You can hear the best classic jazz in New York every Saturday on Jazz Sampler with Bill
Farrar. From 4.30 to 6, Saturday afternoon, listen to Jazz Sampler with Bill Farrar on
listener-sponsored WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
Historical novelist Thomas Flanagan.
Join us for a movable feast. Contemporary literature here on WBAI New York, Friday evenings at 8.30.
This Saturday, October 13th at 12 noon, a newly formed grassroots organization, the
Citizens Planning Board, is holding a demonstration on the site of the proposed 2,000-acre Breslin
Development Project, slated to include New York's largest mall, an industrial park, high-density
housing and more in Long Island's last stand of unprotected Pine Barrens. This site is
directly above our state-designated sole source drinking water aquifer. Take the Long Island
Expressway to exit 68 North, the William Floyd Parkway. Go one-half mile north on the William
Floyd to the demonstration site. For more information, contact the Citizens Planning
Board at 928-6391 or 473-1039. Those numbers again, 928-6391 or 473-1039. That's this Saturday,
October 13th at 12 noon. And those are area code 516. And if you feel the need to get
involved and to make a difference in the world, that's something you really should think about
doing this Saturday at noon, environmental protests on Long Island. Exit 68 on the Long
Island Expressway. It's going to be right there on the expressway to protest what is going on or
what may be going on. Very good evening to you. This is Emmanuel Goldstein and site of the new
program Off the Hook, actually an old program making a new appearance at a new time, and
hopefully a time that we'll be staying in for a while. We're here every two weeks. And I've been
asked to remind you that Nancy Rodriguez, New York collage Latin music show has been temporarily
moved to Thursdays at 9am. So that public service announcement coming to you by way of WBAI, New
York, where we always believe in leaving phones off the hook.
The telephone keeps ringing. So I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving. Now I can't make a call. It couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would. Bum diddly bum for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bum diddly bum.
Bum diddly bum bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum diddly bum didd
So what you may ask is this program all about? Well, we come here and we discuss technology,
technology gone astray, technology run amok, technology perhaps turning upon its masters.
The kind of thing that happens all the time and the kind of thing that computer hackers,
among many others, have a handle on. That's why there's much we can learn
through the world of hacking, through the world of telephone freaks, and just general education,
something that there is certainly a lack of these days. Technology-wise, we can't figure out how to
make phone calls. We can't figure out how to get our own credit reports. We don't know what's in
computer files about us. We know very little. But if you listen to this program, if you listen to
WBAI, you'll find that you're learning, little by little, very many things, I guess is the best way
to say it, of different aspects of life and technology. It's just one of those aspects.
A couple of horror stories, and we'll be giving you the chance to give us your horror stories as
well. This comes to us from a computer publication, computer publication passed on
around computer networks, this network known as the Internet, links lots of schools and
defense department contractors, things like that, all throughout the world. And
they share stories in a magazine called Risks, and that's designed to illustrate the risks of
high technology, and the risks of stupidity and dependency upon high technology.
A woman in Kissimmee, Florida, sent me a dossier that she has compiled over the past few months,
carefully documenting an alarming sequence of problems.
It is one of the most bizarre cases I have ever seen. The problems are still continuing,
unresolved. She runs a business out of her home, and has an 800 number that rings onto one of her
two home phones, although the problems began before the 800 line was connected.
Her local phone company is United Telephone Company. It's one of those independent phone
companies. The list of events is somewhat incredible, but is supported by many witnesses,
including law enforcement people. It includes the following types of incidents.
Calls billed to her 800 number from parties that never called her, in one case from a phone in
Chicago that was not equipped for outgoing calls. Calls billed to one of the home phones when there
was no phone activity, that is, for calls that were never made to people who never received them.
These troubles with the phone company have resulted in huge bills for calls that apparently
were never made. Even more fascinating incidents were these. Frequent incoming calls that were
wrong numbers, usually in large batches on the same day, to similar 800 numbers. Originally three
numbers in particular, and then suddenly two new numbers after some problem was allegedly fixed.
With alarming frequency, apparently cross lines resulting in two parties both
getting ringing tones, answering, and finding themselves talking to each other.
Crossed lines, such that multiple conversations could be heard clearly at the same time.
Repeated calls to 911, attributed to her phone, even when no one was home.
But the most interesting and best documented single incident was probably this.
