...giving you hopefully up-to-the-minute news concerning major events affecting international
politics.
This is Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of physics, and this has been Exploration.
Good evening.
In 1975, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, random murders, beatings, and
unexplained, often fatal accidents were the norm.
It was this government-induced environment which led to the shootout on June 26th of
that year, where two FBI agents and one Native American were killed, resulting in one of
the biggest manhunts in FBI history.
It led to the arrest and imprisonment of Indian leader Leonard Peltier.
On Sunday, July 26th, beginning at 7 p.m., WBAI and the New Community Cinema of Huntington,
Long Island, will present a special screening of the documentary film dealing with this
history, Incident at Oglala, immediately followed by a panel discussion about the FBI's attacks
on the American Indian movement.
Speakers include Civil Rights Attorney William Kunstler, Michelle Vignola of the Leonard
Peltier Defense Committee, Shinnecock Attorney Roberta Hunter of the Suffolk Human Rights
Commission, and Ingrid Washina-Watsock of the American Indian Community House.
The panel will be moderated by WBAI's Gustavo Silva, host of Circle of Red Nations.
So come to the special screening of Incident at Oglala at the New Community Cinema, 423
Park Avenue in Huntington, Long Island, Sunday, July 26th at 7 p.m.
For more information, call 212-279-0707 or 516-423-7653.
And you are listening to Radio Station WBAI, New York.
It's 9 o'clock, time for Off the Hook.
And a very good evening to one and all.
The program is Off the Hook.
This is Emanuel Goldstein, here with you for another hour, up until 10 o'clock, talking
about high-tech, low-intelligence, and the combinations thereof.
It's been an interesting week.
And, you know, it's only going to get weirder.
Those of you listening last week know that we aired some rather risque material in the
form of cellular phone calls, and I just found out that the end of that show was never aired,
so what we'll have to do is repeat the whole thing in a couple of weeks and allow people
to hear the unedited version.
But a lot of people express dismay at hearing cellular phone calls going out over the airwaves.
A lot of people express dismay when they learn that their calls are being monitored.
And really, the question is, who do you express this dismay to?
Who is the problem, and where do the solutions lie?
Is the problem the people that listen in, or is the problem the fact that you can listen
in?
Is the problem the fact that there isn't a law to prevent people really from listening
in, or is the problem that there is no technological ability to scramble conversations and keep
people from doing this, whether it's legal or not?
Those are the questions that should be debated, and, of course, we welcome any kind of feedback,
input, that kind of thing.
We've got several letters on the subject.
I'd like to read one to you.
I won't say where it's from, except that that's from New Jersey.
My compliments to you and your staff, to the great show that aired on July 1st on the Cellular
Phone Recordings.
I had recorded part of the program and found it humorous, the phone conversations and your
music selection.
Perhaps a candid camera, a television show that aired once with Alan Fund, would be best
to describe what can happen with this so-called modern technology with our phone systems.
I would be interested in expansion of this show into the Pentagon conversations and perhaps
some Senators.
How secure are they in their communications?
Can we tap into their conversations?
You never know what you'll be airing on your show.
That makes it very interesting listening, and that's certainly the case with a lot of
programs here at BAI.
You never really know what you'll hear next.
And the reason we did that, the reason we did that was to show people what was possible.
Nobody's privacy was compromised.
We were careful not to let any identities go out or anything like that.
But it was a glaring example of how the most intimate of our conversations could be listened
to by anybody, something that should upset you.
And again, apologies for the airing of that being cut short last week.
We'll be airing the whole thing at some point over the summer.
So if you just make a habit of listening in every week to this program, well then eventually
you'll hear the whole thing.
Okay, we have been up to some interesting things.
Actually last week, for those of you that can read into radio waves, I wasn't really
here.
You heard my voice, but I was actually on tape.
And the reason for that was that I was attending a hacker convention in another part of the
country, a city I'd never been to before, St. Louis, Missouri.
And what an interesting place that turned out to be, but I'll get to that in a minute.
The most important thing was the actual get-together of hackers from all over the country, in fact
all over the globe really, well over a hundred of them, all gathered together to trade stories,
trade information.
Yes, that's right.
Information was passed back and forth, and all kinds of other stories, techniques, escapades.
And there were quite a few adventures that occurred.
It's always a healthy thing to get together with people that share your interests, that
find your interests to be acceptable.
You don't have to go over this debate over and over again about what is moral and what
is not moral, and whether hacking is like stealing.
I mean, I don't mind having that debate.
I really don't.
I welcome the debate, but you have to get past that at some time.
