This announcement on behalf of Jericho 98, a non-profit organization.
Strange lights in the sky, visitors from other worlds, dream time visions, psychic phenomena,
UFOs, the internet, and more.
UFOdesk, a feature of Sidney Smith's Carrier Wave.
Alternate Monday mornings between 1 and 2 a.m.
UFOdesk over WBAI, New York.
Produced by Paul Williams.
UFOdesk.
Okay, well, I'm hypnotized. I don't know about everybody else.
That's an interesting program.
But coming up right now is yet another interesting program over WBAI, New York.
It's called Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
You killed your European son.
You spit on those under 21.
But now your blue cars are gone, you better say so long.
Hey, hey, bye, bye, bye.
You made your wallpapers green.
You want to make love to the sea.
Your European son is gone, you better say so long.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
You made your wallpapers green.
You want to make love to the sea.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
Your cloud streets are goodbye.
It was needed to crack down on workers believed to be using drugs, or dealing drugs, or stolen merchandise.
That's right, it's no longer safe to deal that stolen merchandise in the bathroom.
It's going to be a hard fact of life to deal with for a lot of people.
They have said the cameras captured employees engaged in alleged illicit activities.
None of the nine ever saw the tapes.
Some of the employees resigned.
Others refused and were fired, but none were ever prosecuted.
The tenth person was hired on a seasonal basis at the Mira Loma terminal.
If anybody knows where Mira Loma is, I think it's in California.
I'm pretty sure it's in California, but I'm not sure where in California.
The tenth person was hired on a seasonal basis at the Mira Loma terminal for the last seven years,
but was reportedly told he would no longer be hired because he was a plaintiff in an earlier lawsuit filed against the company in connection with the secret taping.
Other workers still employed at the terminal contend they have been threatened with dismissal
because of their participation in lawsuits against the company regarding the hidden video equipment.
The eleventh person, the only woman listed in wrongful termination suit,
was a temporary office worker who suspects she was let go because company officials feared she had witnessed technicians
preparing to install the bathroom surveillance equipment.
Boy, this is a whole big soap opera going on here.
Anyway, employees said they were never told by the company they were being videotaped in the restroom.
Additionally, workers complained that the company's explanation of why the surveillance was needed
has branded them all as thieves and drug users.
California privacy laws ban the placement of cameras, camcorders, or other viewing devices in bathrooms,
dressing rooms, or other places where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Unbelievable.
And this kind of thing is going on all over the place.
I'll bet there are listeners out there right now who can call us later on in the program
and tell us horror stories about what surveillance is like.
Whether it's online surveillance, people watching your every keystroke,
going through your files on your computer,
or having a camera fixed on you at all times.
Even in the bathroom.
Truck drivers have these little monitoring devices that keep track of how fast they go, how often they stop.
Security guards have to touch a certain part of the wall between certain times,
otherwise they're accused of not doing their job.
It's really a society where we just keep our eyes on each other all the time.
Well, as we talked about last week, there's some fun and exciting Bell Atlantic phone services heading our way.
We've got a letter from Philadelphia.
I'd really like you off the hook radio show. I listen to it from the Philadelphia area over Real Audio as often as I can.
I sure wish BAI would give you guys two hours, since the hour goes so fast.
Well, back in late 97, you guys were talking about Bell Atlantic changing their network
so that unanswered voice calls would be taken over with an automated Bell Atlantic service.
Apparently it's hit your area.
And this listener sent some email that comes along with it.
It's called Name and Number Delivery Service.
Worst of all, every subscriber is subjected to this torturous service
unless they call Bell Atlantic to have it turned off for each and every CL line under their account.
I think it's a huge mistake.
It'll cause havoc with equipment and confusion for consumers.
It forces subscribers into an extremely annoying service
simply to steal by default subscriber revenues for an evermore money-grubbing Bell operating company.
Well, that was Mark from Philadelphia making his feelings known there.
And, yeah, here is what you get.
You get a little welcome message to this service.
Callers of Bell Atlantic New York has taken the frustration out of phone calls that are never answered.
Yeah, you don't have to cuss in the corner anymore
because callers can now leave their name and telephone number for the person they are calling
when their call goes unanswered.
The trouble is that it's a definition of when a call goes unanswered that we're having trouble with.
Bell Atlantic seems to be under the impression it's like two rings or something
and the rest of us would like more like 50.
This new Bell Atlantic service known as Name and Number Delivery Service
is available to many customers on the east side of Manhattan, Long Island City, and Astoria and Queens,
the Kingbridge section of the Bronx, and in the Bay Ridge and Canarsie sections of Brooklyn.
Those who use the service will be able to leave their name and telephone number
for most Bell Atlantic customers in the New York metropolitan area, Long Island,
the five boroughs of New York, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam Counties.
When a call is unanswered, callers hear a series of simple voice prompts or commands
that will enable them to leave their name and telephone number for the person they are calling.
Bell Atlantic's network will record the information
and then call the number every half hour for the next eight hours.
Great, huh?
No attempts to deliver the message will be made between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. weekdays
or 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. weekends.
When the call is finally answered, a recording will announce that someone was trying to reach them
and that Bell Atlantic is attempting to deliver that person's name and telephone number.
The information is replayed twice and the caller is charged 75 cents.
The person receiving the call doesn't get charged anything. Isn't that nice?
It would be great if you could charge somebody for getting a message from you.
I think it's a real big mistake and something that a lot of people are complaining about already
because, you know, you're calling something.
Lots of times you're calling with, you know, a phone that detects busy signals,
doesn't detect recordings saying that the number didn't answer
or that the number is busy or whatever it is that they opt to tell you.
