And it's 10 o'clock, Wednesday night, time for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself off shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bumbly Bumper, the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bumbly Bumper!
and very good evening everybody this is off the hook emmanuel goldstein with you for the next hour
talking about telephones and computers high technology low intelligence all kinds of fun things
that go along with it it's all about new things it's all about changing habits it's all about having
lots of fun and above all else it's all about power the autonomous commie republic which is part of the
russian federation is situated in the far northwest of europe and spreads up to the arctic part of the
ural mountains it's crossed by nine northern parallels ten fair-sized european states it
could be placed on its territory besides indigenous residents that is the commie people
there are also russians ukrainians nenetses chuvashis and tartars and now let's go back into history a
little bit a boy lying on skins behind our backs was turning the knobs of a small transistor radio
and the tent was suddenly filled with an announcer's voice speaking commie
then with music from moscow followed by english and french speech
the recording was made at the moscow theater of musical miniatures now back to modern times
your attention please at the recommendation of the international time bureau commencing at 23 hours
59 minutes 60 seconds utc an extra second will be inserted into the nbs time scale
this adjustment is required to maintain internationally coordinated universal time as broadcast from these
stations in close agreement with ut-1 or astronomical time
and uh do you know how many time zones there are in the soviet union and about power
you might we got so much power now do you know how many time zones there are in the soviet union we
got so much power now that's ridiculous you might do you know how many time zones there are in the
soviet union power and all that that's power we got so much power that's ridiculous
we have power power power power power power now it's ridiculous we got so much power now
you know how many times zones there are in the soviet union it's not even funny
you might that's ridiculous do you know how many it's not even funny you might
that's ridiculous do you know how many that's that's ridiculous do you know how many times
That's ridiculous.
It's not even funny.
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
It's not even funny.
How many time zones?
Yeah, we have four in this country, right?
How many time zones?
Yeah.
One, two, three.
Four in this country, right?
Yes, sir.
Four.
One, two, three.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Four time zones?
Yeah.
We have four in this country, right?
uh no sir we have we have uh yes sir and uh do you know how many time zones they have uh yes sir
uh four uh no sir i never really studied that up eleven eleven it's not even funny eleven
eleven that's that's ridiculous eleven eleven that's what we can do we can go anywhere
because we live here we can anywhere else but not only not only the right of free travel i'm saying
the eleven eleven one two three yes sir eleven eleven that's how big they are yeah yeah eleven
that's how big they are yeah yeah i i can believe that i'm a firm believer in that one two three
uh four yes sir yes sir the soviet union the whole half side of the world
yeah and we're just on a little one little tent of the globe yeah they uh when you talk about fighting
we're a country that uh we're a firm believer on christ and it's called help thy neighbor do not
kill do not you know steal cheat live from everybody that's why we have to have computers because man
nobody is perfect you know it's not even funny and about power man nobody is perfect you know so what
is your point nobody is perfect you know so what is your point there's there's there's two things
you don't talk about one's politics the other one's religion they can the reason you don't talk about
them is because they combine in each other you know what i'm saying do you know how many time zones
there are in the soviet union you know what i'm saying don't you kid yourself thanks glenn for the uh
just thanks for the the good thoughts
this concludes our transmission to oceania however listeners in east asia may continue listening on the
following short wave frequencies 61 10 72 30 95 65 97 60 15 160 and 15425 kilohertz
well if you listen to uh certain members of the house of representatives we just gave out a whole
lot of codes on the air but uh no that's not what we did we listened to negative land and uh a track
called time zones one of my favorites i don't know if you uh were able to pick out the long distance
operator on that particular track giving out the phone number to radio moscow but that was uh
a lot of a lot of things going on there
11 time zones yeah i like to uh look at something that i think is really really scary i don't know how many
of you pick up new york times and read it every day and find yourself being scared to death almost
every day by various things but if you had done that on saturday um you might have really um gotten
the run for your money by looking at the front page and reading an article entitled white house seeking
software to aid in wiretaps now as you recall last week we um we had a show about the clipper chip and how
uh the white house is pressing for the clipper chip to be uh um instituted everywhere you look
a way of decrypting various means of communication ways that law enforcement can maintain a uh a firm grip
if you will on the criminal element and at the same time have the potential to eavesdrop on every single
one of us without us ever knowing well add this story to the mess and you'll see why some of us
are well just looking over our shoulders a whole lot more than we used to the white house is
pressing for legislation to force telephone and cable television companies to install computer
software on their networks that would enable law enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on phone calls
and computer transmissions this according to the clinton administration on friday a week after the
clipper chip was uh was endorsed again the move intended to preserve the law enforcement
agency's ability to conduct court authorized wiretaps is intended to overcome the difficulty of
intercepting telephone conversations and other electronic transmissions in the on off pulses
of digital computer code which is being used increasingly for everyday communications
the administration's plan comes on the heels of a white house effort to promote use of a
government-designed computer chip known as the clipper chip that would facilitate law
enforcement agencies interceptions of coded computer communications like the computer chip plan the
new bill is likely to put the administration on a collision course with both telecommunications
companies and civil rights groups probably the first time they've ever been together on something
industry executives believe any such measure could cost as much as 300 million dollars so that
they would have to seek higher rates from customers and civil rights groups argue the measure is
largely unnecessary and poses potential threats to privacy if you recall about a year or so ago
the administration this time the the bush administration was proposing uh through the fbi that
a kind of monitoring feature be installed in every digital phone system and that the cost for this
would be passed on to the consumer well that raised quite a quite a furor in the in the world of
uh individuals and it was eventually dropped then the clipper chip came out about a year ago was endorsed
two weeks ago by the uh administration who vowed to press on ahead despite all the objections from people
and uh civil rights organizations and now this now a renewal of uh of the first plan which uh allows
for eavesdropping very very simple eavesdropping no more clipping wires onto things no more uh running around and
going through a lot of paperwork makes it very very simple and forcing telephone and cable television companies to go along with it
mark rotenberg director of computer professionals for social responsibility which is a non-profit group in washington says
we're not objecting to wiretaps we're saying they don't have the right to pass a law that requires people to make it easier to wiretap
telephone and cable companies are building advanced networks that will also be used for shopping education and personal business so
more than tapping telephone calls is at stake we're not only talking about voice communications said jerry berman executive director of the electronic frontier foundation
