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| Volume Four, Issue Thirty-Nine, File 10 of 13 | |
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| To Some Hackers, Right And Wrong Don't Compute May 11, 1992 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By Bruce V. Bigelow (San Diego Union-Tribune) | |
| Special Thanks to Ripper of HALE | |
| The telephone call was anonymous, and the young, male voice was chatty and | |
| nonchalant. He wanted to explain a few things about hacking, the black art of | |
| tapping into private computers. | |
| He was one of several hackers to call, both frightened and intrigued by a San | |
| Diego police investigation into an informal network of computer criminals using | |
| high-tech methods to make fraudulent credit-card purchases. Detectives have | |
| seized a personal computer and other materials, and arrests are pending in San | |
| Diego and other parts of the country. | |
| "Half the time, it's feeding on people's stupidity," the anonymous hacker | |
| said, boasting that most computers can be cracked as easily as popping a beer. | |
| Hackers seem full of such bravado. In their electronic messages and in | |
| interviews, they exaggerate and swagger. | |
| One message traveling the clandestine network notes: "This text file contains | |
| extremely damaging material about the American Express account making | |
| algorithm. I do not commit credit card fraud. I just made up this scheme | |
| because I was bored. | |
| They form groups with names like "Legion of Doom" and "Masters of Deception," | |
| and give themselves nicknames like Phiber Optik, Video Vindicator and Outlaw. | |
| They view themselves as members of a computer underground, rife with cat-and- | |
| mouse intrigue. | |
| For the most part, they are bring teenagers who are coming of age in a | |
| computer-crazy world. Perhaps a generation ago, they tested their anti- | |
| authoritarian moxie by shoplifting or stripping cars. But, as it has with | |
| just about everything else, the computer has made teenage rebellion easier. | |
| Nowadays, a teenager tapping on a keyboard in the comfort of his bedroom can | |
| trespass on faraway corporate computers, explore credit files and surf coast- | |
| to-coast on long-distance telephone lines. | |
| San Diego police say that gathering details from computerized files as credit- | |
| reporting agencies, hackers around the country have racked up millions of | |
| dollars in fraudulent charges -- a trick known as "carding." | |
| Conventual notions of right and wrong seem to go fuzzy in the ethereal realm | |
| that hackers call cyberspace, and authorities say the number of crimes | |
| committed by computer is exploding nationwide. | |
| Like many hackers, the callers says he's paranoid. He won't give his name and | |
| refuses to meed in person. Now a college student in San Diego, he says, he | |
| began hacking when he was 13, collecting data by computer like a pack rat. | |
| "I wanted to know how to make a bomb," he said with a laugh. | |
| Like other hackers, he believes their strange underground community is | |
| misunderstood and maligned. Small wonder. | |
| They speak a specialized jargon of colons, slashes and equal signs. They work | |
| compulsively -- sometimes obsessively -- to decipher and decode, the hacker | |
| equivalent of breaking and entering. They exploit loopholes and flaws so they | |
| can flaunt their techno-prowess. | |
| "The basis of worth is what you know," the hacker says. "You'll hear the term | |
| 'lame' slung around a lot, especially if someone can't do too much." | |
| They exchange credit-card numbers by electronic mail and on digital bulletin | |
| boards set up on personal computers. They trade computer access codes, | |
| passwords, hacking techniques and other information. | |
| But it's not as if everyone is a criminal, the anonymous hacker says. What | |
| most people don't realize, he say, is how much information is out there -- | |
| "and some people want things for free, you know?" | |
| The real question for a hacker, he says, is what you do with the information | |
| once you've got it. For some, restraint is a foreign concept. | |
| RICH IN LORE | |
| Barely 20 years old, the history of hacking already is rich in lore. | |
| For example, John Draper gained notoriety by accessing AT&T long distance | |
| telephone lines for free by blowing a toy whistle from a bod of Cap'n Crunch | |
| cereal into the telephone. | |
| Draper, who adopted "Captain Crunch" as his hacker nickname, improved on the | |
| whistle with an electronic device that duplicated the flute like, rapid-fire | |
| pulses of telephone tones. | |
| Another living legend among hackers is a New York youth known as "Phiber | |
| Optik." | |
| "The guy has got a photographic memory,' said Craig Neidorf of Washington, who | |
| co-founded an underground hacker magazine called Phrack. "He knows everything. | |
| He can get into anything." | |
| Phiber Optik demonstrated his skills during a conference organized by Harper's | |
| Magazine, which invited some of the nation's best hackers to "log on" and | |
| discuss hacking in an electronic forum. Harper's published a transcript of the | |
| 11-day discussion in it's March 1990 issue. | |
| One of the participants, computer expert John Perry Barlow, insulted Phiber | |