On February 27th, 1990, a local Kissimmee police officer was in the house,
trying to make sense out of what was going on. He picked up the phone and dialed the police
department. However, he reached Yellow Cab. He put down the phone, not understanding how he
reached the Yellow Cab company when, about three minutes later, the telephone rang and
the officer answered the phone, only to be connected to a Howie.
Howie was a dispatcher at the police department. Only, neither of them had called one another.
It's only a software problem. With remotely reprogrammable call forwarding, speed dial,
re-dial, automatic dialing units, almost anything seems possible these days,
especially when you consider the possible interactions among these features.
One could program up some of the above incidents as combinations thereof.
However, this woman did not subscribe to any of these features,
although the mechanism to turn them on is itself programmable.
If these were the only problems, the logical choice would be a messed-up central office
and monumental incompetence on the part of the telephone company in fixing the problems.
Apparently, the telephone company has been baffled, with even the trap-and-trace efforts seeming
not having been consistent with observed reality.
Some observed calls were not trapped, and some trapped calls were never placed.
But compounding the situation have been a variety of apparently genuine threatening and or harassing
phone calls. From that, we consider the tentative conclusion that there are either at least two
completely independent phenomena, telephone system problems plus malicious human agents, or one set
of interrelated phenomena, caused by a malicious person who has access to
and knows the telephone hardware and software system, with any of a variety of motives.
Is it possible that we might be able to provide some help for this person in Kissimmee, Florida?
This person who seems to be a victim of many problems, including
the computer is never wrong syndrome on the part of the telephone company.
The computer is never wrong syndrome on the part of the telephone company,
whose employees have had difficulty believing that any of these things could actually happen.
And the main question is, does anyone know of other cases of unintentional or intentionally
caused rampant deviations from expected normal behavior that have been attributable to a
telephone system and its operation as a result of scrambled software, miswired switching gear,
inept personnel, etc. Has anything like this happened to you?
Let us know.
Paranormale Tonbandstimmen
Paranormale Tonbandstimmen
Your voice is moving through me
You talk as if you knew me
So tell me what you are saying
Paranoid
Disappearing
Example number 22
Example number 23
Example number 24
Example number 25
The telephone system in Kissimmee, Florida sounds like the one in Moscow.
The one in the Soviet Union, not Idaho.
Callers in Moscow are constantly getting wrong numbers,
and those who have telephones are constantly interrupted by the telephone ringing,
usually with someone who has reached the wrong number.
I have heard people in Moscow say that the chance of getting the number that you dialed is 50-50,
and this is something that everyone has learned to live with.
As I discovered in my hotel in Moscow, the people who do ring through to your telephone
unintentionally are rarely surprised and never apologetic.
In fact, they are frequently quite chatty, a strange form of social communication between strangers.
Here's a story from Moscow which is apparently fairly representative.
A man lives in an apartment building with only one telephone serving about 100 residents.
One day, there is a fire in the building.
The man rushes to the telephone to call the fire department.
He picks up the telephone and is inexplicably connected to his workplace,
and his boss is on the line.
The man is momentarily flustered. The boss says,
How nice to hear from you!
The man is a little stressed,
trying to figure out how to get through to the fire department before the fire gets out of control.
Man, I'm sorry.
Boss, you sound upset. What's wrong?
Man, we have a situation here.
Boss, what do you want me to do?
Man, nothing.
Boss, then why did you call me?
Well, it's Soviet humor.
I'm sure there are many more amusing and not so amusing effects of having a telephone system that is so unpredictable.
The Soviet telephone system is non-digital, of course,
and still uses old crossbar switching, if not step switching.
That's unlikely to be the problem in Florida, but the problems sound similar.
And then we hear from a person who had a similar problem with U.S. West,
in Eugene, Oregon, around 1988.
He says,
A friend of mine called me from his home.
A little later, I returned the call.
Instead of any normal response,
the phone system responded with the out-of-service message.
You know, three loud tones,
followed by,
The number you have called has been disconnected or is out of service.
On a couple of subsequent tries,
motivated by suspicion that I made an error,
followed by disbelief,
I always got the same message.
Eventually, I called an operator to complain.
It turns out that my friend's phone had been forwarded to another number,
despite the facts that, one,
the other number was not a working number,
and two, my friend did not have call forwarding.
It seems to have been an internally generated system error.
A disturbing aspect of this is that my friend could always call out,
so that his phone seemed to be working.