what kind of movies we watch what kind of commerce we engage in what kind of political parties we want to
communicate with all of these things are going to be on the information highway the new bill which is
a revised version of legislation proposed two years ago by the bush administration but never introduced in
congress would not change any of the legal standards set for law enforcement agencies wiretaps rather it would
require companies to install technology that makes it possible to continue traditional wiretapping
officials at the fbi the plan's main proponent and that other law enforcement agencies argue that
traditional wiretap techniques which entail little more than splicing into a telephone line and listening
are insufficient for today's digital networks beyond that they contend the telephone industry is now
using new computerized routing technology that makes it harder to isolate particular calls or figure out where
they are going i mean they're really really confused and upset by this however martina bradford vice
president of government affairs for the american telephone and telegraph company said today that
the company saw no need for mandatory requirements on the industry our main concern in the past was that the bush
legislation appeared to be too broad too sweeping and premature we can work these things out under the broad
guidelines of current law administration officials said the new bill would be narrower than the bush
administration measure which was also also pushed by the fbi that bill would have forced almost any
company providing communication services including private computer networks to include software
permitting law enforcement agencies to decipher the streams of digital data clinton administration
officials said the new bill would be more focused than the bush administration bill which encountered
vigorous opposition from both civil rights groups and telephone companies and would attempt to meet some
of the industry's concerns people familiar with administration thinking say the new bill will probably exempt
private networks like those used within companies to exchange data among offices civil rights groups
are hoping the administration will also propose new measures to expand privacy protections against unauthorized
eavesdropping for example by broadening the scope of current laws against unauthorized
eavesdropping on cellular telephone calls which are transmitted via radio waves and increasing the penalties for violations
within the white house the office of science and technology policy has led an effort to develop a measure
to satisfy the conflicting demands of security agencies the communications industry and civil rights organizations
and administration officials have emphasized that discussions with these groups were continuing nevertheless one
one administration official strongly suggested that the bill would impose new obligations on a wide
range of companies local and long distance carriers cable television companies that enter the telephone
industry cellular carriers and specialized fiber optic companies the official said all companies that
offered communication services must be treated similarly if the telephone company is required to install new
technology but other local carriers are not administration officials fear the other carriers could market
themselves as offering services that are free from surveillance FBI officials contend that unless they can keep
up with new technology they will lose an invaluable tool for investigation that's the article that scared me from the
new york times last saturday they're really serious about this they really want uh total control of
everything they want to be able to listen whenever they want to listen and you have to ask yourself you know
maybe the technology is developing to a to a degree where that's not as uh as simple and maybe it shouldn't be as
simple maybe people should not have the ability to just tap in uh maybe by having computer communications and
digital telephone networks we're simply protecting the privacy that we should have in the first place
and if you think somebody's a criminal catch them committing a crime
it's the old brainwave analogy they could read your brainwaves they'd say they'd have to in order to find criminals
well maybe they don't have to be able to listen to telephone calls
okay we've got all kinds of other
neat things
including
including a uh
a revelation
not not the religious kind this is something that uh
that we found by accident and of course the most important things you always find by accident
just the nature of things somebody called over to the 2600 offices the hacker magazine
and happened just so happened to bounce over to a phone line that was experimenting with caller id
that happens sometimes if one line is busy it'll bounce over to another one and another one etc
and this person was lucky enough to do that however they were calling from washington state
now as you might know we've talked about this before we discovered that cable and wireless was
passing um various caller id data over the networks but this was different this was not being routed
over an 800 number this was being done through another long distance company that's right another
long distance company has joined in and what's interesting about this one is that anybody can
use this long distance company you don't have to be a subscriber to them you simply have to
put a carrier access code in front of your telephone call and anytime you use this particular company
your number will be transmitted we got a call today from california california where caller id has not been approved
in fact the person from washington state said that there was no way we could see his number because
he had blocked his caller id
he made a specific effort with the phone company to block his number from being transmitted well guess
what it's being transmitted anyway with this phone company so we figured it would be a nice thing to
do to let you know about this and uh have uh have people experiment with it themselves the name of the phone
company is um it's kind of a new one to the long distance business at least as far as i'm concerned
this company has been involved with hardware uh the name is will tell w-i-l-t-e-l and if uh you
preface 10555 before a phone number you will be able to use that particular long distance company
it's that simple and your number will be transmitted now as part of an experiment we'd like to uh we did
this once before we'd like for people to use this particular carrier access code and try calling this
particular phone number that we're about to give you and next week we will read off not the phone
numbers not the entire phone number we would never do that but the area code and exchange so that way
you can listen and see if your particular number was passed through it's um it's my opinion that
virtually every number will be passed through we'll have to see um the only way to find out is to
experiment like this so far just about every number that we've tried has gone through from around
the country now this is frightening because this is the way things are going to be
maybe in the next year in the next year whenever you make a phone call your number will be transmitted
without regard to what you want i mean we have people here that wanted to block their numbers
they can't block their numbers anymore simple as that okay so the number number that we'd like
you to try to call and this is very important too because if a lot of people call it once most of the
the numbers won't go through
and uh the number is um 10555 area code 516 751 2600 now as i was saying if too many people call it once
you'll come in on call waiting and the number won't be registered that way so what we're asking you to do
is wait until you hear a pickup and as soon as you hear an answering machine start talking you can
hang up at that point yeah you'll get charged for that you probably get charged about 15 cents or
something and you'll get this is the fun part you'll get a special page on your phone bill from this
weird company and it'll come on your regular new york telephone bill so uh especially those people in
new jersey and connecticut and any other parts of the uh of the planet that might be listening to us right
now 10555 516 751 2600 try that out and we'll see how many numbers we're able to get and we'll see if
if they all get transmitted if some of them get transmitted if uh if it's a 50 50 kind of a thing
and that way we'll have a a sense as to where this is going this is the only way you can find out things
like this and uh i'm going to prove that to you let's get a uh a dial tone here
we're going to attempt to get information
