The attorney is going to attempt to get a motion heard before my trial date to allow me to be released for a few days prior to my trial so I can just prepare myself psychologically and physically and otherwise and just get a good night's sleep.
It's hard to get a good night's sleep in this place. The government evidently still thinks I'm a danger to society, but they have yet to come forward with any tangible evidence to show this.
Now, they've been trying to get this evidence, though, haven't they?
Oh, yeah, in all kinds of ways. They have evidently interviewed people all over the country who know me, people that I haven't spoken to for years.
They've asked them about my political beliefs and whether I've ever said anything bad about any people in public office, things like that.
So it's all very interesting. I don't know what they're trying to prove, frankly, but it baffles me.
Obviously, these questions have nothing to do with the case at hand. It appears that they're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Do you have any specific examples of other questions they've asked or bits of evidence they think that they have that are interesting to them?
Well, unfortunately, I can't go into details for legal reasons.
If I did, it could harm my case, but all I can say is they seem to be trying to—and maybe it's the Secret Service's purpose in life to come up with people who are potentially harmful to political figures.
Well, you know, I can understand keeping an eye on people like that, maybe, but to lock them up in prison for over four months with no bail is, I think, a bit much, don't you?
Well, certainly. From personal experience, I can say it's way too much.
But that's their purpose in life, and they are trying very hard to make their purpose—make themselves purposeful.
Now, I understand that you need some help from people as far as witnesses and things like that.
Do you want to go into some detail as to what you need?
It would be very helpful if I could obtain one or more expert witnesses to testify at my trial regarding both landline and cellular telephone technology.
I'm sure many of our listeners are very well qualified to answer technical questions.
Unfortunately, the federal criminal judicial system doesn't seem to be concerned so much with witnesses who really know what they're talking about as much as their credentials.
So while, yes, it would be nice if we had someone who knew what they were talking about, I need some people that have impeccable credentials,
say someone who, first and foremost, is that they have no criminal convictions,
second, that they would have credentials like perhaps they're a university professor or an engineer at a large well-known company,
preferably someone that has many years of experience in the field or the industry, that sort of thing.
The questions that they'll be asked are not extremely technical,
and I can't even go into detail about what the questions would be,
but we just need someone who can answer questions honestly.
And my attorney is looking for people like that right now in the Philadelphia area,
but there may be people in the New York area who might want to offer their services.
I can guarantee them not a lot of money.
I've always wondered about the supposed accuracy of expert testimony when you're paying an expert witness a lot of money to give their statement.
It always seems like you're not going to pay someone to say something that you don't want them to say.
For instance, the, dare I say, the O.J. Simpson trial, you know,
you're not going to find their expert witnesses saying anything other than what they're paid to say.
So the whole thing is silly is the whole idea of expert witnesses, I believe.
If they're getting paid, I don't think they should be permitted to be paid,
although they have to time, I guess.
But these outrageous fees don't, it seems to color the credibility of anything.
Well, in a way, it should be like jury duty where you're compensated for your time.
But to be paid like you're some kind of a celebrity on tour,
that's, yeah, it does kind of tarnish your credibility a bit.
But now, I guess the government is going to get their own quote-unquote expert witnesses
and pay them phenomenally, but you don't have that option, right?
Right. I, unfortunately, have spent all my money already on my legal fees,
and I am kind of strapped.
I can't afford a high-priced expert witness at this point.
So you're looking for people that just understand the technology, is that it?
They have a basic understanding of electronic technology,
and telecommunications in particular,
and, most importantly, that they have credentials,
that they have been employed in that industry for several years,
preferably many years,
and they just have job titles and experience that would impress a jury.
That seems to carry more weight than the actual accuracy of what people have to say,
if you're an expert witness for some reason.
So people don't have to worry about their political views or their opinions on any other matters?
Maybe ask those questions.
I may be asked those questions off the record,
but many people that have known me over the years have been asked these questions
over the past few weeks by government agents.
But the expert witnesses would not be asked anything other than technical questions.
Right, but I'm saying they shouldn't have to worry about where they're coming from
as long as they have the technical background and can explain the technology to people.
That's what you're looking for.
That's right.
Anything else would be inadmissible and would be objected on by my defense attorney.
The government is not permitted to ask questions aside from the technical questions that need to be asked.
Now, let's turn over to fiber optic for a second.
During your trial, which never came to be last year,
you had some expert witnesses that would have testified on your behalf, right?
Yeah, we had some people lined up,
and fortunately in my case there were enough people that I personally knew in the industry
who were willing to come forward and testify on my behalf
as both expert witnesses and character references.
Well, that's good.
I guess, did you feel it was a...
Were you lamenting the fact that you didn't have a trial and didn't get a chance to prove yourself not guilty
with the help of these expert witnesses?
Well, on the one hand, obviously, I would have preferred to go to trial for that fact
just to come forward and say exactly what happened and how ridiculous the whole thing was.
But on the other hand, at least from a legal standpoint,
it seemed highly unlikely that I was going to convince the judge and the jury
that I wasn't guilty of conspiracy and unauthorized access.
The conspiracy charge is very similar to what I'm being charged with.
You were charged with conspiracy, and I'm charged with intent.
Both of those are really kind of fuzzy, ambiguous terms that could mean a whole lot of things.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's really clear to people what a conspiracy is or what intent is.
I'm not being alleged...
The government's not alleging that I actually did anything that constituted computer or telecommunications fraud.
They're just saying that I had the tools that would have enabled me to if I so desired.
And they're saying that the possession of these tools, software and hardware, by itself,
means that I must have had the intent to do these things.
So it's a gray area, and unfortunately, I think that juries tend to believe what the government says in most cases.
It's just a general kind of brainwashing that people have been subjected to over the years about their government
and its infallibility, and it's very sad.
I just want to read the part of the law that applies, which is Title 18, U.S. Code, Subsection 1029, Paragraph A, I believe.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
Okay.
Fraud and related activity in connection with access devices.
