Hey, sweetheart, this is Bernie Fleshken, agent of the stars, along with the very lovely
waitress for our show, Miss Dixie Lilly.
Ta-da!
Hey, Bern.
Love the outfit.
Day glow lime.
Yeah.
I love the occasion.
The color of money, doll.
Uh-oh.
That's right.
It's time for our incredible fundraising special.
I'm booking all my big guns, my hottest acts for this one.
You mean Zippy Jingles?
That's right.
Zippy Jingles, the radio clown.
We'll be here with his big bag of gags and gee-gaws.
Does his parole officer know he's using his gee-gaws again?
Never mind, sweetheart.
You'll be happy to know that the meat man will also be here.
With his special line of fresh-killed urban fowl.
Yep.
And we'll be cooking it up with my lounge act, Danny Teeny, and the fabulous April Fresh.
Oh.
And we'll also have a cool election year fair like Bushwinkle and Danny the Flying Quail.
Geez, Bern.
You really are pulling out all the stops.
Yeah.
Management wants us to prove that we can still pull our weight around here at pledge time.
I know it's going to be tough, Dixie.
That's why I'll be performing some big stunts myself for listener bucks.
Yeah, Bern.
I wanted to talk to you.
That's right.
Bernie Fleschken, your personal representative, will be jumping through hoops for your support.
Through flaming hoops, to be exact, at 30 feet straight down into a vat of Miracle Whip.
Bernie.
No Miracle Whip.
I can't afford to spread that stuff so deep.
It costs more than mayonnaise.
But, sweet...
Don't worry, Bern.
I have plenty of lard.
Lard?
Yeah.
But lard is flammable.
Isn't that going to make this an even more dangerous stunt?
To jump through a flaming hoop into a tub of lard?
I don't see you explode every time you light up a cigar, big guy.
Straight up.
Besides, you always say, Bern, you got to take chances, maybe even die, to raise money
at WBAI.
Yeah, and we're never afraid to die on BAI.
Done it a million times.
Whee!
Tune in to the Bernie Fleschken fundraising special this Monday morning, September 21st,
at 9.30 for a show worth a couple of your bucks.
That's this Monday morning at 9.30 on WBAI.
Hey, buddy, got a dime radio.
Who loves you, sweetheart?
Hubba, hubba, hubba...
And this is radio station WBAI in New York.
It's 9 o'clock, or thereabouts, and time for Off the Hook.
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Steve and we have quite a bit to tell you as far as uh what's been going on in the world of technology in the world at large and uh all kinds of other things and of course we'll be looking for some support from the listeners but uh that's later on stay tuned
♪♪
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Week after week, we discuss the high points
and low points of technology, telephones, computers,
the infrastructure, if you will,
of our cybernetic community.
I hate that phrase, but you know what I mean.
It's an ever-expanding, ever-present world
that we can no longer run away from.
Computers are everywhere.
Odds are there's a computer of some sort
only a few feet away from you.
And there are thousands, if not millions, of computers
that know your name.
Do you know their names?
♪♪
On this program, we sometimes tell you their names,
and sometimes we show you what they say.
♪♪
And, boy, are they saying some interesting things.
And sometimes they say things that are completely incorrect.
You know, I subscribe. Don't ask me why.
Well, you can ask me why, I suppose, because I do have a reason.
But I subscribe to the TRW Credentials Service.
And I do that basically so I can see what they're up to
and test them out.
And, my friends, they have failed
and are continuing to fail dramatically,
whatever test I put them to.
TRW, for those of you that are coming out of comas,
is an agency that keeps track
of virtually every American in existence
and tells you things about them,
about their credit rating, about when they pay their bills,
how much money they owe,
how much money they're allowed to owe,
what kind of bad things people have said about them in the past.
And, occasionally,
a smidgen of accurate information is passed along.
I've been subscribing to that service for about, oh, maybe,
maybe two and a half years now,
and I'm thinking seriously of canceling it
For something on the order of $35 a year,
you're entitled to see your credit report whenever you want
and also be told whenever somebody asks about you.
It's kind of weird, isn't it?
They tell people about you, and then for a fee,
they'll tell you who they tell.
Yeah.
And it's by no means a guarantee that you'll know
who's looking into you because TRW is only one company.
There are a few companies that
like to keep track of Americans and their credit ratings.
But a couple of weeks ago,
as I was thinking of canceling this service,
I thought it would be fun to
at least get my credit rating one more time.
Since I'm entitled to get it any time I want,
I picked up my telephone and dialed a special 800 number and said,
hey, I want my credit rating, and I want it now.
And they said, okay, we'll send it out, and they did.
It arrived, and, you know,
the first thing I noticed was that my current address was wrong.
They sent me my credit report.
They sent it to my address.
So how could they have my address wrong?
Well, they managed it somehow.
They somehow managed to have my previous address as my current address,
even though I subscribe to their service,
and obviously the address that I get the service at is my current address.
But, no, they couldn't figure that out.
And virtually every bit of information was wrong,
except for the things that credit card companies communicate to them,
and that's scarily accurate,
how much you owe and how much you're supposed to pay
and whether you pay on time.