So I guess the best thing to do is just complain, you know, complain here on the radio show
or complain to the Public Service Commission and to Bell Atlantic and all those nice people.
Just get the word out.
Here's a letter from someone named Roger who was plagued with problems.
Since I moved into my new house, I've had a weird problem with the phone bill.
A mysterious number shows up on the bill as being called several times a day.
This is at times when I know no one is at home
or even worse, when I am home but no one is using the phone.
Of course, I don't pay for these calls, something that pisses Bell Atlantic off to no end,
but they're not helping me find out why this happens.
As far as I can tell, the number, we'll just give the first six digits, 973 which is New Jersey
and 916 exchange is a beeper number somewhere in the Passaic area.
I've sent pages to this number a jillion times without success.
I've even gone as far as to call several paging companies in that area
to find out if it's one of theirs but with no success.
How can I find out who this number belongs to?
Someone else is using my phone service, racking up my bill
and even if I don't know who's making the calls, I want to know who's being paged on my dime.
Interesting problem and this happens to a lot of people actually,
weirdness showing up on your local phone.
Something is obviously forwarding into your number somehow to be dialed in this manner.
It sounds like something that might even be automated
but the first thing you have to do is find out who the beeper number belongs to
and I guess the first step towards doing that is to find out who the number is owned by,
what company bills out to that number.
What I would suggest, if you can't get somebody to call you back on that particular number,
try beeping somebody one number below that, one number below that
because the whole exchange is probably owned by the same company
but you want to keep it fairly close to the number to eliminate any possibility
that they may have just rented out part of the exchange.
When somebody calls you back and it will be a perfect stranger,
so try not to beep them at 4 in the morning,
simply ask them, explain the problem to them.
This is the way you get things done, by talking to total strangers, believe me,
and ask them what beeper company it is that they have.
Then you call that beeper company, explain the problem to them,
give them the number, see what steps they take
and if they don't do anything, give us the information
and we'll continue to try to pursue this because it does sound interesting.
We'd like to find out why this is happening.
In the meantime though, keep telling Bell Atlantic what the problem is
and tell them you're not going to pay for those calls.
Let them try and figure it out on their own too.
Maybe they'll get further than we can.
Okay, one more mystery and then we'll go on to our guest for tonight.
This comes from someone named Soon.
I'm a big fan of your show.
In my last apartment, I started receiving mysterious calls.
They showed up as unavailable on my Cidco caller ID.
Star 69 didn't work.
Also, the feature for marking the call for later use
in a police annoyance complaint failed.
This alone was puzzling.
Then I noticed a pattern to the calls.
They occurred on various days, but when they did,
they seemed to always be in a 90 minute and 30 second interval.
I received more than 20 of these calls total.
The few times I answered the calls, there was no one there
and the line went dead after about 8 to 10 seconds.
I have computers at home and had one listen for a short period of time.
Is it likely I was hacked or the victim of a war dialer?
I was told by one person it could be the result of some call center's phone system.
Well, okay, here's the situation there.
First of all, war dialing, the whole point of war dialing
is not to call the same number over and over again.
It's to scan out something.
It's to scan out an entire exchange and report back with the findings.
Unless someone has targeted you and wants to harass the heck out of you,
I guess that's the only possibility where you could be called.
But if they're going to do that,
they're going to not call you every 90 minutes and 30 seconds,
they're going to call you every 3 seconds,
something a bit more annoying.
Since nobody was ever on the line, since the line always disconnected,
and since it seemed to always follow the same pattern of 90 minutes and 30 seconds,
that tells me that there are no human beings involved in this whole thing,
that this is entirely a machine-operated snafu that you're dealing with.
My guess would be something on the order of a fax machine is calling you
and not getting a fax tone back.
You see, now, when you turn your computer on,
your computer is simply listening.
It's not sending anything.
When you call a fax machine, though, the fax machine originates.
It sends a tone, and the sending fax answers that tone.
So it's the receiving fax that starts the conversation.
All right?
Some computers, obviously, if you call into them,
and they pick up with a modem tone,
they'll be able to receive a fax as well.
I mean, that's pretty standard these days.
But on the chance that that's not what's happening with your system,
if it's not sending the right tones or not understanding that it's a fax,
there just won't be any communication.
That's probably what's happening.
I can think of one way, actually, that you could find out who this is.
You could simply forward your phone.
You have to invest in quite a few things.
You have to invest in call forwarding.
You have to get an OmniPoint account.
And you simply forward your phone to an OmniPoint voicemail,
and hopefully it'll make enough noise so it leaves something,
at least a second-long message.
And since OmniPoint ignores caller ID blocking,
then you'll get the number that way.
Those are all the solutions I can think of off the top of my head.
All right.
Our phone number is 212-279-3400.
We'll be taking phone calls in just a little while.
This is the show that almost didn't happen at all,
because we had, oh, boy, we had such an amazing computer catastrophe today.
It's not even funny.
Just go figure.
You do backups, right?
Backups are the things you're supposed to do to preserve your data.
Well, we did a backup, and for some reason, it made the entire system hang.
Actually, this is nothing new.
It's been going on for a long time where some sort of SCSI collision is happening.
And for those of you who don't know the terminology,
SCSI is not a word I'm using in a disparaging way,
although I really should because of the things it's put me through.
What happened was basically something collided with something else,
but this time, this time, it actually went further than that.
It didn't just abort the backup.
It went and destroyed data on the hard drive.
So doing a backup was detrimental to the computer system.
If we had not done a backup, everything would be fine.
Doing the backup destroyed the data.
