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And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
The time is just about 8 o'clock.
It's time once again for Off The Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Fundidly bond for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Fundidly bond.
Fundidly bond.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Alex.
Good evening.
Voltaire.
Hey there.
And Kyle.
Yeah, what up?
Well, it's going to be kind of hard to do a show tonight
because a lot of crap going on in the world,
a lot of crap going on in this country.
For those listening in the future,
wondering just what in God's name happened this time,
yet another terror attack on our soil, sponsored by the NRA.
I don't want to get into it.
But there was an interesting story.
I just read the first paragraph of this in the Los Angeles Times
that really kind of wakes you up to this age of Google
and algorithms and things like that.
If you started typing school shooting into Google search this afternoon,
you may have noticed that Autofill took over
and anticipated the next word, today.
So even the bloodless algorithms within Google recognize that
when one tries to find information about a fresh school shooting,
the search needs to be narrowed
because people are still searching this school shooting from last week
and the one before that and the one before that.
We are six weeks into 2018,
and so far there have been at least six shooting incidents on school grounds.
And that's all we're going to say about that, this show.
But I'm sure you'll hear all kinds of reports and bemoaning
and things like that ahead in the weeks, months to come
before everyone forgets about it and goes back to the way it was time and time again.
All right, enough of that.
We have to do a fundraising show tonight.
So hopefully we can help this station stay on the air
so we can confront the issues and beat our heads against the wall
and hopefully make change.
It would be nice to see, but it does get awfully frustrating sometimes.
How have you guys been?
I'm all right.
Yeah?
I'm hanging in there.
Like you said, a bit of a somber day, you know, despite it being Valentine's Day.
Yes, it's not 30 degrees anymore.
No, well, neither of those things cheer me up, by the way,
being Valentine's Day and it not being cold.
Or being warm.
You don't like warm weather?
Not in the winter, no.
Iceland really changed you?
No, Iceland wasn't cold enough.
It reaffirmed your beliefs.
Greenland next time.
This is interesting, though,
a story that's kind of near and dear to our hearts
because it involves the NSA.
Did you hear about this incident that took place today at the NSA?
Ongoing investigation.
Apparently what happened, three people, including a police officer,
were hospitalized today in a bizarre incident
at the super-secret National Security Agency
after officers apparently opened fire on a black SUV
carrying three men as it breached the main gate.
Authorities have not determined why the car crashed through the entrance
before ramming a concrete barricade.
There is no indication to think that this is anything more
than an isolated incident, according to the FBI.
They arrested two passengers, the car's driver,
and basically non-life-threatening injuries were sustained.
Of course, they did open fire on the car, which is a bit extreme.
It's unclear why the car, believed to be a rental with New York tags,
we all accounted for.
It's the kind of thing that, didn't we drive down there, Kyle,
a rental with New York tags, and incur the wrath of the NSA police?
As much as it's a super-secret facility, you can go down there,
and they have a visitor's lot and a museum there.
It's perfectly accessible, at least to the perimeter,
so that's not unusual.
No one I know is involved.
The vehicle came onto NSA's compound unauthorized, according to authorities.
NSA police responded accordingly.
An NSA spokesman said weapons were discharged in the incident.
However, the weapons were discharged by the NSA or by responding police.
Of course, we know the NSA collects, processes, and disseminates
intelligence information from foreign electronic signals
for national foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes.
It also oversees code-breaking and monitors federal government
computer networks to counter cyber-terrorism.
It also spies on U.S. citizens and breaks the law on a regular basis.
That wasn't in the story.
I added that because the story needs a little fleshing out here.
Despite prominent highway signs, drivers occasionally take the wrong exit
and end up at the tightly secured gates.
I've done this.
I know exactly what they're talking about.
The gates are right there.
Now, most motorists then carefully follow the orders
of heavily armed federal officers and turn around
without getting into more trouble, but sometimes that doesn't happen.
When you're done with the story, I have a story about this.
We all have a story about this.
We've all done it.
We haven't done this, but we've gone down there.
Well, my story has an interesting end to it.
Okay.
Well, you obviously survived.
I did, thankfully.
Let me tell two other quick stories, and then we'll tell your story.
In 2015, two people were shot by NSA police
when they disobeyed orders outside the heavily secured campus.
One driver died at the scene after NSA police opened fire
on a stolen sports utility vehicle.
Authorities said the two people stole the car from a man
who picked them up for a party at a motel,
which is completely irrelevant to the story, and I don't care.
The fact is they were shot just for not following orders
or backing a car in a particular direction.
It seems a bit extreme.
And then in 1993, a gunman opened fire outside the entrance
to the Central Intelligence Agency in Virginia,
killing two CIA employees in their car and wounding three others.
Again, that has absolutely nothing to do with this story.
I don't understand how USA Today is feeding that information.
That's just propaganda.
It's like, yeah, someone killed CIA officers,
therefore NSA is going to shoot people that don't follow their orders.
It doesn't make any sense.
Well, it is a bizarre thing.
And I've obviously, you know, having worked in the intelligence community,
I've been to both places.
But prior to being in the intelligence community,
I was working for the Army back in 2003.
Which Army?
The U.S. Army.
Just checking.
Good question.
Yeah, I have to ask these questions.
Very, very good question.
In any event, I was, you know, my normal self.
I wanted to go to the National Cryptological Museum that is run by the NSA.
That's pretty close to the NSA,
and I'm sort of a geospatial idiot at the same time.
I can't follow directions.
This is, you know, sort of the days of MapQuest and things like that.
We didn't have GPS in the cars.
So I'm driving down, I think it was the GW Parkway
or something like that towards the NSA.
Yeah, the one that goes between Baltimore and D.C.
Yeah, exactly.
You go New York Ave and D.C. and then over to the GW Parkway.
Well, it's not giving people directions.
They can find it on their own.
They can look it up now.
So in any event, I'm going over there.
I get lost.
I'm finally circling around.
I find the museum,
and there's like a little checkpoint Charlie for me to go through
in order to get into the museum, which I thought was somewhat unusual.
And there's a person in uniform that goes over there and asks me.
She sort of looks out the window and asks me for identification.
And I hand her my license.
I was actually driving a car with Vermont plates that day
because I was living in Vermont in law school.
And she asked me what I was doing there.
And I said, well, I'm here for the National Cryptological Museum.
She wrote down my information and whatnot,
and then she just waved me through and she said,
go ahead and park right over there.
So I go in there and I park,
and I get out and I have a digital camera with me.
It was pretty big and bulky back in 2003.
And I'll never forget,
a security guy smoking a pipe, older gentleman, very nice,
comes up to me and he says, excuse me, sir, what are you doing?
And I said, well, I'm going inside.
And he said, is that a phone that you have in your hand?
And I said, no, it's a camera.
And he said, what are you doing with a camera?
You can't have a camera here.
I said, well, I wanted to take a picture of the enigma.
He said, what the hell is the enigma?
I said, you know, it's that German cryptological device.
Wait, someone on NSA grounds doesn't know what enigma is?
Didn't know what an enigma was.
I had to explain to him what the enigma was,
and then he paused for two or three seconds.
He looked me in the eyes and he said,
are you looking for the museum?
And I said, yes, I am, sir.
And he said, well, this is not the museum.
This is the NSA.
I don't know how you got in here.
Literally, all I said was to this woman,
National Cryptological whatever,
and she just waved me right through.
And oblivious me didn't even realize,
I just went over and parked,
realized I was in the parking lot of the NSA.
What exactly did you say to her?
I was here for the National Cryptological Museum.
Do you think they have another one inside their grounds?
They usually do.
They usually do.
Most of those places, but in any event,
I think that this person just heard
National Cryptological and zoned out.
You know, these are words with lots of syllables.
Do you think she still works there?
She might.
She might, but also the security guard might work there.
He was on the ball.
Yeah, despite being kind of nonchalant,
smoking a pipe, et cetera.
Yeah, he stopped me in my tracks.
So you had a good laugh about it
when you realized you were in the wrong place?
I did, actually.
I got out of there pretty quickly.
And I did it without any gunfire.
So that's a testament to, I think,
my sense of diplomacy.
I would just remind people
that it is a military installation,
so they love their orders and giving orders,
and they have orders and all that kind of thing.
So it's that kind of environment
that you would be thrust into.
One thing I will say about the access
is it's actually pretty common for people
to accidentally go on one of the off ramps
for employees and go up to these gates
because the facility itself
is surrounded by highways on several sides,
and many times people just accidentally
take the wrong exit
and end up on the other side
of this security fence.
Well, we wound up in a parking lot.
I think it was adjacent
to the Cryptological Museum,
but it was a big parking lot.
But it wasn't yet on the ground,
so you didn't have to go through the gate
to get there.
Yeah, it was before the gates.
They do have a lot there.
But we wanted to take pictures
because we were putting together
one of the first hacker calendars,
and the theme was surveillance.
And of course, the NSA,
we wanted to give them as much publicity
as possible because they're front runners in that.
And so I don't know why we did this exactly,
but we had this plan
where in the massive parking lot
we were going to walk over to a garbage can
which was literally on the other side of it.
So anyone watching us would have seen
somebody walking across
this entire empty parking lot
to throw a single cup into a garbage can.
And I guess presumably that's where
we would have gotten our shot
to take a picture of one of the buildings.
And whichever one of us,
I forget who did it.
I think it must have been you
because you're the photographer.
Walked over and came all the way back.
There's records of this, Kyle.
And came all the way back to the car
and we thought we were finished
and then we tried to leave
and that's when we got stopped by NSA police.
And I think there were three, maybe four cars
that wound up surrounding us,
asking us questions over and over and over again.
And we just basically said,
yeah, we rented a car,
drove down to, you know.
I think we had to make up a story
because we said we were on our way to D.C.
And we, what?
I can admit that I lied to the NSA.
We did not make up a thing.
Someone told us that the NSA
has the best crab shack in Maryland.
We did ask that, yes.
And basically they corrected us
and said that no, they actually,
they've heard this rumor as well,
but the crabs actually are in downtown.
You have to go to Baltimore
to get the best crabs.
Yeah.
And anyway, they understood.
It's a common misconception.
People have bragged and boasted
that you can get great food at the NSA crab shack,
but it actually does not exist.
Okay, there is no such thing.
We did, well, I made up a story.
I know, I think I said we were going to D.C.
and we just stopped there on the way.
Not that you guys were the target
and we drove all the way down there
just to take the picture that we got away with.
They didn't apparently know that we took a picture
and we used it in the calendar.
And we did have great crabs later.
We didn't follow their advice
because they advised that we go to the harbor front
and that's where all the tourists go.
We went into the inner city by the row houses
and we found a really good place there.
But that's another story.
Another interesting thing about the NSA,
aside from crabs actually,
is that they actually have really fantastic
Christmas ornaments in their gift shop.
They sell these Christmas ornaments
that are like satellite receivers
and all kinds of electronics-themed Christmas ornaments.
I remember seeing this
when I was inside the NSA legitimately.
And I regret to this day
having not bought a set of these Christmas ornaments.
Voltaire, do you have an NSA story?
No, I was going to ask if the gift shop
is open to the public.
No, absolutely not.
It's only if you're within the NSA or an NSA employee
can you access the gift shop.
I know there was a shopping center there
that was part of the,
there's also a military base with soldiers and things.
And you can go there
and get discounted food items,
but no brand names.
But now you have to show ID.
You used to not have to show ID before.
Okay, that was a different trip.
We actually were on Fort Meade
for the Chelsea Manning trials.
Yeah, but that's a different instance.
That was a separate trip.
I don't think you ever saw the shopping center
that I'm talking about.
Oh, okay.
I thought you were talking about the base exchange.
No, no, no.
There's so many places to go down there.
So many trips to Fort Meade.
Wow.
Do you know if they had a class 6?
It's a good time of year to go as well.
I'm sorry, what?
A class 6.
Did they have that?
I don't know what you're talking about, a class 6.
All right, well, you can look it up.
All right.
It's a liquor store.
Hey, we are in the middle of a fundraiser.
We don't just talk about the NSA all hour long,
although we would like to do that.
We are trying to keep this radio station going,
and this is the winter fundraiser.
And the phone number to call,
if you just want to pledge straight away,
is 516-620-3602.
But what we're offering tonight
is something rather close to my heart,
because it's a project I've been involved in
for a number of years now.
And that is the 2600 Digital Digest.
Now, what that is,
it's a compilation of every single issue
of 2600 Magazine from the very beginning in 1984.
1984 is when we started.
All the way until the future.
It hasn't been defined yet.
So basically, what we do is,
we release every year as an annual digest.
So 1984 was the first one.
Comes out in PDF format.
No copy protection.
Nothing like that.
You get either the entire thing via email,
or you get a link that you can download
straight to your computer.
Make as many copies as you want.
Share with as many people as you want.
And the really cool thing about it
is that you learn a lot about what was happening
at that particular time.
Now, the issues are interesting enough to read through.
Many of them out of print,
but they're all available in digital format now.
But in addition to reading the articles,
you can read about the behind-the-scenes
goings-on that took place putting together the magazine.
I believe, Alex, you have a summation
of the very first year, 1984.
Did you find anything interesting in that summation?
Well, there's a ton of stuff that's interesting here.
And it's fascinating to me because I'm learning things.
I thought I knew mostly everything about 2600,
but there's...
You thought you knew.
No, there's basically a lot of history here
that seems to be shrouded in esoteric symbolism.
A lot of things people have asked about over the years,
and we would never tell them.
And now, well, we're not telling all,
but we're telling most.
Well, here's something I think is really quite interesting,
which is the masthead here,
and sort of the evolution of the masthead.
The masthead, yes.
Yeah, the masthead...
I'll read a little bit from this.
But, you know, the overall look of the masthead
was fairly traditional, with the name 2600
off to the left in times bold.
This is our first year.
For the first year you're talking about.
Yeah, the first year in 1984, to be clear.
A generic month and year to the right in a volume
and number in all caps and italics below.
This left a little bit of space in the middle
for us to play with,
something which quickly grew out of control.
So, all kinds of interesting references from history here.
I mean, there are references to the Clash here,
to the Sardinista album, I think, right?
Yes.
References to Cicero, the Roman philosopher.
Uh-huh, of course.
He showed up over there.
Very, very interesting things.
1-800 numbers, May, I guess, May 1984.
So, a reference to 1-800 numbers,
which were the salvation of many a phone freak at the time.
Back then, not only were 800 numbers free of charge,
which they still are,
but they didn't even ever trace your number.
That's right.
So, this is predating A&I.
Imagine you call an 800 number,
and you could feel secure that the person on the other end
would not know who you are, where you're calling from.
And now, you know, these days,
we just assume that when we call somebody,
unless we specifically block the number,
and you can't do that for an 800 number,
that your name is going to be given away,
and that's just normal now.
Well, right.
I mean, back in the mid-'90s,
when phone freaking was still very popular,
you know, A&I was something that was prevalent
with 1-800 numbers,
and you had to go through diverters
in order to block your number from being listed over there.
And that's something you would set your modem to do
in various ways.
What's a diverter?
That's something you can learn if you get the Digest.
That's true.
There's all kinds of terminology
that Alex is speaking about now that is all explained.
Hey, let me just give you the information now
for people who are interested in this.
What we're offering is a lifetime subscription to this.
In other words, you'll get every single issue
from the very first one up until the present.
We're still releasing a few years in between.
We release them every three months,
but we've gotten all the way up to 2001,
and I think we have maybe a five-year gap
that we'll be releasing over the next year or so.
And then every year,
we release a Digest for the previous year.
So you're going to be getting Digest forever
or until we stop publishing,
and you're going to get all the ones
that have come out so far.
The phone number, 516-620-3602.
Normally, that sells on our website for $260,
and it's a very popular item.
It's the lifetime subscription to the Digital Digest.
We are offering it tonight for only $100,
so that's less than half the cost
of the normal price that nobody complains about,
so it's a really good deal.
516-620-3602.
We're donating this to the radio station
because we believe in the radio station,
and we hope you do too,
and this way, you get something really cool out of it.
Now, the way it works,
you give your email address when you make your pledge,
and as of April 1st,
that is the cutoff that we are establishing,
we are going to check with the station.
We're going to see who paid,
and if you paid your pledge,
your email address will be sent to all of the Digests.
Simple as that.
April 1st, that is the cutoff.
516-620-3602.
But pledge now.
$100.
You officially refer to it as the Hacker Digest
Lifetime Subscription.
You get that,
and everything else will fall into place.
I think it's a great deal
because it sort of demystifies a lot about 2600,
a lot about the show.
You'll get a lot of these sort of esoteric references
that we'll be making in the future,
and you can really trace the evolution
of our ideology and philosophy,
and frankly, I'm not done with 1984 yet, by the way.
