A hurry of things to come in the realm of creative listening.
Coming this Saturday at 9 p.m., the secret museum of the air.
Dateline 100 years ago.
Daring explorers risk their lives to capture the hidden sounds of humanity with a newly discovered invention.
The gramophone.
Join Citizen Kafka and curator Pat Conte as they slowly peel back the layers of time to enter the shrouded mists of the golden age of the gramophone.
Each week, the lost sounds of historic recordings from the far corners of the earth.
On the secret museum of the air.
Visiting hours every Saturday from 9 to 10 p.m.
Remember, knowledge is power.
Thoughts have wings.
And the secret museum is open this Saturday at 9 p.m.
That's Saturday, 9 p.m., the secret museum of the air.
9 p.m. Saturday.
9 p.m. Saturday.
And for those of you that don't know, that's going to happen 9 p.m.
Saturday.
It's 10 p.m. on Wednesday, and that means it's time for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bum, diddly, bum, but the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum, diddly, bum!
Bum, diddly, bum.
Bum, diddly, bum!
Bum!
Bum, diddly, bum!
Bum, diddly.
Bum, diddly, bum!
Bum, diddly.
Bum, diddly.
Bum.
Bum, diddly.
Bum.
Bum, diddly.
Bum.
Bum!
Bum.
Bum, diddly.
C'est a lot.
and a good evening to one and all the program is off the hook this is emmanuel goldstein
and we're going to spend the next hour talking about the phone company and options and questions
and all those things that pop into people's heads things that well some people in charge might not
want to pop into your head but you know it happens anyway and it's been a fun-filled week for me
because this is the first week that i've ever had to play with caller id just came to uh to my
particular area actually as as we've said on this program it's called call id and um it's it's quite
a toy to play with it's rather dangerous for some people because uh it can be used against them in
ways that perhaps they aren't aware of let's look at this story that came from the associated press
a prisoner charged with rape who escaped from ocean county jail by tying sheets together and using
them to climb down five floors was captured yesterday after a half-day search authorities
said john bailey was captured when he called his mother-in-law who lives in berkeley from a south
toms river phone booth um that's according to detective richard breitenbach breitenbach and two
other detectives were at the home of the mother-in-law whom authorities declined to identify when bailey
called the mother-in-law had caller id enabling officials to uh determine the suspect's location
well it's uh you know a nice story about caller id and i'm sure one that the phone company is going
to use uh to um um actually that's not berkeley california it's berkeley new jersey yeah uh that's
something that um the phone company is no doubt going to use as an excuse for uh for enforcing
caller id on everybody well i don't know you know i don't know if it's uh if it's such a good idea to
have everybody uh constantly advertising who they are where they are what their name is i don't know how
do you feel is your number blocked can your number be blocked one thing i found out is that everybody
that uh that lives in the area that has the potential to have caller id has not blocked their
number and the reason for that is pretty simple it's not because they don't want to block their
number believe me they they reacted with some indignation when i picked up the phone and greeted
them by name you know it's hello joe why are you calling me or better yet you look at your caller id
device and you see that joe called you at a certain time but didn't leave a message so you call joe back
and say joe what do you want joe says what are you talking about i didn't want anything what what do
you mean so you called me before and you didn't leave a message he's like well you know i i i i don't
know i don't know uh you know very embarrassed caught in the act caught in the act of calling the
answering machine and not leaving a message you must be accountable for all of your actions
there's nothing you can hide anymore if you pick up the phone and think about calling me it's going
to register someplace but if you're not guilty you've got nothing to hide so we have this uh this spirit of
the 90s now where we must be accountable for everything we do and everything that we uh we say
and think and all that kind of thing i don't know you know people react in a bad way when you greet
them by name when they call you they're kind of surprised sometimes but after a while it becomes
rather a pain so i ask these people why didn't you block your number why didn't you ask the phone
company for all call blocking well they either didn't know about it or they didn't want to go to
the trouble which leads to a very important point why is it that people in new york have to go
to a certain amount of trouble to block their numbers doesn't really make a whole lot of sense
unless you look at that from the uh from the phone company's point of view where they're trying to sell
this service they're trying to make you believe that you need it and by doing that well the best
tactic is to make it as difficult as possible for you not to get the service so everybody um
everybody will be sending their number unless they contact the phone company and tell them
not to send the number otherwise you have to dial star 67 or 1167 if you have a rotary phone
every time you want to call somebody
unless you block your number all the time in which case you would dial star 67 or 1167
to not block your number and if you lose track of which it is it's going to be very difficult to
figure it out extremely difficult i mean how do you call somebody and know if your number is being
transmitted unless you ask the person who happens to have a caller id box if your number has been
transmitted it's uh rather embarrassing to say the least but i had a lot of fun a lot of fun playing
with this new toy i discovered that uh as we reported last week when we were talking about the the phone
smart features call return and return call and all those kind of things for some reason pay phones
cannot be called back you cannot star 69 a pay phone at least not in the uh new york telephone area
however a pay phone will show up on caller id so you'll see a phone number show up on caller id but
you can't call it back you can't star 69 it yes you can dial it yourself but for some reason it's uh
it's uh listed that way i don't really know why that is and the other important thing about that is
that you can't block a number from a pay phone i've tried dialing star 67 to block the number
as i was calling from a pay phone star 67 simply will not work so it's impossible to block pay phone
numbers that's one of the things i learned
and the most recent thing which is probably uh the most scary thing something that uh i think a lot
of us uh ought to be aware of somebody called an office that has an 800 number
now picture this an 800 number with new york telephone fantastically expensive for one thing
but a lot of people do have that an 800 number with new york telephone that goes to a regular phone
line let's imagine that you have that in your house you subscribe to new york telephone's 800 service
and somebody calls that 800 number well guess what caller id is now transmitted over the 800 number
we're not talking about ani which is a completely different technology we're talking about caller id it
will show up on your box or on their box if you call an 800 number now that's something that uh
kind of caught me by surprise caller id actually being transmitted over 800 numbers now so one more
form of anonymity has been lost how many more to go well 950s will still be uh anonymous you can still
call someone using a 950 access number and your number will not be transmitted who knows how
long that will be you can still call through the operator your number will not be transmitted who
knows how long that will be i do know that uh the area is getting larger and larger where if you call
somebody direct your number will be transmitted one day new jersey will be able to call new york
probably sometime this year and numbers will be transmitted on caller id devices one day not too long
from now people in california will call us and we'll see their numbers hey maybe this is a good
thing maybe this is something that uh the average consumer will see as the second coming of christ or
something i don't know but i do have this uneasy feeling that uh we're not being asked we're not
being consulted it's just happening without us
so folks it's up to you to speak your mind this is one place you can do it you can uh call us up and
tell us how you feel about caller id and whether you think it's good whether you think it's bad whether
you think it's something that we should have something that we should have as a mandatory feature
like new jersey
all right let's uh get into an interesting news item and then we have an interesting uh news item of a
totally different nature this is the humorous part of the show
it doesn't last very long so uh state police in connecticut say they've caught the computer
hacker who was fooling around with an electronic highway sign two weeks ago the sign on i-95 was
reprogrammed to read you all suck and earlier this week drivers were greeted with a message that
connecticut governor lowell weicker quote blows unquote police alleged that keith blodgett is the
sign hacker but he says it was unintentional blodgett contends that he was just futzing around with what he
thought was a computer bulletin board system he says there was no password protection whatsoever
to dial into the computer at the state transportation department
wish i could have gotten there first i would have said something a lot more clever than you all suck
i would have said something i don't know martians have landed what would you say if you had a highway
side at your disposal all right we have the uh clipper chip uh thing which has just happened
i don't know how many people have read the new york times over the past week or other newspapers and
magazines but uh the clinton administration has proposed a new form of encryption now i'm not going
to get into a lot of technical detail because a i haven't uh studied it up all that much and b we
really don't have time in this particular program to talk about it however we will be talking about
this certainly over the next couple of weeks but basically what uh what we're seeing here and so
far from what i understand this is uh this is a proposal to um uh to help encrypt cellular phones but it
also is supposed to be expanded to more than just then it's supposed to be expanded to all kinds of
chips all kinds of computer chips including the ones in cellular phones but also possibly including
ones in regular phones including ones in digital phone systems and computers basically we have a
an encryption standard with three separate keys you need all three to uh to operate it the uh consumer
will have one key in his sole possession and the other two keys will be held by two entities these
entities have not been announced they have not been uh defined in any way but these are two entities
supposedly will be trustworthy and the way it will work is this if law enforcement decides that they
want to tap your phone or read your data they will get a warrant they will contact these two outside
entities and they will get the two pieces of the encryption of the key from those two entities and then
they will take yours that uh that that you have i don't know exactly how they're supposed to get
that and they'll decrypt your uh your phone calls or your messages although eavesdrop again it's uh
something that's uh kind of hard to explain kind of hard to understand and hopefully over the next
couple of weeks we will we will have that information what's unsettling about this it's an interesting