Whoever knowingly and with intent to defraud uses, produces, traffics in, has control or custody of,
or possesses a telecommunications instrument that has been modified or altered
to obtain unauthorized use of telecommunications services.
Now, unfortunately, that statute does not define what unauthorized use means, left ambiguous.
Now, they do define what an access device is very clearly in those set of statutes,
but the two statutes that I'm charged with were enacted by Congress late last October and didn't take effect.
In other words, it weren't officially law until late January of this year.
And my attorney's research staff has determined that I am the first person in the country to have ever been charged with these two
particular statutes, the one that you just read and then the other one.
No one, there's no case law on this at all.
No one's ever been charged with this.
It's the government's first shot at this.
And obviously, they don't want to lose their first case on this particular set of statutes because it would set a negative precedent.
And they don't want to set a bad precedent.
They would like to get a conviction on their first one so that they can point to it in their next case and say,
we've got a conviction on that one, and therefore, we should get a conviction on this one.
And if the law falls flat on its face, which by rights it should, but if it falls flat on its face the first time that it goes up for scrutiny before a trial,
before a jury and a judge, then it's going to lose a lot of credibility.
Ed, I want to disagree with you for a second on the fact that access devices are clearly defined in Section 1029.
Go ahead.
I was actually charged with that.
That was one of my charges under the conspiracy.
And I was charged with the possession of 15 or more access devices with intent to defraud.
Right.
Did they define for you what an access device was?
They used it literally as it was defined in Section 1029 with the addition of the fact that they felt passwords were access devices.
Okay.
Which we filed motions against that fact because the word password is never mentioned in conjunction with the term access devices.
That's right.
My interpretation from reading the statute was that an access device was any, well, they defined it by any card, plate, account number, et cetera.
So, I'm paraphrasing here, that allows you to gain access to a particular account.
Well, actually, Ed, the term that they use is goods and services.
There you go.
There you go.
But it seemed to, do you have it, in fact, Emanuel, you probably have a copy of it right in front of you there.
The Section 1029, yes.
Yes.
Can you read there where it says access, I think over on the right-hand side of the page there, I think it says something, it defines what an access device is as far as what the government's definition of it is?
Let's see.
Well, there's Section A here, offering an access device.
Is it near there?
Well, I'm not looking at it, and unfortunately, we don't have the video.
Oh, here we go.
The term access device means any card, plate, code, account number, electronic serial number, mobile identification number, personal identification number, or other telecommunications service, equipment, or instrument identifier, or other means of account access that can be used alone or in conjunction with another access device to obtain money, goods, services, or any other thing of value, or that can be used to initiate a transfer of funds other than a transfer originated solely by paper instrument.
It sounds like it could cover a whole lot of things.
When it says mobile identification number, or min, the min in a cellular phone is its telephone number.
Right.
So merely possessing a telephone number of a cellular phone is possessing an access device.
The term unauthorized access device means any access device that is lost, stolen, expired, revoked, canceled, or obtained with intent to defraud.
Yeah, so these definitions are kind of wacky.
I read some cases.
There was a case in 92, it's called the Brady case, where an individual was charged with selling modified cellular telephones.
The EEPROM had been modified to tumble, that is, to generate random telephone number and electronic serial number pairs, so that every time you made a call with it, it would just generate a bogus random number that wasn't a real number.
It wasn't assigned to any one person, or the serial number wasn't a valid one.
It was just made up out of thin air.
The technology at the time, several years ago, didn't permit real-time validation of cellular calls.
So the first call always went through, whether it was a valid serial number, phone number pair, or not.
And then after the computer had a few minutes to check on it, it would then blacklist if it realized it wasn't a legitimate account number pair.
Anyhow, this guy was acquitted.
Uh-oh, we lost him.
Did we get the warning?
I don't remember.
He didn't mention the warning.
Oh, he's been cut off.
So hopefully he'll be able to call us back, because there's a couple other things I wanted to ask him.
Quite a case, though.
This is, we're hearing from Bernie S. down in Philadelphia, as we do every week at this time, until something happens with this case.
He was arrested about four months ago, and basically the only thing he's being held on is the fact that he has a, had a red box in his possession, which can be used to make free phone calls.
It can be used for other things as well, like education, for one thing.
And also having software which can be used to modify cellular phones.
I think this is him now.
Good evening.
This is Locktel.
You have a collect call from Bernie S.
Okay, I'm going to hit 9 right away.
Accept the call.
Please go ahead.
You are now connected.
Okay, we didn't get a warning there, did we?
Maybe I was cut off because of what I was saying.
I don't know.
I hope that's not the case.
Well, I was just updating the people on what your case is all about.
And actually, I wanted to read one other paragraph from this section 1029.
Let's see.
Whoever, paragraph number 6.
Knowingly and with intent to defraud, uses, produces, traffics in, has control or custody of, or possesses.
Ready?
A scanning receiver.
Oh.
That's it.
They don't say anything more than that.
A scanning receiver, period.
Does the radio in your car scan?
Well, yes, it does, in fact.
Well, you're in trouble.
I could be.
And B.
Hardware or software used for altering or modifying telecommunication instruments to obtain unauthorized access to telecommunication services.
Well, folks, that could be touch tones.
It could be anything.
That's what I'm being charged with.
That's 1029A6B, what I'm charged with.
And as we mentioned last week, if you pick up any electronics magazine, you will see that it's very easy to obtain programs that do exactly what your program is alleged to have done, namely make extension cellular telephones, which I think is something that's a legitimate use.
Well, as was written in the summary issue of 2600 magazine, those of us who are old enough to remember the days when you had to be very sneaky about connecting extension telephones to your home line for fear that the phone cops would come around and arrest you.
Back before the divestiture, you weren't permitted to connect the extra phones to your line.
It was solely a phone company task.
I don't think you're even permitted to own a telephone because I remember 20 years ago or so, virtually all telephones were made by Westerner Electric.
And if you had a phone and you weren't supposed to have it, then in other words, if a phone company didn't have a record that you had a particular phone and it was in your possession and it was made by Westerner Electric, which most phones were, you could be in a lot of trouble just for having it.
