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The time is just about 8 o'clock.
Time for Off The Hook.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could they would.
For Billy Bo for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
For Billy Bo!
For Billy Bo!
And a very good evening to one and all.
The program is Off The Hook.
It's the first show of the year 2000, not the first show of the 21st century, the first
show of the new century or the new decade or anything like that.
It's the first show of a new year.
And this is also the last time you'll be hearing the music behind us because, well, I suppose
the countdown to Y2K is over, right Isaac?
It's finally finished.
You're still here.
You're alive.
I'm still here.
I'm very happy to be here.
You made it.
I'm still here.
I'm alive.
I was expecting some trouble for you.
And I was right there in Times Square.
I really was.
I can prove it too.
I have pictures.
I believe you.
I have witnesses.
The cops will say that I was there.
They know I was there.
Yeah, I actually got there.
And I'll tell you the whole story about how I got there.
But yeah, Y2K, it's over.
It fizzled out, didn't it?
Well, it's not over.
Big fizzle.
Big dud.
It's not over.
And it's not a big dud.
When, Isaac?
Come on.
It's now January 4th.
It's over.
Face it.
It's finished.
It's not completely over.
You lost.
No more chaos.
What did we lose?
Maybe there'll be a snowstorm next week or something like that.
There was a contest here?
Look, there's no Y2K disaster.
It didn't happen.
Correct.
No Y2K.
Okay, correct.
I'm overjoyed.
We just passed January 3rd, which was Monday, which was like the big day after January 1st.
Okay.
Where people would come to work and see what broke.
And some stuff was broken, but not enough to cause some very serious problems.
Would you call it an overreaction?
I would not call it an overreaction.
I would...
Well, all right.
Let's rephrase this.
An overreaction when, where, and towards what?
Oh, all the chaos.
People running around, buying things left and right, flashlights and guns and things
like that to protect themselves.
That would, in my mind, be a little above and beyond.
All right.
Say two years ago, I would say that that kind of thing was appropriate.
Maybe about a year ago, I'd say that kind of thing was appropriate.
So you've mellowed over the months.
Well, over the months, these systems were being fixed.
We spent a lot of time, effort, and money into fixing these systems, and here's the
result.
I mean, we're here.
We've had some minor glitches.
You know, the DoD lost communications with one of its satellites.
There were a couple of reactors in South Carolina that were shut down.
So you believe that this is because...
It's a victory against incompetence, that we actually stood up and fixed things.
We all stood together, and this is our triumph, right?
Well, it's...
We saw a problem.
We invested the time and effort into fixing what we could find, and here's the result.
I wouldn't say that it's over, though.
I wouldn't say that it's over, though.
I mean, there's still a number of weeks into January that we have to deal with.
And, of course, February 29th.
Of course, February 29th.
How could we forget February 29th?
But there is one other thing.
What other thing?
Countries like Italy, for instance, spent virtually nothing on Y2K preventative measures.
Virtually zero.
And nothing really bad happened to them either.
And the computer systems infrastructure in the United States, as compared to Italy, would
be...
I'm just saying, their infrastructure did not collapse.
They didn't have...
Yeah, we're bigger than them.
We are bigger than them.
We have computers in so many more places that we had to spend more time, effort, and money
into fixing.
But a lot of what I was hearing over the past few months is that third world nations are
going to be bearing the brunt of this.
Nations that have virtually no complex systems at all.
Yeah.
They were going to be the ones where we'd see the real, you know, menace of Y2K, and
that hasn't happened either.
Well, there was...
It doesn't seem to be based on how much we put into fixing it.
It seems like the whole thing was overblown to start with.
I don't believe that.
I believe that there was a very real problem in a number of systems, and it was tackled.
I...
You know...
Was it overblown?
I don't know.
I will save that for perhaps a year from now or two years from now, and we can look back
objectively.
But right now, everybody is kind of trying to either say that things should have been
a lot worse, or they should have been a lot better, or we wasted so much money, or all
that money was spent.
Well, it does seem like there was an awful lot of profiteering based on what you were
getting.
There's a lot of profiteering for everything.
I mean, any war that breaks out, you're going to have individuals trying to make a fast
and easy buck off of other people.
But it's...
I...
I...
I'll save my final analysis for a year from now, when we can all look back and say exactly
what happened.
Well, speaking of making a fast buck, I brought something in for you.
You brought something in for me?
Yes.
Here.
What is this?
A box of Millennials.
Of Millennials?
Yeah.
Apparently, the Cheerio Corporation decided to...
Well, actually, I guess it's General Mills, General Motors, whoever puts out Cheerios,
they made a special Millennial version.
Oh, this is cool.
Yeah.
The only difference is that you get a little two occasionally with all the zeros.
Well, that's pretty neat.
Yeah, it is pretty neat.
And there's a bunch of questions on the side, too.
A bunch of questions on the side.
Yeah.
Predictions for the future.
By blank, the U.S. Mint will no longer make $1 bills, only $1 coins?
You have to predict the year that's going to happen.
Oh, so there's no, like, answers or anything?
Well, because it hasn't happened yet.
Oh, okay.
How could there be answers?
Well, why are we going to go to coins and, like, remove bills?
I would assume we go to an electronic currency.
Okay.
Well, maybe you want to pencil that in, then.
Okay.
You don't want to starve.
There's not much room here.
Yeah.
What are some of the other...
The first woman will be elected President of the United States in 1992?
No, I'm sorry.
By blank, all schools will become virtual schools.
Kids will simply log on to their computers for class.
That's kind of scary.
Scientists will find human life on another planet by the year 1947.
Roswell, New Mexico.
Well, they found us.
Well, they found us.
Yeah.
Researchers will find a cure for the common cold by blank.
I don't think that's ever going to happen.
That's never going to happen.
No.
By blank, people will be wearing special suits that allow them to fly.
I'm not going to touch that one.
You have to define what fly, you know, how, you know, you define flying.
All the people I know are flying around in little suits right now.
Well, the Red Sox will win the World Series in blank.
That's okay.
That's...
I couldn't even predict the year that would occur.
Yeah.
A permanent space colony will be in place by the year...
Ooh, that'd be kind of interesting.
That'd be great.
What did Arthur C. Clarke say about that?
He's predicting in the next 100 years.
Next 100 years?
I look forward to it.
Hopefully a lot sooner than that.
By blank, everyone will be driving electric-powered cars.
I don't think that's going to be happening.
Even people who don't have licenses?
Well, I don't think that's going to happen in the near future.
In the year blank, everything will be automated by robots.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Will be automated.
And robots will do our chores, including washing dishes, making the bed, folding laundry.
This was the same kind of prediction that was made in 1950, 1930, 1900, 1850.
So I'm not going to go anywhere near that one either.
People will be able to teleport from one place to the other by the year blank.
Teleport?
Well, I guess they're assuming that teleportation...
As in physically move oneself?
As in Star Trek.
Oh, like the Star Trek transporter kind of teleport.
That'd be kind of interesting.
I don't know.
By the year blank, you will enter your cyber kitchen, click a menu selection,
and within seconds, a gourmet meal will be served.
I like the replicators on Star Trek better than that.
There's no clicking.
You just say like, you know, T, Earl Grey, hot.
You win.
Bernie S. had some run-ins with Y2K.
Bernie S. had some run-ins with Y2K down in Philadelphia.
Bernie, how did your nightmare go?
Are you alive?
Oh, I'm fine.
Oh, good.
My bank account was not unscathed, though.
I maybe foolishly decided to make a cash deposit on New Year's Eve
around 2.30 in the afternoon on Friday.
Oh, you did it just to cause trouble.
Well, actually, someone repaid a loan that I'd lent them some money over the year.
They paid me back, and I figured, well, I'll deposit it.
And it was actually several thousand dollars.
And at the time I made the deposit, this was at the Commerce Bank on Market Street here in Philadelphia.
At the time I made the deposit, I'd asked for a balance statement on my receipt,
and the teller's name, Jamaica, was her name.
She said, well, I can't give you your balance because our computers are down right now.
I'm like, well, my money's going to be there on Monday, right?
She said, oh, absolutely.
So Monday came, and I called the bank just to make sure the money was in there,
because I decided to buy some stocks with the money.
And the money wasn't there.
And their brokerage arm said, well, we can't transfer these funds because they're not there.
I'm like, well, I know they're there.
I'm looking at the receipt right here.
Where are they?
So I went through five different assistant managers who all told me they had absolutely no record of the transaction at all.
And I was told that I had to take my paper receipt back to the branch to prove that I had deposited this money.
Well, no, this is through an ATM, though.
That's no proof.
It went to Tamika.
This was through a human teller.
Oh, it was through a human teller.
Through a human teller.
I'm sure there were videotapes of me handing her the cash.
I had a printed receipt showing my account number and how much money was deposited.
It was printed on the same receipt.
I asked the manager at the branch, don't you balance your drawers at the end of the day?
He said, well, the money must have gone into another account.
They must have typed the wrong account number.
I'm like, well, their correct account number is on the receipt.
There was no explanation that they could give me.
They had a little party on New Year's Eve, maybe.
Well, I wondered if the teller had absconded with it.
The branch manager was very closed-lipped with anything that sounded like a plausible explanation.
His explanation was, he showed me his hand.
He said, you know, I have really fat, stubby fingers.
You could see how easy it would be to hit a one instead of a two.
I'm like, well, Jamaica doesn't have fat, stubby fingers like you.
I think that was very funny.
There still had been no explanation.
After I showed them my printed receipt, they credited my account.
But I said, well, what if I'd lost this receipt?
He said, we would have had it done.
An awful lot of paperwork.
It would have been a big inconvenience for us.
I'm like, for you it would have been an inconvenience.
I called a friend of mine at the city paper here in Philadelphia and gave her the story.
She was looking for some Y2K story.
I wasn't expecting this at all.
Something actually happened to me.
Are you sure this is Y2K or was this just incompetence?
I am not.
It happened on New Year's Eve and they couldn't find my money on the first business day after Y2K.
It may have been something.
But I've been making transactions with this bank for two years.
It never happened before.
So it's an awfully interesting coincidence if it was not Y2K computer related.
Frankly, if it was Y2K glitch oriented, I don't think the bank would be up front about it anyway.
That's true.
But I do think you should hold out for an explanation and just demand to know what really happened.
Oh, sure.
I'm not going to let them off the hook.
All right.
To coin a phrase.
No pun intended.
A couple other Y2K issues.
This comes from the Risks Digest.
On the whole, Y2K came and went without major immediately noted problems.
Predictions still abounded for deferred problems.
In fact, one thing that's rather interesting is that the email that was sent out for Risks Digest
was dated Sunday, 2 January, 100.
Yeah, I missed that.
Yeah, the date was kind of messed up there.
There are a lot of lessons that should have been learned from the entire process,
but we'll address those in the forum later after a little more time to reflect,
which I think is probably the best thing to do from all angles.
A couple of things, though.
Quid pro quo 2.1.2 web servers for Macs are returning 1-gen-100 as the date to client queries.
The Yorkshire Evening Press, www.thisisyork.co.uk, claimed a date of Saturday, January 1, 100.
On January 2, cowsnet.com gave Sunday, January 2, 100.
Kpix.com.tv.schedule.html gave error cannot open ht.tv.schedules January 1, 19,100.
Various sites were hacked, including dea.com, core.net.
There is some lovely Y2K humor on www.2600.com.
Does anybody know what that's about?
I have no idea.
I keep getting all these emails from people saying,
oh, that's really funny.
I don't know what they're talking about.
All right, no one here knows.
All right, I don't get it either.
What else?
Yes, someone, gigabyte.com has the date as January 2, 2100.
That's pretty interesting right there.
Amazon.co.uk claims a Sonic Youth CD will be made available on October 10, 2011.
