274 DEAR HACKER

274 DEAR HACKER

jeopardize my right of privacy without at least being aware of what

I and others view as adverse consequences which may occur because of your actions. Thanks. A Reader

Contest time: Name us one group of people in any moment of history that has achieved justice through hiding.

Dear 2600:

I am convinced that as a result of your mailing 2600 without enve- lopes, many innocent people will be arrested and charged with crimes that they have not committed. Your statement that 2600 is not illegal, etc. is only true on the part of 2600 publishers but you want to imply that no envelopes will not harm your subscribers. This is not true. Let me remind you how the criminal justice system works: “You are innocent until proven guilty.” But even if you are innocent, if some creep suspects that you are not innocent, it could cost you $100,000 to prove in court that you are indeed innocent.

Newark, NJ We respect your opinion. But why did you have to send us those comments on a

postcard so that the whole post office could read it?

Dear 2600:

I was very upset with the misinformation you printed in your September issue. In an answer to a letter, you said that pen registers can be bypassed by using cordless phones. Nothing could be further from the truth! Pen registers record the number you’re dialing no matter what kind of a phone you’re using. And your suggestion of dialing on a cordless phone to avoid the pen register and then hopping back onto a regular phone to avoid being monitored on the radio is ridiculous, to say the least. I just hope nobody gets in trouble believing that this technique is safe.

OUR BIGGEST FANS

There seems to have been some misunderstanding on this topic, judging from the way 2600 has been blasted by some readers in the last couple of weeks. A reader wrote in last month to tell us that his Radio Shack pen register didn’t record numbers he dialed when he used a cordless phone. We found this to be true with this model of pen register and with certain cordless phones. We don’t know if that is true of other “real” pen registers and that is what we said. If someone wants to give us access to a genuine law enforcement-type pen register, we’ll be happy to tell our readers everything it does and doesn’t do. Until then, we have to be hon- est: we’re not entirely sure. We’d appreciate hearing from people who have actual hands-on experience in this field.

Dear 2600: Hi. I am one of your numerous subscribers and interested readers who

has a few gripes with the Spring 1988 issue of 2600. Although I don’t mind the new format and appreciate its larger size,

I think it could stand somewhat better editing. “The Threat of Computer Hackers.” One or two nice anecdotes but

the rest should have gone into Byte or Compute! I mean, you can assume that you have more enlightened readers on that subject that don’t need a “HCK-100 BBS & Systems Intro.”

“ROLM Phone System.” You could have cut this to one or two pages. About 50 percent of the article is fluff, like the complaints that people can’t use the new phone with those weird buttons. Times change faster than humans and some of the complaints are hardly worthy of the reader’s time. So what if the info number changes from 246-3636 to 632-6830?

Given a larger magazine, this wouldn’t be so bad, but 2600 is relatively small and so I’d prefer more and shorter articles (if they exist).

OK. What I liked: “Monitoring TVRO.” Although I am no phreak, I love to read stuff like that just to keep informed.