Towards the end of the year, though,
is something I want to ask you about.
You're not even looking at the summation.
You're not even looking at the issues yet.
I'm not even looking at the issues.
Imagine you get all the issues for the year,
and you get to read all the articles
about new and emerging technology back then.
Oh, yeah.
And I'm sure in the very first issue,
we're talking about the NSA.
What we're talking about right now,
we're revealing various things
that they don't want us to reveal,
all kinds of things that we've done.
All kinds of things that don't exist anymore either.
So, I mean, on the cover of the issue,
I think you had things back in 1984
like a telex number, an MCI mail address.
Oh, yes.
A Western Union EZ-Link account.
Wow.
All kinds of bizarre things
that really most people that were born in the 90s
probably don't really know about.
It's great to see corporate America
try ideas that just end in disaster,
and there are so many examples of that
just with the phone companies alone
that we basically focus on,
mock and ridicule to the greatest extent possible.
And also theorize as to what's next,
what will be developed in the future.
Keep in mind, when this magazine started coming out,
there was no internet.
It did not exist in its present form.
Of course.
So we had to talk about that possibility
and how that might evolve.
We've seen things change.
We've seen every bit of technology change
in so many different ways.
We've seen the commercialization of the net.
We've seen the explosion of the personal computer.
We've seen phones change
more than 180 degrees,
from making phone calls in the first place
from who you pay your phone bill to
to the emergence of cell phones
and the change in technology
just in that field alone.
It's all there.
All that history is encapsulated.
Having gone through all of this,
and I do spend a lot of time
reading through the old issues
to write up the summaries,
it's fascinating.
You don't want to put down the articles.
They might be 20 years old, 30 years old,
but they still have that hacker spirit to them
and they remind you of things.
They make you think,
hey, wait a minute.
This is what we wanted to do.
This is what we were talking about.
How come we never did that?
Then all of a sudden,
you've rejuvenated that interest.
Some might actually call this magenta fascinating.
It really is.
Is that a T-Mobile reference?
I don't know.
Could be another one of these esoteric references.
I've got a very interesting bit here
that I want to address with you.
Okay.
It actually has to do with laundromats.
Oh, God.
Okay.
All right.
The last issue,
the last issue of the first year,
so December 1984.
Just so people know,
the first four years, we were monthly.
The first three of those years,
we were simply a few pages
of 8 1⁄2 by 11 paper.
That's all it was.
It was a newsletter.
Three sheets of paper was our first issue
and we just stuffed it in envelopes
and mailed it to people
that had sent us envelopes.
That was all it took.
You send us an envelope,
we'll send you this newsletter.
And it was kind of inspired by TAP magazine,
which had come out in the 70s and early 80s,
and we just basically wondered what would happen.
We fully expected to be arrested
after sending this out
because we were on BBSs,
we were in the middle of an investigation by the FBI,
and we didn't know what would happen next.
We kind of didn't expect it to get this popular,
but it sure did.
So everything,
every little bit of history
from that very first issue,
those very first words,
where we basically blew an FBI investigation too
because we had somebody on the inside
that was able to reveal
that they were about to arrest a bunch of people.
The whole case was blown in our very first issue
to the things we talk about today,
the new forms of technology,
and of course the letters to the editor.
Every single one of those are included.
Some classic letters
that people have written to us over the decades.
All yours for a pledge of $100 in digital format, PDFs.
You'll be able to read these to your heart's content,
copy them to however many devices you want,
and they will never disappear.
516-620-3602, less than half the normal cost,
available tonight, pledge of $100.
Okay, well, you've talked about a lot of different topics here
very quickly,
but you have not succeeded
in changing the subject from the laundromat.
No, no, you're too good for me.
So I'm, yeah, you can't get one past me here.
The December issue had the upside-down word FALSE
spelled P-H-A-L-S-E,
which is a clear reference to the hacker group
Freakers, Hackers, and Laundromat Service Employees,
which were the people who got together
to form 2600 back in 1983.
They also caused the federal authorities
to investigate a possible connection
between hackers and laundromats.
True.
Even though the group name was only used
in order to make the acronym look and sound cool.
Tell me about this.
Well, we wanted to come up with a cool word,
and FALSE spelled with a P-H was a cool word.
Freakers spelled with a P,
Hackers spelled with an H,
and we just couldn't figure out the rest
to make it into FALSE.
So, and okay, A, that's the A.
What's LSE?
What can we possibly do with LSE?
And one of us just came up with the idea of,
well, why not just say Laundromat Service Employees
and leave it at that?
And that seemed good enough for us,
but actually, you know, unintentionally,
there was that FBI investigation I was telling you about.
We were kind of in the middle of that.
We found out later that they actually did launch
an investigation trying to figure out
what the connection was to laundromats and hackers,
because that name was being thrown around
all over the place,
and there had to be some kind of a connection,
and they, I don't know what they did,
but one of the agents told me, yeah, that was a thing.
We had to actually spend time looking into that.
Well, it's interesting,
because you've been talking about laundromats
for the last couple of weeks, too.
You know, they've been part of the subject,
so maybe there is an actual link between hackers and laundromats.
Well, I'm not saying there isn't a connection
with hackers and laundromats.
We use laundromats.
We went to laundromats.
It's just it wasn't really where we conducted business.
That was a whole other story, but yes, Voltaire.
Is it true that this was the inspiration for Gus
from Breaking Bad's front business?
I wouldn't say that, no.
I'm sure we weren't the first people
to mislead the authorities
and have fronts of various sorts, or fake fronts,
but yeah, it was a bit of fun.
You know, humor is always a part of everything that we do,
and you see that reflected in the pages,
not only of 2600, but in the hacker community in general,
but I think if you're looking for a good taste
of what it's been all about all this time,
this is the quickest, most extensive way
of getting that.