800 directory barbara yes have i gotten information this is 800 information okay great uh i need the
number for will tell w-i-l-t-e-l they're a phone company
do you know where they're located sir uh no i don't
the toll-free number is 800 8 2 8 4 9 8 4 repeat 800 8 2
okay that's not necessary thank you uh okay so we have a number for them we're going to call them
see what they say always the best way to find out what's going on
all representatives are currently busy please remain on the line and your call will be answered
in the order received oh this is great we have music now
sounds like they're using at&t true voice you know at the increased bass response
thank you for calling will tell this is greg can i help you yes hi i'd like to know if um if uh your
your particular long distance service uh is available to anybody do you have to subscribe
to the service or can you use a carrier access code you can use a 105 55 well it depends on where where
you at uh new york yes you can okay and do you know if um if your phone number is passed on to
caller id boxes with this service uh yes it is it is on all calls on as far as i know it's all calls i
see do you know if any other company offers that caller id or where they block it uh no i'm saying as
far as passing the number on is this the only company that does that i'm sure the other ones
i'm not real sure uh-huh and uh do you know how to block that if you don't want to pass your number
on to block the caller id yeah we cannot do that you can't do that so if i make a call with will tell
the number will be passed on no matter what is that right and it's going to have to i believe all the
other carriers are like that too because what happens is we get the telephone number from the local
telephone company and then it goes over our network uh-huh if we scramble it up the local
telephone company will not know where to send the phone number i see okay so you don't scramble it
for that reason right okay all right and where are you located uh we're based out of tulsa oklahoma okay
and have you been in the long distance business for very long about let me think here about 10 years
maybe 10 years okay great all right well thank you for your help you're welcome bye-bye well that's
interesting because um i know i would dial one oh five five five and i got another company not too long
ago so um if they've been in the long distance business for 10 years it's been a secret as far
as i can see but as you heard they they uh they know they're doing this they know they're passing
on the number uh around the country uh they think other phone companies do it other phone companies
do not do this cable and wireless does however you have to subscribe to them and uh i don't think
it's as as far reaching as will tell so this is something new this is another step towards nationwide
caller id and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it other than not using this company so
again to participate in the experiment and you can do this uh because we will have the line forwarding
up until about uh i'd say about midnight or so so between now and midnight if you call that
particular number and let it ring a couple of times and pick up we'll see if your particular
phone number gets passed on and we can tell you next week what exchanges and what area codes made it
through uh the number one oh five five five five five one six seven five one twenty six hundred you
might have to put a one before the five one six two depending on where you're calling from
okay more exciting news this is also from the new york times of february 11th concerning the story that we
reported um last week the cert advisory on internet break-ins now again this is not a new story this
has been going on for years people writing programs that can capture information and thereby capture
people's login attempts and get their passwords and all kinds of things like that the thing that makes
it news is when computer emergency response team puts out a bulletin and tells people that there's a
problem computer security experts say they now believe that a recent rash of break-ins on the
global internet web of computer networks was an organized effort to crack the security of the
world's busiest computer systems an organized effort but they remain baffled by the motives of the
unknown intruders who stole tens of thousands of passwords it had all the trappings of an orchestrated
effort said l dane gary manager of the computer emergency response team center mr gary whose group sent a
warning about two weeks ago to all network administrators on the internet said the break-ins
apparently began sporadically last summer on isolated computers but recently the assault
intensified turning to computers that were strategic gateways to the internet one such computer was
operated by panics of new york city a major internet service provider panics reported that 300 other
computers were compromised as a result of the security breach in the panics computer so you have one
security breach it gets passed on and it's kind of like a a snowball effect sometimes the internet
which is defined as a web of some 10 000 networks that include military government academic and corporate
computer systems around the world it's used by an estimated 15 million people the computer emergency
response team based at carnegie mellon institute at carnegie mellon university in pittsburgh
was set up with federal financing five years ago to monitor the security of the internet and other
national computer networks especially government and military networks the response team's warning came
on february 3rd after officials recognized a surge in breaking reports from companies known as internet
service providers there are an estimated 500 service providers in the united states each is a gateway to the
internet for as few as a dozen or as many as 10 000 or more customers other security experts said that
while the scope of the assault was surprising the number of computers their strategic importance on
the internet and the timing of the break-ins the fact that it occurred was not the weaknesses
exploited were well known in computer networking the actual method used is nothing new said push
penda molta director of engineering at surf net an internet service company in san diego it's not
really a hole or a bug but a feature that can be exploited for many things including by network
operators for troubleshooting or capturing information about activity on the network mr motess said his
system was not affected and how he's so sure about that security experts said all internet users should
immediately change their passwords and make a habit of doing so frequently in general terms the intruders did
their work remotely using computer networks to crack the security on one or more computers that act as
gateways to the internet they installed a secret sniffer program disguised to avoid detection that
captures information on network activity the sniffer was put in promiscuous mode to snare any information
that crossed its path promiscuous mode yeah the passive sniffer grabbed the first 128 characters of
every message that passed through the computer including the identity of the user his or her password and
the identity of the destination computer later the program could play back the instructions if the password
had not been changed in the meantime the intruder gained access to another computer the process was
then repeated and because the computers that were targets were internet gateways the effect was amplified
a single successful sniffer could collect thousands of passwords and thus in theory compromise the security
of thousands of computers worldwide the question is who did it this is the interesting part mr gary of the
response team says there are about 50 people who really have the capacity to defeat the system at
least that's the number we get from our our friends in law enforcement and investigative agencies
those are the ones who have the skill the desire the energy and the persistence to go after the network
until they get the job done but there are about three or four hundred wannabes who will copy whatever
those gurus do perhaps more troubling is that there is no apparent motive for the attacks
officials of the response team said there had been no reports of intruders using the stolen information
for malicious or criminal activities almost like they're disappointed you know they want to see
a crime committed but the fact that somebody would just go in and do this for the challenge of it
that's uh that's unacceptable well what would you do if you had the ability if you could figure it out
if you could figure out a way to uh to to capture all this information and compromise security on
hundreds if not thousands of computers would you try it out would you want to see if you could