You have to start actually talking about hacking, about what is being found out, about
what is out there, and how it all works, how it all fits together.
That was the common denominator at this convention, known as SummerCon, something that's actually
been going on for quite some time in the Midwest.
And it's heartening to see lots of people that still have the spirit.
They've been through hell.
A lot of them have been indicted, put in jail even.
I met quite a few people that actually served time for various things.
Some of them have done things that I really don't think are too advisable.
However, I think the penalties were perhaps a bit much, sending somebody to jail for making
a free phone call.
I don't know.
I don't know if that's quite the right way to deal with it.
But that's another program right there.
A lot of diversity, a lot of different lifestyles, but that same common denominator of curiosity
and the spirit of adventure, and somehow a sense of humor that is never lost, despite
all the crap that happens.
And there's a whole new saga of that that has just been opened up today, which we'll
get to a little later in the program.
No doubt those of you watching television, watching the TV news, listening to the radio,
and reading tabloids will find out about this, if you have not already.
Hopefully tonight we can set the record straight for whatever it's worth.
So, these conventions will occur again, hopefully there'll be some in New York.
In any event, we have monthly hacker meetings now in four cities, which certainly is proof
positive of the hacker spirit that will not die, despite attempts of authority figures.
And boy, let me tell you something.
I don't go out looking for trouble with authority, but for some reason, for some reason it always
seems to follow me.
I don't know why this is.
But wherever I go, there's something about authority figures that troubles me.
And apparently there's something about me that troubles authority figures, because we
just keep coming into conflict.
Now, the first instance of this occurred in St. Louis, where a lot of us were getting
together and trading stories, things like that.
Oh, we even went trashing, you know.
Trashing is jumping into dumpsters and finding bits of information from various large companies
that have thrown out the information.
They don't need it anymore, so we would like to learn from that, and we learned quite a
bit from that.
And there's nothing wrong with learning, right?
That's what I've been taught.
So there was quite a bit of that going on, except for the first time in my life, after
going trashing, I realized that there were so many hackers in the neighborhood that we
had competition, and that we had to hit certain buildings before other hackers would hit certain
buildings, and the whole thing became kind of a game, where you had to get all the good
information before other people did.
And it was a real jovial experience, a lot of camaraderie, a lot of sharing.
Nobody really kept anything to themselves, and made quite a bit of interesting friends
out there, I'd say.
Be nice to see that kind of thing happen more often on a global scale, but we're just going
to have to try a little harder to do that.
Now, our first problem with authority figures took place in a mall in St. Louis.
Now, you know, we don't go out looking for trouble, do we?
No, of course not.
We, you know, do our own thing.
We hang out, we talk, we go to food courts in shopping malls.
You know, people do that.
And there's nothing really bad about that, is there?
But what I'm learning in this country, what I'm learning in our society, is that looks
mean an awful lot.
And if you look the wrong way, and if you happen to be the wrong color, or the wrong
ethnic group, or the wrong religion, or the wrong age, or whatever, if you carry something
like a skateboard, or if you wear your hair spiked, or if you wear a tie-dye t-shirt,
you're going to get all kinds of garbage from all kinds of people that just don't understand,
and don't care to understand.
In this particular case, a bunch of us were sitting around, not making any noise, not
doing anything bad, just sitting around.
And a security guard decided that he didn't like the way we looked, and came up to one
of us and said, you're going to have to turn your hat around, or you're going to have to leave.
Now, this was the most amazing thing I had ever heard, this security guard actually ordering
somebody to not wear their hat backwards.
And the way that I deal with situations like that, and I hope more people out there deal
with situations in the same way, you don't just challenge authority, you do whatever
you can to completely upset authority and put it on its ear, because there are certain
things that you do not have to take, and being told how to look is one of those things.
Being told that you look wrong and must change your appearance is something that I find completely
offensive.
So, we got a bunch of our hackers together and decided to take a trip to Sears, and Sears
was having a sale on hats, you know, those baseball cap type of things, and we thought
we'd be friendly, you know, we thought we wouldn't try and cause any trouble with the
natives.
We bought St. Louis Cardinals hats, a lot of them, and we all wore our hats backwards.
You know, it feels better sometimes to wear your hat backwards, I don't know if people
out there are as daring as I am, but yeah, you wear your hat backwards and a lot more
air gets into your forehead, and you know, the cap doesn't really hurt in the back unless
you really stick your head up high.
We had a high old time walking around the mall, and we got about two minutes away from
Sears before we found ourselves surrounded by security guards, who said that we were
violating a rule of the mall, and I asked, what rule is there that dictates how you must
wear your hat?