Those things are easy to get right,
but the important things, such as where you live, who you work for,
and I don't have any of these, but I know if I did, they'd be wrong,
things like court appearances and various judgments
and bankruptcy, decidings, and all that kind of thing,
can really mess up your life if you don't know how to play the game.
And here, we try to offer tips as to how to play the game to win,
because we're all entitled to win,
but not at the expense of other people like ourselves.
That's kind of the rule of the hackers, I guess, if there is a rule of the hackers.
I've been away for the last three weeks or so.
I've been stumbling around Eastern Europe,
and boy, is that an interesting place for all kinds of reasons.
I've been to Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, yes, Yugoslavia,
Bulgaria,
Eastern Germany,
Hungary, and Romania.
And there's a lot you can learn from wandering around a place like that.
You can learn not to take for granted various things that we have here.
And I have to say, with a bit of shame,
that the thing that probably meant the most to me
was a cold glass of soda as I was walking around in the hot sun
in Eastern Europe, where ice cannot be translated into a word there.
They apparently don't use ice for anything.
It really made me think about things like that.
But the important thing was how people survive their daily lives.
It's really quite a struggle to get through a day in various places.
I'll give you an example.
Arriving in Bucharest, Romania,
which is one of the scariest countries, I think, around
because of the horror of the Ceausescu era.
The closest thing to a madman in power that I've seen in quite a while.
He literally robbed his own people
to pay off the national debt and build palaces for himself.
And created an element of fear, suspicion,
and just overall oppression that exists to this day.
Dimming the street lights and making it known that
one in a handful of people worked for Securitat
and was constantly telling bits of information
about their neighbors, family, friends.
The same kind of atmosphere can be found in many places.
It can even be found in this country if you move among the right circles.
And suspicion is something that never really goes away.
The suspicion never did go away in Romania.
It's like a friend of mine described it.
It's like there was this incredible machine.
This machine was always there, omnipresent.
It knew everything. It controlled everything.
And then one day, the machine disappeared from sight.
But it didn't go away.
And everybody knows the machine is still there someplace.
And they know that everything that happens is because of the machine.
And everything that does not happen is also because of the machine.
The machine is everywhere.
It's responsible for everything.
And in an atmosphere like that,
it's incredibly hard to lead a productive life.
Even as a tourist, you can sense these things.
And I sensed it pretty quickly.
As soon as I got off the train in Bucharest,
I ran into this guy who I thought worked for a tourist agency
because he happened to be standing behind a desk there.
Silly me, assuming something like that.
And he was talking to me about how much he admired America.
And I said, oh, that's okay, I guess.
Talking to me about John Steinbeck and Mark Twain
and all these American authors and how much he read
and how much he liked to practice his English.
And I had this Eastern European guidebook with me
and I knew what to watch for.
I knew the games and I'm a New Yorker,
so I know when someone's trying to con you.
So I was waiting for the warning signals.
And even though I'm fresh in a brand new city
where I didn't know a single word of the language and not a single person,
I figured I'd just see what this guy was up to.
And so he leads me to a hotel
because I was interested in staying someplace
because it was nighttime and I had no place to change money.
And I was kind of tired and I wanted to get a fresh start the next day.
And he said, you know, you can stay in this hotel.
They'll take your Western currency.
I had Austrian shillings with me.
And he said, but you know, it would be really nice
if I could change money with you
because, you know, I can't do it because I'm Romanian
and it would be a great service to me.
And people trade money on the black market all the time.
And I figured it wouldn't really be that big a deal,
especially if I was careful.
So he offered to give me a hundred US dollars
for a thousand Austrian shillings, which is about right.
It's about the going rate.
And he hands me a $100 bill.
Now, the way you're supposed to do this,
if anybody goes into Eastern Europe
and decides to work in the black market,
you're supposed to take the money they give you,
stick it in your pocket,
and then take your money out and give it to them.
That's the way it works.
And that's how you don't get ripped off
because that way they're not holding
both ends of the bargain at the same time.
And they understand this too, and it's perfectly okay.
But he hands me this $100 bill and I say, wait a minute.
I'm in Eastern Europe.
And if I try to change a $100 bill anywhere,
I'm going to get all this worthless currency back
that I won't be able to change into Western currency
when I get out of Eastern Europe.
So a $100 bill is a bit unacceptable for me.
Plus a $100 bill is fairly easy to counterfeit.
Not easy to counterfeit,
but more commonly counterfeited than, say, a one.
So he said, okay,
he's counting out all this money.
50s, or 150 anyway.
20s, 10s, 5s, and even 1s.
And he's counting out the money,
and he gives it to me, and I count out the money.
And as I'm counting it out,
I realize he only gave me $99.
And an alarm goes off inside my head
because I had just read in the Eastern European book
that a common ploy used by black market people
is to give you the wrong amount.
And then when you say, hey, you've given me the wrong amount,
they say, oh, I'm sorry.
They take it back.
They pretend to give you the right amount,
but then they do a sleight of hand,
and they wind up giving you back something that is different.
And that's how you get ripped off.
So I thought about all this in that one second,
and I said, the one thing that he was not expecting me to say,
I said, thank you.
And he said, no, no, that's wrong.
I only gave you $99.