actually do this if you could actually get all this sensitive information it's one thing to uh to try
to do that and then it's another thing to see what you do with it once you have accomplished this
i'm sure we'll be hearing more about that in the very near future
okay what else do we have here we have a couple of other uh interesting stories this is um
again not to pick on the clinton administration but they are the current administration and they
i guess have to be picked on because they're the ones in charge you know that that old information
superhighway well the thing with data is that you can always manipulate data you can always change what
you say and make it seem as if it never happened and you know what that's exactly what seems to be
going on with the clinton administration listen to this this comes from the associated press the white
house deleted the word lie from a press release criticizing a new york scholar who took issue with its
health care plan and issued a sanitized version over its computerized information service
the electronic version replaced references such as blatant lie with far milder and less controversial
language including that is wrong one white house official told a computer subscriber we do not alter
documents and suggested the first version had never been published another white house official stood by
the first version thursday while yet another called it a mistake and backed the milder electronic version
in what one aide called a comedy of errors the white house found itself defending two separate versions of
its attack on scholar elizabeth mcawee of new york justin roberts a california attorney and computer
buff who got an electronic mail message from the white house disputing the accuracy of the first press
release said he was dismayed that officials would alter the document in the computer version let's not use the
information superhighway to distort public documents roberts said in an interview it all began
on january 31st when the white house distributed a 10-page press release blasting the cowrie's piece
in the new republic magazine her article had suggested the clinton health care plan would restrict
people's choices of physicians limit their access to specialists and deny new cures to those over age 65
the white house took strong issue in its initial press release widely distributed in washington using the
word lie four times as well as phrases such as this is ridiculous and deliberately inaccurate
the episode created something of a tempest giving the article far wider attention than it would have
otherwise received the author a fellow at the conservative manhattan institute and the author
of several books on government said she resented being called a liar by the white house and she defended
her views in a series of newspaper and television interviews roberts an attorney in lafayette california
near san francisco said his curiosity was whetted by a newspaper article so he went to his computer
and dialed up white house documents on the internet the internet is a worldwide connection of computer
networks linking an estimated six million users that's down from the 15 million the new york times
estimates but i guess that's just something that got lost anyway the white house is also on the internet
and they routinely put their press releases and other documents into the system but roberts said he was
amazed that the computer version press release didn't contain the word lie at all he said he
sent the computer message to the white house asking why they had all to the document now here's the
surprising part he got a reply i mean those of us that send computer messages to the white house we
might get a form letter back but he got a real reply that's i think the most amazing part of this story
he got a computer mail response from jonathan gill a white house official who oversees special computer
projects raising questions about the existence of the earlier version roberts made a copy available
to the associated press it said you should know that we do not edit or alter documents posted to the
computer servers that they were using it would appear that the reporter in question may have obtained
an unpublished earlier draft with a different vocabulary again we do not alter documents signed jock gill
but the white house did alter the document other officials conceded thursday when pressed by the
associated press we certainly don't deny that we put out the original documents at press secretary dd
myers there's a different version running on the computer service we reserve the right to edit
furthermore she said we stand by the draft that was put out initially but jeff eller white house
media affairs director who oversees health care issues stood by the newer sanitized version instead he said
the original one with the words lies never should have been issued it was my fault he said the one
that went out with the word lie inadvertently went out it was a mistake later he said that the white
house stands by both versions meanwhile gill who sent the message asserting we never alter documents
said he had been unaware that a different version had been issued first by the white house press office
when he sent the message to roberts originally the white house had branded as a blatant lie mccawey's
assertion that escaping the clinton health care system and paying a specialist out of pocket for tests
would be almost impossible the altered version says instead that is wrong and responding to the
article's claim that the health care is based uh biased rather towards lower cost not highest quality
care the white house replaced another lie with not true well it might be an innocent mistake it might
be incompetence but it does point to something that could be very dangerous altering electronic documents
saying something never happened when people know that it did rewriting history almost literally
something we have to keep an eye out for and i'm glad there's people out there that are doing just
that i'm glad we're able to tell you about it who knows what 10 years from now we'll bring
oh i don't know something about uh having government knowing how to use high technology to its
advantage something about that that just it just worries me because uh well gosh i guess uh i guess it's no
secret that government can abuse things in fact government tends to abuse just about everything
that uh that it can get its hands on and once you abuse the net once you abuse high technology
you suddenly become a lot more powerful
all right we're going to take some phone calls 212-279-3400 for whatever uh might be on your mind
as far as this kind of thing as far as other uh high tech issues telephone issues
computer issues privacy issues that kind of thing one one uh item that uh has just happened this just
happened today we just found out about this it's bad news uh from 2600 magazine apparently as as some
of you know uh 2600 magazine is distributed in various places uh and you can find it in some very strange
places too including um some some bookstores that you wouldn't really expect to see it in like
barnes and nobles tower books places like that actually you could expect to see anything in tower
books but one of the most unusual places was a computer chain store known as comp usa and uh quite
a few people were finding 2600 for the first time there and getting turned on to the world of computer
hackers and uh and freedom of information and all that kind of thing well apparently those days are over
because today we just learned that comp usa has taken offense at a story we don't know what story
they're talking about they they took offense to an article in our latest issue about decoding it
doesn't exactly uh narrow it down too much an article about decoding and the crux of the matter is they
have decided to permanently remove 2600 from their stores and that's uh that's something that's something
to uh to to hit somebody with uh they're offended by an article so they're cutting off 100 all their
supplies to all their customers of this magazine i don't know uh i'd like to know what article it is
they're talking about was it uh about cellular phones was it about uh 9x voicemail what what exactly
was it that troubled comp usa so much that they felt they had to uh get this thing out of their stores
immediately or or have all kinds of dire consequences i don't know that's uh that's bad news though because
it's always good to have people waking up and seeing you for the first time and getting turned
on to something and to have a powerful entity just kind of uh turn that channel off that's not a good
thing not a good thing and uh something that deserves to be known all right 212-279-3400 that's our
telephone number and we're here to take your phone calls so let's get started good evening you're on
uh hi i i i i'm going to turn this thing off i uh heard that woman who wrote that article she
works for the wall street journal in addition to being a member of that think tank and she was on
an nyc interview and she's a real sort of right-wing uh pro-business pro-insurance lobby and i suspect
that the information in her articles probably were factually correct in some very very strict uh
interpretation but the gist of what she was saying was in fact to distort most of what the
clinton bill is about so i think she probably was lying which brings me to the point related to your
program and i think the mere fact that you believe what you're saying doesn't mean it's true in other
words what is truth and well hold on a second what what we're focusing on here is that the clinton
administration put out something and then they said they didn't put it out and then it was later found
that they did put it out well i'm sure each of the spokespeople who said what they were saying
thought they were saying the truth because when you're dealing with information that's in cyberspace
it's all in a state of electronic flux and you've got one one person writing in the first draft of
something on a computer there's no hard copy and someone sends out what's in that computer through
uh through uh faxes and and data transmission lines to all these different uh you know news uh sources as
a news release right then somebody else modifies that and says no let's change that's a little bit
too strong let's you know change it so what is truth in other words the first thing they sent out was a
mistake so i think you're being a little bit hard on the administration although i'm no great fan of
clinton well no okay yeah you might be right about that and and you know i don't really think that there
is any ill intent this time but the technology is such that it's very simple to insert that that uh ill
intent and to do this deliberately to put out a document one day in the future and then withdraw
that document and say no it never existed or alter it in some way well i think this is the great moral
crux of the issue that you spoke of earlier when you when you criticize the law enforcement people
for being suspicious of digitized data uh information flowing through through these uh channels that they
could not possibly access because they didn't know the encryption codes and their feeling is that they
they don't know what's going on and that scares them uh in the same way when you don't know what's
going on with the administration scares you and one of the results of this it's not not knowing what's
going on it's knowing exactly what's going on and knowing that somebody is is trying to pull the wool
over your eyes that's that's what's uh annoying and frustrating and and potentially scary and the
whole thing with with the uh you know the numbers showing on the phone on the on the phone book and you
know on your electronic phone or whatever i think this whole this whole electronic information
each thing is creating a a whole bunch of paranoia and everybody's trying to out snoop the other
and that there's something we really have to work out around all these issues otherwise we're in big
trouble in the future yeah well i agree that uh there's there's an unprecedented amount of
paranoia going on but there's also a lot of um a lot of facts that aren't being aren't being told
to people and people deserve to know when their phone numbers are being passed all over the place
when their names are being given out uh you know when their privacy is being invaded in any way
oh yeah the whole thing with caller id that i really object to is why should you pay four or
five bucks a month extra for something that costs them next to nothing to give you it ought to be
a free service to everybody and if that means charging two cents more on each bill then so be
it but for them to make it an exclusive thing available to those people who can afford to to
spend sixty bucks for a box you know and and five bucks a month extra i think it's a they're
using it as a marketing uh ripoff ploy right and it's also it's it's proof that even if you block your
number that data is still being sent out in some form uh that's something that uh people deserve
to know anyway i'll let you go okay thanks for calling good evening you're on off the hook yes
emmanuel yes go ahead fantastic program thank you um that part thing about the white house and the
press release is pretty funny it reminds me of something it's a good thing the reagan administration
years ago didn't have uh access to the internet because they would they were doing this sort of
thing every day they would issue statements and then deny them the next day can you imagine the
reagan administration with his hands on the i mean i kind of like to see what they would try you know
in a way i regret it but i i guess it's or the nixon administration oh can you imagine that they
were uh you know reagan uh administration was like denying everything they said the next day all
the time they weren't even on the internet but that was really funny the way you presented it and i
you know i think you have a good point there too on the other hand i i don't agree with the
other caller because i think concerning the health care plan i think the clinton plan is
definitely designed to limit your choice to providers it's one of the purposes of it yeah
well you see that's that's not the issue i don't i don't really i mean i care about the health care
thing but that's not the the intent here to talk about that it's it's the fact that somebody would
put out something and then say they didn't put it out and almost be believed that's that's the
issue here of course i didn't i don't want to get into the whole thing but i do have a question about
phones i was in the city recently and uh i know that certain public phones you can't receive a
phone call on that's right so i was i want i needed to uh call someone on their beeper and get them to
call me back and i didn't know whether the phone i was going to use could receive calls so what i did
was i dialed the operator i got my next operator and i asked um the operator and the operator said well
i don't know but i'll try to call you back on the phone and if i get through to call you back then
that means the phone receives calls so i said fine and sure enough like 10 seconds later she called me
back and i said okay i'll use this phone because i can get a call back well i called the beeper uh you
know and i waited and waited and waited and i never got a call back so finally i said let me check this
i went to a public phone another one next right next to it tried to call the phone i was on and sure
enough a message comes on saying the number you are trying to call is inoperative for incoming calls
right uh angry about that because i've been trying to reach someone and getting them to call me and
i specifically checked first and apparently the operator did not know what she was talking you see
every telephone has a ringer in it and by calling the operator you can you can have the operator uh ring
back to that particular ringer but it doesn't it doesn't check to see if that line is restricted
in a particular way and can't receive real phone calls the best way to do it is what you did in the
end to call the number from either another phone or even if you call it from your own phone and it's
busy that's a good indication that's going to ring because it can't be busy if there's a recording on
there i guess i was duped to believe the operator knew what they were doing uh-huh there are some phones
though and you got to be careful of this there are some phones that uh uh that will ring but the
ringer doesn't work so you have to keep picking up every few seconds to see if your call is coming
through you mean someone is calling you but you can't hear it ringing exactly yeah so you got to
be careful of those too but that's that's better that's better than having a phone where you can't
get a call back no matter what and it's a real disservice to uh to customers not to be able to be
called at a pay phone i mean what are you supposed to do i know it's really frustrating of course by
by beeping somebody and waiting at a pay phone you know that makes you a drug dealer right yeah that's
what i mean it's the only possible thing that 9x could think you were doing at a pay phone by
beeping somebody and that's why they're they're changing pay funds to rotary so that you can't
possibly do that it's gonna it's gonna cut drugs in half in this country you know it's gonna solve
everything we all have the cellular phones oh yeah okay well i guess that's the end of that
thanks a lot emmanuel great show thanks for calling bye yeah simplistic solutions that's
that's their trademark you know one thing that i wanted to do i wanted to ask new york telephone
now that you're installing or 9x actually now that you're installing all of these pay funds
and making them rotary only instead of touchtone well since touchtone service costs so much money
what are you doing with all the savings that you're you're getting from having all these rotary phones
there you know you must be saving a bundle by not having to provide touchtone service to those phones so
let's uh let's share some of that profit there i don't know could i get an answer
probably not good evening you're on the air hello yes i'm going to find out
there any way i can block that beeper from uh showing my number on the display of course yeah
because beepers don't uh don't record the number that's calling them they record the number that you
input you see when you call a beeper yeah you you uh you get your beeps you're supposed to input
something with touchtone and yeah because i called i live in new jersey and i called a number in new
york i think it was i won't say the number just uh i think it was seven one nine area code seven one
eight but no there was a beeper code nine one seven then nine one seven yes and then eight seven five
and then the person called me back here in jersey and i was curious how can the person see my number in
new york city being them in new jersey well are you saying you didn't enter any digits at all i didn't
enter uh my number what did you hear when you called the number was i i heard a message uh telling me it was a
beeper number and to enter uh my phone number i didn't enter my number because i was somewhere i
wanted to call somebody else okay and um yet they called me back here on my phone was this somebody
that you knew no that's awfully strange uh but you're suggesting is that there's a beeper service
that can read your telephone i mean it's not inconceivable it could be i'm just not aware of
anything like that i'd certainly like to look into it yeah the eight seven five exchange you said
eight seven five yeah okay well uh we'll try to look into that and see if that's possible if
people have that kind of a service yeah and also for some time now i've called a number in new york
city uh two and two five four one six oh two five or two eight rather and i get nbc tv through the phone
yeah that's probably a um uh one of those audio feed lines they're passed around on bulletin boards
everywhere you call up and you just hear an audio feed for a network there's one for abc there's one for
i think virtually every tv station what are these four usually used uh well they're not for the
public for they're for people to uh who work for the network to uh to see what's on or or to monitor
something okay and like you know some feedback on that a beeper we don't have one here at bai though
i can assure you of that okay okay i mean like here can i block it so they can't see my number on a
beeper uh well again if it's going you're going interstate so it depends how i mean yeah there's ways to
do that obviously if you go through an operator or if you use a particular carrier it won't be
passed along if that's what's happening uh it's too early to say exactly how this is being done
you know i i can't i'm not aware of that particular service being offered however do you know what uh
what your long distance company is uh at&t this person here had called me back and had like a
computer and they uh it spoke it gave my number out it said see i know your number and uh they played
it over the phone uh-huh that's that's pretty strange that's pretty and you had never called
this person before and he did not know who you were this person i heard their number over the cb
uh-huh a cb radio i have a cb radio and they gave me a number right uh-huh i called him up in
new york city and then the guy called me back here in jersey i'll tell you what can you um can
you give a call uh to the 2600 line and leave that number there what number is this uh this i'll give you the
phone number and you can call over there and leave the whole phone number for the 917 thing
and we'll look into it okay all right it's area code 516 yeah 751 2600 okay and just leave that
information there and somebody will will if they don't answer the phone they'll uh they'll leave
it on the machine and uh we'll we'll hopefully have an answer for you next week all right thank you
all right bye bye that's uh that's interesting i mean we always knew that was possible but i just
i'm not aware of that actually happening beepers that can uh instantly read your phone number it
kind of takes away the purpose of beepers in the first place where you enter a particular phone
number or a particular message or or a code or something like that that you want to enter it's
kind of like what caller id could be if it was done properly imagine caller id where you could just
simply type in a message type in a number type in something that would indicate to somebody who you
are and not necessarily pass along the phone number that you're at because sometimes when you get
say a call from a pay phone you don't know who that is at the pay phone but imagine if you got
a little code that said hey it's me i'm calling you i'm at a number you won't recognize
that would be a positive implementation of caller id good evening you're on hi uh this is uh
i haven't uh go ahead don't listen to the radio i want to get some information about information
all right uh if i call for a number in wisconsin i can get a street address
a zip code everything spelling of the name right if i call international at and t they will give me
a name a number for a name in a city and then they might play a sort of little guessing game where
you supply part of the address and they'll give you a scrambled part of the rest that's right yeah
it's that guessing game that costs money but you see uh as i understand it the phone system in france
is actually a little more advanced over ours and if they can give you this information in wisconsin
you know there there isn't it's not like the old days where the great eastern laid cables that there's
no there's nothing funny about getting information about from france why do they do this well this
could be something that you're running into with uh you know different culture perhaps explain to me
that it was an fcc regulation i doubt fcc has any uh has has any power over in france um i'm sorry
i i use an at&t international operator uh-huh did you get connected to a french operator at any point
no it sounds like they're giving you the runaround i mean if they have the information
they're they're required to give it to you well in other words they get a french database they
load it into their computer they search it by name right then they get the whatever is available
right and if it's there if you have a number if you have a name they're they're supposed to give
you whatever is there and that includes address plus they charge you something like 375 it's it's
ridiculous what they charge you now just only a couple years ago it didn't cost anything now all
of a sudden we're led to believe that it cost four dollars to get a phone number well this is what i
don't understand there is nothing any exotic about getting a phone number in france anymore there's
hardly any difference between wisconsin and france that's true that's true it's uh it's all part of
wisconsin's more difficult because of the weather i don't know that's probably true um and and they're
playing this gag like uh in other words i have a serious piece of information i want to get someone's
mailing address why is it a secret in marseille and a noble in madison wisconsin and at seven times the
rate well like i like i've said before you're better off just calling a random number in france getting
to know somebody and asking them to give you a phone number out of the phone book it'll cost less too
i hadn't thought of that yeah it'll cost much less actually so yeah it's it's it's bizarre you're
running into bureaucracy you're running into stupidity but it's interesting though the way
they play in this notion of it being foreign uh-huh no to charge money if um if something is is foreign
they can always blame it on the foreigner yeah exactly yeah that's that's you know that's a standard
thing to do uh but it's you know you're running into bureaucracy and i think you're running into it
here if you if you talk to an at&t operator and they're not giving you that information
uh well uh i liked your intro piece very much incidentally thank you you mean the negative
land yes yeah that's uh that's a classic piece i think available uh it's yeah it's on uh it's on
cd now it's sst records and what would the title be uh it's called uh escape from noise uh-huh
name of the record you know um they do a radio show actually out on our sister station in berkeley
kpfa ah yeah every uh thursday night i believe so you might want to tune in for that huh i mean
if you're out in berkeley that is obviously yeah all right well thank you very much okay thanks for
calling bye just uh proof that crazy people think alike you know if they're we listen to them here
on bai means they have a show out of kpfa maybe uh maybe somebody's listening to us on kpfa right now
who knows good evening you're on yes just a quick comment to the folks who are concerned about paranoia
okay uh and the intrusions that you uh so correctly bring forward on your on your show
just this statement paranoics even paranoics have real enemies right that's true okay sir okay well
i'm sure you've made a lot of people sleep better tonight yes even paranoid good evening you're on
hello uh manuel great show um i had a question about um this new service that the phone company
is offering here in uh in the new york area which service is that it's the service in which you you're
allowed to assign a um a name to a phone number and then you just speak the name into your telephone
and it dials it for you ah yes the old voice calling that's something 9x is offering uh yeah i think
so i gotta you can store up to i think 10 numbers on your machine and um i was just wondering what
the utility of this is uh you mean what what the use of it is yeah why would they offer this service
since most uh telephones door numbers anyway yeah i don't really understand what what they're what
they're leading up to i mean if if you keep saying somebody's name you know you're gonna forget their
number and if you had a pay phone you won't be able to call them because you'll keep saying their
name it's like when you have speed darling you know and you say well uh you know jimmy's number
is seven that's you know that's not going to help you much until you're away from your telephone
exactly unless you know they've got some sort of master plan where they're going to have uh
a name equal a number everywhere you go and you'll just have to speak somebody's name and you'll be
instantly connected to them it's uh it's kind of a scary thought in itself um for now i'd just be
content playing with it have you played with it yourself no i haven't played with it but i was just
wondering how they would do it and where they'd store those numbers and if that was connected to
your telephone i mean when i mean and who has access to it it strikes me as a really easy way to
you know trace what your calling habits are well yeah and also to get your uh your voice pattern and
all that i mean the thing is is connected through your your your local switch uh just the same way the
phone cards by sprint and when when you access their network that information is stored in their
particular switches um it's you know part of part of voice technology which is something that you're
going to see a lot more of in the future the question is how is it going to be implemented
uh who has access to it well again everybody in the phone company can access this uh what exactly can
they do with it i don't really know what they can do with it uh it's it's not exactly sensitive
information you're getting somebody's name and it's translating to a number it's the same thing you
know you get anyway from information or uh or dialing records of any other sort but it's not the kind
of thing you'd want to have being circulated all over the place certainly no it's not it just it just
really reminded me of that friends and family thing yeah yeah it's uh probably the same mistakes are
being made i wouldn't be surprised what what area are you in that's offering this i'm in brooklyn
uh-huh because i think only a limited area is getting this right now so you're probably part of a test
group uh-huh okay all right thanks for calling bye
and i hope the uh the test works out uh well to be uh to be interesting in any way
yeah most uh most of these new forms of technology are going to have a few bumps in the road
and we're here to ride with those bumps all right that's uh that's going to be our program for tonight
a lot of interesting developments happening and we'll be back again next week with uh
even more interesting developments because things are happening things are happening fast involving this
uh this whole clipper chip and um and uh eavesdropping technology things like that so we'll update you as
far as that kind of thing goes again if you want to test your number to see if um to see if it's being
passed on via long distance through a company called will tell dial the following number up until
midnight and let it pick up and we'll tell you next week if your exchange made it through
one zero five five five one five one six seven five one twenty six hundred um it appears to be
passing caller id information phone number information nationwide if you use that particular prefix
a sign of things to come we'll be back next week take care
so
so
Hey, this is Todd McFarland, creator of Spawn,
and I'll be on Night Shift, Thursday, February 17th, from 3.30 to 6 a.m. on WBAI 99.5 FM.
Friday night or Saturday morning, 3 to 5 a.m., hear the music of Donna Long live.
That's Friday night or Saturday morning, depending on whether you're staying up or getting up,
3 to 5 a.m. on WBAI 99.5 FM.
Donna Long live.
I'm Frederick Giebold.
It's Light Show.
Good evening.
In the news tonight, the Navy's Admiral Kelso steps down,
but does that really close the door on the tailhook scandal?
Pennsylvania's tough new abortion law has a ripple effect along the East Coast,
and in New York, the police department pays up for the beating of a gay and lesbian rights activist,
while local farmers speak out against the growth hormone, DST.
With these and other stories, I'm Jose Santiago in New York with Verna Avery-Brown in Washington,
and this is the news for Wednesday, February 16, 1994.
First to Washington for the Pacifica National News.
President Clinton today announced that Saudi Arabia has agreed to buy $6 billion in commercial aircraft
from the Boeing company and McDonnell Corporation.
Clinton thanked the Saudi king and said the decision was made despite strong European competition.
A White House fact sheet said the deal would result in tens of thousands of American jobs in California and Washington.
South African President F.W. de Klerk and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela
have offered to change the new constitution to accommodate the conservative parties.
The conservative parties are running under the banner of the Freedom Alliance
and have been saying they won't take part in the country's first all-race elections.
James Lorimer reports from Johannesburg.
African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela says the new constitution will be changed
to include separate ballots in the election for national and provincial legislators.
He says the constitution will also recognize the rights of Afrikaners and will enhance regional powers.
There have been growing pressure on the government and ANC to make some sort of concession
to try and defuse the growing threat of civil war.
That pressure has come from smaller parties, from the churches, business and foreign diplomats.
They want concessions so that parties in the Freedom Alliance may be persuaded to come back
into the negotiations process and to take part in elections.
A Freedom Alliance negotiator has reacted with suspicion,
saying he wants to see the concessions on paper before he responds.
The concessions follow an explosion of tension in the small town of Standerton today.
The white conservative council there declared the area would become part of a white state.
An ANC march to protest that was stopped by police,
who fired shotguns and rubber bullets and wounded 30 people.
For Pacifica Network News, I'm James Lorimer in Johannesburg.
In Sarajevo today, sniper fire claimed another life,
marking the first casualty since a truce between the warring sides was declared nearly a week ago.
The death came as the United Nations asked for extra troops to help demilitarize the besieged city.
But member nations are wary of committing their troops to the region.
Stephen Jones reports from London.
The UN commander in Bosnia, General Sir Michael Rose, wants another 3,000 troops,
roughly doubling the size of the contingent already in Sarajevo.
He had hoped reinforcements would come from countries already represented in the region,
but his pleas appear to have fallen on deaf ears.
The French have said they're not willing to send extra forces, but will send two radar units instead.