And they found a sign, they actually pointed to the sign and said that, ah, there's a rule
there.
The rule said, clothing must be worn in the way in which it was intended.
Now I don't know where they came up with a rule like this, but apparently what that means
is you cannot wear things inside out, you cannot wear hats backwards, you cannot wear
your shoes on the wrong feet, all kinds of possible interpretations of this law.
And that's when the big debate started, and I believe it was the supervisor of the security
force that I got into the debate with, and I said, what in God's name is the purpose
of a law that tells you you cannot wear your hat backwards?
Where I come from, which is a civilized city of New York, lots of people wear their hats
backwards, sideways, upside down, whatever they want to do, it is not a big deal.
And a security guard looked at me and said, if you wear your hat backwards, you're going
to get shot by gang members.
And I said, say what?
If I wear my hat backwards, I'm going to get shot just for wearing my hat backwards?
He said, that's the way it works, if you wear your hat backwards, you see, you're indicating
that you're part of a gang, and this is the most dangerous mall in the world.
He wasn't doing much for the shoppers by confessing all this to us, but he said, you'll be shot
in no time if you continue to walk around the mall, and we're doing this for your own
protection.
The same rule that any infringement of liberty always falls back upon.
Yeah, it's for your own good, for your own protection.
or else you'll be shot by some non-conformist.
And I said, look, if, hypothetical situation here, just bear with me for a second and follow
my logic, if a lot of black people were being shot by a lot of white people, would your
reaction then be to ban all of the black people from entering the mall and say that they were
going to be shot if they walked into this mall?
And he didn't choose to follow that logic, he just repeated in that security guard way
of his that you have to turn your hat around or leave the mall.
So then my next point was, well, here we are all wearing our hats backwards and you say
that we're about to be shot by all these gang members, well, don't you think, the security
force that you are, that maybe you should be looking for the people with guns, not the
people with hats.
And he said, well, you know, we can't always find them, so we go for the obvious solutions.
It's just like everything else, where they take away touch-tone phones and replace them
with rotary phones because that way you won't have drug dealers beeping people with touch-tones.
Oh, sure, you inconvenience everyone else, but it's for your own good.
Yeah, and of course, if you outlaw beepers for anybody under 18, then you won't have
any 18-year-old or younger drug dealers because they won't be allowed to have beepers.
Never mind that drug dealing is just slightly illegal in itself.
Making beepers illegal will really put the nail in the coffin.
It's hard to counter logic like that, but the group of us, I won't say gang because
obviously it has negative connotations, but the group of us refused to turn our hats around.
It just was not the right thing to do.
And we decided we didn't want to spend a few days in jail.
We decided to leave, but we left with our hats on backwards.
Not only did we leave with our hats on backwards, we walked around the entire mall outside.
Not to prove a point so much as the fact that we were lost, but the point was proven anyway.
We weren't harassed by anybody.
We wore our hats the way we wanted to wear them, and I hope people out there, no matter
how your individuality is contested, challenged, that you stand up to it, that you don't let
yourself be pushed around, and that you let other people know when something like this
happens.
And I believe the name of this mall is the Northwest Mall, it's right by the airport
in St. Louis.
If anybody wants to go out there with their hat backwards, please do so.
It's necessary to not allow these things to happen.
They say, of course, that it's private property and they can do whatever they want.
That might be the case.
I'm not really up on mall law, but it's something that people should know about and people should
get upset about.
Seems like a minor thing, but when you saw everybody walking around like dutiful sheep,
wearing their hats the right way, just plodding along like they're in Dawn of the Dead, it's
kind of a sad thing.
We need to be individuals.
We need to wear our shirts backwards and spike our hair and talk whatever lingo we want to
talk and hang out with the people we want to hang out with.
It's called America, in my eyes, and it's been quite an independence day for me because
I learned a lot about freedom, learned a lot about liberty, about challenging authority.
I went to Canada.
Now Canada is a cool country.
I like to say it's got all the advantages of America and none of the disadvantages.
It's sort of true and sort of not true.
They have liberty, freedom, and they don't really have troops all over the place, which
is always nice.
They don't invade people.
They have their problems.
They have language problems.
They have provinces that want to break away and things like that, but for the most part,
people there and authority there is a lot more laid back.
Now to underline this, when we entered Canada, and this is a couple of hackers entering Canada,
no big deal, just curious people exploring a foreign land, we were asked, how come we're
coming to Canada?
Why are we going there?
Just to explore, hang out, be there for a couple of days.
How much money are you bringing with you?
Are you visiting anybody?
