TRANSCRIPT: PHIL DONAHUE SHOW Aired March 15, 1985
EDITOR'S NOTES: This is an annotated transcript of the
highlights of "The Phil Donahue Show," which dealt with computer
communications and its ramifications. The
New York-based syndicated television show aired this morning in many parts of
the country.
Donahue's guests for the discussion were Richard Louv, author of a book called
"America II: The Book that Captures
Americans in the Act of Creating the Future" and Newsweek journalist
Richard Sandza, who has reported on the exploits of computer
"crackers."
Also on
the show were demonstrations of the CompuServe and Source networks and regulars
of the networking community, including Chris
and Pam Dunn of the CB forum and subscriber Bill Steinberg.
Now, the show begins. The transcript...
PHIL
DONAHUE (to the audience): Do you know
who can access a computer to find out how much is in your checking
account? How many times you've been divorced? Whether or not you watch dirty movies? I'm telling you.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN IN THE AUDIENCE:
Not true. Not true.
DONAHUE: Whether you're bankrupt?
THE
WOMAN: Yes...
DONAHUE: Who you owe money
to. You know what else they can do? They can get your credit card.
THE
WOMAN: Yes, but not if you're careful.
DONAHUE: I don't know if it
matters about being careful...
(turns to the stage to introduce guests)
DONAHUE: This is Richard
Louv. He's written a book entitled
"America II" ... This whole
Orewellean thing is not funny. You know
that people are falling in love with computers.
I mean, with each other. There's
X-rated computers. (Laughter) I'm
telling you and you're laughing.
LOUV: (When) I got interested in
this whole thing, I (visited some bulletin boards and)...it's a good thing my
computer has a fan on it. I was up late
one night and all this X-rated stuff started coming up on my screen, I mean
really hardcore.
DONAHUE: You're talking about
dirty language. Not pictures?
LOUV: No, but it's a form of
mating. (Laughter) There's a lot of
computer sex out there.
DONAHUE
(to the audience): You know what they
do? They have hot tub parties...Everybody's
got a nickname and then if you connect with somebody during this party, you and
that other person can go off by yourself onto this private channel, have a
little more X-rated conversation, and then if you want, go back to the hot tub
party. (Laughter) I'm telling you.
LOUV: And there are hundreds of
these computer bulletin boards that are sexually oriented...
DONAHUE: The problem is: 14-year-olds are doing it....
DONAHUE: (introducing second
guest) Let me tell you what happened to a Newsweek reporter. This is a real live computer victim
here. Richard Sandza was doing a piece
for the magazine...
SANDZA: Yes, I did a piece
talking about these bulletin boards ...
(to say) "Here's what's going on.
There are these bulletin boards and kids are using them to exchange
illegal information (such as) how to get your credit card." ...And they
came after me because they felt I had broken some sort of pledge and told too
much about their underground.
DONAHUE: And you had a
'teletrial,' didn't you?
SANDZA: I was put on teletrial,
which is somewhat like the hot tub parties, only I think I was going to be
boiled in oil in this one.
DONAHUE: A jury and testimony and
everything?
SANDZA: Yes, they set up a
bulletin board and people would call in and place charges against me and say
why I should be punished. I was allowed
to defend myself.
DONAHUE: You were also getting
hostile phone calls at home? They got
your phone number?
SANDZA: They got my telephone
number and began calling me at home at all hours of the day and night. The worst thing they did was they dialed into
(a credit card company) and got the whole list of my credit card accounts. They passed the credit card numbers around
the country and then they started using the credit cards.
DONAHUE: Your wife... you both must have been very, very frightened
by all of this.
SANDZA: Well, this started on the
day my wife went into labor with our first child and I called the phone company
from the maturity ward to make sure my telephone wouldn't be disconnected, as
they had been threatened. They threatened
to blow up my house. I didn't know
whether to take this seriously, but I had seen messages (on bulletin boards) on
how to make letter bombs, nitroglycerin, pick locks, all these other things,
all the things necessary to blow up my house in San Francisco.
DONAHUE: Neo-Nazis have
computers.
SANDZA: They keep track of their
hit lists and pass around information so they can keep track of their enemies.
LOUV: Yes, that's a national
network. Any one of you can call into
the Neo-Nazi's bulletin board, if you have a computer.
SANDZA: Yes, if you want some
hate mail, just dial in.