I just saw you count it.
I said, no, no, you gave me $100.
It's fine.
Here, here's your thousand shillings.
Bye.
Well, it didn't go over very well.
And by this point, about five of his friends were surrounding me,
so that didn't bode well for the future either.
So he was getting very upset at this point,
saying, I don't have to trade money with you.
Give me my money back.
At this point, I had both the 99 US dollars
and the 1,000 Austrian shillings in my pocket
and six angry people surrounding me
in a foreign city in the country I'd never been in before in my life.
And all this happened in the first ten minutes.
Quite a welcoming, wouldn't you say?
So I figured the best thing for me would be to give him his money back
and try and get out of there as quickly as possible,
which is what I did.
And I figured I would walk into the middle of town.
Unfortunately, the train station, Gare du Nord,
is not anywhere near the middle of town,
and I had to walk down these dark, and I mean pitch-dark streets
where the streetlights had been turned off to save power
back in the Czeskow era and had never been turned back on since.
It was the most frightening thing in the entire trip that I took.
In fact, one of the most frightening things in my life, I'd have to say,
was that I didn't know who was behind me,
I didn't know what was in front of me,
and all I knew was this was a hostile environment in a very scary place.
But eventually I made it to an expensive hotel that took plastic.
And, friends, that's why having plastic is a good idea sometimes.
It can really save your neck.
And while I looked bedraggled and not like the kind of person
that would stay in an expensive hotel,
I had the right plastic card, so they had to treat me as an equal.
And they did, which was very nice.
And then the next day, and this is how this all ties into
what we do here on this program,
the next day I went back to that train station,
and I explored every single inch of it,
and I got to know exactly where everything was and how everything worked.
Because to get out of the country requires quite a bit of maneuvering.
You have to get reservations, and then you have to wait in line for tickets,
and if you don't do it right, you could be stuck for quite some time.
So, after falling off the horse,
the most important thing to do is to climb right back on it and don't be intimidated.
Don't allow yourself to be intimidated.
And so, inside of half an hour, I felt like I owned the place.
I knew where to go.
People even asked me in foreign tongues for directions,
and I was able to sort of tell them.
And I think that's what we have to do whenever something baffles us.
We don't walk away unless we plan to come back and figure it all out later.
And that's pretty much how things go.
You know, if you're afraid of something, if you refuse to learn, you won't.
But if you're determined enough, there's really no end to the benefits.
And there are quite a few benefits in store.
Knowing the credit card game is one thing that comes in very handy,
because no matter where you are in the world, it usually comes in handy,
although Eastern Europe is a place where things can go rather unpredictably sometimes.
For instance, walking around the streets of Belgrade,
which is also an interesting place, not nearly as scary as Bucharest,
but scary because there's a horrible war going on only about 100 miles away.
You'd never guess it, being in that city.
You would never guess there was a war going on in Yugoslavia.
And walking around in a rather expensive country,
I was looking for those little visa signs so that I could maybe get something to eat
and not have to worry until I got home about paying for it.
And I saw one, and I walked up to the place just to make sure.
I said, you do take this visa card, right?
And the man looked at me and shook his head and said,
No, no, only Yugoslavian visa.
I couldn't believe it.
I mean, now they're segregating credit cards by nationality.
I mean, what an incredible scam that the visa people have going here.
They make it seem as if you can use your visa card anywhere you go.
But in some countries, they only accept visa cards issued by their own country's banks.
What is the point?
What is the point of having something with the same name if it cannot be used in different countries?
Yugoslavian visas, unbelievable.
So that was a bit of a coming down.
I think I had a frankfurter that night, and that was it.
But you live and you learn.
Okay, that's pretty much what happened over the past few weeks, wandering around various places.
People can ask me questions later, I suppose, if they have any questions.
The phone system in foreign countries is weird.
No question about that.
Actually, I take that back.
The phone system in this country is weird.
Every place else is pretty much the same.
For instance, most countries do not have what we are very used to.
They do not have something called itemization.
Itemization is where you see the phone numbers that you dial on your phone bill.
What other countries have is a tick system.
That's where they send a little tick down the line, and that's kind of like a billing pulse.
And if you call someplace far away, it ticks about every five seconds or so.
If you call something local, it might only tick once for the whole call, or it might tick once every five minutes.
And you can get these little machines that will tell you how many ticks you have,
and then when your phone bill comes, it bills you for the amount of ticks that you have.
It's as simple as that.
The pay phones work the same way.
You drop, say, the equivalent of a quarter into a pay phone,
and that quarter gets diminished, either by five cents, ten cents, whatever.
And if it goes to zero, you get disconnected,
and you have to put more money in to extend the time of your call.
No warnings or anything like that.
No little voices coming on saying deposit a certain amount of money.
You just have to know how it works.
And the funny thing is that itemization is considered an invasion of privacy.
Now, here we are in this country talking about caller ID
and knowing who's calling you before you even pick up the phone.
In most other countries in the world, they don't want people in their house
or even the phone company to see the phone numbers that they are dialing.
And, in fact, some countries are offering a service now, kind of a compromise,
where they'll give you itemization,
but they'll X out the last four digits of the phone number
so that only you know who you really called.