It's just that no one ever seemed to call them.
It's unknown how long this state had existed.
Indeed, if the number to which the calls were being forwarded
was a working number that turned out to be either always busy or not answered,
this situation might have continued indefinitely.
And, in Israel, the government-owned company is notorious for such incidents.
Where this contributor lives,
connections to numbers in Tel Aviv starting with 4,
especially 41 and 42,
are sometimes close to impossible,
with all the phenomena you mentioned in previous articles,
especially crosstalk between lines.
The common explanation is that this is an old exchange which is overloaded.
In any case, all this is caused by bad hardware,
mainly due to rain damage.
When it rains, they have to wait until the lines are dry before fixing anything,
but then they don't know where the cracks are.
There are new and computerized exchanges too,
but the only differences seem to be that
such malfunctions are echoed into billing as well.
And, of course, they blame the computer for everything.
Transcribed by ESO. Translated by —
Transcribed by —
Transcribed by —
Media Network, Radio Netherlands, P.O. Box, 222-1200,
J.G., Hilversum, The Netherlands.
Or you can even send your request by electronic mail.
Fax the facts to Hilversum, 724-352.
Transcribed by ESO. Translated by —
As you may know, when you phone across the Atlantic Ocean,
the two telephones are no longer connected by two discrete lengths of wire.
Your conversation is converted electronically
into a stream of numbers or data,
combined with thousands of other telephone conversations going on at the same time,
and sent up to a satellite transponder
as a whole bundle of mixed-up mathematics.
The trick, though, is that when the signal comes down from the satellite,
the data has been packaged in such a way
that all the individual telephone conversations can be reconstructed at the other end.
You can set up the system to get maximum capacity out of the satellite, too.
So if someone on one side of the Atlantic stops to take a breath,
or there's a momentary hesitation behind a computer terminal,
that data is not transmitted to North America,
and the capacity can be used for another phone or data conversation.
But let's take our analogy further.
If the satellite sitting in geostationary orbit above the Atlantic
is handling such a river of data, as it were,
is there a danger that someone might put a paper boat on top of the stream
and get a free ride?
Or, worse still, somehow pollute the river of data?
Telecommunications specialist Rosella Sturm has been investigating
the world of satellite technology and piracy,
and has come up with some worrying data.
If you were to go and take a wideband broadcast satellite
and just use a little bit of the frequency response of the satellite
by fitting up a very narrowband signal,
then you'll be able to have a piggyback ride on the transponder
and rebroadcast your signal wherever you want it,
and totally unnoticed.
The link will carry voice, data, or fax transmissions.
So it's a bit like having a wideband signal then,
and there you are, a tiny speck.
It's like hiding in a traffic jam.
Yeah, exactly.
The story was published in the April issue of Electronics and Wireless World,
but it wasn't quite what it seemed.
Frank Ogden, the editor of the magazine,
gave me, believe me, some surprising information.
We don't normally run April Fool jokes in the magazine,
but this time we decided the idea was so good that we just had to.
Being engineers, if we were going to produce a spoof,
it had to be a very good one.
So we thought that with the intelligence of our readers,
that they wouldn't want to be able to go and discern a game too easily.
I haven't really stopped to think about it since I published it,
but my gosh, it is a spoof though.
But the spoof backfired.
Nobody, even from the satellite industry, was caught out.
Joe McCormack, who is an Irish freelance consultant on satellite television,
tells me that aloof actually exist.
They exist, but they're known as VSAT.
They actually are used in the states where they uplink and downlink
voice and fax transmissions.
That's the reason the article didn't raise any eyebrows or attract any comment.
VSATs operate by using the unused part of a satellite television transponder.
So the signal level there would be lower
with respect to the center of the transponder.
By using combinations of spread spectrum technique,
they can actually fit in an audio channel there too.
Spread spectrum is where the signal is broken up into a digital format,
and one bit will be sent at one frequency.
Another bit will be sent at another frequency.
So it would, in effect, appear as noise throughout the transponder.
But that wouldn't degrade the quality on the actual picture
as long as the correct filter is used.
Now, the military have used so-called spread spectrum technology
for some time now.
If you want to send a secret message across the airwaves,
you can either try to scramble the signal
so that someone tuned in to the same frequency
trying to overhear the conversation
simply gets a garbled message.