It's bigger than any book you could possibly imagine.
And it's kind of neat, too, to think about this
as just being a couple of pages of a few sheets
of 8 1⁄2 by 11 paper way back in 1984
and to see how it's evolved,
see how the technology's evolved,
but speaking of technology, I wanted to ask you,
8 1⁄2 by 11 pieces of paper,
where did you make these photocopies?
All right, well, that's something
I really don't want to reveal,
because I still know some of the people involved,
but it involves sneaking into offices after midnight.
I'm not kidding.
I know.
Sneaking into offices after midnight
and making unauthorized copies,
because back then, you know,
it wasn't easy to do this kind of thing.
That's right.
I mean, the photocopy machine
was an amazing piece of technology back then.
It was a good machine,
and yeah, it served our purposes.
Now, of course, when we started
printing hundreds of the things,
we couldn't do that anymore.
We had to go to a bona fide printer,
but those first, see, that's the secret
of the whole developing something new.
You start out small, and we started out so small
that basically what we weren't outright stealing,
I don't mean stealing,
I just mean, like, borrowing services.
We basically were doing for cheap or volunteer time,
and that's how we grew.
We just kept expanding from there
until we got to the point where, okay,
people are actually subscribing now.
We can pay for a printer,
so now we can print the thing and have more pages,
and it just kind of grew from there.
I mean, it was a very rebellious thing to do.
Was it a kind of startup attitude back in the 80s?
Well, it seemed like a necessary thing to do
because we were on the BBSs, bulletin board systems.
Basically, you call up somebody's computer,
and you connect, one person connects at a time,
300 baud, and you read stories,
and hackers were telling stories
about systems they were penetrating,
or phone freaks were telling stories
about the phone system,
or people were discussing trashing,
jumping into trash cans,
and basically what we saw was potential
to tell these stories to a bigger audience,
to people that didn't have computers
because not everybody, in fact,
very few people had computers back then,
so we wanted to share that culture
because that culture was interesting.
You know, war games had just come out.
It was something that people really seemed fascinated by,
and the spirit was contagious,
so we had seen Tap Magazine.
We had seen what they did.
We thought we could do better,
and we basically solicited a bunch of these stories
from the BBSs, and we collected them,
printed them out, got a nice typesetting machine,
borrowed the nice typesetting machine
to make it seem professional,
and the rest is history.
I mean, what's fascinating to me
about these older stories, too,
is that so many of them focus on the phone system itself,
and we sort of forget that the phone system
and freaking was a really, it was an art,
and it was a dark art back in the day,
and also just the printing of raw data.
I think it was page five, wasn't it,
that was printing raw data?
At one point, it was page five, yes.
It was page five, yes.
Right.
Just that very act alone
is something that seems kind of strange today
because data is just available everywhere you look,
and we don't leave the house
without at least 128 gigs on us every day,
so that was something that was just impossible
to even imagine back in 1984,
so the printing of telephone numbers,
the printing of dial-up numbers for modems,
this was a really rebellious act
for people that were starving for information.
It was rebellious, and it was met as such
by many of the powers that be.
Both our readers and our writers
were penalized in many ways.
I mean, kids all over the country
were being thrown into detention
because they had a copy of 2600 on them
or because they explained computers
better than a teacher could,
were suspicious in one way or another,
and of course, we were threatened
and sued many, many times
for printing the things that we printed
and saying the things that we said,
so yeah, it was something that was necessary,
but I don't regret any of it.
It was something that was a lot of fun
and expensive to do
because when you're the enemy
of powerful entities,
there is a cost, absolutely.
And you see that reflected in the letters.
You see people writing in
for many, many years.
I mean, even a decade and a half or so later,
people are still writing the letters
to the editor about being penalized
for having copies of 2600.
It is still, to this day, I think,
a subversive publication.
Thank you.
You're very welcome.
Now, Kyle, I know you have 10 years in the future.
You have a summation for 1994.
Now, people were saying
that the hacker world was dead
literally the year after we started publishing,
in 1985,
and people continue to say that.
People continue to say,
you know, it's nothing like it used to be,
and yeah, they're right.
It's nothing like it used to be,
but it's still very much there.
The hacker spirit lives on,
and 1994, I know there were a lot of naysayers,
people saying that,
yeah, the magic is gone then, too,
but I don't think that was really the case.
1994, there were all sorts
of interesting developments.
I know the internet was just starting up
in its present form,
and all kinds of other things.
Do you have any kind of selection there?
Well, geez.
I mean, where do you even start?
There was a lot going on
just even outside of, I think,
the hacking community in 2600,
but 2600 was there to tell the story
and really give people details
about stuff that they really hadn't wondered about
or hadn't had as much exposure to
Of note, I think there's discussion
both on the covers
and then inside some of the issues that year
about this clipper chip.
Oh, the clipper chip.
The one that was blown up at Hope.
And 1994 was our first conference.
Yeah, yeah.
You can just pick any year,
and something happened.
Oh, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Wow.
There's a section here actually talking about
the president at whitehouse.gov email address.
It was just announced in 1994.
Who was the president back then?
Truman?
Clinton?
Was it Clinton?
It must have been Clinton.
Just this section kind of refers to it.
We saw disturbing moves by the government
with regards to encryption in the form of the clipper chip,
a secretive encryption chipset developed by the NSA
for the purpose of spying on our voice transmissions.
And I'll just say that they like to make their own chips.
I think they have a chip fab.
They make their own hardware,
and they do have an interest in our voice transmissions.
It's funny how we keep returning to that theme.
Yeah, it's, I think, kind of redundant to say now,
but I'll just say it.
Yes, they were doing this for the purpose of
spying on our voice transmissions.