Well, you know, it's possible that it might take that long for them to actually put it out
because they are perfectionists as far as getting the notes just right.
So, yeah, I don't know if that's necessarily a Y2K problem.
Let's see what else.
The U.S. Naval Observatory calendar had a date of 19,000.
And according to the New York Times website, the date was January 1, 1900.
As the Pentagon folks were claiming that everything was working fine,
a computer system processing satellite intelligence data lost its data collection ability
at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, midnight GMT, on Friday evening for about 2.5 hours.
And what else do we have here?
www.apple.com, local time error.
Someone who at the stroke of midnight,
GMT conveniently updated their code to change the prefix from 19 to 20,
having presumably audited their code.
The claim on their main page over their very prominent Y2K statement
that the date was January 1, 20,100.
And Compact Sites somehow managed to claim it was January 2.
So, that's a brief rundown of all the major calamities that took place.
Well, there were more.
Did you hear the report about the person who returned their video for a $91,000 fee?
Yeah, they had to sell their house.
That's a real tragedy right there.
But that's pretty much it.
Well, that's not it.
For now, that's it.
We're going to find out.
But there's more that isn't reported.
February 29th, maybe, is something else that's going to happen.
There's a lot more that isn't reported.
And why is that?
Because it's just not enough.
Part of the conspiracy?
No, it's not important enough.
They're just minor inconveniences that people are dealing with.
You're feeling it.
How am I feeling it?
You're feeling it now.
How am I feeling it?
Well, Bernie sure felt it.
He felt it, but we don't know for sure if that was a Y2K issue.
We don't know yet for sure, and I'd like to find out.
Handing something to somebody, you'd think more people would have experienced it.
Well, there was a Y2K issue.
There's also a potential there that somebody just pocketed the cash and was going to blame it on Y2K.
Yeah, there's that.
But there wasn't any widespread panic.
There wasn't anything really horrible that happened.
No, which is great.
Power stayed on.
In fact, let me tell you very quickly the story about what we did, a couple of us did, for New Year's in Times Square.
I said I was going to go down to Times Square.
I did go down to Times Square.
At least someone did what they planned.
Yeah, you wound up where?
I actually wound up on Long Island, where I didn't particularly want to be.
Long Island.
Well, you were going to be buried in a silo someplace in New Mexico, and you wound up on Long Island.
I was going to be in Albuquerque, then I was going to be in upstate New York, and I finally wound up on Long Island.
Funny how things work out, isn't it?
Yeah, isn't it great?
Thanks, Mom.
But we were wandering around, and we realized, hey, all these people are panicking.
All these people are canceling their reservations to do things on New Year's Eve and not paying huge amounts of money.
And so we decided, hey, let's see if we can actually get a hotel room in the middle of Times Square on New Year's Eve.
Well, we could and we couldn't.
We were able to get something for January 30th, but if you wanted to stay on January 31st, you had to pay the millennium.
December 31st.
I'm sorry, December 31st, thank you.
The millennium rate, which was $2,000 for three days, which I thought was a complete crock right there.
Oh, isn't that cute?
That was the Marriott.
They were really putting it to people there.
But we were able to stay there.
The building that Dick Clark stood on top of.
He stood on top of the Marriott?
Yeah, doesn't he broadcast on the Marriott every year?
I don't even pay attention to these things.
But the thing that they were doing was they were giving out special gold cards to people so that they could get access to the area after midnight on Friday.
And we didn't have a room for Saturday, for Friday night and Saturday, New Year's Eve.
But we did have a room for Thursday into Friday, so they gave us little gold cards so we'd have access to the area after midnight.
Well, we just didn't give the gold card back.
And so that meant the next day we had this little pass that we could show to the cops to get through the streets.
And so we were walking around all over the place, down 42nd Street.
Nobody, nobody was on 42nd Street.
No people, no cars, just a lot of cops.
And every time we passed a little blockade, we would show a little gold card that said Marriott Hotel.
And they'd say, OK, go right through.
Using that, we were able to walk over to Broadway and see this little pen, this little enclosed area that was in front of where everybody else was standing.
It was an area right in front of that.
And we looked in there, and all these people just kind of wandering around, nobody really paying any attention to anything.
A lot of people in wheelchairs.
So we figured that was where the handicapped people were being ushered.
And other people, too, that were just kind of wandering around.
And we later found out that that was the area for volunteers.
And so we volunteered to go in there.
And that's where we stayed for about four hours and then kind of hung out, you know, and watched the whole thing happen.
That's where you saw the ball drop.
How was the ball this year?
I heard it was this big crystal.
Made out of Waterford crystal.
But, you know, standing a couple hundred feet away or miles away as people did, you know, you couldn't notice if it was made out of it.
It could have been made out of plastic for all we cared.
I was just curious.
Yeah.
So it was very nice, though.
The mood was extremely pleasant.
They had countdowns every hour all around the world.
And they played really good music from all around the world.
Sounded like a lot of fun.
It was great.
It was the best way I could have imagined spending New Year's Eve 1999 to 2000.
All right.
Looking back, I probably should have joined you.
You should have.
It was a risk issue with me.
And I decided that it would be better that I be in Albuquerque or upstate or wind up on Long Island.
Long Island, I guess, was probably a good place to spend it as well.
Okay.
Moving right along.
We have a lot of things to talk about tonight.
Here's a very quick story here.
A computer hacker turned a German police Internet page into a site promoting marijuana and pleasure toys for sadists.
A spokesman said last Wednesday, I don't find this funny at all, said Aldebert Halt, a spokesman for the police union in the German state of Hessen.
Their site was altered.
The hacker, whose identity is unknown, changed information about the regional police offered on the website to advertise as a marijuana café and a sado shop.
Police undid the changes later in the day.
What do you think?
Electric chair for that?
Why did the guy do it?
Why did the guy do it?
I don't know.
Why do people do anything?
It's mischief.
Well, that's mischief.
It's mischief.
We define it as mischief.
It's not a high treason type of a crime.
It's not a high treason type of a crime.
Right.
You wouldn't send somebody to jail for this.
I sure hope this guy isn't going to try and fall back on saying, well, I'm a hacktivist.
I'm trying to spread the word of sadomasochism and marijuana usage.
I don't think that's hacktivism.
That's mischief.
It's vandalism.
That's mischief.
It's vandalism.
It's not something I would support.
I don't know if it's even vandalism.
I guess it's a degree of vandalism.
What would you call vandalism?
Vandalism is a little bit more lasting than simply renaming a file or copying a file.
Well, you've got to paint over it.
Yeah, but it takes a second.
It's a degree of vandalism.
It's a degree of vandalism and a vandal would not be sent to prison for vandalizing.
Well, if you kick down someone's fence, that's also vandalism.
We're getting into a very long argument that we've had previously.
We can get into this for many hours.
We had a guest on here a couple of months ago, actually.
We should update people on this.
Mackie's here, too, from California.
Say hi, Mackie.
Hey.
Mackie's our webmaster.
If you ever go to our website, you probably have seen his work on various places.
And a couple of months ago, we had someone on the show who was playing around with an ankle bracelet.
Remember that guy?
Yes.
His name was Zale.
How is he?
Not good.
Today, Zale was sentenced.
What was that?
I thought he was already sentenced.
Well, they're always after him to sentence him for various things.
This was hacking a site, I believe, two years ago when he was 14.
And today, he was sentenced.
And get this.
Maybe, Bernie, maybe you know something about this.
It was a bizarre type of a thing that he was sentenced to.
It was a – what was it, Mackie?
A wagon train?
Wagon train.
What was the –
By Vision Quest.
Vision Quest wagon train.
Bernie, have you ever heard of anything like that?
In fact, I think there was a 60 Minutes segment on this many years ago about Vision Quest.
It's kind of like you hear about these boot camps where it's sort of like basic training with hard labor for adolescents.
It's a shorter sentence, but it's more intense.
But this Vision Quest thing is like a boot camp with a wagon train theme.
I don't know if any viewers remember the movie.
A wagon train theme?
Wagon train.
It's out.
You go out.
It's like in Colorado or somewhere out west.
And they literally – you're on horseback with wagons, and you go out into the desert.
It's kind of like that movie City Slickers with Billy Crystal and Jack Palance from a few years ago.
You're just thrown out in the wilderness, and you have to survive.
Now, they have these – what do you call them?
Like washers or organizers, you know, older people who supervise these kids.
And I guess they're armed or something to keep them from mutinying or whatever.
And they have to go through this couple-week thing out in the wilderness with rattlesnakes and tumbleweeds.
And supposedly they're supposed to learn responsibility and how to survive.
I think it's ridiculous.
But frankly, I would have much rather spent a few weeks out on a wagon train than a year and a half in a 5x8 concrete cell.
But where's a wagon train going to go in the middle of the winter?
Because it just goes around in a – it's aimless.
It doesn't go to any particular – the point is not to get from point A to point B.
It's to get you out there for a few weeks to find yourself, to learn that life is bigger than your crime.
Well, that would be the vision quest aspect.
Yes.
Well, if anybody out there knows more about this or has ever been in something like this, we'd like to know more.
This just happened today.
Zale was sentenced to a year of this wagon train nonsense.
So is he out of his homebound ankle collar?
Yeah, he doesn't have the ankle bracelet anymore, I guess, unless they put some other kind of monitoring system.
If you recall, the thing I found that was fascinating was we were talking to this kid several weeks ago.
And even though he was being threatened with all these kinds of punishments for basically just accessing things,
not hurting anything, but just being where he wasn't supposed to be, as a lot of hackers are, he kept his curiosity.
He was trying to figure out how the ankle bracelet worked.
And of course, the authorities hate that.
They hate it when you question and try to figure things out.
But he just would not let his spirit be crushed.
Let's hope that while he's out there in the prairie or wherever they send him, that his spirit does not get squashed.
I actually think it's going to be the exact opposite.
You think?
The idea is to have a good experience and to –
You think this is a good thing?
Well, I'm – well, what was the charge related to this sentence?
I believe it was simply accessing an ISP's website, maybe hacking a website.
Basically a frivolous –
Imagine Wolf doing that out there in the desert.
No, he won't be accessing any websites, that's for sure.
Yes, but it was a frivolous kind of thing with no actual victims or anything.
It could be good for him to be out on his own.
It could be good for him, but you know what would be better?
It would be going to college, something he was planning on doing.
The only good that I can see, hopefully, coming of this is that perhaps it will give him some time to mature and stay out of trouble
so that he will be able to go on and use computers later, but surely is not the optimal way of achieving that.
Well, it's supposed to be a character building kind of exercise where you go out and you're under the stars
and you've got to figure out who you are, what the hell you're doing.
Under the stars is some guy pointing a gun at you if you don't do what he says.
I doubt he's pointing a gun at you.
Well, I want to hear more about this program.
Yes, I'd like to.
Because some of these boot camps are really quite abhorrent.
Some of them parents send their children to voluntarily if they feel they can't handle them.
And some of them involve intense physical labor.
I've known more than one person who's had to go through these.
And a lot of them are getting shut down one by one for child abuse charges.
And because a lot of them involve a lot of real mind games and brainwashing.
And a lot of the people who run them aren't licensed psychologists.
And there isn't necessarily adequate mental health facilities or people.
A lot of them are being run by private corporations.
And these people are not qualified.
But you have to understand, these are our nation's brightest kids
that are being sent into these horrible areas.
It's important to note that these boot camps have not been shown to have any lower recidivism rates
than standard punishment in a prison cell.
Although if I had my choice, I'd rather not be in a 5x8 concrete cell 23 hours a day.
You can always think of something worse.
That's for sure.
But just knowing this kid, having him on the air a couple of times.
He was, to give you an example, he was the kid who found the hospital 800...
Dictaphone system.
Yes, dictaphone system that was wide open.
Patients had all their information out there for anybody to call in.
No password.