Or you can chop up your message into tiny fragments
and transmit each of those fragments
on a slightly different part of the radio dial,
providing transmitter and receiver
can cope with the constantly changing frequency,
something that's only been possible in the last 20 years.
Someone tuned to just one frequency
probably wouldn't even be aware that you're on the air.
Back to satellite technology, though.
VSAT, which stands for Very Small Aperture Terminal,
is a fairly cheap and flexible two-way satellite technology.
In most countries, nobody except a phone company
is allowed to own and operate a two-way satellite dish.
So from the phone company's perspective,
it's a dangerous technology
because it threatens to bypass their monopoly.
In fact, VSAT brings satellite links
direct into business premises.
Companies could control their own communications
and be set free from the constraints
of having to deal with the phone companies.
That's why in Europe,
VSAT technology is so edged in by regulations,
and it's almost unknown.
Because it's so easy to use,
John McCormack believes it could be easily abused.
With the availability of technology
within the next few years,
VSATs will become common,
and it's a possibility someone will go crazy and try it.
Dr Achim Edgais,
director of the engineering and operations division
of Immersat, based in London,
identifies three kinds of satellite piracy.
The first kind is where someone steals
the satellite capacity in order to communicate
without harming the satellite.
The second case is where the intruder
attempts to prevent others from communicating,
and it's usually called jamming.
The third type is perhaps the most objectionable,
and I'll call it hijacking of the satellite.
The intruder takes control of the satellite
by breaking into the telemetry,
being able to read it,
and thereby telling what the satellite's actually doing,
and then issuing unauthorized commands
to make the satellite do what he wants
rather than what the owner wants.
This means that it's possible to kidnap a satellite
and, for example, hold it for ransom.
It's possible in principle.
It certainly wouldn't go undetected for long,
because the hijacker had the resources of,
let's say, a high-technology advanced nation behind him,
would not be able to hijack a satellite.
I know of no case where this has happened in the past.
Toto Geis reckons that operators
of telecommunications systems,
including satellites, of course,
are quite capable of coping with any sort of piracy,
should it ever occur.
But Joe McCormack is not so optimistic.
The public believes that they're in a safe world,
but the reality is that very little is safe
in satellite technology.
Partly due to the technology,
and it's also partly due to the attitude
of the people who control the technology.
There's no way you can have a 100% safe system,
so 90% may be good enough,
but there's always the 10% that will cause a problem.
Why should they cause a problem?
Why should they like you to hack into a satellite network?
It's mental chess.
That's the best analogy for it.
When you're only dealing with a very small handful of people
who could actually interrupt the satellite,
and brain power required is a lot more
than it would take to break into a computer system.
There's been no real reason to hijack a satellite yet.
What could be a good reason?
Boredom.
If you've done everything,
or rather, done as much as you can with the present technology,
you always want to go a little bit further.
It's just going one step beyond.
I believe that's not a spoof.
A satellite is a bird which sits out there in space,
and it's defenseless.
Somebody could grab control,
and most situations,
the satellites would respond and obey automatically.
I'll send an S.O.S. to the world
I'll send an S.O.S. to the world
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle, yeah
Priscilla, that does seem quite frightening,
the research you've done so far.
Do you know if there are some active hackers in this business?
You have hackers trying to break into computers.
You have people trying to break into satellites.
From my information, yes, there are.
But I have no proof. I haven't interviewed them yet.
When I get the interview, I will come back here and report.
Okay.
Would you say that people who are playing around with this technology
obviously must have money, too,
because it's not just something that you can do on a laboratory bench
or do at home, is it?
As a matter of fact, John McCormack gave me this information.
It's possible to find the equipment you need on the used market,
mainly the military surplus.
And a station, in order to hack into a satellite,
might cost from a minimum of 7,000 pounds
to a maximum of 15,000 pounds.
A lot depends if it's a homemade station
or if you want to buy everything new.
It obviously is a hacking activity for rich hackers.
And, of course, very bored.
Yes, as you just pointed out.
But, I mean, I remember the Captain Midnight situation a while back
where it turned out that it was a technician
at a television station in Florida, I believe it was,
who put up a signal and put a special message over the home box office,
and immediately there was this huge nationwide,
or US nationwide, search to try and find him.
And he was found and, in fact, prosecuted in the end.
So, I mean, on the other hand,
do you think that some of these people are not being found?
Well, if you wanted to hack into a satellite
and obviously use the facility and the capacity of the satellite,
as some are doing already, without being noticed,
it is possible.