It's all kinds of things that you can say about this,
all kinds of ironies going on here.
Fortunately, we have backups, but our whole site is down now,
and I had to get, you know, things ready for the show tonight,
and I couldn't access them.
I couldn't print them.
We had to go to DOS.
We had to copy everything to a DOS machine and print out from that.
I mean, that's just embarrassing.
I guess I didn't even have to reveal that, but, you know, I've got nothing to hide.
Anyway, so that's why things are a little flustered here tonight
because we had all kinds of technical problems,
but we managed to get through them for the most part,
although the system is still in pieces, and we have to work on that.
If you've ever dealt with a computer,
there's always a day like this that comes up someplace
where you get nothing else done, you waste a lot of time
just to get back to the stage where you were before,
and it usually takes about two days to do that.
So that's the penance I'm paying right now.
But no penance can compare to what's going on with Kevin Mitnick,
who has been in prison now for three years.
That's right, the three-year anniversary was marked on Sunday,
and it's pretty shocking to me that this could actually happen to somebody,
and to somebody that, you know, we know, a bunch of us know,
and does not deserve this in the first place.
We have on the phone with us Roger Slates,
who is Kevin Mitnick's civil attorney,
and I guess you've marked this anniversary,
and you've seen the reaction of people.
What's the situation as you can gauge it at present?
Well, actually we're pretty much just in a holding pattern right now,
waiting for a bail hearing.
You know, hopefully after three years, he deserves a hearing for bail.
What has been the history of that?
He has been denied bail consistently for the whole three years?
Yeah, he, let's see, I'm trying to remember the exact chronology at this point.
First we had North Carolina.
Right.
And then they had their negotiations for, oh, about two years on that,
on trying to work out a plea agreement on what his criminal attorney, Mr. Randolph,
calls the minor charges,
and then the big one is what's going to be coming up,
and that's where most of the issues are going to be dealt with.
So they were kind of in a holding pattern for those two years
while they were dealing with how to work out the sentencing.
And at that point, once they concluded that,
then they started considering the bail issues and all that sort of thing,
and we've just been trying to get a bail hearing for some time now.
Now, I heard on the web page the most recent thing says that a bail hearing is imminent.
How imminent is it?
Well, I'm hoping it's very imminent.
Kevin has been trying to get a hold of me for about a week now,
and I have no idea what he's trying to get a hold of me about.
I'm hoping that it's news of a bail hearing.
Unfortunately, he can only collect calls,
and so obviously I have to be at my office exactly when he calls in order to take the call.
And I just haven't been in enough, so we just keep missing each other,
but hopefully I'll have something very soon on when the bail hearing will be,
and we'll be posting that to the 2600 website.
Okay.
Now, how did you get involved in this case?
Have you been on for the whole stretch?
No, actually, I just started, I believe it was last November.
Yeah, late October, early November,
I actually read the plea that went out on the Internet
for help with legal research in his civil matters,
and I wrote him that day and have been on it since.
So you actually are a product of the Internet getting involved in a case like this?
That I am.
I actually read his plea, I believe it was on Computer Underground Digest,
responded to him right away and have been helping him ever since.
Now, had you heard of the case before that happened?
Oh, yeah.
I've been following it since day one, since back in the 80s, actually.
Since the first case?
Yes.
What do you make of all this?
Why the overreaction?
Why keep somebody in prison for three years without a trial
for something that most of us wouldn't even think is that big a deal?
Well, I think the problem is his name is Kevin Mitnick,
and he's had three books written about him,
and if they don't keep him in for as long a time as possible,
then they look bad, the government looks bad.
Uh-huh.
Doesn't the government look bad by torturing someone, though?
I would agree with that.
I don't think they would.
Uh-huh.
Well, how about the average person, though?
What's the average person's take on this?
Have you talked to people who aren't familiar with the case
and gotten any kind of reaction?
Absolutely, yeah.
I've talked to many people about it.
I bring it up whenever I can,
and absolutely everyone is astonished
and can't believe that something like this could happen in this country.
Uh-huh.
How does the conversation go, though,
someone who knows absolutely nothing about the case?
How do you introduce it to them?
Well, I basically just tell them that I'm working on the case,
and I explain what the accusations are,
and I explain that, you know, there's been no indication,
no allegation that he wanted to profit financially from it,
that it was just for his own intellectual knowledge,
and people at that point just become shocked
that he's in jail after three years.
Now, the specific accusations,
where are they officially from at this point?
Well, he was indicted in, I believe it was September of 1996.
There are 25 various charges
ranging from possession of unauthorized access devices
all the way down to impersonating people.
Okay.
And, as a matter of fact, I should have it here.
Are all of these counts,
each one is an individual count of a different nature,
or are some of them five counts from the same organization?
Uh, I'm looking through it as we speak.
Okay.
Um, the...
I'm trying to...
I don't like to leave dead air on you here.
Oh, dead air is fine.
I encourage you here.
It shows that we're not afraid of the unknown.
But during this dead air, let me give out our phone number.
It's 212-279-3400.
If anybody wants to call in, ask some questions,
share some stories of surveillance,
or ask Roger Slates, Kevin, the civil attorney,
any questions about the Kevin Mint in the case,
212-279-3400.
If you're overseas, the country code is 1.
I've bought you enough time there.
You bought me enough time to read up to count 15.
Most of them, there are a couple of them
that deal with the same companies,
but by and large, it's Nokia, Motorola, Fujitsu.
The cellular companies.
Yes, exactly.
Okay.
So there aren't any hidden charges in there
that we haven't heard of before then?
Uh...