Pretty amazing cultural differences there.
That's some of what goes on.
And, of course, it's a lot more difficult communicating.
Phones in Budapest are horrendous.
Most of them are broken.
In fact, most of the phones in Germany seem to be broken now,
which is a rather sad thing.
It used to be quite good.
But one can only hope that eventually,
eventually we'll all meet on some kind of a harmonic plane.
In any event, the program is off the hook.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein,
and we are here for another 20, actually another 33 minutes.
We're going to be asking for your support
in just a couple of minutes here on radio station WBAI.
And a number of people were listening last week
when we once again tried to air the radio program
having to do with cellular phone calls.
And there was a bit of controversy concerning
whether or not we were going to be able to do that.
And we did.
We did.
We did.
We did.
And there was a bit of controversy concerning that.
To put it bluntly, the program was yanked off the air midway.
And it's kind of a difficult situation
because, well, it's controversial.
Let's just put it that way.
To air something that has the perception of possibly being illegal.
Let me assure you it is not illegal.
And it was the most unfortunate event that took place here last week.
We here at WBAI can fall victim to the exact same thing that we always talk about.
Namely, not understanding how it all pieces together.
How it all works.
Briefly, cellular phone calls are extremely easy to listen to.
Anybody can do it.
And technically it's against the law to even listen.
Now if you have an old TV set you can just tune to channel 83 or channel 82
or one of those upper channels.
Tune around a little bit and you'll hear cellular phone calls.
And you'll be breaking the law.
You can also use a scanner, which are very easy to obtain, these scanners.
And tune to around the 800 megahertz section.
And listen to your heart's content.
And this is being done all the time.
The purpose of our airing phone calls last week,
and we did not air anything that was considered personal or confidential.
We were very careful about that.
There's nothing in there that can point to any particular part of the country.
Nothing there that can point to any particular person.
Nothing there that can even point to any particular time.
In fact, it's extremely possible that these phone calls were monitored before the law even took effect.
So there is no illegal activity on the part of anybody here at the radio station.
Only possible, possible illegal activity on the part of the person who recorded the phone calls.
And that again is impossible to prove, impossible to enforce.
The law itself is absurd, as most of us already know.
And unfortunately what we witnessed here last week was, I guess you could say, a panic reaction.
And not one that is entirely non-understandable.
So I ask that people forgive the station for that, and continue to listen, continue to ask questions.
And if you feel strongly about the matter, either way, please write in and let us know how you feel.
We'll even be taking some phone calls later on, and you can tell us that way how you feel about that or any other issue.
Now, I also want to point out that I guess if this was a commercial radio station,
and there was any element of freedom of speech, you'd be tempted to say,
well, you know, that just proves how fascist the station is and how people don't really care about freedom of speech.
And it's all, you know, irrelevant and open to the interpretation of whoever is in power.
And yeah, I guess, you know, you could say that that would be an interpretation.
But I honestly think that this was a misunderstanding of some sort.
And you have to continue to support the radio station for just that reason,
because if you cut off your nose to spite your face, you don't have much of a face left now, do you?
WBAI is the only place where you can even get the chance of hearing controversial topics such as that.
And the only chance that you'll have of hearing it in the future.
Yes, it's controversial. People are scared. They don't understand the laws. They don't understand the technology.
It happens. But at least we are here to talk about it. At least we're here to open a dialogue.
And if you value that, then this is the station for you.
Now, it's important for us here at this particular program to send a message as well.
That people here care about what we are trying to say, about the education we're trying to spread,
as far as how it all pieces together, how it all works, what the dangers are, what the threats are.
The fact that anybody can listen to your phone calls is something that should not be ignored.
It should not be protected.
It should not be something that is not talked about because it will offend people, offend corporations,
and show everybody just how fragile it all is.
That's why we need you to call us, not an hour from now, not a week from now, but right now.
212-279-3400
And pledge whatever you can afford.
$50 is the suggested pledge amount.
$25 for senior citizen students and people with low income.
And what you'll get for that is a special bonus that we're adding tonight for all callers to this particular show.
And it's kind of appropriate concerning the events of last week because we had the exact same arguments
about this particular item when it came out.
It's a videotape.
A videotape of Dutch computer hackers breaking into a U.S. military computer system.
And that's for anybody that pledges tonight during this particular radio program.
We're not going to be doing this next week, only doing that this week.
Our number is 212-279-3400.
If freedom of speech means something to you, then you'll recognize the value of both what we try to do on this particular program
and the value of seeing for yourself firsthand what is going on.
Firsthand knowledge is a very important thing.
It's one thing to say something on the radio.
It's quite another thing to show you exactly what is going on.
And that's what we are constantly striving to do.
For instance, a couple of weeks ago we repeated the show having to do with MCI Friends and Family,
which is only now getting some press.
We showed the world how easy it is for anybody to get information about the people you call.
We demonstrated it live on the radio.
And that's a whole lot more impressive than just simply saying that it's possible.
So, it's that kind of freedom that you don't see at other radio stations.
And yeah, it causes controversy sometimes.
It causes controversy right here at the radio station.
But, you know, I'd rather it cause controversy than cause indifference.
At least we know people are listening.
