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On Sunday, April 9th from 2 to 5 p.m., join WBAI for a teaching and fundraising event
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The teaching, focusing on the trial of Amadou Diallo, the shooting of Patrick Dorismont,
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Congress of Puerto Rican Rights, Iris Baez, mother of Anthony Baez, Ron Daniels and Nancy
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For more information, call 212-209-2827.
That's 212-209-2827.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
We apologize for the various bits of silence before, but we only have one working magical
message machine, and now it's time for the off-the-hook theme.
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.
For Billy Bond, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Understood, for Billy Bond.
For Billy Bond.
I wanna be a drug-sipping dog, so I can't go to school all night long.
I wanna be a drug-sipping dog, so I can't go to school all night long.
I wanna be a drug-sipping dog, so I can't go to school all night long.
I wanna be a cuckold's friend, I shouldn't do your stuff, but I can.
You can make it right through your private life.
Breakfast, your panic attack, and I'll play the night.
Oh, oh, oh.
Bloody telephone.
It's a knife, it's a snake, it's a knife.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
I wanna be a San Francisco cop, so I can't feed and watch at night.
The turrets grinding for the king.
We got ways to make you sing.
It's a knife, it's a snake, it's a knife.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
We can save everything.
How the car is life-saving.
Keep the loot for ourselves.
These drugs aren't worth it.
I'm high, high, high, high, high, high, high, high, high, high, high, high, high, high, high.
I wanna join the Christian formation, so I can't molest my children.
God forbid, please, I've been slain.
Till I step forward, I will catch him unlinked.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
They're on for their time.
It's a knife, it's a snake, it's a knife.
And we can have so many examples on this station, it's just unbelievable.
So we'll be monitoring that situation as well.
Please listen to the station throughout the day, throughout the week, and we'll update people on how he's doing.
Hopefully he'll be back here real soon.
Well, we have Bernie S. and Mackie with us on the telephone.
You guys there?
Yep, I'm here in Philadelphia.
Okay, Isaac's over on the other side of the room.
How you doing?
Just fine, sir.
I'm good, I'm good.
It's been a busy week, a lot of crazy things going on.
Let's try and run it all down as best we can.
Let's see, what shall we start with?
Okay, how about this?
I don't know what that noise is.
Oh, that's the music.
Yeah, I was wondering, is there feedback or something?
Yeah, there's feedback on this CD, and there's also static on this CD.
It's kind of cool.
Okay, I was trying to get your attention.
It confused me because I wanted to demonstrate my new phone, which I just got.
Well, I got it last week, actually.
Which does feedback and static as well?
No, but it has kind of a cool ring.
It's the kind of ring that when you get a call, you can't help but smile.
And isn't that what it's really all about?
When you get a telephone call, it should be a pleasant experience.
It shouldn't be something that you dread.
So, when you call my number, this is what you get.
You get nothing, that's right.
Here we go.
Now, that's just the most amazing sound.
That's pretty solid.
All right, it gets kind of old after a while.
Shut up!
Yeah, that's what I look for in a phone.
Yeah, anyway, that's my new phone.
It replaces the last stupid phone I have, which doesn't work very well.
I've gone through so many phones on OmniPoint and Sprint, it's not even funny.
There's just too many.
All right, so that's my exciting bit of news for the week.
We have yet another lawsuit threat.
You guys seen this one?
I know, Mackie, you've seen it.
Bernie, have you seen it?
I have.
It's equally ludicrous.
Actually, it's even more ludicrous.
Isaac, have you seen this one?
I have not seen any.
Oh, you haven't seen this one?
No.
Wow.
What do you do all week?
Nothing.
People on the street know about this.
People on the subway asking me about this.
You know, I don't know how to turn this phone off.
What button do you hit?
Yes or no?
Just pull the battery off.
No, I'm not going to do that.
There's no power button.
It's either yes or no.
I'll hold no.
Right, no.
No.
Okay, no work.
No is also how you turn it on.
Go figure.
What?
Yeah, you have to hold the no button.
All right, to get on with the show here.
Yeah, we're being, well, we're not being sued, but we're being threatened with a lawsuit.
Let me read you the letter we got last Wednesday.
Dear Mr. Goldstein, I am counsel to National Broadcasting Company, Inc.
You are listed as the technical contact for the following site, www.
And the word I can't say, it begins with F, NBC.com.
The use of NBC's name in this domain name constitutes trademark infringement
and is also a violation of our copyright interest in the NBC.com site.
Please be aware that a letter is being sent to the listed owners of this site
and that if the site is not taken down immediately
and arrangements made to cease and discontinue all use of this name,
we will pursue all necessary legal remedies, including instituting litigation in the appropriate venues.
Well, the appropriate venue for this litigation was the garbage pail.
That's where the letter wound up.
It's really something when they actually think that they can control criticism of their name
as well as their name in itself.
Now, there's a number of...
How did they manage to connect NBC to them?
They've been like Neolithic barbaristic carnivores.
That's true, except the site linked to them.
So if you went to the site, then it linked to them.
But, you know, that's perfectly within anyone's rights.
You can link a site anywhere you want to go.
You can say something critical of a corporation.
You know, we don't live in an age where criticism is illegal.
And it doesn't matter if their name...
You know, somebody could have, and we suggest it, in fact,
somebody take out the same iteration of the language with 2600 in there
and do whatever you want with it.
You want to point it at us, you want to point it at the moon, it doesn't matter.
It's within your rights to do that.
And we post this on our website, as is our way.
When we get threatened with lawsuits, we tend to tell people about it.
Since then, we've gotten so much support and publicity,
we suggested that since it's obviously a waste to point it at NBC now,
we have a real story here, we might as well use the site.
It was suggested that somebody come up with a site of their own
that would more appropriately fit the name of f**nbc.com.