discussion but what's unsettling about this is just what the administration thinks they have the
right to do do they have the right to uh outlaw any other form of encryption are we looking at some
sort of mandatory system that people are going to have to use and are we talking about a society where
you have to register your chips with the government you know kind of rubs me the wrong way so um those
are the questions we're going to be asking over the next couple of weeks and believe me we are going
to find some answers and we're going to see uh just what kind of ideas these people are coming up
with now some people are hailing this as a a solution to the uh digital telephony issue where
law enforcement claims it's a great problem to tap digital lines well other people are saying this is
something that uh could spell the end of uh freedom of speech certainly in the electronic age
again we will be talking about that we welcome any comments uh later on the program as far as that
particular item the clipper chip it's going to be in the news quite a bit certainly on this program
quite a bit and we have one final bit of glorious news and then we will be getting into uh the main
part of our program remember the uh the belcor uh lawsuit threat from belcor in new jersey
uh against 2600 magazine this came last july and it came as a result of an article that was printed
uh in i believe the winter uh 1990 91 actually it might have been 91 92 i'm not really sure on the date
but um it was basically a a threat because of some uh internal information that was leaked to the
magazine concerning how uh operators might listen in to telephone calls by using something called
busy line verification blv belcor didn't like the fact that that was leaked 2600 magazine didn't like
the fact that belcor was threatening them and the whole big uh hullabaloo started as a result of that
and uh right now it's kind of uh kind of at an impasse uh 2600 said they would continue to
print this kind of material and belcor said well if you do oh boy you're you're you're going to get
yours if you do and uh that's sort of where it stands right now well we have a new situation now
brand new and this just happened a couple of days ago and this time the uh the threatening party is
not belcor it's at&t now very quickly uh belcor is the research arm of the regional bel operating
companies uh regional bel operating companies being a product of the breakup of the phone system
in 1984 and our particular piece uh here in new york is 9x uh bel atlantic is the piece over in new
jersey and uh the subdivisions of those particular bel operating companies are new york telephone and
new jersey bel respectively so basically we have two different entities because at&t is the long
distance company and that's it there used to be a lot more than that but now they're just
the long distance company not to make them sound as if they're a small company they certainly aren't
and they have all kinds of other interests but uh for now we will refer to them as just that
well they sent a letter over to uh to the magazine uh this week saying uh this is from r.a ryan a
trademark and copyright attorney um i've been informed that the winter 92 93 edition they seem to
always like the winter editions of uh 2600 magazine includes material copied from at&t's eastern area
directory the material copied by you is proprietary to at&t and subject to the protection of state and
federal law including the copyright law of the united states at&t will take immediate action to
protect its proprietary information and its copyrighted property in the event you persist with
its publication well friends what we are talking about here that at&t is so upset about and you're
really going to find this hard to believe i think i know i do we're talking about a list of at&t offices in
other words where at&t is located something that could almost be considered a public service
but at&t is saying printing where we have offices is proprietary information now i don't know where
it was written that at&t is is surreptitiously planting offices all over the place and that the
revelation of where these offices are is is some sort of a crime some sort of uh infringement of
proprietary information but it goes to show you the the insanity the illogic that is at play here
and how how uh big companies like this feel they can um they can intimidate smaller companies and
and individual people by by threatening lawsuits for each and every little thing so um that's the
latest that's the latest at&t threatening to sue because 2600 has said where at&t is go figure
and when you come back let us know all right imagine if you will an alternative an alternative
to the phone company the local phone company that is yes you pick up your telephone here in new york
you get a dial tone from new york telephone you pick up your telephone over in new jersey you get a
dial tone from new jersey bell and we have snat in connecticut and uh all kinds of other entities
elsewhere and there really isn't much of a choice you know you can choose your long distance company
you can say at&t and mci and tweedle dumb and tweedle d but when it comes to local service you're pretty
much a slave you have to participate in the local company's rules and regulations not so however in
berkeley california where there is an alternative and the alternative is starting to take off
and maybe someday we'll uh we'll have such an alternative here we have on the line with us
george gleason of people's telecom berkeley california george you're with us yes i am hi hi you want to
uh describe for us what uh what kind of alternative first of all why would somebody want an alternative
to uh to your local phone company pacific bell i guess well for the same reason that they might want
an alternative to anything else they buy in the marketplace which is that uh the alternative provides
better service or that the cost is more befitting their budget or that uh they're just in league with
the spirit of what the organization stands for much the same way as you might choose to buy something
from a company which uh supports environmental causes or something like that and uh what particularly
would be wrong with the phone company as it stands now what what kind of services don't they offer
well let's look at one of the few of the things that pacific bell doesn't offer first of all you were
talking about caller id a little bit ago and what that really is is calling line identification so
for example if you're at home and you have your phone set to block calls from numbers that you don't
recognize what happens if your kid is out on the road and has an automobile breakdown and has to
call you from a payphone well lo and behold the call is blocked we all have a service called please
which stands for private line enhanced access service and what that means is that you'll have a
person identification instead of a call identification but using it will be voluntary so in other words if a
person calls your line and finds the line is blocked they can dial their individual access code and their
name will show up on the screen on your phone so that means that if your kid is broke down on the
side of the road someplace um they'll be able to get through to you no matter what phone they happen
to be calling from that's something which the existing telephone system doesn't offer another
case in point is if you live in a cooperative household or you share a phone with other people
for whatever reason or you have a family with kids that make long distance calls you get your
phone bill at the end of the month and it's listed by just the calls come in chronological order
wouldn't it be nice if you can get your calls broken out by the initials of the person who made them
that's another type of service that we'll be able to offer that pacific bell doesn't
so those are some specific examples there are other ones there's also a whole political side
to this thing by the way i might add your line is cutting out from time to time here right your voice
kind of fades so if i ask for a clarification that's probably what it is that's okay what you're
experiencing is a wbai phone system which is different from any phone system in the world uh it i think
it selectively cuts out words it doesn't like uh but apart from that um now how how would an
individual person i mean can individual people have uh this alternative or is this for for larger
customers how does it work well at first it's going to end up being for larger customers or
places where there's a large concentration of lines in one in one in one very compact area so
for instance our minimum is about 100 lines um that's the way it is right now once the service
becomes more ubiquitous every place our cable happens to go by houses will be able to sign up or
businesses will be able to sign up it's kind of one of the unfortunate elements of the deregulation of
local service that the way it's going to be structured initially favors these situations
where you have large concentrations of lines and frankly there's no way to get around that because
the economics of putting cable under the street is such that there's really nothing else you can do
except get the larger customers at each end and then fill it in as time goes by is is cable the only
way to go can you go perhaps by by microwave well there's two problems with microwaves one is that i
don't know how many people are familiar with the questions about electromagnetic radiation and health
but it seems to me that you know if we have a society in which there's this huge proliferation
of microwave transmitters um as the air becomes more contaminated with electromagnetic noise as it
were you know who knows what the long-term effects are going to be i'm not an alarmist on this count
but i think that it's something that might want to be looked into but more specifically in our case
the cost of microwave transmission is sufficiently high that you'd only use it as a link between nodes
in the system it's not cost effective to have a microwave transmitter on top of your roof at least not yet
so uh tell us something about uh about the history of your particular organization how long have you been around for
people's telecom is berkeley's oldest interconnect contractor and by that i mean a telephone company
that specializes in private phone systems so for example if you have an office
or if you have a large household or something like that and it could be as few as three telephones
and it could be as many as 30,000 we can come in and supply everything on your side of the network interface
it's kind of as if you can hire any let's say pg&e or the electric company comes to the side of your building
and then you hire the contractor of your choice to provide the wiring and the appliances and all of that
and of course if you want energy conservation built into that or if you want some other alternative
you've got to find someone who specializes in that
well this is what people's telecom does for your telephones
and of course we've got a commercial site called integrated signal
um if i haven't mentioned it already i started this in 1984 and you know it grew by reputation
um right now we serve probably between a third and a half of all the politically progressive
and public interest and public service groups in the bay area
um but what we're going to do now to get this new service launched
which is what we're calling community dial tone
is to open up another division or another independent entity
which will be concerned primarily with these types of larger service offerings
now as far as the community dial tone project
now you'd think that with the breakup of the phone company everything
uh a lot of people will be rushing to offer competing services but we haven't seen this happen
at least at least not in areas that i'm familiar with why is that
well in new york you've actually got a few and i'm not certain if i've got the names memorized
