Public Affairs; Phone Phreaks

Two months ago ramparts came out with a article that had been suppressed so you may not have heard too much about it. It told how to report the telephone company by installing a device in your home telephone that enables you to receive hall at no charge to the caller. OK now we have perfected a device to the point where anyone anyone in the country can do this young or old even child can do it. Basically the way this works is you open up a telephone. The two screws on the bottom and very simple to do the only tool you need for this conversion process are a screwdriver you only need two parts this one is a story which is taking place right now in cities and towns throughout the country. This war find small bands of guerrillas attacking an enormous conventional army while the large conventional army has been quick to publicize its victories. There is still great uncertainty about who is winning. Carrying that Alabama hanging. National Public Radio presents a report on phone free and Their

Assault on the world's largest and most powerful corporation the American telephone system. Here is Jim Russell. It began less than a decade ago in the mid 1960s when telephone companies around the world took part in a multibillion dollar conversion of their equipment. The new system was based on 12 different tomes and operators almost anywhere in the world could control telephone equipment virtually anywhere by using combinations of these same 12 tones the tones themselves were relatively unsophisticated. They are produced by combining two different frequencies and to the ear they sound just like variations on the touch tones we hear on our home telephone. New dialing control system was a tremendous advance for the telephone company but it brought with it two fatal flaws. First the 12 control tones used by telephone operators are relayed over the same voice circuits that we've begun thus anyone who knows what the tones are can recreate them

and send them down the phone line as easily as can an operator. And thus was born the generation of phone phreaks bone breaks is the name given to people who know how to control the phone system from their home telephone or from pay phone booths. There are several hundred phone breaks in America and many of them have engineering backgrounds. But it's not necessary to have extensive training in electronics to become a boom for. The reason bone breaks convention in New York a man who calls himself Al Bell a pseudonym demonstrated how anyone even a child could build a device that would permit the average home telephone to receive long distance calls free of charge to the caller and the receiver. The device cost less than $1 to make and it is called a mute. Answer the phone. All start ringing. You leave the switch always in the normal position for normal use when they call you take your receiver. You lift it up and hang it up as quick as you can just talk like that. Just let up and hang it up and the ringing will stop.

Let's watch the frame pick up the phone and talk and call it. For up to 15 minutes the shorter the better because the phone company has ways of checking on knees. But right now they're what they're trying to do is basically to install new telephone systems and they will have new telephone systems installed that will make the system obsolete by 1978 so we have six years I think years to totally totally destroy the U.S. They can't put in those new telephone systems if we all tell all our friends about how to do this because then they won't get any revenue when essentially OK because we're going to find out other ways too. We have many other ways of ripping off the phone company and people who subscribe to the youth as national party line newsletter and people who write into the ground newspapers are contributing ideas daily. And we're finding new ways to get back at them. So you think. Now we have replaced Ironically the phone company admits that there's a lot of the guild for the development of these phone phreaks Joe's have dowered he is the director of corporate security for AT&T in New York.

The candor with which we have published technical information through the air is best in the early is the how the system works has come back to plague us to us to some extent because actually most of the information that they have gotten they have gotten through the Bell System and other technical journals and so it is available if they look hard enough for where we try to be careful now and to make it too easy to obtain this loose security was the telephone company's second fatal flaw. The phone company had carelessly made available to almost anyone who wanted the technical information on how the phone system works. It was all there in black and white available to any would be saboteur of the telephone system available in any college library. But even if that data had not been so readily accessible phone phreaks would probably have discovered the facts and frequencies anyway through trial and error and experimentation. School board wants the birth of a boom free.

In a babysitters house a young blind boy sits and waits. He is bored and lonely and for lack of anything better to do he starts to play with the telephone. He was over at her house one day that I was listening to a recording in Los Angeles you know a non-working number recording which I used to dial because they were free and I like to listen to the different voices and the different accents and stuff and I just happened to go. When I hit that last tone fired up. Hong Kong. At the end of recording went off said well I want to put cut who cut the recording off. But all that again I figured well what was going on when the recording cut off and I said well I was whistling an saw I found the tone again and realized that my whistle was putting it off. And finally I whistle some digits you know and I whistle once and I whistle twice as playing with it. It turned out it was actually

dialing through the circuit I could hear that the call was going through. And gradually through a process of figuring out why it was doing everything and thinking about it I realized that I could actually make long distance calls that way. The young blind boys name is Joe Engressia. Joe is in his early twenties today and he lives in a suburb of men visit Tennessee where he holds down a job with a local telephone company. But in the years between six and twenty two Joe and Greg became one of America's most exceptional phone phreaks. And although he has now stopped phone phreaking he is still greatly respected by phone phreaks who call him the original granddaddy of phone phreaking. He lives alone in a small dark apartment now and seldom has visitors but he is rarely lonely anymore. Phone phreaks calling him from all over the country. When I visited Joanne Gresley out in Tennessee he told me about his days as a phone free and how he developed his early interest in the phone system.

