The Anarchist Cookbook (48 page)

starts carrying his voice to you by way of the LA tandem. A notation is made on the

accounting tape that the connection has been made on the 800 call which had been

initiated and noted earlier. When you stop talking to New York a notation is made that the

800 call has ended.

At three the next morning, when the phone company's accounting computer starts reading

back over the master accounting tape for the past day, it records that a call of a certain

length of time was made from your New Orleans home to an LA 800 number and, of course,

the accounting computer has been trained to ignore those toll-free 800 calls when

compiling your monthly bill.

"All they can prove is that you made an 800 toll-free call," Gilbertson the inventor

concludes. "Of course, if you're foolish enough to talk for two hours on an 800 call, and

they've installed one of their special anti-fraud computer programs to watch out for such

things, they may spot you and ask why you took two hours talking to Army Recruiting's 800

number when you're 4-F.

But if you do it from a pay phone, they may discover something peculiar the next day -- if

they've got a blue-box hunting program in their computer -- but you'll be a long time gone

from the pay phone by then. Using a pay phone is almost guaranteed safe."

"What about the recent series of blue-box arrests all across the country -- New York,

Cleveland, and so on?" I asked. "How were they caught so easily?"

"From what I can tell, they made one big mistake: they were seizing trunks using an area

code plus 555-1212 instead of an 800 number. Using 555 is easy to detect because when

you send multi-frequency beep tones of 555 you get a charge for it on your tape and the

accounting computer knows there's something wrong when it tries to bill you for a two-

hour call to Akron, Ohio, information, and it drops a trouble card which goes right into the

hands of the security agent if they're looking for blue-box user.

"Whoever sold those guys their blue boxes didn't tell them how to use them properly,

which is fairly irresponsible. And they were fairly stupid to use them at home all the time.

"But what those arrests really mean is than an awful lot of blue boxes are flooding into the

country and that people are finding them so easy to make that they know how to make

them before they know how to use them. Ma Bell is in trouble."

And if a blue-box operator or a cassette-recorder phone phreak sticks to pay phones and

800 numbers, the phone company can't stop them?

"Not unless they change their entire nationwide long-lines technology, which will take them

a few billion dollars and twenty years. Right now they can't do a thing. They're screwed."

Captain Crunch Demonstrates His Famous Unit

There is an underground telephone network in this country. Gilbertson discovered it the

very day news of his activities hit the papers. That evening his phone began ringing. Phone

phreaks from Seattle, from Florida, from New York, from San Jose, and from Los Angeles

began calling him and telling him about the phone-phreak network. He'd get a call from a

phone phreak who'd say nothing but, "Hang up and call this number."

When he dialed the number he'd find himself tied into a conference of a dozen phone

phreaks arranged through a quirky switching station in British Columbia. They identified

themselves as phone phreaks, they demonstrated their homemade blue boxes which they

called "M-Fers" (for "multi-frequency," among other things) for him, they talked shop

about phone-phreak devices. They let him in on their secrets on the theory that if the

phone company was after him he must be trustworthy. And, Gilbertson recalls, they

stunned him with their technical sophistication.

I ask him how to get in touch with the phone-phreak network. He digs around through a

file of old schematics and comes up with about a dozen numbers in three widely separated

area codes.

"Those are the centers," he tells me. Alongside some of the numbers he writes in first

names or nicknames: names like Captain Crunch, Dr. No, Frank Carson (also a code word for

a free call), Marty Freeman (code word for M-F device), Peter Perpendicular Pimple,

Alefnull, and The Cheshire Cat. He makes checks alongside the names of those among

these top twelve who are blind. There are five checks.

I ask him who this Captain Crunch person is.

"Oh. The Captain. He's probably the most legendary phone phreak. He calls himself Captain

Crunch after the notorious Cap'n Crunch 2600 whistle." (Several years ago, Gilbertson

explains, the makers of Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal offered a toy-whistle prize in every

box as a treat for the Cap'n Crunch set. Somehow a phone phreak discovered that the toy

whistle just happened to produce a perfect 2600-cycle tone. When the man who calls

himself Captain Crunch was transferred overseas to England with his Air Force unit, he

would receive scores of calls from his friends and "mute" them -- make them free of

charge to them -- by blowing his Cap'n Crunch whistle into his end.) "Captain Crunch is one

of the older phone phreaks," Gilbertson tells me. "He's an engineer who once got in a little

trouble for fooling around with the phone, but he can't stop. Well, the guy drives across

country in a Volkswagen van with an entire switchboard and a computerized super-

sophisticated M-F-er in the back. He'll pull up to a phone booth on a lonely highway

somewhere, snake a cable out of his bus, hook it onto the phone and sit for hours, days

sometimes, sending calls zipping back and forth across the country, all over the world...."

Back at my motel, I dialed the number he gave me for "Captain Crunch" and asked for G----

T-----, his real name, or at least the name he uses when he's not dashing into a phone

booth beeping out M-F tones faster than a speeding bullet and zipping phantomlike through

the phone company's long-distance lines.

When G---- T----- answered the phone and I told him I was preparing a story for Esquire

about phone phreaks, he became very indignant.

"I don't do that. I don't do that anymore at all. And if I do it, I do it for one reason and

one reason only. I'm learning about a system. The phone company is a System. A computer

is a System, do you understand? If I do what I do, it is only to explore a system.

Computers, systems, that's my bag. The phone company is nothing but a computer."

A tone of tightly restrained excitement enters the Captain's voice when he starts talking

about systems. He begins to pronounce each syllable with the hushed deliberation of an

obscene caller.