You don't have photos of things inappropriately done to the peacock, do you?
No, no.
Why, do you?
No, I'm just...
Well, that's exactly the kind of thing that we'd be looking for.
If anybody out there has things like this,
we've gotten about 50 people that have volunteered to do this,
but nobody has shown us any artwork yet.
So if you have a fake NBC site,
I guess I could say fakenbc.com, even though that's not what the word is,
but it's close,
you can show that to us, and if it's good,
if it's the best of what we see, we'll put that up,
and then we'll have a real site.
And it's all thanks to the NBC lawyers.
Can you believe these guys?
And the thing is, we have so many of those sites,
I'm not going to tell anybody what they are,
but there's lots of them out there.
Because when the new registrars opened up,
they didn't have NSI's same censorship policies
as far as what names you could and couldn't use.
So basically, all kinds of new words were...
not new words, but new words for the domain names.
The Internet got a good injection of bad taste.
Yeah, yeah.
We're here for democracy.
There's all kinds of sites out there.
Emmanuel, is there an email address we could direct our feelings
about this harassment to the NBC corporation or their lawyer?
You know, I'll give you the address that the person sent it from.
And a lot of people have sent mail to that person.
His name is Gillian Lucens.
And I really apologize, Gillian,
if I'm pronouncing that improperly.
But so what.
Gillian, G-I-L-L-I-A-N dot L-U-S-I-N-S.
Don't you love those email addresses that have dots in them and the names?
Yeah.
G-I-L-L-I-A-N dot L-U-S-I-N-S at NBC.com.
So feel free to voice your opinion there.
And also voice your opinion to us, O-T-H at 2600.com.
We have gotten some criticism.
I'm not going to say that it's been 100% support.
Some people have said that what we're doing is sacrilege
and we should be punished for it.
It's a horrible thing to put up a site like that,
even though we didn't put up a site.
All we did was point.
We just had a name, and I don't really see what the big deal is.
But some people took offense.
Some people think we're just looking for trouble.
Trouble finds us.
No, trouble finds us.
We don't have to look for it.
It's out there hunting.
Were you waiting for me to defend that charge?
No, we're not.
We didn't throw it in their faces or anything like that.
We were minding our own business.
In fact, I even forgot about the site.
It was just sitting there, and all of a sudden, hey, guess what?
Well, anyway, back to the real trouble,
the real trouble, of course, being the DECSS case.
Things are moving forward, as we mentioned last week.
The trial has been set for December 5th, which is quite a ways away,
but that gives us a lot of time to prepare as good a case as we can possibly prepare.
I mean, we could go to court tomorrow and have a damn good case,
but why not go for everything?
Why not have as many expert witnesses as we can,
as many facts on our side as possible?
I'll tell you, it really makes a big difference when you have a decent law firm on your side,
and that's what we have right now.
Thanks to Electronic Frontier Foundation, we've gotten the help of the legal team,
Frankfurt, Garbus, Klein, and Seltz.
Martin Garbus, by the way, has a long history defending.
He's not new to this.
No, he knows what the First Amendment is, which is a very rare thing these days.
When you go into a court of law,
to actually find somebody who appreciates the First Amendment,
and he's defended people all the way back to Lenny Bruce.
So this is somebody who knows a thing or two.
And I think the other side isn't very happy about this, from what I've heard.
They're very angry, in fact, that we actually got a good defense.
But, you know, that's what you have to do.
And, Bernie, I think you know that more than anybody.
A good lawyer makes all the difference.
If you don't have one at the beginning, you're screwed.
Yeah, and you were pretty screwed when you didn't have a lawyer.
I mean, you know, it's a bad thing what you went through,
but certainly a lesson for a lot of us.
And it's hard, too, you know,
because people don't have the funds for this kind of a thing.
But, you know, like everything else in this country,
justice is a commodity.
You have to be able to buy it.
Because certainly the people on the other side,
as I believe you once said,
they're the guys that print the money.
Yep.
All right.
We have word from somebody else who is in the legal system right now.
Bernie, I believe you found out something about the person
who was on this show several months ago named Zale,
who had hacked into NASA when he was 13
and had shown us more recently the hospital paging system,
which by making public we were able to actually protect and seal up.
They had it wide open on an 800 number.
This is the fellow on home release with the ankle bracelet?
No.
No, this is the guy on the wagon train.
He was being sent across the country.
Formerly with the ankle bracelet, though.
Okay.
He had an ankle bracelet at one time.
Apparently they didn't like him having that, so they gave him.
I'm not sure exactly how it happened,
but he wound up on this wagon train program.
Bernie, you found out some more information.
Yeah, I spoke with Zale's mother this evening,
and she was very upset.
Apparently the judge's order that Joe be sent on this rehabilitative wagon train trip,
like one of these Homeward Bound kind of things.
It's called Vision Quest, actually.
It was postponed until June.
Now Zale, whose real name is Joe Gregg,
and I'll give his real name because we'd like people to write him where he is.
He's living in a teepee in rural northwest Pennsylvania at this Vision Quest outfit,
which is a private corporation that charges the government
or charges taxpayers for these creative sentencing measures for juveniles.
Joe is 17 now.
He's been living in this teepee since, when did he get sent out there, Emanuel?
Sometime in January.
Yeah, it was right around the beginning of the year, middle of the winter.
He's been living in a teepee without the ability or permission to have any books or magazines in his possession.
This is part of the orientation process.
Apparently this orientation process was supposed to end a few weeks after it started.
Now Joe's mother tells me that it's going to be extended until June.
They don't have enough wagon trains, apparently, to put Joe on.
So I don't know.
Joe's a great kid, very creative.
He's got a mind, a sharp mind.
And I'm sure most of our listeners have a sharp mind also.
Can you imagine living in a teepee with no access to books or magazines for, what, six, seven months?
You see, I can understand.
I certainly can't condone, but I can kind of understand when they would, like,
keep somebody away from high technology and say you can't use a computer.
But books, magazines, are these considered a threat now?
Well, I was certainly harassed and punished by guards in various prisons I went to
for having certain books and magazines or just too many books or magazines.
But this goes above and beyond the conditions that I faced in some of the maximum security prisons I was in.
No books or magazines is really mental torture.
And also physical torture, too.
I mean, living in a teepee in a really cold part of the country, I mean, how is he surviving?
What's he doing?
That's a good question.
Joe's mother goes out there every other Sunday to visit him,
which is about an eight-hour drive for her all the way across rural Pennsylvania.
And she's very upset with the situation.
She's talked to their attorney.
The attorney's been trying to get the judge to get this straightened out.
The judge is apparently, the sentencing judge is very upset that the wagon train was not made available when it was promised.
And apparently Vision Quest charged or billed the government for the full 12-month wagon train trip.
And he's going to be getting a short ride for the full price at taxpayer expense.
So we need to find out about this fraud and this mistreatment of this 17-year-old, this bright 17-year-old.
This is just ridiculous.
They did give Joe an option.
If he wanted to not wait in the teepee for several more months without any books or magazines,
he could go to one of these boot camp places where they wake you at the crack of dawn
and march you in a military fashion until you're ragged at the end of the day.
I guess this would go on throughout his sentence.
So his mother didn't feel that was appropriate at all.
And that's not what he was sentenced to.
Yeah, considering he wasn't sentenced to a boot camp,
that doesn't really seem fair that they would actually give him that kind of an option.
Do we have an address for him that people can send him things?
Yeah.
Now, people, remember, we don't want to get Joe into any trouble.
Don't send any books or magazines.
However, if you want to get creative in a letter and what you want to cut and paste in that letter, fine.
But don't send him anything that's going to get him into trouble.
You can address letters to Joe Gregg.
That's G-R-E-G-G, two Gs.
The address is sevenarrowsslashvisionquest
at P.O. Box 168 in Franklin, Pennsylvania, 16323.
Shall I read that again?
Yeah, give it one more time.
It's Joe Gregg with two Gs, sevenarrowsslashvisionquest, P.O. Box 168, Franklin, PA, 16323.
Please give this guy some mental food.
He's probably starving.
His mother tells me he's going out of his mind not having any kind of reading material.
Again, you can't send him any books or magazines,
try to maybe cut and paste some interesting reading material into a letter and mail that to him.
How about printouts from the net?
Would that be considered a magazine?
Judging from some of the stuff I got, some of the e-mail printouts you sent me of people writing me while I was incarcerated
were denied me by the Bureau of Prisons.
He is in federal custody through this private corporation, which is a disturbing trend.
Yeah, that really is disturbing.
I don't know if you've been reading the news recently, but a couple of weeks ago there was a really serious story out of Louisiana
where Wackenhut, the biggest prison corporation in the country, was found to have been literally torturing kids.
Three kids were taken out of the prison system by the judge because the conditions were so atrocious.
No food, no clothes, all kinds of horrible things going on you would not expect in this country, but corporate run.
And the reason why it's like that is because they're trying to cut costs.
They have people running these prisons with no training whatsoever, and they're allowed to do it because of the privatization of prisons.
It's disgusting, and it's really frightening.
So I imagine if anything that looks technical, I'm sure they know what he's sentenced for.
I would strongly suggest that people not send anything that looks technical or suspicious to anyone who is technically naive.
Nothing that looks too computer-oriented, please.
We don't want to get him in any hot water, but just anything of interest that's not going to be too blatantly computer-oriented
would certainly help Joe cope with his current situation.
Yeah, try to think of yourself in that situation and what you would be going through
and what you would need to get through the day and get through the weeks, months, whatever it is he has left.
Thanks for that information, Bernie.
We also have some updates on a couple of other things.
Last week we mentioned that the film Takedown was out in France.
We have a story that came out by none other than Kevin Polson.
I'll briefly go through this.
It may never make it to theaters in the English-speaking world,
but a controversial motion picture based on a digital manhunt that snared hacker Kevin Mitnick
debuted in France this month to generally poor reviews and unspectacular box office receipts.
The movie, from Miramax's label Dimension Films, is based on the book Takedown,
the pursuit and capture of America's most wanted computer outlaw by the man who did it,
authored by computer security experts Sotomayor Shimomura and New York Times reporter John Markoff.
Shimomura electronically tracked Mitnick to his Raleigh, North Carolina, hideout in February 1995
and sold the book and movie rights for an undisclosed sum, which is generally thought to be over a million bucks,
amidst the storm of publicity following the fugitive hacker's arrest.
Early versions of the screenplay for the movie adaptation of Takedown cast Mitnick,
played by screen star Skeet Ulrich, as violent and potentially homicidal.
Who is Skeet Ulrich?
Well, Skeet Ulrich playing Kevin Mitnick.
In July 1998, supporters of the then-imprisoned cyberpunk rallied against the film
outside Miramax's New York City offices.
Writers later revised the script and shooting wrapped on the project in December 1998.
Since then, the film has languished without a U.S. release date,
amid rumors of a direct-to-video or cable TV release.
The French-dubbed version of the 90-minute film is titled Cybertrack.
It opened on March 15th.
A promotional website features streaming video of the theatrical trailer.
Miramax publicists didn't return phone calls about the movie.
You know you're in bad shape when you don't return phone calls about a movie that you're putting out.
Obviously, they want to forget about this.
The exact box office take of Cybertrack is unknown,
but receipts failed to crack France's top-ten list on the movie's opening weekend.