| Optik by saying some hackers are distinguished less by their intelligence than | |
| by their alienation. | |
| "Trade their modems for skateboards and only a slight conceptual shift would | |
| occur," Barlow tapped out in his message. | |
| Phiber Optik replied 13 minutes later by transmitting a copy of Barlow's | |
| personal credit history, which Harper's editors noted apparently was obtained | |
| by hacking into TRW's computer records. | |
| For people like Emmanuel Goldstein, true hacking is like a high-tech game of | |
| chess. The game is in the mind, but the moves are played out across a vast | |
| electronic frontier. | |
| "You're not going to stop hackers from trying to find out things," said | |
| Goldstein, who publishes 2600 Magazine, the hacker quarterly, in Middle | |
| Island, New York. | |
| "We're going to be trying to read magnetic strips on cards," Goldstein said. | |
| "We're going to try to figure out how password schemes work. That's not | |
| going to change. What has to change is the security measures that companies | |
| have to take." | |
| ANGELHEADED HIPSTERS | |
| True hackers see themselves, in the words of poet Allen Ginsberg, as | |
| "Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the | |
| starry dynamo in the machinery of night." These very words were used by Lee | |
| Felsenstein, designer of the Osborne-1 computer and co-founder of the Homebrew | |
| Computer Club. | |
| But security consultants and law enforcement officials say malicious hackers | |
| can visit havoc upon anyone with a credit card or driver's license. | |
| "Almost none of it, I would say less than 10 percent, has anything to do with | |
| intellectual exploration," said Gail Thackeray, a Phoenix prosecutor who has | |
| specialized in computer crimes. "It has to do with defrauding people and | |
| getting stuff you want without paying for it." | |
| Such crimes have mushroomed as personal computers have become more affordable | |
| and after the break up of AT&T made it more difficult to trace telephone calls, | |
| Thackeray said. | |
| Even those not motivated by financial gain show a ruthlessness to get what they | |
| want, Thackeray said. | |
| "They'll say the true hacker never damages the system he's messing with," | |
| Thackeray said, "but he's willing to risk it." | |
| Science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling said he began getting anonymous calls | |
| from hackers after an article he wrote about the "CyberView 91" hacker | |
| convention was published in Details Magazine in October. | |
| The caller's were apparently displeased with Sterling's article, which noted, | |
| among other things, that the bustling convention stopped dead for the season's | |
| final episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." | |
| "They were giving me some lip," Sterling said. They showered him with | |
| invective and chortled about details from Sterling's personal credit history, | |
| which they had gleaned by computer. | |
| They also gained access to Sterling's long distance telephone records, and | |
| made abusive calls to many people who has spoken to Sterling. | |
| "Most of the news stories I read simplify the problem to the point of saying | |
| that a hacker is a hacker is a hacker," said Donn Parker, a computer security | |
| consultant with SRI International in Menlo Park. | |
| "In real life, what we're dealing with is a very broad spectrum of | |
| individuals," Parker says. "It goes all the way from 14-year olds playing | |
| pranks on their friends to hardened juvenile delinquents, career criminals and | |
| international terrorists." | |
| Yet true hackers have their own code of honor, Goldstein says. Computer | |
| trespassing is OK, for example, but altering or damaging the system is wrong. | |
| Posing as a technician to flim-flam access codes and passwords out of | |
| unsuspecting computers users is also OK. That's called "social engineering." | |
| "They're simply exploring with what they've got, weather it's exploring a | |
| haunted house or tapping into a mainframe," Goldstein said. | |
| "Once we figure things out, we share the information, and of course there are | |
| going to be those people that abuse that information," Goldstein added. | |
| It is extremely easy to break into credit bureau computers, Goldstein says. | |
| But the privacy being violated belongs to individual Americans -- not credit | |
| bureaus. | |
| If anything, credit bureaus should be held accountable for not providing | |
| better computer security, Goldstein argues. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Companies Fall Victim To Massive PBX Fraud April 20, 1992 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By Barbara E. McMullen & John F. McMullen (Newsbytes) | |
| NEW YORK CITY -- Appearing on the WBAI radio show "Off The Hook," New York | |
| State Police senior investigator Donald Delaney discussed the movement of | |
| organized crime groups into telecommunications fraud and warned the public | |
| of the dangers of such practices as "shoulder surfing." | |
| Delaney said that corporations are being victimized to the tune of millions of | |
| dollars by unauthorized persons "outdialing" through their private branch | |
| exchanges (PBXs). He traced the case of Data Products, a computer peripheral | |
| firm, that did not even seem aware that calls could be routed from the outside | |
| through their switchboard to foreign countries. It was only, according to | |
| Delaney, when it received a monthly telephone bill of over $35,000 that it | |
| perceived a problem. | |
| "It was at 5:10 PM on a certain date that Liriano finally, after weeks of | |
| trying, was able to obtain an outside dial tone on Data Products 800 number. | |
| Subsequent investigation showed that thousands of calls using a 9600 baud modem | |
| as well as manually placed calls had been made to the 800 number. At 7:30 the | |
| same evening, a call using the Data Products number was placed to the Dominican | |
| Republic from a telephone booth near Liriano's house. Within a few hours, | |
| calls were placed from phones all around the neighborhood -- and, within a | |
| week, calls began being placed from booths all around Manhattan," Delaney | |
| related. | |
| Phiber Optik, another studio guest and a convicted computer intruder previously | |
| arrested by Delaney, commented, "I'm glad that Mr. Delaney didn't refer to | |
| these people as hackers, but identified them for what they are: Sleezy common | |
| criminals. What these people are doing requires no super computer knowledge | |
| nor desire to learn. They are simply using computers and telephones to steal." | |
| Delaney agreed, saying, "The people actually selling the calls, on the street | |
| corner, in their apartments, or, in the case of cellular phones, in parked | |
| cars, don't have to know anything about the technology. They are given the | |
| necessary PBX numbers and codes by people higher up in the group and they just | |
| dial the numbers and collect the money. In the case of the re-chipped or clone | |
| cellular phones, they don't even have to dial the numbers." | |
| Delaney added, "These operations have become very organized very rapidly. I | |
| have arrested people that have printed revenue goals for the current month, | |
| next six months, and entire year -- just like any other franchise operation. | |
| I'm also currently investigating a murder of a call-seller that I arrested last | |
| October. He was an independent trying to operate in a highly organized and | |
| controlled section of Queens. His pursuit of an independent career may well | |
| have been responsible for his death." | |
| Off The Hook host Emmanuel Goldstein asked Delaney what responsibility that the | |
| PBX companies bear for what seems to be rather easy use of their systems for | |
| such activity. Delaney responded that he thought that the companies bear at | |
| least an ethical and moral responsibility to their clients to insure that they | |
| are aware of their exposure and the means that they must take to reduce the | |
| exposure. "As far as criminal and civil responsibility for the security of the | |
| system, there are no criminal statues that I am aware of that would hold the | |
| PBX companies criminally liable for failure to insure proper security. On the | |
| civil side, I think that the decision in the AT&T suit about this very topic | |
| will shed some light of legal responsibility." | |
| Goldstein also brought up the difficulties that some independent "customer- | |
| owned coin-operated" telephones (COCOTs) cause for customers. "The charges are | |
| often exorbitant, access to AT&T via 10288 is sometimes blocked, there is not | |
| even the proper access to 911 on some systems, and some either block 800 calls | |
| or actually try to charge for the connection to the 800 numbers. | |
| "We've even found COCOTs that, on collect calls, put the charges through when | |
| an answering machine picks up and the caller hangs up after realizing that no | |
| one is home. They are set up to start billing if a human voice is heard and the | |
| caller doesn't hang up within 5 or 10 seconds." | |
| Delaney agreed that the COCOTS that behave in this fashion are an ongoing | |
| problem for unsuspecting users, but said that he has received no complaints | |
| about illegal behavior. He said, however, that he had received complaints | |
| about fraudulent operation of 540 numbers -- the local New York equivalent of a | |
| 900 number. He said "most people don't realize that a 540 number is a | |
| chargeable number and these people fall victim to these scams. We had one case | |
| in which a person had his computer calling 8,000 phone numbers in the beeper | |
| blocks each night. The computer would send a 540 number to the beepers. | |
| People calling the number would receive some innocuous information and, at the | |
| end of the month a $55 charge on her/his telephone bill." | |
| Delaney continued, "The public has much to be worried about related to | |
| telephone fraud, particularly in New York City which can be called "Fraud | |
| Central, USA." If you go into the Port Authority Bus Terminal and look up in | |
| the balcony, you will see rows of people "shoulder surfing" with binoculars. | |
| They have binoculars or telescopes trained on the public telephones. When they | |
| see a person making a credit card call, they repeat the numbers into a tape | |
| recorder. The number is then sold and, within a few days, it is in use all | |
| around the city. People should always be aware of the possibility of shoulder | |
| surfers in the area." | |
| Goldstein returned to the 540 subject, pointing out that "because so many | |
| people don't realize that it is a billable number, they get caught by ads and | |
| wind up paying for scam calls. We published a picture in 2600 Magazine of a | |
| poster seen around New York, advertising apartment rental help by calling a | |
| 540 number. In very tiny print, almost unreadable, it mentions a charge. | |
| People have to be very careful about things like this." | |
| Delaney agreed, saying, "The 540 service must say within the first 10 seconds | |
| that there is a charge, how much it is, and that the person can hang up now | |
| without being charged -- the guy with the beeper scam didn't do that and that | |
| was one of the reasons for his arrest. Many of the services give the charge so | |
| fast and mix it in with instructions to stay on for a free camera or another | |
| number to find out about the vacation that they have won that they miss the | |
| charges and wind up paying. The 540 person has, although he may be trying to | |
| defraud, complied with the letter of the law and it might be difficult to | |
| prosecute him. The average citizen must therefore be more aware of these scams | |
| and protect themselves." | |
| Goldstein, Phiber Optik, and Delaney spent the remainder of the show answering | |
| listener questions. Off The Hook is heard every Wednesday evening on New York | |
| City's WBAI (99.5 FM). Recent guests have included Mike Godwin, in-house | |
| counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Steve Jackson, CEO of Steve | |
| Jackson Games. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Changing Aspects Of Computer Crime Discussed At NYACC May 15, 1992 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By Barbara E. McMullen (Newbytes) | |
| New York City -- Donald Delaney, New York State Police senior investigator, and | |
| Mike Godwin, in-house counsel, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), speaking | |
| to the May meeting of the New York Amateur Computer Club (NYACC), agreed that | |
| the entrance of organized crime into telecommunications fraud has made the | |
| subject of computer crime far different than that discussed just a year ago at | |
| a similar meeting. | |
| Newsbytes New York bureau chief John McMullen, moderating the discussion, | |
| recalled that Delaney in last year's appearance had called for greater | |
| education of law enforcement officers in technological areas, the establishment | |
| of a New York State computer crime lab, outreach by law enforcement agencies to | |
| the public to heighten awareness of computer crime and the penalties attached | |
| -- items that have all come to pass in the ensuing 12 months. He also | |
| mentioned that issues involving PBX & cellular phone fraud, privacy concerns | |
| and ongoing debate over law enforcement wiretapping & decryption capabilities | |
| have replaced the issues that received most of the attention at last year's | |
| meeting. | |
| Delaney agreed with McMullen, saying that there has been major strides made in | |
| the education of law enforcement personnel and in the acquisition of important | |
| tools to fight computer crime. He said that the practice of "carding" -- the | |
| purchasing of goods, particularly computer equipment, has become a much more | |
| major problem than it was a year ago and that many more complaints of such | |
| activities are now received. | |
| He added that "call-selling" operations, the making of international telephone | |
| calls to foreign countries for a fee, through the fraudulent use of either a | |
| company's private branch exchange (PBX) or an innocent party's cellular phone | |
| account, has become so lucrative that arrested suspects have told him that | |
| "they are moving from drug sales to this type of crime because it is less | |
| dangerous and more rewarding." | |
| Delaney pointed out, however, that one of his 1991 arrests had recently been | |
| murdered, perhaps for trying to operate as an independent in an area that now | |
| seems to be under the control of a Columbian mob "so maybe it's not going to | |
| continue to be less dangerous." | |
| Delaney also said that PBX fraud will continue to be a problem until the | |
| companies using PBX systems fully understand the system capabilities and take | |
| all possible steps to insure security. "Many firms don't even know that their | |
| systems have out-dialing capabilities until they get it with additional monthly | |
| phone charges of upwards of $35,000. They don't realize that the system has | |
| default passwords that are supposed to be changed," he said, "It finally hits | |
| some small businesses when they are bankrupted by the fraudulent long-distance | |
| charges." | |
| Godwin, in his remarks, expressed concern that there is not sufficient | |
| recognition of the uniqueness of BBS and conferencing systems and that, | |
| therefore, legislators possibly will make decisions based on misunderstandings. | |
| He said "Telephone conversations, with the exception of crude conference call | |
| systems are 'one-to-one' communications. Newspapers and radio & telephone are | |
| "one-to-many" systems but BBS" are "many-to-many" and this is different. EFF | |
