cuts both ways.
But if we relegate the St. Patrick's Day to, say, a Klan rally,
I think a lot of people would be happy with that.
But the fact of the matter is that the parade turns out to be a city event,
and it's, you know, what...
But when you say it's a city event, you know, you're right.
To the extent it becomes a government event,
then the government has restrictions on it that private parties do not.
But if we're talking about, you know, government approval of a parade,
the government issuance of a parade permit,
or government, you know, government's decision to support a parade with, you know,
with actually being organized by somebody else,
that's actually a somewhat different issue.
And I feel important, you know, what I would say, by the way,
is that, you know, it's worth comparing what a contrasting case might be,
which would be one in which gays and lesbians had approval for a parade permit
and city support for it.
And then a group of fundamentalist Christians who were anti-gay
insisted on their rights to freedom of expression and inclusion in the parade.
Right.
Well, the reason I would differ with that is because gays and lesbians are Irish.
It's not that they're anti-Irish.
These are Irish gays and lesbians.
So it's not like...
But it's not the job of government to enforce content control on the parade organizers,
for the most part.
Well, we could talk about this for hours,
but we're kind of straying from our topic, which is the computer issues.
Let's go back to the telephones.
Incidentally, just one other thing about the parade.
I want to say that, personally, I'm very sympathetic with the gay and lesbian Irish
who want to be part of the parade.
I think they have...
I think they're entirely justified in wanting to be part of it.
And I know that in the Dublin St. Patrick's Day parade, they were a part of it.
There was actually no quarrel about it.
For the first time ever, I believe.
Right.
And only because it was the first time they'd asked.
Uh-huh.
Well, hopefully next year in New York, we'll see civilization like that here.
I think that would be good.
Okay, let's go back to the phones.
Good evening.
You're on.
Hi.
Go ahead.
I enjoy the show.
I just got to...
I'm in my radios.
It's making me confused.
There we go.
The comment you made earlier about the well being a little box in a closet, and you were
sort of...
Even though you're really hip to the whole thing of online communication, but the sort
of visceral reaction you had was intriguing.
And I thought I would tweak you a little more, because to think that people don't realize
that the truth is all reality really depends on that little box that's resting on your shoulders.
I mean, our conception of reality really is very relative, and it depends on a couple
of things.
It depends on your relative size and relationship to your environment, and it also depends on
your sensory input.
So if you were the size of an electron, let's say, your environment would be totally different,
and that's what you would think reality was all about.
And if you could receive different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum or other kinds
of sensory input, then your environment would be different.
And I would say that what we do with our tools, such as radios, that we listen to electromagnetic
energy that we can't perceive by ourselves, or computers that we use to perceive other
sorts of stimuli that we can't perceive with our own bodily organs, expand those ranges of
sensory inputs.
So it's all relative.
Oh, you've given me a lot to think about now.
But thanks for your thoughts.
And thank you.
And hooray for Steve Jackson, by the way.
That was a comment I wanted to make, too.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
All right.
Take care.
All right.
And that's a good note to end on, I think, all those ways of dealing with our sensory inputs,
and a good cheer for Steve Jackson.
Mike, you deserve some congratulations, too, for your hard work on this case.
Are there other cases we can look forward to with the Electronic Frontier Foundation?
I think you should look forward to our involvement in the 2600 case that we are shaping, you know,
even as we speak.
I think it's one of the things that's important to establish for our society is that it's just
as valid and just as constitutionally protected for people to talk about technology, even when
that talk could be used in a dangerous way, as it is to talk about political issues or artistic
issues.
The fact is, you know, it's a cliche to say that we're living in an increasingly technological
society, but the fact is that we're going to be talking about technical issues as part of regular
public discourse more and more.
And it's vitally important that we establish that the First Amendment applies just as strongly in those
discussions as it does in any other discussion that we can imagine.
Well, we seem to be off to a good start.
How can people get a hold of the Electronic Frontier Foundation?
To contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation by phone, they should send a message to,
pardon me, they should call in Washington, D.C., area code 202-544-9237.
And that would be for general information about EFF.
If you have a particular question about a legal problem or issue, if you're having a particular
difficulty, you should call me directly in Cambridge, Massachusetts at area code 617-576-4510.
And general queries to EFF can be sent to the email address, EFF at EFF.org, EFF at EFF.org.
And that will be routed to the person who can answer your question.
All right.
Mike Auburn from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, thank you very much for being with us tonight.
And congratulations again.
You're welcome.
Okay.
Talk to you again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And that's going to just about do it for us here on Off the Hook.
We'll be back again next week with another exciting story of something happening in the
electronic community and how it affects you.
Stay tuned for the WBAI Evening News next.
This is WBAI New York.
See you next week.
We'll be back next week with another vacation.
We'll be back next week.
Bye.