A couple more questions.
Okay, welcome to Canada.
That's it.
A couple of days later, we decide to come back home, and you know, friends, it wasn't
the first time that I thought that move was a mistake.
See, I've been harassed at borders before, I've been harassed at the United States borders
more times than any, and it's a troubling thing.
Yeah, you know that they have to take precautions, you know that they have to be careful about
who they let into the country, but I've never seen anything quite like this, and what happened
to me yesterday, to me and a friend of mine yesterday was, well, I hate to use a New York
Post word, but it was shocking.
It was a very shocking, dismaying, disturbing incident.
Now, we first had problems when we pulled up to the, I guess they're immigration officers
or customs officials or whatever, it's kind of like a toll booth type of a thing, except
you don't give them money.
You simply answer the same questions that you answered going into Canada.
How long were you here?
Did you buy anything expensive?
You know, that kind of thing.
And where do you live?
All right, it started off nice and pleasant.
We pulled up and started answering a couple of questions, where do you live, that kind
of thing.
But after a while, the questions started becoming more and more hostile.
Now, we had a rented car, and for whatever reason, the rental agreement had been lost,
and this does happen occasionally, but it's very easy to check these things out.
I know because I've asked law officials how easy it is to check out, and I know people
that check these things out.
All you have to do is, if you really have a problem with something, you call it in and
see if, in fact, a car has been stolen or if this person is dangerous or whatever.
It's very easy to check that out.
But it became clear that that was not what was going to happen.
It became clear that we were going to be given the once-over, twice-over, however many times
just because they didn't like the way we looked.
And after it became clear they didn't like the way we looked, we made it clear that we
didn't like the way they acted, and we became more and more terse with them.
And when they asked questions like, how come I get the feeling that you're not being honest
with us, we'd answer with things like, maybe because you're just too suspicious.
Why don't you just check it out?
Why don't you just run the license plate and see that there is nothing wrong?
But of course, they could not do that.
They had to send these suspicious-looking people into the customs building where we
were held for the next three hours for no reason at all.
And I'll tell you, what was really interesting about this was watching how U.S. Customs operates.
It was fascinating, folks.
It was absolutely fascinating.
I saw how everybody, and I'm not exaggerating here.
I might sound like I'm exaggerating, but I am not.
Every white person going through the border was asked about one or two questions and waved
on.
Every black, Hispanic, or otherwise minority person was interrogated, and in most instances
sent inside to be searched, to have their baggage opened, to have their cars ripped
apart.
It was one of the most dismaying things I think I've ever seen.
But after watching this for quite some time, I realized that I didn't have to smile.
I didn't have to sit there and nod, yes sir, no sir.
Dammit, I was an American citizen and I was being mistreated by my own government, yet
again, for no reason.
And you know, folks, we don't have to take this.
We don't have to sit back and just smile and realize, hey, these people have guns and they
can do whatever they want and run roughshod over us.
You don't have to take that.
And you let them know that you're not happy with it.
And at one point, I did let them know.
I said, you know, this is really an abomination here.
And I said, well, you know, it's just a routine thing.
Everybody has to go through it.
I said, routine?
The only people you have in here are people that are the wrong color and people that are
wearing the wrong kinds of clothing, referring to tie-dye shirts.
I said, the only people you have in here are people with tie-dye shirts and black people.
And you know, one of the customs officers said, kind of as a half-aside, I've got one
myself actually.
Now, I think he was referring to a tie-dye shirt, but who knows, maybe he was referring
to a black person.
I don't know.
And I sure didn't want to find out.
But when you're in a situation where you know that they've got absolutely nothing on
you, and believe me, folks, you want to make sure that they can't get things on you.
They didn't get anything on me because there was nothing to get on me.
But when you're in a situation like that, you can be as righteous as you want to be.
You can say, look, there's nothing illegal here.
Go check it out.
Do you want me to explain it to you?
Do you want me to tell you what this particular thing is?
Now, one thing that they really hate, and I suggest everybody do this when you go over
the border and when you get harassed, because I imagine a lot of BAI listeners will get
harassed, especially if you say you listen to BAI.
That's probably a no-no up there.
If you are asked questions, you simply answer them to the best of your ability, but if they
ask you what it is that you do, say that you're a freelance writer.
Oh, they hate that.
They do not like writers.
And almost every time I was asked that question, because we were asked the same questions about
four or five different times by these people, we said we were freelance writers, and they
said, so what do you write?
I said all kinds of things, including accounts of my experiences while traveling that appear
in various major newspapers and magazines, as well as articles about computer hackers
and telephone technology and, yes, abridging of certain fundamental rights.