but i think one of them is called teleport or something like that or new york fiber something to that effect
and so in fact there are some but they're serving huge clients
so for example in new york you've got a concentration of those down on wall street
um i suspect that a lot of companies are making plans to get back into this as soon as they get a chance
and probably most of them are keeping it a great big secret
um we have inside information to the effect that there are likely to be some additional ones coming in
uh we are hoping to be the very first one in the bay area
but that all really depends on us getting about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars to put in the first installation
we have a client that'll do a thousand lines on a ten-year contract
but you know the economics of this is such that we really need to get it uh we need to get it financed
um but aside from that let's see back to your initial question
how soon before this stuff comes in it may come in very quickly
and one of the things we're concerned about is that the large companies that have been involved in long distance in the past
which are likely to get back into this
um are going to be interested in doing what in the industry called cream skimming
and that means going into the places where the most profitable service can be found
the big office towers the condominium complexes the apartment complexes
places where they can grab a few hundred or a few thousand lines all in one swoop
and what happens then is that if you're off in uh you know less developed areas or in your rural areas
or perhaps in the inner cities where people are not as well off economically you may be left in a digital backwater
and as society moves more toward a footing that's based on the information technology being an integral part of daily life
civic life and social life as well as perhaps how a lot of people get their jobs
um what i'm thinking of here is people who do clerical work and that type of thing or engineers or what not
if you're living in the digital ghetto you're going to be left behind
and there's really a substantial political and social issue involved in that
and it's something that we're hoping to address
uh once we've got ourselves established on this
we'll be able to have a platform from which to raise a lot of these issues in a really substantive way
because we can say hey we're not just dreaming about this we're actually doing it
and uh you know where the rest of you guys anyway
um with regard to the biggies getting back in
okay one of the things that i've heard talked about and there may be some legal limitations on this
but at&t would be a logical contender to get back into local service
if you think of what happened when they broke up the bell system
at&t corporate took the most profitable parts of it for themselves
and left the local telephone companies with the least profitable parts of the business
so it's kind of like an unfriendly divorce where one partner gets everything
and leaves the other partner with the kids but no child support
now if at&t wants to get back into this
um the local telephone companies on the inside are probably going to be fuming mad about it
but they're not going to say that on the outside
you're not going to say that to the public
it's an example of the kinds of ways in which uh the deregulation
of the telephone industry in this country has proceeded and and and tends to kind of produce
self-contradictory results or results that are not in accord with the public interest
now give us a give us an idea of uh a best case scenario for say an average uh person or an average business
how uh can phone service be uh be better more exciting more flexible than than what is offered by the regional bell operating companies now
well the best case scenario is your phone does what you want it to do and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to do it
um
so for example you would maintain unlimited local calling which means that you can make as many calls
in your local area as you want and there's no additional charge for that
um you might have additional features on your phone for example something that tells you who's calling if they want to identify themselves
um you might have a feature that uh lets you add more people to a conference call for social reasons
um there's a whole new range of services coming in called isdn in the industry of course for the last
ten years when you know this has actually been around for a long time it just hasn't been acted
on people have joked that the initial stand for it still does nothing actually it's the integrated
services digital network and what that will do among other things is give you a digital phone which
allows you to use your telephone uh for a voice conversation at the same time as you're using your
computer to communicate something across town or across the world you might be working on something
you might be telecommuting for example and i actually want to get into this and a little
bit more about telecommuting and its impact but for example you might have a job with a company
that's across town or across the world and you're telecommuting to there so you're typing stuff on
your computer and it's connected to the mainframe this whole thing is happening at speeds of between
30 and and 60 times as fast as your current modem allows you to do and at the same time as you're
on the computer you can also be talking on the phone and you can be sharing work on your computer
with someone at the other end so that you could both be looking at the same screen moving your cursor
around editing things changing things that type of stuff um if you're a musician or an artist you
might be able to send things back and forth a lot more rapidly than we have now you might get for
example digital jam sessions over the phone where people hook their musical uh the digital musical
equipment for example midi synthesizers and so forth uh you might have a situation where a recording
artist is making an album and wants to bring in a player who's well established on their instrument
but lives far away that player goes into a recording studio on the east let's say on the east coast and the
studio engineers on the west coast pick it up and they make their music together just as if they
were in the same room and with uh really high fidelity um you can also get conference quality
video but see these are applications that mostly affect business from the residential subscribers
point of view what people want is access they want simplicity they want the cost to be affordable
in the best case scenario telecommuting is going to actually be an element that helps families
and neighborhoods stick together more closely than before and here's how right now if you work at a job
you go to an office and if the company goes out of business or they move their operations to some
slave state overseas where they can pay two cents an hour you're out of a job and you probably have
to move house the average residents uh the average family in this country moves house every two and
a half years and that does absolute hell to neighborhood stability because when you have
people coming and going they don't really care about where they are and they don't care about
what happens when they leave it behind you won't vote for a school bond issue for example if
the taxes come due today but the high school is not going to be improved until five years down the line
when you and your kids are out of the neighborhood so that's a bad thing and in contrast to this if
you're dealing with telecommuting for example you could be plugged into an office that's anywhere in
the world and if that company goes out of business or if you decide to change jobs for whatever reason
instead of moving house and pulling up your family and ripping apart your social ties
uh you just simply change the settings on your modem program on your computer and suddenly tomorrow
you're connected to somewhere else but you're physically staying in the same place
i think that's a good thing i come from a family where on my mom's side there were four generations
of the same family on the same block in a small uh in a small suburb in new jersey and that was a
really great thing and i really believe that uh when you look at the difference between a stable
neighborhood and an unstable one you know you can really tell the difference and if we can make that
situation come about again through high technology i mean we're not going to put the genie back in the
bottle that's not possible but what we can do is we can move forward and use these things in ways
that enhance people's lives so the best scenario of all is the digital community where there's
really a strong level of interaction between people face to face and where they're able to
use the new technologies to enhance their life in certain ways that are specifically under their
control the world case scenario which probably isn't going to happen quite this badly but certain
elements of it probably will um first of all as competition comes in the telephone companies are going
to need more sources of revenue so for example with your caller id what caller id is really for is
telemarketing you call a pizza place you order a pizza they have your number they call you back
to make sure it's really you okay that's fine but what also happens is your number goes into a database
and all of a sudden you start getting junk mail for pizza showing up at your doorstep
um or you call a supermarket and you do shopping by phone and you enter your credit card number and all
of a sudden some database has your uh information as to who you are and what you like to buy and maybe
next week you get a notice from your health insurance company saying hey you're eating too much red
meat we're going to cut you off uh those kinds of things um but what's probably also going to happen
along with this okay so that's one example of how they're managing to squeeze more money out of the
network by basically making everything they can into a commodity i sort of wonder how long it's
going to be before they start injecting commercials between the rings when you're waiting for somebody
to answer well in fact somebody's got a patent for a device that actually does that and they're
saying that this is a way they can offer low-cost phone service so presumably in the ghettos you're
going to see ads for booze and cigarettes coming over to the homes of people who can least afford that type of
thing and and you know there's a lot of ethical questions involved um what i'm most concerned
about though is the charging for local service now in new york right now you make a local call you pay
a message unit charge um in california and in most of the rest of the world or rather most of the rest
of the united states that's not the case you make your local calls you've got a flat rate you pay let's
say 12 bucks a month and all the local calls you want are free that's very nice and residential service
has always been done that way traditionally because it doesn't have an impact on the system it's kind of like
the way that bicycles impact city traffic they don't take up lanes on the street they just kind
of get by and they don't cause problems residential service involves such a small amount of usage
compared to the business traffic on the network that traditionally it's gone through for free but
as a telephone companies have to start squeezing every penny they can in order to compete effectively
with each other what's going to happen is there'll be more and more pressure for measured local service
now that by and of itself you say well a few more dollars it's no big deal but if you look at the
statistics and you see how people use the phone you find out that it's a bigger deal in fact and
here's what i'm talking about in the early 80s southern new england telephone in connecticut did
something called the subscriber line usage survey and they tried to measure through technical means
and surveys how people use their phones and what they found out was this black families way below the
poverty line used the telephone ten times as many minutes of local calling as did white families in
the same income group and as you got closer and closer to middle class the difference between black and
white families narrowed and when you got to middle class and above suddenly the white folks were
using the phone more than the black folks now i'm not going to presume excuse me i'm not going to
presume to psych out why different people use the phone different ways but if you suddenly start
charging for local calls what you're going to find out is that uh the black families below the poverty
line for instance are going to have ten times a higher higher phone bill and at the prevailing rates at
the time what that came to was a telephone bill of around forty to fifty dollars a month
um certainly not something that a family in poverty can afford and so even though there may not be an
intent to discriminate it's as if you had a health insurance system that said we're going to charge
you more if you're at risk for sickle cell that hits the black folks we're going to charge you more
if you've got a risk for aids that hits the gay folks we're going well it hits everybody nowadays
we're going to charge you more if you have a risk for tay sachs disease oh now we've hit the jews
gee whiz how many more ethnic categories can we bring in here so although there may not be a discriminatory
intent there's a discriminatory impact and it's something that's going to affect people social
lives it's going to affect civic participation it used to be in the old days for example that uh
you know uh well let me take it on a slightly different tack here if we start getting measured
local service it's as if somebody installed a toll booth on the road to the village square
suddenly the avenue through which many people are going to be conducting political debate social
interaction and all these things is going to be having a meter attached to it that's constantly running
and what that's going to do is create a differential degree of access to the point where some people
are going to have all the access they want and a lot of people perhaps the majority as the divide
between the rich and the poor gets larger are going to have less and less access because they
simply can't afford it and i think that would be a national disgrace it certainly would and that's
something that uh that i'm very concerned about but george one quick question i want to go to the
telephones uh why don't the phone companies uh simply provide service that would be more useful to
individual people like addressing the concerns that you've brought up what would they have against
that well it's not that they have an implicit an intrinsic bias in some cases they simply don't
know about concerns that are out there for example you have a cooperative household the phone is listed
in one person's name um it would be much nicer if the household could be listed by its house name
because that's the name that everybody in the neighborhood might know it by and as as it were if
you're looking up someone's number you don't maybe you don't know the name of the person who uh who
that number is listed under but the telephone company sees that as a business and so they won't do that
so some of it is just a matter of the fact that their administration can't cope with the social
and cultural realities of our times and some of it is also a technical limitation for example
person id that i described earlier what we're calling please service um that's something which
they don't have the ability to provide in their network right now i mean in a way they sort of do
but they'd have to give people a lot more things attached to that in order to make it work and
those are things that they can charge a fee for and they really haven't identified the trend because
they're not as close to the grassroots with us a lot of the stuff that we'd like to do isn't
technically feasible right now for the telephone companies the way they're set up um some of it
would require changes in their tariffs which involve going through a big state a big process
of the state bureaucracy um it's just a question of market demand i mean general motors didn't
anticipate the need for small economical automobiles but uh you know toyota and volkswagen and all the
rest of them did and uh the result was not only a change in the market shares but then after a
while general motors got hip to it and and now the american car companies have caught up um it's the same
case with the telephones i think that probably after about 10 years we'll see that most of these
services are fairly similar and some of the things that we're talking about now that people might
consider sort of idealistic or or advanced or far ahead in some way those things are going to be
fairly standard on the network all right we're talking with george gleason of uh people's telecom
berkeley california providing uh um an alternative to local telephone service from the phone company
uh before we go to uh listen to phone calls at two on two two seven nine three four hundred uh george can
you give out any kind of uh phone number way people can get a hold of you to ask you any more
questions or provide information that might be helpful to you sure the number my private line
on my desk i don't want to bother my co-workers with this but my private line on my desk is area
five one oh six four four eight oh eight five and so if you like you can leave a message for me if
i'm not in the office at the time where you can talk to me if i am and uh and we'll see uh you know
one thing we'd really like to do is encourage this thing to go on a larger scale if anybody in new
york has a gut to try to set up a franchise or a subsidiary of this we'd love to hear about it
and uh you know if uh by chance if somebody's listening who can help us get contract financing
for those first thousand lines in berkeley i'd be thrilled anyway that's an advertisement you're
not supposed to take ads on the air right now are you well it's a plea and we have plenty of pleas on
the on the air but um i guess the question that we're asking our listeners today is um is what do you
want from your phone service that the phone company does not provide today if you had your own uh your
own independent phone company what would you do differently and that's uh something that i think
uh we might need to hear at this point so that we can uh proceed because george you're certainly
in the uh position where you can actually make something happen if you're able to do this yeah
if we're able to set this up basically it's going to respond to customer demand to the point where
the way we like to put it is anything somebody wants chances are there's a way we can do it
for example i got a request from someone they said well i make a conference call every day at the
same time to eight other people can i do that and it's like of course you can we can put one
button on your phone which calls well the way it has to work is one button for each of those people
but it adds them to the conference automatically um another thing is hey let's bring back the local
telephone operator you know because maybe a lot of these services are things which could better be
handled by a human being you don't want to sit there and wait and listen and hold the line while each of
the eight people you're trying to connect with gets on the phone but you know if the operator's there to
do it for you then great and then they'll call you back when they've got them all there and business
proceeds more efficiently so the way we like to think of it is anything anybody wants chances are we can do it
as long as we know what it is all right let's uh let's take some phone calls 212-279-3400 is our
phone number good evening you're on off the hook yes hello emmanuel yes go ahead great show thank you
again um recently a few days ago in fact i uh got a call from the at&t um trying to convince me to
switch my long distance service to at&t so i was very happy to take the opportunity there to explain
to the at&t salesperson why the company i used working assets long distance is far superior to
at&t and i got into detail about how working assets rates are the same but they provide socially
responsible uh practices like um using recycled paper and giving of donations to worthy uh groups that are
progressive organizations and which i agree with politically and so forth and so on and that
there's uh you know same quality of service and that sort of thing now your guest you have on
mentioned that there's some uh political aspects to the uh company that he's been involved with there
in berkeley providing local long local service and i was wondering what those might be and how they
um maybe might be uh similar or perhaps not to uh the services and the uh socially responsible
aspects of the working assets company working assets long distance george hi well there's a few things
actually and thanks for your call um first of all we always we've always recycled our paper too but
more specifically we hello still there yeah go ahead that was just a call dropping off okay one of the
things we do is provide a ten percent discount on systems and installations to groups that are serving
the public interest we also do a lot of free consulting in that regard and over the years we've provided
other types of communication support as well so for example when um oh boy how can i do this without
mentioning names okay when operation rescue was uh conducting guerrilla actions against local family
planning clinics uh we provided two-way radio equipment to the um groups that were operating against
operation rescue so that they could for example set up place locations they would be able to see if
operation rescue was coming and then move their counter protest into the appropriate uh the
appropriate location whether it was this family planning officer that one we've also done communication
support for big mountain support group where you you know the situation there with the bureau of land
management or the bureau of indian affairs trying to uh take away land that the indians have held for
centuries
believe in direct support for the things that uh that we feel are right in the world and we've stuck our
necks out for that you know for the last uh nine or so years um as far as this whole project is
concerned one of the things i hope to do with community dial tone has to has to do with the uh
what i call the digital ghetto and i'll get to that in just a second but i had another slimy
AT&T story if you want to hear a slimy AT&T story oh we'd love to hear slimy AT&T stories go ahead
well your friend out there at the other end of the line got a call from AT&T uh telemarketing
long distance but uh in here in here in california that had an interesting twist to it because
the people who they had making those calls were convicted felons in the state penitentiary
uh what do you think about the idea of a convicted felon in the state penitentiary having your customer
database your credit information your phone number and your address all spread out before them on a
computer that really makes for high pressure sales tactics now doesn't it because if you don't sign
up maybe one of his friends is going to come visit you sometime later and do some really high
pressure sales tactics you know in addition to the fact that AT&T is getting slave wages for that
because they only pay those people like 50 cents a day or something well i mean can you imagine i
mean people who wind up in prison you don't know why they're in prison i mean a lot of people are
in prison for you know various reasons some good some bad uh but imagine someone who is in prison
calling someone that he in some way victimized saying hey remember me i'm working for
a guy who broke into my house and helped me at night point for a few hours until the cops came
gee this is great because a lot of people do have victims when they go to prison so uh there's a
chance you might call one of them yep that's that's entirely possible and AT&T deserves to get
faulted on two levels for this one thing is of course they're engaging in slave labor which is
you know the only real word for what happens when you've got prisoners who are i mean you can say
sure the prisoners deserve to earn more money than they could mopping the floor in the jail but i mean
this is really this puts us on an equal footing with the last great communist giant in the world namely the
people's republic of china where they have political prisoners routinely engaged in labor for
for things that are sold in fact including sold into the united states um that's not fair to the
prisoners at all not fair to the prisoners to make them slaves to a private company and it's not fair
to the customers who have to deal with that because and the other thing is it drives down
the cost of wages and eventually what happens is it hits your job no matter what you are no matter
what you do uh you know the further the wages go down the closer it comes to the day when you're
going to find yourself earning minimum wage with your with your with your bachelor's degree or your
or your phd or whatever it might be now where where was it that this was happening this is going
on in california and once it came to light at&t of course got all red in the face and apologized
and they got all embarrassed and stuff but it's like you know come on you caught them with their
hands in the cookie jar what more do you need now back to the digital ghetto for a second one of the
things we want to do here you know referred to the idea that as these high-tech services come online
in the more well-to-do areas or in the places where there are high concentrations of lines or something
like that um that uh there's a risk that the service may not be available to people in the less
less densely populated areas or places where people are less well off or something like that
um one of the things that we'd very much like to do and i don't know when we're going to have the
economic means to do this is drop a thousand lines into the inner city someplace let's say east oakland
or someplace where you've got a predominantly minority predominantly very uh poor economically
constituency and uh see what happens and we'd also like to get some company let's say apple to uh
donate a thousand free macintoshes so that each of these lines also comes with a computer
if you look at the history of innovation cultural innovation in this country you find a lot of it
comes from minorities a lot of it comes from from uh subcultures which are relatively unknown
um for example the two examples i'd like to point to one of them is videotape uh originally videotape
recording was developed to capture sporting events live so that you could do instant replay of the
exciting moments and uh you know thirty years later along comes rodney king and the videotape that
sparked a whole new search for racial justice in this country it came out of the black disadvantaged
areas um the music synthesizer was originally developed to create inexpensive backing tracks
for singing commercials on the radio and uh thirty years later uh right out of the same part of uh the
same the same demographic groupings comes uh rap music and hip-hop music which have really defined
a generation's musical taste and a whole culture that goes along with that so what we expect is going
to happen is that right now okay this digital telephone technology is like what we call a technology
seeking applications everybody knows it's good for a couple of things but we really don't know how
it's going to be used in daily life what we think is going to happen is if you turn this loose in the
inner cities the black teenagers are going to come out with something that's just going to totally
blow our minds and i have no clue what that's going to be right now but i think if we get a chance to
do it we're going to find out and i agree we should have that chance i can't imagine the phone companies
uh giving the inner city that chance but with uh companies like people's telecom perhaps uh
it's a possibility let's go to another telephone call good evening you're on off the hook
oh hi i'm very glad i got through um excellent show as usual before i forget um sometime back a
number of months back you gave a number on the air it was a i believe it was a 900 number that would do
a reverse uh look up given a uh 10 digit phone number would read back to you the customer name
and address uh well actually uh i don't think it was a computer i think that was a human um but i don't
have the number with me but it's one of uh there are there are such services like that that uh do
customer name and address um uh and there are commercial services like that available now
where you give them a phone number you give them an address and they'll tell you the uh
uh the person it's listed too if it's listed that is uh what what area are you in uh 201
new jersey 201 what i suggest you do you're looking for somebody in the 201 area no i'm looking for uh
some people out of state mostly out of state what uh probably the best thing to do is to uh
contact a couple of libraries in the area find out if they have uh what's known as the coles directory
c-o-l-e-s and uh lots of times the libraries will uh you know if they have those they'll look up the
numbers for you or look up the addresses for you it's just a reference source and it's a way of uh
getting information that way okay good um you had mentioned that prisoners uh doing telemarketing
that's uh that's something that i'd read about about a year or so back that uh entire state
prison systems i forget whether it was might have been michigan might have been wyoming that
was they were having their entire prison system to get into this and marketing it to these mass
program telemarketers that that call up selling everything from you know uh magazine subscriptions to
to uh stocks and bonds and all these uh these folks with these programs you know the whole script on
the screen right in front of them uh that they were going to that more and more states were going to
probably get involved in this so it is i agree it's a slave labor kind of situation but well if you think
of it this way it costs uh four thousand dollars a year to send a student to school and it costs
twenty four thousand dollars a year to keep somebody in jail so you could cut the school funding by half
and uh let your prison population rise a few times before uh it ever got to the point where it cost as
much as keeping the kids in school isn't that nice so by the way that number you referred to in
telephone company terminology there are things called ani numbers automatic number identifiers
everybody in the industry knows that stuff but we don't like to give it out because we essentially
use it on the job every day and if people are casually messing messing with it it makes our lives
difficult because the telephone companies have to change it but there's another issue that brings
up which is sort of a pertains to the whole question of anonymity and it's like this some years ago
i was involved in a case where i had to testify against somebody where i voluntarily stepped forward
because they were asking for technical information when i found out what they were using it for what
they wanted to do is they were a stalker and they were trying to track down this woman who they had
it in for and they were going to harass and so somebody who'd been to jail for blowing up somebody's
car in a similar case ten years before and the more and more information that's available in public
databases the more easy it is to get at people the easier it's going to be for these for these stalkers
who are really you know as as wacko as it gets i mean you think david koresh was bad i mean i don't know if
this is even in the same category because it's only one victim at a time but still i mean there's lots more of
these these stalkers out there and you know people can use that information for all kinds
of nefarious purposes and there really should be some there should be a greater degree to which
people have control over how their information is used and where it's available well okay on that on
that subject uh somebody called before mentioning working assets long distance company i'm a customer
there's also and i've got their uh working assets uh calling card the way that works is a little
differently than than some of the other calling cards they you have an 800 number you have to dial
it's kind of like the the old uh the older alternate calling cards you have to dial 800 number first you
get a tone and then you have to dial the number you're calling and then you dial your your credit
card number so it's it's it sounds like a bad idea because it's an inordinate number of digits to dial
but it it occurred to me that it might be an advantage uh it it already has proved an advantage
with some of the coca telephones because you a lot of times you can get through to an 800 number
and they're especially with a local call in the state um it's often impossible to uh override their
choice of uh of of vendor you know using a calling card but it occurred to me this might also be a way to
defeat uh caller id we in new jersey here we don't have the option of of not identifying ourselves when we make a
call i was wondering if if you or if i don't i i came in late tonight i don't know if fiber optic is
there but uh if anybody there knows you know what what the deal is could this be used to override caller
id when you well fiber isn't here tonight george you want to take that one sure i have a i have an
idea about this first of all if they're using the 800 numbers for access chances are they're using
slightly older technology at the front end of their system and if that's the case then those uh
caller id numbers aren't going to be forwarded out the back side of that system so yes it would
provide a certain degree of enhanced privacy um the thing is though that if the network develops
there's nothing to stop them for just reasons of wanting to modernize their equipment for putting
something in which does that so it's probably a good idea see working assets is a very good
organization in fact we supply their local telephone equipment for their financial services department
over here in san francisco um they're very good people and if you call them up and express that
concern if you write them a letter and say hey we're concerned about this that if you upgrade your
technology we want to make sure that this doesn't have end-to-end caller id uh chances are they'll
respond positively to it um but i think you're right and that's that's just another another case of
how a little inconvenience at the front end adds up to a lot of privacy or a lot of some other
preservation of your rights at a different part of the system so it's a question of uh people
standing up and saying what it is that they want and uh and the company's hopefully listening uh thank
you very much for your call we're gonna go to another call and uh see if we can uh fit in a couple more
this hour good evening you're on the radio yeah hi um uh yeah on the call of uh id you know i i i
i feel about that that uh uh there's enough lack of uh spontaneity you know and and uh uh i told
the telephone company uh but but it's mainly i think it's a very big invasion of privacy you know and
uh uh uh i i i was very ira with the telephone company and said how come you don't try to you
know you don't get my permission and i think that this is a minimum thing we should strive for
rather than you having to to call in to block a number they should get your permission you know if
you want to participate in this don't you think that's uh uh uh a little more rational i think this
is uh much bigger than um um you know a lot of the civil service uh civil uh liberties groups have
uh indicated well i'm in i'm in total agreement with you sir they should ask you because they
are changing the rules and if they're going to change the rules they should get someone's permission
george what do you think of that well that's exactly why we're offering person id as a voluntary
service instead so for example if you want to identify yourself to someone's phone you type in an
access code which they'll give you that corresponds to your name and the name appears on the screen
uh it's something you have control over but if you want to surprise them with a happy birthday call
or something like that then you don't have to type that in if you don't want to it's kind of like
a beeper isn't it where you put in whatever you want right exactly the way a paging system works
you can put in whatever you want the reason the telephone companies aren't offering this right now
or one reason is because people could use that to create a sort of fraudulent call situation where
those codes actually stand for messages and so the code appears on your phone before you pick up
the receiver and you know what the message is and the call isn't charged and so forth um
but you can do that with caller id and here's how you get two pay phones side by side they send their
caller id to a person's screen and you use the pay phones as dot and dash and morse code you call you
let it ring twice you hang up you pick up the other phone you know you could you could do that if you
wanted to it would be a huge waste of time but uh you know well there's an easier way with
automated collect calls you can you can get a good sentence out on the when you record your name to send
the collect call right exactly and you know here's another thing also a lot of these alternative
long-distance carriers do their uh answer supervision by timeout so in other words if you let it ring for
more than 30 seconds you get charged if somebody picks it up instantly and your call is less than
30 seconds long you don't get charged that's sort of disappearing now but it's just some of these
things that people are complaining about are basically unintended results of the technology but
it's just the case that when you implement something on a massive enough scale inevitably there's
going to be some people caught in and feel hurt by it and that's one of the reasons why we feel the
local telephone service ought to be locally controlled by local people it ought to respond
to local needs because then whatever the local market wants now for example in chinatown before
they went into dial service the uh operators were fluent in five different chinese dialects
and instead of taking calls by number they took calls by person's name so instead of asking number
please they'd ask with whom do you wish to speak and they knew the local cultural etiquette
and they knew how to interact with people in that community and uh the service was much
more personal than you can have with uh dial phone or with a you know anything like that
all right sir thank you very much for your call okay thank you let's go to another call good
evening you're on off the hook uh hello mr gorsin sorry mr gorsin uh yes go ahead uh i like to ask
you a favor okay i will tell you can you can i call you somewhere or you can get my phone off the
off the whatever you call it uh to call me back it's something it has nothing to do with phone
uh now wait i'm not sure i know what you're asking uh can you give me your call or your phone
somewhere so i can reach you or can i give you my telephone off the air uh well the
you can call me anytime because there's something very important i want from you no no money no telephone
no okay all right well now i think what we'll have to do okay uh probably the best thing to do
is for you to either call after the after the program or and if you can't get through after
the program uh write in and we'll uh we'll try to handle it that way and leave information that way
okay thanks very much let's go to another phone call good evening yes hi uh manual as far as uh are you
even slightly worried about that suit that possible suit well of course anytime a multi-million dollar
uh corporation uh threatens to sue you it's something that uh you don't take lightly but at the same time
you have to weigh uh the disadvantages of backing down uh if you do back down you you agree with them
that printing a list of office locations is something that they can control uh then that means that uh that
you've lost a battle and other people probably will follow in your footsteps and be intimidated by that
company so you know it's it's a question of balance it's a question of well do you sacrifice something
of yours to uh to make things a little bit uh uh more democratic for other people it's a risk
everything in life is a risk so um now of course we're worried as of now do you plan on backing down
uh well no we never plan on backing down that's certainly uh by the no stretch of imagine of my
imagination can i believe let's say they even win how could they possibly collect any money because
as everyone knows they have to prove damages right well even if a judge says here you you obtain
this information illegally that's how can they win a penny for you by what stretch of the imagination
can someone claim that they suffered uh monetary damages because you published where their offices
are 20 years down the road if some bomber bombs one of these offices are they going to say that because
you published where this office was that they're holding you responsible well anything is possible
but i think uh part of the intent is to intimidate not so much necessarily to win a case or even to
start a case but to intimidate somebody therefore controlling them and if you do actually take it to
a case uh draining your opponent dry just in in defending themselves which sometimes is enough take my
advice in a case like this uh defend yourself uh if it's uh if you're not going to back down and
they do take you to court don't spend a penny on a lawyer because there's no way you're going to
there's no way any court i believe uh unless it's fixed uh going to uh give them monetary uh
rule in their favor and and and give them money well there's also the possibility of counter-suing
because of intimidation tactics and things like that but that's something we're going to be
discussing over the next few weeks listen sir thank you very much for your support and your call
uh we are out of time george i want to give you one more opportunity to give the name and address
of people's telecoms to people who are interested either in starting something here in new york or
just contacting you and and either offering advice or getting answers to questions can can do so
yes first of all community dial tone service is being offered by our commercial branch integrated
signal to switch networks division and so the phone number on my desk is area 510-644-8085
that's 510-644-8085 remember you're calling the west coast so there's a time difference and uh
if i'm not in the office i'll certainly call you back um i can also be reached online my online
address is gg at well.sf.ca.us that's the well which is a bulletin board service in Sausalito
that's really great and uh thanks a whole lot for your time still there uh yeah george actually the the
tape broke so i'm going to ask you to talk about another 15 seconds while i splice it back together
okay sure well you know here's something that everyone in new york can do seriously start
thinking about this start thinking about where your local community is at and uh what types of
telecommunication services you want because even if community dial tone never comes to new york
if you organize among yourselves if you think about what you really want to have uh and what types of
access you want what types of services you want you can get together and you can start lobbying for it
you might be able to find another interconnect contractor out there that's public spirited that
might be able to help you put it in um if you live in a cooperative apartment let's say a co-op
building that has you know a lot of units in it or something like that uh or you know i guess in
new york the real estate situation is pretty impossible but you know if you live in a place
where the management are responsive to this you might be able to organize to run your own telephone
company if your student's in a university you might be able to do the same thing as a cooperative
service you might be able to find a contractor that's able to put it in on a long-term contract
so you don't have to come up with you know a large fortune in order to install it at first
okay george that type of thing you know so it's basically a matter of just get organized and stand
up for what you want and sooner or later you'll you'll have it okay that's great uh we are out of
time though uh the tape is fixed so we are going to play it now uh yes there it is off the hook we'll
be back again next uh wednesday night at 10 p.m thanks so much for calling in and uh and listening thanks
george for being our guest tonight and uh we'll be back again next week this is emmanuel goldstein have a
good week
I hope that's understood
from Bigley Bell.
So decide to be
a quick postal field.
Now my court is in session.
Will you please stand?
In the 60s, the acknowledged
king of ska or bluebead
was Prince Buster.
His records dominated the charts,
jukeboxes and sound systems.
Wherever Prince Buster appeared,
whether in nightclubs,
theatres or concert halls,
sold-out signs were evident.
On Friday, April 30th,
from midnight to 3 a.m.,
join the Midnight Ravers
as we deliver the message
of Prince Buster
with an exclusive live interview.
We will discuss his 30-year career
as a singer, songwriter,
producer, philosopher,
and his genius.
This retrospective
on the musical career
of one of the pioneers
of ska, rocksteady, and reggae
comes just as his work
is finding new critical acceptance
and popularity.
The Message.
Friday, April 30th,
at midnight,
on listener-sponsored
non-commercial radio,
WBAI 99.5 FM,
on your dial.
The Legendary...
Good evening.
In the news tonight,
hate crimes visit the high court.
Should racists receive longer sentences?
Inmates and negotiators
come to terms in Lucasville
in a 10-day takeover.
Will Congress pull the plug
on an AIDS hotline
aimed at changing sexual behavior?
And in New York,
one of the toughest clinic access bills
in the country
is introduced
into the city council.
With these and other stories,
I'm Laura Seidel in New York
with Verna Avery Brown
in Washington.
And this is the news
for Wednesday,
April 21st, 1993.
First, to Verna Avery Brown
in Washington.
The prison siege
in Lucasville, Ohio,
is over.
Bill Cohen has the story.
Five guards,
held hostage
by 450 inmates
at the Lucasville prison
since Easter Sunday,
are to be freed.
A lawyer for the inmates
has announced
that prisoners
and corrections officials
have agreed
on a 21-point settlement.
And that means
the inmates
will soon be giving up.
That surrender,
the inmate lawyer
is calling it an evacuation,
is being broadcast live
on radio and television.
It's a protection
the inmates had asked for,
believing they will be safer
from retaliation
if cameras and microphones
are trained on them.
Other than that, though,
the inmates don't seem
to have won major concessions.
Prison officials
have promised
only to review
many of the inmates'
concerns
on issues like
better pay
for inmate workers,
more phone calls,
and better medical care.
And the rebel inmates
won't be shielded
from prosecution
for the seven prisoners
and one guard
they reportedly killed.
Amnesty is not
part of the agreement.
For Pacifica Radio News,
I'm Bill Cohen reporting.
Authorities have recovered
40 bodies
from the burned-down
Davidian compound
in Waco, Texas.
Justice Department
spokesperson Carl Stern
disputes the contention
of a cult survivor
that a federal vehicle
caused the blaze
by overturning lanterns.
