The Bernie S. Saga

It's almost a given that the first few pages of 2600 will be devoted to the latest travesty of justice, the most recent in the long string of harassment against computer hackers.  Regretfully, this issue will not be an exception.  In fact, this time what we re talking about could have such profound effects on the rest of us that nothing will ever seem the same.  It may sound a bit over-dramatized but we feel the facts have no trouble supporting our cynical conclusions.

Bernie S. (Ed Cummings) was involved in 2600 for most of our existence.  If anyone could answer a question on scanners, surveillance, or the technical workings of a certain piece of machinery, he could.  His presence at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference last year provided many informative lectures to a fascinated audience.  Like most good hackers, Bernie S. believed in sharing the information he was able to obtain or figure out.

At the time of this writing, Bernie S. sits in federal prison, held without bail and without any prospect of a trial in the near future.  The more we find out about this case, the more we believe that nobody really knows why he's been imprisoned.

It started outside a 7-11 in Pennsylvania when Haverford Township police came upon what they believed was a drug deal in progress.  They were wrong.  What they were witnessing was a transaction involving crystals, which could be used to modify RadioShack tone dialers into Red Boxes.  The key word here is "could" since crystals themselves can be found in a multitude of sources and their possession or sale is far from illegal.  Bernie S. believed in making technology accessible to the public and providing something as basic as a crystal was one way of achieving this.  However, the police did not understand this and thought they were onto some really big nefarious scheme to do something really bad.  So they searched the vehicles of Bernie S. and the people he had met there.  They confiscated all of the crystals as well as "suspicious" reading material such as The Whole Spy Catalog, a must for any serious hacker (available from Intelligence Incorporated, 2228 S. El Camino Real, San Mateo, CA 94403).  They said everything would be returned if nothing illegal was found to be going on.

Then the U.S. Secret Service was contacted.  Special Agent Thomas Varney informed the local police that there was no other use for a Red Box (and hence, the crystals in question) but to commit fraud.  The Secret Service even went so far as to go to a payphone with the Haverford police to demonstrate how an illegal Red Box call is made.  Based upon this, Bernie S. was forcefully arrested at gunpoint by numerous law enforcement personnel and thrown into state prison.  All of his books, manuals, copies of 2600, and anything electronic were seized.  The charges were possession of a Red Box (a non-working RadioShack dialer that someone had asked him to look at) and unauthorized access to a phone company computer.  Apparently the thought behind the latter charge was that if Bernie S. had used a Red Box, he would have had to have signaled a computer with the Red Box tones simply by playing them.  And so, unauthorized access.

The judge refused to indict him on this charge because it was so far-fetched and because there was no indication that Bernie S. had ever even used a Red Box, let alone a phone company computer.  Ironically, the Secret Service and the Haverford police had already done both, in their eagerness to capture Bernie S.  No doubt with all of this in mind, the judge set bail for the remaining charge of possession of a Red Box: $100,000.

The fact that such a bogus charge and exorbitant bail were allowed to stand shocked many.  And shock turned to disbelief when a student questioning this on the Internet found himself threatened with a libel lawsuit by the Haverford police.  This was truly turning into a spectacle of the bizarre.  Bernie S., meanwhile, endured week after week of squalor and inhuman treatment in a state prison.

Then, one day, the Haverford police announced they were dropping all charges in the case after Bernie S. spent more than a month in prison with rapists and murderers.  It almost appeared as if they had realized how flimsy their case actually was and how unfair it was to penalize someone so severely who hadn't even been accused of doing something fraudulent.  But this was not to be.  The local police had made an arrangement with the federal government that substituted the old Red Box charge with new federal charges accusing Bernie S. of possession of hardware and software that could be used to modify cellular phones.  Was this really the best they could do?  Bernie S. had openly advertised this software, which had been used legitimately by many to create extensions of their cellular phones. Many hackers learned about this technology at the HOPE conference.  But because this software could also be used by criminals, the government decided to charge Bernie S. as if he were one of those criminals.  And for this, the government has declined to set any bail.

