9 p.m. Saturday. 9 p.m. Saturday.
Oh, it's that time again for our day of love, lust, renunciation, sex and violence. Ring
Day on WBAI. We'll be using the Metropolitan Opera version with James Levine and some absolutely
fantastic voices. I'll be starting on Valentine's Day, appropriately enough. It's 7 in the morning
and running straight through until 2 in the morning. So, join me. I'm Manya. I've been
doing this for a while and whether it's your first time or the most recent, you'll like
it. And a very, a very good evening to one and all. It's just about 10 o'clock. Time
for Off the Hook. Yeah, time for Off the, is that two or is that three? That's three.
Thank you. We're having some technical difficulties. Send in your pledge and we won't have as many.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call. It couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would. Bum-diddly-bum
for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bum-diddly-bum.
And our apologies for the slightly disorganization you heard before. Things aren't where they're
supposed to be. Things aren't working quite the way they're supposed to work. And right
now, the only way we can bring you this program is to kind of stretch around the entire studio.
Microphone is all the way at one end and a tape recorder is all the way on the other
end and you have to sort of do a balancing act to get to both. But that's part of what
we're all about here at WBAI is a consistent balancing act. That's what we will endeavor
to do in the next hour. The program is Off the Hook. This is Emanuel Goldstein. And we
are having all kinds of other stories, other technical difficulties as well that we'll
be sharing with you. I will be taking your phone calls, 212-279-3400. And hopefully you
can partake in this madness. Okay, let's get right into things. We've got some special
announcement type things, some news type things, and bits of data and information. And again,
your phone calls are a vital part of that, 212-279-3400. Okay, here are some experiences,
some nasty experiences from people. Now, occasionally we tell you about the licenses that people
have a lot of problems with, you know, where you have kind of a duplicate of some sort,
somebody else's name or address or social security number is remarkably similar to yours.
And you wind up having to pay a lot of grief for that. Well, this person named Jim Roberts
or James Roberts, if you will, says he received in the mail from the state of Maryland, which
is where he lives, a notice that my driver's license is revoked based on a DWI arrest by a
person with a similar name in 1985. On all official documents, including driver's licenses,
I use my full name, William James Roberts. The person with the same birth date named James
Roberts resided in Florida, a state I have never visited, and he was arrested in Tennessee.
To have my license reinstated, I must prove to the hearing board that I am not the DWI James
Roberts, something I suspect it will not be easy to do. If one has a real DWI, he gets a day in
court, but if one has merely a computer-generated DWI, he has no such right. The notice indicated
that James Roberts had no sex, weighed, it's true, weighed zero pounds, was zero feet, zero inches
in height, and had blank eyes. So the folks who programmed the database, well, the information
you're required to have on your driver's license is not useful when they want to roll up the numbers
on license revocations, apparently. I suspect that if I were Barbara James Roberts, that is, sex F,
I would have gotten the same notice. In that case, it might be easier to fight, but what if I were a
woman with an ambiguous middle name, say Barbara Kelly Roberts, and the revokee were just Kelly
Roberts, really a male, but to Maryland, an M or an F? Then I would again be in difficulties.
The next step in the widening scope of the database may be just to use your birth date and the
soundex code of your last name. That should considerably improve the numbers achieved by the
responsible bureaucrats in their hunt for more revocations. Incredible. If anyone out there has
ever had that happen to them, I'd sure like to hear what kind of experiences you've been put through.
And this doesn't just apply to driver's licenses. It can apply to anything, anything at all that
involves computers and credit reports and that kind of thing. All right, here's something else.
This comes from Mark Colon, who heard this on the BBC. The tail end of the sports news at the end of
NewsHour, which is a BBC program, which you can get on shortwave if you have a shortwave here.
The morning BBC show heard on WBUR, among other places. It's also heard in some public stations.
I don't think any in New York, though. The mention of an error in a betting computer at a Greyhound
racetrack. The computer continued to accept bets well after the conclusion of the race. Needless to say,
many gleeful track bettors bought tickets for the dog that had already won and claimed their winnings.
The article also mentioned that some people are just born losers after the race had finished.
One hundred and thirty nine people bet on dogs that had already lost. The government management
reported that they intend to reclaim all of the unfairly won monies. However, they stated that they
intend to keep the money from the losers.
Okay. Now, what else do we have for you? A Reuters report found in New York Times, January 21st, 1993,
states that computer disks holding secret information on Brazil's banking reserves have disappeared from
the central bank. The federal police are investigating the loss. According to the report, President
Itamar Franco took the unusual step of releasing information on the reserves to offset any damage or
financial speculation from loss of the disks. The disks held information on day-to-day reserve
operations and details, like where the reserves are invested, what they consisted of, and how the
reserves were generated.
Yes. A computer glitch two weeks ago means some accident compensation clients have been sent
multiple identical letters promising them checks for zero dollars and zero cents.
Teacher Angela Watt received three envelopes the other day from the Accident Rehabilitation and
Compensation Insurance Corporation, and this is in New Zealand, by the way. This is relating to her
son Andrew, who sprained his ankle while picking apricots. That's what they do in New Zealand.
The first letter gave Andrew's medical fee number and requested that he keep it in a safe place.
The second did the same thing, but added mysteriously that, although you have claimed zero dollars and
zero cents, legislative regulations provide maximum limits of payment of zero dollars and zero cents.
Payment of this amount will be forwarded. Confused and craving enlightenment, Mrs. Watt opened the
third letter. She found a check for $29, a refund for Andrew's doctor's fee.