That's right. I don't know if anybody ever got charged or imprisoned for that kind of thing, but there certainly was the fear factor.
There's a lot of paranoia about that, I remember.
And that fear factor exists in a lot of countries where the phone company is still a monopoly and it's owned by the government and they run the post office, too.
So, you know, I guess we in a way we sort of still have that here.
Just the names have been changed on that really briefly back to the definition of this access device.
In this Brady case, which was decided in 92, the defendant was acquitted, or actually, no, it wasn't acquitted.
The judge threw the case out, dismissed it without prejudice, because the randomly generated account numbers, serial numbers and phone numbers that were generated by these modified cellular phones,
didn't constitute access devices because they were not debiting a particular person's account, and the government ended up having to admit that these things were not access devices because the numbers themselves were bogus.
So, under that definition, a blue box or a red box would also not be considered an access device, in my opinion, because it's not accessing a particular account.
In other words, as if a credit card code would access a particular person's account, a red box or a blue box would not do that, since it doesn't debit any money from any particular person's account.
Well, it's still a very different thing than what it is you're being held for.
I mean, I think it's not hard for people to understand that if you hold a red box to a telephone and you insert fake quarters, then you are committing a crime of sorts.
Now, if you do that, and if you do what the other thing that involved something that you're being charged with, namely, take cellular phone numbers and duplicate them and make fraudulent phone calls on those,
you committed two crimes there, even committing those two crimes, you would not expect somebody to be treated the way you have been treated.
You're not being accused of any of that.
You're just being accused of having the technology to maybe be able to do that if you felt like it.
And for that, you considered Timothy McVeigh the second, right?
Well, it seems that they're trying to paint me as that.
So, just the intent is what they're accusing me of.
They're not actually accusing me of acting in any fraudulent manner.
Well, now, when did they do the mind meld?
How did they know what your intent was?
Well, I guess that's where Mr. Spock comes in as the expert government witness.
That's really kind of shocking.
But, now, we issued the plea before for expert witnesses.
How do people become expert witnesses?
How can they get a hold of your legal people?
Well, the best way, if they have access to the Internet, would be to email my attorney.
And his email address is K-T-R-E-H.
I'm sorry, let me spell it again.
It's K-T-R-E-U-J-I-L-L-O at AOL.com.
And you can get in touch with him.
That way, he checks his email every day.
It's on AOL, eh?
Yes.
Wow.
Oh, that's his choice.
Yeah, I guess so.
The other way to get a hold of you, to have something forwarded to you personally, is to mail at your account at 2600, which is BernieS, B-E-R-N-I-E-S, at 2600.com.
That's 2600.
Right.
And either way, also, if you want to make a phone call, you can call the office at 2600, and we'll forward the information to the legal people.
The number there is 516-751-2600.
And if you don't want to sit through the long message, just hit a star.
I should mention that time is of the essence here.
Yeah.
Well, you're going on trial on the 31st, right?
First, unless we get my attorney, if he's not able to come up with an expert witness in the next two or three days,
it's going to have to file for a one- or two-week extension just so we can get this witness and go over with him or her what questions they'll be asked.
I see.
All right, BernieS, we want to thank you very much.
Also, if I could ask you to call back after the program at 11 p.m., because I have some very important things I have to tell you.
I will do that.
All right.
How much later after 11 p.m.?
Like around 11.05, no later than that.
Okay.
Okay, because Robert Knight will be in here, and he'll be barrel-housing through here, and we don't want to get in his way.
I want to make a final thank you to everyone out there who has sent me letters and cards and magazines to read.
It's been...
It makes a big difference.
Has it fallen off?
Has it slackened at all?
It has fallen off considerably, but occasionally I'll get a letter and it's...
Okay, well then I'd like to...
It makes my day.
I don't want to reprimand the listeners, but I do want to fervently urge them to not let that slacken off like that, because BernieS is still in prison.
It makes a great deal of difference to get mail when you're in prison, as I'm sure Fiber can attest.
Yeah, definitely.
It was the highlight of your day, and you got mail virtually every day, right?
Yeah, it did taper off towards the middle, and then a lot of my mail started being censored, but it does make a hell of a difference in the day.
Yeah, so now why don't you give us your address again so people can send mail to you, and remember, any kind of mail is welcome as far as printed material.
That's really the only thing you can send.
I should say that anything that's mailed will be read by government censors, though, by the Bureau of Prisons.
They screen all the mail coming in, so don't send anything in that you don't want to come back to you in some way or another.
You can't send money. You can't send cash. You can't send stamps. Actually, some people gave me money orders to forward to you. Can you get those?
Yes, I can get money orders. If it's a U.S. postal money order, it will be immediately credited to my prison account, so I can buy things like shampoo and other sundry items.
At bargain prices, no doubt.
Yeah, I'm sure their profit margin is pretty large. It's not clear to me where those profits go, either, but in any case, cash and stamps will be immediately rejected and sent back to the sender. At least they don't keep them.
Yeah, at least not that we know of. Okay, give us your full address.
It is. First, my name, Ed Cummings, C-U-M-M-I-N-G-S, 48919-066.
Then the second line is FCI, that's Federal Correctional Institution, Fairton, F-A-I-R-T-O-N, A-Dash-Left, P.O. Box 420, in Fairton, F-A-I-R-T-O-N, New Jersey, 08320.
Letters are really the best thing to send. It's just an uplifting experience to have some communication from another human being when you're locked up.
And again, if you would rather just send something over the net, which we will then forward to Bernie S., you can send mail to Bernie S. at 2600.com.
But again, keep in mind that will be read by government censors, so just be careful with that.
If you want your address obliterated, we can do that for you, too.
Okay, that's pretty much it as far as that goes.
We wish you the best of luck, and hopefully we'll hear from you again next week.
And I should also remind people on the net to stay on the lookout for some interesting news that will be appearing on all 2600,
as well as a couple other USENET news groups that will be in the next 24 hours or so.