Knocking down old ladies or anything like that?
Nope.
Okay.
Absolutely nothing like that.
It's all pretty much intellectual knowledge,
non-violent, non-profit motive type of things there?
Absolutely.
There are absolutely no allegations
that he ever had any profit motive whatsoever.
Now, okay, so first of all,
the trial date was originally set for April.
Now I understand that's going to be postponed yet again.
Is that true?
Well, there are, according to Mr. Randolph,
200 million pages of discovery documents.
So that has to be reviewed by Mr. Randolph prior to trial,
obviously, so he knows what's out there.
And I calculated, I think, one day
that that's some 400 boxes, 400 reams of paper,
or 400 cases, rather, of paper.
That's a lot of stuff to go through.
And that just takes time.
Even if you just glance at each page,
it's going to take a great deal of time.
I just don't see how it could be done by April 14th.
Well, how could they have done this and said,
we have 200 million pages of evidence?
Are they maybe sort of glossing over this a little bit?
They've had three years to look through it.
But do you think they've looked at every page?
Personally, I suspect not.
I mean, I'm not privy to it.
I haven't seen any of it.
But just by the fact that they were able to gather
200 million pages,
seems to me there must be a lot of logs
and user logs and such things in there.
It sounds like they probably haven't looked at it.
They just dumped everything.
Yes.
You know, core dumps and all that kind of thing.
Precisely, probably, yeah.
Wow.
I mean, it sure would be interesting to see
just what it is that they have.
Now, Mr. Randolph, Kevin's attorney,
obviously has the right to look at that.
Now, it seems like Kevin should have the right
to look at that as well,
but they're not allowing him to.
Unfortunately, many of the documents
are only on computer-readable form.
And, of course, he doesn't have access to computers.
Now, why can't they print out all of the...
I mean, they're not going to be...
A program can't be evidence.
You have to have something in writing.
Precisely.
Can't they simply print out everything
and give it to him in that way?
I believe the government's last position
was that it would take up
more than a courtroom
to just fill it up with the printout
of all the documents.
Yeah, but they're the ones coming up
with 200 million pages of evidence.
I agree with you 100%.
How can they complain about their own evidence?
I agree with you 100%.
That's really silly.
I agree.
Okay, so...
That's the way this case has been, though.
Nothing has been ordinary.
Right, it's been frustrating from the start.
We send mail to Kevin.
It comes back to us.
It's, you know, an exercise in futility lots of times.
You just want to throw up your hands and give up.
Unfortunately, Kevin is still sitting there in prison.
He's been there now for over three years.
And, I mean, how much punishment do they want to...
I mean, this is like a Saddam Hussein situation.
They just want to keep, you know,
battling this supposed enemy
until they just don't exist anymore or something,
or until some message is given to everybody else,
which I really don't know what it is.
Well, I think the message is
look at what we did to Kevin Mitnick,
so for anyone they arrest in the future,
that's a pretty good bargaining chip.
That's...
You know, they can say, you know,
look what happened to Kevin Mitnick.
He was in jail for three years before his trial.
And they got away with it.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I mean, there's still the chance
that they won't get away with it if...
I mean, obviously, you can't get back those three years,
but what's the best thing that can happen at this point?
How can Kevin be vindicated?
Well, he could certainly win a trial,
and I'm hoping that that's what's going to occur.
Mm-hmm.
And if he wins, what I'm saying is,
what would be the next step?
It's like, you know, are they just going to say,
oh, I guess you were wrong, and have a nice day?
Well, on his first two,
what are called the minor cases,
he still has three years of supervised release,
which is basically being released on probation.
That's on North Carolina charges?
Yes, on the North Carolina charges.
Okay, which he pleaded guilty to,
so that he would be exiled to California.
Correct.
Okay.
And so he still has three years of supervised release to serve there.
So even if he wins and is proven completely innocent,
he still is going to be on some sort of parole for three years.
Interesting.
Now, how about the scenario which has been drawn up,
where if they do not get the verdict they want,
the government can simply put them on trial
and some other jurisdiction just keep, you know, doing this.
You know, sort of like a John Gotti type of a thing.
Keep hitting them until they get exactly what they want.
Is that still a possibility?
Oh, it's possible.
This district attorney in L.A., I think,
is really into prosecuting Kevin.
Is that right?
Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Sort of his mission in life.
I suspect.
Well, it sounds really depressing.
Is there any optimism here?
Well, the optimism is that we're hoping that, you know,
we can get to a trial as soon as possible
and that he will be released
and can start serving that three years of probation,
or parole, rather.
Is there anything people listening can do or help in any kind of a way?
Well, you can certainly send letters to Kevin.
He appreciates that.
That keeps his spirits up.
I would also encourage people to write letters to the editor or whatnot,
to the local papers.
I think as much as we can possibly get Kevin's story out there,
it can only help.
Because, like I said, when I talk to all of just people on the street
and I talk to them about this, they are shocked.
You know, if we can get the word out to enough people,
I'm hoping that there might be some pressure
just from ordinary citizens
to show that this is just insane.
Now, taking over webpages is not the way to get that message out, is it?
Absolutely not.
We've just got to make that point clear,
because that does get a message out.
It's not necessarily the message we want, though.
No.
He didn't seem too happy about the last incident,
so I think that really does more harm than good.
But, you know, there is talk of all kinds of things
to mark the anniversary of the continuing imprisonment,
things like, you know, demonstrations, concerts,
you know, petitions, all kinds of things like that.
And, yeah, that's something that I think we really should explore,
but we need a lot more people on board
before we can actually do something significant.
Absolutely.