Palmerston North branch manager Joe Burney said the corporation reprogrammed its Wellington
computer on January 12th to stop it sending out individual letters for every part of a client's
claim. Under the old system, you would get separate letters and checks for each part of a claim,
the doctor's fee, the prescription charge, and the physiotherapy, she said. The new computer
program was supposed to save all the claims, add them up, and send out one letter and one check.
Something happened. There was one letter all right, but it was sent out three times in some cases.
Oh, this is a good one for those of you that think you're safe from using pirated copies of software.
Listen to what happened in Germany. Employees of IBM, Philips, the German Federal Interior
Ministry, and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution are among those who unwittingly
turned themselves in when a German computer software company resorted to an undercover strategy
to find out who was using illegal copies of one of its programs. Hundreds of customers accepted
CADSoft's offer of a free demonstration program that, unknown to them, searched their computer
hard disks for illegal copies. Where the search was successful, a message appeared on the monitor
screen inviting the customer to print out and return a voucher for a free handbook of the latest
version of the program. However, instead of a handbook, the users received a letter from the Bavarian
based software company's lawyers. Since the demonstration program was distributed last June,
about 400 people have returned the voucher which contained coded information about the type of
computer and the version of the illegally copied CADSoft program being used.
CADSoft is now seeking damages of at least 6,000 Deutschmarks, each from the illegal users.
Of course, nobody knows if this is legal yet for them to do this kind of thing, but they're preparing
for some long legal battles. That's the newest way of fighting quote-unquote software crime.
And that comes to us from the Risks Digest.
How about this? A superior court judge has upheld the Milpitas Unified School District's
two-year-old ban on the Wizards spelling game. That's out of California, by the way.
The ruling was handed down last Friday, actually a few Fridays ago. The computer game was banned
in 1990 by the school board following complaints from parents that it promoted satanic worship.
Teachers seeking to reverse the ban argue that it infringed on their rights to choose teaching materials
and broke laws prohibiting state agencies such as school districts from supporting any religion.
The court ruled that the school district had acted within its authority and had not violated
the California Constitution by banning the game.
With all due respect, we don't agree with the court's decision, said Catherine Porter,
an attorney representing the teachers. Based on the California Constitution, we do believe
that we provided significant evidence to show that the purpose and effect of the ban
was religious and not secular.
Pleased by the ruling, Milpitas Superintendent Jack Mackey said,
we always thought the board was acting within its authority to maintain a secular environment.
Unquote.
Wizards spelling game. That's an interesting one.
Speaking of religion, heard this on the radio, according to Peter Scott on the Risks Digest.
A major Christian radio network is alerting its member stations to check their latest shipments
of religious compact discs before airing them.
It seems that due to a computer error, some other CDs were mislabeled at the factory
and shipped along with the religious ones.
Unfortunately, the itinerant CDs were by the dead Kennedys.
A spokesman for the radio network said,
this is what happens whenever people get around machines.
The CBS Newsreader with masterful understatement said,
the dead Kennedys CDs included songs such as I Killed Children,
which some Christian listeners might not find inspirational.
The major telecom carriers are reporting that 1992 was a bad year for the phone baddies,
intent on ripping off phone servers from corporations.
Sprint reported fraud claims by its business customers dived 96%.
Fraud went down 96% to $670,000 or $1,350 per incident,
compared to an average loss of $35,000 in 1991.
That's $35,000 per incident compared to $1,000, about $1,000 per incident last year.
AT&T also says fraud claims made to it dropped about 88%,
and MCI says it has also seen a drop in claims.
In other words, 1992 losses were a far cry from the $1 billion to $3 billion a year claimed as losses in past years.
The major reason? Customer awareness.
And a three-minute computer failure at an Ohio Bell central office
disrupted phone servers for 42,000 telephone lines in the downtown business district.
That was in late January, for about 45 minutes.
The computer problem cleared after a few minutes,
but the disruption snowballed when a surge of callers seeking dial tones
caused a telephone traffic jam of sorts, according to Ohio Bell spokesman David Kandel.
Outgoing and incoming calls on 15 downtown prefixes were disrupted by the problem,
which started at 9.42 a.m.
The Columbus Police, the Franklin County Sheriff's Department,
Columbus Public Schools, and state offices were among those disrupted by the outage.
Callers in the affected prefix areas who dialed 911 could not reach Columbus Police
or the Franklin County Sheriff's Office for at least three minutes.
However, those agencies reported that they did not receive any calls
However, those agencies reported that they did not receive any complaints after the dial tones returned.
It was starting to clear itself within minutes,
but because you're looking at such a huge volume of calls downtown,
it took the system time to recover.
They said the system was delivering a very, very slow dial tone.
Problems started when one of two computer processors failed.
The other took over, but it took about three minutes for it to retrieve the information from the failed processor.
Ohio Bell technicians were working with the equipment manufacturer yesterday
to determine what caused the processor to fail.
It still was not working late yesterday.
When I say yesterday, keep in mind this is a news story from about a week or so ago.
Columbus Police dispatchers reported having problems for about 30 minutes.
Chief Deputy Robert Taylor of the Sheriff's Department said
this radio room used cellular phones until the problem cleared.
Neither department knew of any emergencies missed because of the computer problem.
Columbus firefighters said they were receiving 911 calls throughout the period of disruption.
Interesting that such a brief period, three minutes, can cause a snowball effect like that,
but that's exactly how the phone system works.