| is interested in seeing that First Amendment protection is understood as | |
| applying to BBSs." | |
| He continued "We also have a concern that law enforcement agencies will respond | |
| to the challenges of new technology in inappropriate ways. The FBI and Justice | |
| Department, through the 'Digital Telephony Initiative' have requested that the | |
| phone companies such at AT&T and Sprint be required to provide law enforcement | |
| with the a method of wire-tapping in spite of technological developments that | |
| make present methods less effective. | |
| "Such a procedure would, in effect, make the companies part of the surveillance | |
| system and we don't think that that is their job. We think that it is up to | |
| law enforcement to develop their own crime-fighting tools. When the telephone | |
| was first developed it made it more difficult to catch crooks. They no longer | |
| had to stand around together to plan foul deeds; they could do it by telephone. | |
| Then the government discovered wiretapping and was able to respond. | |
| "This ingenuity was shown again recently when law enforcement officials, | |
| realizing that John Gotti knew that his phones were tapped and discussed | |
| wrongdoings outdoors in front of his house, arranged to have the lampposts | |
| under which Gotti stood tapped. That, in my judgement, is a reasonable | |
| approach by law enforcement." | |
| Godwin also spoke briefly concerning the on-going debate over encryption. "The | |
| government, through varies agencies such as NSA, keeps attempting to restrict | |
| citizens from cloaking their computer files or messages in seemingly | |
| unbreakable coding. We think that people have rights to privacy and, should | |
| they wish to protect it by encoding computer messages, have a perfect right to | |
| do so." | |
| Bruce Fancher, sysop and owner of the new New York commercial BBS service, | |
| MindVox, and the last speaker in the program, recounted some of his experiences | |
| as a "hacker" and asked the audience to understand that these individuals, even | |
| if found attached to a computer system to which they should not legitimately | |
| access, are not malicious terrorists but rather explorers. Fancher was a last | |
| minute replaced for well-known NY hacker Phiber Optik who did not speak, on the | |
| advice of his attorney, because he is presently the subject of a Justice | |
| Department investigation. | |
| During the question and answer period, Delaney suggested that a method of | |
| resolving the encryption debate would be for third parties, such as banks and | |
| insurance companies, to maintain the personal encryption key for those using | |
| encryption. A law enforcement official would then have to obtain a judge's | |
| ruling to examine or "tap" the key for future use to decipher the contents of | |
| the file or message. | |
| Godwin disagreed, saying that the third party would then become a symbol for | |
| "crackers" and that he did not think it in the country's best interests to just | |
| add another level of complexity to the problem. | |
| The question and answer period lasted for about 45 minutes with the majority of | |
| questions concerning encryption and the FBI wiretap proposal. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Couple Of Bumbling Kids April 24, 1992 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By Alfred Lubrano (Newsday) | |
| Two young Queens computer hackers, arrested for the electronic equivalent of | |
| pickpocketing credit cards and going on a computer shopping spree, will be | |
| facing relatively minor charges. | |
| Rudolph Loil, age 17, of Woodside, charged with attempted grand larceny, was | |
| released from police custody on a desk appearance ticket, a spokesman for the | |
| Queens district attorney's office said. | |
| A 15-year-old friend from Elmhurst who was also arrested was referred to Queens | |
| Family Court, whose proceedings are closed, the spokesman said. He was not | |
| identified because of his age. | |
| Law-enforcement sources said they are investigating whether the two were | |
| "gofers" for adults who may have engaged them in computer crime, or whether | |
| they acted on their own. | |
| But Secret Service officials, called into the matter, characterized the case as | |
| "just a couple of bumbling kids" playing with their computer. | |
| The youths were caught after allegedly ordering $1,043 in computer equipment | |
| with a credit card number they had filched electronically from bank records, | |
| officials said. | |
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | |
| Hackers April 27, 1992 | |
| ~~~~~~~ | |
| Taken from InformationWeek (Page 8) | |
| Two teenagers were arrested last week in New York for using computers to steal | |
| credit card and telephone account numbers and then charging thousands of | |
| dollars worth of goods and phone calls to the burgled accounts. | |
| The two were caught only after some equipment they had ordered was sent to the | |
| home of the credit card holder whose account number had been pilfered. Their | |
| arrests closely follow the discovery by the FBI of a nationwide ring of 1,000 | |
| computer criminals, who charge purchases and telephone calls to credit card and | |