And because the size of the dish is...
...be caught.
But they have to chase you by air.
And that means that an helicopter or an airplane has to come and find you.
And, obviously, this is very expensive.
Well, let's hope that satellite companies recognise the hijack threat
and take precautions to prevent misuse and abuse in the future.
That report was compiled by Rosella Ström.
And we'd like to hear your views on the subject too.
In the meantime, from Hilversum, Holland, it's cheers for now.
And cheers from New York.
This is WBAI in New York.
The program is Off The Hook.
I'm Emanuel Goldstein.
And we're talking tonight about telephone systems gone crazy,
satellite hijacking, as it were,
and all kinds of other fun things.
We'll be getting into New York telephone scandal in just a bit.
But first, a couple of more stories.
Again, our thanks to whoever it was that passed that on to me,
the Radio Netherlands piece there.
And hopefully we'll hear more from them in the future.
Now back to the Risks Digest,
which was pulled off the Internet Computer Network,
talking about phone companies gone crazy.
And I should say, at this point, we'll be taking phone calls
if you want to tell us your horror stories,
or if you have any questions as to what your phone is capable of
in the positive sense and in the horrible sense.
Phones can do a lot of damage.
The number is 279-3400, area code 212.
This story, while it may not be related to a phone company problem,
but the person writes,
As an undergraduate, the university decided to go from party-line rotary phones
to a brand-spanking-new digital switch
and give everyone their own private line.
No problem, right?
Well, you know the answer to this one.
Not only did we get our own phone lines,
but all the neat-o features that come with a digital switch,
such as call forwarding, speed dial, three-way calling,
call waiting, on and on,
and the ability to have a secret five-digit code to bill your calls to.
Due to a programming error,
it was quickly discovered that you could use your secret code from any telephone on campus.
And, of course, if you happened to incorrectly enter your secret code at another phone,
chances were that it was someone else's secret code that you entered,
and the call would go through.
Of course, when that person's bill came,
it ended up as a call from a phone they weren't at for a number they didn't call.
So, of course, the local telephone people on campus got this bug fixed
after about a month and an unknown number of mis-entered secret codes.
After this fix, another neat thing would show up.
During the late hours of the night,
when all the computer science hackers do their things
and make avid use of all the modem lines on campus,
the digital switch would tend to hang
and would not produce a dial tone.
Sometimes, it would actually connect you as an additional party to a conversation in progress.
And although you could hear both sides of the conversation,
they couldn't hear you,
no matter what tone you sent or how loud you screamed.
After the two parties hung up,
if you stayed on the line,
you would be connected to the next phone call which either of those two parties made,
although they could hear you this time.
However, they could not dial.
And until you hung up, they couldn't dial at all.
Through some trial and error, a friend of mine and I discovered that by hitting star-nine-nine,
which would kill all of your personal speed dial numbers,
by hitting star-nine-nine, the entire switch would reset,
losing all the speed dial numbers and other pre-programmed things.
Needless to say, after reporting this occurrence, the university did nothing.
So we talked to the makers of the switch, GTE,
and they came out and fixed it, no problems since then.
The moral of the story is this.
Software controls our lives,
and is written by people who are subject to sleeplessness,
caffeine or other drug addictions,
or just plain forgetfulness.
After all, how many times have you left out a bracket in some C code?
We had all better be aware of the risks and do the best we can.
8991990
There was a problem earlier this year with the census, folks,
the Census Bureau's toll-free telephone system.
Each census form sent by the Bureau of the Census was contained in an envelope
on which was printed a toll-free number to call in case of any questions.
That was 800-999-1990.
And I can tell by that number it's owned by MCI.
I had a relatively simple question, this person did,
and found that one of two things happened on the 100 or so times I tried the number.
Either 1, a busy signal, the usual result,
or 2, a few rings, a few rings pitched slightly higher,
then a click, and finally a connection to another person with a question.
The second case happened twice.
Both the other party and myself were rather confused for half a minute or so.
I finally did get through to an actual census employee,
and I relayed my problems with the phone system to her.
She replied that other callers had relayed similar problems,
and this contributor wonders if the Bureau of the Census
will fix its phone system in the next 10 years.
And finally, our final story for tonight.
This is for all you folks that think caller ID is the next best thing since the coming of Christ.
That's right, you'll be able to call people and identify yourself before they even pick up the phone.
