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Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody. This is Off the Hook with Emanuel Goldstein, and
we have some interesting bits of information for you tonight, including a correction from
last week because, well, we were just totally wrong about something, and that's something
that deserves to be corrected, and the sooner the better as far as that particular bit of
information goes. And that, of course, concerns the 9x phone bills, which we were talking
about. Well, first of all, I think we might have Bernie S. on the phone. Is anybody there?
Okay.
Bernie, can you hear us?
I can. It's very noisy here.
And your levels are very bad, so you're going to have to scream if you can.
Bad as in they're weak?
Yes, they are weak. I could barely hear that.
Speak as loudly as I can. You can hear me better now.
That's fine. If you can keep that kind of a level going, that would be fine.
I hope my voice holds out.
Now, tell me, does our techno music in the background, does that bother you?
Does what? Technical music?
The techno music we're playing in the background.
I can't even hear it. All I can hear is about 60 other inmates yelling and screaming.
Okay, well, it's good for us. It makes us more relaxed, and it's also good for the listeners
because sometimes it drowns us out.
Okay, wonderful.
So, now, you're still there in the Bucks County Prison, which is the new facility for you.
...transferred there last week from Northampton County Prison...
Uh-huh.
...on tampering with evidence charge, which stemmed out of the federal charge
for possessing a hardware and software for the illegal...
I'm sorry, hardware and software for the modification of telecommunications instruments...
And you also have... you've answered one of my questions in that I was wondering
if you still had your cough, and it appears that you do.
I'm sorry?
You still have your cough, and I believe that would...
It was not for... but it's better than it was.
The medical care at this facility seems to be a little more competent than the last...
Well, it seems to exist.
...on cough medication, so that's a positive.
The other positive is that here at this prison, they have a non-smoking cell block
so that I don't have to inhale cigarettes and smoke 24 hours a day,
so that's a big improvement.
Can I ask what radio frequency this program is being broadcast on?
Some of the other inmates wanted to tune it in, if they could.
Well, I doubt they can get it down there, but it's 99.5 FM, so you can certainly try.
And, of course, if you're in the New York metropolitan area...
Is it also on AM by any chance?
No, it's not, unless it's being rebroadcast by a pirate somewhere, which I have no problem with.
Do you know where that pirate is?
Well, hopefully that pirate will tell us if they are doing that.
It's probably on shortwave that might be rebroadcasting our signal,
or certainly on satellite, or over the Internet.
There's many ways you can probably get this show that I don't know about.
We've had a lot of trouble talking to you in the past week
because this new automated way of making collect calls is really kind of crazy.
It seems that any time you make any kind of a click whatsoever,
you wind up disconnecting the call, and that goes for before you even accept the phone call.
So what happens is, we hear you coming across on the speakerphone,
and we go to pick up the phone to accept the call,
and the act of picking up the phone makes the automated collect thing disconnect,
thinking that you're trying to do some funny business.
And it's very frustrating because there's no way we can accept the call unless we hear your voice,
and when we hear your voice and pick up the phone, it thinks that we're trying something,
so we just never communicate.
The system, which is run by the Atlantic here, for its special system set up is for prison inmates.
The calls are made on these inmate phones,
which actually are identical to the balloon charger calls for inmates around the city.
Only collect calls can be made.
Only 0-plus calls can be dialed.
And then, I don't know if listeners heard the collect call coming in, but there's a message.
It says, you have a collect call from...
And then it examples your voice.
Right.
You say your name, and then the calls are billed, I think, two or three times
what one would normally expect for a direct dialed call to the call party.
And unfortunately, the system seems to hang up the moment it hears any sudden noise
on the call party's end, like a click.
I kept calling someone earlier this week who, every time he laughed about something, we got cut off.
Uh-huh. Well, you shouldn't be so funny.
I guess prison phones should only talk about serious things, and they can sense that as well.
Interestingly enough, we had a Barrel Atlantic technician come here yesterday to the prison
to service some of the phones.
And I asked him if they had considered replacing the handsets with noise-canceling handsets
that would block out ambient noise and only allow near-field noise,
like your own voice, to be picked up by the microphone.
And he'd never heard of such a thing, and said even if there was such a thing, it wouldn't be available.
And I also suggested possibly a push-to-talk handset, which I know were also manufactured by various companies
that would shut off the microphone unless you were pressing the button.
The problem is that these mics on these phones pick up the sound of everything going on in the cell block,
and it feeds back into your ear and makes it very difficult to hear the person you're talking to in the cell.
Now, one thing, though, that we are able to do is take phone calls with you on,
so I guess it's not upset by that.
But something we have to try right about now is making a phone call ourselves.
Do you think that might be a problem?
Well, we can try it. It seemed to have worked last week.
We'll try it again this week. If we get cut off, we'll know what happened.
I'll try to call back, but there's no guarantees of anything with this system.
Okay. Well, now, I don't know if we actually made a phone call last week.
We're going to try something different. The sound of a dial tone might really flip out the system.
Well, we'll see.
Okay. What we're going to do is we're correcting ourselves from last week when we talked about the 9X phone bill situation,
where it turned out that people were not getting their AT&T portions of the phone bill, and we jumped the gun a bit.
We said it was because 9X had stopped being a billing agent,
and it seemed because I've been hearing these advertisements on the radio for SNET, Southern New England Telephone,
saying pretty much that they won't be acting as billing agents for the long-distance phone companies.
And I just sort of made the logical jump that maybe 9X was doing the exact same thing.
Well, it turns out not to be the case.
It turns out that what, in fact, happened was some sort of a billing snafu.
There was an article in the paper last week called, Hold the Line, Charge is Coming.
Did your last 9X bill seem too low?
Well, your next bill may seem too high, all because of an error by AT&T,
which uses 9X to bill and collect for its long-distance calling.
I'm not quite sure what kind of error this was.
According to AT&T, the data wasn't lost, it was sent,
but was rejected by the billing equipment because of an error in software code.