Did he use that for any ill gain?
No.
He reported it.
He reported it so that it would be exposed, so that it would be shut down, and it was.
And I think that tells you something about where his mind was.
I don't know.
That's what happened to him today.
We'll be keeping updated on that.
A lot of parallels I see to the Kevin Mitnick case, where we've been following this for five years now.
Kevin Mitnick, of course, has been locked in prison since February 15th, 1995.
I mean, think about it.
Where were you in February of 1995?
I mean, a lot has happened since then, and he has not been outside since.
Not since that day.
On January 21st of this year, he will finally be let out, but he's not completely free yet.
He'll have to report to supervised release for three years.
He'll have to stay away from computers.
He isn't even allowed to talk about computers, give people advice, anything like that.
All kinds of horrible conditions are being imposed on him.
Yes, he'll be able to walk down the street.
That's great, but they're making life very, very difficult for him.
So we're all going to have to help out to make sure things work out so that he doesn't wind up being sent back there,
which is what they want.
They want you to fail.
They want you to be sent back.
That's how the system works.
So we'll be keeping people updated on Kevin's latest news.
Again, January 21st is when he will be released, and we'll hopefully be able to talk to him real soon.
He's being held where right now?
He's being held in Lompoc, which is in California.
It's in the middle of nowhere.
We're going to be heading out there in about two weeks and seeing him on his last day
and then seeing him when he gets out.
So hopefully it will be a happy occasion.
Hopefully he'll be able to survive in a world where he's not allowed to go near technology.
And unfortunately, that's turning into the norm these days when you're sentenced for anything having to do with technology.
Stay away from technology.
Don't even be part of it.
It's almost impossible to live life that way.
Okay, more updates.
As you recall, last week we reported that we were being sued by the friendly folks over at the DVD console.
Consortium or whatever you want to call them.
Simply because we posted something on our website a couple of months back when the DVD encryption was cracked.
By doing that, we supposedly ruined the Hollywood industry.
We broke the whole thing.
I want to read a letter, and then, Mackie, you can give us an update as to what happened at the hearing last week
and what we have to look forward to.
This is to 2600.
I did not receive the ECSS off your website, but I did receive it through another site.
I haven't pirated any DVD movies.
I don't send my friends the 5 gig or so movies.
I mean, think about it.
It's ludicrous.
Who in God's name would send a 5 gigabyte file to a friend just so they don't pay $3 to Blockbuster to rent it?
It's nuts.
It's a total waste of time.
The ECSS has allowed myself to actually watch the 4 DVDs that I paid $25 a pop for.
Now I can watch Austin Powers on my computer, which I'm very thankful for.
If anything, these people shouldn't be pressing charges.
You should because you have helped us legal people who don't have the money for 750 megahertz Athlon computers with a gig of RAM.
All I have to say is thanks a million.
I hope you get the charges dropped.
We've gotten a lot of letters like this.
A lot of people who realize why we posted the files, that it's got nothing to do with pirating films.
Unfortunately, these people who are after us don't seem to realize that.
So what's the latest?
Yeah, the response has been really overwhelming.
I know we put out a request for people to mirror the source code and the executables for the ECSS,
and we've gotten well over 100 responses just after asking for it.
We've gotten so many we had to stop putting them up.
It got to be such a pain.
Why are they asking for it at all?
I mean, it's available on the website.
Just download it and put it on your site.
No, the idea is to mirror it in case we go down, in case we're taken down.
Well, no, we requested that other people do it just to make the point that even if they...
So that we can list them, so that we can list them on our site.
And that even if...
Yeah, we've compiled a list of other people who have mirrored it,
and it's to really drive home the point that they can stop all 500 people that they named in their request for an injunction,
but it won't do any good.
So what happened last week?
So what happened was last week they filed a motion requesting a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction.
So this would essentially stop the named defendants from distributing or linking to the DECSS information pending an actual hearing.
So this was...
We were given about 72 hours notice saying that they wanted to stop it.
Well, the hearing was last week, and the judge denied it.
Thanks in a large part to the efforts of the Electronic Freedom Frontier.
Frontier Foundation.
Frontier Foundation, sorry.
The EFF who provided pro bono counsel and is now putting together a legal team.
A whole lot of people banded together.
Thanks in no small part to the people who sent us the threat because they copied everybody's name onto the email,
so we were able to contact everybody.
So what we have here now is an order from the judge, which was actually prepared by the plaintiff,
which isn't uncommon that attached to such a request for an injunction,
they give a proposed order for the judge to just sign off on, which happened a lot in the Mitnick case.
So what the judge did here is struck out large portions of it and wrote denied over it.
Yeah, big X's.
But what we get to see here is a little bit more specifics on exactly what the DVDCCA wanted to impose.
So among the things that they wanted to stop us from doing is, quote, besides just distributing it,
knowingly linking to other websites which disclose, distribute, or link to any proprietary information or property or trade secrets.
So not only would it be, not only would we be barred from linking to the program,
we would be barred from linking to any site that links to it, that links to it.
So Yahoo and any other site.
These guys have no sense of reality at all, do they?
That's how the web works.
Everything is linked together.
Yeah.
And so, although this is denied, Friday after the next, on the January 14th,
there's a hearing for a full injunction.
So this would, you know, this was a temporary one.
Now we have some time, and there will be another hearing.
So this isn't over.
No, not by any means.
In fact, we came up here fully prepared to be served today, you know,
because there's people being served all over the world with these stupid notices.
Today and yesterday, many of the co-defendants.
Anybody out there in the lobby who wants to serve us?
Come in and serve us right now, you know.
There's dozens of defendants here, including about 500 John Does,
or just URLs that they've cited,
including among the John Does who were cited for merely linking to it
are sites like Slashdot, which is a large news site,
and Deja.com, which just posts Usenet articles.
But conspicuously, they didn't link, they didn't sue Wired, that we know of.
So now named in this from 2600 is you, Emanuel Goldstein, as an individual.
Yeah, I thought that was interesting.