Well, I have to give this phone up to another lonesome inmate.
Okay, you do that. And I'll hear from you later, and we'll hear from you next week.
Yes.
Take care.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
This is Bernie S. talking to us live from federal prison.
I'll tell you, every week we hear from him, and it's becoming sort of a repeat of what we did last year with you.
Yeah. It's kind of interesting.
There was a period last year where we weren't able to hear from you live, but then we were able to work that out.
Yeah.
It does make a big difference when you're locked up.
I mean, this is probably the highlight of his week, being able to speak to people.
He's not allowed any visitors.
You know, the only visitors he's allowed are relatives, and he doesn't have any relatives, so he has no visitors at all.
No bail. I mean, this is crazy.
This is, I mean, I say this every week, that this is crazy, but it's as crazy as it ever was.
So, something we definitely have to be concerned with, if there are any people out there that qualify as expert witnesses, you can make a big difference.
I mean, having someone who knows what they're talking about saying the facts that might not coincide with the facts the way the federal government perceives them,
it could be enough to totally change this case around.
And I know that's probably what you were hoping to accomplish with your federal witnesses.
Yeah.
What kind of background did they have, do you remember, without giving specific names?
Yeah, I mean, there were people that we both knew, and there were people that had a strong background in industry,
and to some degree, maybe a little bit in activism, as far as rights for computer users.
But pretty much all around people that had a really good either working or technical knowledge of the matter at hand.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, again, if you feel you're one of those people, please contact us at the office, 516-751-2600.
Write to the address, which I did not write down, at AOL.com of his lawyer, or write to BernieS at 2600.com,
and one way or another, we'll get back to you.
So, okay, that's it as far as that goes.
Fiber, over the last couple of days, we've been involved in some rather interesting experiments,
and I guess, in a way, we should bring back an old friend.
Yes, that's the familiar theme to the quest for ISDN, which, the quest is over, the quest has been over for some time,
but for the first time, I got to play with it last night with the ISDN that I ordered a couple of months ago,
and you've been playing with it for some time now.
Yeah.
You've become sort of an expert.
So, what kinds of things can we do?
What kinds of things have we done already?
I mean, we actually connected, didn't we?
Yeah, we did.
What we did was, last night, I had spoken with a friend of mine from a local Internet service provider in Manhattan
who offers PPP over ISDN access to the Internet.
So, what I did, I brought my hardware over to your place, and in a matter of minutes, it was, right?
We had it set up and working.
It was incredible.
Now, we connected at 56K.
Right.
Not 64K, but we connected to 56K using an audio call.
Right.
Meaning that we won't be charged that penny a minute surcharge thing that 9X has.
As it stands right now, audio calls, and this isn't just true in 9X, this is true of the way that it's been tariffed all over the country, all the regional bills.
Audio calls are considered speech bearers, as well as a normal full-fledged speech call.
However, an ISDN audio call is considered narrowband.
It's 3.1 kilohertz.
But what you can do is send 56 kilobit data, digital data, over it.
So, at a sacrifice of 8 kilobits a second, you're still able to achieve a relatively high-speed connection
and avoid whatever tariff charges that there are in your particular regional bell, if any.
And if you can manage to do bonding, you can actually double that.
Right.
Bonding is a protocol that's used with ISDN that allows you to simultaneously use two or more B-channels to achieve higher aggregate speeds.
For example, if you have basic RAID ISDN, you have two B-channels.
Each one of those is 64 kilobits.
If you bond them together using your ISDN hardware, which is a relatively simple and automatic process,
you can use the full throughput of both B-channels simultaneously.
If you're doing a full-fledged data call at 64 kilobit on one B-channel and bonded the other one in, you'd be using double, 128.
On the other hand, if you were making an audio call, it would be twice that, which would be 112 kilobits, twice 56.
Okay.
Well, that's dramatic, I think.
Yeah.
We actually got it to work, and it's something that works well.
Yeah, it works rather well.
I can't believe 9X gave this to us.
Yeah.
And it's not very expensive at all, and in fact, if you're someone who uses the Internet quite a bit
and tends to use a slipper PPP connection and does all that stuff,
especially if you enjoy perusing the World Wide Web, in my opinion, it's the only way to go.
And once you actually use the web on ISDN, you'll never want to look at a modem again.
No, this isn't the kind of technology where you go back.
Yeah.
You know, this is the kind of thing where you just keep moving forward,
and hopefully the price comes down enough so that you're able to afford to do that.
Yeah.
I mean, just to give people a relationship in case they have trouble thinking in terms of,
well, how fast is 56 kilobits?
I can't really work that out in my head.
As far as, just to give you an example, if you were doing transfers of, say, binary data,
which would be typically a lot of what you were transferring, say, on the web,
pictures, GIFs, JPEGs, sounds, typically binary data that can't be compressed very much.
Right.
On a 14.4 modem, even with the V42-BIS compression,
you would probably achieve the highest transfer rate of 1.5K, 1.5 kilobytes a second.
If that.
Yeah, if that.
I've had 0.3 on many occasions.
Yeah.
On a 28.8 modem, again with V42-BIS, you might achieve 3 or better, 3 kilobytes a second.
In the best-case scenario that I've achieved, at 56 kilobytes, I've achieved a maximum throughput,
which, using simple math, 56 kilobytes divided by 8 bits per byte is 7,000 characters a second,
which is just a little less than 7 kilobytes a second, which is very fast.
And again, at 64 kilobytes, that would be approximately 8 kilobytes a second.
So if you're comparing 8K a second as compared to 1.5K a second on a 14.4 modem,
it's a relatively dramatic speed-up when doing transfers.
Absolutely.
All right, we'll keep people updated as this moves forward, I guess.
Right now, the problem is providers giving ISDN access.
There aren't very many of them.
Hopefully, they'll be more pretty soon as ISDN becomes more and more popular.
And also, as far as converting regular telephone lines to ISDN, regular voice lines,
what has to happen before that becomes more popular?