Stern contends
a surveillance helicopter
with a heat detector
saw the fire start up
in three different parts
of the compound
at the same time.
Secretary of State
Warren Christopher
today announced
the Middle East peace talks
will resume in Washington
on April 27th.
Daoud Khutab
in East Jerusalem
reports on the
Palestinian reaction.
Palestinians are concerned
that the peace talks
will only relieve
the Israelis
of international
pressures on it
without having to
make substantive
confessions.
What is most
worrisome to Palestinians
is that the Israelis
will not carry out
many of the promises
that it has made
to Palestinians
via third parties.
The Israelis have promised
to speed up
the return of Palestinians
deported four months ago
as well as to allow
the Palestinians
expelled over the last
25 years to return.
It has also promised
to participate
in a joint committee
with Palestinians
and international bodies
that will monitor
human rights violations
in occupied territories.
All these promises
will now be put
to the test.
The PLO leadership
has indicated
that it will give
the Israelis a chance
to fulfill their promises.
For Pacifica Radio,
this is Daoud Khutab
reporting from
East Jerusalem.
Environmentalists
are applauding
President Clinton's
announcement that he
will sign
the biodiversity treaty,
something the previous
administration refused
to do at last year's
Rio Summit.
Clinton also set a goal
of reducing the emissions
of greenhouse gases
to 1990 levels
by the year 2000.
Among the other
green ticket items
Clinton announced today,
an executive order
that requires
federal facilities
to set a voluntary goal
of having toxic pollutants
by the year 2000.
Poor neighborhoods
in our cities
suffer most often
from toxic pollution.
Cleaning up the toxic waste
will create new jobs
in these neighborhoods
for those people
and make them safer places
to live,
to work,
and to do business.
Clinton also pushed
for his scaled back
$12 billion jobs bill,
something the White House
says he'll continue to do
despite a successful
Republican filibuster.
Today, the Senate Republicans
held together
and prevented a vote
on the measure.
Republican Bob Dole
of Kansas says
all the spending
must be matched by cuts.
If we're going to do
anything on this floor,
we pay for it.
We pay for it.
Then we might be able
to work out some package
that would satisfy
the great majority
of the American people,
if not the majority
of our colleagues.
The U.S. envoy
who went to Vietnam
to check out
a Soviet document
on American POWs
says there are factual
problems with the document.
In the details,
we haven't found
any of the facts
to be accurate.
Now, there are other facts
about which we haven't
yet dealt with.
The document
is a Russian translation
of a Vietnamese general's
briefing and indicates
that in 1972,
North Vietnam held
three times as many
American prisoners
as the Vietnamese
said they held.
Following a White House
meeting today,
General John Vesey
told reporters
some of the items
in the Russian document
are contrary to what
is known from America's
own prisoners of war.
The Russian document
maintains American prisoners
were separated by rank.
Vesey says that's wrong,
as are a number
of other details.
If there were
an additional 669 prisoners,
it seems logical
that our people
would have seen them.
They did not see them.
That our prisoners
were separated
according to political
progressivity
and released that way.
That is clearly
not the case.
They were released
chronologically
according to capture,
except for those
that were seriously injured.
The number of colonels
is wrong.
Vesey says he believes
the Russian document
is authentic,
it's just inaccurate.
Those are the stories
topping the news.
The race for mayor
of Los Angeles
has come down
to a Ross Perot-style
conservative businessman
and a liberal
city councilman.
The two were
the top vote-getters
in a primary election
largely overshadowed
by the trial
of the Rodney King
civil rights trial.
Frank Stoltz reports.
62-year-old Richard Reardon
and 41-year-old
city councilman
Michael Wu
are political opposites
with clearly different
visions of Los Angeles.
Reardon, who captured
33% of the vote
in the primary,
calls himself
tough enough
to turn L.A. around.
Wu, who garnered
24% of the vote,
describes himself
as someone
who can bring
people together
in a city
with more than
140 ethnic,
racial,
and cultural peoples.
It was a theme
he reiterated
to supporters
at a victory party
last night.
We have come together
in an historic campaign
to reclaim
the heart and soul
of this city
from the chaotic
sources of fear,
hopelessness,
racial enmity,
and violence
which have threatened
to tear our city apart.
Wu, the first
Chinese-American
elected to the
L.A. City Council,
was an anti-war
activist in the 1960s.
He spent most
of his life
in government
and says he would
use government
to serve poor people.
Reardon, on the other
hand, is a venture
capitalist who's
emphasized strict
fiscal responsibility
and an expanded
police force.
Political consultant
Kerman Maddox.
Reardon is a Republican,
he's a conservative,
he's been a supporter
of Ronald Reagan,
George Bush,
Pete Wilson.
Reardon's pumped
two million of his
own dollars
into his campaign,
prompting accusations
he bought his place
in the runoff election,
but Reardon's conservative
get-tough message
appealed to a lot
of Angelenos,
frustrated and fearful
of an economically
depressed city
getting more and more
violent.
Interestingly,
that frustration
and fear
did not translate
into a victory
for a ballot measure
which would have
added a thousand
police officers
to the LAPD.
The measure would have
required an increase
in property taxes,
something voters
were unwilling
to go along with.
For Pacifica Network News,
I'm Frank Stoltz
in Los Angeles.
An innovative project
aimed at changing
the sexual behavior
of gay and bisexual men
to help them avoid
contracting the HIV virus
is in political jeopardy.
Project Ares,
a government-funded
telephone hotline,
is sinking fast
in a sea of partisan politics.
George Howland reports.
Project Ares,
would you hold, please?
Mm-hmm.
Project Ares,
Leona,
how can I help you?
In an ordinary-looking
office building
in Seattle's
university district,
an innovative research
program is underway
to help gay and bisexual
men reduce their risk
of getting AIDS.
University of Washington
professor Roger Rothman
received a four-year,
two-million-dollar
research grant
from the National
Institutes of Health
or NIH
to set up
Project Ares.
There's a minority
of gay and bisexual men
who are finding it
difficult to consistently
be sexually safer.
Some of these individuals
are very closeted
and some of them
live in geographic areas
that are far removed
from communities
that offer AIDS
prevention programs.
But what Project Ares does
is tries to overcome
these barriers
for reaching closeted people
and people in rural areas
by delivering AIDS
prevention counseling
over the telephone.
Project Ares offers
14 weeks of free
anonymous telephone counseling.
The participants
use an 800 number
to call the program
from all across
the U.S. and Canada.
Ares uses a group
therapy approach
in which six clients
and two counselors
hold a weekly
conference call.
The program has a
sex-positive,
gay-affirmative philosophy
and has counseled
over 300 men.
But funding for its
final year is now
in doubt.
The project's troubles
began last September
when a conservative
newspaper,
the New York Guardian,
ran an article about it.
Professor Rothman
explains.
The article was
pretty disappointing
because of its
misinformation.
It was titled
1-800-Sodomy
and that was a pretty
nasty swipe
at what we're doing.
After that article
appeared,
we found ourselves
getting lots and lots
of very angry
telephone calls
from people
who believed
that the government
had no business
providing funds
for this kind of project.
The article was
reprinted in a newsletter
published by the
right-wing Christian
activist,
Reverend Donald Wildman.
Angry constituents
began calling Congress
and rallying the
opposition to Ares.
Republican Representative
Bob Dornan
of California
is a leading critic
of the program.
He told me that,
quote,
Project Ares
is a rip-off
of taxpayers' money
for male homosexuals
to get it on,
get it off,
and talk dirty
on telephones.
By March 1993,
Texas Republican
Representative
Sam Johnson
was working
to cut funding
for Project Ares.
However,
the congressman
denies that this
is part of the
nationwide backlash
against homosexuals.
His spokesman,
Gordon Hensley,
says that Johnson
viewed it as a
simple matter
of wasteful
federal spending.
Project Ares
was essentially
a duplicative program.
And what he's
looking for
across the board,
whether it's
domestic or
defense spending,
are examples
of what he deems
wasteful programs.
Seattle's Democratic
Representative Jim
McDermott
defends Project Ares
and accuses Johnson
of harboring
an anti-gay agenda.
Well, I wouldn't
expect him to
admit that he's
a bigot,
but I think
if you look
at their budget,
his interests,
he's not afraid
to spend federal
money on a
super collider
of $10 billion
in the state
of Texas.
He spends all
his time on that
and is worried
about a little
$300,000 program
dealing with
the major
illness in this
society.
Project Ares
is slated to
receive $339,000
in 1994
to complete
its research.
Professor Rothman
says that the money
is a wise investment.
