The director of the Hidden Planetarium, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, and specialist on chemical
and biological warfare, Dr. Leonard Cole, author of The Eleventh Plague.
Refreshments will be served.
And autographed books from all these writers will be available.
Again, this special event will take place right here at WBAI Studios, 120 Wall Street,
10th floor, Friday, February 5th at 6.30 p.m.
For more details, call 212-209-2828.
That's 212-209-2828.
Hi, I'm Simone Maxman, program director of WBAI Radio.
As many of you know, we have been airing the Senate's impeachment trial of President Clinton.
A few of you have called to ask why we chose to air this broadcast.
Some even suggested that it's a waste of time.
Well, that may be the case to a few of you, but it is the opinion of many of our listeners
that this is an historic event with significant historical implications for us all.
We've decided to continue airing the trial this week.
This also means that we will suspend our January membership drive effective Tuesday, January
19th at noon until the trial is over.
We're grateful to all of you who have contributed to our fun drive during the first week, and
we regret any inconvenience these changes might cause.
But as I'm sure you know, we are all in this together.
Thank you for being with us, and please encourage others to join us here at WBAI, listening
sponsored Pacifica Radio, 99.5 FM, in New York.
And it's eight o'clock on a Tuesday, and on this particular Tuesday, that means it's
time for Off the Hook.
Get up, be on your way.
And good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
This is Emanuel Goldstein here with you.
You know, we're originally not supposed to be here tonight, but because of all the goings
on down in Washington, D.C., well, as you just heard, our fundraiser got kind of messed
up as a result of all that.
I still think the whole thing is a plot just to mess up the WBAI's fundraiser, you know,
the whole Monica Lewinsky Clinton thing started a year ago just so that we would have to delay
our fundraiser for a couple of weeks.
But who's to say, you know?
Anyway, so we probably won't be on next week because the fundraiser is beginning next Monday
again.
I'm not sure about the week after that.
But again, check the website, and also, of course, check WBAI.
You might want to call in just to find out for sure.
In fact, that's what I'm going to be doing.
I'll be calling in to find out if we're on.
But we're on tonight, so let's treasure the time we have together on this particular evening.
Which means less music and more talk.
Because there's plenty to talk about.
A lot of it is kind of bad, so that's why I'm going to try and stay happy.
Because otherwise, it's just too depressing to go on.
Well, first, happy news.
Age verification systems required under a federal law designed to keep online pornography
away from children would be inexpensive, secure, and simple to run, a computer expert testified
on Monday.
Dan R. Olson Jr. contradicted testimony given last week by computer experts and website
operators who said such systems would increase costs and decrease traffic to their pages,
effectively putting them out of business.
He also testified that encryption systems, which encode credit card numbers to foil online
theft, are good enough that consumers should not worry about becoming victims of fraud
any more than they would when using their cards in public.
If I wanted to steal a credit card, I'd become a waiter in a restaurant, said Olson.
The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging a law which would require commercial websites
to collect a credit card number or some other access code as proof of age before allowing
users to view material deemed harmful to minors.
Yeah, you know, a credit card number, that's a surefire way to prove that somebody is of
age.
I mean, how's a minor going to use a credit card number?
It doesn't make any sense.
It's impossible.
Yeah.
Who are these people that come up with these things?
Anyway, the law's supporters say it is a sensible way to keep internet pornography away from
children.
The ACLU, however, contends the law violates the First Amendment and claims mainstream
sites may inadvertently be affected.
Here's the weird part.
The ACLU last week argued that parts of the hearing should be closed to the public to
protect some websites from releasing proprietary information.
Several news organizations filed a motion to keep the hearing open.
It's kind of weird for the ACLU to want to close a hearing.
Ruling Monday said that no part of the proceeding would be closed.
Instead, the information would be allowed as evidence but not openly discussed in court
with the sensitive material kept under seal.
Whatever kind of sensitive material that may be.
Isaac, how are you today?
Oh, I'm fine.
Yourself?
Confused.
I got a letter from EasyPass.
Every time I get a letter from EasyPass, I get confused.
They have this way of accusing you of things without any kind of evidence to support them.
They sent me a nasty letter a few weeks ago saying, you ran a toll for 50 cents somewhere
and now you're responsible for $10.50 and soon it may get even worse than that.
We may send constables for you and you could be sentenced to the electric chair and all
kinds of horrible things.
And so I called them.
And when you call them, they're always really nice.
They're these really nice people.
You know, like grandmothers sitting in rocking chairs.
And you can't believe they're the same people that sent out these horrible letters.
And I said, look, I didn't run a toll.
I mean, if I did run a toll, well, I didn't know I was running a toll.
I have EasyPass after all.
Probably didn't register.
He said, yeah, you know, that happens.
If you're in one of the upstate EasyPasses, they're not quite the same as the EasyPasses
downstate.
And it may say that it worked, but it didn't really work.
So that's why you got this notice.
And the funny thing is the notice acted as if they had sent out a notice beforehand.
And of course they didn't.
That was the first time I ever got any notifications there was a problem after they had added a
$10 penalty to it.
So she said, just write us a check for the amount of the toll.
I had to write a check for $0.50.
Felt like a complete idiot.
And I wrote a little explanation on the back of the notice saying I'm not paying the $10
thing because they said I didn't have to do that.
And please see that your thing works better in the future.
Doesn't scare me to death.
But that wasn't the end of it.
The next nasty letter I got came only recently.
They said, thank you for your cooperation in exchanging your EasyPass tags.
Our records indicate that these two sentences totally contradict each other.
Thank you for your cooperation.
And our records indicate that although you have received your replacement tags, you have
failed to return the tags originally issued to you.
And of course, I disputed that because I had sent one back.
But apparently, when I called them, again, they were very nice.
Different person, but just as nice.
And I apparently sent back the wrong one because there was no difference indicated.
I have one for the 2600 van and I have one for my car.
But when they sent me two of them, they didn't exactly differentiate van-car.
So I put one in the van and one in the car.
And wouldn't you know it, I put the wrong one in the van and the wrong one in the car.
They say they've had a long string of incidents involving me that I didn't even know about.