Along with many others,
we condemn this development along with the implication
many other forms of encryption would be forbidden.
The quote is,
the Clinton administration is becoming obsessed
with monitoring citizens.
Well, this isn't really unique to administrations.
Yeah, and this is also,
to those people who say that we are just left-wing
and anti-Trump and anti-Republican,
look at what Kyle just read there.
We came down so hard on the Clinton administration
throughout the eight years they were in power
on all the attacks that they had on freedom of speech,
on the net.
So anybody in power is going to get it.
So we're biased in favor of freedom,
not in favor of political parties.
Yeah, yeah.
And this just underlined a lot of
what we now talk about as privacy issues,
but was emerging as a big theme,
privacy and the ability to control it and have a say.
There's another section here, actually,
that kind of refers to that.
Apparently, in some of the articles,
there was discussion of IVR systems and voicemail,
which was becoming popular.
Oh, wow.
And 2600 was at the front of this,
kind of with the counterintuitive argument of,
hey, this might be handy,
but you're relinquishing all of your messages.
At least an answering machine,
the tape is in your house, right?
But with voicemail systems being part of the phone system,
part of the emerging 5ESS or late 4ESS,
whatever packages the switches were able to then offer
with SS7 switching the new protocols coming out,
it hands a bit of your information.
You're using a feature that might be convenient,
but it's actually owned,
it's on the premise of the phone company.
And their security, as is said here,
it says their security was unproven
and it was a form of losing control of something personal.
And look at what happened since then.
Look at how many times those words have proven to be correct.
I wonder how many people still have answering machines.
Pretty much, you know, we lost a number of battles.
I know we were anti-caller ID,
we were anti people using voicemail for everything.
And of course, people use caller ID all the time
and people use voicemail for every little thing.
And you don't have as much control.
Like you said, tapes, you know, answering machine tapes.
I've got so many of those over the years that I've collected,
but I always will have them until I decide to destroy them.
Well, and also, I mean, even now,
you can buy solid state, like, tapeless answering machines
and you have control.
You're physically, you know, containing that device.
You aren't relinquishing the information
that people will leave when they get an answering service
to the phone company and having it centrally stored,
which makes it a lot easier, as we've found out,
when there are interfaces and abilities
and sort of the era of warrantless wiretap.
This was all precursor to that.
There is a discussion in those years, 1994, of caller ID.
I could go on.
There's so much stuff here.
Well, I think what you find is that
we always talk about the technology.
We always question the technology.
It's not like we're afraid of the technology.
It's not like we blindly embrace it.
We kind of go in the middle,
where we try and break it one way or another
and see what the what-ifs are.
This is an excerpt from 1994,
10 years into the 2600 Lifetime Digital Digest
that we're offering tonight for a pledge of $100.
516-620-3602, and you call that number.
Just pledge $100,
ask for the Hacker Digest Lifetime subscription,
and you will get every year that we have put out so far
in addition to every year that we put out in the future.
You will learn so much about the hacker community.
You'll see every article that has ever been printed,
and you'll read all these summations.
Now, Kyle, you're reading from 1994,
and I know that Alex was reading from 1984.
We didn't have actual covers then
because it was the newsletter format.
In 1994, we had covers,
so you have some explanations as to what the covers mean.
I alluded to that when I started talking about this.
There are a couple issues with, well,
all of them had these great, great full-color covers.
Color sort of slowly began to emerge as something,
I'm sure, part of that small growth
you were discussing earlier.
Exactly, it evolved, and we learned from our mistakes.
That's right.
Anyway, excuse me.
Let's see, all kinds of information,
stuff about IRC.
There were mini covers, small vignetted, I think, graphics.
I think on one cover, the mini cover featured the logo
for New York City's brand-new MetroCard service.
Oh, boy.
Yes, we all know that logo.
Look in your wallet or your strap hanging.
You can see that logo now,
but it was on an early issue of 2600,
celebrating the beginning of that.
Another thing I did want to mention that started that year,
sadly, Hactic, a great Dutch hacker magazine
that was around at the time and an inspiration for 2600,
I'm sure, they were closing,
and I think there's some headstones in one of the covers
or an open grave, actually, for that magazine,
which was ending, just with the Hactic text on the grave.
But the exciting last thing I will add is that 2600.com,
yes, our domain, the numeric.com homepage
for the magazine emerged,
and it just simply said,
2600.com will soon be in operation on the Internet.
Wow.
And that sure worked out, didn't it?
It is still our homepage to this day,
and just one of the many, many things just in that year alone.
And I just want to say, this is a great, great package.
It's portable.
It's a great way for you to catch up on technology,
hacking, the sort of emergence of how we communicate,
how we share information, these sort of legalities
and a lot of the early manifestations of law
and how those things morphed
and became the kinds of case law
that we discuss every Wednesday on this show.
And it's just a great way for you to become a real expert
on hacking history as 2600 has reported
and covered it over the years.
I do want to just say you can donate.
You can pledge any amount.
This pledge is called the Hacker Digest Lifetime Subscription
at the $100 level.
That's a drastically reduced rate.
We're offering, we're donating that to the station
as a thank you.
And I just want to say any amount, really.
This radio station is such a vital, vital voice
in New York City here.
It allows us to do what we do.
It augments our publishing, our conference,
and our other activities on the internet and elsewhere,
whether it's IRC or anything.
We really, we need this as much as any of the other producers
would say as a cohesive part of our community,
and we bring in people.
We learn from other people that call and write to the show,
and we can turn people on to hacking and technology,
and maybe they then point out things that we never saw
over the years.
And that's really, really important
for human understanding of technology
and how we're wielding it over one another.
That's a very good point.