I'm not really sure what kind of error could cause something like that to fall apart,
but 9X was saying pretty much that it was an AT&T problem.
In fact, if you called 9X, something happened over there.
Let's try this first of all.
Something happened at 9X within the last 24 hours,
because yesterday they were saying one thing, today they're saying something else.
We're going to try this. Hopefully we won't lose Bernie.
Here comes our dial tone.
No, that's not the dial tone. Where is the dial tone?
Okay, there we go.
Now we're going to dial away.
And what number should we call? We'll call this number.
Let's see what kind of recording we get.
We lost Bernie.
Thank you for calling 9X.
If you are calling with regard to the AT&T portion of your bill,
please call AT&T at 1-800-222-0300.
To expedite your call, respond by pressing the keys on your telephone.
Okay, expedite the call.
We're going to hang up and try something else, because that is what you've been getting today.
Yesterday, if you had called that same number, you would have heard something to the effect of,
if you're calling about the AT&T portion of your bill,
AT&T had a problem with the billing portion and called them.
Now they're not being so accusatory, so I guess some words were spoken.
But anyway, if you call, this is very interesting.
If you happen to call AT&T, what happens is this.
We're going to hit our dial tone.
Very useful service here.
Thank you for calling the AT&T Account Servicing Center.
If you have a touch-tone phone and have questions about your AT&T bill, please press 1.
Okay, that's what we're going to do. We're going to hit 1 right now.
Press 2.
I see you're calling from 2-1-2-2-7-9-3-4-0-6.
If this is your home phone number, press 1.
Well, I practically live here, so yeah, okay, why not?
If you're calling about AT&T Lost Instance Service or Charges, press 1.
If you're calling about your local service or charges, press 2.
To arrange to pay your bill, press 3.
To hear these options again, press 8.
What shall we press? Any idea? Let's press this.
If at any time during this call you're not sure what to do, just stay on the line.
I'll repeat your choices.
Here are your AT&T service choices.
For billing questions or problems, press 1.
For rates and dialing instructions, press 2.
To check on your True Rewards balance or to redeem points, press 3.
For information on other AT&T products and services, press 4.
Please have your AT&T bill ready so I can help you.
If there's a call on your bill you don't recognize, press 1.
If you would like a credit for a call on your bill, press 2.
To hear your AT&T service choices again, press 3.
For other billing questions or to speak with an AT&T service representative, press 0.
Please wait while we access your records.
We are still processing your request.
Behold.
I guess he didn't like the sound of my voice.
Well, um, what's interesting about that is, well, all of a sudden, uh, 1-800-MY-A-N-I-IS has become 1-800-222-0300.
You just have to hit one touchtone and it'll tell you what your phone number is.
That's very, uh, exciting news, and you never have to talk to an AT&T representative.
Uh, just, uh, more, more technical advancements week after week here.
Okay, let's see if Bernie is with us now.
Good evening.
It really doesn't like the sound of my voice.
It hangs up as soon as, uh, as soon as it gets me.
FiberOptic, you're here.
What's, what's, what's new with you?
Um, let's see.
Why are we getting feedback like this?
Must be headphones.
Something, something's turned way up.
Yeah, okay, that's better.
Yeah.
So what's, uh, what's been happening?
What do you have?
Um, let's see.
Problems with, uh, Windows NT that don't bear mentioning.
Um, if I'm not mistaken, I think there were some new, uh, new security holes that were announced in, uh, within the past week or two, I think.
Uh-huh.
I know that, um, there were some security holes announced concerning, uh, Sun's Java.
And they, uh, were actually owning up to the responsibility of having the, uh, the security holes corrected.
Had to do with, um, people being able to access, uh, just as an example, people being able to access, uh, files on a remote person's hard drive through Java.
Uh-huh.
And, um.
So Java's a real security nightmare from what I've been hearing.
Um, it's, it's got its problems.
There's a similar problem that was announced, um, a few weeks ago, close to a month ago concerning JavaScript.
Which is, uh, wasn't actually written by Sun, was written by Netscape.
And was incorporated into the, uh, the, uh, the recent Netscape, uh, navigators that support Java.
And, uh, JavaScript was meant as a, an extension to HTML that would allow somebody who doesn't really know Java or isn't really familiar with programming languages to access some of the features of Java through, through simple HTML hooks.
And there were various security problems with that along the lines of being able to monitor somebody's, uh, history, every site that they visited that's in their cache.
Being able to access, uh, remote files and directories on a person's hard drive and, and so on.
Hang on, we're gonna try Bernie Ash one more time.
Okay.
Good evening.
AT&T has a collect call from Bernie Ash at the Bucks County Correctional Facility.
To refuse this call, hang up.
If you accept this call, do not use three-way or call waiting features or you will be disconnected.
To accept this call, dial one now.
Thank you.
Okay, it kept hanging up on me for some reason, but, uh, you're back with us now.
Yeah, apparently, uh, the system detected the dial tone and, uh, hung up.
Didn't, didn't like it very much.
Okay, um.
I was also told by a guard that I could not use the phone I was on and he told me to, uh, use one of the phones on the lower level, which is much noisier.
And I explained to him that I couldn't hear on the lower level, but if I have trouble hearing you, that's just fine.
Okay, well, right now, uh, FiberOptic is talking about some, uh, some Java exploits.
So, uh, we'll continue with that and if anything comes up, uh, you let us know.
Go ahead.
Do you think he heard us?
I don't know.
Like, I can hear snippets of, uh, of conversation, so go ahead.
Okay.
Okay.
He heard enough, I think.
Okay.
Um, yeah, so basically, uh, what I was saying is that there were various problems that were found in JavaScript,
which is an extension to HTML from Netscape that's supposed to provide, uh, Java-like features for people that don't know the Java language.
There are various, uh, security problems uncovered with that that Netscape is supposed to be correcting.
Um, I'm trying to think of, uh, I was almost sure there were some, some other security holes that were, uh, recently uncovered.
Well, I'm sure there's no end of security holes that are, that are popping up with, uh, with this.