Nobody told me about these, where I'm driving through a toll booth with the wrong vehicle.
Yeah, with the wrong vehicle.
And I said, this isn't a problem.
This is, you know, no big deal.
You should not feel like a criminal.
But in the future, and this is something I thought was very interesting, in the future,
within a couple of months, it will be a problem.
Yes, it will be a problem if your car does not match your tag.
So your E-ZPass tag is going to have to have the information that your car matches when they take a picture of it.
They take a picture of your car every time you go through there.
I have to wonder why, you know?
Why is it so important to them that there's no price difference?
The price is exactly the same, but they want to make sure that you're tagged and that's who you are
and you're where you're supposed to be at a certain time.
So in any event, I sent back the wrong one.
Apparently that one got lost in the mail somehow.
I have the one that I was supposed to send back, which I haven't been using
because that's sitting in my van, which hasn't been running.
And now I have to send that one back.
Switch the car one.
Oh, I have to do all kinds of crazy things.
Basically, it got really, really annoying and complicated, but I think it's straightened out now.
But I learned something interesting out of it, and that's that they're going to be monitoring cars,
monitoring the exact type of car.
They have been doing that since the beginning.
They have been, but they haven't been enforcing it.
I didn't know they were going to be enforcing it.
They're keeping databases, and they're keeping track of just who you are,
and if your plate doesn't match your EasyPass tag, they definitely know this.
They say it so that they can prevent fraud from somebody breaking into your car.
How am I defrauding myself if I have two vehicles and I choose to flip-flop my EasyPass tags?
You're not defrauding yourself.
You're just making their life more of a hassle because their database doesn't exactly fit.
I think I'm going to do it anyway just to see what happens.
You're going to get in trouble.
If they told you, you're going to be in trouble.
Here's the thing.
I'm not just a radio show host here.
I'm also what I call a test consumer, somebody who goes out there and provokes the system into reacting.
By doing that, I can warn people, don't do this because this is what will happen to you.
I see.
You may have to accept some calls from prison, but it's worth it.
It's worth it if I am able to warn even one person not to follow in my ways.
Now, speaking of bad things to do, the pull of the Internet was just too strong for Shana Freed to resist.
The 17-year-old Washington High student—I don't know.
Washington High where?
You know how many Washington Highs there are?
Where did this come from?
Okay, well, I'll try and track that down.
I think it's Philadelphia.
I'm pretty sure it's Philadelphia.
The 17-year-old Washington High student couldn't stop her excessive usage when her grades started to slide.
She couldn't stop when her parents took her to a psychologist, then cut off her major online service.
That's a weird, rare phrasing.
Cut off her major—as if she still has a minor online service somewhere, but that was her major online service.
Okay, now the Busselton—anybody know where Busselton is?
It might be in Pennsylvania.
The Busselton girl is missing, and her worried parents think that Shana's addiction to the Internet is the key to her sudden disappearance.
Internet strikes again!
Strikes terror into the hearts of parents.
Even though she seemed very happy at home, her mother said, she told her friends she was very unhappy.
Shana disappeared from school last Monday after a seemingly normal day, according to her parents.
But the Freeds believed Shana had been making secret preparations for something.
She'd done a load of laundry the night before, which was rare, according to her mother.
She apparently took with her to school Monday a few new CDs her parents had bought her, and her beloved collection of Beanie Babies.
That's it, then.
Perhaps most alarming, the Freeds later—I almost said the Feds. It looks very similar.
The Freeds later discovered that Shana had deleted all of her online chat files.
The Freeds are extremely worried, having posted missing flyers of their oldest daughter at shops, malls, and with authorities all over the city.
If they tried ICQ.
Yeah, if they really were intelligent here, they'd be posting this on the Net, you know?
They say the Net grabbed her. Well, maybe that's the place you should look.
We all love you, the note says. We want to work this out. Please call.
Recently, the Freeds—this story actually was dated January 18th, so for all I know, she's been found one way or another.
Yesterday, the Freeds expressed hope that Shana—I'm sorry, it's spelled so weird, I'm going to say it differently every time I see it.
Shana, I think, is the right way to say it.
Shana is with one of the online friends she chatted with most, either in New Hampshire, California, or Texas.
If they know that much, it really shouldn't be that hard to narrow it down.
That's true.
They want to assure Shana she is in no trouble. We want to make sure she is safe.
She didn't take any of her parents' credit cards when she left. That's odd.
Isn't everybody who uses the Internet engaged in credit card fraud?
Oh, I always thought as much.
She's probably stealing other people's credit cards. That's got to be it.
Okay.
Yeah. And she only had a little money of her own.
The police department's Northeast detectives are now investigating,
and several friends are helping to distribute flyers, which does a fat load of good if she's gone out of state.
Parents have to explain to children that what you see is not always what you get when communicating online,
said Robert R. Butterworth, a Los Angeles expert in children and trauma.
Butterworth, who is the father of a 13-year-old Internet user—
Oh, they're not children anymore.
They don't call them children anymore. They're Internet users.
A 13-year-old Internet user says he has found two types of young people who get hooked on the Net.
Kids who use it because they get more out of it than school are one type.
They're bright people. They get hooked on it in an innocent way.
They crave information.
The second type is a child who feels very different from others.
A lot of times, alienated people will get into it because you find like-minded people from other regions, Butterworth said.
He's not related to the tub of plastic that you see on the Internet.
Yeah, I was wondering.
They say that here.
He said many parents believe that since the activity takes place at home, the children are safer.
But that's not true.
Parents have to be very acquainted with their children's browsers.
That's safe or Explorer. It's very important.
That can determine the kind of person you wind up being.
Parents take an interest in this kind of thing.
I mean, there's somebody who used Mozilla, and they wound up in a mental hospital.
You've got to be careful.
Okay.
So you have to be very acquainted with your children's browsers, get the history of where they have been that day,
and be upfront with them about why you're snooping around and watching over their shoulders.
Shana Freed has had a computer for about three years, her parents said,
but it didn't start to become a problem until her sophomore year.
Shana was spending all her spare time on it, chatting with other young people all over the country.
The Freeds monitored their daughter's activities,
but it's such an addictive thing that monitoring all the time is impossible, her mother said.