Well, typically, what would happen is if you already had a phone line or if you had multiple phone lines
and perhaps you wanted to convert one of them to ISDN service, you don't have to change the line.
There's nothing that has to be changed at all.
So you can use the existing jack.
If you want to, you could get it replaced with an RJ45 jack, which is a fatter jack at a nominal cost,
which is used with some ISDN hardware.
But ISDN is a two-wire interface.
And the only thing that would have to be done by the phone company is to make sure that you're within a certain limit of distance from your central office.
You would have to be under 18,000 feet from the central office.
This isn't something that you as the customer would typically have to worry about because at least in Manhattan, that's pretty much normal.
Now, what happens to those people that aren't within 18,000?
That aren't, what would happen is you would have to be connected to what's known as a subscriber loop concentrator,
which are typically located underground, which is a form of digital repeater.
And what they would have to make sure of is that in a lot of cases,
if you were beyond that distance on an analog telephone line, which is what people normally are on,
you might have load coils introduced into your telephone circuit,
which would pretty much boost the power of the phone line so it would reach the distance.
Okay, but is that going to become more and more widespread?
These people won't be shut out, in other words.
Oh, no, not at all, no.
That's just what I was concerned about.
No, again, in Manhattan, it's not a very large concern.
It's very rare that somebody would be more than 18,000 feet from their central office.
That's a couple of miles.
Okay.
We're going to take some phone calls, 212-279-3400.
Also, we have an interesting letter to read, so stay tuned.
This is Off the Hook.
Again, that phone number is 212-279-3400.
You know, Fiber, we have an interesting letter here, and a lot of it is about you.
Really?
So I'm going to read bits and pieces, and you can just jump in whenever you feel like it
with answers to the questions, the many questions that this person asks.
The last time I listened and called into your show, Fiber was, you don't want to know how
he spelled Fiber.
Okay, we'll skip over that.
He got three of the five letters wrong.
F-I-B-R-E.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, it's the British spelling of Fiber, I guess.
But it's actually P-H-I-B-E-R.
Right.
The last time I listened and called into your show, Fiber was still in jail, saying
that he missed and most craved good pizza.
Now that he is out, I would like his pizza reviews and recommendations, as well as his
telling, if it hasn't been done, of where his first slice as a free man was consumed
and his reaction to it.
Can you share that rather personal information?
Sure.
Actually, the first slice of pizza that I wanted to eat, I picked up the very same day while
driving home from prison, once I got back to my parents' neighborhood, which is in Elmhurst,
Queens, and the pizzeria was Gino's Pizzeria on Broadway.
That's your favorite place, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the place you grew up in.
Yeah, that's the pizzeria I've been eating in.
Actually, it's the only pizzeria left out of the original pizzerias that I grew up eating
in.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, that's good.
I'm glad that brings back such fond memories.
Next, I recently bought a copy of 2600 at Spring Street Books, and I must protest its layout
and typeset as a visually impaired person.
It was a struggle to read and gave me a headache.
Well, I'm not unfamiliar with that protest about giving people headaches, whether they're
visually impaired or not.
And also, it can be a struggle to read because it is rather tiny in print.
Well, I can't say that it's not going to be tiny in the future.
I can say that we'll try and make it so that it's available in other forms as well, so
people who are visually impaired can read it, you know?
Well, they might want to check out the article in this issue about using Citibank ATMs for
the visually impaired.
There you go.
If you can read the article.
If they can see the print.
The article is pretty tiny, but it has to do with Citibank ATMs where you tap them in
the upper right-hand corner and they go into this big visually impaired menu.
Yeah.
We have Eric Hughes from Berkeley who's just come in right now and he has something to
say about that subject.
Yeah, the visually impaired Citibank things have been used to defraud Citibank at the
ATMs.
Evidently, some fellows figured out they could print new instructions on the Citibank ATM
instructing people just how to use this new interface that Citibank had so conveniently
designed for people, which displays everything about your PIN in audio because you punch in
your PIN number in unary, which means if your PIN is 1, 2, 3, 4, you go beep, beep, beep,
and you can just sit around and listen to the PINs, and that's what these people were
doing.
They were listening to PINs, and then how did they get the card?
They didn't need the card.
They could steal the little paper receipt that came out of the machine with the ID number
on it.
And make a card and then have the PIN.
And make a card and have the PIN.
It's kind of silly at Citibank to have a system like that, isn't it?
Yeah, where you can actually hear.
Well, I guess if they're visually impaired, well, that's what you're going to do.
You have Braille on the keypad and have them do it like anybody else.
Yeah.
Doesn't that make sense?
Possibly.
But it's the wonders of new technology.
Well, this is a new technology that they haven't exactly been going out of their way to advertise.
So you have to wonder if maybe they're trying to hush it up.
Well, it's not hushed up because it's in the last issue, and anybody out there visually
impaired or not can rush down to Citibank and play with those machines.
Not all of them have that function.
If you tap it, I think, twice in the upper right-hand corner.
Twice in the upper right corner before, and then it says to dip your card in after that.
It just says dip.
Dip, yeah.
That's all it says.
And if you don't know what dip means, you're out of luck.
It's kind of a weird thing to see on a machine.
And then when you actually succeed in getting money, it plays this little victory music.
Yeah, you get little victory tones.
Like you won at Pac-Man or something.
Kind of like an old Atari video game.
Right.
And if you get it wrong, you get defeat music.
Maybe that's where those old Atari video games went to.
Could be.
I wouldn't be surprised if Atari Citibank Network was running an Atari.
Okay, now an anecdote.
One night coming home drunk and horny, I tried for an 800 sex line, having a 900 blocker due to $300 a month phone bills.
And I tried different combinations of numbers corresponding to two word obscene phrases involving women and sex.
Usually, I get one which connects me long distance and bills me $4 a minute on the phone bill.
I reached on this night a recording which gave me a code number and another phone number to call,
along with a number repeated fast and only once, to call if I wanted out.