The Russian authorities have flatly denied the request,
worried by the demands of hardliners not to use force against the Serbs,
people they once regarded as allies.
The British government is still considering its answer,
but say they've already shouldered more than their fair share of the responsibility.
Stephen Jones, London.
For Pacifica Network News.
A United Nations report released today says the lifting of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba
will improve human rights conditions there.
The report, compiled by a Swedish diplomat for the UN Human Rights Commission,
said that outside pressure on the island was not working.
The Cuban economy has steadily declined since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Acute food shortages has forced at least 6,000 people to leave their villages in central Somalia today
and trek to the town of Badoa to look for food.
A U.N. spokesperson said the U.N. was seeking help from international aid agencies
to distribute food after another poor harvest.
And in the capital, Mogadishu, U.S. troops fired into the air
to disperse a large crowd of Somalis who were blocking the entrance to the port.
The Academy Awards of Pork Barrel Spending Projects was announced today
with Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia winning the Lifetime Achievement Award.
According to the Pig Book of Wasteful Government Spending,
Senator Byrd brought a total of $154 million to his small rural state.
The book is put out annually by Citizens Against Government Waste.
Jack Anderson, the co-chairman for the group,
estimates that 34 cents out of every tax dollar is allegedly wasted.
And those are the stories topping the news.
For all intents and purposes, the tailhook scandal is over.
Late yesterday, the man at the top of the Navy gangplank,
Admiral Frank Kelso, decided to retire two months early.
He said his effectiveness had been hampered by continued questions
about the tailhook convention two and a half years ago
when dozens of women were molested.
Admiral Kelso said this is the end of tailhook.
But is it?
Mark Beavis reports.
It's been two and a half years
since the infamous tailhook annual convention in Las Vegas.
The 1991 gathering of Navy and Marine aviators
ended in dozens of women charging they were molested and harassed
when they attended a party.
The most notorious of the charges
was that the women were forced to run a gauntlet
while men grabbed at them.
The investigation into the charges lasted until last week
when the military judge in Norfolk
threw out the last three criminal cases.
In all, the Navy disposed of 116 cases.
Of them, only 28 officers received administrative penalties,
including fines and reprimands.
The Marines threw out all but one of its 22 cases.
No officer from either service has been court-martialed.
Yesterday, Admiral Frank Kelso,
Chief of Naval Operations,
announced his early retirement,
saying he thought this is the end of tailhook.
Colorado Democratic Representative Patricia Schroeder
has been a leading critic of the tailhook investigation.
If you sit there and think,
okay, now where are we three years later?
Three years later,
the Navy brought absolutely no sexual assault charges.
What they did was try to treat this
like it was streaking or a bad fraternity party.
When you read the charges,
that's not what it was about.
It wasn't about rowdyism.
It was about people being assaulted.
Out and out assaulted.
They ignored that part at all
and tried to treat it like it's boys will be boys.
The taxpayers spent a whole lot of money
because they had to pull off
three or four different investigations
that just were obviously whitewashes
and everybody got embarrassed by those
when they got uncovered.
So we spent a whole lot of money.
We finally got to the bottom of what really happened
and who the 84 victims were.
And now you see the first victim quitting
in total disgust
and no one charged with anything
and they're saying it's all behind us.
So what was that all about?
Kate O'Byrne thinks it's all about sexual politics.
O'Byrne is vice president of government relations
for the conservative think tank,
the Heritage Foundation,
and says O'Byrne,
she believes tailhook is not over
but that it will live on
to the detriment of the Navy.
What the Pentagon was unable to do,
beginning with Dick Cheney
and now under Les Aspin
and Secretary Perry,
is put in perspective the tailhook episode.
The behavior was obnoxious
and indefensible for young officers.
However, it should never have been permitted
to taint the entire United States Navy.
It is a community onto itself, these aviators.
It does not signal
a larger cultural institutional problem in the Navy.
There's absolutely no evidence
that the kind of behavior
that was evidenced at tailhook
exists any place else in the whole Navy.
And O'Byrne puts much of the blame
for the tainted Navy on Admiral Kelso
for letting the investigations get out of hand.
But some disagree with O'Byrne's characterization
that sex discrimination is not Navy-wide.
One of the original tailhook whistleblowers,
Navy Lieutenant Paula Coughlin,
recently resigned due to alleged harassment.
Retired Brigadier General Patricia Foote
is saddened by the recent events around the scandal,
but she does not agree
that Admiral Kelso's early retirement
represents closure.
In fact, I think there's no closure whatsoever,
and I certainly do not look
at Lieutenant Coughlin's resignation
as the appropriate closure.
I find that to be one of the most tragic aspects of this,
that the Navy has lost a very courageous young woman,
a very courageous professional officer
who had the courage to stand up and be counted.
In a strange sort of way,
while her tenure in the service
has been relatively brief,
Paula Coughlin, by having surfaced tailhook,
I think has changed the Navy forever.
But has the Navy changed?
Lieutenant Kate Muller,
spokesperson for the Pentagon, thinks so.
She says just the inclusion of more women
into areas from which they were formerly excluded
will bring about better understanding
between men and women,
and in that way reduce the chances of future tailhooks.
Muller says the Navy can't change a culture overnight,
but it is working to improve the situation.
Right up this alley is one of the training programs
that the Navy has started
called Informal Resolution System.
And what this system does
is it helps people start a dialogue
among each other
about what really constitutes sexual harassment
and what doesn't
and helps us recognize it better.
If something happens in the office now
where, you know,
might be borderline or something like that,
someone will say,
hey, you know,
a lot more willing to say,
hey, you shouldn't say that
or that's not appropriate.
And I think people are just so much more aware
that there is greater respect out there.
Lieutenant Muller credits Admiral Kelso
for putting many of these programs in place
in light of the tailhook scandal.
Admiral Kelso's retirement
goes into effect April 30th.
Defense Secretary William Perry
is expected to nominate Admiral Jeremy Borda
to be Kelso's replacement.
Mark Beavis, Pacifica Network News, Washington.
The Crown Bank, who is always open for JUL.
The Crown Bank, who is always open for inviting communities,
under
What's the one thing the spotted owl, rangelands, and ozone holes have in common?
Paid lobbyists.
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It identifies the 12 most powerful groups, who they are, what they've done, and how they compete in a leaner meaning.