When Gary and Susan Freed realized their daughter had a problem,
they dropped Shana's America Online account.
There you go.
Also, in early spring of last year, the Freeds took their daughter to a psychologist.
Shana saw the psychologist for three or four months, and the Freeds saw improvement.
Her grades went back up again.
She even had tried out for a part in MAME, at the Lawncrest Community Center,
where she often helped out behind the scenes.
She's having a good year, Susan Freed said.
Why did she say that? Because that's present tense.
It's like she's being quoted from some other report.
Then again, how long was this year?
The progress report of Shana Freed here, which everybody was following.
She's having a good year.
Shana was also getting enthusiastic about doing things with her parents and younger sister, Jenna.
That's why her disappearance was such a surprise to the Freeds.
If they don't hear from her soon, the Freeds plan to hire a private investigator.
Gee whiz.
I mean, you know, if you're really worried about your kid, wouldn't you do that right away?
I would.
Anyway, if you happen to know where she is,
and I appeal to people out on the internet who might be listening,
you might be the only chance that these people have of getting their daughter back,
because obviously they're looking in malls around their local town,
not realizing that she could be anywhere in the world.
Contact Officer William Freisinger of Northeast Detectives.
Why does it sound like it's a commercial detective agency?
Northeast Detectives, 215-686-3153,
or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 1-800-843-5678,
and ask for Charles Pickett.
Be sure to do that.
I just found the wording of that article interesting,
especially in the beginning, where you could actually substitute the word internet
for any name of a narcotic.
Yeah, it's an addiction.
It's evil, you know.
We don't want to mock what's going on.
Obviously, if someone's missing, it's a serious thing,
but just the ignorance people have towards the internet,
and communication with other people,
and normal things like that.
You sort of focus the problem in the wrong place.
Anyway, we'd like to see how that story turns out.
Speaking of 800 numbers,
Bernie S. just sent us a text message on one of my phones.
And on that text message is a phone number.
I'm going to call it right now.
I've never called it before in my life.
It has to do with Y2K problems.
Hang on, I have to find the message.
No, I don't want to do that.
You don't want to find the message?
No, I tried to read a text message and it started connecting me to voicemail,
and I sure don't want that.
Okay, I'm going to try that again.
Go down there, hit OK.
Unknown number, no.
Okay, here we go.
All right.
Let's get a dial tone, please.
Thank you very much.
This is actually an 888 number.
888-USA4Y2K.
Thank you for calling the Federal Year 2000 Information Center.
Information specialists are ready to assist you from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
Informational messages are available to touch-tone dialers 24 hours per day
and are updated frequently.
If you're calling from a touch-tone phone, please press 1 now.
Be told why your call is being transferred.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on a second.
A little patient here.
Please select from the following options appropriate to your needs.
You may make your choice any time during this message.
You may also press star at any time to repeat the menu.
Can we hurry it up a bit?
To find out what the government is doing to fix Year 2000 problems, press 1.
For information about Year 2000-related banking issues, press 2.
For information about Year 2000 personal computer issues, press 3.
For information about the Year 2000 problem and small business, press 4.
For information about Year 2000-related airline and airport issues, press 5.
For information about the Year 2000 problem and telecommunications, press 6.
For information about Year 2000-related electricity issues, press 7.
For information about the Year 2000-related food supply issues, press 8.
To speak with an information specialist, please press 0.
I'm interested in the food supply.
Please make your selection now.
Okay, I'm interested in the food supply.
How about you?
Let's find out about that.
Government agencies led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
in coordination with the food industry report encouraging news.
Major domestic companies that provide most of the food Americans consume
are confident that there will be little or no interruption from the Y2K bug.
However, some foreign countries have not yet made significant progress,
and there is a possibility of short-term disruptions in some imports.
In winter months, it's just good sense to keep bottled water, some canned food,
and candles and batteries on hand because Mother Nature, not the Y2K bug,
can cause power outages or make a trip to the grocery store more difficult.
The Department of Agriculture has information about food availability on its website,
http://www.usda.gov
www.usda.gov
If you would like to hear this message again, press star.
Once was enough.
USA for Y2K.
No end of useful information there.
It's just the foreigners are going to have a problem, not us.
We're fine.
It's reassuring.
I debate that, but everybody's heard my piece time and time again.
Well, we'll devote more show time to Y2K.
Unfortunately, we don't have that much time today, and there's other issues,
but I just figured I'd give out that number because it's kind of entertaining.
It's a good thing to do at parties, I guess, when things get a little slow.
All right.
We also have news from the courtrooms.
Here's something interesting, and this was not very widely reported.
I don't really know why.
A Rhode Island man was sentenced on January 14th to a year and a day in prison
after admitting that he led a nationwide computer hacking group known as the VRI.
It's virus.
Plural.
Oh.
I think I'm pronouncing it right.
Yes.
At the sentencing hearing on the 14th in U.S. District Court in Boston,
Judge Patty Saris questioned whether the Internet service disruptions
and other damages caused by 21-year-old Sean Trofaro added up to as much as $67,500,
as prosecutors claimed.
Probably not.
Now, keep in mind that Kevin Mitnick is accused of $80 million of damages.
We'll get to that later.
$67,500 a year and a day in prison, and can you even prove it?
Saris also rejected a request that Trofaro continue to be banned from the Internet
except to use it at work.
So that's kind of significant right there that this person is having that figure questioned
and also the ban on the Internet is being, I guess, rejected by the judge,
which is kind of good, but it's not good that they're sending this guy to prison.
The decision was a setback to the government's contentions that the group he led
threatened national security interests.
Trofaro could have received a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison
after pleading guilty to computer fraud charges,
but prosecutors recommended the lesser sentence.
They also agreed to allow him to serve his sentence in a federal boot camp
with the result that he will likely be released in six months.
If you've been to a boot camp, you'll feel like you're there for 10 years.
Anyway, Trofaro's case has been seen as a test of the Justice Department's
ongoing campaign against hackers who prosecutors contend pose a serious threat to computer networks.
Critics say, however, that cases against young hackers like Trofaro have been overblown
and that the real danger to these networks comes from disgruntled corporate insiders.