Now this is something of interest.
If you know anybody that goes to the University of Illinois,
you might want to take note of this latest item.
You should know that anyone, anyone who knows your social security number and birthday,
can now see your official transcript.
And, to add insult to injury, if someone does look at your transcript, you will be charged $5.
That's right, the administration building, room 100, now has three computer terminals.
Anyone can walk up to one and type, one, a social security number,
two, a birthday, three, an address you want the transcript to be sent to.
It's that easy.
If the social security number and birthday match a current student,
that student's transcript will be sent to that address,
and that student's account will be charged $5.
And I somehow have the feeling that this is not an unusual type of system.
And also in the stupidity department, this was also sent into the Risks Digest,
this person saw on page two of their phone bill from Southern Bell the following little notice.
Call Right Touch Service to do various things such as disconnecting your phone,
ordering extra cost services.
Please protect your access code.
And then they printed the access code right there on the page.
Like I said, most people would simply throw that page out.
But who knows how many people really did.
All right, a couple of legal things now.
The New York Times has reported that a document obtained by computer professionals
for social responsibility through the Freedom of Information Act,
well, they say that internal memo, which was prepared by the General Services Administration,
describes many problems with the FBI's wiretap plan
and also shows that the GSA strongly opposed the sweeping proposal.
The GSA is the largest purchaser of telecommunications equipment in the federal government.
The FBI wiretap proposal, first announced in March of 1992,
we've devoted quite some time to it here,
would have required telephone manufacturers to design all communications equipment
to facilitate wire surveillance.
The proposal was defeated last year.
The FBI has said that it plans to reintroduce a similar proposal this year.
Difference, though, is that we have an administration that might understand
why this is a bad thing now.
The documents were released to the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility,
which is a public interest organization headquartered in D.C.,
after CPSR submitted Freedom of Information Act requests
about the FBI's wiretap plan to several federal agencies last year.
The documents obtained by CPSR reveal that the GSA,
which is responsible for equipment procurement for the federal government,
strongly opposed two different versions of the wiretap plan developed by the FBI.
According to the GSA, the FBI proposal would complicate interoperability,
increase cost, and diminish privacy and network security.
The GSA also stated that the proposal could adversely affect national security.
In the second memo, the GSA concluded that it would be a mistake
to give the Attorney General sole authority to weigh provisions of the bill.
The GSA's objections to the proposal were overruled by the Office of Management and Budget,
a branch of the White House which oversees administrative agencies for the President.
However, none of GSA's objections were disclosed to the public
or made available to policymakers in Washington.
Secrecy surrounds this proposal.
Critical sections of a report on the FBI wiretap plan
prepared by the General Accounting Office were earlier withheld
after the FBI designated these sections national security information.
These sections include an analysis by a GAO on alternatives to the FBI's wiretap plan.
CPSR is also pursuing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit
to obtain the FBI's internal documents concerning the wiretap proposal.
GSA memos, the GAO report, and others that CPSR is now seeking
indicate that there are many important documents within the government
which have still not been disclosed to the public.
They're doing quite a job down there in D.C. tracking down information on this particular case.
And while it may seem as if the battle has been won,
as the FBI said, they plan on resurrecting it and it could pop up again at any moment.
It's important that people be educated when it does.
Mark Rotenberg is the head of CPSR in the Washington D.C. office.
And if you have an internet account, since a print is internet account on the Risks Digest,
we might as well give it to you here as well.
It is rotenberg, R-O-T-E-N-B-E-R-G, at wash, W-A-S-H-O-F-C,
as in Washington office, dot CPSR dot O-R-G.
And become part of the educational battle which is always going on in this particular world we live in.
Speaking of CPSR, there's also more CPSR action a little closer to home.
And that concerns something else we've been talking about quite a bit on this program,
the incident in Washington D.C. at the November 2600 meeting.
Computer professionals for social responsibility have filed suit in federal court
seeking information on the role of the Secret Service
in the disruption of a meeting of computer users last November.
The incident, which occurred at the Pentagon City Mall in Arlington, Virginia,
has been described as an example of overzealous law enforcement activities
directed against so-called computer hackers.
On November 6, 1992, a group of people affiliated with the computer magazine 2600
were confronted by mall security personnel, local police officers, and several unidentified individuals.
The group members were ordered to identify themselves
and to submit to searches of their personal property.
Their names were recorded by mall security personnel,
and some of their property was confiscated.
However, no charges were ever brought against any of the individuals at the meeting.
The Secret Service has not formally acknowledged its role in the November incident.
However, a mall security official and the Arlington County Police
have said that Secret Service agents were present
and directed the activities of the mall security personnel.
According to CPSR Washington Director Mark Rotenberg,
if this was a Secret Service operation, it raises serious constitutional questions.
It is unlawful for the government to disrupt a meeting of people
who are peaceably assembled and to seize their personal property.
We have filed this FOIA suit to determine the precise role of the Secret Service in this affair.
CPSR has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Secret Service,
or they did submit that several days after the incident.
To date, the agency has failed to respond.
Under the law, FOIA requesters may file suit in federal court
when an agency has not complied with the legally imposed time limits.
CPSR, a national membership organization that protects civil liberties for computer users,
previously filed an FOIA suit against the Secret Service
after the agency was criticized for several poorly conducted investigations of computer users.
Documents disclosed to CPSR from the Operation Sun Devil case
revealed that the agency monitored publicly accessible electronic bulletin boards.