They don't like that kind of thing.
And they also don't like it when they find things they don't understand, and believe
me, when you have a couple of computer hackers traveling around, there's plenty of things
that the authorities will not understand, such as magazine articles that might have
been written.
At one point, they were questioning our integrity.
They were saying, you folks are writers for 2600 Magazine, and aren't you telling people
how to break into computer systems and how to defeat technology and do illegal things?
And we said, we don't have to answer that question, because we've got certain rights.
Freedom of the press.
Ever hear of freedom of the press?
You can't stop us, and you won't.
They moved on.
They moved on to various bits of technology that we carried with us, including FM wireless
transmitters, the schematics of which we printed a couple of issues ago.
I said, what are these things?
They look evil.
And we explained, you know, you can get these kind of things in Radio Shack.
They're transmitters.
Transmit little things at very low frequencies over low power, rather, not low frequencies,
over FM frequencies.
They opened them up.
They broke them, actually.
They broke both of them.
And they didn't understand it at all.
And then they were asking all about our credit cards, because you know something, folks?
I'm going to tell you this here.
When you have a credit card, every single credit card company allows you to do this.
They allow you to get credit cards under different names.
As long as you pay the bill, you can have a credit card under any name you want.
And it's kind of neat to have credit cards under all different names, because you can
flash them and impress people.
Fun thing to do at hacker conventions, you know?
But of course, when you're obsessed with illegal things, when you're suspicious of
everybody, you think that all of these other names mean something significant.
So when they found all these additional cards and additional identities, as they put them,
they thought for sure we were up to something, even though we said, look, the card numbers
are exactly the same as the real names here.
So they're simply additions.
They're simply additional names that the credit card companies allow.
It's perfectly legal.
Go check it out.
So after the first couple of hours, we decided we weren't going to not have fun.
We decided to call our friends all over the country on their pay phones and have them
call us back.
And we were having a grand old time speaking to everybody, and that's when they said we
could leave.
So they tore apart the car and made quite a mess of it.
They allowed us back into this wonderful country.
And you know what they said on the way out?
They said, you know, you're probably upset.
You probably think that you've been hassled.
You probably think that us holding you here for three hours was a bad thing.
But you know, sometimes it's necessary.
Now, of course, first of all, they wanted so badly to find something on us because they
didn't like our looks to start with.
And then once they realized we were into technology and we understood things and were capable
of manipulating things to our advantage, they wanted something on us so badly that three
times, three separate times, they tore apart the car looking for something.
And they searched us, made us empty our pockets, asked to see our money several times.
I don't know if they were asking for a bribe or what, but they kept asking over and over
again how much money we had, what we did, what we bought, where we went, who we were,
why we were there, what we wrote, what kind of things did we write.
And so after all of this, they said, you know, you probably feel like it's a bad thing.
But it's important that we do this.
It's important that we check people out sometimes.
And the reason they gave was, the main reason they gave for checking us out so much were
these little FM wireless transmitters, which was very easy to demonstrate and explain to
them.
They said, we thought, and we had to confer with all the customs agents all over the country,
our technological experts, we thought that these things could be used to rip off automatic
teller machines, because there have been all kinds of bank robberies.
And these devices look like they might be able to tap into banks and give out money
from ATMs.
Now, first of all, five-year-old kids know that banks don't use wireless communication
to spit money out of ATMs.
I think that's a little bit of common sense right there.
They didn't know this.
They had to check this out.
Or so they said.
I don't really believe that story.
But that's the excuse they gave.
They said, we had to check it out.
And you know, we got their badge numbers.
We got their names.
We got their address.
We got their phone numbers.
We got everything.
And we're not going to let this rest.
We're going to keep challenging things like this, whether it's a hat, whether it's being
harassed entering a country because of the way you look, because of your racial makeup,
because of what you say, how you act, or what your name is.
That's the kind of thing that you've got to stand up for.
And when it happens to you, you tell other people.
Enough said about that.
We're going to get into what happened today, more or less along the same lines against
computer hackers, right after we play a song in tribute to bank robbers that never were.
We're going to get into what happened today, more or less along the same lines against computer
hackers, right after we play a song in tribute to bank robbers that never were.
We're going to get into what happened today, more or less along the same lines against
computer hackers, right after we play a song in tribute to bank robbers that never were.
We're going to get into what happened today, more or less along the same lines against
computer hackers, right after we play a song in tribute to bank robbers that never were.