In response, prosecutors note that members of the VRI have bragged of breaking into computers
belonging to NASA and other government agencies.
Now, you know, there's a big difference between bragging that something was done
and evidence that they did it.
And also, even if you have the evidence that they did it, what exactly does that mean?
Did they just access something? Did they destroy something?
Big differences here. You can't just lump everything together.
Yeah, the shuttle went up a little while ago, so I don't know if there was a lot of damage there.
Yeah.
If at all.
What does that mean?
What does that mean? I believe that NASA is still functioning despite the fact...
Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. NASA does a lot of other things, too, you know.
That's true.
Last year, two California high school students connected to the VRI admitted they snooped
through the Pentagon through Pentagon computers.
Actually, I didn't know they were connected to that group, but I guess in the eyes of law,
they're all connected.
Yeah, they snooped through Pentagon computers. They were sentenced to probation.
Oh, what the heck, you know.
Trofaro was not charged in connection with those events.
In October, he pled guilty to criminal charges that he tapped into five academic
and commercial computing systems without permission in 1996 and 1997,
disrupting online services at Harvard and Amherst colleges, among others.
Again, no details. How was it disrupted? Maybe just his presence disrupted things.
Was anything deleted? Anything changed? Anything damaged?
Trofaro's role in the hacking group wasn't clear until the 14th, when on the witness stand,
the thin and sharp-featured young man was asked by Prosecutor Gene Chemthorne
to describe his connection to the VRI.
I used to run it, he replied.
I'm sure the members of the VRI might have something to say about that,
but it might be true, too. Who knows?
I don't know why you'd say that on the stand, though.
But anyway, he insisted the group's main motive was only to test computer security,
not abuse systems.
Cyrus suggested he might find a better way of applying his skills after his release,
such as teaching children how to use computers.
The $8 an hour retailing job he recently started, she said, was a waste of his talents.
That's the judge saying this.
The same judge that sent him to prison is saying that he should be working with computers.
I mean, what's the point of sending him to prison? I don't get this.
I don't understand this at all.
Cyrus said she was appalled at how little he earns,
adding that other people were charging $50 an hour to fix the problems you created.
Well, gee whiz, I'm sure he would have fixed it for free, you know?
I mean, that makes more sense, if there were any problems at all.
In addition to serving his sentence, Trofaro might have to pay for the damages he caused.
The exact figure remains in dispute pending further hearings.
The judge questioned government estimates, which included $29,500 in damages
to a Nebraska internet service provider and $27,000 in damages
stemming from his computer break-in at Harvard.
Prosecutors and the institutions involved have declined to discuss
how they arrived at those amounts.
Well, if they're so low, I'd imagine that it's just that they're having to hire somebody
to go through and just figure out what the heck he did.
Whereas in the Mitnick case, that's an entirely different story.
I wish I got $29,500 every time I had to go through something and figure out what someone did.
Well, I wish I did, too.
I was making $8 an hour at the same as this retail guy was.
If my boss, or my former boss, is listening, listen to that judge, you know?
Trofaro admits that he and other members of the VRI intruded into computers,
shut down chat rooms, and used abusive language online.
It's probably that latter one that got them in trouble.
Oh, well.
But in an interview after yesterday's sentencing hearing, Trofaro, surrounded by his family,
repeated his claim that such activities weren't malicious.
Listen to this. This is interesting.
I feel badly that they couldn't patch up their systems easily, he said,
of those whose computer services he disrupted.
They couldn't patch it up. I mean, they didn't know what the hell they were doing.
Basically.
And it's true. Most times they don't.
But my intention wasn't to steal money out of their pockets. It was to learn.
Upon his release, Trofaro plans to return to college.
He said he looked forward to trading email with other VRI members.
He also said he might start a computer security consulting firm after his release.
I do want to start a business of some type, he said.
It would make sense to do what I know.
It's a tragedy when people like that are sent away.
And I hope when he gets out, he remembers this whole thing
and tries to help people who might be facing similar situations in the future.
And also help to change things so this doesn't keep happening to people.
And yeah, it's still happening. It's still happening all over the place.
I really got scared this week.
I don't know if you saw me over the weekend, but I was really trembling.
New York Times. Front page, New York Times, on Friday.
Anybody see this? I imagine a lot of people saw this.
Clinton describes terrorism threat for 21st century.
Oh, I heard about this.
And in a speech he gave that same day, I just want to quote some of this.
This is rather important.
How about that? We won.
We don't need traditional military means anymore.
Okay, pack it all in, everybody. It's all over.
We won. They cannot defeat us with traditional military means.
It's on to cyberspace now. Yes.
Now they are working on two new forms of assault, which you've heard about today.
Cyber attacks on our critical computer systems
and attacks with weapons of mass destruction.
Chemical, biological, potentially even nuclear weapons.
We must be ready.
Ready if our adversaries try to use computers to disable power grids,
banking communications and transportation networks,
police, fire and health services, or military assets.
We're going to skip over the nuclear and chemical weapon thing.
Oh, but those are fun.
It's amazing that computer hackers, people we know,
are being talked about in the same breath by the president,
by the president of the United States of America,
as multinational terrorists, you know,
the people we read about in papers, the schemers,
the people that are doing all the horrible things in the world.
Well, it's something of an ego boost to be, you know, put on the same level as them.
I'm sure for a 14-year-old it's heaven, you know, being thought of in this way.
But when you think about it, when you think about what these people are doing
and the resources they have at their fingertips, it's damn scary.
It is. It is.
It's really scary.
When are these people going to wake up? Not the people, not the kids.
When are these people making these crazy statements going to wake up
and realize that it's not necessarily terrorism
every time you don't understand something?
Sadly, I doubt they will.
Well, then, I really don't know what we're heading for.
But listen to this one. This is a good paragraph right here.
More and more, these critical systems are driven by and linked together with computers,
making them more vulnerable to disruption.
Last spring, we saw the enormous impact of a single failed electronic link
when a satellite malfunction disabled pagers, ATMs, credit card systems,
and television networks all around the world.
Now, wait a second. Are they insinuating that hackers did that?
No. No.
Well, that's their clever way of making it appear like hackers could do that.