And I hope if we can get the word out there
more and more to regular people,
that we'll get some grassroots support.
Is there an address you can give us?
I can give you Kevin's address,
where you can write to him via snail mail,
and that is Kevin Mitnick, obviously.
And followed by the numbers 89950-012,
and that's to the Metropolitan Detention Center, or MDC.
Their address is PO Box 1500, Los Angeles, California, 90053-1500.
And that will get to him.
Just be aware that anything that you send to him
is going to be read by the federal authorities,
so you might want to be careful about, oh, I don't know,
antics that you've recently accomplished.
Yes.
That would be unwise.
And the list of things that you cannot send is pretty long.
In fact, it's everything except for pieces of paper
that you write or send that have words written on them.
And they can't have money written on them,
so don't send any of that.
But if you are interested in making a contribution, though,
there is a Kevin Mitnick Defense Fund.
Details for that are on both sites,
the www.2600.com site,
and also the www.kevinmitnick, one word, .com site,
which is devoted to the case as well.
Correct.
And that address that I gave out is, I believe, yeah,
as a matter of fact, I'm looking at it here on my screen,
on the kevinmitnick.com site under Contact Info.
That's there.
So if you didn't get to write it down,
you can go to that site and check it out.
Okay.
One thing that really kind of shocked me was,
after all this time,
there was only one person who donated money to the defense fund.
It might be because word hasn't gotten out all that much,
although I kind of doubt that.
I've seen mention of it in many places.
All right.
So it's time that if we really want to make a difference,
we have to get our act together and help out,
come up with ideas and really start pushing this thing.
Remember with the Bernie S. case,
we didn't actually get things done until we got angry
and we started really, you know, putting the pedal to the metal, as it were,
and calling people, arranging demonstrations,
just getting the word out.
That's important.
We can't forget somebody because we haven't heard from them in three years.
I mean, it's more important now.
Especially when the reason for not hearing from them for three years
is he's been held in prison without bail.
Exactly.
All right.
Let's go to the phones.
212-279-3400 is our phone number.
This program is off the hook.
We're speaking with Roger Slates,
Kevin Mitnick's attorney, civil attorney,
and how does your role differ from his other attorneys?
Well, I really don't handle any of the criminal matters whatsoever.
I'm not a criminal attorney.
I'm actually a computer law attorney,
and so any of the computer law issues I can take a look at.
But I really don't know much about the criminal process, to be frank with you.
Well, there's going to be a lot of use for people like you in the future.
Computer law is definitely something a lot of people will be learning about.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I could use the clientele.
Okay.
Unfortunately, I think you may get it.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
I hate to make you backtrack, but could you just give a brief synopsis of the case?
I've never heard of Kevin Mitnick.
I don't know the situation at all.
That's a good question, Roger.
You want to try that?
Okay.
Thanks.
Actually, why don't you handle that?
Okay.
Well, basically, Kevin was, well, he first got in trouble in the late 80s
and was put in solitary confinement for a period of months, which got a bit of attention.
He was described as a computer addict, someone who needed treatment to cure his addiction.
And that's when I got to know him, actually, from that time when he was locked up in prison
with all kinds of junk bond dealers and people like that.
So he finally got out.
He improved his life quite a bit.
He was described as an overweight, bespectacled junk food junkie.
And he went on a health food diet, lost a lot of weight, was working out, and things were really doing.
I think he was doing quite well.
The only thing that was frustrating to him was the obstinate way people would not allow him to reenter the computer society.
He was not allowed to go to, say, a trade show.
He was kicked out.
People just would not ever trust him with anything, and he had this stigma attached to him.
And I know that hurt a lot.
It was very, very frustrating for him.
As far as what happened afterwards, Kevin became a fugitive when there was some kind of incident
surrounding the end of his supervised release where they said, you know,
you committed some sort of offense, and now you're a fugitive.
And Kevin decided that instead of just turning himself in and subjecting himself to what he thought would be a witch hunt,
he decided to escape.
A lot of people thought that was a mistake.
They thought that becoming a fugitive means that you become a criminal.
And in light of what has happened to him over the past three years,
I'd have to say that he made the right decision by electing to flee.
I don't think he made a strong enough decision.
I don't think he fled far enough.
I certainly think he should have gone someplace where, you know,
they wouldn't have prosecuted him quite like this.
And when they finally caught up to him, basically,
John Markoff of the New York Times,
Hitomu Shimomura of the San Diego Supercomputing Center,
they had a vested interest in capturing him.
They wrote a book about his capture, made lots of money.
Two or three other books were written at the same time.
It became a real media case where nobody really knew the facts,
and there was a lot of speculation being thrown about, a lot of crazy charges.
And before you knew it, everything that went wrong with any computer anyplace was being blamed on Kevin Mitnick.
He was the super hacker.
He was the person that broke everything and was, you know, really horribly malicious.
But when you actually look into the facts of the case and ask somebody to explain a little bit more,
well, do you know for sure that it was this person?
Do you know that that, you know, he was the one breaking into your computer at that time?
The facts quickly fall apart.
For instance, the whole Hitomu Shimomura's incident
where he was alleged to have broken into his system and, you know,
leave threatening voicemail messages.
Well, it was pretty clear that those messages were not left in his voice.
In fact, the messages continued to be left after he was arrested.
To me, that's a pretty good indication that it was not him.
That fact, though, was never actually corrected.
And people to this day say that he was the one doing that.
They say he disconnected Christy McNichol's telephone.
You know, some Hollywood person.
However, when you talk to her or her lawyer, that never happened.
It was just wild speculation.
And that is what is 95% of this case is wild speculation.