I keep hearing about, uh, lots of other ones as well that, uh, people mail me about.
But since I don't use Java to start with, it doesn't really, uh, affect me.
Yeah.
I'm trying to remember.
I could have sworn I remember hearing about something recently in Linux.
Uh-huh.
Or, or Linux or whatever your particular preference of pronunciation is.
Uh-huh.
A Java application or something?
No, no.
Nothing to do with Java.
Uh, I could have sworn, though, that recently I remembered reading something on, uh...
SendMail?
Elm?
Something like that?
Um, I'm trying to think if it was SendMail.
I don't think it was SendMail.
Well, let me, let's, let's run down the list.
We have the, uh, split VT problem.
Right, well, that's, that's sort of been, been covered.
Yeah.
I think that was even in Time Magazine by now.
Yeah.
The, uh, the Elm filter problem.
Uh-huh.
Which, uh, affected pretty much everybody.
Uh-huh.
Um, did you, did you happen to, uh, notice anything recently about Linux?
Um, it's been running a little slow, but I don't think that's, uh, that's probably a virus.
I don't think that's anything, any exploit.
Uh, no, no, everything seems to be fine.
Yeah.
Oh, I'll have to double-check on that.
Nothing to complain about.
Yeah.
Hmm.
No, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, our system is, is in perfect shape.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Apart from being, you know, mail-bound a few times, and, uh, and having all kinds of fun things happen, uh, along those lines.
No, everything, everything is running just smoothly.
Yeah.
Our website is, is doing incredible, by the way.
That's, uh, we have something close to, uh, two million hits since we started back in January.
Uh, that's total hits of, of various pages.
And that's, that's a lot.
Yeah.
And the Secret Service portion of that is, uh, is doing quite well, too.
A lot of people downloading information there.
Now, this is something interesting.
I, I decided to look at the information myself, which, uh, well, of course, I've done that before.
But I never actually printed it out and looked at it in, uh, in the order we put it in.
A lot of times, a lot of times, the, um, um, the list of names, the list of, uh, of, I guess, code names that the Secret Service uses.
For instance, uh, Blackboard is the Secret Service Protective Intelligence Division, whatever that is.
Uh, and you, you see this in, like, various different orders.
But we decided to split it up into orders of, um, of, of, of what they are.
For instance, Locations gets their own section.
People gets their own section.
So, what I have here is I have a printout of People based on, um, on their, um, code names.
And you realize something very interesting here.
Look at the very first one.
The first one is Calico.
And that's, uh, Eleanor Mondale.
See that?
Uh, then you got Cameo, which is Joan Mondale.
Uh, you got Cavalier, which is Walter Mondale.
You got Centurion, which is Theodore Mondale.
You got Chessman, which is William Mondale.
Now, Fiber, what, what, what is, what is the, the parallel?
What, I mean, what is the, the same thing that all those names have in common?
Uh, they begin with a C.
They all begin with a C.
They all begin with a C.
Now, let's move on to the Carter administration.
Uh, and we see that Rosalind Carter was Dancer.
Jimmy Carter was both Dasher and Deacon.
And Donder and Blitzen and all those.
Uh, Jeff Carter was Deckhand.
Jack Carter, Derby.
Chip Carter, Diamond.
James Carter IV, Digger.
Uh, Sarah Carter, Duchess.
Jason Carter, Dusty.
Amy Carter, Dynamo.
Very interesting.
And now you got the Clintons.
Hillary Clinton is Evergreen.
Bill Clinton is Eagle.
You see what, you see what we, uh, we've discovered here?
When they have an administration,
all of the letters of the code names begin with the same letter.
I might be able to add some input on that as well.
What, what do you have?
Well, I, I read in a book, uh, recently,
uh, probably one of the books that was seized, uh, by the Secret Service
when my home was raided, uh, last year.
It's called Inside the White House.
It's published by Simon & Schuster.
It, uh, gives you a lot of insight about how the Secret Service operates
and, uh, what goes on behind the doors of the White House.
It said that every first family and every, every family that the Secret Service protects,
um, the code names for that family all start with the same letter.
So, you may have the, the first family and then the, all their,
all their code names will start with one letter.
And then the Vice President's family, as you notice with Same-On-Dale,
they will start with a different letter.
But, uh, just for consistency, they keep each family's first,
the first letter for each family's code name, person's code names the same.
And that seems to be a, a long-standing tradition with the Secret Service,
with the, the executive protective division of the Secret Service.
That's interesting.
And, and I was never able to see that before
until, uh, the, the list was sorted in a particular order.
Uh, it seems to me that's kind of a simplistic way to do it.
I mean, are they, are they trying to keep these names secret
or do they really, uh, expect people to figure it out?
Well, they're, they're obviously not secret
because they've been, they're widely available.
The press is fully aware of them.
Although when it comes to criminal prosecutions,
uh, they, the Secret Service will often testify that these names are,
are, um, restricted or secret in some way.
When, in fact, they're not at all.
But it's just one of the other pieces of misinformation
that they tend to bring up whenever they're prosecuting someone.
Yeah.
And I think that's a, that's a good indication that they're really, uh,
not, uh, keeping them that secret
if they all begin with the same letter in the first place.
I don't know.
I was, I was kind of surprised by that,
just, uh, being able to figure it out just by looking at it.
Um, any other little tidbits like that, that, uh, that jump out?
It's really an excellent book.
Anyone who has any interest in how the Secret Service operates
should, should check out it.
I wish I could.
William, uh, I, I honestly can't remember the,
I think the author's first name is William,
but that's not a lot of help to people out there.
But I know it's published by Salmon & Schuster.
It came out last year.
It's called Inside the White House.
And, uh, there's a lot of good information there
about present and past administrations
and how the Secret Service has operated, um, with those, uh,
with those administrations.
And there's a lot of comical information there
about Secret Service agents getting arrested for breaking various laws
and how Secret Service agents have, uh, been, uh, been cited for, uh,
uh, fraudulently, uh, putting information on their expense reports
and other, other embarrassing incidents like that.