Get away, get away, get away, get away, get away, get away, get away, get away.
where every song is done by a different group and quite a lot of interesting
versions on there and the program is off the hook this is Emanuel Goldstein we're
together until 10 o'clock talking about all kinds of abridgments of freedom in
the electronic world and in the real world as well because they're never too
far apart you know first they tell us what we what we can say what we can do
on computer systems the next thing you know they're telling us what to do on
newspapers on the radio things like that well we may one day be known as the
Freedom Network but right now we're still WBAI and we tell you all kinds of
things as they happen probably before other people do today was a rather
interesting day there was an indictment at press conference here in New York
City announcing the indictment of five computer hackers at least one of which
has appeared fairly regularly on this program as none other than fiber-optic
the others were known as outlaw corrupt acid freak scorpion names like that and
of course you look at those names you say wow what evil people what horrible
things they must have been doing but let me tell you when that when people are
are young adventuresome and into different sometimes mischievous things
you never know what kind of names they going to come up with you can't really
judge somebody by a name now can you oh yeah of course you can we do it all the
time but doesn't make it all right anyway I'd like to read a couple of
things here and then tell you a couple of things and if we have time take a
couple of phone calls but I can't guarantee anything at this particular
point now a lot of this centered around a so-called hacker group known as MOD
in the indictment they have a definition of this they say MOD was a closely knit
group of computer hackers now it's interesting I should say this because
that's the exact same phrase they used when they were describing the Legion of
Doom a couple years ago and they were indicting them left and right close in
the group now this is rather funny here they say MOD was a closely knit group of
computer hackers located primarily in the New York City area and of course
they define the term computer hacker as someone who uses a computer or telephone
to obtain unauthorized access to other computers which of course is not an
accurate definition but we won't even get into that what's funny here is when
they say MOD was a closely knit group of computer hackers they go on to say the
letters MOD had various meanings among them masters of disaster and masters of
deception in other words nobody really knew what MOD stood for nobody really
knew what the initials meant this is a closely knit group of people that didn't
even know what their name was in fact there are people that are members of MOD
that didn't even know they were members of MOD because there really isn't such a
tightly organized group of people and I'm speaking from from personal
experience here because knowing computer hackers you know that they're not
exactly a tightly organized group there were a bit more organization maybe these
things wouldn't happen but there is very little organization so right away we're
starting off in the very first part of this indictment with something that is
not true and they go on to talk all about people using the various handles
and various companies that they quote-unquote victimized Southwestern
Bell British Telecom of North America New York Telephone Pacific Bell US West
Martin Marietta ITT Information America TRW and various other places as well
now they say there is a conspiracy and of course a conspiracy to prove a
conspiracy you have to prove organization which is why that first
part is so important why it's so important to say that this was a tightly
knit group of people they say from in or about 1989 through the date of the
filing of this indictment in the Southern District of New York and
elsewhere these hackers I will give their handles because I'm sure you can
read the post to get other names we don't have to give them out here outlaw
John Farrington corrupt fiber-optic acid freak scorpion and others known and
unknown to the grand jury collectively the co-conspirators unlawfully willfully
and knowingly did combine conspire confederate and agree together and with
each other to commit offenses against the United States of America to wit to
possess unauthorized access devices with the intent to defraud folks you
know what an unauthorized access devices a password a password to a computer
system you write down a password which you get somehow or maybe an authorization
code that might allow you to make a free phone call I'm not saying that they had
this themselves but I'm looking at their definition of this something like that
is known as an unauthorized access device a bunch of numbers written on a
piece of paper that's it all right there you go that's your conspiracy right
there did this with the intent to defraud in violation of title 18 United
States code blah blah blah to use and traffic and unauthorized access devices
with the intent to defraud to access federal interest computers without
authorization to intercept electronic communications to commit wire fraud
it was a part and object of the conspiracy of the co-conspirators
unlawfully willfully knowingly and with the intent to defraud would and did
possess 15 and more unauthorized access devices to with the co-conspirators
would and did possess 15 and more unauthorized passwords user
identifications personal identification numbers and other access devices that
permitted access to computer systems databases and telephone services not
exactly John Gotti material but it's getting the same amount of attention
it's getting the same amount of press well actually no that's not true it's
not getting the same amount of press but it's getting the same amount of hysteria
attached to it same amount of tabloid nonsense that goes with with these
stories and what we're talking about are people simply exploring computer systems
now you may not think that's right you may think that what they're doing is is
illegal wrong but is it so wrong that you would charge them with these felony
counts that can carry many years in prison would you send some of our
brightest people that we have that simply believe in exploring certain
certain caves certain haunted houses if you will an analogy that many people