DONAHUE: The KKK is talking to
each other on bulletin boards. A
14-year-old ... was apparently able to
transmit how to make nitroglycerin.
UNIDENTIFIED SPECTATOR: How do
you protect yourself from this.
SANDZA: I'm not sure you can
protect yourself from this. Credit
bureau computers are kept so all of us can have credit cards and they have
information on just about...every adult in the United States. The security's not (even) good enough to keep
these kids out.
LOUV: I talked to one guy who
gets into these (systems) and he says that the TRW computer system is
incredibly user friendly.... I asked TRW
about this, "How do you get these numbers?" TRW has 30,000 customers
-- banks, savings and loans -- who call in every day to ask for a
credit... They print these numbers out. That's 30,000 leak points for your number.
SANDZA: The kid who got my number, they found
... the password and the number (in a)
garbage can behind a bank in Massachusetts.
UNIDENTIFIED SPECTATOR: I think
what you have to consider is, we're blaming the computer in this. It's not the computer. It's the people using it. (Applause.)
SANDZA: You're absolutely right.
...
(Donahue
introduces Bill Steinberg at a computer terminal. There's a demonstration of The Source's
electronic conferencing system, PARTICIPATION. The messages shown on the screen
from an online conferences about "sexual gadgets" and devices.)
DONAHUE
(to the audience): ... While we're watching this, let's consider some
of the legal questions. Can I insult
your mother on this thing? And if I do,
can you sue me? How do you find me? And who's responsible for that libel? Is it
the computer agency? The bulletin board
itself? And who's responsible... does the law oblige the person running the
bulletin board to be responsible?
... You cannot send Neo-Nazi
mail, hate mail, to Canada, for instance.
It's illegal...but you can transmit...
SANDZA: Well, that's why they set
up the bulletin board. One of them is in
northern Idaho... so that their
followers in Canada could dial in and get this information. It's very effective, as I understand.
...
DONAHUE: (Looking back at the
computer screen. To Steinberg:) What
have you got there. Oh, it's another sex
thing. We'd better get off this thing...
LOUV: This may be the only safe
form of sex left. (Laughter)
(Steinberg then logs on to CompuServe Service's CB)
DONAHUE: You know what would be
fun? Let's get the checking account of somebody
in the audience... I bet you we could.
UNIDENTIFIED SPECTATOR: Use
yours...
(Laughter)
...
(Donahue
looks at the computer screen again, and notes that one of the CB'ers said he
was logged on from Montreal)
DONAHUE: So we have an
international communications. Now, one
of the things that obviously should concern us is that this appears to get
around laws that government international (communications.) That could include
information that might hurt somebody.
Racist information that might place somebody at risk. Remember the CB
craze. Wherever there are people communicating,
there is going to be conflict. It's
another flag.
LOUV: But it's also another
opportunity for social activism.
Greenpeace now has its own computer bulletin board network. So does the anti-nuclear movement and I think
we're entering a period ... of strange
forms of social activism, and this is going to be one of those forms.
SANDZA: It replaces the telephone
in a lot of cases...The difference here is that you're completely anonymous and
you don't need somebody's telephone number...
Maybe there shouldn't be any laws that govern what you say back and forth. There certainly aren't on the telephone. The difference here is that you could keep an
actual record (of what was said) on paper and then you could rebroadcast that
somewhere else.
LOUV:
In a sense, this is a return to Tom Paine who printed off cheap pamphlets
and handed them out in Boston. These
political groups have instant access to information. For instance, how to set up a protest against
(a nuclear plant). They can find out in
San Francisco immediately how it was done on the East Coast...That has enormous
power for the future and I'm not sure many of us have fully realized that.
(Donahue introduces Chris and Pamela Dunn
in the audience)
DONAHUE:
They look happy, don't they?
Well, they are. Very happy. (To the Dunns) You're married, aren't
you? They met via computer
terminals. How did this happen, and were
you alone, or at work, or...?
PAM DUNN:
I was alone at home and I was using a terminal to access CompuServe,
utilizing the CB network. That was a few
years ago now, when it was young and there weren't that many at first, I didn't
even know he was male, because we were both using handles to have that
anonymity.
DONAHUE:
What were your handles?
PAM DUNN:
Zerbra3
CHRIS DUNN:
ChrisDos, which is a computer term.
PAM DUNN:
We got to talk to each other quite frequently and we started having
parties. That was the thing to do in CB
was to have actual parties so people could meet each other. And I came from Chicago to New York and met
and (laughs) made history.