Do you remember when there was the Martin Luther King crash back, I think, in 1990?
It was set from the very beginning.
It was an AT&T problem, I think.
From the very beginning, everybody said hackers were not responsible for this.
But I remember reading an editorial in Computer Week or Information Week or Security Week
or one of those week papers that, basically, hackers were not responsible for this,
but they could have been.
And that's the reason why we have to strengthen the laws.
It's the most convoluted logic I think I've ever seen, but nobody questioned it.
And nobody's questioning this. Well, I'm questioning it.
Well, why strengthen the laws when you can actually strengthen the security?
Well, yeah. Then you're expecting corporate America to do something.
Oh, I'm sorry. I know.
All right. And also, he's talking about this malfunction.
We talked about this on the radio when it happened.
Pagers were what were affected.
I didn't hear of any ATMs being affected by this.
I don't know of any television networks that got affected.
Except the television networks were reporting about the pagers.
That was the extent of it as far as I know.
Anyway, so, yeah, he made it into this big major deal.
And that's what happens. Satellites malfunction.
But what does that have to do with computer hackers?
We already are seeing the first wave of deliberate cyber attacks.
Hackers break into government and business computers.
This is the president speaking. President Clinton speaking.
Hackers break into government and business computers, stealing and destroying information,
raiding bank accounts, running up credit card charges,
extorting money by threats to unleash computer viruses.
What has this guy been reading or smoking?
He's definitely not in tune with reality here.
He's watching too many movies.
Basically.
He's not reading the facts. He's not reading 2600.
I'll tell you that right now.
Well, I know that certain agencies certainly are.
But his script writers, his speech writers, rather.
Well, one or the other. You can never tell nowadays.
He's just a runaway process here.
A zombie process.
Yeah, it's scary.
You know, when you see the president of the United States
almost talking by name to people that you know.
That is fairly frightening.
It frightens me. It really does.
I don't know what to do about this.
First of all, one thing I do want to, and maybe somebody out there can help,
and if you can help, please do.
This is a speech that was given in front of the, what was it, the National,
hang on, I have it right here.
The Science Foundation?
No, the National Academy of Sciences.
The speech was given on January 22nd.
I cannot find the video of this speech anyplace.
I can't find it on C-SPAN.
I can't find it on the White House website.
It's got to exist someplace.
I need to see this.
There is a video.
Every time the president gives a speech, somebody's recording it.
The network should have it someplace.
Have you checked the NAS?
What's the NAS?
The National Academy of Sciences.
Oh, yes, I did.
They don't have anything video-ish.
That's as far as I can tell, anyway, unless they hid it pretty good.
Well, you know, there are things called telephones,
and you can talk to somebody in case they have it.
Yeah, but I was doing this at 3 in the morning, okay?
Okay, well, then maybe.
That's when I do my work.
So, all right, someone out there must know how to do this,
how to get ahold of a video copy of this, or if it was seen anyplace.
Please let us know.
You can mail us, othat2600.com is our email address.
And it gets scarier.
It gets scarier, too.
It really does.
This is from the front page of the New York Times.
That was a speech.
That wasn't even included in the New York Times, but this was.
And this wasn't reported.
This is what bothers me.
It was reported once, and I never saw mention of it again.
Elaborating on some of the initiatives he intends to unveil on Friday,
Mr. Clinton said he is weighing a proposal from the Defense Department
to establish a commander-in-chief for the defense of the continental United States,
a step that civil liberties groups strongly resist.
Such a step would go far beyond the civil defense measures
and bomb shelters that marked the Cold War,
setting up instead a military leadership to help fight chaos and disarray if an attack occurred.
The Pentagon has commanders overseeing regions around the globe,
but none for the continental United States.
Well, there's a number of them for CONUS.
If they're going to try and conglomerate the power into one, that could get very interesting.
Critics fear that such moves could open the door to rising military influence
and a loss of individual rights.
But Mr. Clinton insisted that such erosions would never occur, even while acknowledging the danger.
We've got to preserve civil liberties, resolve all doubt in favor of that,
and if there's a question, bring it to me, Mr. Clinton said,
while acknowledging there were specific concerns in areas like computer security.
He did not offer details on how he would ensure protection.
That kind of thing just gives me nightmares.
Well, the fact that it hasn't been recurring is more interesting, as in...
I wonder where the author of that article is right now.
Oh, boy.
The president is supposed to be the commander-in-chief.
For him to consolidate all of CONUS under one man
certainly puts somebody in a very close position to his own.
Meanwhile, he does still have ultimate control.
We'll see what happens now.
But a military leadership in this country.
Well, it's always existed.
Yeah, but, you know, someone... it bothers me.
It sounds like martial law, if you ask me.
Yeah, in fact, that's what things have been gearing towards.
If you look at it in relation to other current events,
such as, hmm, Y2K, the possibilities of serious civil unrest,
it gets even more interesting.
But we won't go into that.
Yeah, that's another show.
When I was a kid, I played with baseball cards.
I don't know what's going on with these unfounded kids these days
playing with computers and causing national unrest.
Oh, well.
Now to the Kevin Mitnick case.
And this is the worst of it all.
Because as you may know, if you've been following the story
and other forms of information dissemination, such as the website, www...
Actually, I'm going to give it a different address this time
because it's actually easy to remember.
www.freekevin.com.
It goes to the same place as kevinmitnick.com,
so it might be easier for you to do that.
And that way, if you see one of the stickers, just remember,
just put a www on the left and a comma at the end, and bingo.
You don't even need to do that, as we've discussed on a previous show.
That's true, too.
Okay, what happened was, basically, Kevin's lawyer was not prepared
to defend him by April 20th,
which is the date that the trial originally scheduled for January 19th, I think,
January 19th or 20th, was postponed to.
He wasn't prepared.
There was just no way.
In fact, the trial was supposed to be underway now.
He's a court-appointed lawyer.
He has other cases.
He's a busy person.
He's not getting paid very much.
And basically, Kevin is left in the dark lots of times.
This is Don Randolph?
Donald Randolph, yes.
Now, that is a fact of the system.
When you get a court-appointed lawyer, that's how you get treated.