At least we know people care.
Do you care?
Do you care enough to pick up the phone and support the radio station?
We don't do this to make a profit.
We don't do this to pay for any kind of commercial product.
We do this simply so we can continue.
And you are our only means of continuing.
You know, this is incredible.
We've been doing this show now for a couple of years.
We have an atom bomb or something that dropped on the city.
I see only one phone call.
We have seven lines, my friends.
Seven lines.
Please show us that this program means something.
Because it's inspirational to know that there's a strong response out there.
It makes me and the other people connected with the program dig a little bit deeper.
Because we know that if we find something, there are people out there that care enough.
Yeah, you can care by listening.
You can care by telling your friends.
And that's great.
But the reality of the situation is that we need you to care enough to call and pledge.
212-279-3400.
So if you're driving, the tri-state area has more pay phones than I think any part of the world.
Please pull over.
It only takes a minute.
And the effects last for a long, long time.
They really do.
If we had, say, not had a single pledge drive,
if we had missed one of our pledge drives over the past, say, ten years,
there's no way we could be here now.
Every single one matters.
And just like every pledge drive matters,
every person that contributes to every single pledge drive also matters.
You see, it's a building block.
And you as individuals are capable of building the station, making us stronger,
making us say those things that sometimes cause people to freak out.
But people freaking out is a healthy sign.
You know, I learned that.
Walking around the streets of Eastern Europe,
you know what I'd look for?
I'd look for dissent.
I'd look for signs of people defying authority.
And you know what I looked for?
I looked for graffiti.
Yeah, if you saw graffiti, I found that that was a sign that there was human intelligence.
There was a sign that there was individuality,
that there were people willing to stand up and say enough.
And even if they did say guns and roses or something like that on the side of a statue,
it's something they wouldn't have said if they were living in fear.
Hopefully, when people express themselves, they'll say something intelligent.
And I did see a lot of intelligent statements.
For instance, an Abolish Apartheid stamp on the side of a water tower,
actually a water facility in Bulgaria.
It was in Cyrillic, but you could tell that it said Apartheid
and it had an exclamation point afterwards, so you knew what it was saying.
And it was such a healthy thing to see people not defacing public buildings and statues,
but expressing themselves in non-traditional ways.
Think about that.
Think about that next time you see a graffiti train or something.
Because individuality is something that we cannot put restrictions on.
We cannot define it.
It expresses itself in all kinds of different ways.
Who are we to legislate it away?
You know, I went into that situation thinking that graffiti was okay,
but for the most part, it was kind of ugly.
When you're in a place like Romania, where it's really, really scary,
you see things like the House of the People, this incredibly huge building
that's completely vacant, was never finished.
It's probably bigger than any building in the world.
And robbed the people of their food money, of their electricity, of everything they had,
so that it could be constructed, so that Nikolai and Elena could smile.
When you see something like that, that kind of fear,
you still feel the fear from that kind of a thing.
You realize how the little tiny bits of dissent really matter,
because other people see it, and other people are able to build off of it.
It all adds up.
And your support adds up.
We had a flurry of phone calls.
Please, let's get another flurry.
I know there's people out there, because I hear from them week after week.
And they say they get things from the radio program.
They learn things.
For instance, they learn that if you dial 958, you'll find out what your phone number is.
There you go.
That little bit of information couldn't be bought on the streets,
yet we freely give it out here at Off the Hook.
Other bits of information like that, when we find out things,
we pass them along to other people.
For instance, don't ever dial 450.
Other bits of information like that.
Actually, that only applies in the 516 area code.
But little tidbits like that.
212, 279, 3400.
We do take Visa and MasterCard,
those wonderful magical plastic bits that allow you to spend all over the world,
except in Yugoslavia.
212, 279, 3400.
We have no calls on the line.
I want to tell you something.
This is important.
When I went to Europe in 1989,
the Berlin Wall was still up.
And there were two different cities.
There was the black and white Berlin,
and there was the colored Berlin.
That's the way I looked upon them.
Eastern Berlin was a rather depressing place.
But there was a ray of light.
And I talked about this on the radio too back then.
There was a radio station.
A radio station known as Radio 100.
It was in West Berlin.
But when you have a radio station in West Berlin,
obviously the signal is going to get to East Berlin as well.
And it was inspirational because this was before the Wall fell.
And the radio station was getting calls from people in East Berlin.
And they were able to actually open a dialogue between the two cities.
They were able to play alternative music.
They were able to talk about gay and lesbian issues.
In short, they were able to do just about all the things that we do here at WBAI.
And I thought to myself, this is great.
This is amazing because this kind of concept for alternative radio
is actually catching on.
It's staking a claim in Europe as well as the United States.
And people are finally recognizing the value of radio.
And when I visited this station,
in fact I was interviewed on this station,
and I did all kinds of neat things,
and talked radio talk,
the biggest problem that they had was raising money.
It's that thing that transcends all different languages.
Raising money, that was the big problem.
How do we raise money? How do we keep on the air?
Well, I gave them some suggestions from things that we did here at BAI.
I said, you know, maybe you want to start asking for support from listeners
because commercials are not going to allow you to continue doing this kind of programming.