And you'll receive phone calls, and you'll know whether or not to pick up the phone or not
because you'll see the phone number.
And if it's a creep you don't want to talk to,
you won't pick up the phone.
If it's someone you do want to talk to, you will pick up the phone.
If the creep is calling from the house of someone you do want to talk to, however, you are screwed.
But we won't get into that right now.
This comes from someone in some part of this country.
I can't tell by the address where they're from.
But he says,
I recently had an unpleasant taste of the disadvantages of the caller identification
that may be more widespread soon.
A few weeks ago, I called the university police's business line from my office phone
and asked a few minutes of questions about how to find out about outstanding warrants.
I had heard of someone getting arrested while renewing his driver's license.
I informed the officer that I spoke with that this was entirely moot.
After receiving my replies, I thought that was the end of it.
Thus you can imagine my surprise and annoyance
to find that two uniformed armed officers and their sergeant came to my workplace,
having located that, using the Campus Centrex's caller ID ability,
on phones with appropriate displays.
They spoke with my co-workers, knocked on my office door,
and, via surprise and intimidation, verified my ID.
This permitted them to run a warrant check on me.
I was clean, which was no surprise to me.
They skulked away shortly thereafter.
Conversations with the chief of police indicated that the rather zealous,
instigating officer's behavior was within acceptable bounds.
And if you raise enough suspicion, on a slow day,
this constitutes justification for nosing about your workplace.
Something to think about.
If you happen to be reading the pages of 2600 magazine in our last issue,
which was the summer issue, that's right, the summer issue,
you may have noticed, in fact, you may have noticed,
had you been listening to this radio station a few weeks ago,
mention of an 800 number, nice special 800 number you can call
to find out what your phone number is.
Real handy to have, you know?
And also, handy to have because you can tell what people know about you
when you make a phone call.
And you can tell how to defeat that.
Well, this 800 number no longer exists.
Apparently they got their bill and they've decided to discontinue the service.
But it was very handy to a number of people in the time that it was around.
And other than a moment of silence for its demise,
I'd like to share with you one of the benefits I got from it.
For one thing, we discovered that if you place an 800 call through an operator,
they don't know what your number is.
So if you're worried about calling the IRS or the Census Bureau
or whatever thing you're calling that you don't want to be identified,
place the call through the operator,
and at least for now, your number will show up as all fives.
They'll have the correct area code, but that's all they'll have.
Anything else, though, is suspect immediately.
They will have your phone number on an 800 number now
in a growing, a very rapidly growing number of cases.
So that 800 number showed us that.
It was also very, very handy to have when you were at phones
that you didn't know what the phone numbers were.
For instance, those rip-off pay phones that we all hate so much.
I went around the city and I found a few that I always was curious what their phone number was
because there's really no way to find out what the number is.
The operator won't tell you. The person who owns the store won't tell you.
The phone number is not written on the phone itself.
But if you call this 800 number, and very, very few customer-owned pay phones
don't allow you to call 800 numbers,
if you call the 800 number, it would tell you very merrily
what the phone number was you were calling from.
And tonight, we're going to call two of those numbers.
Yes, that's right. We're going to call a customer-owned pay phone.
Now you may ask, why in the world would anyone want to call a pay phone?
Well, I've called pay phones before on the radio
and sometimes had quite nice discussions with people who answer.
Sometimes not so nice discussions, but that's beside the point.
When you call a customer-owned pay phone,
more often than not, something unusual happens.
You see, they don't like you to call those phones
because there's no way they can charge while the person is on the phone
if he picks up a ringing phone.
So therefore, they use a different kind of system.
They use...
Well, maybe I should just connect and show you exactly what I'm talking about.
Let's get a dial tone.
And we'll dial one of the numbers.
I have two numbers here.
And these are two pay phones on 8th Avenue, right next to each other.
Let's see what happens.
Well, listen to that.
It's a computer tone.
Let's hit a touch tone.
Oh, my God.
I know what's happening here.
See if you can figure out what's happening.
I'm not 100% certain.
I'm going to call back because that's the first time I heard that.
But it sounded to me like when I hit that touch tone,
you could suddenly hear the surrounding noise of that pay phone.
In other words, it was kind of spying on the people around.
It sounded like traffic there.
I'm going to try it one more time.
Actually, what I'll do is I'll try the phone next to it
and see if the same thing happens.