Not 2600 Enterprises Incorporated, which for the most part,
which is responsible for the website, if anything is.
So they're trying to pin this all on me.
Yeah, presumably because you're less apt to defend yourself.
I tried to stop it, but as you know.
I fought tooth and nail.
Our website is run by a bunch of Pakistani nationals in a foreign country,
and we have absolutely no control over it.
That's just the way it is. I'm sorry.
We're literally at their mercy here.
But even if this was granted, even though it's just your name,
here is the phrase that they used to cover the Pakistani nationals.
It would be against, quote, defendants, their principals, agents, servants,
employees, attorneys, successors, assigned representatives,
and all other persons acting in concert and participation with them.
So everyone who's ever participated in this would be covered by the injunction.
We're all going down in a sinking boat together, I guess.
And finally, one last quirky thing about this order is
there's a lot of fill-in-the-blanks here for dates and things
for the judge to fill in from the proposed order.
And they were hoping for, well, in the clause that says
when they have to serve us with the papers.
Is that a process server? It looks a lot like one.
It looks like a goon, yes.
What do they look like anyway?
Well, it could be a sheriff. It could be a private investigator.
It could be a...
There's somebody wearing a cowboy hat in the lobby there.
I fear cowboys. It's scary.
So the date here for when they have to serve us by,
the lawyers had entered January blank 2000,
hoping to get it into this week,
and the judge crossed out January, wrote December 31st,
and left 2000 there.
So although the court date is next week,
they have until the end of the year to serve us with the papers.
That's a Y2K issue right there.
Yes.
How about that?
Okay, well, we're looking forward to being served.
Are you supposed to tip the guy when they serve you?
Does anybody know?
No, I guess you just escort him to the door once he's done serving.
Oh, okay.
Well, I'd kind of like to hang out with the guy
and find out what makes him tick.
Well, you could do that if you like.
Yeah, I have no problem with that.
Yeah, you want a cup of coffee?
Yeah.
Well, okay, just as a public service to the servers out there,
if you have trouble reaching us,
and you probably won't find us tonight
because for all you know, we're on tape.
Wouldn't that be embarrassing if you came up here and we were on tape?
But we do have a 2600 meeting this Friday,
and that will be taking place at Citicorp Center,
which is located at 53rd, between 3rd and Lexington.
We meet there in the lobby area.
The building with the slanty roof.
Yeah, the building with the slanty roof.
If you have trouble, just ask anybody.
They'll direct you to it.
And anybody you need to serve will probably be in the lobby area
where all the security guards hang out.
The thing is, we're not sure if we're going to be in New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo,
and there's also a possibility we'll be in Kansas City.
So just to be safe, have process servers go to all those sites.
That's my advice.
Because, you know, we don't want to clog up the wheels of justice here.
We want things to move smoothly.
All right, that out of the way,
here's something really exciting that's happening right here in New York City,
something that a lot of people don't know about.
You know, there's a Broadway show called Y2K.
Really?
It's all about hackers and things like that.
And let me read you a little bit from The New Yorker,
which came out just a little while ago.
This is a young cyber-subversive in a brooding leather jacket.
His name is Kostra Astragon.
I believe I'm pronouncing that right.
Played by Eric Jensen, known to FBI men who are pursuing him by his aliases,
Because I Can, I See You, various other ones.
I am everywhere, on the outskirts of your mind, in the ether, in the darkness.
He confides to us as the play opens,
and when I'm on the hunt, as relentless as the wrath of God.
He has the power to recreate the virtual universe at will
in his own demented image, unseen by his victims on stage.
He is a techno-demiurge who speaks only to us.
I can see all of you.
He's drawn to invade the lives of a suave Park Avenue couple called the Elliots,
two pillars of respectability whom he taunts and finally topples.
By the end of the play, he has stolen the Elliots' bank accounts,
their faith in each other, even their bloodline.
He's written himself into Joseph's story as his long-lost father
and has falsified medical records to prove it.
They are trapped both in a cyber-fiction,
and as we see in the fictions they've built around their marriage,
and there's no escape from either.
Well, we have with us in the studio today
the person who wrote this Broadway show.
Arthur, I'm sorry, what?
Off-Broadway.
Off-Broadway. It's off-Broadway?
Yes.
I thought it was close to Broadway.
It's close to Broadway.
Okay. Arthur Kopit who has written this.
And I understand from what I've heard from various people
is that you actually use this radio program as part of your research.
I don't know if I should acknowledge that because I might be served.
You might or I might not have.
I certainly did research,
and the research certainly linked at various times to the people here.
Wow. That's kind of scary, isn't it?
That's kind of scary.
You can't hide.
Well, now, tell us your views of what hackers are.
Are hackers this menace, this evil type of thing like this main character is?
No, no, no.
He's a particular person, and I had not met.
I had a purpose which was not to attack hackers
or to really directly address that,
but to explore the issue which to me is the real year 2000 problem
which has to do with the manipulation of data and information,
especially to the degrees to which it invades people's privacy,
which you can coerce the simplest situation,
people going to doctors knowing that their medical records can be used against them,
can be sold.
The play came about, oddly enough,
from my being outraged at Kenneth Starr's going after Monica Lewinsky,
trying to subpoena her book records, what books she had bought,
and I thought that that was a major threat
and that our freedom had to do with our privacy.
That privacy was at the core of freedom.
And I began to think about other ways in which we could all be vulnerable
and could be surveilled, could be watched, observed, and pressured.
When this play was done last year in Louisville,
I mentioned to a director who was down there
and was connected to a university,
just think of the pressure that could be put on someone on the tenure track,
and he blanched and had to sit down and said,
I'll talk to you later about it,
and basically saved his life and his career,
not from a hacker but just from information put onto a website
claiming that he had harassed a girl who had been a student,
and she was, of course, ultimately connected to his rival on the tenure track,
and he was only saved because somebody in the tenure committee
who knew something about computers said, I believe you,
and went into the data records at the university
and found phone records that showed that this professor,
who denied he had ever known this girl, had in fact called her.