So, uh, it's, it's quite a hoot, reading the book.
Well, you know, uh, maybe, uh, maybe next week
I will have tracked down a copy of this book.
I'll, I'll start hunting for it.
It sounds like something our listeners would be interested in
and I certainly would be as well.
Unfortunately, there's no one,
it just talks about White House Secret Service responsibilities.
Um, there's, it does stay in there that there's, uh,
I think 2,051 Secret Service agents.
Um, there's a separate uniformed division of the Secret Service, apparently,
that's, that's, uh, is assigned exclusively to the White House.
And there are also non-uniformed Secret Service agents
that are assigned to White House protective duties.
But the other parts of the Secret Service, um,
those, the parts they're assigned to, uh,
trying to combat, uh, uh, credit card fraud, telecommunications fraud,
counterfeiting, and, uh, computer crimes.
Those, uh, those, there's still a total of 2,000 un-uniformed
or non-uniformed agents.
Uh, I think about 500 of those, I'm guessing,
I think it's about 500 of those are assigned to the White House.
The other 1,500 or so are, you know, responsible for those other duties.
But it doesn't, this book does not describe any of the other responsibilities
in any detail, just those around the Secret Service.
The person who wrote the book also wrote a book called Inside the FBI,
which, which was very interesting, gave you a lot of insight,
had some, some tie-ins to the Secret Service.
But a book really ought to be written on how the Secret Service operates
in its non-presidential, uh, roles.
Because there's a lot of, uh,
I'm sure there's a lot of stories that need to be told.
And, uh, I've learned a lot just in the past year dealing with them personally.
It, uh, really opened my eyes.
Well, we'll just say we're compiling lots of information.
So, uh, there, there are quite a few stories to be told,
and hopefully we'll get to tell them all at some point.
Uh, we're gonna start taking phone calls.
212-279-3400, the program is off the hook.
And we're talking about, uh, billing snafus in the Secret Service
and, uh, prisoners and various other things like that.
Farber, were you surprised by the AT&T, uh, thing?
No, actually, um...
How could they mess up like that?
How could they, uh, how could their billing not work?
I, I thought it might have been, uh, a problem with 9-X
that they didn't get billing from, from anybody else.
Do you know anyone that, that doesn't use AT&T that did get their bill?
Everyone I know used AT&T.
Oh, you don't use it? Joker doesn't use AT&T.
What's wrong with you?
No, I do use AT&T. Remember, I, I got slammed last month.
Oh, you got slammed through AT&T.
Here's, here's what's really interesting.
I get a phone call about a month ago at 8 in the morning from MCI.
Mm-hmm. 8 in the morning?
8 in the morning. Yadda, yadda, yadda, MCI come up.
I'm like, no, I use AT&T.
Well, AT&T's a very good service, sir, but...
Who wants to talk about long distance at 8 in the morning?
I didn't, so I tried to get off the phone as quick as possible.
Said, hi, remove my name from all your calling lists.
Mm-hmm. Blah, blah, blah.
Right.
So I get my phone bill, I go to pay it, and, uh,
I look down and it's MCI.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, I'm like, I don't use MCI, how did this happen?
I called them up, and what was very strange is my phone number
obviously is billed, um, I have it listed
under a different name.
The MCI bill was...
Mm-hmm.
...under the name I have it listed under, not the billing contact.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, the listing is, you know, totally fictitious,
and so that's the name that appeared
on my MCI bill, which was very odd.
So I called them back and I said, you know, hi, what's going on with this?
I was contacted a month ago by a telemarketer.
I said, no, I don't want to do this,
you know, go away, take me off your calling list,
you call me again, I'm suing you.
And he said, well,
this was in regards to Amway.
Amway?
That's what I said, and he said,
are you an employee of Amway?
And I said, no, I have absolutely nothing to do with Amway.
And he said, well, this was,
it's marked on here that you switched over to MCI
as a service,
some sort of promotion
that they had with Amway.
Wow.
So, yeah, but long story short,
I got my MCI bill, and it was much higher
than my AT&T bill.
AT&T is like $0.13 or $0.14 a minute,
whereas AT&T is like $0.10 or $0.11.
Where's the savings?
I don't know. I want my dime a minute rates.
I want Candice Bergen to come to my house and explain it to me.
Well, that's Sprint.
You're going to have to deal with Sprint, then, if you want that.
If you want Candice Bergen, you've got to deal with that.
Well, Bernie, you've got no choice at all, do you?
I'm sorry?
You're stuck with O+, and I think it's AT&T.
It's EPD, zero plus dialing.
Although, I don't know who carries these calls.
I think these calls are actually carried by AT&T
from the Bell Anika routes from this prison,
the previous prison.
It was EPD, and at the federal prison last year,
it was also ZPD,
which I think is somehow associated
with Sprint in some way, perhaps.
But this is actually AT&T, I think.
Well, yeah, it is AT&T,
because that's what they say
when they announce the call.
That's AT&T dialing.
So, uh...
I imagine that'll change pretty soon,
now that Bell Anika
and all the other regional Bell operating companies
can handle long distance.
I don't know.
Is that something that maybe fiber is aware of?
Is that something the RBOX can handle now,
is long distance,
or are they still waiting
for some other regulatory lifting?
If the RBOX can handle what?
Intraladder calls?
I'm sorry?
I think he means collect from...
Apparently, a part of this new...
I've been cut off from the rest of the world
for quite a while,
since prison,
but I'd heard
telecommunications bill
permitted
regional Bell operating companies
to actually carry long distance calls
and into the long distance market.
Is that right?
Yeah, I think they were given permission.
I haven't...
Or at least I do remember hearing
that other regional Bells
were going to be allowed
into the exchange market.
Like, for example,
I can't possibly imagine this ever
physically taking place,
but I think that, for example,
Southwestern Bell would be able to
provide phone service in 9X territory
and vice versa.
Just in case you're not confused enough already.
Yeah.