To give you an idea of the intellect we're dealing with, here's a quote from Special Agent Thomas Varney's affidavit:

"During my review of the items seized pursuant to the state search warrant, I determined that Cummings had in his residence the following items that could be used for the cloning of cellular telephones:

a.)  Three cellular telephone cloning computer disks.
b.)  A laptop computer that had a cloning software program on the hard drive which I confirmed by observation.
c.)  A computer cable that would allow for cloning of Motorola brand cellular telephones.
d.)  Several cellular telephones some of which had broken plastic surrounding the electrical connectors to the battery pack.  The breakage of the plastic is a required step before cellular telephones can be connected to a computer for cloning.
e.)  A book titled, Cellular Hacker's Bible.
f.)  Photographs depicting Cummings selling cellular telephone cloning software at an unknown event."

We congratulate Varney on being the first person to grasp the concept of photographs being used to clone cellular phones.  However, until the scientific evidence is in, perhaps we'd just better strike item (f).

Items (a) and (b) are the same (a) is a disk with a computer program and (b) is a computer with the same computer program.  With a little more effort, the next item could have been a house with a computer program in it, but the Secret Service probably felt that a laptop computer would be of more use around the office.  (A large number, if not most, of computer hacker cases never see owners reunited with their computer equipment.)  So if we follow the logic here, it's possible that Bernie S. got himself thrown into prison without bail because he figured out how to make an extension of a cellular phone and wrote a computer program to do this.  Way back before the Bell breakup, people were afraid of getting into trouble for plugging in extra phones without letting the phone company know.  We realize now how absurd such thinking was.  Yet we're reliving history, only this time the penalties are much more severe.

Item (c) is a cable.  Let's just leave it at that.

Item (d) consists of cellular telephones, none of which were illegitimately obtained or used for fraudulent purposes.  If any of our readers are interested in how a cellular phone works, we encourage them to take it apart and experiment with it.  Any evidence that Bernie S. was doing any more than this has yet to surface.

Finally, the Cellular Hacker's Bible is a book anyone interested in electronics and the phone system would want to read.  The federal government has managed to outlaw radio frequencies but they have yet to outlaw books.  With agencies like the Secret Service doing their dirty work, it's only a matter of time.

So what do we have here?  Apart from an inept, backwoods police department specializing in intimidation tactics and a federal agency bent on keeping a vice grip on technology, not a whole hell of a lot.  Nothing listed above constitutes a crime, at least not in a democratic society.  In a suspicious and fearful regime, however... books, ideas, technical ability - these could all be considered threats.  And by permitting this to go unanswered, either through encouragement or through silence, we move steadily down that dark road.

This whole series of events and their consequences is a disgrace to our judicial system and it's essential that we fight back.  Every organization that claims to have an interest in justice should know about this.  Hopefully, the majority will take a strong stand against what has happened here.  The alternative is practically unthinkable; imagine a world where reading, experimentation, and software are the only ingredients needed to put a person in prison indefinitely.  There would be very few people looking at these words who would be safe.

There are two ways you can write to Bernie S. in prison.  One is by sending him mail directly at: Ed Cummings 48919-066, FCI Fairton, A-Left, P.O. Box 280, Fairton, NJ 08320.  You can also send email to bernies@2600.com and we will forward it to him.  (This method is preferable in case he gets moved to another prison after press time.)  Remember that all of your mail will be read by prison authorities.  We encourage you to write whenever you can since no visitors are allowed and this is his only contact with the outside world.

---

This public letter on the Internet:

From astro.ocis.temple.edu!neitzert Tue Mar 28 23:05:19 1995 Return-Path: <neitzert@astro.ocis.temple.edu> Received: by astro.ocis.temple.edu (5.61/25) id AA01437; Tue, 28 Mar 95 23:04:42 -0500 Date: Tue, 28 Mar 95 23:04:42 -0500 From: neitzert@astro.ocis.temple.edu (Christopher K. Neitzert) Message-Id: <9503290404.AA01437@astro.ocis.temple.edu> Apparently-To: chris@ts6-2.upenn.edu Status: 0 Several friends of Ed 'Bernie S.' Cummings have prepared this press release due to the fact that a man is being held on $100,000.00 Bail for possessing the right electronic components to trick a pay phone into giving free telephone calls. His promotion of these devices is not against any law in the land, however the Governments of Delaware County, Pennsylvania and United States are acting as though their own laws do not matter to them. -- Delaware County Pennsylvania, USA Ed Cummings, also known to many in cyberspace as Bernie SS was arrested on March 13th, 1995 for 2 misdemeanors of possession, manufacture and sale of a device to commit Telecommunications fraud charges. He is being held in Delaware County Prison in lieu of $100,000.00 Bail. His story follows. On the evening of the 13th Bernie S. received a page from his mail drop. Some people he knew from Florida had stopped in at his mail drop thinking it was his address. They were looking to purchase several 6.5 MHz Crystals. These crystals when used to replace the standard crystal in the RADIO SHACK Hand Telephone dialer, and with some programming, produce tones that trick pay phones into believing they have received coins. These are commonly referred to as Red Boxes and got their name from an actual red box pulled from a pay phone in the late seventies by some curious person. Ed Cummings met these people at a local 7-11 where he was to sell the widely used electronic timing crystals for roughly $4 a piece. The purchaser only had two twenty dollar bills and Ed Cummings no change. Ed Cummings went into the 7-11 to get some change to make the transaction. A police officer noticed a van parked in the parking lot of the 7-11 with several African Americans inside. As Ed was leaving the 7-11 he noticed fifteen police cars pulling into the parking lot of the 7-11. Next thing he knew the police were asking him if they could Trifle through his car. He said no. Moments later as he was talking to a Detective and noticed another police officer going through his car. He asked the officer to stop. They did not, in all the police confiscated a few hundred 6.5M Hz crystals (which he resells for roughly $4 a piece) and a large box of 100 dialers. The police told him they would get back to him, and he could have his electronics back if the contents of the bag were legal. In the contents of the seized items was one modified dialer, that a customer returned after modification explain- ing that it did not work, a broken red box. The next day Ed 'Bernie S' Cummings was over at a friend's house working on their computer when eight to ten plain clothed armed men burst into the house and ordered him and his friends to freeze. They cuffed him and took him to a hold- ing cell(what jail?). There he was left without a blanket or jacket to sleep with in the cold cell. That evening the Secret Service had been called in when someone figured out what the dialers and crystals would do when put together. The United States Secret Service found his home and entered it, while they were questioning him. The next morning at his arraignment he was finally told of the charges he was being held upon. They were Two misde- meanor Charges of manufacture, Distribution and Sale of devices of Telecommunications Fraud. and Two Unlawful use of a computer charges. His bail was automatically set to $100,000.00 because Ed Cummings refused talk with the police without his attorney present. The Secret Service presented to the judge a 9 page inventory of what they had found in his home. On that inventory there 14 computers. 2 printers. Boxes of bios chips for the systems he worked with. EPROM burners which the Federal Agents had labeled Cellular telephone chip reprogramming adapters. EPROMs are used in everything from Automobile computers to personal computers. They also confiscated his toolbox of screw drivers, wire clippers and other computer oriented tools he used for his consulting job. The Judge dropped the Two unlawful use of a computer charges due to the fact that the evidence was circumstantial and the county had no actual evidence that Ed had ever used the computers in question. As of 3/27/1995 Ed Cummings is still in Delaware County Prison awaiting his trial. His trial has not yet been scheduled and Ed will most likely not raise the One Hundred Thousand Dollars needed to be released on bail. If anyone has any questions or comments direct them to this newsgroup and my email box. Thanks. Christopher K Neitzert -- christopher k neitzert neitzert@astro.ocis.temple.edu Film and Video Student InterNetworked Multimedia Design, Implementation and Administration office: 215.467.3001 Fax:215.467.3412 Service: 215.505.6637 *Coming Soon to this space: Chapel Perilous Project Velcro!* Support Your Local Free Net! Linux: Choice of a GNU generation! http://astro.ocis.temple.edu/~neitzert "When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl." -jpb Finger for PGP2.6 or RIPEM Keys. Opinions here are not those of temple university nor my clients.

Got this threat from the cops: