News Items
We may think things are bad here in the United States as far as threats to freedom of speech on the Internet go. But the truth is that there are always places where things are worse. Sometimes much worse.
In China, even meeting in an Internet cafe can be looked upon as a threat. And it's no wonder with enlightened laws that decree things like "Neither organizations nor individuals are allowed to engage in activities at the expense of state security and secrets. They are also forbidden to produce, retrieve, duplicate, or spread information that may hinder public order." Don't expect a flurry of 2600 meetings in China anytime soon.
Germany, however, does have 2600 meetings. And it claims to be part of the Western world. We re beginning to think they may be trying to gain admission into the deep South. The head of CompuServe's German subsidiary was recently indicted for helping to distribute child pornography and violent computer games by not doing enough to block offensive material. An individual was charged more recently with maintaining a link on her web page to a leftist newspaper in Holland. This is a country where people who access "violent" games like Quake are punished. Apparently the German government sees the Internet as a threat to their society. The Internet community is beginning to look upon the German government in the same way.
You can bet that the Exons, Helms, and even Clintons of our nation are looking at the situations in these two countries with great interest. And they're taking lots of notes.
As the Internet continues to grow, it was inevitable that existing top-level domains would become insufficient. There is talk of expanding them to include things like .firm (for businesses), .store (for places to buy things), .web (for WWW-related activities), .arts (for cultural and entertainment crap), .rec (for recreational activities), .info (for information service providers), and .nom (for individuals). We're surprised we haven't seen .xxx suggested as a potential domain for, gosh, who knows?
But this is only part of the story. The entire structure of the Internet is about to change and many people think this is for the better. Whereas there is currently only one registrar for the .com, .net, and .org domains, as of April 1998 there will be a more competitive atmosphere. Anyone who can afford the $10,000 application fee and demonstrate financial stability and Internet access can apply to become a registrar and register domain names all around the world. Customers will be able to keep their domain names if they switch registrars. The deadline to apply is October 16, 1997, and the form can be found at www.gtld-mou.org. If you don't have Internet access and can't get to that site, why in the world would you want to become a registrar in the first place?
Incidentally, in the sucker of the century department, the domain business.com recently was bought for the cost of $150,000!
International toll-free numbers are now a reality. It works like this: "800" is the country code and the number itself is 8-digits in length. So to reach an international toll free number from the United States and Canada, you would dial: 011-800-XXXX-XXXX
From Europe it would be:00-800-XXXX-XXXX
We will let you know if we find any of these magic numbers, and what kind of call accounting records are kept.
America Online strikes again. Word leaked out that AOL was planning on selling their customer data to telemarketers. The way they did it was particularly sneaky. Instead of mailing their eight million subscribers, they simply updated their Terms of Service without saying anything. Customers weren't too thrilled about this little maneuver and, as a result, AOL canceled plans to release their subscribers' phone numbers only days after making the decision.
Cyber Promotions is undoubtedly one of the most hated organizations on the Internet. Why? Read this little pitch that these sleazebags use to con other sleazebags into sending them $1,000: "Cyber Promotions is now presenting three new technologies that will only work properly if used all together. The first technology can change the message ID before your e-mails leave your computer! The second technology allows you to send over 50,000 e-mails an hour - with a single computer and modem without stealing other peoples resources, and the third technology will relay your e-mail messages through Cyber Promotions own proprietary high-speed relay network, without identifying the domain name or IP address of the origin! The end result is that you will be able to send all the bulk e-mail you wish - at lightning fast speed - from your own local dial-up account without the risk of account termination."
Basically, they are forging e-mail addresses so people can't reply to the sender with dark threats and spectacular Internet justice. But any good hacker can get to the root of the problem one way or another. In May, cyberpromo.com was hit by a relentless mail bomb campaign designed to slow down their harassment campaign, if only for a little while. It worked rather well although Cyber Promotions claims it had little effect. In another action, one of the Cyber Promotions machines was accessed and a list of customers, i.e., people who themselves are involved in unsolicited mailings on the Internet, was widely circulated.
Organizations like Cyber Promotions have practically destroyed the effectiveness of USENET and now they are clogging up individual users mailboxes with unsolicited junk. The last thing we need are more laws designed to regulate the Internet. So the most effective way of dealing with people like these is to use the power of the Net in a positive way. If someone makes the first strike, you are entitled to do what is necessary to get them to stop. Since, by forging their headers, they have made it impossible to be asked politely to stop, cutting it off at the source is the only action left. In addition, we as individuals can commit ourselves to wasting as much of these losers' time as possible. That means expressing an interest in whatever product they happen to be peddling and getting them to believe that you're really interested. At some point they will become vulnerable to your full wrath. If enough of us do this, this problem will go away once and for all because of the massive amounts of money being lost.
In one of the funniest ads we've seen in quite a whiles, RASTRAC has been promoting GPS vehicle locators that can attach to car phones as apparent safety devices. "Track yourself - or somebody you love," the ads say. A concerned mother is seen saying, "Now I never worry about Johnny on Saturday night!" We all know the scariest thing about new technology has always been the danger of parents figuring out how to use it. You can see what this is all about at www.navcomp.com/navcomp2.htm.
E-ZPass is the latest system in use in New York for cars going through tolls. It sits on the inside of your windshield, receives a signal at the tollbooth, and "pongs" back a response that will then open the gate and charge your account. There are two different systems and they each have their own 800 number: 800-222-TOLL for the New York Thruway system and 800-333-TOLL for the New York City area. The two systems are still not connected to each other but concern is already being voiced over the potentials for tracking drivers. Records are obviously kept of what bridges and tunnels you drove through and when. Only a fool would think that this information wouldn't be handed over to law enforcement in a second. But there is at least one thing that seems to surprise most people. On the New York State Thruway, drivers are getting speeding tickets because of their E-ZPasses. And it's not because of a simple calculation between two toll points - that method has been used for years with the toll card system. Now it seems that they've installed secret detectors at certain points on the highway that exist for no other purpose but to calculate your speed and send a ticket to the address that your E-ZPass is registered to if you happen to be speeding. We should point out that the system is totally voluntary and, if you're interested in getting a couple of these units and maybe ripping one apart to see how it works, it's easy to accomplish by going through one of the above numbers.
In New Delhi, GSM phones are turning out to be as open to abuse as their more primitive cousins. This scary excerpt comes from the New Delhi Statesman:
"In a gross invasion of the law and the citizen's right to privacy, the government is forcing private cellular telephone companies to provide the infrastructure to tap cellular phones.
"Cellular phone owners, confident that their phones have the latest automatically encrypted GSM technology, are blissfully unaware of the tapping.
"The cellular phone operator is also forced to maintain confidentiality of the names given to it by the authorities.
"Since the conversation is automatically encrypted, normal monitoring is not possible. Calls cannot be intercepted except after they have been decrypted at the switching centre. [Law enforcement] takes a line from the switching centre and then with the help of cables the call is taken to the nearest Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited exchange after which it goes to the secret central monitoring station in North Block.
"Another method to short circuit the process involves a junior level official being sent to the switching centre with a tape recorder and a list of names to be monitored. He then simply tapes the calls. Most private companies are too scared to object and do not even ask for the mandatory authorization.
"According to a Supreme Court order on the telephone tapping issue, phones can only be tapped on the specific authorization of the Union home secretary. In this case the Department of Telecom, in blatant disregard of the law laid down by the court, has forced the operators to agree to carry out tapping on the authorization of any government official."
The lesson to be learned here is simple. We can put in all the encryption we want but as long as government has the potential to work around that, this is exactly what will happen. There's no reason to believe anything will be any different here.
It now seems almost certain that Bell Atlantic will be replacing NYNEX as the local phone company in the Northeast. This comes as the merger between the two telecommunications giants somehow won approval from all of the regulatory bodies who really should have known better. Earlier, two other Baby Bells also merged: SWB and Pacific Telesis. And for a brief while, there was talk of that huge entity merging with none other than AT&T! That insanity was mercifully short-lived but don't be surprised to see more mega-mergers.
It seems almost as if the great breakup of 1984 was little more than a trial separation. If we can stretch the analogy to make telco customers the children of this marriage, we had better start looking for a foster home.
Congratulations are in order for the city of San Francisco. They've managed to scare away drug dealers by ingeniously removing payphones! "It looks like it could become a very important tool," says Chief Assistant District Attorney Richard Iglehart. The concern was for the safety of people trying to make phone calls while all the drug dealers were milling about. Now they will have to walk to another street where all of the drug dealers have moved.