| phone account numbers stolen from the Equifax credit bureau and other sources. | |
| The discovery has already led to the arrest of two Ohio hackers and the seizure | |
| of computer equipment in three cities. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| DOD Gets Fax Evesdroppers April 14, 1992 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By Joseph Albright (Atlanta Journal and Constitution)(Page A12) | |
| Washington -- The Air Force is buying a new weapon to battle leaks: A $30,000 | |
| portable fax-tapper. | |
| Whenever someone transmits a fax, the fax-tapping device attached to the phone | |
| line will sneak an electronic copy and store it in a laptop computer's memory. | |
| Each of the new devices will enable an Air Force intelligence officer to | |
| monitor four telephones for "communications security" violations. | |
| Susan Hansen, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said last week that "there is | |
| no plan right at the moment" to install the devices in the Pentagon, whose | |
| top leaders have been outraged in recent weeks by leaks of classified policy | |
| documents to reporters. | |
| But she left open the possibility that some of them will be attached to | |
| sensitive military fax lines when the tapping devices are delivered to the Air | |
| Force six months to a year from now. | |
| "There are a lot of things that are under review here," she said after | |
| consulting with the Pentagon's telecommunications office. | |
| Plans to buy 40 of the devices were disclosed a few weeks ago in a contract | |
| notice from a procurement officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near | |
| Dayton, Ohio. When contacted, a spokesman referred inquiries to the Air | |
| Force Intelligence Command at Kelly Air Force Base, Texas, which authorized the | |
| purchase. | |
| The Air Force Intelligence Command insisted that the devices will never be used | |
| for law enforcement purposes or even "investigations." | |
| "The equipment is to be used for monitoring purposes only, to evaluate the | |
| security of Air Force official telecommunications," said spokesman Dominick | |
| Cardonita. "The Air Force intelligence command does not investigate." | |
| Mr. Cardonita said that, for decades, Air Force personnel in sensitive | |
| installations have been on notice that their voice traffic on official lines is | |
| subject to "communications security" monitoring. The fax-tapper simply | |
| "enhances" the Air Force's ability to prevent "operational security" | |
| violations, he said. | |
| He estimated that the Air Force will pay $1.2 million under the contract, due | |
| to be let this June. That averages out to $ 30,000 for each fax-tapper, but | |
| Mr. Cardonita said the price includes maintenance and training. | |
| Douglas Lang, president of Washington's High Technology Store and an authority | |
| on security devices, said that, so far as he knows, the Air Force is the first | |
| government agency to issue an order for fax-tapping machines. | |
| Mr. Lang said he has heard from industry sources that 15 contractors have | |
| offered to sell such devices to Wright-Patterson. | |
| "It is one more invasion of privacy by Big Brother," declared Mr. Lang, who | |
| predicted that the Air Force will use the devices mainly to catch anyone trying | |
| to leak commercially valuable information to contractors. | |
| Judging from the specifications, the Air Force wants a machine that can trace | |
| leaks wherever they might occur. | |
| Mr. Cardonita said the Air Force Intelligence Command will use the devices | |
| only when invited onto an Air Force base by a top commander. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| 900-Number Fraud Case Expected to Set a Trend April 2, 1992 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By David Thompson (Omaha <Nebraska> World-Herald) | |
| Civil court cases against abuses of 900-toll telephone number "will be slam | |
| dunks" as the result of the successful prosecution of a criminal case in Omaha | |
| over 900 numbers, a federal postal inspector said. | |
| Postal inspector Michael Jones said numerous civil actions involving 900 | |
| numbers have been filed, including three recently in Iowa. At least one civil | |
| case is pending in Nebraska, he said, and there may be others. | |
| Jones said the mail fraud conviction of Bedford Direct Mail Service Inc. of | |
| Omaha and its president, Ellis B. Goodman, 52, of 1111 South 113th. Court, may | |
| have been the first criminal conviction involving 900 numbers. | |
| The conviction also figures in Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg's | |
| consumer protection program, which calls attention to abuses of 900 numbers, a | |
| staff member said. | |
| Among consumer complaints set to Stenberg's office, those about 900 numbers | |
| rank in the top five categories, said Daniel L. Parsons, senior consumer | |
| protection specialist. | |
| People are often lured by an offer of a gift or prize to dial a toll-free 800 | |
| number, then steered to a series of 900 numbers and charged for each one, | |
| Parsons said. | |
| He said that during the last two years, state attorneys general have taken | |
| action against 150 organizations for allegedly abusing 900 numbers. | |
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