Bell was always a challenge to me and there was very little you know way of getting information. You know not that many people that could really tell me so I mostly did things on my own by dialing and figuring things out when the phone man would come to the house and I'd always you know save them any any kind of food I could you know sort of like bringing giving a carrot at Santa Santa Claus. You know mother would you know usually cook up sandwiches and coffee and anything else to lure him you know and subvert him into talking. And I would fire up I'd prepare my questions three or four days in advance you know have the advantage on the poor guy because he would just be able to you know have to give me answers off the cuff. So I'd start spouting you know on. Don't give anything that give everything I could. And one day one thing he told me Well you'll have to call the central office for that. They gave me the number of the central office. I call them and ask them some technical questions about the dated absorbing step switches. He said Well who is this man why I asked him about his digit absorbing selector levels and I said I'm no ma'am I'm

Joe I'm seven years old. So he didn't quite believe me but he answered my questions and he said well you're really seven years old why don't you come down for a tour of the office. And boy was that a thrill I didn't understand at all then I really found out how stupid I was and collapse on me about that time you know I'm innocent I really want to learn the circus of the stuff to myself and the boy. One of these days. I'm going to work for a phone company. You know I know where all those wires go and what they do and what all the different switches do. Joe's fascination with the phone system knew no bounds but the loneliness of his blindness and his natural curiosity about the world were also factors in his phone phreaking in the house to be kind of lonely they are everything I can talk to thousands of people. I will talk all kinds of people in different countries learning a culture and by talking to a guy in Moscow and learning about Red Square and the U.S. embassy and just everything you know makes my whole world so much bigger. But back when I was three

and four. I was just entranced by the phone it was just so amazing to me I mean things more complicated like radio and color television or anything like that I had this you know thats not half as interesting to me as the phone was I really. I really don't know what struck me when I was an early age I think one of the reasons it did because nobody could tell me anything. And my parents sort of discouraged me I said you know the phone is kind of a stupid thing to play with everything and maybe that's why I did it. Because you know nobody appreciated its complexity except me saw it as a way I felt back when I was five and six. As he grew older Joe found he had to reach out beyond his local phone company where the information he needed to quench his thirst. He literally saved pennies for months so he could afford the price of bus fares to take him to visit far off central telephone offices. He speaks routinely of staying awake for 36 hours at a stretch to make the most of these information gathering trips. His initial obsession to become an

employee of the phone company never left him and he finally devised a plan to land him a job with the phone company. He increased the pace of his phone phreaking making sixteen hundred free calls in one week and he began to call the phone company to report malfunctions of the system. I really you know was getting low on money and I needed a job and I was hoping that I could get a phone company job but I decided that the best chance of getting a phone company job was to get arrested which might sound crazy to most people that. Don't know the circumstances but. I figured if you know that would bring things that I was doing to people's attention especially in the phone company graphically. Where hopefully they would hire me. The first thing I did once I planned. But I did it before plan of action I reported some troubles to them. What I wanted improved anyway you know some codes that couldn't be reached from state. They were supposed to be read from in various things. I gave my phone number. And they called me up.

And asked me about it I told them a little more and they were wondering how I knew they ass Laden asked me how I know but they got started wondering. They started checking my line and found out I was making some free calls. I'm checking. So I made more free calls and told exactly what I'm doing like I said. Well now at a time Moscow country code 0 7 1 area code 0 0 9 5 U.S. embassy number 2 5 2 0 0 0 1 1. And I gave them frequencies and so now this is how I'm doing it. And you know I talk to some freaks and call up test boards and finally they arrested Tom. Went to jail you know all excited and everything thinking well I'm going to be getting a job soon. Then I found out that Mel won't hire me. I was a big disappointment figured well as soon as I get a little publicity or something they'll hire me. Then you know I've got a little publicity and even the mayor called I'm the mayor of Memphis and asked them to hire me and told them you hire him. And they still would. So then I figured my god my plans are for nothing everything is for

nothing and I was really depressed and nail him about two days later I got a call so little in the pin that about 15 miles from Memphis saying I don't know if you'd like to take a job with such a small company just a little job but if you want to take it we'd be glad to have you in show. Sure enough I did start Monday and I've been working there since June Gresley is says his real interest is learning about and improving the phone system. But when he took the job with the local phone company in Tennessee many of his phone phreaks friends accused him of selling them out. They still call him though and younger knob his phone phreak seek information from him. One of his callers asked Joe how safe it was to phone phreak anymore. Not very safe if they find out about it. You know it's just real real soon and you can get busted. It's just not very good to carry. Say Ok I really don't know I mean it is very near I can tell. I mean you might get away with it for five years or you might be caught in five days it is just.