CPSR has recommended the development of guidelines for computer crime investigations
and called for a reassessment of the Secret Service's role in the computer crime field.
If you're interested in CPSR membership,
you can contact CPSR, PO Box 717, Palo Alto, California, 94302,
or you can call 415-322-3778.
Okay, that's pretty much it as far as that kind of news goes.
But sticking with the government issues,
we were talking last week about new ways you can get a hold of various governmental officials.
We gave out a CompuServe address.
But now we have even more.
We have some Internet addresses as well.
FiberOptic is here with the latest as far as that goes.
You've got some addresses for us.
Is that right?
Some addresses.
Okay, let's make sure that microphone is working because a lot of things aren't working here today.
Try the console mic on number 6.
On number 6?
See if it works.
We don't have a number 6.
There's no 6.
It says 6 here.
Well, no, it only goes up to 5.
This microphone is fine. I like this one.
Just use yours.
You have to speak into it, though.
Okay.
Hi, everybody.
Since January 25th, the new administration has been installing a domain on the Internet known as house.gov, G-O-V.
And it's for the main purpose of email.
And whether it's for internal use or whether it's so that our fine citizens of the Internet
can send our newly elected administration some electronic mail, it's being set up as we speak.
Now, if one was to inquire on the network information center on house.gov,
you'd find that it listed as house information systems, house annex 2, 2nd and D streets, southwest, Washington, D.C., 20515.
And there are three contacts listed.
There's Doreen Albiston as an administrative contact, John Schnizline, technical contact, and Dorian Dean, zone contact.
And it also lists their phone numbers and email addresses.
Now, for all you Internet users, if you want to look this up yourself, you can simply type whoishouse.gov, G-O-V.
And, of course, a more advanced user might use the nslookup utility.
Well, to type this whois, you have to be on a particular system, right?
You have to be on a Unix system.
Any Unix system this will work on?
Any Unix system is going to have the whois command, yeah.
And you can look up people on other systems?
Yeah. In the event that you're a Net user and you find that your system doesn't have the whois utility for whatever reason,
the first thing you should do is complain.
And the second thing you should do is just do the next best thing, which is to Telnet to the Network Information Center
by simply saying telnet nick.ddn.mil and do the same thing.
Once you're connected to that, then just say whoishouse.gov, and it'll have the same effect.
Now, it's interesting, ddn.mil.
It stands for Defense Data Network and Military.
Now, why would people have to connect to military computers to get this information?
Well, the Network Information Center was originally set up by the Stanford Research Institute, SRI,
back when it was still ARPANET.
And once they moved the NIC and ARPANET is no longer around,
they changed the host from, remember what the old one was?
I think it was sri-nic.arpa, and now it's nic.ddn.mil.
It's just simply because SRI has a lot to do with the government and the military and doing research.
So that just happens to be where the machine is.
It's located on the Defense Data Network.
And it should be noted that the Department of Defense, or the people who first started the DARPA project,
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
All right. Now, I have in front of me the results of one of those lookups.
And I have a few different names of computers here.
Maybe you might know what some of these are.
Looking for house.gov, we find such names of computers as, well,
Nitrogen, Oxygen, Ozone, Bismuth, B-I-S-M-U-T-H,
Demo Center 1, Demo Center 2, Minority Leader, Majority Whip Server, abbreviated SVR,
Appropriations, Dellums, D-E-L-L-U-M-S, capital L, capital T,
Sikorsky District, L-T, Stark District, L-T,
and then the two final ones, Batman and Joker.
I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but each of these has a corresponding Internet address,
all of which begin with 137.18.
There's actually a lot more than that. There are at least 100 or so systems that came up, yeah.
Now, this is all brand new, isn't it?
Yeah. Since the 25th of January, they've been setting this up.
Again, the main purpose is for e-mail, to get everyone on Capitol Hill hooked up on the Net and using electronic mail,
and also make them accessible to the outside world for e-mail purposes.
Bear that in mind. If someone goes and looks up the hosts in this domain and sees an IRS subnet or a federal government task force,
it's not anything top secret. It's just their e-mail system.
But it is interesting, and it's about time that they've tied into the 20th century,
which is something that we didn't really get much of in the previous administrations.
I'm willing to take bets to see if the...
It's a good bet, actually.
Well, here's some information on something else that we gave out last week,
as far as the CompuServe account sending e-mail to President Clinton.
This comes from somebody named Gordon Linoff.
Maybe you should say gordon at think.com.
And this is regarding e-mail to the White House, dated January 31st.
Yesterday, meaning January 30th, I saw several postings related to the e-mail address for the White House.
Along with a good number of others, I worked throughout the campaign as part of a network of e-mail volunteers for the Clinton campaign,
so I can pass along some important information about that e-mail account.
The account is actually the personal CompuServe account of Jock Gill.
Jock worked hard, along with a handful of programming volunteers,
BBS operators, list server maintainers, and computer sophisticates at places such as Marist College, MIT, San Francisco, Chicago, and elsewhere,
during the campaign to put together an e-mail system for national campaigning.
The system was later expanded to accommodate all three major presidential campaigns.
It was an innovative, highly successful effort,
and it played a huge role in getting campaign position statements out to a wide public.
Things posted from that address found their way into the virtual reality,
as the messages got passed along many networks from their original posting.
Several weeks before the inauguration of President Clinton,
Jeff Eller was appointed by the president-elect to have overall charge of establishing something which has never existed,
an interactive public access e-mail system into the White House and into other offices of the administration.