And today, three years later, Radio 100 no longer exists.
They went off the air.
They went off the air because they could not get the money they needed.
And you know, back then, 1989, being at this radio station,
that was the last thing anybody would have expected.
The station was flourishing. It was in the middle of Berlin.
Changes were in the air.
There were things to talk about, lots of things to talk about.
And today they're gone.
So friends, it can happen. It does happen.
If you don't raise the money, you disappear and you get replaced.
Today, the frequency of Radio 100 in Berlin is a French broadcasting group
that plays Technopop 24 hours a day.
And there might be some kind of a demand for that type of thing,
but it's just not the same.
So we're not going to go that route, at least I certainly hope not,
but there are always things that could happen.
Things like cutting back on the broadcast day,
things like moving to a less desirable frequency,
all kinds of things that are rumored.
And the way to combat that is to come out fighting,
to stand up and say, this is my radio station and I support it.
All you have to do is call 212-279-3400.
I should point out, though, if you're in New York City, don't dial 212.
You'll only confuse the phone company.
And again, for a pledge of $50 or $25,
depending on your wealth status in this nation,
we'll send you absolutely free,
well actually at no additional charge, as a thank you,
a videotape that will show you exactly what hackers do.
You don't have to read about it in the New York Post,
you don't have to see it on a 10 o'clock news.
You can see for yourself.
Dutch hackers getting into a military computer system.
This was done last year.
Bits of it aired on that horrendous program.
Now it can be told with Geraldo Rivera.
It wasn't all that bad, but I guess it was pretty bad from most people's perspective.
Okay, it was terrible.
But now you can see the whole thing and reach your own conclusions.
And we're big on that here.
We're big on presenting you with evidence,
with first-hand information,
and having you judge it for yourself.
Same thing with music.
When we play music on the radio station,
we don't play the kind of thing that they play on Hot 97 or whatever.
Because there's a time and place for that,
and the time and place is not here.
It's as simple as that.
We're alternative.
We do different things.
And we allow our listeners to judge whatever it is that comes over the airwaves.
We're listening.
We're listening now.
Please speak to us.
212-279-3400.
The program is off the hook.
This is Emanuel Goldstein.
It's important that you show your support for us
and for the kinds of things that we do here at the radio station
and here at this radio program.
It's not done anyplace else in the country as far as I know.
And that's true of a lot of programs here.
If you're one of the people where this particular program means something special,
if you've got that hacking spirit,
if you're just curious,
if you ask too many questions and people tell you to shut up,
then you're our kind of person.
No two ways about it.
If you're a Sneakers fan,
and, of course, we're going to be talking about that in the weeks to come,
you're probably our kind of person too
because that film really wasn't all that bad, was it?
It could have been a lot worse.
212-279-3400.
In fact, FiberOptic is here,
and I'd like to get in three words or less your opinion of the film, Sneakers.
Three words.
With a cast like that, I mean, Robert Redford,
and, oh, the names go on and on and on.
It's an incredible, incredible acting ensemble there.
But despite that, it was a good film.
Usually films like that get overacted and overrated.
But it was fun, and I think the most important thing was
that it didn't have to be a bad film.
But it was fun, and I think the most important thing was
that it did not portray hackers or hacker sympathizers as the problem
because they're really not the problem.
They're the people that show you what's happening.
They're the people that show you what's wrong.
The problem is, as the film said, too many secrets.
Hey, that's exactly it.
Too many secrets.
And, you know, if this program wasn't called Off the Hook,
I would like to call it Too Many Secrets.
Anyway, we don't want to keep any secrets from our listeners.
We want to share with you everything that we have,
and we have something rather interesting here that I'd like to share.
But please, 212-279-3400.
I don't know if that's the updated tally.
If it is, I think I'm going to slip my wrist.
But if we don't start doing better,
it's not going to portend too well for us here.
I know that.
212-279-3400.
All kinds of ominous things are in the works.
You never know all those unspoken threats.
212-279-3400.
I can't say it enough, but I will.
212-279-3400 is the phone number to call.
Remember, any pledge tonight will get a free videotape.
VHS, NTSC, all that kind of thing.
And on that videotape, you'll find, from 2600 Magazine,
the hacker video of Dutch hackers getting into a military system,
an American military system, last year.
And no, don't worry.
There's nothing illegal about having the videotape.
It's been out for quite some time, and many, many people have it.
And you won't be put on any list or anything evil like that.
Just please show us your support, and we'll say thank you in that way.
And plus, if videotapes don't mean all that much to you,
you'll be getting the WBAI program guide for a full year,
and it's the best way to know what is on the air.
Your friends and neighbors will be knocking on your door
to find out what's on BAI.
When they do, please tell them to subscribe so they'll get their own copy.
212-279-3400.
Please, let's have a flurry of calls.
We have two calls on the line.
Let's make that four, because, hey, that's not bad.
We have three already, so all we need is one more.
One more call, and we're up to four.
212-279-3400.
212-279-3400 is our phone number.
Keep those calls coming in.
They are all important to us.
Now, this is something, an example of how scary it can get out there,
and it can get pretty gosh-darn scary.
It's a man named Mark Forsten,
and this is taking place in Fresno, California.