NYNEX has also made some changes to their payphones, specifically those annoying yellow pre-paid card phones that didn't take coins or incoming calls and had a ten minute limit on all calls. In short, they're history. The NYNEX Change Cards, modeled after European phone systems, just never caught on. Restrictive phones are always a pain and we're glad to see these yellow things off the streets. But the new silver phones that are replacing them and the remaining coin phones are hardly much better. These "smart" phones cut off your Touch-Tones shortly after connecting you to a number! Just like a COCOT! An annoying synthesized voice comes on after a total of around 20-digits are dialed and says, "No additional dialing allowed." Why this is needed is beyond us. Has NYNEX never heard of remote answering machines or voicemail? It doesn't matter if you dial direct, use a calling card, or call an 800 number. NYNEX will cut you off just the same. Apart from making people use NYNEX phones a lot less, this stupidity will get many people to journey to RadioShack and buy more tone dialers.
One of Clinton's latest ideas is to have a 3-digit number for non-emergency police calls. That number will be 311, according to the Federal Communications Commission, in honor of the Chief Executive's favorite band. Meanwhile NYNEX has replaced its easy to remember 611 repair service with 890-6611 allegedly because of local competition; having a 3-digit number constitutes an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
Those of you who think you're safe by dialing *67 to block your number had better think again. Omnipoint, a new GSM provider in the New York area as well as other parts of the country, has an undocumented way of getting around those pesky Caller ID restrictions. If you call someone with an Omnipoint phone, your Caller ID data will be displayed on their phone. If you have blocking enabled, they won't see your number. But, if the person doesn't answer and the call goes to their voicemail, ANI is recorded onto the time/date stamp. In other words, calling Omnipoint can be just like calling an 800, 888, or 900 number. Except you may not know when you're calling an Omnipoint phone. In New York City, they have bought the 917-770, 917-774, 917-815, and 917-945 exchanges. Since all cellular/GSM phones go through the 917 area code in New York City, you can just add 917 to the area codes not to call if you want to keep your privacy. But other parts of the country are a different story. In 516, for instance, if you don t know that the 516-312 exchange is Omnipoint, you could be in for a surprise.
In a revelation that startled a lot of people, AT&T has been offering customers a dime a minute rate around the clock. The weird thing is that they haven't been telling anyone about this rate, which is designed to compete with Sprint's dime-a-minute plan on nights and weekends. They only give it to those customers smart enough to ask for it. AT&T has gone on record as saying the best deals go to those who haggle best. We hear rumors of a nickel a minute deal...
Earlier this year, three teenage computer hackers in Croatia were reported to have broken Pentagon protection codes and gained access to highly classified files from military bases in the United States. The Pentagon angrily denied this saying that such a thing wouldn't be possible. Nevertheless, the U.S. Defense Department had contacted Croatian police through Interpol to demand an investigation while local police searched the youngsters' flats and confiscated their computer equipment.
The sites that were compromised allegedly included the Anderson nuclear installation and an unnamed satellite research center. After the news broke, local reporters flocked to the high school in the Adriatic port of Zadar where the three teenagers, aged 15 and 16, specialize in mathematics and computer science.
Assistant Interior Minister Zeljko Sacic told state radio the hackers had broken the U.S. Defense Ministry system of the air base on Guam and several other bases. In a way, they almost seem proud of these kids. Police have said that, while they were investigating any possible motives the hackers might have had, they would not be prosecuted because they were minors. And Zdravko Curko, principal of the Zadar high school that the three hackers attend, said they had no criminal intent and their feat was a compliment to their education. Such an enlightened outlook is something we could learn a lot from over here in paranoia land.
There's hardly a day that goes by where we aren't subjected to some new phone company offering astronomically low rates for phone calls if we only use their carrier access code before dialing. They almost never want us to sign up as customers - they just want us to dial the five digit code first. We've been asked many times if these companies are rip-offs. We've looked into a few of them and invariably there's a catch of some sort that makes the offer not as good as it sounds.
10502 is Talk Cents and they offer an "unlimited 9 cents per minute" rate. But there s a $4.95 charge, which may catch some people by surprise. Even if you only make one phone call on Talk Cents and stay on for one minute, that call will cost you $5.04. If you are always making calls on this system, it could pay off, even with the fee. But undoubtedly this fee from everyone who dials the code is helping this company stay afloat.
10297 is the Long Distance Wholesale Club. There are no fees or minimum number of calls. It looks pretty good on the surface. But the one thing they don't tell you is how much you're actually paying. All they keep saying is that you will save 15 to 50 percent on every call. That's a pretty wide range and it's bound to change radically depending on the calling plan you happen to be on. The truth is there's no guarantee you'll save anything and it's awfully hard to know for sure when the numbers just aren't there.
10811 is the Dime Line. Only 10 cents a minute, anytime. This is one of the worst ones around. Not only do they charge you $5.00 a month, but all calls have a three minute minimum! That means you will never spend just 10 cents on the Dime Line. It will always be at least 30 cents, even if you only stay on for three seconds. That's far worse than most companies.
Finally, 10457 is Dial & Save. This one is almost exactly the same as the Long Distance Wholesale Club. Except they'll only save you 25 percent. And again, no mention of the actual rates.
Every one of these companies sent us stickers to put on all our phones. The stickers never said anything about extra charges, minimums, or vague rates. We suspect many people are just dialing without thinking. And phone companies love that.
The Federal Communications Commission is on the warpath once more. In a memorandum dated February 13, 1997, they state angrily:
"It has come to our attention that entities are offering to modify scanning receivers (scanners) in order to receive frequencies allocated to the Domestic Public Cellular Radio Telecommunications Service. Such modifications are not permitted under federal law and the Commission's rules."
See, first they made it illegal to listen to cellular frequencies back in 1986. Then, in April of 1993, they prohibited the manufacture and importation of scanners capable of receiving or being easily modified to receive those frequencies. Now, not being able to prevent people from figuring it out anyway, they're really pissed off: "The modification of scanners on a substantial scale to receive cellular frequencies will be considered to constitute manufacture of such equipment in violation of FCC rules. Entities engaged in such activity are cautioned to cease advertising and/or performing any such activity immediately."
So modifying a radio can get you up to $75,000 in fines if you're visible enough. Encrypting the conversation in the first place would make all of this unnecessary. But then, how would the government listen in?
But it gets even worse. Our old friend in Congress, Edward Markey (D-MA) has introduced H.R. 1964 which would expand the prohibited frequencies to include "Commercial Mobile Radio Service." "Decoders that convert digital commercial mobile transmissions to analog voice audio" will also be banned on radios.
Commercial Mobile Radio Service (CMRS) has been redefined to include private paging services, Business Radio Service Systems, Specialized Mobile Radio, and Radiotelephone services, as well as the new Personal Communications Services (PCS). So what frequencies could Markey's latest little gem restrict? Private Carrier Paging (PCPS) can be found at 929-930, 931-932 MHz, Business Radio Services are at: 30.76-31.24, 33.14-33.16, 33.40, 35.02-35.14, 35.18, 35.70-35.72, 35.88-35.98, 42.96-43.00 MHz, 151.625-151.955, 154.570-154.600 MHz, and 457.525-457.600, 460.650-462.1875, 465.650-467.1875, 462.750-462.925, 467.750-467.925, 463.200-465.000, 468.200-470.000 MHz.
A number of frequencies between 470 and 512 MHz would also be removed. Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) services are found at 851-866 (806-821 MHz), 935-940 (896-901 MHz). Land Mobile Services are in the 220-222 MHz region. Public Mobile Services include Paging and Radiotelephone Services (35.2-35.66, 43.2-43.66 MHz, 152.030-152.240, 152.480-152.840 MHz, 154.625, 157.740-158.100, 158.460-159.700 MHz), Cellular Radiotelephone Service from 869-894 MHz (824-849 MHz mobiles), 454 MHz Air-Ground Radiotelephone Service from 454-455 MHz (459-460 MHz mobiles), 800 MHz Air-Ground Radiotelephone Service from 894-896 MHz (849-851 MHz mobiles), Offshore Radiotelephone Services (157.200-157.400, 161.800-162.000 MHz, AMTS 216-220 MHz), Satellite Mobile Services from 137-138 MHz NVNG (148-150.050 uplinks), 399.900-400.050, 1525-1559, 1610.0-1660.5 MHz, and Personal Communication Services (PCS) at 901-902, 930-931, 940-941, 1850-1990 MHz.
So all of these frequencies are on the verge of also becoming illegal to listen to. It really was inevitable. Once you allow one small part of the spectrum to be off limits, there's no telling where it will end, if it ever will. One thing is for certain. If this crazy Markey bill becomes law, scanning as we know it will be hopelessly crippled.