like but it is an analogy we send those people to prison what will what will
become of that what will we gain in mainstream society and how will they
come out
alright let's get into some specifics here goal of the conspiracy again I have
to point out I really really doubt that these hackers or any other hackers in
in the country that I've ever heard of or seen sat around and said let's have
this massive conspiracy to defraud all these people to do this do that
like I said hacking is a very unorganized sport where people simply
wander around and see how various systems work we get hackers on our
voicemail system we get hackers on our answering machine get hackers all over
the place and while you may not always be happy with what they do in the long
run what they are doing is healthy goal of the conspiracy it was the goal of the
conspiracy of the members of M.O.D. whatever it stood for would gain access
to and control of computer systems in order to enhance their image and
prestige among other computer hackers to harass and intimidate rival hackers and
other people they did not like to obtain telephone credit information and other
services without paying for them and to obtain passwords account numbers and
other things of value that they could sell to others last one if if that is
true of course I condemn that kind of thing but then I have to also ask the
same question does the punishment fit the crime and again that's something
that has to be proven that I know of no case where somebody would actually sell
information and if it is if it is proven that something like that happened it is
a very rare thing in the hacker world believe me it would be a first the
co-conspirators form the group M.O.D. to further their computer hacking
activities and to compete with other computer hackers in their quest for
access to and control of computer systems the members of M.O.D. exchange
computer related information among themselves including passwords user
identifications and personal identification numbers the members of M.O.D.
also assisted each other in breaking into computer systems by sharing
technical information that's really what they don't like they shared
technical information regarding the configuration and security systems of
target computers the members of M.O.D. agreed to share important computer
information only among themselves and not with other computer hackers well
that my friends is a damn double lie because I know of many instances where
these people helped out other inexperienced people and answered
questions and no they didn't lead them into a life of crime they answered
questions about their telephones about how to defeat call waiting about how to
do various things that people are not always taught I suppose that makes them
part of the conspiracy as well the co-conspirators obtained passwords user
identifications and other unauthorized access devices through a variety of
means including data interceptions social engineering which they define as
making telephone calls to telephone company employees and other persons
pretending to be computer technicians or others who are authorized to obtain
access devices and related information one of the oldest tricks in the book
where you fake somebody out on the telephone and they tell you something
that's supposed to and it's never really been considered a crime before but I
suppose now with caller ID and all that kind of thing we're going to be
accountable for 100% of all of our actions at all times here's another one
password grabbing and password cracking programs we've devoted quite a bit of
space to this in 2600 co-conspirators wrote and used various computer programs
that were designed to steal passwords from computers in which the programs
inserted the co-conspirators maintained other programs that were designed to
crack encrypted passwords that is to take passwords that have been scrambled
into a code for security purposes and to break the code so that the passwords
could be used to obtain unauthorized access to computer systems this kind of
thing is like a hobby that many people engage in to see if they can crack a
code it's now going to be illegal even to try in the comfort of your own home
to crack a code
over at axe on or about November 28th 1989 members of MOD caused virtually all
the information contained within the learning link computer operated by the
educational broadcasting corporation to be destroyed and caused a message to be
left on the computer that said in part happy thanksgiving you turkeys from all
of us at MOD and of course that kind of destruction is something that does not
happen very often in the hacker world and something like that of course is not
a good thing is frowned upon by almost everybody that I know and something like
that if you're going to accuse someone somebody of something like that you
better prove it and I hope they're able to prove an allegation like that because
that's a blasphemy if they don't and even if they if they do manage to prove
something on that again you have to ask the question does the punishment fit the
crime
but that is that is something that is so rare it is really the exception here for
as far as all the accusations the the crimes that these people are being
accused of this person here for instance January 8th 1990 accessed a New York
telephone switching computer without authorization they issued a command to
call forward all calls received by one telephone number to another telephone
number that's several years in prison doing that yeah or several hundred
thousand dollars fine you you take your choice sure you know access something
without authorization you issue a command without authorization it's not
right you're doing something you're not supposed to do just like when you enter
a building that's locked to explore that's something you're not supposed to
do either but you react in a completely different way you have better security
you don't make it so damn easy for people to do things like this why is this
still able to be done it's been happening now for years do you think by
intimidating people by sending people away and finding them and putting them
through hell that you're going to stop everybody from exploring from playing
with systems you're not it's a big waste of time this other person possessed
numerous password files containing hundreds of encrypted and unencrypted
user identifications and passwords to telephone company computers and other