Southwestern Bell in New York.
That's great.
Okay, 212-279-3400,
program is off the hook.
Very interesting things
concerning telephone service.
Okay, try to speak up, you're a bit low.
Okay, alright, fine.
I contacted
the good old Bell Atlantic,
I live in a Bell Atlantic area,
and I'm putting in another line,
and I was going over
account information, and apparently
now my long distance company
is LBBS Worldcom,
and what happened was
the lady was giving up,
basically reviewing the records,
and she came up with this
0488 as some
kind of identifying code for
of all things, and their system
they have it as ITT.
Oh yeah, ITT was the old carrier
for 10488, and since they
were taken over
first by Metromedia,
and then by LBDS,
their records probably just haven't reflected the change.
It's like Sprint used to be
USTEL and Sprint before they merged.
Uh huh.
Among other things, yes, I was
involved in Amway
some years ago, yes, I'm not ashamed
to say that, but it's like
I gotta deal with it.
Actually, this is going back
in 1984, Amway was
actually a catalyst
for the spread of MCI service.
Is that so?
Oh yes.
How were they connected?
This was a long while back.
I don't know how to bring up
the information.
OK, we got some prison noise
coming in, so try to speak up.
It's pretty much
what I want to talk
about at this point.
Just hope that Bernie S. is holding
up well. That's all.
You're not going to tell us the Amway connection?
I don't have
enough information to be
exact, but like I said, I was
involved in Amway a couple years ago,
and there was
a sales pitch
among other things, but there was
something along the lines of a joint venture.
OK. That's all
I remember clearly.
OK, well
we'll check into it then. How's that?
Thank you very much.
We had some dealings
with various
companies.
I don't remember the exact
name of it, but I do remember that if you made
Oplus calls through MCI a few years ago,
you got connected to an AOS,
another
phone company. I know it was
IT something. It wasn't ITT.
It was ITI. ITI. That's it.
Thank you. ITI would handle
MCI Zero Plus calls, so that was kind
of disturbing because they would charge
a lot more than any other
company would that would handle
Zero Plus. So you had that connection.
Various other telemarketers
which were causing all kinds of grief because
they were very aggressive and wouldn't take
no for an answer. And then you got an
Amway connection, or you did back then,
that we're just learning about now.
So I guess that's something
we need to hear more about,
just where these companies are coming from, who they're
connected to.
212-279-3400. Good evening. You're on.
Hi. This is Jeremy.
I met you at the party. I wanted to thank you
for the ad cafe.
Is Bernie still there?
Yes, he is.
Hi, Bernie. I hope you're doing all right.
Thank you. I had sent some
literature to the
first address and
I guess it had missed,
you know, you had transferred at that point
and it eventually got back to me
and it was like a bulldozer
ran over it.
Don't worry about that. I thank you for
sending it. Apparently at the other
institution, the Northampton County
reading materials were considered
contraband.
They were a reading of a dangerous activity.
But at this prison,
apparently, reading materials can be sent.
I guess I could
give the mailing address where you could send that to.
Are you still a D-19?
I'm sorry?
Are you still a D-19?
She's asking about your address.
I know you're a D-block. Actually, we've got the address
here. It's right to
Ed Cummings at C-U-M-M-I-N-G-S
Care of Bucks County
Prison. And if you write
D-block on there, that will make it
more efficient.
And that's in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Doylestown.
D-O-Y-L-E-S-T-O-W-N.
And the zip code, I believe, is
1-8-9-0-1. Am I correct, Bernie?
Let me double check on that.
Did you mention it's 1730
Southeastern Road? You know, that's the part
I left out. It's probably the most important part.
Which eastern again?
1730 Southeastern.
Southeastern Road. Okay. And eastern is one word.
E-A-S-T-O-N.
And the zip code is 1-8-
9-0-1. Apparently
it's very important to write on the outside of the package
anything that's coming here
outside of the envelope. It must say
reading materials on the outside of the
envelope or box
or whatever that's coming. Otherwise, they'll just
reject it out of hand and assume it's not reading
materials. So, it's got to say reading materials.
So, even if it's a letter or a card,
make sure it says reading materials. And that way, it removes
all doubt of what's inside.
Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Several people had mailed me
cards, letters, books, and
it's really a godsend because this place is so
unbelievable.
Is it opened when you receive it?
I'm sorry? Yeah, they open everything.
Every piece of mail that you send in is opened.
Technically, when they
send things out of prisons, they're not supposed to be looked
at, but we happen to know that's not true.
Can I ask, are there any subjects that writing
about is taboo?
I really don't think so, unless it's
something that's obviously
verboten, like escape plans
or something like that. But no,
I don't think there's a... this prison seems
to be a little more progressive and
in a lot of ways, it's
regressive.
They don't seem to consider reading a dangerous activity.
So, as long as it's something that's not obviously
detrimental to the
safe and orderly operation
of the institution, I don't think they really care.
Well, that seems to be
the phrase that always
is mentioned whenever, say,
a copy of 2600 is
rejected because it would
interfere with the safe and orderly
operations of the institution.
Anyway, thanks so much for the call
and thanks to everybody who's sending in
material to Bernie S. It does make a
big difference. It means a lot to him
and to us to know that people out there care.
I also want to thank people who showed up last
week at the At Cafe event.
That was a lot of fun. We basically
were showing off the webpage to a whole lot
of people and it was kind of
neat. You know, a lot of people got their first taste of what
the web and what the internet is all about.
And the support for
Bernie S. was amazing down there. Almost everybody
wanted to know more about the case
and were interested in various ways
of pursuing it. So, I think
once you get out, whenever that day comes, which
will either be hopefully as
early as May 30th and
hopefully the Secret Service won't
mess things up too much,
I think you'll find a lot of people want to talk to you about
this whole thing.
It'll be an interesting
subject to explore over the years ahead.
I have a
bit of new information about the case too.
I spoke with my attorney
a few days ago who has
recently made the
formal entry of my
federal appeal challenging the
unconstitutional vagueness
of the federal statute that I was convicted of.