And so that was a simple way in which people could be pressured.
So the play deals with really a conflict
between someone whose view of reality comes as a virtual reality.
I can change reality to suit me,
and when I don't like the reality, I'll change it in another way,
as opposed to someone else who has made assumptions about what is real,
what is solid, what is verifiable or reliable about his life,
and suddenly finds that he's under attack for no known motive.
This hacker basically does it because he can.
There may be other reasons that he does it, but he does this.
The play ends before you know actually what will happen,
and I'm working on a movie version which carries it farther.
What I wanted was to examine what happens if somebody goes after you,
and they decide, and they're very good at this,
and they're able to go not only into your records,
but to change records that were there,
go back and create an entire new history for you
that is put into place very swiftly,
and can show that on a particular date you were in a city
that you never thought you would be in,
doing things that you never wanted anyone to believe you did
because you never did,
and included in there are some things that you did you didn't want to know about.
And legally, they probably can't get you
because they know that some of this stuff is suspect,
but your career is over, and your life is over,
and what is your life really about ultimately,
and what do we know about ourselves?
On one level, from what you talk about,
it certainly would speak towards the need for encryption
so that one can protect certain aspects of your life,
and also to know that if there are accusations that come out,
that it's even more important not to believe
that because the evidence seems to be there,
photographs are there, videotapes are there,
this could be not real.
So it's certainly not about year Y2K as a data management problem.
By the way, one of the things that you were talking about at being over,
it seems to me that one of the consequences
of this not having been caught early enough
is that in order to fix the problem,
every major corporation in the world has opened up its code
to people that they don't know about in order to fix the code.
Well, you can get into the code anyway and find back doors,
but how much is there now that has been corrupted
that has nothing to do with crashing the system,
but it's just a lot of different eavesdroppers
watching what the company is doing.
So the repercussions of having opened up your files,
your code, to outsiders will be significant.
Because of a sense of panic that you have to or you'll be destroyed.
Yes, we have to.
And who are these people?
Oh, do you know how to read COBOL?
Or do you know assembly language?
And so we've just gotten some people in to fix the code.
Well, what else have they fixed?
And now it's closed up, but you don't know what you have.
So the reliability of information seems significant.
You seem to think that the real threat comes from our blind faith in technology,
in relying on things as evidence.
I think that the threat comes from not recognizing what can happen.
It doesn't mean close down the technology.
You can't.
Technology is out of the bottle, and it's extraordinary.
But it needs to be looked at.
The world that we're in, what we depend upon,
used to be things that you could hold in your hand.
You could hold your money in your hand.
You had the money in a bank.
You wrote down your information.
Now it's much more convenient to put it onto a computer.
It goes into a data bank.
You believe that you're protected.
But, in fact, what you are counting on may not be.
I can have a photograph of your house.
I can put anybody in that house, and there's a photograph.
It will look exactly as if it was there.
So even in a legal sense, what is reliable evidence?
I think we're in a period of time where no one quite knows what this new world is like,
what is solid and what is plastic, what can be molded.
And so, to the heart, the play is political.
It's really about the possibilities of control in ways that we don't understand towards fascism.
If I know how everybody out there, if I can tell what they click onto, what they buy, what they do,
what they shouldn't have looked at,
I can begin to intimidate them when they want jobs in very simple ways,
and I can get them to vote the way I want.
I can know how they're thinking.
So it's, as you know, a 1984 kind of issue.
We're speaking with Arthur Kopit, who is the author of Y2K,
an off-Broadway show currently playing here in New York.
We're also here with Mackie from California, Isaac here from Queens,
and Bernie S. from Philadelphia on the phone.
We'll be taking your phone calls, 212-209-2900.
We'll try to squeeze in as many as we can.
Let me just ask Arthur one question.
What are some of the reactions that you've seen from people who have gone to your play?
What kind of precautions do they wind up taking afterwards?
Most interesting are from a lot of the Manhattan Theater Club's older audience
who have been saying, well, I should never have had a computer,
and I know I shouldn't have a computer,
but they seem to see what to me is the essential issue,
which is it's about human beings.
It's the humanness that's at the center,
and that you can't throw, they know you can't put away the technology,
but focus on what to me is the real issue,
is how do we know who we are and what do we value,
and what do we think is important in life?
It's not a play about technology.
It's a play about people who view themselves in some kind of context,
and that context is changing.
So the response has been very exciting.
They're scared of the hacker.
He's a wonderful actor.
He's astonishing because he's playful.
He's excited by what he's doing,
and what's scary is that there's really no moral concern for him.
He's not like the people around me,
and it's a dangerous thing.
It's a loaded gun that he has.
He's very good at what he does.
Okay, let's take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hey, guys.
How come no mention of Red Atlantic going into the long-distance business?
Well, because we've got so many things to talk about tonight
that one company's expansion just somehow didn't seem to be as important
as all these other issues.
But, yeah, they're going into long-distance, I think, what, starting tomorrow?
I believe so, yeah.
Wow. I can't tell you how thrilled I am.
Well, I like those James Earl Jones commercials
where he's like, welcome to Red Atlantic.
Yeah, yeah.
Any questions for our guests?
No, I'm afraid not. I'll let you go.
Okay. Thanks for calling.
Let's go over here.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Speak up, please. Go ahead.
Hi, Emmanuel. Hi, everyone.
I have a couple of things on my mind.
First, I'd like to say that Y2K sucked.
I mean, no mass suicides.
Not the play. You mean just the Y2K?
Oh, no, I'm sorry. No, not the play, of course.
I mean the real thing.
Right.
About the play, actually, I think you bring up a very good point
about all the Y2K code that's being changed.
I mean, you know, they sent some code to India,
but I'm sure that the government didn't pass up this advantage
to at least implant something in it.
And I know it's probably been sent to other foreign countries as well,
and you're right about how everything is,
like you can't implant things into it and just kind of track it along.
There's a lot of sniffing and copying going on, I'm sure.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Okay. Anything else?