computers possession of passwords major crime their question is how can somebody
get things like this why the phone company so inept that they allow their
passwords to get out this other person possessed a backdoor computer program in
a password grabbing program this other person on May 31st 1991 obtained
unauthorized access to a Southwestern Bell computer in St. Louis Missouri
someone else obtained unauthorized access to a Southwestern Bell telephone
switching computer in Houston Texas and issued commands so that calls received
by one telephone number with the automatically forwarded to another
number it's basically a lot of the same bits of information but what's what's
very interesting here what's very disturbing here is what is said in a
couple of other other examples other items honor about November 5th 1991 from
his residence in Brooklyn New York the hacker known as corrupt obtained a user
identification and password and later on November 5th 1991 this person called the
hacker known as outlaw and provided them with the intercepted user
identification and password now the question on a lot of people's minds
would be how did they know that how did they know that hacker a gave this
information to hacker B and friends for the first time ever we now know that
telephone lines of computer hackers are being tapped not just pen registers not
just keeping track of the digits that you dial we've known that for a long
time the phone conversations are being listened to and this affects quite a few
people because a lot of the people that are involved here people that I speak to
on a regular basis which means my phones are probably tapped as well you realize
that they're really scared they're really scared of these kids that know
how to use technology and they're scared of anybody that knows that kind of thing
they're scared of people sharing information and they want to stop it at
all costs I can point to the undesirable things they can point to to a moron that
might crash a computer system and blame everybody else for that and say this is
what computer hackers do they can define computer hackers as people that break
into computer systems and destroy things but those of us that know these people
those of us that are part of this world know it's a lie that something that is
simply said to get public opinion on their side I hope when you read the
tabloids tomorrow and watch the eleven o'clock news and see all the propaganda
that's going out there that you think about this and you realize that there's
an agenda here there's a reason for this to be happening and that while they may
succeed here while they may manage to to either put people away or shut them up
for the rest of their lives or just make them into quivering masses of jello that
won't cause any more problems the threat does not stop there threat does
not stop with a bunch of mischievous kids because after that is over there
will be more threats we got rid of the Soviets we didn't get rid the CIA of the
military we didn't get rid of it we'll just find new threats and that is what's
going to happen if they successfully managed to put down all these people
with curiosity that go into the wrong places sometimes and they'll find the
next group of people that are out of line that look the wrong way that act
the wrong way that are uppity that wear the wrong clothes that wear their hats
backwards and they'll control you they'll make you do what they want you
to do so that's why I feel people have to understand what is at issue here what
the case is all about maybe you have people that have been breaking into
computer systems and manipulating telephones and putting call forwarding
on a phone line someplace or maybe it's just a little bit bigger than that maybe
these are kids playing like kids have always played but because there's more
at stake here because technology is something that the people in power want
to be able to control maybe a few sacrificial lambs are in order you gotta
be careful this kind of thing you know something else you gotta be careful of
and this is especially troubling in this particular instance hackers are turning
against hackers and this is something that was mentioned earlier in the
indictment that this group allegedly harassed hackers they did not like and
while I was down in St. Louis at this hacker convention I met some of these
hackers that claim to have been harassed by New York City hackers and they said
yeah you know they put call forwarding on my phone line and as soon as they did
that I called the FBI and turned them in because it's one thing to do it to
somebody else but when they do it to to me that's something that I can't
tolerate and you know that's such a stupid thing to do because you're
turning away from everything that you've ever learned and you're bowing in to the
pressure and saying okay this is legitimate it's okay then to to go after
these people and take everything that they own out of their homes and take
their computers and take their their notebooks and take all the books that
they read and take all their personal effects it's okay if it's for my benefit
and the thing that we have to learn as hackers and as people that are into
freedom and liberty freedom of speech I think all of our listeners can
appreciate that we have to learn that that's not okay that we don't allow
people to do that kind of thing to us and get away with it so it's a sad thing
to see hackers actually falling for that line and I hope that's an isolated
instance and I hope it's something that is soon corrected and I'm sorry we
didn't have any time for phone calls and we won't be back next week either
because the Democratic Convention is in town and of course we have to cover that
in our unique BAI style but I'd like people to think about the troubling
things that they've heard about tonight and if you want to to help out in
whatever way please call us at the office at 2600 magazine tell us what you
can do because a lot of things are at stake here the number is five one six
seven five one twenty six hundred and you can leave a message on the machine
and hopefully become a part of the ever-present fight for freedom this has
been off the hook my name is Manuel Goldstein I'll be back in two weeks from
nine to ten o'clock talking about whatever else has come up then and
hopefully having time for some phone calls stay tuned for the personal
computer show goodnight