Impossible to tell. Joan hangs up and tells me why he tries to impress upon knob his phone phreaks the potential danger of their activity. I don't like to see them get any travels fast and they don't always know the seriousness of it yet I'll be playing games and having a little fun and all of a sudden they'll find themselves in jail and realize it's not so much fun anymore doing Gresley is as the American phone system is the best in the world but he concedes that right now it is pretty vulnerable to tampering by phone phreaks he debates the claims of some freaks that they could take over the phone system. But he admits that some of their claims are not exaggerated. Some phone phreaks for example say they can use their phones and homebrew equipment to dial into corporate or governmental computers and even to remove information and reprogram these computers. Joanne Gresley it concedes this can be done. Says that bone breaks can also see a number of long distance lines at one time. But he says that there are so many long distance trunks between major cities that it

would take thousands of people to jam the phone service in even one single city. Before leaving join Gramsci I had one final question for him. What motivates people to play with a telephone. What is it that makes food freaks free. Well a good many of them do it for kicks. In other words they don't really have any desire so much to learn about the system as just another point toy. Some of them. Are some of them are pretty dedicated and want to learn about the system even if they are. No you can't be pro company. They they do want to learn about the system nevertheless and are interested for that reason. But those some of whom I have to admit that are just in it to learn how to make free calls better they can care less about the system. And they really can care you know about how it works. They are mainly interested you know for what they can you know if they call it rip off. They say I love phone phreaking because it's such a kingsize ripoff they say oh this darn established.

All these people in here that don't have any conception of social justice or welfare or raw equality or anything I just feel good ripping them off. And there's all different kinds of people that are interested in the phone for various reasons but me I'm interested in it just go on about the system and that is really pretty rare. Part to the development of the little blue box. Most film grades do not have Joe ingress in his ability to whistle on a perfect pitch. Most of them have to rely on electronic devices to produce the 12 tones required to become a super operator to dial free calls around the world. Early bone breaks U.S. electric organs and they found that by pushing various combinations of keys on these organs they could produce the required controlled tones then an engineering student named Al Gilbertson came along. And discovered a

publication in his college library which listed the correct frequency is by the 12 control tones. He raced from the library to the laboratory and there he produced the first blue box. It was big and clumsy but it worked. The first time we found the frequencies we put together a working blue box and about 12 hours ahead it on the aerial work the first time. Construction of a blue box given the frequencies is very easy for any engineer to do. Someone with a journeyman's experience Francis television repairman can build on very easily and most of the Livebox factories are run out of TV repair shops. Modern blue boxes are no longer big and clumsy. They are miniature AIs. Al Gilbertson has build one smaller than a pack of cigarettes but no matter what size the blue box is the basic principle remains the same. They all produce the controlled tones needed to become your own super operator. The key to the blue

box is power is its ability to fool the phone company's equipment. This basic deception is produced when the phone brake depresses one of his 12 buttons and the blue box emits a high pitched whistle. In order not to violate the law we will not at any point in this program actually give out the details needed to defraud the phone company. So in the following tape you'll hear that we have cut out any mention of the actual frequencies you. Into the blue box. This is the way it works. The user dials an 800 number and one of those no charge long distance number is used by companies like Hertz and Avis Rent a car. And the 800 number begins to ring the phone phreak and his blue box go into action. Al Gilbertson explains and is the 800 number is ringing. You hit it cycles for a second. The equipment in White Plains hears and says he hung up. And that point it clears out its registers and assumes that the line is I'll even send it the key pulse signal which is a signal that

says that get ready I'm about to send you information. You follow that with 10 digits followed by a start signal and here start it takes the information that you've given it and then proceed to route it over say sorry I am in Washington and I dial one of those 800 number is one of the toll free number is used by the rental car agency. I wait until the number begins to ring in St. Louis and as soon as I hear that rings start I depress one of the buttons on my blue box. Bringing on the herds line stops immediately because when I push that button I fool the phone company equipment into thinking that I had hung up so the equipment cancel the call and it also stops the rental agencies phone from ringing. In reality I did not hang up at all.