And before I knew it, without even having to press 1 or say yes,
I was locked into something where I was automatically charged $45 a month on my phone bill.
The interesting part of this story is that I opted to change my number
rather than deal with the hassle of calling the carrier that billed for this service to cancel,
embarrassed wimp that I am.
Yet, the change still appeared with my new number.
I eventually called the carrier whose operator stopped the monthly billing
after first denying that I was being billed.
Then, after consultation with a supervisor and telling them my old number,
saw it on their system.
How is this done in terms of them knowing and being able to bill the new number?
And is this whole scam scenario illegal or what?
Friber, why don't you tell us how it's done?
Well, I would assume that in both cases, he was probably listed.
And in which case, when they got the number the first time through A&I,
the fact that they were billing the person,
obviously they had the person's name and address in their database.
When the number was changed, I'm sure they probably just looked up the new number.
In which case...
You think they actually went to the trouble of looking it up,
or do you think it was an automated process?
It might very well have been an automated process.
Maybe they have a subscription to directory assistance type CDs,
or who knows what the case may be.
Or maybe they hired a collection agency who does this by bulk,
who finds where people are and reports back to them.
As to whether it's illegal, I would tend to think having a service
where you don't have to press any kind of confirmation
and be billed $45 a month, yeah, it sounds a bit illegal.
If you know who these people are, I would report them right away to the...
If it's within New York State Public Service Commission,
if it's Interstate, Federal Communications Commission,
Common Carrier Bureau, Washington, D.C.,
and let us know who these people are
so we can spread the word about them right here.
Okay, let's take some phone calls.
212-279-3400.
Good evening. You're on Off the Hook.
Hi, Emmanuel. Greetings.
How are you doing?
Two questions.
Last week you talked about a magazine called Nuts and Bolts.
Yes.
Where do you get it, and just what type of magazine?
Well, it's a magazine having to do with all kinds of electronics
and, you know, Nuts and Bolts, things like that.
Suppliers. A lot of classified ads.
Right.
A heck of a lot of classified ads.
Gary, where can you find this?
That's a good question.
You know, I don't know if any bookstores actually carry it.
I know they exist.
Nuts and Bolts is in California.
That's your issue.
I think they're in the 909 area code.
So if you call 909 information, ask for Nuts and Bolts,
you'll get their main number.
You can ask them where they're sold in New York.
But just, you know, check out some.
I know Tower doesn't have it yet anyway.
Check out other ones like Hudson News perhaps.
No, because every time I ask for Nuts and Bolts,
the new immigrants keep pointing me toward the boat magazines.
No, it's not Bolts. It's Volts with a V.
And that. I say Bolts.
They show me boating.
The other question is, ISDN lines,
is that the same as a T1 line?
No, not at all.
A T1 is a lease line, is a high-speed lease line,
usually businesses order.
T1 speeds are approximately 1.5 megabits per second.
That's well above and beyond any bandwidth
that any residential individual would possibly need.
You could consider ISDN to be one-twelfth the speed of a T1 line.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
So in other words,
in order for me to utilize an ISDN line,
the host provider that I'm calling should have an ISDN line also.
Right.
If you want to use the ISDN line to connect to the Internet,
then yeah, that would be true.
The Internet service provider has to have ISDN lines.
But that's not true if you're using a regular telephone line.
You've converted that to ISDN.
Right.
For voice.
Well, I was thinking about doing that
in addition to getting an ISDN modem, I assume.
Right.
In that case, there are terminal adapters and modems on the market
that do both analog modem,
which is normal modems that you would buy now,
as well as being capable of connecting to other ISDN hardware.
Okay.
So now, any recommendations about what is a good ISDN modem?
Um, for example, does Super make them?
Does U.S. Robotics make them?
Yeah.
In fact, U.S. Robotics makes a combination of V34 and ISDN modem.
And, uh, if I'm not, does it have an analog interface?
Yeah, it does have an analog.
What's important is that you don't want to get stuck with a terminal adapter
that you can't plug a normal telephone into.
More and more ISDN terminal adapters do have analog interfaces
that let you plug in a normal telephone modem or fax machine.
Otherwise, you would have to buy a digital ISDN telephone,
which you're not exactly going to find at the Wiz.
Yeah, no, I didn't think so.
All right, because I've been looking for an ISDN modem,
and really I don't see anything listed as such.
Oh, I can give you some recommendations.
You might want to be interested in ordering Motorola's BitSurfer.
The BitSurfer goes now for about $370.
That's the one we were playing with over the past couple of days.
But it's got a couple of interesting bugs in it.
Yeah.
Tell them about this. This is funny.
Okay, yeah.
In fact, it started out as a whole long ordeal,
trying to figure out where the problem was.
Initially, I found that if I called people that were on the network,
on 9X's SS7 network,
if people who happened to have call waiting were on the telephone at the time,
I should come in on their call waiting.
And in fact, I do hear a short ring,
and we tried it with you.
You do get your call waiting beep,
but I'm instantly disconnected before you get a chance to answer.
And I either get my dial tone back,
which is simulated by the box,
or I get dead silence.
Okay, that's one,
but there's another bug which is kind of interesting.
The other bug which is related to this one
is calling most businesses
that happen to have phone systems,
digital phone systems,
with automatic call distributors,
which includes 9X's business office
and a whole host of corporations,
such as Motorola, Microsoft, and so on.
Same behavior occurs.
I get connected and instantly disconnected.
But what I've narrowed it down to
is it's definitely an interrelationship
between Motorola's BitSurfer
and Northern Telecom's DMS100 switch.
They're just not getting along.
Yeah, apparently at some point during a call setup,
they're not happy at some point.
Okay, so this is an early type of a bug
that I guess you'd find in technology as it's developing.
Yeah, I wouldn't...
People shouldn't let it scare them away.
It's not something that's...
Right.
I mean, it's a nuisance at this point in time.
I'm sure it'll be fixed.
It'll be fixed, I'm sure.
Especially now that it's been broadcast.
Right.