Actually, yeah.
About that kid that was sentenced,
what was the thing he was sentenced to?
He was sentenced to the, what was it, Bernie?
Vision Quest.
Vision Quest wagon train.
Yes.
That sounds absurd.
I'm sure that once he gets there,
he'll actually wish that he was in a five-by-five cell.
You know, I think that it's going to be hell for him.
I'm pretty sure, I mean, for a year to be on horseback.
Thanks for your optimism.
Well, one thing we're not going to forget about him,
we're going to keep in touch with him.
However, it's going to be very hard to write to him, obviously,
since he'll be on the road, but we'll see what we can do.
Maybe we'll intercept the wagon train.
Hey, if they're going on public property, right?
You know, maybe we should have our own camping trip.
We'll see about that.
All right, thanks for calling.
Oh, I'm sure they were going to say Happy New Year,
but Happy New Year to you, too.
Let's take a call over here.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yes, you are. Speak up.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hi, Emanuel. Hey, guys. How's it going?
Okay, how are you?
Actually, I have a comment on the writer of the play you guys have on there today.
Okay.
I mean, do any of you guys think that a lot of this negative portrayal of hackers
is just the only thing we're seeing
and the only thing that people are focusing on mainly?
And as far as it being an original idea
or something that hasn't been put out there,
I think that's not the case here.
Well, you're pointing at, what, films like The Net and things like that?
Yeah, well, yeah, basically films in which we always see the same stereotypical hacker.
I mean, even on the Kevin Mitnick movie, whether that's coming out or not.
Take Down. Right.
Right, and The Net, the movie Hackers,
I mean, it's more or less the same exact character, the same exact act.
Let's ask the author. Is it the same exact character?
I saw them. I'm not bored by my play, and I'm bored by Hackers.
I wasn't. I mean the film Hackers.
I can only say that he's a very specific person,
and I think it's involved with identity,
and it wasn't a play about hacking.
It's a play about what we know and how you can manipulate what you know
and what this hacker does,
and it's never in the play whatsoever put forward as what hackers do and anyone can do.
It could have been done in other ways.
You could have manipulated people's lives.
You could have planted false claims.
What is, to me, the center of the play is the way in which the central characters
are undermined swiftly and quickly because they've depended upon aspects of their lives
that are very quickly changeable.
It's a storm, as if a storm is...
I think, by the way, there's a lot of very interesting information.
The article in the New York Times on Loft certainly showed a complex and other side.
I think that there is now an image that hackers are not bad,
and, in fact, the separation between hackers and crackers and white and black is coming out.
I think the point is that it's less about the evilness of hackers
and more about the fragility of all of us.
Yes, it's not about... For me, it's not about the evilness of hackers.
I don't think this person is evil.
I think he's amoral and, therefore, he is not conscious of doing anything whatsoever
other than playing around with the system.
But do people walk out of the play saying,
Hey, hackers have to be stopped, they're going to menace?
Not at all. No, no, no, no, no.
And I'm pleased that the issue is not...
Writing a play about technology would be uninteresting, I think.
It is about the...
He's almost like an Iago, and this is just a method that he uses.
It's about imagination. It's about fiction.
There's a central line which he quotes from Flaubert,
Everything you invent is true.
And he takes that to an extreme extent.
Okay. Let's see if we can squeeze in another call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Hi. I have a couple of questions.
First of all, I don't know if anyone knew this,
but I just found out about this not too long ago.
When you press star 67,
or some people automatically have a caller ID blocked,
you think you block all calls,
but I found out that if you call an 800 number, 877,
any toll-free number, or a 900 number,
it bypasses that.
No, it's because they don't use caller ID.
They use ANI.
It's a different technology, and you can't block it with star 67.
That's a topic for another show, though.
Do you have a second point?
Yeah, a couple of points.
One thing that actually affects my calling into this show,
with Bell Atlantic, you can only get, I think, 15 or 20 rings
before they shut you off.
There's a lot of state government,
a lot of state offices, a lot of bureaucrats.
It's difficult to get in touch with him in less than 20 rings.
I've been on the phone 30 rings down in Trenton
to call in some place in Trenton.
Again, that's defined by your local phone company.
I think that we don't have that problem here at BAI
with local calls we do with long distance,
because we don't control that.
But that's been something we've talked about many times, too.
Let's see if we can squeeze in another call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Okay, you've got to move faster than that.
Well, listen to the phone, not the radio.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Okay, that person did hear me and hung up.
Let's try over here.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, I was wondering if you had a chance to describe
if you have any scenery in the play,
and also just to mention one of the great surveillance-oriented plays
is Little Murders.
There's a great scene in that, Jules Feiffer.
Okay, we have just about enough time to answer that question.
Go ahead.
I love Little Murders,
and the scenery basically just creates two realms,
a virtual realm and a space
which the characters in the middle believe is literal and real.
And I try to use the conventions of a stage
where you are all imagining things,
and some of those things you believe are real,
even though you know that you are playing.
It's all virtual on stage,
so it's an interesting convention to use
to deal with what is real and what is not.
Arthur Coppett, author of Y2K,
tell us how people can see your play.
They can go to Sheridan Square.
They can find Christopher Street.
They can walk west on Christopher Street toward Hudson,
and you will see the Lortel Theater,
and you will see something called Y2K.
And if you go there and you go to the box office,
they will accommodate you.
Okay, great.
I want to see this.
It sounds fascinating,
and if we do see it, we will certainly tell people how it is
next week or the week after.
I want to thank everybody for coming.
Thanks, Arthur, for showing up tonight and talking about the play.
And thanks, Mackie, for coming all the way from California,
Isaac from Queens,
and Bernie S. out there in Philadelphia.
Happy to meet everybody.
We'll see you again next week
for another edition of Off the Hook.
It's Manuel. Have a good night.
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
Von Diddley Bond for the best
Expect the worst
I hope that's understood
Von Diddley Bond
I hope that's understood
Von Diddley Bond
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood
I hope that's understood