78: How Bad Is Bad?
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Okay, three boys, aged 13, 15, and 16. All three chose to appear with fake names on this radio program. And the fake names they chose? Ready? K-RAD, Mr. Where As, and Fred. Those first two names come out of the world of computer hacking and software piracy. That's Mr. Where As, that's Where As As In, Where As As In, Software As In, illegal software, pirated software, and as for Fred? Why Fred? For no reason then. There's got to be someone else named Fred out there. And anonymity was important, given the kinds of things we were discussing. Namely, credit card fraud, computer hacking, and the nature of hell. Welcome to WBZ in Chicago and Public Radio International. Each week in our program we choose some theme, bringing you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today on our program, How Bad is Bad Enough to Count. Act one, How Bad is Stealing $800. Act two, the little radio experiment we're going to put on the lab coats and the protective goggles and hope you do the same. Act three, How Bad is this relationship. Act four, How Bad is this movie we teach you a simple home test that anybody can do to determine if a movie is actually good or actually bad. Act five, creating your own moral code. This story of a teenager with the power to shut down your phone line or anyone else's and how he decided to wield his power. Stay with us. Act one, so K-rad, Mr. Werez and Fred were trying to be criminals, but they were not too successful at it. They were in New York for a hackers convention. Between sessions, I followed them to lunch at a McDonald's on Times Square. At first, Fred was going to pay for Mr. Werez and K-rad. What do you guys want? I want our number one meal. But Fred wasn't used to the downtown prices. Oh my God, that's five bucks, man. You guys are chipping in, I can't pay for this. I think it's safe to say that one sign that your criminal career is not going as well as you might want it to is if you have to worry about the prices at McDonald's. But K-rad, Mr. Werez and Fred were involved in very low level types of crimes. All the crimes involved computers, they pirated software, they scammed free CD-ROM games. They cheated one of the big online computer services out of a few hundred dollars in online time. Oh no, they didn't steal very much and they didn't steal very effectively, but stealing was the idea. Here's a typical one of their scams. They called people at random and tried to get a calling card number or a credit card number out of them. Basically, the way it works is that you call up somebody, you say this is the AT&T operator, and the whole point is you have to sound like you're not calling somebody up with the intention of getting them. You have to sound like you've been sitting in this chair for ten hours and you want to go home. So you've got to go. This is the AT&T operator, I have a call for call, we accept charges sir. Yeah, I'll accept charges. Hold on one second.
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