We'll see what happens.
All right, let's take another phone call.
Good evening, you're on.
Hi, I have the 800 number for nuts and vaults.
Could you speak up, please?
I have the 800 number for nuts and vaults.
Oh, great.
What is the 800 number for nuts and vaults?
Okay, it's 783-4624.
783-4624.
Yes.
Okay, that's the 800 number for nuts and vaults.
So you can call them, ask them where they're on sale in New York.
And when you do get nuts and vaults, take note of the classified advertisements under
the telephone listing that has basically the same exact software that Bernie S. is now
in prison for having.
It's sold by many, many people.
It has legitimate purposes.
And the whole thing is pretty absurd.
Thanks for the info.
Okay.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Good evening, you're on.
I have an address for nuts and vaults.
Okay, well, we got a phone number, but let's have the address now, too.
430-Princeland-Court, Corona, California, 91719.
That's Corona, California, 91719.
And do you know any places that sell them in New York?
No, but there's also an email address.
Okay, what's that?
Boy, we have all the info here, don't we?
742-62.3664 at CompuServe.com.
Okay, great.
Okay.
Thanks a lot.
Right.
Bye-bye.
I don't think there's any more information we can possibly get about nuts and vaults.
Let's see if anyone else has any more information.
Good evening, you're on.
Hello, let me turn my radio down.
Okay.
Concerning the Zoom modem, I have the one that's listed, V.32 bis.
And I've done some file transfers from my internet provider, and I've gotten up to about 3,100 bytes per second with some kind of compression algorithm.
However, I guess in certain parts of the file, it starts dropping off, and then it recovers back to about the same speed.
Well, V.32 bis, that's the speed of the modem.
That's a 14.4 modem.
Yeah.
You'd be using V.42 bis, error correction and compression.
The speeds that I were giving were for binary files, files that were strictly binary, that couldn't be compressed very much.
Okay.
If you're achieving at least twice that, you're saying approximately 3K a second, although it varied.
I guess I was transferring text files.
Right, exactly.
Text files have a lot lower of an entropy, it's known as, in information theory, which is the degree of disorder of the data being transferred.
Binary data is a lot more random than text is.
Text could be compressed a lot more than binary, hence the higher throughput.
Yeah.
My stepmother works for Bell Atlantic, and she claims that there are a lot of these Siemens switches around in South and Central Jersey.
Is that like the same company that makes the Roam phones?
Yeah, it is.
In fact...
Are they still owned by Siemens?
Yeah.
Siemens, I believe it's Siemens Stromberg Carlson picked up Roam from IBM originally.
They're a German company.
Yeah, Siemens is one of the top German telecommunications companies.
In fact, in a lot of the regional Bell operating companies, they're using Siemens EWSD digital switches, which they're also providing ISDN service on.
Yeah, because I was thinking there was possibly a bunch of DMS-100s over in the Passaic area, which pretty much serves my area.
I've noticed that dialing 553, you get this waltzing busy and the line goes dead for some minutes.
Waltzing busy?
You get the 480 and 620 for 500 milliseconds, silence for 1,000 milliseconds.
It repeats it seven times before the line going dead.
Is that pretty much like a noise test?
Well, it sounds like, similarly, what we used to have in New York, we used to have 450 did something similar.
You would hear a busy tone, and either the busy tone would continue or the line would go dead.
In either case, the line was dead.
And it seems like it was just a test number to remove battery from the line.
In New York, 450 and 480 do weird things.
Now I think they're exchanges.
In 212, I think they're exchanges, but in other areas, they're not.
Thanks for the call.
I mentioned before, Eric Hughes is here, and I want to welcome you to New York.
Why don't you update us on what you're up to with Cypherpunks out there in California?
Cypherpunks is an organization I started with with a couple of my friends about almost three, I guess it's been about three years now.
And we're a cryptography activist group.
Our motto is Cypherpunks Write Code, which more or less gets done.
And then our goal as a group is to get good cryptography software out in the masses.
We've deployed a remailer network for automatically sending email anonymously throughout the Internet.
This is anonymously even more so than the server in Finland a lot of you may know about
because our servers don't store any information about who you are.
Now, is that something that most anonymous remailers do is store information about the people that send them mail?
Well, the Finland remailer was originally designed to make it easy to reply to mail.
And so what it does is it stores your email address so that it can map your pseudonym back to your real email address.
But as we know, that carries a lot of risks.
And that was recently exhibited quite explicitly with this latest Church of Scientology case
where they, through various channels, got the Finnish police to conduct a raid on the operator,
the Finnish remailer, and made him turn over the name of a particular person they were after.
Now, this person will be able to use your service and that would not be able to happen.
Yeah, I mean, my view is if you're going to, like, get yourself in trouble with the Church of Scientology,
you should at least have good information security.
Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
For those of you who want to use remailers, I would recommend looking at Rafe Levine's remailer page.
And I'll give you the web access for that.
It's http colon slash slash kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu slash tilde Rafe, R-A-P-H, slash remailer hyphen list dot html.
Okay.
I guess there's no need to repeat that.
I'm sure people will have that memorized by now.
Great.
So what can we look forward to in the future?
Any particular battles that cypherpunks are going to be on the front lines of?
Well, I mean, there's one that's coming up just recently.
There's been some legislation that's been introduced in Congress
that would make putting up cryptography software on an FTP site de facto illegal,
unless you could prove really strongly that there were no foreign people who had possible access to it.
It would provide a real chilling effect on software distribution on the Internet
because so many things have small amounts of cryptography in them just for standard security they need in order to be able to operate at all.
This is turning into a nightmare, isn't it?
All these chilling effects coming down.
Well, it's Louis Free, J. Edgar Hoover II.
Okay.
Well, thanks for stopping in, and best of luck.
You'll be in touch with us in the future, and we'll let you know what goes on on this end.
Let's take one or two more phone calls, see if we have time for those.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, good evening.
Great show.
I have a question for you about ISDN.
Who's the service provider you did your test with?
We did inch.com?