The prosecution feeds on this kind of thing because it gets the American public to say,
hey, there's a danger here.
We have to attack this danger, do whatever is necessary.
But when you ask for specifics, when you say why, you know,
what specifically are we protecting ourselves against, it all falls apart.
So this is a case, I think, about emotion, not about actual facts.
How's that for a summation?
I'd have to agree with you 100%.
Okay.
He was the most famous name in hacking at the time.
And so whenever any incident occurred, they automatically tagged his name onto the story.
And that was true on television and newspapers and whatnot.
Unfortunately, it's true.
And, you know, you might think there's some glory attached to that.
Believe me, there's no glory being locked up for three years.
And when you add to that, add to that the time beforehand,
which I don't think deserved prison time either when I talk about any kind of crime
that involved, you know, profit or maliciousness.
You add that, you add the, I think it was a year and a half on the run from the FBI.
You know, that's living in hell as well.
So we're talking about, you know, the better part of a decade here
where somebody's life has been pretty much messed up by all kinds of hysterical reactions
to what it is you're interested in.
And it's just a shame because there's so much we could be learning from him.
There's so much we could be sharing.
He would love to be able to play with the newest technology of today to learn certain things,
but instead he's barricaded.
And, you know, I don't have any problem using the word tortured
because I consider that kind of a mental torture right there.
Roger, would you say he's a political prisoner of sorts?
I mean, people have asked me that, and I'm not quite sure what to answer.
You know, I'm not quite sure what to answer either. I'm sorry.
Uh-huh.
All right, well, I guess we need to define what constitutes a political prisoner.
And, you know, I think a lot of people have defined him as such.
Let's see if that's the consensus.
All right, 212-279-3400. Let's take some more phone calls.
And turn down your radio or computer or whatever.
Okay, hi.
How are you doing?
This is Charlie. I'm calling you from Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Without a public hearing, our water department is going to tap into our phone lines.
Oh, dear.
And what they said is, don't worry.
You will never pick up the phone and get a busy signal
because it only takes like 12 seconds to read your water meter.
And they said we gave all the water meter readers, you know, like a 10-month window,
and then we're going to lay them all off.
And I'm wondering, doesn't my phone line have rights attached to it just like, you know, my mail?
Well, you know, is it written someplace that you have to give them your phone number?
We all got a notice saying, as you know, we want to streamline costs.
And we in Ridgewood, New Jersey, we're in Bergen County.
What we're going to do is we're going to, starting next year in March,
we're going to start putting a device on your water meter and tap it to your phone line.
But no public hearing.
But there is nothing anywhere that says that you have to give them your phone number.
I mean, it's just not written anyplace.
Now, you know, if you want to be a real wise guy about this.
Oh, just refuse what you're saying.
Oh, give them a cellular phone number.
That'll be fun, you know, while they try to read the water meter off your cell phone.
I don't know.
Just do whatever it takes to make sure that they can't get what they want if that's not what you want
because you do have the final say here.
It's your house.
It's your phone line.
If you don't want somebody calling you, you can tell them not to call you.
But for the village overall, it is a done deal.
Uh-huh.
I just thought you'd like to know.
Well, you know, a lot of people will say, hey, this is great.
I mean, I no longer have to have that suspicious character walking up to my water meter and looking at it.
Yeah.
And one more person on the unemployment line.
But now how do I know when the CIA doesn't use my water meter for a tape recorder or something?
Well, I think.
That's the only thing.
In other words, you don't know.
It's like a fudge factor.
You got to worry about that.
There's probably other things you got to worry about as well.
Could I quickly ask your guest a question?
Yeah, that's what he's here for.
You years ago had a wonderful guest on who was being accused by the government after they confiscated his computers of having, quote, pornography on the disk.
Could you just ask the lawyer, like, how do I, if my computer is walked out of my house by a federal agent, how do I have a right to say, hey, my disk didn't have that stuff?
Like, how can it be tracked to me?
Or is it all the honor system?
Like, can they say there are things in my computer that really weren't there?
I mean, you know, we had a ring of 30 cops in Philadelphia last year who were all rounded up because they totally lied to get people arrested.
And in New York State, there was a big scandal two years ago with a state trooper barrack somewhere around Utica.
They were falsifying things to get people.
I just would like to see the computer lawyer.
How are they going to charge me and say, well, we found this pornography in your computer?
Like, how does it tag to me?
I mean, the way something in my wallet would if it's physical evidence.
Did they actually take your computer or were you just talking hypothetically?
No, no, this is a totally hypothetical question.
I'm wondering, like, how does information, how does content in a courtroom, how does a jury and everybody say, yeah, that must have come out of his computer
because they said it did?
Or is it all just on faith?
No, there is what's called the chain of evidence.
And each time the computer passes hands from one person to another, it's logged and documented.
But my unfancy computer doesn't keep a log of when people put garbage in it.
When I was a child, there was a joke about how a police officer would throw a bag of marijuana at you.
And when you caught it, your fingerprints were on it.
And what I'm saying is, how does a regulation computer where you could just put stuff in it once you have it in your possession?
Or it's all literally the honor system.
I'll hang up.
Okay.
Okay.
Do you understand the question?
Yeah.
And, again, it's the chain of evidence.
And it's completely documented who has, from the time that it's taken, who has that computer in their possession.
And if you were suspicious that something was tampered with, you can certainly, at a trial,
call all those people into court and have them testify what they did or did not do.
Now, there's nothing you can do to prevent them from committing perjury, but that's the way our legal system works.
It's a lot harder, though, when you're dealing with zeros and ones to prove that somebody—
there's no fingerprints to speak of.