French critics have generally panned the film.
A review in the French newspaper Le Monde notes the film's problems
in translating a virtual manhunt to the action-adventure genre.
Can the repeated image of faces sweating over keyboards
renew the principles of the Hollywood thriller, the paper asks?
It's easy to say that the filmmaker hardly reaches that point,
regardless of his saturation of the soundtrack with rock music,
to defeat the boredom of the viewer.
Wow, that's not a good review, would you say, guys?
Well, if the French didn't like it, you know...
Well, they don't like anything American.
Right.
I don't think Americans are going to like this either.
Now, Mackie, you had a run-in with John Markoff,
the co-author of that book, this past week.
Yes, as we mentioned on last week's show,
there was a panel put on in Mountain View, California,
featuring, among other people, John Markoff,
who was giving a talk entitled,
Kevin and Me, at the Computer History Museum.
And Kevin wanted to go to this,
but the panel was held on Moffett Field,
which is federal property, part of NASA Ames Research Center,
and NASA security would not give Kevin permission to attend.
So Kevin was not able to go, but I was.
So I got prepared.
You actually made it to the front row, didn't you?
Oh, yeah.
I got prepared.
We drew up a bunch of questions
and got some evidence from the case FedEx to me.
Went there, and it was about 300 to 400 people.
The place was absolutely full.
I wormed my way up to the front row.
You're good at worming your way up to the front row.
Yeah, well, you know, I was sitting alone,
so you can find those single seats there.
And his entire talk did not mention Kevin once.
Well, his talk was entitled, Kevin and Me, though.
Yeah, yeah, I'm aware of that.
It was just me.
Yeah, it was just me.
There was no Kevin in there.
What's up with that?
Yeah, it was interesting.
He just talked about Captain Crunch and Susan Thunder.
Everyone in the world except Kevin and Me, I guess,
is what the full title was.
Yes, yes, people very close to Kevin, people around it,
just no mention whatsoever.
So a question-and-answer session came around,
and I was the first one up there.
And I didn't reveal that I was wearing a 2600 shirt
until I got up to the mic.
And Markov happened to be at the end of the table
that was the closest to the microphone,
so I was about, you know, like eight feet away from him,
right up there,
and exchanged this priceless grin right as he realizes,
you know, wearing this shirt and about to ask him a question.
And so I started out by pointing out that he hadn't mentioned Kevin,
which brought on lots of laughter.
And he asked, well, is this an audience or a lynch mob?
The audience was definitely swayed in favor of Kevin.
And I called him on some very difficult questions
about his reporting.
And I challenged him to either back up or retract his statements
about Kevin having broken into NORAD, among other things,
in his old 1994 article.
And it's really incredible hearing him try to answer these questions
because he just completely sidesteps them.
And I asked him, well, you know, is it true?
We all know it's wrong.
Why haven't you admitted that Kevin never broke into NORAD?
He said, oh, well, I think the real question here is Kevin's character.
And I had to interrupt him.
No, that's not the question.
The question is, is this false and why haven't you retracted it?
But you asking the question, we should know what the question is.
Yes, that's what I said.
I know what question I asked.
What is this?
And he was, oh, well, Stephen Rhodes told me so.
And just completely, you know, skirting all responsibility,
saying, well, my source said it was true.
Well, that doesn't mean that it is true.
And now that you should know that it isn't,
you should really retract it because to this day
other media organizations are quoting his story as fact.
Just a couple weeks ago when Kevin was on Burden of Proof,
one of the anchors said,
so you were on the FBI's top ten most wanted list, right,
which is a myth started by that article.
Among many myths.
Yes, and so we went back and forth,
and he kept, every time he'd get into a corner,
he'd go back to this whole, well, I think the real issue here
is that you seem to think that I was Kevin's problem.
Why do you think that four law enforcement agencies were after him?
Do you think it was because of little old me?
And it was just like, you know, completely voiding the question.
But that gave me the perfect opportunity to bring up the second point,
which was his giant conflict of interest.
And into that argument I got kind of cut off
by people who wanted to move on to other questions.
So he never actually answered the question?
Oh, absolutely not, no.
Well, at least you made your presence known,
and I guess that's probably the best we can hope for.
Yeah, and lots of people came up afterwards congratulating me,
and there was a reception afterwards,
and who pulls up next to me in the parking lot,
we had to drive to the reception,
but John Markoff, and he waited there for me.
Did he have a gun or something? Was he after you?
He waited for me.
I'm pretty sure he didn't follow me because I got kind of lost
and was looking for other cars.
Markoff following a hacker, I would imagine that.
He came over next to my driver's side
and just, like, waited for me to get out of my car.
Like a police officer.
Yeah, I would have waited him out.
Yeah.
We'll be publishing details of that later.
You don't want to reveal what happened?
I can't give details yet,
because we've got to still go over it with Kevin and stuff.
I want to kind of come up with a comprehensive commentary on it.
But basically...
Well, you can kind of tell us what happened.
You don't have to consult with somebody to tell us what happened.
We, you know, further continued the conversation,
talked about various other, you know, breaches in ethics,
various ethical shortcomings over the last six years.
And he continued.
There was one really priceless part, actually, which I will mention,
is, like, where he insisted Kevin had gotten a bail hearing.
And I thought, well, no, he very clearly didn't get one.
He was all, well, and he didn't get one because he's a flight risk.
Well, wait a second.
A second ago, you said he never...
You said he did get one.
And then as soon as I called him on that, he was all,
well, do you know Kevin reads people's e-mail?
Yeah, he always falls back on that.
Always falls back on that.
Completely.
Just bold-faced.
And the funniest thing was, I was taping it.
I had a tape recorder out, but no one was around, you know?
It was just me.
Do you know John Markoff listens in on people's phone calls?