Let's get another dial tone here and see what happens.
Yes.
I'd say very definitely that was street noise.
That shows you something.
I just hit a tone now.
I hit one single tone.
I did not even try this before.
Every customer-owned pay phone is slightly different.
Some will tell you how much money is in them.
Some will tell you things you really shouldn't know,
like billing information, that kind of thing.
But I think this is probably the most outrageous of the things that they do.
They actually spy on people from a phone that appears to be on the hook.
Most shocking.
Most shocking indeed.
Speaking of shocking, let's connect to something else just out of pure fun here.
This is a surprise.
279-3400.
This is the New York Telephone Newswire for Wednesday, October 10.
On Wall Street today, 9X closed at 74-18, down 7-8.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 2407.92, down 37.62.
Representatives from New York Telephone's management team
and the Communications Workers of America's international staff
met to launch a new phase in their relationship,
developing a more constructive mutual relationship.
During the September meeting, the group shared their thoughts
concerning the actions and reactions that had fueled some of the distrust
between union and management.
There was a consensus.
New York Telephone must develop a new way of doing things
that focuses the energies of the union and management where it should be,
on the customer.
The group agreed that the next step would be to focus on the quality process.
To address this, a session on quality is scheduled for October 19.
In other news, the Supreme Court yesterday let stand
a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling allowing regional phone companies
to compete in the lucrative information services market.
The seven bell companies want to sell their own information services,
ranging from stock quotes to classified ads, over phone lines.
The lower court ruling in Washington last April was a major victory
for the phone companies in their efforts to enter the growing market
of selling data by phone.
The next Newswire update will be Thursday morning.
Thank you for calling.
All right, that's the New York Telephone news line.
Lots of news from New York Telephone recently.
Some of it good, some of it bad.
And to put it all in perspective,
let's go back to January 1st, 1984.
That sound you may have heard there was the breaking up of the phone company.
That's right, the one massive phone company was split
into several different pieces, 9X being one of them,
9X becoming the parent company of New York Telephone.
And recently, something very strange has occurred.
The Public Service Commission in New York State
has come out and said that they're going to study,
they're going to study the idea of breaking up 9X.
They are considering forcing 9X to divest itself
of the New York Telephone company.
It's incredible.
Something I never even thought would be possible.
And a lot of this comes after reports of sex parties in Florida
that 9X was hosting and us rate payers were funding that kind of thing.
And I didn't see a little line on the phone bill that said,
you know, certain amount for sex parties for friends of the company.
So that kind of thing sort of was the last straw apparently
with the Public Service Commission.
And they are considering breaking up 9X.
And this would open the pathways for competition on the local level.
Something we're in desperate need of
because New York Telephone is a monopoly
as AT&T was a monopoly back in the past.
A lot of people say, well, is that such a good thing?
Is it good to have competition?
Because look what has happened with pay phones,
with long-distance companies.
All of a sudden, it's a rip-off.
You don't know what you're getting into.
You pick up a pay phone and you charge $10 for a local call.
You get signed up for some sleazy long-distance company.
Wasn't it better back in the days when you knew what you were getting?
Well, I have two answers to that.
One is, had we done it right to start with,
it wouldn't have gotten to this stage now.
And two, if you make it so hard for the alternate companies to operate
that the only way they can possibly turn a profit is by ripping people off,
you've got to take a good look at the rules of the game.
All right.
Well, I certainly have talked up enough at this hour.
We only have eight minutes left.
The phone number is 279-3400.
Your thoughts, feelings, comments, questions.
Good evening.
Yes.
Go ahead.
Pardon me.
You caught me off guard with a mouthful of corn chips.
Yeah.
Well, that was my intention.
Oh, good.
Well, it was my fault since I started.
I rung the phone just as soon as you came on the air.
I wanted to get some information about encryption programs.
I know you weren't talking about that, but it's been something I wanted to ask you.
And, by the way, congratulations for your new, more accessible time slot.
Well, I hope it lasts.
You know, I'm told that's not a definite thing right now,
but we are going to be back in two weeks.
The question is that for people who want to encrypt information so that,
well, let's take the case of these guys who are developing software
and the Feds came in and raided them in order to keep things private,
is there any decent encryption program?
I've heard some bad things about the DES program
and that apparently there are some side doors into that,
that if somebody really wants and they know what they're doing,
they can get in and not have to go through taking the whole thing.