Someone could simply put a file someplace and change the date, change the time, and it was there.
They're rewriting history.
It's Orwell's dream.
I think you're raising some pretty good points there.
You've got to be really careful these days.
Right.
And I guess, I mean, take some safeguards.
Keep backups yourself that will prove that you're telling the truth.
Yeah, good idea.
Yeah.
212-279-3400.
Incidentally, we have 140 listeners on the Internet right now.
They're spread out all throughout the world.
Big hello to all of you.
Of course, you won't hear this for about 20 seconds, but yeah.
Give us a call, too.
We'd like to hear from people anyplace.
We don't discriminate.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
I'd like to ask you a question.
What would be a—to ask you, what would be a good book for—to buy to teach me C—Fast C++ programming?
A good book to buy to learn Fast C++?
O'Reilly?
Yeah, get one of the O'Reilly books.
Practical—practical what?
Practical C programming.
Uh-huh.
Things like that.
Basically, just go to one of the bookstores and look around.
I mean, feel free to browse.
They encourage that.
And just, you know, a book that—you know, they don't all work for the same people.
Some people like certain books.
Some people don't like them.
Everyone has a different approach.
So that's what I suggest, going there and simply thumbing around and finding something that works for you.
And after you've read half of it, then maybe you want to buy it.
So the O'Reilly books, they're not that—they're not boring, are they?
That wouldn't make me go to sleep after the first page.
It depends.
It depends how interested you are in the subject.
You know, our show bores people coast to coast, I'm sure, if they're not interested in it.
Right?
But if you're interested, then you can listen forever.
Same thing with reading about certain subjects and topics.
And two more questions.
Do you know when the next Beyond Hope meeting will be?
No.
We never really know when those are going to be until fairly soon before they happen.
They don't happen every year, though.
I can tell you that much.
So it's a fair bet there will not be a Hackers on Planet Earth conference this year.
Sorry to ruin your life like that.
It's a fair bet there will not be.
That's us, yes.
Did you have another question?
No, that's it.
All right.
Thank you.
Thanks for calling.
I think he was listening on real audio.
But who knows?
Delay in the background?
Yes.
Well, we always have delay.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Okay.
Well, you were on the air.
Here's the problem, folks.
When you're listening on real audio, you know, we already have a delay, okay, for the on-air people.
But then there's an extra delay for processing time with real audio.
So by the time it gets to you, it's going to be about 20 seconds or so.
If you're listening to your computer and using that as a gauge as to when you're on the air, you know, when the silence hits,
we're not going to wait 20 seconds for you to say something.
So have the phone next to your ear.
When you hear my voice coming into your ear, not from the radio, from the phone, that means you're on the air and you start speaking, okay?
Let's practice even though that instruction won't hit people for 20 seconds.
Let's see if this person can get it.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Yes.
How are you doing?
Oh, hi.
Where are you calling from?
New York.
Okay.
What's on your mind?
Okay.
I just want to say hi to everyone.
Okay.
Not much is on your mind.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes.
Speak up, please.
Yes.
Hello?
Yes.
Go ahead.
Hello?
Yes.
You are on the air.
Speak up.
Okay.
I really would like to know what's a good book on Kevin Mitnick, the guy you're talking about.
Kevin Mitnick.
Okay.
The best book I can recommend is The Fugitive Game by John Litman.
I would agree.
Only because he is the only person that actually talked to Kevin who wrote a book.
And I think that means a lot.
You know, when you're going to write a book about somebody, to actually have some first-hand contact with the person.
And it could be in your point of view in a way that you agree with the information.
It's not just the guy that basically read some stuff on him and just did it.
Yeah.
He actually spoke and he got the point of view of Kevin.
You look at Takedown, right, which is the book written by Shimomura and John Markoff.
You know, they obviously have an agenda.
They helped catch the guy.
They wrote stories about him.
Basically, they defined who Kevin Mitnick is to everybody because everyone read their stories.
No one else wrote stories about him.
So, he was not defined by anything he said because he didn't say anything publicly.
He was defined by what they said about him.
Yet, they never spoke to him.
So, how can you really, you know, have much faith in that kind of a documentation?
You get the government side, what they think.
Well, you get their side.
I don't know if necessarily the government side.
But you definitely get a biased side that really doesn't have facts supporting it
because they never actually went to the heart of the matter.
And it's not fair to him.
No, whereas the John Lipman book not only critiques the whole Mitnick thing,
it also critiques the whole book writing thing around Mitnick, including Takedown.
You know, I would read both just so you have some contrast.
But if you really want something that's going to speak to you,
I'd say The Fugitive Game is going to do that.
John Lipman?
John Lipman wrote it, yes.
I would agree.
That's by far the best book.
Just keep in mind, not even everything in there is 100% correct.
That's true.
And that's going to happen every place.
You're always going to get some, you know, some inaccuracies.
But I think it's clear that that's the best of the three books that I know of that are out there.
What does Kevin think about that book?
Basically what I said, I would think, is that there are a lot of inaccuracies in it.
But he lived it, so he knows exactly what happened.
Of the three, I'd have to say he probably prefers that one.
Yeah.
I mean, almost definitely.
Do you think they're helping him out with any of the funds coming in, like a percentage or anything?
I don't think so.
I can tell you right now, Kevin has not made a penny from anything he has done,
either criminally or legitimately, because he's not allowed to, for one thing.
He can't even write a book about his story, even though everyone wants to hear his story.
All these people are making, it's, you know, the victim type of thing.
You can't profit off your victim's losses, even though there's no true victim here.
Son of Sam Laws, yeah.