And WBAI's connection here is a vital one,
one that we've had since 1988.
In fact, that's documented in the magazine as well.
But the stories that we have focused upon here
that affected our communities,
such as when FiberOptic was a co-host of the show
and was sent to prison,
the Bernie S. saga that we focused on
for a couple of years,
of course the Kevin Mitnick story,
all of that was brought to so many more people
through these airwaves.
And by working with 2600,
we were able to reach so many more people.
And that's why this place remains crucial,
and it's a voice that we need to maintain and keep strong.
And you can do that by calling 516-620-3602.
The pledge amount for this package, $100, as Kyle said.
It's drastically slashed from the normal 260 rate.
And you will get every single issue
that has come out so far on PDF format,
which basically is something you can read on your computer,
you can read it on your phone,
you can read it on any digital device,
and you can copy it as many times as you want,
you can share it with people,
and learn so much about the whole process,
the whole history-making period.
You get not only the issues,
but you get every single year.
I printed out for a couple of years here,
there are something like eight or nine pages
of 8 1⁄2 by 11 typed
just describing the issues for that year.
And then you have the issues on top of that.
You know, one thing that sort of struck me
as we're talking about this right now
is that when you read these old issues,
especially back in the 90s,
you get the sense that 2600 is a publication
as part of the press,
yet it was constantly being attacked.
It was constantly under threat.
You're going to read stories about things
like the Secret Service raiding the Pentagon City Mall
down in Virginia.
Oh, wow, yes.
Remember that?
1992.
Absolutely.
That was huge.
I mean, I remember these things,
you know, when they happened,
and sort of reliving them now,
sort of, you know, with a little bit of PTSD, I guess,
and thinking about some of these stories.
But it goes to show you
that attacks on the press are not a new thing.
They've been going on for a really, really long time.
Attacks on those who report unpopular facts
has been going on for decades.
This is not just this current administration.
And it goes to show you why 2600 is so important
and why WBAI is so important.
And again, I think, again, they go hand in hand.
516-620-3602,
pledge to support independent press, independent radio.
Keep us on the air, keep us publishing.
When we had that raid of our meeting in Washington, D.C.,
I believe it was 1992,
that basically led to us meeting all kinds of new allies
in the civil liberties world.
So every time that we were attacked in one way or another,
it strengthened us.
We met more people, we got more supporters.
And, you know, in fact, 1990,
we were talking about this last week
when we mentioned the passing of our friend John Perry Barlow,
co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
One of the major reasons the need for the EFF was seen
back in 1990 was because of hacker raids
throughout the country,
including one that took place in Austin.
The Steve Jackson Games case.
These communities got together by sharing stories,
by reading the same publications,
by talking on the radio.
And that's what helped make this community
that we all live in today possible in the first place.
It continues.
You know, we continue to talk to all these people
and more and more communities are being spun off as a result.
We have conferences, we have meetings,
we have publications and broadcasts.
It all is a part of this story.
And what we're offering tonight is the story.
You can have the entire thing.
Pledge of $100.
516-620-3602.
Kyle.
You can also donate to the station
by texting WBAI to the short number 41444.
That's WBAI.
And you'll get a link where you can contribute online
as a response to your SMS.
Also online, give to WBAI.org.
That's a direct address to the online donation.
The package we're offering now
is the Hacker Digest Lifetime subscription.
But any contribution is a real substantive fundraising donation.
I mean, it's so important.
I'm at a loss for words.
We're at a point where every bit of your contributions help.
This is merely a thank you.
The 2600 is offering for your pledge at the $100 level.
But that's if you really value this.
It's the most concise, compact, condensed way
to take all of this history with you,
share with other people, do with it what you will.
But the real important thing is to donate to WBAI today.
So please, any contribution you can.
If you can make this $100 level,
we guarantee you you'll be really satisfied with this.
It is a fantastic compendium of information
about hacking, hacker culture, history, telephony, computers,
just about everything.
And the PDF format is readable on any computer.
You can read it on your phone.
516-620-3602.
$100 pledge gets the lifetime subscription
to all the back issues and all the future issues.
But I have 2,000.
I pulled 2,000.
And that was another moment.
In fact, every year was momentous in one way or another.
But this was the year that Kevin Mitnick
was released from prison.
And we had been following that story for years
about the computer hacker who was basically kept in prison
for five years without any clear charges against him.
And it's very interesting what happened
right at the period of time where that saga ended.
Here's a quote from the Digest.
With the end of the Kevin Mitnick saga scheduled for January,
we thought things would finally calm down.
We were wrong.
It was with the precision of a soap opera
that one crisis was immediately succeeded by the next.
On the very day before Kevin Mitnick's release,
we at 2600 became the latest targets of a world gone mad
with litigation and incarceration.
The Motion Picture Association of America
decided that we were somehow responsible
for a tool on the internet known as DECSS,
which existed solely to bypass access controls
on DVD technology and allow Linux machines to play DVDs.
Imagine that.
We don't even have a working DVD player,
and here they were accusing us of piracy.
It had nothing to do with piracy.
We've talked about this many, many times.
It had to do with control of technology.
We had a lot on our side.
The Free Kevin Movement helped train us in organization skills.
Never before have we seen such awareness and education
on the part of the hacker community.
There were massive demonstrations.
Well, I wouldn't say massive demonstrations,
but a massive amount of demonstrations
throughout the world in support of our case
and what we were doing.
And basically this was our latest challenge.
We had to fight another battle,
the second that this first battle had ended.
It wasn't even the first battle.
It had taken up years and years of our time.
You mentioned this case.
You mentioned Bernie S.
You mentioned Fiber, all these things.
They were really formative to me.
Going through that in the 90s
and then into the early 2000s
was really one of the reasons
why I decided to go to law school and become a lawyer.