I am still on the line. And not only am I still on the phone line but I'm still in control of the long distance 800 trunk which I used to get to St. Louis in the first place. So now I am free to use the other buttons on my blue box to dial any number anywhere in the world. For example I can dial the time in France. Don't talk. For the time in Italy. Or in Germany the right way and we will give you a call or even around the world in Australia.

Epic level. Thank you co. I've brought you back to. The point of all this is that I will not be charged for the calls because I have deceived the phone company's billing equipment into thinking that I first dial the non-toll number and then hung up. The phone company's accounting computer goes over its records for the day. All it will show is that I made a call to a non-toll 800 number and there is no charge for that call. After they have gotten over the thrill of making a call to the time in Italy France Germany or Australia. Of course phone brigs are not satisfied with these rather simple cause. There are conference calls and toll free loop arounds. In layman's terms these are numbers which for one reason or the other permitted several phone phreaks all dialing the same number or consecutive numbers to hold a party line conversations. Some of these numbers have provided the forum for weeks and even months of continuous conversation with hundreds of people

joining the conference call during its existence. But as with all experimentation after the theory is proven the phone phreaks often tire of calling Moscow or dialing their own voices around the world and back into a second phone right next to them. Some of these for eggs are now into computers and they claim that from their home phones they can call major computers around the country use them and even subvert them. One phone phreak says he has reprogrammed the computer of a large institution so that part of its circuitry is now reserved for his exclusive personal use. He also says it would be possible for example for a phone phreak to enter the FBI as crime control computers and freak around with the FBI as memory bank. The big game of phone phreaking these days is to get into online computers and reprogram them or particularly in automatic inventory type warehouses. The fun thing to do is to get into the computer and start shipping refrigerators to Alaska etc..

How much real damage can bone breaks do to these corporate or government computers. Al Gilbertson explains one program which freaks often inject into computers. They call the program the glob or cancer the program can be injected into a computer by the bone break and Gilbertson explains what happens then. And once it's in there this thing as sole purpose is to duplicate itself and of course it understands operating systems. And every time control passes end of this thing it looks around to the catalogs finds new places the stuff itself orders copies put up will scratch out the user's real data at random in small quantities so the operating system just gets slowly sick. And then if you come in to try to kill it off you have to kill off every single copy of it everywhere simultaneously as if you ever if you if you miss one of its brothers first thing is if you pass control to some routine at one of your libraries and you haven't cleaned it out first thing this

guy does he looks up and he looks around to find out of his brothers are still alive and if they're not he starts duplicating himself into other data sets in the computer. And this pretty vicious program very hard to get rid of. That's a fun game. Is this really possible. Well a computer expert told me it is not science fiction. It can and has happened and it is a deadly serious problem. Part 3 the phone phreaks gathered to show their wear. This past summer in New York on Briggs gathered in a rundown hotel to hold a convention. The conventioneers were a weird variety of actual and would be film freaks hangers on and phone companies by. They spent their time viewing new equipment and attending seminars on technique. Reporter

Bill Toohey was there and he talked with the organizer of the youth international party line about phone phreaking phone phreaks of old sort of love hate attitude toward the phone company. They love them yet they hate him for example I want to work for them but they wouldn't let me. So I hate them. But it's more it's a sort of deeper thing than that in a lot of people realize how the phone company is unfair to both its customers and to its employees. They rip off operators they rip off and the operators in turn rip off the people people get sometimes angry day operators when they said it's not their fault they're being supervised monitored and harassed daily and they know that anything they say over the phone is overheard by up to eight people by their octopus devices that monitor and listen in. Say the phone company doesn't believe in wiretapping but they do believe in monitoring which is the same thing but it's just the way that the phone company likes to use semantics to its own advantage. Now that's kind of a political social attitude. Do you have any emotional feelings towards the phone company. Well they symbolise for a

lot of people. Ma Bell symbolizes you repressive agencies they they symbolize the establishment if you know it and not only that the phone companies. So many people hate the phone company of all different political persuasions because they realize commonsense was simply what it is it's a big ripoff it's a big corporation and the people are making profits and not the millions of stockholders but the few stockholders alone the millions of stocks and they keep reaping in profits but their rates soar higher and higher the service declines to the people who need it emotional. What's the difference between the phone companies rip off of people and Europe of the phone company. No different except that the people are involved in ours. The people are getting no Finally a fair shake on it so it's a social movement known for what it is the issue that could bring the right and left together it will bring the right left together because everyone agrees that the phone company should be free. For example a variety of ways of rationalizing or just of buying their bone

for some bone breaking is a way to attack the establishment. Others cite different reasons. Why do phones ring a lot of what makes a. You know I'm electronics and that is if you know anything electronics wise turns me on. I like to do it. I don't enjoy ripping off the phone companies like maybe long distance calls though I like their equipment. I like the way things are designed and I like to learn about electronics through their equipment it is not unusual for bone freaks to feel a sexual attraction toward the bones as demand Bones Brigade. The danger involved the sweetness of success the forbidden fruit. All produce in some bone breaks a distinctly sexual reaction the first time you succeeded in ripping off a fine company. How did you feel. I felt amazing. First married single and I thought it was like one of the best feelings ever felt phone phreaking is a it the unique the relative life like having an orgasm for the first time when you

first make your first blue box call and it goes through it. It's quite an amazing thing and gives you a feeling of power over a computer system that is designed to work for computers by robots not for people. Bone breaking also breeds fear among its practitioners even to the point of paranoia. Now you worry that you might get caught. I'm very wary but I try to be as careful as I can you know and I hope I won't get caught you know I tell people I I'm not a chemist I should be you know but I think the way I look at it. In a city let's say in New York City there are millions of phones you know literally millions of phones and wanted to catch me the ways I do it to get them to tap my phone you know. And for them to do that takes a lot you know they have to get a court order in this and that it's not that easy for them to do it and plus the like it takes at least a month I figure for them to move in on you by the time I've moved so I've changed I've stopped doing and where I'm doing it. You know what major get started what made you cross that line. Well a friend of mine had a blue box you know

and I thought of borrowing it you know. And like I said I'm electrical engineer so I said why should I borrow it you know I want to build it myself. And like it was a great project it was a big project you know and it would be a very good accomplishment you know. And I was when I it took me about three months to get the first one working you know and it works beautifully and really works every time you get a sweet taste of victory when you get in the phone company. Yeah definitely. That's the way I. Like other movements the phone brigs also attract hangers on people who don't themselves phone break but like to be around those who do. It's rather easy to join the movement. All you have to do is dislike the phone company based on a bad experience with them. With these criterion in mind the phone phreak movement probably has a potential membership in the tens of millions where there is hardly an American alive who has not had some kind of bad trip aboard Ma Bell's circuits with the phone prices just rising and rising. It's just cheating everybody and everybody is being unseated and it seems like the more you

try you know you can't do anything and finally people are doing something and people do really care. You know people haven't care they just let the prices rise and rise and. But until he does he didn't you know with a phone bill then with never getting help when you want it waiting I just call the phone company because their line was dead for three days they didn't call and you know that could be a serious problem in a lot of cases you know many of the more serious phone freaks say they're going to vote on breaking because it's a form of social protest. They're rationalizations of their behavior have a familiar ring about them because these rationalizations are drawn in the language first popularized by the civil rights movement and later the peace movement. Obviously we don't want to break laws. No reason to break laws in this your host to the point where you can't do anything else and certainly would like to be able to do things reasonably. I feel that. Phone should be free and they should possibly be higher taxes and this is why I personally I just can't see how the phone company merits running the world literally. Then there are tremendous

war machine things doing it I mean I just can't see agreeing with that just sitting still. Other bone breaks have fewer hang ups about explaining their behavior. One young man who cheats the phone company by using a fraudulent telephone credit card had this to say to build a first credit card. It was great that I have a 15 minute they didn't. I get about 20 times in one day. Oh yeah it's a joke but Ophelia that's a great thrill available anywhere for its graceful thrill to be able to do anything for free nowadays so you don't feel guilty about it at all or not at all. You love it. Card for phone phreaking as an example of pure science. Despite the fact that phone breaking has been around for nearly a decade. There is a terrific scarcity of published material on the subject. Numerous articles about how to do it have appeared in underground publications but for some reason we are unable to locate any

serious research on a phone phreaking as a social phenomenon. Professor Howard Becker of Northwestern University is one of the few a sociologist to have thought about the subject on a serious level and Professor Becker has a theory about phone phreaking. He calls it a kind of people's science. I think one of the really interesting things about phone phreaking in the phone phreaks is the way it represents a kind of nonprofessional effort a scientific exploration and discovery. In other words we're used to thinking of science as something that you have to have a Ph.D. to do something that has to be done through universities something that has to be funded by the government and so forth. In this case quite a lot of knowledge has been established in a fairly rigorous scientific way by a bunch of essentially amateurs. Using techniques that they didn't have to get a Ph.D. in order to use. So I think it's an interesting example of how people might escape

the what you might call the tyranny of experts. But isn't it stretching things too far to call the phone a break scientist and the information that they on earth scientific knowledge. Professor Becker thinks not and he defames the break Zam their discoveries its knowledge in just the same sense that scientific knowledge is knowledge that as you might think of the phone company in this case as a big secret in the sense that nature is a big secret to the scientist. And the object of the game so to speak is to find out you know the character of that secret. Now you speak of the weight of the phone phreaks as though there were individuals and the thing that interests me most about them is the degree to which they are in touch with one another in communication with one another. The degree to which they share their knowledge and use the findings of each individual investigator you know to further the whole collective enterprise very much in the style of conventional and legitimate science. They don't

have professional journals in the strict sense but they on the other hand they do share their information and what in something like a scientific meeting you know like the conventions and scientific associations have every year only they do it by phone. Having said what doesn't cost them anything so that they you know sort of speak to their research arrive at certain findings and communicate them to one another so they can be checked by other people which I take to be one of the chief characteristics of scientific work. The fact that the thing they're investigating is illegal to know so to speak are illegal to use doesn't differentiate them from all kinds of scientists in the past. You know anatomy used to be a forbidden subject. Professor Becker as a parent kindly regard for the phone of regs and is elevation of them to a level of serious scientists we all seem to imply that he condones their behavior. And I asked him if he considers bone breaking a socially desirable form of behavior.

Well I don't know that. You know ripping off the phone company is in itself necessarily desirable although it certainly isn't necessarily undesirable. But the model of using the scientific method to arrive at knowledge without the intervention of experts as intermediaries seems to me a very socially worthwhile. Finally there are many different kinds of phone phreaks who break for many different reasons and while some are obviously doing it to gain knowledge about the system other bone breaks admit that they do it merely for the fun of doing it. And still others contend it is a form of political protest against Ma Bell and the phone company monopoly. The reasons why people do it are quite separate from the consequences of them doing it. You say In other words you know people do science for all kinds of reasons too. I mean some of the reasons are the kind of reasons that are ordinarily alleged you know to help mankind and further knowledge. But a lot of scientists engage in scientific research because it is

fun. You know that's one of the reasons I like to do research. It's a pleasure. Some people do it in the hopes of affecting social change. That's not an uncommon reason to engage in scientific activity. So in that variety of motives the phone for example really different from ordinary scientists. Howard Becker professor of sociology and Urban Affairs at Northwestern University in Chicago. Hard five Ma Bell and institutional vulnerability. We've already talked about blue boxes and about the phone phreaks claims that they can sabotage computers. But in addition to these kinds of bone breaking the brakes say they also have the ability to order basic electronic changes made in the phone company's circuitry. And they do this without any complicated devices as Al Gilbertson explains.

Some of the best phone phreaks don't use any hardware at all. You can talk people into the telephone company into doing stuff for you because it's such a big organisation and they often as not I could not identify you know authority and they will take orders over the telephone and you simply have to imitate a person of authority to get something done for you. And since the phone phreaks do have the ability to tap lines if they can locate a manager or someone else in the phone company they can set their monitors line until they find out how he talks and what he sounds like and his actions and what channel she asked to go through to get something done. And then they just imitate him to get something else done. This can actually go so far as to making hard physical rewiring changes ordered in the rack rooms in the relay rooms. Braun Briggs say they can tap almost any telephone in America without going near the victim's telephone Gilbertson explains why you do this is to dial

the verification operator and there's one operator that sits and verifies that circuits are really busy. If you call up and say Is this circuit really busy I think it's off the hook. An operator will go on the line and listen to it for a psych and see if anybody is talking about it. That's why they do it. Well you can do the same thing. You can call to the verification operator by dialing the prefix DIAL AREA CODE plus prefix Plus the last four digits that they vary slightly indicating that you want the verification operator to get the verification operator. You will come up here on her board as having supervisory authority only. You'd have to be an insider in the phone company to appear on her board anyway she's very used to talking to repairman and other people in the phone company so she automatically assumes that you're authorized when you appear on her board asking for service and if you use the correct jargon she will do exactly what you ask her to and you say Hello operator

will you put me up you know test truck put me up to as an old Accord board phrase which means pull out one of your plugs and pull it up and stick it into the border. Put me up to the board. OK well nowadays I just throw a key. And you vanish into her board when she throws that key. You then pulse start the last four digits of the number that you want to record and you hit key pulse for digits in the number you want to tap start and you appear on the line and you can sit there for ever. And you can monitor doing any you want to it. And there's no thing. One of the top freaks in New York. His phone is always busy. You cannot talk to him directly. However he will have five or six conversations going simultaneously of people you have to tap is a line to talk to him but you cannot call him directly. So this is the way he screens

out crank calls you have to know what you're doing just to talk to him. Card six the telephone company answers some questions about phone phreaking. Girls if ever. Doherty has been with the Bell Telephone system for 18 years. He is now the director of corporate security at AT&T in New York. He is the ranking general in Ma Bell's war effort against the phone brings Doherty's army as well staffed and has a great deal of technical support but his best weapon is the law as he explained when we talked with him in New York. We have statutes in all of the states and there is also a federal statute which is called for by wire. Which is Section 13 Title 18 United States Code and that is a felony status incidentally which also covers both for time

total front and credit currently on order say some of the penalties for using the so-called blue box. Well the federal statute Carse's is easiest because we does have the one in that penalty for that is $1000 fine and or five years in jail. Now the state statutes vary they vary from as little as 60 days in jail to as long as 15 years in jail and usually it depends upon whether the individual had already been convicted for a prior use of one of these electronic tofor devices as you mentioned the blue box of the black box. Also many of the states it depends upon the amount that he has defrauded us. But you'd have to look at each specific state statute because they vary as far as a pound. So how widespread does the phone company think that bone breaking really is. Again Joe dowered for a lot we have been able to discern it is relatively small both in the number of political Raiders

and also in the dollar amount. However we feel that big with the widespread publicity that it has been receiving in the last. Here are two that there certainly is an increase and unfortunately with the increase in all types of crime in the United States we can expect a further increase unless we take some very firm to turn action which we are doing a much more extensive and aggressive manner than in prior years. So the phone company appears more worried about the danger of future bone breaking than by the present small number of breaks. How much money our phone breaks now costing the telephone company the actual losses today we don't have any great amount but the potential was certainly there and we don't intend to allow this to to get to a stage stage of potential losses of our partner translating the potential was in actual losses where the dollar loss would be quite significant where

we feel that we're going to certainly prevent that in our aggressive approach I think has certainly could Taylor with everyone calling it perfectly fine. We were in my view somewhat wholly lenient and that we would just caution these people more or less locked in on the risk and give the military an interview and we did not prosecute anybody stand we have changed that policy we are prosecuting. As a rule rather than exception where it was before it was the exception rather than the rule. Some of the phone freaks who have been quoted in the various bits of underground press seem to feel that the the problem with AT&T is not so much the financial loss it's actually costing more to prosecute and they risk taking from you rather you just won't tolerate anyone interfering with your system. How would you respond to that. Well that may be true but that's just that's just good common business sense. Any business at the inception of a

security problem will probably spend more to establish preventive measures because it is worthwhile it's a good investment and one of the problems in the whole security fail is you can never equate what you spend with what you have prevented. In other words if we prosecute. Two three or half a dozen people and within a short period of time six months buried in his well-publicized we might have deterred a hundredfold from engaging in this fraud and this is true in any area. The Bona Briggs say that the telephone company is going to solve the loophole which permits bone breaking in the first place. By changing its system and converting its equipment. Is that true. The technical knowledge is available and has been available to prevent the use of blue boxes.

But it's a trade off between the cost of prevention and what we're losing we don't feel that the losses are significant enough to go into a full scale preventive program which would mean a great deal of modification of the network now. We are going towards a change in the signaling. Of the network from what we call in band add a band in layman's terms and I'm not a technical man by education or training which will eventually eliminate this problem anyway. And we are really studying the most economical way to modify the network at the present time. But telephone company has developed equipment to use in ferreting out of phone phreaks. While many bone breaks report that they have sends the presence of these electronic spies on the phone lines Ma Bell has still been able to prosecute only a fraction of the estimated hundreds or even thousands of phone phreaks in America.

Although the phone company has successfully prosecuted and convicted hundreds of people who have tried to defraud them by using phony credit cards or charging calls to other users their record in prosecuting blue box users is not nearly so good. Nationwide an estimated 50 arrests were made for phones breaking in 1972 and of those arrested only 20 phone phreaks were convicted. Fourteen of these people were arrested in a series of raids last September in cities including Chicago Houston Memphis Minneapolis Cleveland then Detroit. Interestingly the people arrested in these raids were not the common variety of phone phreak rather the telephone company described them as average middle to upper middle class American businessmen who were using blue boxes to reduce their business telephone cost. The telephone company published the story in the most recent issue of Bell magazine obviously hoping that giving widespread public city to arrest and convictions will have a deterrent effect. But

privately phone company officials can see that the only practical solution to the problem now is to change their system. That will take millions of dollars and several years. The new system reportedly will not be fully operational until the year 2000. In the meantime phone for IGS will continue to play with experimenting with and rip off the telephone company if they are caught at these phone phreaks will be prosecuted. State law enforcement officials are investigating phone breaking and here in Washington three federal agencies have some jurisdiction. The FCC the FBI and the Justice Department officials at all three better real agencies were reluctant to talk with me on the record about phone phreaking by Justice Department lawyer Jim Robinson did make this statement about phone phreaks claims that they can tap telephones under the title 3 of the omnibus crime control and safe streets Act of 1968. Congress made an interception of communications. A federal felony.

Punisher why imprisonment for a period of five years and a fine of up to $10000. The department maintains a vigorous prosecution program is part of this statute. We have increased our prosecutions seven times over what they were under the old section 6 0 5 of the Federal Communications Act. And in general the punishments meted out by the courts are sufficiently severe that I would advise anyone avoid it. It's unfortunate that more people do not realize the serious nature of such a violation. Justice Department lawyer Jim Robinson one of the best known phone phreaks in America until a few months ago was a 29 year old Californian named John Thomas Draper for several years Draper's exploits on the telephone were near legendary and he was known as Captain Crunch reportedly Captain Crunch used to drive around the country in a Volkswagen bus which contains supers of

instigated equipment. It was one of the most advanced film freaks who delighted in the beauty of the Bell phone system. Not long ago Captain Crunch agreed to be interviewed by Lorenzo Milo public station da da all in Los Gatos California. When Cap'n Crunch placed his call to the radio station he did so by way of a satellite across the ocean to London and then back again to the United States. How far away do you think that a signal is knowing. That you think that fifty thousand miles is a fear of how far you've gone. Yeah.

Like a very long way. And that's probably why I'm really going to ask you to call me back. But I'm going to go ahead and interview you anyway. OK.

In the end of your Captain Crunch explained how he had avoided arrest by maintaining tight security over his phone phreaking activity. Nobody really knows my number how can such a thing. Thank God nobody can climb down any any. I've been kind of wandering and hopping around all over the way out. Really like where I'm coming from now I could be anywhere between at Seattle. So you're sort of wandering from a free workout I'm a whiner I'm the one and move around this and the reason why I probably have been and they can't pin me down to be taken around where you are goes backwards you are your telephone go about it and getting a wire. And you're moving around from city to city and you play your musical instruments alone will not do with point thing anywhere where I had to pay the recording I have I run out and I'll let me find the crime equipment. I have now if that

recorder and I are very often that recorder when I prolly got a little bigger. OK I'll I'll know after they. Are locked up and. Now I have my. Eye Out a matter of tape and every number. I have on tape and I don't want to have an index on the tape that I can find a number within about a minute. And. On the recorder I have read. An hour to do it right. And everything on it wiped out the built in Belgrade right on the recorder. I thought. Yeah I do that and everything on it I mean I wouldn't that completely gone and it and you I don't know if I'm going legally I am legal age I can get for having that record.

Well I really am. I gave you a lot of information on the record and all that and one thing well about anybody who think they might try to get by with doing their work on the yard. I think I better because why. A good friend of mine in the area and. Like you know and I think he was going to think way. Too many people knew about him. That we can have any brand in the way with. Anything and anybody getting a good to play with you don't tell anybody that you play with you if you don't think you're going to tell anybody. Because anybody who knows you play with you. Well then and have

a really good hearing aid and blackmail you are doing something bad. You. Don't tell anybody about it. Thank you. They are fired. However despite his precautions Captain Crunch was soon to discover that even he was not invincible. Last May he was arrested and indicted on seven counts by a federal grand jury. Six of the charges were dismissed and he was convicted on the seven counts of using a multi frequency signaling device to enter the phone system and place a free call to Australia. Captain Crunch was fined $1000 and placed on five years probation and before he left the court room the presiding judge warned him that if he ever again engaged in phone phreaking he would go to jail for five years. Upton crunches arrest and conviction will undoubtedly put a damper on

phone phreaking at least for a while but eventually Captain Crunch his fate will be forgotten or at least put aside and the freaks will continue to freak. But for the film company and law enforcement agencies a large part of the problem is the public's attitude toward phone phreaking as one phone company official said. Many people just don't think this is stealing. Somehow when you steal an intangible thing like a phone company's services it's just not as socially condemned as shoplifting or bank robbery. This is Jim Russell reporting. Sorry the telephone company you're dialing has been temporarily disconnected was produced for National Public Radio by Jim Ross on orders for this program where Jim Bill

Toohey and Lee only technical direction by Rene Chaney David cray and John cater provided by Ron Rosenbaum of the Village Voice and to the random Island radio station KTLA Los Gatos California for the interview with Captain Crunch. All illustrations of some creaking heard in this program were simulated and none of the tones heard with the actual frequencies used in electronic toll. The program was made possible by funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And this

is NPR National Public Radio.