So for that reason, his lawyer asked for additional time.
Now, this really sucks because Kevin's in prison,
and I think everyone's forgetting about that.
He's in prison.
If he gets an extension, he's still in prison.
He doesn't have any bail hearings.
He's not allowed to weave to prepare his case.
He's stuck there.
He's been there almost four years now.
And just to clear up a few things, I see it constantly in misstated places.
He has been charged.
People say he's been in it four years without being charged with a crime.
No, he has been charged with a crime.
He has not been given a bail hearing, which is something that Timothy McVeigh got,
something the World Trade Center bombers got.
He's not been given a bail hearing.
He has not had a trial.
And the crimes he is charged with are so ridiculously minor as to be funny.
He's being accused of causing $80 million in damage.
But as we pointed out in this other story, they don't explain how they arrive at these figures.
They just make up these figures out of nowhere, copying software.
This is not deleting software.
You know, if you go in and you delete everything a company did,
I could see maybe causing $80 million worth of damage.
If you go in there and you copy something and then you sell it to the Latvians or something,
okay, maybe that's causing damage too.
But if you go in there and you look around and maybe you copy a file but you don't do anything with it,
is the damage the same?
Is it really the same?
Is it that easy to cause $80 million worth of damage?
See, I think it's easy for people to think that when they don't understand the technology.
And that's what Kevin is faced with right now is a lot of people who don't understand, including the judge.
The judge does not get this.
Otherwise, how could she live with herself, keeping somebody in prison four years for copying files,
not even distributing them, selling them, destroying them, just copying them?
I mean, I'm sure there are people out there that say,
yeah, someone should rot in jail for the rest of their life for doing that.
I'd just like to hear some logic behind that.
Anyway, of course the motion was denied.
In fact, it was denied without comment.
And reports have it that the judge didn't even read Kevin's lawyer's motion
but sided completely with the prosecution's objections.
I'd like to read you some selected pieces of this.
I'll just show you how outrageous this whole thing has gotten.
Ignoring this court's admonition that no further continuances would be granted
and ignoring this court's observation that it is time for this case to proceed to trial,
defendant Mitnick yet again seeks to have the trial date in this matter postponed.
Recognizing that his failure to review the evidence,
his apparent failure to retain an expert in a timely fashion,
his failure to conduct any investigation in over three years,
and his counsel's trial conflicts arising from more recent engagements
are not appropriate grounds for yet another continuance,
defendant instead seeks to manufacture alleged government misdeeds
in the hope that the court will grant yet another continuance of the trial date.
Now, let's look at this.
His failure to review the evidence.
He wasn't given the evidence until a couple of weeks ago.
He was not even allowed to look at it.
We're talking about somebody who was in prison.
Evidence is only viewable on computer.
He is not allowed to have a computer, therefore he cannot look at the evidence.
How simple does it have to be for these people to understand this?
He has finally been able to get a hold of a computer for limited hours,
a couple hours a day maybe, if he's lucky.
And when you're talking about tens of gigs of data to go through,
I don't know if you've ever had to do that.
It can be a real pain.
There just isn't enough time to mount an adequate defense.
It's like they say here's the evidence against you,
and they put a computer on the table,
and they say it's in here somewhere.
It's in here somewhere.
There's 50 gigabits of information in there,
but the one sentence that we have against you is in there.
We know where it is.
You don't.
Good luck.
You have two weeks.
That's basically the mindset we're dealing with here.
And it's okay with everybody,
because Kevin is seen as some terrorist,
just like President Clinton seems to think he is.
Failure to conduct any investigation in over three years.
I've talked to Kevin so many times over the past almost four years,
and he is completely frustrated by his inability to conduct an investigation,
because he is kept in prison.
His lawyer has no time to deal with his case.
That is a fact.
That is a fact.
They even say it here, it's counsel's trial conflicts.
How is that Kevin's fault?
It's not Kevin's fault.
It's really, really sad.
What choices does he have at this point?
What can he do?
Does he get another lawyer?
Does he start from scratch?
That's not going to work.
The system, the system is what is unfair here,
and that's what Kevin is caught in the middle of.
He's getting injustice from both ends.
He's getting injustice from defense.
He's getting injustice from prosecution.
And everyone's forgetting he's an individual.
He's stuck in prison.
He's been there for four years.
I don't care what he did.
I don't care if he erased all of Motorola's profits for a certain year.
That is an incredible amount of time to spend in prison for something on the Internet like this.
All right, maybe if he erased their profits, that might be a little bit more serious.
But still, he did nothing like that.
He probably didn't cost them a penny.
They certainly didn't report anything to their stockholders.
So there's serious problems with this case.
But he's not being allowed to defend himself.
And how anybody can say that he is, how anybody can say that he's stalling,
why would he want to stall?
Why would he want to be in prison any longer than he has to be?
I think the only way to even pretend that justice is starting to be served
is to have the trial and sentence him to time served or find him innocent completely
and let him the hell out of there.
Because this can't go on any longer.
Okay, I'm going to read a couple of things from the mailing list,
and we'll try to take some phone calls.
I'm sorry we didn't have more time to do this, but we haven't been on in a few weeks.
We won't be on again for a little while, and there's so much to cover.
This comes from Kerry on the Kevin Mitnick mailing list.
The government reply to the last defense motion for delay of the trial
blames Kevin himself for failing to take necessary action toward trial preparation,
specifically for not doing investigation during the past three years,
for failing to review the evidence.
Whereas Kevin himself says if the government will provide him with the access,
that is, his freedom to do anything at all in his defense,
he would be more than happy to start the investigation, witness interviews,
resolving trials, scheduling conflicts in his attorney's calendar, etc.
Yesterday and today, Monday and Tuesday, Kevin was unable to do any evidence review
because a representative from his attorney's office must be there with him
when he reviews evidence, and no one is available.
That's Kevin's fault, huh?
The situation just seems to be getting worse.
As of now, Kevin does not have the ability to do any of the things
the government has complained about in their opposition document.
He cannot interview any witnesses.
He cannot possibly review the evidence in time for trial,
as he doesn't have any control over when he is allowed to look at the evidence.