It was going through that.
For young people today to be able to sort of relive that
and relive that rebellious spirit through this compendium,
this historical record of the hacker spirit,
I think is really important as well.
Looking back at this lawsuit,
as a practicing lawyer now for a good number of years,
do you remember there was a preliminary injunction
that was issued against you
that prevented you from disseminating
the DCSS source code over there?
I think it's probably in the magazine as well,
but how you maneuvered around that preliminary injunction
and allowed the information to get out at any cost
and at great potential liability
to the magazine and yourself,
I look back at it now and think
that was actually really kind of cool,
very smart, and very neat.
So you'll see all of this.
You'll see all of it in the record.
The whole story is there,
the fight between the MPAA and 2600.
The case itself, I think, went to the Second Circuit.
In fact, we had Kathleen Sullivan come out,
the dean of Stanford's law school,
and flew out and argued the case
in front of the Second Circuit pro bono for 2600.
And I believe the name of the case
is Universal Studios v. Ramirez.
It doesn't actually have 2600 in the caption.
Yeah, had the first defendant
who had since dropped out of the case.
That's how it works.
Yep, that's exactly right.
But it's a really fascinating read.
It's an incredible case, and it was a real battle.
Let me just read a couple more words about the year 2000.
For whatever reason, 2000 was the year of the lawsuit,
particularly the year of the lawsuit against us.
We received a legal threat from Staples
over an article that had appeared in a previous issue
which sought to advise us on finding the line
where freedom of speech ends
and corporate infringement begins.
Well, we advised them that while we appreciate
the suggestions on how to run our business,
we feel your needs would be best suited
if you simply minded yours.
When they demanded that we reveal
the name of the author of the story,
we made our position quite clear.
We will never reveal a source
without that source's explicit permission,
and we won't cave in to threats of any sort.
We printed the whole thing in our letters section.
The writer of the story even wrote in
to reemphasize our position.
And it continued.
A new company called Verizon threatened us
for registering verizonreallysucks.com
as a counter to their registering verizonsucks.com.
That's right, they went out and they registered
their own Verizon sucks to keep people
from criticizing the company.
They actually accused us of cyber-squatting.
Now, while we're pleased that we may be
Verizon's very first lawsuit,
we're annoyed at the other waste of time
these huge entities continue to waste.
We found that the, I wouldn't have written it that way.
I wouldn't have used the word waste twice in a sentence.
When you go back on this,
you see how you could have done better, yeah.
Oh, well.
We found that the new massive company
formed by the merger between Bell Atlantic and GTE
had registered no fewer than 706 domains,
many of which were names critical of the company.
We printed them all.
Apparently, they thought taking control of these phrases
would prevent people from criticizing them.
They had no idea what they were up against.
And that went on for a while.
They eventually dropped that threat.
In fact, they even went back and said,
yeah, this is freedom of speech and we support it.
So I thought that was kind of cool.
Well, that sort of sparked verizoneatspoop.com,
verizonreallysucks.com,
and Verizon should spend more time fixing its network
and less money on lawyers.com, if I recall.
Yeah, I think that used every single letter possible
in a domain name.
But yeah, 2000 was filled with all kinds of battles
and challenges and fights.
One year out of more than 30 that we have printed so far.
Voltaire.
What year do you think you realize
that you'll probably be spending
the rest of your life on this project?
Well, who said I'm going to spend
the rest of my life on this project?
I don't know.
Yeah, we have an announcement.
Yeah, it's basically...
At some point you realize,
boy, I've spent an awful lot of time on this.
And I'm realizing that now, definitely.
But you know what?
You can sort of ease the pain of that realization
by calling 516-620-3602,
pledging $100, asking for...
Asking politely for the digital...
I lost a page that has a specific name.
It's the...
Do you have it?
The name of the package is
Hacker Digest Lifetime Subscription.
Yeah, you got to say it just right
or you get something else.
Hacker Digest Lifetime Subscription.
$100.
516-620-3602.
And you'll get everything from 1984
through 1994 through 2000
and all the years in between.
And you'll get the most recent as well.
And you'll get everything into the future.
Again, 516-620-3602.
Make sure you give your email address
to the person taking your pledge.
That way we send you the digest to the right place.
And we will be doing that as of April 1st
when we check everybody's status.
And if you've paid up by then,
then you're on track to get digest
as long as there are digests.
So I think it's pretty neat.
I was going to print out more years,
but I realized there's an awful lot of material here.
I didn't have enough paper for one thing.
No, no.
And the magazine is now 68 pages
in the digest format.
That's the paper edition.
So it's amazing to have gone from 3 pages,
8 1⁄2 by 10.
Six pages, technically.
Yeah, I guess that's six digest pages
to now nearly 70.
Wow.
That's a lot of information.
Yeah, it really is.
And I want to thank people for calling in,
for supporting the radio station.
Again, that phone number, 516-620-3602.
Every little bit counts.
Every ounce of your support has meant so much
over the years, both with the magazine
and the radio station and everything else
that we do and that we get involved in.
And that's why we continue to do it here
on WBAI, where you hear so many voices
in the course of a day, let alone a week.
You can make those voices stronger.
You can make this radio station survive
and keep doing what it's doing.
516-620-3602.
Website give to WBAI.org.
You can text to 41444 with the letters WBAI.
In all kinds of ways, become a BAI buddy
and pledge a few cents every day.
It's up to you.
Yeah, it's so important, and we really appreciate
any contribution you can make.
So please, donate to WBAI.
Happy New Year, everybody.
And thank you to everybody that pledged last week
for the Blackstone Law Group legal package.
So we look forward to working with you, and thank you.
Have a good night.
Happy hacking.
Ha ha!