...
CHRIS DUNN:
(The parties became national parties eventually). I flew to San Francisco to meet some people,
just to have a nice time. They didn't
have anything to do with sex or any of this other stuff. We were just enjoying each other's company
and talking to each other. The thing
about computers is, they're just a tool.
People are doing the same thing with them that they've done for
ages...It's not the computer; it's the people running them.
DONAHUE:
Pamela, you're a shy person.
You're not the kind to be found in a singles bar.
PAM DUNN:
Absolutely not, and I've found this is an incredible way to meet, not
just a potential spouse, but friends, people you have things in common with,
people that you don't have things in common with but ways to broaden your horizons
by encountering them.
CHRIS DUNN:
And you don't have to be a technie type.
She's a zookeeper...
DONAHUE:
And I assume you can tell a jerk on the screen maybe even easier than
you can ...
PAM DUNN:
It takes practice. You get
suckered in a few times...(Laughter)
DONAHUE:
Well, there's no guarantees when you meet them (away from the computer
systems.)...
...
DONAHUE: (Addressing a portion of the audience) Now am
I to understand that all you people refer to yourselves as 'users'? You know, 'user' has become a bad word in our
culture, but we won't (laughs) suggest that you're doing anything wrong...
(While walking
through the audience, Donahue talks with a woman who says she used to call a
number of bulletin boards, but after receiving big phone bills, restricted her
BBS-hopping to local New York boards.)
DONAHUE: But there are people who
can use this equipment without paying the phone company?
SANDZA: Sure. That's one of the things they exchange on
these illegal bulletin boards. Most of
these people (in the audience) probably haven't been on illegal bulletin boards
and aren't interested in being on them.
But (the bulletin board will) spread information on ... how to beat the phone company... so you don't have to worry about those big
phone bills...
...
(Donahue returns the the CompuServe CB
demonstration. He notes that many users
of CB and other "real-time" conferences send messages such as
"<waving>" and "<hugs!>," noting this is
"really a warm medium.")
LOUV: You know what? One thing they've found about this, though,
is that you'd think that you'd be kind of cold and technical using this, with
the language? The opposite is true. There's a term, "flaming" (for)
when people use electronic mail (and) exaggerate everything. You see exclamation points across the
screens. Everything's exaggerated. People lose their tempers. Executives will
swear on these things, when you'd never see them swear in the board
room... So everything is hot on this
medium. It's not a cold medium.
DONAHUE: (looking at the CB
demonstration.) Can you see this? We've
already got a wise guy. "Hi
Phil. I always liked Marlo Thomas
better." (from a CB'er with the handle of "MOM")
(Laughter and applause)...
LOUV: You need to put this into
the context, or culture we're in. I've described
it as "America II." It's a culture in which many of us are drawn into
condos with high-security systems. More
and more things are done in the home. We're more and more isolated. But just when you think that (we've) created
an America II where everybody stays inside and (doesn't) touch or anything,
this kind of communications comes along.
That hot medium that I find very fascinating. We're finding new ways to communicate...
SANDZA: The flipside of this is
the misuse of these bulletin boards that pass out information about how to
break the law, how to invade your privacy, how to make bombs...These boards are
completely anonymous. I can say anything
I want about you. You can say anything
you want about me. This information moves
around at the speed of light and if you wanted to spread my credit card around
the country, you could do it in a flash...
LOUV: This lady back here who
said it's not the computer, it's how we use it is exactly right. It's part of the new American culture and we
can't get around it...
<COMMERCIAL BREAK>
(A woman in the audience comments to Donahue
that the computer's seem like "adult toys" to her).
LOUV: Phil, there's something
very ominous that doesn't really have to do with the privacy issue and that's
the split between America I and America II. The America of poor blacks and
chicanos and people who have no access to this stuff. This stuff is rich kids' toys for the most
part....
(Another
woman says her child saved up to buy his own computer.)
LOUV: Increasingly, it's
available to those people...but even when it's available, studies have shown,
often times they haven't been prepared by their education to use it...They use
it by rote memory. They don't use it in
the intutive kinds of ways that middle class are using them.
DONAHUE: It's another vehicle to
widen what we have already been told by a national commision is a gap between
the two Americas.