Yes.
That's exactly it.
That's exactly what I told him.
I said, well, what about you listening to the cell phone?
He said, oh, well, no, I didn't do that.
I said, well, but, you know, it's right there in the Fugitive Game.
It's in his book, too.
It's in both books.
Yes.
I mean, it's absolutely absurd.
And the fact that, well, that has nothing to do with whether or not Kevin got due process.
Right, skirting the issue.
It just boggled my mind how he could really, like, look me in the eye and pretend to be that delusional.
Well, I'm just glad you were there to look him in the eye,
and hopefully people will be there every step of the way to make sure that the story one day gets out somehow.
Moving on, we have a couple of real quick news items.
We're going to take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
Bernie, this might be interesting to you.
Actually, it should be interesting to all of us.
But did you know that President Clinton's phone bills rose more than $50,000
after an Army sergeant gave out the White House long-distance calling code?
That's according to federal prosecutors yesterday.
Now, this intrigues me because this tells us something about how the phone code works.
Now, let's try and theorize as to what exactly it is that they do.
Now, apparently, Clinton has some kind of little calling card going on,
and somebody gave out the number.
The scheme allegedly culminated in the arrest of David Gilmer of Woodbridge, Virginia,
an Army sergeant assigned to the White House Communications Agency.
I guess that means that he's part of the Secret Service, doesn't it, Bernie?
White House Communications Agency?
No, it's a different agency.
The White House Communications Agency is actually part of the Department of Defense.
Oh, it is? I thought they were part of the Secret Service.
No, they're not.
Okay.
In papers filed in federal court in Manhattan,
U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White alleged that Gilmer gave the White House phone access number
to people in New York and New Jersey,
allowing them to make 9,400 unauthorized calls between December 5 and February 8.
Sure took them a long time to find out something was up.
The callers were tapping into the same telephone service provided to the president,
vice president, White House senior staff, the National Security Council,
and U.S. Secret Service, according to court papers.
The computerized telephone system is owned by private companies
but operated by the White House Communications Agency.
Gilmer was arrested Friday, charged with conspiracy to defraud the government.
If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney,
said there was no indication that those who obtained the access codes
could have done anything more than make free phone calls.
So, I don't know. What do you make of this?
They got, like, sprint codes or something?
I was trying to find out, you know,
is this just a standard calling card they're using,
or is it something secure, or what is it?
And I wasn't able to glean any more just from what I heard on CNN last night
about, you know, how the system actually works,
whether it's anything other than a regular phone card. Were you?
Well, they say things like the computerized telephone system,
but what telephone system isn't computerized these days?
It's run by a private company, okay? That could be any private company, you know?
But we know that that's how they make phone calls.
Now, when would Clinton need a calling card? Think about it.
Was he going to make a call from a pay phone or something like that?
When does he actually need to use a calling card?
Isn't he always in an area where he has a phone?
Well, the White House Communications Agency, you know,
the whole traveling White House that follows him wherever he goes,
has portable secure phones with him at all times.
Secure and non-secure phones.
Right, but you wouldn't need a sprint code to use one of those, would you?
Not at all. Not at all. Unless he's in a hotel room or something.
I imagine they have secure phones and non-secure phones that are direct links
from every hotel room he stays in.
It seems silly that he would need that, but however,
this account is apparently used by people other than the president and the vice president.
Yeah, they say it was used by a bunch of people,
but they distinctly say that it's President Clinton's phone access calling card code or whatever.
That's kind of weird.
I think it just goes to show that there's very little security,
even at the highest levels of our government.
There's just gross carelessness and slipshod security no matter how high you go.
Typically they blame the messenger for the security breach,
but the security breaches wouldn't happen if these people were confident in the first place
and didn't let this stuff get compromised. Same old story.
Absolutely. I want to read something that was sent to us here at BAI,
which I think is really interesting and telling.
It's about Bell Atlantic, and we all know and love Bell Atlantic, don't we?
Well, listen to this.
If you are a small business owner in New York City and the surrounding counties
who has ordered new phone service,
you may have experienced delays with the installation of the new lines.
I did. I asked around to find out why.
Here is why.
Poor planning.
In 1999, Bell Atlantic started the General Business Services Group in the New York area.
From the beginning, the general business subdivision was undermanned
by over half of the needed workforce.
Orders for new services are missed because there are not enough people to do the work.
The idea was, dedicate a workforce for the small business customer.
Bell Atlantic operates this way in other states.
It's a good idea, but with too few people it has become a disaster.
There was no plan to accommodate the high volume of installation requests
spurred by a growing economy.
They did nothing about bad telephone cable in poorer or older neighborhoods
that are now experiencing business growth.
Many of the business growth areas are in the 10 worst districts for telephone service.
Bell Atlantic's construction and design department has no priority or plan
to fix telephone cables specifically for business customers.
On up to 45% of requests for new service, the installers encounter problems
with defective or no telephone cable facilities
and waste time finding new telephone cable facilities and swapping lines.
The installers are young and inexperienced.
The few supervisors are desk-bound with paperwork,
unable to train and lead people in working with customers and building technical expertise.
Many business locations require much physical work to bring in new lines.
This work, if done correctly and safely, takes a lot of time.
Sometimes several people are needed to install the lines.
The growing number of requests for service and complaints ties up the service representatives
so you sit on hold when you call the office.
None of the proceeding was factored into the needed workforce calculations.
In my case, our new store needed all new wiring from the telephone pole down the block
and new wires in the store.
The guy couldn't get another installer to help.
All the while, his boss was paging him to see what was taking so long
and told him to leave me and go to the next customer
because the next customer's installation would be easier.
The guy had several customers to visit.
There was no way he could do them all.
I had to wait for another day when the installers would not have any other work.