"Ma Bell is a system I want to explore. It's a beautiful system, you know, but Ma Bell

screwed up. It's terrible because Ma Bell is such a beautiful system, but she screwed up. I

learned how she screwed up from a couple of blind kids who wanted me to build a device. A

certain device. They said it could make free calls. I wasn't interested in free calls. But

when these blind kids told me I could make calls into a computer, my eyes lit up. I wanted

to learn about computers. I wanted to learn about Ma Bell's computers. So I build the

little device, but I built it wrong and Ma Bell found out. Ma Bell can detect things like

that. Ma Bell knows. So I'm strictly rid of it now. I don't do it. Except for learning

purposes." He pauses. "So you want to write an article. Are you paying for this call? Hang

up and call this number." He gives me a number in a area code a thousand miles away of his

own. I dial the number.

"Hello again. This is Captain Crunch. You are speaking to me on a toll-free loop-around in

Portland, Oregon. Do you know what a toll-free loop around is? I'll tell you."

He explains to me that almost every exchange in the country has open test numbers which

allow other exchanges to test their connections with it. Most of these numbers occur in

consecutive pairs, such as 302 956-0041 and 302 956-0042. Well, certain phone phreaks

discovered that if two people from anywhere in the country dial the two consecutive

numbers they can talk together just as if one had called the other's number, with no

charge to either of them, of course.

"Now our voice is looping around in a 4A switching machine up there in Canada, zipping back

down to me," the Captain tells me. "My voice is looping around up there and back down to

you. And it can't ever cost anyone money. The phone phreaks and I have compiled a list of

many of these numbers. You would be surprised if you saw the list. I could show it to you.

But I won't. I'm out of that now. I'm not out to screw Ma Bell. I know better. If I do

anything it's for the pure knowledge of the System. You can learn to do fantastic things.

Have you ever heard eight tandems stacked up? Do you know the sound of tandems

stacking and unstacking? Give me your phone number. Okay. Hang up now and wait a

minute."

Slightly less than a minute later the phone rang and the Captain was on the line, his voice

sounding far more excited, almost aroused.

"I wanted to show you what it's like to stack up tandems. To stack up tandems."

(Whenever the Captain says "stack up" it sounds as if he is licking his lips.)

"How do you like the connection you're on now?" the Captain asks me. "It's a raw tandem.

A raw tandem. Ain't nothing' up to it but a tandem. Now I'm going to show you what it's

like to stack up. Blow off. Land in a far away place. To stack that tandem up, whip back and

forth across the country a few times, then shoot on up to Moscow.

"Listen," Captain Crunch continues. "Listen. I've got line tie on my switchboard here, and

I'm gonna let you hear me stack and unstack tandems. Listen to this. It's gonna blow your

mind."

First I hear a super rapid-fire pulsing of the flutelike phone tones, then a pause, then

another popping burst of tones, then another, then another. Each burst is followed by a

beep-kachink sound.

"We have now stacked up four tandems," said Captain Crunch, sounding somewhat remote.

"That's four tandems stacked up. Do you know what that means? That means I'm whipping

back and forth, back and forth twice, across the country, before coming to you. I've been

known to stack up twenty tandems at a time. Now, just like I said, I'm going to shoot up to

Moscow."

There is a new, longer series of beeper pulses over the line, a brief silence, then a ring.

"Hello," answers a far-off voice.

"Hello. Is this the American Embassy Moscow?"

"Yes, sir. Who is this calling?" says the voice.

"Yes. This is test board here in New York. We're calling to check out the circuits, see

what kind of lines you've got. Everything okay there in Moscow?"

"Okay?"

"Well, yes, how are things there?"

"Oh. Well, everything okay, I guess."

"Okay. Thank you."

They hang up, leaving a confused series of beep-kachink sounds hanging in mid-ether in the

wake of the call before dissolving away.

The Captain is pleased. "You believe me now, don't you? Do you know what I'd like to do?

I'd just like to call up your editor at Esquire and show him just what it sounds like to stack

and unstack tandems. I'll give him a show that will blow his mind. What's his number?

I ask the Captain what kind of device he was using to accomplish all his feats. The Captain

is pleased at the question.

"You could tell it was special, couldn't you?" Ten pulses per second. That's faster than the

phone company's equipment. Believe me, this unit is the most famous unit in the country.

There is no other unit like it. Believe me."

"Yes, I've heard about it. Some other phone phreaks have told me about it."

"They have been referring to my, ahem, unit? What is it they said? Just out of curiosity,

did they tell you it was a highly sophisticated computer-operated unit, with acoustical

coupling for receiving outputs and a switch-board with multiple-line-tie capability? Did

they tell you that the frequency tolerance is guaranteed to be not more than .05 percent?

The amplitude tolerance less than .01 decibel? Those pulses you heard were perfect. They

just come faster than the phone company. Those were high-precision op-amps. Op-amps are

instrumentation amplifiers designed for ultra-stable amplification, super-low distortion

and accurate frequency response. Did they tell you it can operate in temperatures from

-55øC to +125øC?"

I admit that they did not tell me all that.

"I built it myself," the Captain goes on. "If you were to go out and buy the components

from an industrial wholesaler it would cost you at least $1500. I once worked for a

semiconductor company and all this didn't cost me a cent. Do you know what I mean? Did

they tell you about how I put a call completely around the world? I'll tell you how I did it.

I M-Fed Tokyo inward, who connected me to India, India connected me to Greece, Greece

connected me to Pretoria, South Africa, South Africa connected me to South America, I