Jock Gill was then hired by the administration to work under Jeff Eller.
Currently, Jock Gill is working in an office located in the old executive office building across the street from the White House.
At this point, he is working alone, without a staff.
Nobody has seen him. He hasn't eaten anything. He hasn't talked to anybody.
His current assignment is to use the e-mail system, as during the campaign,
to issue official copies of White House statements, the text of press briefings and press conferences,
copies of executive orders and presidential memos, declarations of martial law, you know, that kind of thing,
the like to the virtual world of e-mail.
Since the CompuServe box is a regular personal mailbox, it gets filled very quickly,
especially given the high volume of mail now beginning to arrive with the broad dissemination of his address.
Those of you who have sent e-mail to that address may well have received an error message stating that the box is full.
That's another way of saying it has been overwhelmed.
Jock has asked those of us who have been part of the volunteer e-mail team to help him out
while he works to get a good interactive system up and running.
Basically, he has asked that everyone cooperate and not begin sending a barrage of e-mail to that CompuServe address.
The White House itself employs a large staff to handle snail mail,
which, to those of you who don't know, is regular mail that goes to the post office.
Actually, at this point in the development of the White House e-mail system,
you will probably get your message through to the administration quicker through ordinary snail mail and telephone.
Later, once the administration's e-mail team develops the system they want and need,
e-mail contacts should become the easier route.
All things in their time.
Once the e-mail address was circulated together with the heading The White House,
everyone understandably believed the real system was up and running.
Not quite yet.
Suggestion. Use the CompuServe address you have judiciously,
reserving it for absolutely vital contacts.
Until such time that a real public access White House e-mail system is operational,
consider relying on the traditional means of contacting the administration.
Given what they had to start with in the previous administration, which is nothing,
I have every reason to expect that Jeff Eller and Jock Gill will work well
and as quickly as possible to get an interactive system up and running,
but it will take time and patience.
We can all help them achieve that effort best if we refrain from acting as if that non-existent system were already in place.
Please help relay this context and suggestion to other networks and individuals,
which I think we've done a pretty good job of tonight.
Now, here are some addresses and phone numbers of the more traditional ways of getting a hold of the White House and the president.
The president's phone number. Of course, he won't really pick this up very often, but his office will.
Area code 202-456-1414.
The White House comment line to register your opinion on an issue.
202-456-1111.
And number to call when a bill has been signed or vetoed, 202-456-2226.
And a couple of vice presidential numbers, 202-456-2326 and 202-456-7125.
The mailing address, the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C., 20500.
And as we get more addresses, of course, we will put them here,
and hopefully we'll talk to these people in the future and get some more information from them.
Okay, that's the situation as far as that goes.
We're just about ready to take phone calls now, 212-279-3400,
but first I have some exciting news that came out of NYNEX today.
And I was wondering if anyone here has heard of it.
FiberOptic, have you ever heard the term voice dial?
Voice dial?
Yes.
That's a new phrase that I heard today from NYNEX.
You mean speaking a number?
Yes, this is how it works.
And this is going to be tested in Bayshore, New York, over the next couple of weeks.
And they expect to have the system up and running in New York City by May,
where you can store up to 50 different numbers in your telephone at a cost of about $4 to $6 a month
and literally speak a phrase, a name, whatever,
and the central office will recognize your voice, recognize the phrase,
and connect you to the number that you wish.
You look stunned, but that is what NYNEX announced today.
Seems like a waste to me.
Why?
Well, it just seems wasteful.
Yeah?
Yeah, well, first there's speed calling.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, but you don't even have to dial.
You don't even have to worry about all those numbers and letters.
Yeah, but how lazy do people have to get?
As lazy as necessary.
If they're going to shell out the $4 to $6 a month to just speak a, you know,
you can pick up the phone and just say B-A-I.
Imagine that.
Picking up your phone and saying, oh, you can just say B if you have to,
and your phone will instantly dial the B-B-A-I's phone number,
which is 212-279-3400.
You don't have to dial all that.
They don't exactly go into how accurate it is, how many mistakes it can make.
Well, actually, from what I heard, it's not 100% when someone has a cold.
It's pretty good, they said, but not 100%.
And there are certain problems that could arise, you know,
people using it for unauthorized purposes, of course.
From what I understand, the first time you use it,
you have to enter a particular code.
I guess you have to use touch tones in that particular case.
And then you speak the name and dial the number that you want to connect it to,
and from then on it works.
So that's something you should be seeing within the next couple of months within our area.
I have two things to say.
The first thing is that if someone has to dial in a code to use it,
they might as well just dial a single digit.
No, no, just the first time.
Just to program it.
Okay.
And then the other thing is that…
This will be in the papers tomorrow.
Okay, I'll check it out.
The other thing is a federal law enforcement
or any law enforcement agency that's going to place a dialed number recorder on a phone line
does it in either one of two ways.
Either it's going to record rotary or it's going to record touch tone.
They can't record what you're dialing.
That's a very interesting point.
Now, all that is going to be…
This might be a very good thing for people who are under investigation by certain agencies to use,
but then, of course, it will force them to use taps, full-blown taps on the phone lines.
Either that or they'll simply request a message accounting from the phone company.
Now, this is all done through the central office.
This is not something like the Sprint calling card or anything like that.
This is the actual local switching network that will take care of this,
and it's being installed in various places throughout New York, New England,
and various other places I would imagine.
It will soon be nationwide, but it is being tested in Bayshore,
and it will be in place, I'm told, in many places, that is, by mid-year.