The installer told me they are given more work than they can possibly handle
and then rushed and harassed throughout the day to get it done.
If you think you will need new telephone lines, place your order early.
When you call the office, you will be placed on hold.
When your order is written, you will be told the lines will be in in a few days.
And when a date promised comes, no one will show up
because they don't have enough people to do the work.
If they do come, the order is not for what you told them they wanted in the first place.
You'll then call them up to complain and demand that someone comes to install your lines
and you will be told the next possible date is a few days away.
Don't tolerate it.
If they can't turn on your lines the first time within two business days, complain.
Call the New York State Public Service Commission, 1-800-342-3377
or Bell Atlantic Executive Appeals, 1-800-722-2300
or Bell Atlantic General Business Downstate Manager.
Her name is Marie Gallinero, 212-240-6206.
And she'll be changing her number tomorrow.
Bell Atlantic's upper management has failed to listen to its own employees
and its own internal customer care survey.
This is not union versus company.
It's about customers.
It's about people who have had enough.
People who identified the problem but have been ignored,
all the while even more work is dumped on them.
I'm writing this anonymously because I want to keep my job.
I'm in a unique situation.
I'm a Bell Atlantic employee.
I've complained about the workload, the lack of help, and the poor service we give our customers.
But in the shoes of a Bell Atlantic customer, I was shocked at how bad it really is.
I have heard of customers' many bad experiences with Bell Atlantic,
but I was surprised when it happened to me.
Even as an employee, there was nothing I could do to speed up the process.
When my family moved our store to its new location, it took a long time to get the lines installed.
We lost money and customers.
Bell Atlantic is not compensating us for lost business.
It is a problem that is easily fixed.
Get the people you need to do the job.
The company has the money, but Bell Atlantic will continue to do nothing
until you demand the quality service you're paying for.
That sounds like a familiar story.
I know getting lines installed, getting DSL installed recently,
these guys are overworked because there aren't enough of them.
They lay off people left and right.
There's only a handful of people working for the company now, it seems,
and they just can't do it all.
And they're using a lot of non-Bell employees to do this work, too,
who apparently aren't qualified to do the job.
These private contractors, I've had to call Bell Atlantic for my employer on many occasions.
They send out these contractors, these private contractors
that are just contracted out through Bell to do this stuff.
These guys really don't know much about telecommunications.
You'd think that would be a prerequisite for working for a phone company,
but I guess these days they're just open to anything.
Didn't we have a guest on a couple years ago, Emanuel,
who had set up a website, bellatlanticsucks.com?
Yeah, I wonder if they got angry at that.
Yeah, I do remember that.
Actually, I think it was 9xsucks.com because we were back in the 9x days then.
But in any case, no, it was bellatlanticsucks.
I remember he also registered the domain name bigyellowsucks.com.
Oh, really?
And Bell Atlantic had registered those but forgot to pay for them,
so then he was able to get them.
Bell Atlantic registered Bell Atlantic.
I don't understand.
Why would a company register that they suck?
Well, clearly they're aware of the fact that they suck.
In any case, that was a great site, bellatlanticsucks.com.
I'm sure it's probably still up.
It was a compendium of these problems people experienced.
You could just read these horror stories after horror stories
of people's experiences with Bell Atlantic and 9x.
Visit that site sometime.
It's worth checking out.
I remember it was actually suggested that a new top-level domain,
.sucks, be introduced so that, no,
for people to report problems about certain companies.
That's a great idea.
I think it would be amazing because it really keeps a company on its toes
when there's someone out there blogging every time you screw up,
and you feel compelled to fix the problems if the problems are legitimate.
Wow, what a great idea.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
All right, let's take some phone calls.
212-209-2900 is our telephone number.
Bernie, pick a number between, let's say 1 and 5 tonight.
7.
That's about the only way we're going to avoid what's waiting for us.
All right, 3.
3? All right.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
How are you doing?
Hey, how's it going, Emanuel?
Okay, can you turn on your radio a little bit, please?
Okay.
It sounds like you're listening to a different station, but what's on your mind?
I was just calling in to see what's going on.
It's my first time calling in to show.
Okay, you have an opinion on something?
Yeah, I don't think that that was cool how John Markoff
just blowed off Bernie S.'s questions like that.
Actually, it was Mackey's questions.
Oh, that was Mackey, I'm sorry.
Yeah, but I'm sure he would have blown off Bernie S. too,
no matter who would have asked him the questions.
Yeah, that's true.
I think the important thing, though, is that we just get out there
and make sure that the presence is known.
I think in Mackey's case, the audience certainly knew of the controversy.
Yeah, regardless of what he says, you know, the fact remains that
John Markoff is a dick.
All right, all right, that's enough of that.
Okay, 212-209-2900.
Good evening, you're on the air.
About maybe in 1996, it took me two months working for a company
to get two phone lines from then NINEX,
who probably still has most of the same employers
that they had with Bell Atlantic,
but not only were there extreme malfeasance,
I shouldn't say malfeasance, but just malpractice
on the part of people just at the very front layers,
the so-called customer service people,
that was compounded by negligence on administration
because you couldn't even get to a supervisor,
I mean a real high-level supervisor.
The highest that you could hope for would be one level up,
who would be a low-level supervisor,
and people were constantly giving misinformation
and contradictory information.
So it took me two months or sometimes two hours worth of calling
to get two phone lines because the business was in desperation,
and that was in 1996,
and the horror story is that the current company that I'm working for
installs DSL and T1 lines,
and they are now threatened with several lawsuits
because there have been people who've waited two months
and have not gotten their DSL lines
because you have to go to the local exchange carrier to consummate it,
and the story with DSL is widespread
because I actually hold competing companies just as a potential consumer
just to make inquiries,
and the horror stories of people trying to get DSL lines
and the problem that they're having was just plain stupidity,
and then that also is compounded with people who are trying to get T1 lines.
The extreme degree of malfeasance and just malpractice and negligence
is so absurdly shocking that it's almost you have to be taken aback
that there could be people holding jobs who are just so negligent
who probably if they had to make it in the private industry
just would not make it.
In the future you could actually do a show
that would probably concentrate on the real frustrations
of getting DSL and T1 lines
because literally it may sound superficial to people who are listening,
but the show could really be of potential interest
because when you really get down to the extreme degree
of just widespread and omnipresent negligence,
that would really I think be a very entertaining show.
Well, you didn't listen about a month or so ago, did you?
Probably not a month or so ago.
Well, that's when I got my DSL finally,
and let me tell you, people are complaining after two months,
and well, they should, but I waited a year.
I didn't know you waited a year.
A year, and when they finally installed it,
it broke after two days.
Something got disconnected, and I had no connectivity whatsoever,
and it was going through withdrawal.
It was a horrible feeling.
Now just answer me one question.
Actually two questions, and I'll take your answer off the air.
I'm still having trouble figuring out
what is basically frame relay,
and the second question is logistically T1s and DSL
are theoretical or 1.5 Mbps.
Yes.
Now what is the technical difference between the T1?
Is it simply a trunk that just allows many, many potential accessors
while DSL is simply a one-person setup?
And I'll take your answer off the air.
Well, okay.
We could do a whole show on that.
Yeah.
Well, Bernie, you want to try that one?
Because that's kind of complicated.
A T1 is kind of guaranteed, isn't it?
You have a certain guaranteed grade of service with a T1 line
that you don't have with a DSL for one.
There's a whole lot of technical differences between that and a frame relay,
but we could talk about that for half an hour.
Plus when the T1 goes down, they generally fix it within the hour,
whereas DSL, they'll get around to it next Tuesday maybe.
Part of the reason is they're getting paid a lot more for it.
Yeah, Mackey, you have DSL.
DSL is going to be much more reliable than DSL.
But also much more expensive, much more expensive.
Keep in mind that T1 is HDSL.
It happens to be HDSL.
And the H means a hefty increase in price.
In general, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's frustrating,
and I think a lot of people out there feel the same frustration.
So, yeah, this is a good forum to bring it all together.
I am still waiting for just fiber to be brought to the home.
That would be nice.
We can forget this whole copper,
all these copper shenanigans just go out the window
and just start bringing fiber straight into the residence.
There's no problem.
We have that in Palo Alto, California.
So why do you have a DSL line?
Get funding.
He's not in Palo Alto now.
The city of Palo Alto installed a fiber loop,
single-mode fiber around the entire city.
There you go.
And you can pay, rather than paying like the cable company,
it's kind of a similar layout,
but you can pay to have the dual-mode fiber run from the backbone into your house,
and it's about 100 megabits.
And in some areas, in theory, it's going to be cheaper than getting a T1.
Now, is that 100 megabits if nobody else subscribes,
or is it 100 megabits no matter what?
It's 100 megabits switched.
It's a lot of bandwidth.
I think it's because you pay your ISP separately.
So you get the line from the city, and then you pay an ISP,
and the ISP also has to be on the fiber loop.
Is this a pilot program, or is it like a serious?
Yeah, well, see, what happened is the idea with it being inexpensive
is that taxpayers, through their property insurance,
property taxes, rather, already paid for it.
So it's been bouncing around for the last couple of years
with them trying to decide exactly how they're going to implement it,
who has to pay for what, et cetera.
It would be nice if they bounced that around here because we could sure use it.
One group of homeowners who said, hey, we want our neighborhood done.
So they paid a lot of money and got themselves set up.
So they have to decide who's going to pay for the equipment.
I think Steve Jobs lives in that neighborhood, doesn't he?
Not far away, actually.
Yeah, that explains why things get done.
Yeah, we know how it works.
All right, 212-209-2900 is taking another phone call.
Good evening.
You are on the air.
Yo, Manuel.
It's Tommy Pickles.
Hey, how are you doing?
All right.
Setting up to go to Atlanticon this weekend.
I heard everyone's discussion about DSL on the show tonight.
Atlanticon, where is that?
That's going to be in Atlanta.
Ah, Atlanta.
This weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in Atlanta.
Kind of like a geeker convention.
Yeah, that's good.
So I don't know what kind of net connections they're going to have down there yet.
Make sure they all come to H2K.
Yeah.
We're going to spread news about H2K to bring everyone back up to New York.
I've already shipped my water cooler down there so we can fill it with Everclear and bug juice
and get everyone drunk down there.
We're going to be selling our T-shirts down there for Moloch Industries
and hopefully get everyone online with us.
Okay.
So it's going to be a good thing, and hopefully spread the news about Kevin
for all those rednecks who might not have heard about it, him being out.
And everyone who tried to get to B.com probably had a hard time today
because B operating system was released today.
Yes.
For free.
And let me tell you, for 40 megs, it's not even worth the download.
Okay, I'll keep that in mind.
It'll install 500 megs on your own hard drive out of 40 megs.
So I don't know how it blows that up, but it's probably mostly free space.
And then you go ahead and there's nothing that it does.
It does absolutely nothing.
Oh, come on.
Well, at least it doesn't do something bad then.
I guess that's good.
It's better than doing something bad like crashing your system like Windows, of course.
I'll take nothing over that.
And then Red Hat 6.2, no bells, no whistles.
It just patches pretty much.
So, oh, well, it's a pretty even week, and we'll catch up next week,
and we'll tell you what happens down there after we do our cybercast from AtlantaCon.
Okay.
Look forward to hearing about it.
All right.
We'll talk to you soon.
Take care.
Bye.
And FBSD 142 was also released recently.
That's right.
I know about that.
I heard about that.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
How are you doing?
Okay.
The first movie I saw a long time ago, I've been trying to get in to talk to you about it.
It was called Max Knight Ultra Spy.
Max Knight Ultra Spy.
It was a very hilarious and incorrect movie that, after I saw it, made me very sick to my stomach.
Uh-huh.
Well, it sounds like the kind of thing I'd be looking for.
Well, it was about a group of evil hackers that wanted to take over the world
and kill everyone on the planet and put their minds in cyberspace.
And this came out when?
It was a TV movie on UPN a month and a half ago.
How did I miss this one?
I don't know.
It was a true story.
They seem to have weekly crappy TV movies every once in a while lately now.
Wow.
Well, if somebody wants to send us a copy of it, I'd sure like to have a laugh.
I don't know.
It just seemed funny.
What was it called again?
Max Knight Ultra Spy.
It sounds like they had trouble with the title, too.
Okay.
We want to use all these things in the title.
Well, I don't know.
It seemed for children with no more technical experience than using a microwave.
It was they...
The typical UPN viewer, okay.
Yeah, it was, you know, they had to keep the disk plot, you know.
We have to get the disk back.
It seems to be used in everything that has to do with computers.
Get the disk back.
That's floppy, you know.
And they had laser-guided laser guns.
Well, we all do, don't we?
Yeah.
Laser-guided laser guns.
Yeah.
We had a lot of fun running around the city streets with those.
And he wanted to get the password for his laptop computer.
Was there rollerblading in this film?
What?
Rollerblading?
Oh, yes.
The hackers kidnapped a young girl by rollerblading her down.
And they were all very pretty.
Hey, you know, the girl from Hackers won an Emmy the other night.
Yes.
Angelina Jolie.
Yes.
So that was nice.
I'm proud of her.
We hung out at the set when they were making the film.
She's a nice person.
But I can't believe she won an Emmy.
That's amazing.
I haven't seen the film.
She won it for it.
Oh, the one about the crazy?
There were some talented people that came out of that film.
There were.
They didn't necessarily show talent in that film.
In that film, correct.
But there were some very talented people in that film, definitely.
The kid who played Joey, he was a good actor.
He was in other films as well.
So, you know, the guy in Search of a Nick.
Yeah, I'm trying to remember his name.
Yeah.
I forget all their names.
But, you know, some of them are pretty good people.
Hey, thanks for the call.
Let's take another listener phone call.
Let's go over.
I'm doing pretty good at avoiding certain ones.
Let's go over here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
You just jinxed us.
Yeah, hi.
I have a question.
I told you.
How did I do that?
You jinxed it.
Yeah, wow.
Boy.
Well, okay.
Let's try this one over here then.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, I have a question for Bernie.
Then I want to get on my phone.
Okay, go ahead.
Ask your question.
Make it fast.
Did you ever go to a website that asks you if you're using a mouse?
This is related to his question, you know, that when you call in,
the first thing they ask you is if you have a touch-tone phone.
So, okay.
Well, there is a reason they ask you if you're using a mouse
because there are these things out there called text-only browsers,
which are usually used on terminals.
Yeah, but everybody ignores those usually.
Well, I happen to use one.
And I, for one, get very upset when people just make these huge shockwave
JavaScript sites with all these nifty graphics.
Image maps.
Right.
That entire front page is a big image map,
which on my copy of Lynx is a single link which says image map.
I can't do anything with.
We've got to do something special on the 2600 page just for you, Isaac.
Oh, thanks.
Yeah, just for your benefit.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Now I want to give out my e-mail address.
All right, listen.
You're in violation of several federal laws by giving out your –
by calling so many numbers at the same time.
You know what?
We lost Bernie S.
Wait.
Oh, we lost Mackie.
Let me call Mackie back, all right?
Oh, we lost –
Yeah, well, I'm going to have to talk on the air while we do that
because I have to dial his number live.
That's the only way to do this.
And we're out of time anyway, so we don't really –
Might not be worth it.
Well, we're going to get a special little time.
If you tell this person not to call again, and they do call you,
are they not guilty of a harassment by communications?
Hey, it didn't ask for a code.
Hi, this is Claude.
I'm in customer relations.
I'm away from my desk.
Who is this?
I'll call you back in a second.
Thank you.
Who is this person?
Did you dial the right number?
I thought I did.
Apparently I didn't.
I'm sorry, whoever you are.
Let's hang up on you and get Mackie back.
Adventures in telephony.
All right, let me try that again.
I really don't know who I called.
Okay, I'm going to try this one more time.
Okay.
I dialed all the right numbers there.
Now we should get a special little tone to enter our code.
There it is.
This isn't the presidential one, right?
No, I got rid of that one like I'm supposed to.
Yo.
Mackie, you there?
Yeah.
Okay, we just called to say goodbye because we're out of time.
That's sweet.
We accidentally called some person.
I don't know who it was.
Anyway, it was fun having you guys on tonight.
Bernie, are you still there?
I'm still here.
Oh, good.
Okay, we're going to see you at ICON this weekend.
Yes, I'll see you next weekend.
Stony Brook, New York, the annual science fiction convention.
ICONSF.org.
Oh, thank you.
I never remember their webpage.
ICONSF.org.
We have panels Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and we're going to be
talking about the DCSS as well.
And I believe we'll even have a booth with 2600 propaganda and
things for everybody.
So we'll see you guys there.
Mackie, it's always a pleasure.
Likewise.
And keep harassing the people who need to be harassed.
We'll be back again next week with an update on whoever it is
that's suing us by then.
Until then, Emanuel Goldstein for everybody.
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 it could, it would.
Bon dilly bon for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bon dilly bon.
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