And in weeks to come, we'll be talking about this
and talking with some of the people involved, I hope.
He's a system operator of a gay bulletin board,
and there are quite a few gay bulletin boards in the country,
a growing number,
and something like this certainly affects everybody running such a board.
In fact, if you think about it for a second,
it affects everybody running any kind of a board.
And if you think about it for a minute,
you realize that it affects almost anybody in the country
interested in freedom of speech.
Okay, in the August 13, 1992 edition of BAR,
there was a story about Mark Forsten,
who was the operator of a gay BBS in Fresno, California,
who was apparently the target of a calculated sting
organized by Fresno police officer Frank Clark,
who gained access to Forsten's private membership,
Gay, Lesbian and Bi BBS, known as Designer BBS,
and then engaged in a fantasy sex chat,
agreed to meet Forsten,
and then, upon meeting him, arrested him when he showed up.
And what's fascinating here is that the person,
the police officer,
pretended that he was a 15-year-old person.
It says he pretended he was a 15-year-old person.
And so when the system operator showed up to meet this alleged 15-year-old,
he arrested him on the basis of child pornography.
An imaginary person, somebody who doesn't even exist.
Forsten is now charged with the following felonies,
attempted child molestation,
attempted use of a minor for an illicit purpose,
and sodomy rape of a minor.
Now the police officer, Clark, a Christian fundamentalist,
believes in the need for spiritual warfare against Satan,
and has openly discussed the matter in front of his Assembly of God audience.
And according to various posts on the well,
out in California it gets even more complicated.
Mark Forsten, age 49, is the sole operator
of a three-year-old gay, lesbian, and bi BBS
called Designer Bulletin Board System.
It includes restricted sexually explicit programs
in addition to games, e-mail, and general programs.
In March 1992, 42-year-old Fresno police officer Frank Clark
joined Mark Forsten's BBS.
Clark is a Christian fundamentalist who Forsten contends
is trying to rid the city of homosexual perverts.
And Forsten says he's been the target of hate messages
both at his home and on his BBS.
Forsten claims that when Clark answered the preliminary online questionnaire,
he gave his birth date as 1973, which would make him 19.
Forsten did the usual telephone voice verification
to confirm Clark's age.
However, Clark charges that he told Forsten he was 15 years old.
Then it gets complicated.
At that time, Forsten was installing a new accounting software program
which later proved effective.
By placing a dollar symbol as a code in front of a new user's name,
the software accidentally allowed some users access
to restricted areas of the BBS
which contained sexually explicit materials.
Clark began to chat online with Forsten after he joined the BBS,
and they engaged in a fantasy sex chat.
Forsten agreed to meet Clark to do a visual verification of his identity.
Because of Clark's behavior online,
Forsten suspected that Clark was Forten's archenemy, Jack Porter,
up to his old homophobic tricks.
Forsten wanted to investigate to ascertain if it was Porter
or an innocent 19-year-old on the verge of coming out.
Forsten was arrested when he went to the date.
After the arrest, Clark held a news conference
heralding his capture of Forsten,
who was charged with being a child molester and pedophile
and with luring minors onto his BBS to corrupt their morals
and engage in illicit acts.
The publicity led to an 18-year-old man coming forward
who claimed that Forsten had raped him when he was 16.
Tom Bradenberry from Fresno's Queer Nation
has identified said young man as a gay man
who attended Queer Nation meetings
and participated with the group in a sacramental demonstration
against AB 101.
Another young man told a TV reporter
that the man who accused Forsten of raping him
lied in order to get revenge on Forsten
for kicking him off the BBS two years earlier.
Forsten having no money for an attorney
was assigned a public defender.
Clark recently told a reporter that the police department
initially did not want him to pursue the ensuing case,
fearful that Mark Forsten and the homosexuals might sue us.
They haven't yet.
It doesn't take much to realize how a story like this
can affect us all.
And it will.
And things like this will continue to happen, no doubt.
Imagine being charged with child molestation
when there's no child.
It's a crime to meet somebody who's underage
if the prosecution believes your intent is immoral.
Have you heard that story before?
If you haven't, then I ask you now to please think
of where you would have heard that story
if you didn't hear it here.
We're almost finished for tonight.
212-279-3400 is our telephone number.
212-279-3400.
It would be nice to see a few more calls come in
before we go off tonight.
212-279-3400.
We need a rather strong response.
And so far a tally doesn't look all that impressive, I must say.
We could use a couple of large pledges
so that we can walk out of here looking a bit respectable
before the computer show goes on.
212-279-3400.
Those of you on Long Island,
those of you in Connecticut, New Jersey,
we need to hear from you.
Remember, everybody that calls in will get a videotape.
It runs about a half hour
and shows in startling detail,
with narration, by the way,
how Dutch computer hackers were able to easily,
and I mean incredibly easily,
gain access to military computers in this country.
It was, I hate to say this word,
but it was shocking.
It was incredibly shocking how easy it was.
Just like the cellular phone calls last week
that we aired bits and pieces of,
it's so easy.
You have to know how easy it is
to realize what kind of defense there is
against intrusions,
against compromising data,
against privacy invasions.