Since it costs
$200,000
to treat
one person
from the time
of infection
to the time
of death,
the amount
of money
that the government
would ostensibly
save by eliminating
our fourth year
of funding
would be entirely
offset if we
prevented simply
two people
from becoming
seropositive.
Last month,
Representative Johnson
attached an amendment
to the NIH
reauthorization bill
which cut Ares
funding for next
year and forbids
any future grants
to the program.
The measure passed
278 to 139.
The issue now
goes to a joint
conference committee
on NIH funding
before the House
and Senate
will vote on it
again.
No one is making
any predictions
on the outcome.
However,
it is clear
that Ares funding
is in jeopardy
due to attacks
from both
deficit hawks
and members
of Congress
who oppose
gay rights.
reporting from
Seattle for
Pacifica Network
News,
I'm George
Howland.
Wisconsin's
hate crime law
made its way
to the Supreme
Court today.
What's dramatic
about this case
is that an
African American
was the perpetrator
not the victim
of the hate crime.
In the case
of the state
of Wisconsin
versus Todd
Mitchell,
Mitchell,
who is black,
led an attack
against a white
male after becoming
angry after watching
the film
Mississippi Burning,
a film about
white southern
segregationists.
Pacifica's Don
Rush was at
the court
this morning
and has a
look at the
case.
One October
night back
in 1989,
a young
African American
named Todd
Mitchell had
just returned
from seeing
the film
Mississippi Burning.
Outside the
Rambler apartments,
he and his
friends were
incensed over
a scene in
which a
Klansman had
beaten up a
black youth
as he prayed.
Suddenly,
the 20-year-old
Mitchell asked
his friends if
they felt hyped
up to move
on some white
people.
A moment
later,
he pointed
to a young
white boy
and shouted,
go get him.
Nine of the
young men
crossed the
street and
beat him
unconscious.
Thus,
the bigotry
of the
turbulent
1960s reached
across the
years to
produce the
reaction of
these African
American youth.
Ron Walters,
a professor
at Howard
University.
Mitchell was
ultimately convicted
and sentenced
to two years
in prison for
his role in
the assault,
but another
two years was
added on under
Wisconsin's hate
crime law.
So today,
Lynn Adelman,
Mitchell's attorney,
came before the
Supreme Court to
argue that the
law was a
violation of the
First Amendment.
He told the
court what the
Wisconsin legislature
was after was the
suppression of ideas
it does not like,
not just conduct,
when it approved the
sentencing enhancement
provision.
The enhancer,
which is what this
case is about,
not the underlying
conduct, punishes
only motive,
only bigotry.
See, that's how this
statute works.
You just add on
punishment if you've
got a motive that the
state doesn't like.
But Wisconsin Attorney
General James Doyle
fired back, saying
that the law was
directed against
discriminatory conduct
on the part of the
defendant, and he
said it did not
matter what overall
views Mitchell had
about race relations.
In this case, we
don't know whether
the defendant held
racially biased views
or not.
We do know, under
the proof of the
case, that he picked
out a victim simply
because of the
victim's race, and
that's what makes it
punishable under
Wisconsin law.
But Washington Post
columnist Nat
Hintoff, who
opposes the law,
says there is no
doubt that
investigating motives
leads to McCarthy-era
tactics on the part
of the authorities.
The question is,
when you defend
yourself, and you
say to the district
attorney, let's say,
I couldn't have done
this because of race,
I've never been
bigoted in my life,
I have a photograph
of William Du Bois
on my wall, then the
prosecutor can
investigate and
subpoena whatever
books or magazines
you have at home,
they can ask your
friends and enemies
if you've ever said
anything derogatory,
they can go to the
local bar and ask
what kind of jokes
you tell, that's
McCarthyism under
the guise of going
against discrimination.
As arguments
proceeded in the
courtroom today,
State Attorney General
Doyle moved into an
area that appeared to
open up serious
questions about his
case.
Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor wondered if
a state legislature could
pass a law that would
increase the penalty
against draft card
burners who opposed
government policy.
Doyle suggested the
court would have to
take a very close look
at such a law, but did
not disavow it as
unconstitutional.
Attorney Edelman pounced
on the comparison.
Under this statute,
David O'Brien, who
was convicted of
burning a draft card,
could have had an
increased penalty of
five years in jail if
he burned his draft
card because of his
opposition to the
Vietnam War.
After a long silence
in the courtroom,
Justice Clarence
Thomas weighed in
with a question of his
own.
He wondered if the
law applied to
individuals singling out
victims of the same
race.
And Edelman appeared to
say that it could.
Outside the courthouse,
State Attorney General
Doyle thought Justice
Thomas' question was
telling.
It doesn't matter
whether somebody is
racially biased or not.
A person of one race
could select a person
of the same race.
And if they have
selected the person
because of the race,
for example, a black
person believing that
perhaps attacking a
black person, another
black person in the
case, the police won't
investigate it as
thoroughly or they might
escape detection, would
be subject to the
Wisconsin crime.
If the court were to
rule against Wisconsin,
State Attorney General
Doyle says it would
put a host of
anti-discrimination
laws in doubt.
Don Rush, Pacific
Network News,
Washington.
And you're listening
to the news on WBAI
in New York.
I'm Laura Seidel.
In health news, some
200 nurses at the
Bronx-Lebanon
Hospital spent their
lunch hour on the
picket line today
to protest what they
say is a dangerous
shortage of nurses
at the hospital.
Jose Santiago was
there and filed this
report.
16 patients!
Wild nurse!
20 patients!
Wild nurse!
40 patients!
Wild nurse!
40 patients!
Wild nurse!
40 patients!
Voices of anger
filled the streets
outside both divisions
of the Bronx-Lebanon
Hospital today, the
Fulton Division at
Fulton Avenue and
169th Street, and the
newly built Main
Division at
Mount Eden Avenue
and the Grand
Concourse.
According to the
nurses, hospital
management is placing
its patients at risk
by failing to replace
nurses who have left
their jobs.
The nurses say right
now the two hospital
divisions are operating
with as many as 100
fewer nurses than
required by state law.
Maria Fuentes is a
nurse representative
with the New York
State Nurses
Association, the
Nurses Union.
Patients are not
getting the care that
they're supposed to be
getting according to the
law.
These nurses have been
working here under the
worst conditions.
They protest the
assignments every day
saying that they are
registered professional
nurses, that they are
responsible for the
patients for whom they
care, and therefore
they cannot without
protest accept the
assignment.
They let management
know every day about
the working conditions
here, the hazardous
conditions for the
patients.
And everybody's turning
their head and saying
we're sorry we can't do
anything, our hands are
tied.
And it's just gotten to a
point that eventually
there will be a strike
in this hospital if
management doesn't wake
up and realize that the
registered professional
nurses of this facility
are the backbone.
Union officials say they
successfully fought the
hospital's attempt to
eliminate some 40 more
nurses' positions.
They have reported the
situation to the state
health department, which
oversees hospitals, and
the state is presently
reviewing whether the
nurse vacancies at Bronx
Lebanon pose a threat
to hospital patients.
Barry Waldman is a
spokesperson for the New
York State Nurses
Association.
We have situations that
put patients' lives in
immediate danger.
We've got staffing
situations that are
abominable, I mean, where
you've got no nurse in
the recovery room even
while they're doing
surgery in the operating
room and patients are
coming out.
We've got three nurses in
the emergency room trying
to care for 90 patients.
We've got nurses in the
intensive care unit where
the most critically ill
patients are, and they
have half of the minimal
staffing levels of the
hospital patients are
demanded by the state.
I wouldn't want to be a
patient here, frankly.
If I were bleeding from
the carotid artery, I'd
tell the ambulance driver
to keep going.
Hospital officials could
not be reached for
comment.
We attempted to speak with
Errol Schneer, vice
president of public
relations, but our calls
were not returned.
Like many other
hospitals in the area,
however, Bronx Lebanon is
caught in a financial
squeeze caused by, among
other things, a reduction in
reimbursements for services on
the part of the state.
Because hospitals are
essential, particularly in
the low-income areas like
those served by Bronx
Lebanon, the state often
steps in and keeps
hospitals financially afloat.
The nurses' union concedes
that Bronx Lebanon is
struggling financially, but
union spokesperson Waldman
questions the wisdom behind
some of the cost-saving
measures the hospital has
taken.
Management decided to
eliminate flex time in the
intensive care unit.
Almost all of the nurses in
that unit quit, and they
now forced medical surgical
nurses to go into the
intensive care unit and
learn a very high-tech
craft on the job, and boy,
that is a very dangerous
situation.
We need the hospital to
wake up and realize that
without nurses, you can't
run a hospital.