Yeah, Son of Sam Laws, he's seen as some sort of a criminal.
You could write it for him, though.
Yeah, someone could write a book, that's true.
Someone could write a book and donate all proceeds to him.
And we'd love for someone like that to come up and do something.
But anything, you know, any kind of fundraiser to help him out, to help in his defense,
we have to get the word out, we have to get people motivated.
I would feel pretty bad if I were him sitting in jail for three years,
and there's all these books in circulation, and you're not even getting a penny about you.
Yeah, well, I think that Kevin is more important than money.
It's just the whole, you know, sitting in prison thing, which is pretty depressing.
But people are profiting off that, off your horrible story, you know.
Well, if anything, that shows the true light that they're coming from.
They're not really interested in the story, they're interested in the money,
which is diametrically opposed to what Kevin is.
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Thanks for calling, and good luck reading that book.
Let's see if we can fit in a couple more phone calls.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Okay, you were on the air. Good evening, you're on the air.
Yes, speak up.
Hello?
Yes, where are you calling from?
Finally, I get on this thing.
Where are you calling from?
I'm from Ohio.
Ohio, okay. What's on your mind? You got a question for our guest?
Actually, no, I wanted to say a couple of things.
Reading from books, I always wanted to recommend not to go and pick the largest one.
Pick the what?
The largest book, you know, the thickest thousand-page book.
Right.
Because they're usually over-informative.
And I like O'Reilly's stuff because it gets quite down to the point.
Another thing was, you were talking about, like, what was it, early on the show,
the public security thing or people monitoring what you did?
People monitoring you in your workplace, yes.
Yeah, I worked at a place, a computer store, which I'm not going to give out their name.
Okay.
Because the boss might be hearing this or something.
And you respect their privacy.
Yes, I do.
And I wish they would respect mine and my love for Unix-based computers.
And I had lost my job from the area for what she called being a hacker.
Really?
Yeah, it was kind of interesting because what basically happened was I had used,
when I telemeted to my own machine, I had used, like, keyboard shells.
So, you know, she wasn't really monitoring what I did.
She didn't like that.
And she didn't like how I didn't like to read books.
You know, I kind of explored, wanted to learn my own way.
This is your boss?
It was my ex-boss, yeah.
Okay.
And, you know, it was kind of strange because they didn't really say anything other than,
you're a hacker, we're going to fire you.
Well, what was your job?
It was being a computer technician.
Uh-huh.
And, you know, I hadn't really had a lot of experience with DOS-based PCs, you know.
Well, were you supposed to be telemeting places or were you supposed to be fixing computers?
Oh, I was supposed to be doing, you know, basically both, whatever I wanted to do when I wasn't working.
I see. Okay.
Because, you know, I like to play around and everything.
Uh-huh.
Basically, you know, she didn't like the way I had done things.
And one incident really crosses my mind is when a guy's hard drive had broken
and she just said replace it when it could have been fixed relatively, you know, by, you know, using LBA mode.
And she said to fix it, you know, by putting a new one in there.
And I didn't like to do that because it could have been fixed.
You charged him a lot more money by doing that.
Yes, basically.
And then she had another incident where she had a bunch of kids working up there.
I was one of them.
And one of the guys had worked there for seven months, never getting paid a penny.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, listen, we're out of time.
Yeah, I just wanted to say one more thing to you guys.
Yes.
Good luck in pulling through your little struggle.
It sounds like things just keep getting worse and worse.
Oh, thanks.
Thanks.
We'll get through all of our struggles.
I've been a dedicated reader and I don't want to see you guys go.
No, we won't.
We're not going anywhere.
Thanks for calling.
Thanks a lot, man.
All right.
We are out of time.
Roger, I'm going to give you one more opportunity to, I guess, wake people up
and get them to do something and write to appropriate people.
How can people get in touch with you, for instance?
You can e-mail me.
And my e-mail address is slates at 2600.com, surprisingly enough.
That's spelled S-L-A-T-E-S?
Correct.
Okay.
And you can write to me snail mail if you'd like.
It's Roger Slates and it's P.O. Box 244 in Huntington Beach, California.
Zip is 92648-0244.
And we really need people to come up with ideas, suggestions, resources,
anything to get the word out about this case.
Kevin Mitnick now in prison for over three years.
We reported it first here on Off the Hook.
In fact, we beat the New York Times three years ago when we reported his capture.
It was a shocking day then, and I'm pretty appalled now that it's gone this far
and really nothing has changed for him.
I think our longtime listeners would have to agree with that.
If you're on the Internet and you want to join the Kevin Mitnick mailing list,
it's pretty simple, except right now probably isn't the best time since our system is in pieces.
But if you mail to majordomo at 2600.com, that's M-A-J-O-R-D-O-M-O,
at 2600.com, that's our mailing list program,
and simply write in the first line of the message, not the subject,
the first line of the message, subscribe Mitnick,
and that will automatically subscribe you to the Kevin Mitnick mailing list.
And then from that point on, you simply post to that address, to Mitnick at 2600.com,
and you'll be able to communicate with all kinds of other people
who are interested in fighting this injustice.
Roger, I want to thank you very much for being part of the show tonight.
You're welcome, I loved it.
Best of luck, and we'll be talking with you in the future.
Great, thanks.
All right, we'll be back again next week with another edition of Off The Hook.
Till then, this is Emanuel Goldstein, have a good night.
This is Emanuel Goldstein, have a good night.
This is Emanuel Goldstein, have a good night.
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Money for health care and education, not war.
Demonstrate, Tuesday, February 17th at 4.30 p.m.
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