And I'll be working
with him, hopefully on the outside,
if I get out of here on May 30th. If not, he'll have to
drag himself all the way up here to this prison
to go over some of the legal fine points
of it. But we discussed some of
the
angles that we want to attack in this
federal appeal. It's going to be heard later this year
apparently by a three-judge
panel. Three federal judges will make
a decision as to whether the
wording of this federal statute is
indeed unconstitutionally vague.
Basically, it comes down to a few
terms in the
wording of the statute that aren't defined.
And it's
just left very ambiguous.
It's so ambiguous that almost anyone
with a computer could be
charged with violating the statute
whether you don't have to
have committed any fraud with
commonly available equipment or software
to be convicted. So that's what's
scary about it. So hopefully we can get this thing overturned.
I won't get the year of my life back or
tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees or
anything else. But if I can spread somebody else
going through this, it'll be a win.
Well, now, do you have an exact date as to
when this will take place?
The hearing date has
not been set, but my attorney told me it's going to be
late this year.
So maybe that'll be changed.
But as far as I know, it'll be sometime in the
fall or winter
this year. Okay. Well, we'll keep
posted on that. Let's take another phone call. Good evening.
You're on off the hook. Oh, hi.
I was wondering
about
cable descramblers. Okay. What about
cable descramblers? Okay. Do the
ones that you build
actually work?
The ones I build
work. I don't know about the ones other people
build. Well, you know the ones that say, you know, the
seven easy steps and all that kind of stuff.
Do those really work? Well, I know that
there are lots of boxes floating around
and it's a fairly simple thing
where they're
plugged into the
system and basically they just
open up everything. They
de-scramble all of your channels
including pay-per-view. It's really
a pretty simple thing. You do have to
occasionally recharge it
or not recharge, but just plug
it back in so it does it again.
Redo the variable capacitor? Right.
Well, I'm not sure what the exact technical
term is. Actually,
the ones that I've heard of floating
around actually put the box into
a maintenance mode.
Oh, is that what it does? It's in maintenance mode the whole time?
Yeah, and usually
the box, as I understand
it, the box has a
timer that only allows it to be in
maintenance mode a certain amount of time.
And afterwards it reverts back.
The ones that you build? Yeah.
There's a couple of simple ones
and there's also
the couple that I saw were either
it was a couple
of logic gates or I saw a couple
that used microcontrollers
too that were based on
a chip known as the basic stamp
by a lot of hobbyists.
There are certain timeouts. If you just
plug the thing in
and then walk away from it,
I think it only lasts a couple of hours.
If you leave it plugged in and you put
some sort of an FM trap on it as well
to prevent any signals from coming down from the cable company,
it can last for
quite a long time.
Occasionally it has to be done over
again, but once that happens,
these instructions I'm looking at
are telling me to wrap wire around a nail.
The thing you have to be careful about, though,
well, you know,
that might be good for good luck or something like that,
but the thing you have to be careful...
That's how the coil is.
Solid wire and twist around
a nail or a rod.
Bernie, what do you got?
Go ahead, Bernie.
What's more commonly referred to as a trap,
there's really two main methods cable companies
use to prevent people from doing something
they're not paying for.
There's active scrambling,
where they actually change the signal
and suppress the
synchronization signals that are built into
the video signal.
And there's jamming, which is also used
in some of the less sophisticated systems.
In the jamming system, they actually
jam that particular channel
with an annoying beep-beep-beep sound
and put like a herringbone pattern
on the screen. You can build a very simple
filter to filter out the jamming.
There's a variable capacitor.
There's plans for that in various magazines.
But the scrambling method
where the video is just
all very wavy
and out of sync,
that's a lot more sophisticated.
You need digital logic circuits for that.
What most people do instead of building their own boxes,
they'll just purchase the type of
cable de-scrambler
that that cable company sells from
one of several companies that advertise in the back
of various electronic magazines.
Yeah, I purchased one. It cost about $315.
What most people have to do is
replace the firmware
in that chip. There's a chip called an EEPROM.
You'll need to replace that with
what's often called a
test chip. But it's like FiberOptic
says, it puts the box into maintenance mode
and allows it to receive all the channels
all the time. Basically, sometimes you have to
reset it by unplugging it or
shorting out the CPU
with a push button or something. You can put it on there.
But basically it'll allow you
to receive everything all the time. Unlike
a lot of magazine articles,
there's no way the cable company can
readily tell
if you have one of these
boxes. Although one technique they've used to
catch people is to
exploit some of the
programs
out there that are stored on these
illicit test chips
by broadcasting
a channel that the legal boxes
won't be picking up, but the
bogus boxes will be picking up.
It'll be some sort of ad that broadcasts
like, to get your free t-shirt, call this
800 number. If you call that 800
number, they use an ANI
feature which allows them to know
where you're calling from. I know everyone
calling that number at that time
must have one of these bogus boxes. So if you
see any too-good-to-be-true offers
on your cable after you've been watching
it with your
illicitly programmed cable box,
it's not a good idea to respond to it because
it may well be a trap of some sort.
Well, if you do see a number like that,
it might be a good idea to hop onto
poundhack and IRC and post the number there so
everybody there will call it and
get visits from their cable company. I don't know.
It seems like a pretty low-tech way
to find people.
They've actually started to have commercials
on subscribers of Time Warner
Cable here in the area.
They're actually having commercials
to try to deter cable theft.
It's a commercial
basically where there's a guy
appearing before a judge claiming he didn't know it was illegal.
And then you hear this
big, loud, booming voice at the end of the commercial
saying, now you know.
This is also something very interesting because we're talking about
this particular bit of
hardware that is used
by many people, but I don't think any
of us actually use it ourselves.
We've experimented with it, we've played around with it
and we're trying to figure out how it works, how the cable
companies work, but I've got a cable bill.
It's kind of high, but I do pay
the cable bill because doing that
would be, I don't know, kind of
not the kind of thing I'd like to do
at this particular point in time.