He's only been able to review a very, very sparse amount of the evidence thus far,
something like four days with a laptop,
something like three or four hours a day, just been reviewing it.
And he can't be his court-appointed attorney's only client.
Part of the aforementioned January 11th motion document covers the problem,
the problems that Kevin's attorney is experiencing handling another case,
which is going to trial very soon.
And as we mentioned, Judge Feltzer denied the defense motion,
as can be seen in past court transcripts,
and you can see all these on the site, www.freekevin.com.
He and the government are both impatient to take this case to trial.
I'm sure Kevin would like to get on with things,
as far as being able to review the evidence, prepare for trial,
have the defense do whatever investigation it needs to do, etc.
And only then, once it can be a fair trial, get on with the trial too.
But given his present circumstances at the MDC,
he can't do much of what the government asserts in its opposition that he should be doing.
As we have said before, he only has a small amount of time every week to review evidence,
contingent on his attorney's office providing a representative to be present when he does this.
He obviously doesn't have a crew of investigators to send out interviewing witnesses,
gathering more information about the circumstances of his arrest
and the searches and civilian participation involved therein.
And by the way, the government in this opposition is using some clever rewording,
accusing the defense of blaming their untimely need to investigate these events on the government,
when the defense motion never said such a thing.
Rather, it referred to the scope of the investigation broadening,
as more evidence was provided by the government.
The government response makes it sound as though Kevin should have taken care of all investigation and review by now,
but how was he supposed to have accomplished any of these tasks while imprisoned and denied a bail hearing?
Despite the fact that the defendant has received every accommodation,
he once again seeks to continue the trial based upon misrepresentations of fact.
Four years of pretrial detention without a bail hearing does not exactly qualify as every accommodation.
Now does it? Of course not.
For all the complaints the government gives in this document about allowances they've made for the defense,
it seems that they've completely forgotten that they're already handling this case in an unusual manner,
keeping their pretrial detainee incarcerated four years before trial.
And as we said before, why would Kevin want to hold up this process?
Not the process of going to trial, but the process of trial preparation.
There is the speedy trial argument that people often hand you,
that because Kevin gave up his right to a speedy trial as imprisonment for four years before a trial is somehow justified,
this is flawed logic at best.
A speedy trial in such a complex case could well have resulted in an unfair conviction had Kevin gone that route,
and that is true now as well.
And by complex case, we basically mean an area of law which is only now being defined.
The fact remains this is a complicated case, an unusual case.
It's going to take some time and effort to research it on both sides.
The government which started this case is now impatient to move on with it.
The government says in its response that it is doing Kevin a favor,
allowing him to have a laptop to review evidence,
as it is not required to allow this privilege to a pretrial inmate.
In reality, providing printouts of the evidence involved would be impossible.
There is just too much data.
And considering that Kevin is not allowed to be out on bail,
for which at least a hearing would be allowed for practically any other accused person,
shouldn't he at the very least be allowed to see the evidence against him?
Shouldn't that be a right rather than a privilege?
At the same time, the government refers to particular parts of the evidence it has provided to the defense
as obviously unnecessary to the individual.
as obviously unnecessary to the case,
thereby claiming it has provided much more than it was responsible for.
But where is the justice in a defense prepared from evidence which is predetermined by the opposition?
Does the judge actually believe the following statement?
The simple truth is that the defendant has failed to exercise any diligence
in reviewing or analyzing the electronic discovery,
and therefore he is searching for any mechanism to avoid proceeding to trial on schedule.
Kevin has exercised every diligence he possibly can to get this review of evidence going,
and a lot of other people have tried to help this process along too.
But the obstacles encountered while doing so, particularly the bureaucratic ones, have been considerable.
Again, those words are coming from Kerry on the Kevin Mitnick website and the Kevin Mitnick mailing list,
which you can join if you're on the internet.
Simply mail majordomo, M-A-J-O-R-D-O-M-O, at 2600.com,
and in the first line of your message, simply say subscribe Mitnick,
and it should be easy after that point.
And if you just need to look at the webpage, keep updated in that way,
www.freekevin.com or www.kevinmitnick.com, they go to the same place.
I'll tell you, week after week, it just keeps getting more and more frustrating.
Hopefully, more of us can get together, figure out ways to get the word out,
send us an email if you have any ideas, O-T-H at 2600.com.
I really apologize for all the time we've taken,
but I don't think there was a single story we read that was not important.
Let's see if we can race through some phone calls.
We're going to have to make it pretty fast, though.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Okay, thing is, I know people are falling asleep, and I'm sorry about that,
but there's really nothing I can do.
212-209-2900 also is the phone number,
but all the lines have been lit for a while, so I don't think you'll even get through.
Let's try this one.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, Manuel.
How are you doing?
Always nice to hear a friendly voice.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up, please.
That's an interesting sound, but I don't know what else.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Does he somehow have a power of blocking all lines except his?
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, I just want to mention the following things.
Okay, well, I'm sure you'll have that opportunity.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, Manuel.
Yes.
This is Jim from Idaho.
Jim from Idaho?
Whoa, I don't think we've ever gotten a call from there before.
You're listening to us right now.
No, I can't, because you don't use an open source broadcast system.
We don't use an open source.
Oh, boy, not this again.
Uh-huh, hey.
Listen, you could connect, right?
What?
I can't decode the source, because there's no…
That's not what I called to talk about.
Okay, all right, all right.
I want to talk about one of the reasons why there's a lot of companies
turning in people like Kevin Mitnick to the authorities
is because they don't have any other alternative.
Basically, we have a fascist government,
which thinks that all people who just want to explore are terrorists,
but they're the only alternative for people to turn to.
Right now, I'm dealing with a bunch of script kiddies
who are harassing people, spouting racist propaganda out of their systems,
but I can't turn them into the government, because they'll just be put in jail.
I don't want to do that.
I just want to scare them to get them to stop what they're doing.
But who do I turn to?
Well, in cases like this, I strongly believe it should be kept within the community,
within the Internet community,
and I think there are plenty of smart people here
that either have gone through it themselves or just know how things work,
that are certainly capable of finding somebody very quickly
and talking some sense into them.
You have to remember, these are kids doing what kids have always done,
except the tools have changed.