Yeah, the Internet channel located in Manhattan, in lower Manhattan, and our ISDN service itself provided by NYNEX.
Right, of course.
So are they providing dedicated lines now?
Yeah, they're providing both dedicated, dial-on-demand, and so on.
Do you know what their rates are?
Let's see.
Or say, like, 24-hour dial-up, like, PPP, ISDN.
Can you give them a number to call or something?
Is there a number?
Well, whatever the number for inch.com.
I guess you can look up Internet channel or something on the...
What phone number can you give?
I can give the voice number for the Internet channel is 212-243-5200.
If you want rates information right now and you have web access, you can check out www.inch.com and go to the information section and then prices.
Great.
Okay.
Thanks for the call.
Thank you.
Bye.
Let's take one more.
Good evening.
You're on.
Hi.
Um...
Well, you're last tonight.
Oh, I'm last.
Yeah.
From first to last.
Okay.
Well, make it good.
I had something to tell you.
Did you know...
By the way, we checked out your story of MCI not being able to reach the 2600 voice mail system, voice bulletin board, and so far nobody is having trouble with it anywhere in the country.
I could dial zero, though.
I know you could dial one plus.
In other words, you could dial 10222 one plus your number, but if you dial 10222 zero plus your number and, like, either try and bill it to your calling card or whatever, it will not put it through.
Well, you're probably the only person in the country that does it that way, so I don't think that's really that much of a problem.
I thought you were saying that MCI was blocking the number, period.
All right.
If I try to call you through MCI, I would not be able to call you and, let's say, bill it to my calling card, let's say.
Uh-huh.
All right.
Try this.
Dial 10222 zero plus 516 751...
I mean 473-2626.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, we'll give that one a shot.
And I just wanted to tell you that when I call 411, I got a man recording, you know, that say, may I help you?
And you got a woman giving the information.
Right.
Now, I'd just like to know...
One of the worst things.
I saw a call card that was not identified as a call card.
You can make free phone calls by dialing the operator and having the operator dial the number for you.
You mean the operator didn't know it was a pay phone?
It was a call card, right.
Well, that happens sometimes.
Now, what I do is I ask the time and charges so that, like, the person who owns a call card, maybe they'll realize that, oh, why is this person having the operator?
I think the person is going to realize what's going on pretty soon.
Now, how can prison phones block...
How can prison phones call phones that are blocked for collect calls?
In other words, my...
They can't.
...boyfriend was in jail.
He called my parents' house collecting and it was blocked for collect calls.
Yeah, well, I don't know how it got through, but it's not supposed to be able to get through.
I mean, sometimes the database thing doesn't work.
The phone company has told me that many times that if you have a block, it doesn't always work.
You know, some companies go through the block anyway.
I don't know how they do it or why, but it does happen.
Yes, it works, right?
I'm sorry?
Well, Bernie, yes, it works.
It's working.
Let's just put it that way.
We're out of time, though.
So we have to get out of here and make way for the news.
I want to thank everybody for calling in and we'll be back again next week with all kinds of updates
and who knows what's going to happen between now and then.
This is Emanuel Goldstein for Off the Hook.
We'll see you again in one week's time.
Good evening.
The telephone keeps ringing
So I ripped it off the wall
I cut myself while shaving
Now I can't make a cough
It couldn't get much worse
But if they could, they would
Bum, diddly, bum
But the best is fake or worst
I hope that's understood
Bum, diddly, bum
Good evening.
In the news tonight, President Clinton lays out his agenda for the future of affirmative action.
House Republicans go after the Democratic administration for its handling of Waco.
And in New York, elected officials and others speak out against government plans to slash legal aid
and we'll have a final word on the demise of New York Newsday.
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, July 19, 1995.
First to Washington for the Pacifica National News.
Bosnian Serbs have told UN officials their troops have entered the safe haven of Zepa
and may, in effect, control the town.
The mayor of Zepa says the town is not yet in Serb hands
but there is widespread panic there.
The safe haven of Bihas is also under attack.
Serb leader Radovan Karadic says any NATO intervention in the Serb siege of Garajda will come under fire.
White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry says President Clinton has telephoned the French president
and the British prime minister.
There is a determination on the part of these three key allies to work together to address the problem,
the conflict in Bosnia and also address the need for a more robust defense of Garajda.
And I can say only that they have agreed that it's important to agree
but I think they also are simultaneously working through the details of how to do that in a way that would be militarily effective.
The Clinton administration is trying to stop the Senate from requiring the U.S. to unilaterally lift the arms embargo on Bosnia.
The bipartisan measure would require an end to the embargo if UN peacekeeping troops are withdrawn
or within 12 weeks of a request from the Bosnian government for a UN withdrawal.
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California backs the bill.
I don't know whether it has merit but I do know that the absence of any other course of action people must be able to defend themselves.
But Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts argues against the U.S. acting alone.
To try one last time to make this mission work.
If it means take it away from the United Nations, take it away from the United Nations.
If it means those countries willing to stand up, do it together, then do it that way.
The White House is calling for the Senate to hold off on the popular plan in light of Friday's meeting in London of the contact group.
President Clinton today called affirmative action valuable, effective, and fair.
If properly done, affirmative action can help us come together, go forward, and grow together.
It is in our moral, legal, and practical interest to see that every person can make the most of his own life.
Clinton has ordered federal agencies to avoid quotas, preferences for unqualified people, and reverse discrimination.
And a policy is being drawn up so set-asides can be given to any business provided it locates in a poor neighborhood or hires workers from there.
Republican presidential candidates Pete Wilson, Bob Dole, and Phil Graham all criticized Clinton's stand,
all saying affirmative action serves to divide people, separating them by race and gender.
Some House Democrats today tried to amend the Treasury Appropriations Bill to allow federal employees health insurance to cover abortions.
Representative Lynn Woolsey of California noted,
The House has already voted against letting servicewomen receive abortions at military hospitals even when they pay out of their own pockets.
Now this appropriations bill will deny women who are federal employees...