I think it's an important parallel
to Bernie S.'s case where because
he had knowledge about certain bits
of technology and because he had an interest
in it, that meant he was guilty of fraud.
It doesn't necessarily have to be so. By all means
ask questions, by all means experiment and
try things out. It doesn't mean that you
have to steal things and become
a criminal in everybody's mind. And the more people that
do this, that play
around with it and don't use it for their own
personal gain, I think
the more people will see
that there are legitimate uses for this
technology. Everybody should really be aware
that the mere possession
of a cable box with a test chip
in it or just the test chip itself
falls under the new federal
statute
as being a federal felony
punishable by up to 15 years
imprisonment and a $250,000
fine. That's Title 18
Section 1029A
6B, Possession of
Hardware or Software for the Modification
of Telecommunication Instruments for the
Unauthorized Access to Telecommunication Services.
That's what I was charged and convicted with.
And you don't have to
even be using this stuff to be
convicted of
this felony, which is so scary.
You can buy these
chips readily from various companies
in the back of electronics magazines. You could
write your own software and be convicted
of this felony and not even having
used the software. So
beware if you're going to experiment with this
technology. Just beware of the risks that
you don't have to be committing
any fraud at all or
defrauding anyone to be convicted of a federal
felony just for possessing
something that could be used in that
manner as long as the government can show that you knew
it could be used that way. And also the people
that you buy it from, you know, they could be just
giving your name away to whoever
and putting you on some kind of a list. So you've got to be careful
of that, too. Okay.
I just wanted to, without wasting any more
time, I'll just tell you something that I figured
out at the phone booth. It doesn't work anymore. It was working for a couple
days, though. Okay. I don't know what this was.
When you typed 196
pound, it would go click, click,
give you about a second, and then
give you a brand new dial tone, and
it was just like having the dial tone from home. You can call
anywhere for free. From a pay phone?
Yeah, it doesn't work anymore, though. Uh-huh.
Working a couple weeks ago. If you
call 1-0-0-9-6,
then 1-7-0-5-5-5-4-1-4-1,
that'll tell you what company that was.
And then you can find out who the
suckers are. That set it up wrong.
But basically, I know All Net has
a case where you dial 1-0-0-
what is it? 1-0-4-4-4-
pound, and then you get a dial tone that
belongs to All Net. But the idea is you enter
an authorization code of some sort. You don't just
dial away. No, see, that's what this was.
It was just dialing right through. I was
making free phone calls from it. Right. I was very surprised.
Right. Well, you know, that
does happen occasionally, and
the only way you find out about it is by
experimenting. All right. Thanks for calling.
All right. Thanks a lot. Very interesting subjects
here that we brought up.
Let's take another phone call. Good evening. You're on.
Yes. I got an interesting call last night
from a telemarketing. They offered me
caller ID. They said that
they work for 9x, not
with 9x. And when I asked the guy what type
of caller phone it was,
with a built-in caller ID, he had
no idea what I was talking about. How many lines
do you have? What kind of memory does it have?
Very strange. And he
called me back a second time and said, oh,
everything is free. The hookup
is free. So I told him, in my
area, the hookup is free, too. I just call up
9x, and they hook up for free. Were they calling
on behalf of 9x? A representative.
We're representing 9x, but
not 9x itself. Right.
Well, it sounds like 9x hired out to a bunch
of telemarketers to make some calls and get
people to sign up for caller ID. They wanted to charge me
$50 for a telephone with a built-in
caller ID box.
Right. Well, they are selling hardware now
that has things like that
built into it. When I asked him what type of
caller ID box was
built in, he had no idea. It wasn't a
9x or AT&T phone.
Some off-brand name. Right.
He believes it was made in China.
They sell all
kinds of... I mean, are there any 9x phones?
Have you ever seen a 9x phone? Oh, AT&T
phone. Yeah, AT&T makes home
phones, and so does Southwestern Bell, but
have you ever seen one from 9x? I don't know if 9x
themselves actually has brand name
phones. I don't think they do, so they must get it from
someplace else. And yeah, China's a good
bet. I've seen 9x caller ID boxes
that I've seen. They say 9x on them?
Yeah, they say 9x on them. Oh, they're probably just stamping their name on it.
They stamp their names on it, right. Right.
Oh, so you know anything about the phone cards they're selling
in the stores, the $10 cards? What about
them? Oh, I purchased one recently
and the line is always busy.
Then I called up the number,
the number in the back, they gave me another number to dial.
It's also always busy.
That's not a very good service, then, is it?
No, it's a lousy service. You pay $10 for this
thing, and then you can't make any phone calls with it. You can't make no phone calls
from it. And then finally,
I managed to make a phone call. It worked beautifully,
but the next time I tried,
the 800 number they give in the back was busy,
and the Spanish number they give in the back
is also busy. Well, now, do they have
a customer service number? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you call that one? I called that, and the guy said,
oh, since our rates
are so low, I'll give you another
number. Oh, the circuits were overloaded
with so many people calling up, using
our card. Well, I would tell them that they might
have to raise their rates to cover the lawsuits
they're going to get from people that can't make phone calls.
They're a phone company. They're supposed to allow people to do that.
If you're not satisfied, return
to the store where you bought it, and they should
refund your money. Return the unused portion.
Right, like a 7-Eleven
clerk is going to want to return money for a
used phone card. Go try that one out.
That's a fun thing to do
on a Saturday night. Oh, so on the cable,
they sent out a, in the New York
area, Brooklyn Cable, I believe,
Cablevision, they sent out a bullet
recently, about a year ago.
Oh, the old bullet.
What? The old bullet
story. Right. Oh, I've heard that
story. And the cheaper boxes were disabled,
and the more expensive boxes were not disabled.
Bernie, you know anything about that?
Well, it's not what they try
to make it sound like. It's just a
signal they sent down a line that
instructed the box to go into a different
mode, and it only
worked, it only affected the
certain type of test
chip in it. If someone were just to unplug
their box for a few hours
and plugged it back in again, it would have reset it,
and then it would have been no
problem. The way they caught people
is that people would call
the cable company as soon as they sent this so-called
bullet or code down a line.