I think the figure I heard was 70% of all 9X customers will have it by January 1st, 1995,
and they'll slowly integrate it into everybody.
So, something else to watch out for as technology marches on.
Okay, our phone number is 212-279-3400.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Yes, hello, Emmanuel.
How are you doing?
Hi, I'd like to thank you for an excellent program.
I'm a frequent listener.
I'd like to talk a little bit about caller ID.
Okay, what state are you in?
I'm in New Jersey.
All right, then you've had it for a while.
Right, I don't personally have it, and I'm against it.
People who are against caller ID as an infringement of privacy,
as I think you've explained you are,
are often described as paranoid, thinking that someone is after them and that sort of thing.
But in this month's issue of Consumer Reports Magazine,
a letter was printed, and I'd like to read it.
It's very short, and I think it captures what my position on the whole situation is.
Which is?
Okay, it says,
A New York telephone was recently granted permission by the state to offer a new service
known as automatic number identification, ANI, which I think is the same thing.
No, it's not really, but why don't you read the article, and we'll add our corrections to it.
Okay, it's very short.
I urge Consumer Union and its members to vigorously oppose implementation of this service in New York and other states.
ANI can provide the recipient of a phone call with the number of the caller.
So when consumers call a business, they will risk having their number recorded for sale to telemarketers.
Since the caller's number can be displayed even before the call is answered,
businesses can also use this function to screen out calls from selected individuals,
such as those with complaints.
This service paves the way for numerous abuses of consumers.
And I think that this is one of the reasons I really object to this caller ID service,
because I do a lot of shopping over the phone and checking out and calling up businesses and that sort of thing.
Right.
Well, now, this particular service is not caller ID.
ANI or ANI is something that is already in place, and it's not something that's up for any kind of a vote.
Fiber, what are the technical...
The guy who wrote that article is obviously very confused, although his point is well taken.
He really means caller ID.
He doesn't mean ANI, which is completely different and has been around for years.
And the other thing is that telemarketers and businesses get your number through ANI, not caller ID,
because usually you're dialing an 800 number,
and ANI is just another way of passing along your phone number to a Watts subscriber.
No, it's often not 800 numbers, and I think that the caller ID thing can be used for that.
Yeah, if you're calling a local number, then caller ID will be used.
But if you're calling a business with an 800 number, then they're using ANI,
and they could be anywhere in the country.
Now, so far, it's just 800 numbers that use ANI to record the number coming in?
800s, and I'm sure 900s as well, and 700s as well, yeah.
700s, 800s, and 900s.
No direct dial long-distance numbers do it?
Not as of yet, no.
I just thought that was the same thing as caller ID.
It has the same effect.
I mean, for all intents and purposes, the differences are very, very small as far as we're concerned.
But ANI is already in place.
Every time you call an 800 number, your number is flashed up on the screen someplace,
and there's not much you can do about blocking that.
And, yeah, we were never asked if we wanted that kind of service.
There's one other point about it, one other aspect of it.
I think last week or the week before, on another show on BAI, which I won't name,
but it happens to come on right before your show.
Okay, well, that narrows it down quite a bit.
There was a fellow promoting software he had developed,
which uses this kind of a system to record the calls of numbers of people
and put them right into a database of a computer, a PC-based database,
and to record all kinds of information that way,
or capture information from callers starting with their phone number and identify them that way.
And this was supposedly presented as some kind of tremendous advancement.
And to me, I'm disgusted with that sort of thing.
And if I find out any businesses that are using it,
I'm going to make sure I never call them or do any business with them.
Well, that's one way of getting your point across.
Spread the word if someone is using that kind of thing.
Now, you're in New Jersey. You're not allowed to have blocking on your line?
I don't know. I was wondering if you might be aware of that.
Well, now, I don't think that New Jersey has a blocking option.
In other words, whenever you call somebody, your number can be displayed if they have caller ID,
and you don't know one way or the other if it is.
Well, if it did work, star 67 would be the way that you would block your number from being sent.
That's per-call blocking.
Now, if you already had all-call blocking, star 67 would unblock it,
which is kind of silly, but that's the way it works.
So you might be able to have per-call blocking, but not all-call blocking.
All you need to do is call your business office and ask what you can get.
I think I really would do that.
Yeah, and be indignant if they don't allow it,
because they really have no right to dictate how to use your phone like that.
Well, thank you very much for your show again.
Okay. Thanks for calling.
Let's go to another call. Good evening.
Hi. I have a comment on something you talked about in the beginning of the show, about mixing up numbers.
Mixing up numbers.
I remember about five years ago I was on a cold call phone that said,
if you're out of change, use your bank card to make calls.
Now, I assumed that that meant your 24-hour bank card,
and I used my 24-hour bank card number, and it worked.
And the reason why it worked is because my 24-hour bank card number
probably was the same number as somebody's credit card number,
like Visa card number or something.
Yeah, it probably fit the algorithm, and that's all they checked.
Because it said bank card, meaning bank credit card, and it didn't sort of state that.
You made an honest mistake, and you committed a federal crime in the process.
Oh, I didn't.
Well, that's all right, you know.
Well, the other question is, is that how possible is it to make...
I have, again, I have a friend who I've known for a very long time, about 12 years,
and he knows and his family knows that I love telephones
and how I, you know, know all about phones since I was, you know, for many years.
And he'd gotten some third-number calls placed from his phone,
a couple of third-number calls fraudulently billed to a pay phone,
and he thought, his father thought that I made the calls.