Well, there's word that DES is not as uncrackable as it's cracked up to be.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
No pun intended.
And, of course, that's the reason being that NSA does not exactly want there
to be an uncrackable decryption standard.
They're going to want to be able to get into just about anything
and back doors are certainly a possibility there.
Do you know of anything like out on the shareware market
or anything on the underground market?
Encryption isn't exactly my forte, but I do know this.
The only way it's going to be really secure
is if there are lots of different standards floating around.
That way you never know what it is you're going to be trying to decrypt.
I don't think there should be just one standard.
I think there should be lots of different things that you can choose from.
Right, exactly.
I just wondered if you were aware of any one particularly good piece of software
or some algorithm that's really useful for this kind of stuff.
Well, I'm not, but if someone has one, send me the details here at WBAI.
All right. Thanks very much and congrats again.
Thanks for calling.
Fair enough.
279-3400. Good evening.
279-3400.
Well, it was nice hearing my voice there. Good evening.
Yeah, hi. I'd like to know if you could give out some information
on how I could subscribe to the magazine 2600.
Well, what I'll do is I'll give you the address.
Okay.
Okay, it's 2600 Magazine. That's the Hacker Quarterly.
Okay.
And that's P.O. Box 752.
752, okay.
Middle Island, New York, 11953.
And generally, if you mention that you're a BAI listener,
we send you a free sample.
Oh.
Because we're such nice people.
The subscription rate.
Sorry?
What is the subscription rate?
Well, you see, that's a funny thing here at BAI.
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to give prices over the air,
but if you call, I'll give you a phone number to call where it says all that information,
and that's 516-751-2600.
751-2600?
Right, and that's about all the promotion for that I can do right now.
Let's go to another phone call.
Good evening.
Hi, is this BAI?
Yes, it is.
Oh, I have some information that you might like.
Okay, let's hear it.
If you want to know, if you want to get the phone number from where you are,
and you don't, you dial 958.
Well, yes, that's an old one.
I mean, I knew that.
Maybe there are people out there that didn't know that.
Oh, because I heard you talk about that 800 number.
958 works from just about anywhere in lower New York State.
It does not work in New Jersey.
It does not work in Connecticut.
I did use it in New Jersey once.
I don't think it could ever work in New Jersey,
because it's a different phone company completely.
No, I did.
I swear, I used it in New Jersey once.
Well, maybe you were on a leased line of some sort.
I don't know, because it was a rental house, and there was a phone there.
And it was working, and they said, well, this is great.
It's working, but nobody can call us.
I said, wait a minute, and it worked.
Well, there is one way to always find out the phone number that you're calling from,
and that's to make a collect call to a friend,
and then a month later look at the phone bill and see what the number was.
That's a surefire way of doing it.
But other than that, if you can find an 800 number
that gives you automatic number identification, known as ANI,
or what you have, 958, which is known as ANAC, automatic number.
Oh, gosh, I forget what it stands for.
But it's slightly different.
Uh-huh.
Well, that's why I called it.
Right.
Yeah.
BAI?
On the air.
Oh, great.
Well, I just tried the 958 number.
And, yeah, I'm 55 miles west of New York City, and it works.
My number was...
I just read my number right over the line.
201 area code.
Yeah, well, it definitely did.
So that call I just called in was pretty certain.
This is a very interesting show.
I just tuned in a minute ago from my car,
and I said, wow, this guy's fascinating about all this information on the phone.
Now, when are you on again?
We'll be on two weeks from tonight, 9 to 10 o'clock.
And I encourage folks,
if you're interested in seeing this kind of program on the radio,
to write into the station and say that,
because we're kind of uncertain where we're going right now,
and we'd like to be on on a regular basis.
It's a very interesting topic,
and there's tons of material that we haven't even covered yet.
Yeah.
OK.
Well, 2600, that's the Hacker Quarterly.
That's a magazine that deals with passing information around
and, you know, hacker information, that kind of thing.
Right, OK.
All right, thanks so much for calling.
All right, peace.
All right, and that's going to pretty much do it for us right now.
The program is off the hook.
This is Emanuel Goldstein,
and I'll be back in two weeks from 9 to 10 o'clock.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show coming up at 10 o'clock.
Remember, information is free.
Share it liberally.
And we'll see you in two weeks.
Good night.
Good night.
99.5 FM, WBAI, New York.
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