LOUV: There's a study in Silicon
Valley ... of kid who uses computers.The
kids of the engineers and computer designers....40 percent of (them) had computers. Ten miles away, the kids of the parents
who... put those computers together, 1
percent of those kids have computers...
(A woman
comments she feels "shut out" by not knowing about computers.)
LOUV: These are the people of
America I -- not shut out of the world so much as left before... The people of America II are going to be
talking internationally... There's a
computer bulletin board in Japan (with which) you can make a local call and
talk to anyone in the world. What about
the people of America I who are being left behind?
(A woman
spectator asks: are these people
spending too much time with computers?)
DONAHUE: Good question.
SANDZA: Perhaps they are. But we ask ourselves what's going to happen
in the '80s, as we move from an industrial society to a service society when computers
will do the high tech jobs of the future.
These kids...are the ones who are going to be ready for those jobs.
<COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(Donahue
talks with a man in the audience who says he operates a local computer bulletin
board and is proud of the fact that its a "clear board." The man
notes that his board deals primarily with sharing computer information.)
DONAHUE
(to the audience): You know you can get
electronic grafitti. It's another
opportunity to display your idiocy, so how are you going to police that? Who's going to take it off? And if somebody's libeled...
(Woman
asks if it should be illegal to have x-rated bulletin boards.)
SANDZA: How are you going to enforce that law? The only way you can enforce that law is to
have the people who are the guardians of these young people...(interrupted)
(Woman
says there's room for both America I and America II, that she hopes some people
are still "writing poetry and kids going out sailing.")
LOUV: One of the things I discuss
in the book is that....America II doesn't have to end up where it looks like
it's heading. Look -- how many of your communities
have spent money on parks lately?...This (computing) is the new recreation, the
new outdoors and we've got to start looking at these things if...we really want
to balance society...
UNIDENTIFIED SPECTATOR: Are we
saying that even though there are a lot of people doing things that are
illegal, there's no way to police it so it's all right?
SANDZA: It's virtually impossible
to police it...the law's beginning to emerge.
The federal goverment passed a law last year making it illegal to trespass
in a computer, but it applies only to government computers. The section (dealing with) private computers
was deleted as it went through Congress.
...
DONAHUE: It's a nightmare when
you think about it. Can they access an (aviation
computer)? Can they send your plane to
the wrong city? Can they send your plane
to the wrong runway?
(Sandza
notes that crackers were "into the computer" that kept time on the Olympic
races.)
<COMMERCIAL BREAK>
(Donahue
looks at the computer screen again. It's
now displaying The Source's PARTICIPATE this time with an electronic conference
on "Single Parenting.")
LOUV: The point isn't the
law...the law has to be changed, obviously.
But that isn't the point. The
point is what kind of alternatives do we provide for kids? This is not a negative technology. It's neutral.
Kids have to have an alternative.
We have to start looking at our cities and countryside and our small
towns and figure out how to make them more humane for children.
(Man in
the audience said he'd like to hear more about Chris and Pam Dunn.)
DONAHUE:
I would too... And they're still
married even though the show's almost over.
(Laughter) How long did you use communication through the computers
before you actually met?
PAM DUNN:
About six months before we actually met.
CHRIS DUNN:
We got together a few times back and forth. She was throwing a party and I went to
it. The rest was just plain old
love. It happened that way.
DONAHUE:
Where was the first time you met?
PAM DUNN:
Chicago.
DONAHUE:
He came to see you.
PAM DUNN Yes, still old-fashioned...
DONAHUE:
Did you take him to see the Cubs or the Sox?
PAM DUNN:
I took him to see the zoo.
(Applause and laughter.)
(Woman
says she wants to have nothing to do with computers asks if she'll have no
choice in 20 years.)
SANDZA: The technology is heading
toward making it much easier for people who know nothing about computers to use
them.
(Woman
asks Sandza what about what the punishment was in his "teletrial" -- "did
they flip the switch or what?")
SANDZA: No. I made a deal with a friend who's a hacker
who crashed the system... he essentially
blew up the courthouse. (Laughter.)
<COMMERCIAL BREAK>
(Man in
the audience says that something to consider is that "if information is
currency, then who's minding the bank.")
DONAHUE: And what are the censorship
rules? Who decides?
(Following the usual format for the Donahue
show, the camera fades out with people in the audience still asking
questions. As the show ends, one man is asking
if the computer crackers ever break into computers in the Soviet Union. No
answer is record.)
-End
of transcript.-