Now, you can read all the boring articles
and listen to me drone on and on for hours at a time
about how it's possible,
but it's another thing entirely to see it
and to hear it for yourself.
Don't ever give up that right.
212-279-3400.
We have two calls on the line,
and if we can make that four calls,
I just might be happy.
Yes.
212-279-3400.
We only have about a minute left,
so please, you're one of two people
that can make a big difference here.
212-279-3400.
Every time that switchboard lights up,
it causes frenzy in the control room,
and frenzy is a good sign.
Remember that.
Frenzy is something that is a healthy sign,
something that you don't see
in the commercial radio stations
because everything is planned.
Everything is organized.
Everything is boring and bland,
and there's absolutely nothing unpredictable.
One more phone call.
212-279-3400.
You can be that person.
Please, make it so, in the words of Jean-Luc.
Okay, we are just about out of time.
I'd like to close, though,
with a quote from a book.
The difficulty in these times,
ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes
rise within us only to meet
the horrible truth and be shattered.
It's really a wonder I haven't dropped all my ideals
because they seem so absurd
and impossible to carry out.
Yet I keep them because, in spite of everything,
I still believe
that people are really good at heart.
I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation
consisting of confusion, misery, and death.
I see the world
gradually being turned into a wilderness.
I hear the ever-approaching thunder,
which will destroy us, too.
I can feel the sufferings of millions,
and yet, if I look up into the heavens,
I think that it will all come out right,
that this cruelty, too, will end,
and that peace and tranquility will return again.
In the meantime,
I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps
the time will come
when I shall be able to carry them out.
And a special thank you to Anne Frank
for those words.
We'll see you next week.
Stay tuned for The Computer Show.
Good night.
The Computer Show
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And at 10 o'clock, this is WBAI, New York.
Next up, The Personal Computer Show.
And welcome to The Personal Computer Show
here on WBAI.
Dave Burstein, Hank Key,
and I have a special treat for you,
because you know what it is?
Tonight is fundraising.
Wait a minute.
This is the chance we give people
opportunities for remarkable bargains,
software they couldn't get at anything
like this price.
We shouldn't scare them away
by using words like that.
We're going to give them a chance
to make a difference.
At anything like this price,
we shouldn't scare them away
by using words like that.
We should tell them what we got for them.
We've got good stuff.
Okay.
We got good stuff.
We got things like PageMaker
and C-Development packages
and Lotus and Mouses
and Image Studios
and all those wonderful things.
But do you know why we have that stuff, Dave?
We need the money.
It's fundraising tonight.
We've worked hard all month.
I've worked hard.
Dave has worked hard.
Claude has worked hard.
Everybody.
Emmanuel has worked hard.
We've all worked hard,
and the only reason we've worked hard
is to get your money.
So before we go any further,
let me tell you,
279-3400.
That's an area code.
212-279-3400.
Call right now.
Don't wait for us to read off the list,
because the people on the other ends of the phone
have the list.
You can tell them what you're interested in,
and they can go down the list.
In the meantime,
we'll read the list at a much more slow pace.
Now, if you happen to have a modem,
Hank, what can I do if I have a modem?
Well, you can get onto the Bulletin Board.
The number is 718-539-3338,
and it's Bulletin 7.
And if you just want to download the file,
it's BLT 7.
So there are three things you can do.
One is you can call up 279-3400
and just say,
what's on,
and they'll tell you quickly what's on
or whatever you're interested in.
The other is go on the Bulletin Board.
And the third is,
well, maybe you have some patience
and listen to what we have to say.
And contrary to what you may have heard
from Emmanuel in the last hour,
that's a very clean Bulletin Board.
Nothing dirty is happening there.
We just have lists of premiums for you.
That's all.
Bulletin number 7.
Okay.
279-3400.
Area code 212-279-3400.
Call in right now.
And, you know,
since we're not taking your calls on the air,
you can leave the radio on while you're calling in,
and you can, you know, hear what we're doing.
When you call in,
make a pledge,
or don't make a pledge.
Just join the station for the basic $50 a year rate
and get the program guide.
But, you know,
if there's an extra $5 or $10 in your wallet,
it's amazing what kind of premiums you can get.
Why are you teasing these people?
And if you put them on your Visa card or your MasterCard,
we can get the use of your money right away,
and you don't have to pay for it
until the next billing cycle.
Hank, why don't you start it off
and tell them what kind of premiums we have.
Okay, fine.
First off is Aldis PageMaker.
I opened the box inadvertently,
so that's my mistake.
It's version 4.0.
That's the latest version,
and because it's my mistake,
we're requesting a donation of $125.
Everything is intact.
The skits are there.
Registration cards are there.
And at $125 donation,
let's see who's the quickest on trigger for that one.
Dave, what's the cheapest you've seen that on the street at?
It's got to be $300, $400.
It's the current version of PageMaker,
which, at least this week,
is the leading desktop publishing package for the IBM.
They're going to be shooting that one out real hard soon.
And I haven't seen that under $400 yet.
This was somebody's mistake when we did the paperwork, I guess.
We should have been asking for more on that one.
Next we have is Ballin's C++,
which is the development kit,
and there I understand that the list price
is around $700, $800 in street price.