Now, instead of smashing mailboxes,
they're sending out abusive messages on AOL or something.
Yeah, there needs to be a way to deal with them,
like some sort of hacker-organized community to deal with a problem like this.
Well, why do you think that changed?
Excuse me?
You say there used to be a way of dealing with them.
No, there isn't a way to deal with it.
There never has been,
and until either the government wisens up and creates speeding tickets
instead of sledgehammers,
or hackers themselves get together to provide a way to track people down
and scare them without having to put them in jail for years,
there's still going to be this problem.
Yeah, you know, I'm in favor.
If it's a virtual crime, how about a virtual penalty?
You go to virtual jail or something.
I don't know, there must be some...
They lock your web browser to a certain site,
so you have to look at it all day.
Consider it a challenge for all you programmers out there.
Okay, well, I better let the next caller in.
Thanks a lot.
All right, thanks for calling.
You know, for someone who's not listening,
you were surprisingly on target as far as what we're talking about.
Yeah, remarkably so.
All right, good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi, you were talking about a video earlier on the president's speech.
Yes, you have a source for us.
Yeah, I would suggest the University of Texas A&M
is where the National Academy of Sciences is.
That's where they're located.
That's where one of their labs is located.
Uh-huh.
So you have a good shot that they have that video
or that they took the video.
Okay.
But can I get your fax number?
Because I have some other ideas if you can't get that one.
Yeah, the 2600 fax number is 516-474-2677.
Okay.
All right, thanks.
Thanks for calling.
And let's go down here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, you think there will be a year 10,000 problem?
You know, that's of concern to many people,
not just because it's another turn of the millennium,
but five digits over four, that's a serious issue.
And, yeah, there are moves afoot to deal with that.
I actually have a good joke about that, but not enough time.
Yeah, I'll have to just, I'll do our funny show in a few weeks.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
I want to mention the following things.
Okay.
Maybe something in your voice that keeps doing that.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, how are you doing?
Okay, how are you?
I want to know some information on the 1010-220 or the 1010-501.
Those are the access codes that supposedly allow you to make free phone calls, right?
Yes.
Well, that's all I know about them,
that supposedly you can make free phone calls by allowing those access.
Well, it doesn't work in New Jersey.
Well, I bet it doesn't work anywhere because we broadcast this a few weeks ago
and the company would be out of business by now if it still worked,
or either that or incredibly stupid or maybe they just abandoned it and walked away from it.
I heard like five numbers, like 1010-220, 1010-501.
Well, you know, this is something.
Now, in relation to our first caller,
for all those kids out there that are spending time doing malicious things,
now you have several tens of thousands of numbers to scan in the hopes of making a free phone call.
You see?
All that energy is put to constructive use.
That's true.
And, of course, you share the information when you get it because that's just the nature of things.
I'll tell you, these numbers are driving me insane.
You know, in Philadelphia now, you have to dial the area code,
even if you're in the same area code.
You're in 215.
You have to dial 215.
Isn't that going to start here with the addition of the new area code?
There are supposedly riots planned if that starts in Manhattan.
Yeah.
There are riots planned.
Imagine you have to...
You're in 212, right?
And you have to dial 212-209-2900.
And the thing is, in Philadelphia, they say you don't have to dial the 1.
You don't have to dial the 1 if you're calling 215.
Oh, wow.
But you do have to dial the 1 if you're calling outside 215.
It's so confusing.
I've seen people in tears in the streets there.
It's horrible.
Well, I have to dial MPAs with my Sprint phone all the time anyway.
Okay, one more call.
One more call.
Let's go over here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, what's up, Emmanuel?
How are you doing?
How are you doing?
Make it quick.
Yeah, I run a porn site.
I just want to tell you that that law that's going to go through actually has already gone through.
It's definitely a bad thing for traffic.
That computer expert or whatever was definitely full of crap.
Well, in 30 seconds or less, tell us why it's bad.
Well, because traffic is the key to making money on the net.
And if you can get the hits, you can get the bucks, even in the non-adult entertainment world.
But what if a lot of those hits are coming from six-year-olds?
I don't know how many hits are coming from six-year-olds.
But I mean, hey, a hit's better than no hit, I guess.
Okay, well, we're just going to have to leave it at that.
That's an interesting perspective anyway.
And one I'm sure that lots of people will feed on to prove their point.
All right, that's it for us this week.
I think that's it for us next week.
What does that mean?
It means hurry up, right?
No, it means take your time.
Oh, take my time.
Well, okay, maybe we'll just stay until next week.
Do you know if we're on next week?
Are you on next week?
No, I don't think so.
I think the marathon.
The marathon's on next week.
Okay, how about the week after that?
I think you'll be on.
Oh, really?
So we might be back in two weeks.
Wow.
Okay, so almost definitely you can make plans for next Tuesday to watch the PJs or something.
But the week after that, you can – actually, no, what am I saying?
You have to be here pledging your support to this radio station.
I'm sorry.
I don't know what I was thinking.
And please do because we're the only radio station covering the Senate trial.
It may seem like a waste of time to a lot of people, but this is history.
This is history, and if you go up and down the FM dial or even the AM dial,
you don't find other stations doing this.
It's fascinating listening, hearing the things that are being said down there,
and people need to hear it.
People need the option to be able to hear it.
Yeah, you can go and listen to classic rock for a few minutes,
but come back and hear what is being said there.
This is history in the making.
It has not happened in over a century.
Yes, kudos to BAI.
It's important enough, I think, to – you know, the first day of the trial,
all the major networks were carrying it, and then all of a sudden they went back to their soap operas
and they don't care anymore.
But we still do, and I'm glad to be preempted for something important like the marathon,
to raise money for this station to exist.
That's it as far as that speech goes.
We're out of time, we really are, and we'll be back again in two weeks.
Until then, it's Emmanuel Goldstein for Isaac.
Toodaloo.
Have a good night.
Have a good night.
Transcription by CastingWords
.
Hi, I'm Samori Maxman, Program Director of WBNR-Radio.
As many of you know, we have been airing the Senate's impeachment trial of President Clinton.
A few of you have called to ask why we chose to air this broadcast.