How possible is it for somebody to, you know, to do that,
to make somebody think that somebody made calls from somebody's number
and charged it to another number?
Well, now, what was it he actually saw to give him...
No, no, no. He got a call from the fraud investigation unit.
Right.
It said, somebody placed calls from your line and billed them to a pay phone,
and we're billing you back to them.
Billed them to a... how do they bill to a pay phone?
Well, not to a pay phone. They billed it to another phone.
Okay. And was there a pay phone involved in this at all?
There might have been. I don't know.
But one of them was a new pay phone that they forgot to block or something.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Well, I'm still kind of unclear as to how you got involved.
Yeah, because I like telephones, and he came to me saying,
did you place these calls, and I'm trying to prove to him that I didn't.
Well, you know, just because you like telephones,
that's not really much of a reason to blame you for making phone calls.
Well, how did the fraud investigation work with that number fraud?
What did they do? Did they...
Well, what they do is they compare the numbers.
They look at somebody's phone bill.
They compare the numbers that have been called and billed to that particular number.
First thing they do is check your line out to see if you ever called those numbers,
which would indicate that they were your calls.
Then what they do is they call back the number that it was called from.
It cannot be a pay phone to allow third-number billing to go through unquestioned.
And then they ask the people there, well, who was here at this time,
and they launch a big investigation.
Well, right.
Sometimes they get someone.
What if they said, I don't know, or whatever?
Well, you see, if all the people say, I don't know, I guess they kind of strike out.
And they bill them back.
But what if they say, what if he mentions my name?
They have to swallow the law sometimes.
I'm sorry, what?
What if he mentions my name and say, oh, I think I know who it is.
Well, they might investigate you then.
How would they investigate?
They would look at your phone bill and see if those numbers show up at any point in your phone bill.
No.
If they do, they would call you and interrogate you, I suppose.
They don't show up in my phone.
I didn't make these calls.
Well, then you have nothing to worry about.
So, I mean, what, um, okay.
You have nothing to worry about.
You should also reevaluate as to who your friends are.
Yeah.
If they're so quick to accuse you or something.
No, tell my friend.
It's my friend's father that's doing this.
I'll tell your friend to reevaluate their father.
Listen, we got to go.
So, uh, thanks for calling.
Okay.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Hi, good evening.
Um, great show.
Thank you.
You know, there's a special on Channel 4 about, you know, pornographic.
That is the biggest pile of garbage I've seen on TV in a long time.
I mean, I don't mean to jump on you, but.
Why do you feel that way?
Well, because if you watch a particular feature that they have.
And this is a sweeps week kind of thing or sweeps month kind of thing.
You get the impression that people can use their modems and simply download pornography.
And that's what your kids will do.
The reaction to this will be to take modems away from kids because there's all kinds of child molesters out there.
They've made the connection.
They've said because you can access this and because pedophiles are interested in this.
That means pedophiles are going to prey on your kid whenever he uses his modem.
And people who don't know much about technology are going to freak out and think that this is a hotbed for this kind of criminal activity.
In reality, we're not talking about anything more than somebody taking a magazine with dirty pictures and looking at it.
Except they're using their computer to do it now.
Big deal.
How do you feel about this?
I kind of agree because, you know, I mean, I've used some bulletin boards.
And, you know, if you don't know what you're doing, I mean, it's actually hard to download.
It's not so easy to download software.
And, you know, if you're just a novice computer user, you might actually be intimidated by the BBS itself.
Well, it's a lot easier to get a dirty magazine than it is to go out and get a GIF picture of a naked woman or something like that.
But, I mean, even if somebody is able to do that, that is not going to lead to the dire predictions that Channel 4 is saying are going to happen or implying.
You know, at one moment, they show a picture that you can download on an Internet connection.
And then the next moment, they're showing a trial of a pedophile that raped a child.
Now, those two are as far apart as, you know, the Mideast to here.
It's not related.
One does not lead to the other.
And that's a very important point to make.
But it's a point they're not making because I don't know why.
I guess SweepSweep answers all the questions, yeah.
Yeah, you know, there's another issue that I wanted to raise.
And it's about this government program, the Energy Star computer program.
Do you know when that's going to kick in and when those PCs are going to be ready?
I'm not sure I know what you mean.
The Energy Star computer program is, you know, from the EPA.
And it's like a new standard so that desktop PCs will go into sleep mode anytime they're inactive, you know, to save power.
And, like, as an environmentalist, the thing is, like, when will big companies, you know, kick that in?
When will they be available to the public?
I'll look into it.
I have heard nothing about that.
IBM, Apple, and Compaq, they're the big three on the block that are supposed to be, you know,
implementing this Energy Star computer program from the EPA to DC.
So, like, you know, that's kind of interesting because I built my own PCs
and I'd like to be able to build my own PC that has those, you know, sleep mode features just like notebook computers have.
Right. I'm sure we'll hear more about that in the future.
But, you know, I'd like to see some other energy-saving ideas.
It would be nice if your TV had a mode like that.
You know, people leave their TVs on for hours at a time and don't even look at them.
Yeah.
Unless you speak a command that says TV or something like that and then 9X will kick in and turn it on.
Thanks very much for calling. Let's go to another phone call here.
Good evening.
Oh, yeah. Hi. Let me get the radio here.
Okay.
On the Clinton connection, email connection there.
The Clinton connection. I like that.
Yeah.
That, the CompuServe ID was given to them by CompuServe during the campaign.