And everyone who called to complain
that their cable just mysteriously went off,
the phone company would add it to the list of people
that they suspected were using one of these illicit
boxes. So,
it's just a trick that
the cable companies were using.
Well, why didn't it happen on the more expensive boxes?
I know a guy bought a box for $200,
and one guy bought a box for $350.
The box they paid $350 for, no problem.
The cheaper box for the $200,
he had the problem. Apparently
the firmware chip that was in the cheaper
box was the
program that the cable company
would try to exploit by sending
a special code down the line
to make it go into
a different mode, preventing it from receiving anything.
They could have just as easily
sent a code to prevent the other
type of boxes to do it as well, but there's
several different versions of the firmware
out there, and they're not aware of all of them
or just wanted to address the most commonly
used one, which is ostensibly the cheaper one.
So,
if your cable goes out mysteriously and you're using one of those
bogus boxes, it would behoove you to
unplug the box overnight and then
plug it back in again and see if the problem goes away
rather than calling cable company complaining
and putting yourself away.
Right, right.
Thanks for the phone call.
I was wondering if either
Fiber or Bernie S, have you ever
seen a channel on your cable
it doesn't show up in your cable box, it shows
up only when you have a cable
ready TV set, but it's like an
oscilloscope. I see that on my regular
cable box. You do? What is that?
I'm not sure. It's an oscilloscope on TV.
I mean, great, but what purpose does it serve?
Nobody knows, huh? I've never seen it
myself. It's quite a sight to behold. Does
yours say something on it? Mine says the number
12. Yeah, I think it has
number gauges on the screen.
And it has some waveform on the screen.
Yeah. Well, if anybody knows what that is, that's
the mystery that's floating around this week.
I'm sure it means something to cable
workers. Yeah, probably does, but
what does it mean? Yeah, it means
something. Good evening, you're on the air. Hi, let me turn
off the radio. Uh-huh. Okay,
just wanted to
ask for Bernie S.'s telephone
number. Ah, not telephone number, excuse me,
address. Real funny guy. Completed address.
Okay, we'll give it one more time. Now, Bernie, why don't
you give it? Okay, it's
Bucks County Prison. That's B,
isn't it, boy? Bucks County Prison
at 1730.
It's 1730
Southeastern
E-A-S-T-O-N Road.
And that's in Doylestown.
D-O-Y-L-E-S-T-O-W-N
P-A,
1-8-9-0-1.
If you send me anything,
first only send me things that are
reading material. If you send me
a cake with a file in it, it will be
rejected, and then I'll probably get a disciplinary
write-up. So don't do that.
But anything you want to send me, paperbacks,
magazines, photographs,
comics, just anything to keep my mind
occupied, because this place is excruciatingly
I'd really appreciate it.
Write reading material on the outside of the envelope
or box, because that way they won't think
it's a bomb or something. Okay, another thing.
I found out that it's
very easy for other people
other than yourself
to get
a credit card.
I get a telephone card
from a major carrier.
About a month ago, I got
a call from
the security department
of Sprint
asking me if I
took out a card.
And when I said no,
the guy said, well, someone took out a card
with your name, your address,
and he asked
me for my social security number,
which I told him, and
he said, well, the person used another
social security number,
and the guy got a card within two days.
And...
I have no need for doing that. I have a legitimate
calling card, which incidentally
doesn't work here, because I can only do zero-plus
dialing here. It only does
collect calls.
What I'm saying is that major carriers
like Sprint, AT&T
have really bad security.
That's not too surprising.
Almost anyone
can call up
and ask for a card,
and they're practically
not going to ask for anything. So what I had to do
is I had to call up my
my...
9X
and my long-distance carrier
and have them switch back everything,
and then get a PIN number
so that no one could touch my telephone.
No one could call my local
carrier and ask
for a credit card or
telephone card.
I would make a lot of noise and complain to a lot of people
with that carrier that they were so lax
in issuing a phone card in your name to another
person without proper identifying
information, because that could be a liability for you.
Eventually, you're not going to have to pay for it.
No, I didn't. I got a
bill, and then after I got
the bill, I got a second bill saying I had no
liability at all. It's still a hassle that
you shouldn't have had to be put through
because of their negligence. Right, but
it seems that the local carriers
don't ask people for individual
don't ask
people to create
PIN numbers
so that anybody can call up
local carrier and
use the same name and number as
someone else and
a fake social security
number and get a
long distance card.
I'm not too surprised. Are you, Emmanuel?
I'm never surprised by anything like
this, but you know what I am surprised at is how quickly
the time goes, and the time
is up now, and we have to
pretty much call it a night for this
week, but thanks, caller, for
those interesting remarks, and
Bernie, I want to wish you the best of
luck in the week ahead.
I'm sure we'll talk to you again next week. Thank you.
I want to thank everyone who's mailed me anything
because it's immensely helpful.
It's painfully boring in here.
Yeah, stultifying is
definitely the word, and we will be trying to visit you in the
weeks ahead. There is a visiting
schedule, and we'll try to get as many
people down there as possible to
help break things up as much as we
can. All right, so
again, everybody, please write to Bernie, and
please keep abreast of the situation.
Visit the website.
Learn everything you can about the Secret Service, the people
that put him there.
www.2600.com
You can mail your Secret Service
stories to SecretS at
2600.com
And you can mail BernieS
BernieS at 2600.com
as well, as well as the people on Off
the Hook, O-T-H at 2600.com
All kinds of neat things you can do on the web.
But if you insist on not being on
the internet, you can write to us
WBAI, 505 8th Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Attention, Off
the Hook. And that's going to
just about do it for us
here tonight.
Thanks again for listening.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call.
It could be that much worse.
But if they could, they would.
So they live on for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
But maybe not.
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The Arts in the Evening magazine.
The Arts in the Evening magazine.
The Arts in the Evening magazine.