They also, they gave one basically to the three main contenders, Perot, Clinton, Bush,
and actually I think there was a fourth one, too, but I forget which one, who it was right now.
Through their, I think they called it the Vote Forum.
And basically that's a CompuServe, what they call a sponsored account.
So people have been wondering what might happen if they start getting a bill for that account.
I don't know, but it would be quite a bill because CompuServe is a very expensive service.
It's much better for them to have their own domain.
Did you also mention the America Online address?
No, I didn't mention that. I don't have that. Do you have that?
Yeah, well, it's just Clinton space PZ.
Okay.
It's their address on America Online.
There's also another, there's a college, something Marist College, I think.
Yeah, Marist College, right, that's upstate.
I believe they also have a, they have an address there, too,
and basically what they also put out is all the press releases that come out of the White House
go immediately onto that system.
And I guess the transcripts of any speeches and things like that as well.
I don't know. I haven't seen anything from that. I just know some other things.
What do you think of this? Do you think this is a good idea?
Well, it's cute, you know.
It's kind of like anything, any, you know,
it's kind of like their public opinion hotlines that they've got, you know.
I mean, you have no idea.
I mean, the guy could just go in there and they can collect all the addresses
and send you back a nice little, you know, machine-produced note saying thank you for your input
and just completely ignore everything.
Like they do now.
Yeah, like they do now, but with more volume.
So, you know, it's cute, but I guess, I don't know, I guess it could be interesting.
All right, well, the coming months we'll definitely see some changes, I think.
Also, you were talking about the connection between the X-rated BBS matter
and the pedophile charged with rape up in Rhode Island.
Right.
Didn't he contact the rapee over a BBS?
Well, I think what he had done was he had used a bulletin board at one point,
and he may very well have met somebody on the bulletin board,
but again, to make the blanket statement or implication that downloading X-rated pictures
or, you know, pictures of questionable nature are going to necessarily lead you into something like this
is quite a jump as far as I'm concerned, and it seems, you know,
it seems like it's going to make a lot of people panic for no good reason.
You know, they have the final part of that series on tonight.
In fact, it's on in a few minutes, so if people watch that and, you know,
maybe get back to us here and get back to Channel 4 and say what you think of that.
I'll make one final point and then I'll go.
Okay.
It's interesting.
I was talking to a woman, a single mother, the other day who has a computer,
and I was suggesting to her, well, you know,
it would be much easier for us to be able to communicate through e-mail
instead of phone calls back and forth.
As far as long-distance charges are concerned, it's much cheaper to communicate through e-mail,
and she was saying how she didn't want to get a modem for her Mac
because she was afraid that her son would download viruses onto it.
Well, you see, it's the same kind of panic situation.
That's exactly what I'm talking about, whether it's viruses,
whether it's he'll, you know, get connected to all these evil computer hackers
or whether he'll get attacked by child molesters.
You know, a modem is just a tool.
It's just a tool, and if you use it responsibly, it can be a really good tool.
If you use it irresponsibly, you know, all kinds of bad things could happen,
but the modem is not what's evil.
The bulletin board, the computer, they're not what's evil.
It's how they're used.
Hey, you guys do a good show. Keep up the good work.
All right. Thanks for calling.
You know, this whole Clinton thing, though, it all depends on how many people have access,
and that's why we've got to figure out ways of getting people onto the Internet
so they can have access to just one of many new, evolving communications things
that are going to be happening throughout the 90s, and we'll have more on that in future shows.
Let's see if we can squeeze in one or two more calls.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Yes, hi. Hold on a second.
Yeah, turn on your radio.
Okay. I'm calling about phone dialers.
Okay.
Modified ones.
Modified phone dialers.
Right, specifically RadioShack.
Okay, I think what you're referring to are RadioShack tone dialers
that make red box tones, I believe is what you're talking about.
Yeah, well, what happens is it's like a higher octave of the regular tones
that you hear from one through zero.
Okay, you might be talking about silver box tones then.
Well, what happens is I can make the sound of a quarter nickel and a dime.
Right, those are red box tones.
Okay, how come it works on most indoor telephones as opposed to the ones out in the street?
Very good point, and the fact that you picked that up proves how observant you are.
Yes, the phones that are inside do not get serviced as much as the phones that are outside.
The phones that are outside, when they get serviced,
they get fitted with the newer kind of system which does not allow that to go through,
and the phones that you're seeing on the inside, they haven't been touched in a lot longer.
They haven't been serviced and they haven't broken down in a long time.
Phones inside tend not to as much as phones outside,
and so that is the simple reason why that still works, but it won't work forever.
Right, right. Also, there is a crystal inside.
It must have been a new crystal placed inside, but it's not identified.
Usually there would be a frequency of some sort on the crystal.
Do you know what sort of frequency it might be?
Do you know, Fiber?
Well, it might be 6.5536, but that's only a guess.
Are you being sarcastic?
Yeah, it's that frequency.
Okay, I just didn't know all those numbers.
In megahertz, of course.
Right. Okay, great, that's really what I need to know.
Okay, thanks for calling.
I enjoy the show. It's great.
Okay, well, keep listening then.
Okay.
Take care.
That's going to just about do it for us here tonight because we're out of time,
and we'll be back again next week for Off the Hook between 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock on Wednesday night.
Stay tuned for the WBAI Evening News, a rebroadcast.
This is Emanuel Goldstein.
Have a good week.
See you next time.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
I hope that's understood.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.