I FIRST LEARNED ABOUT phone phreaking from a magazine. In the fall of 1971 I stumbled onto an article that seemed like a bit of science fiction, about these groups of people who knew how to crack the phone system all over the world. I was young, only twenty years old, and I thought this was a really cool made up story. I phoned Steve Jobs halfway through and started reading him the article. I just had to call him. We researched it and found out, “Whoa!” It made sense! Who would ever believe you could put tones into a phone and make calls free anywhere in the world? I mean, who would believe it? It was like we stumbled onto to some magical mystery that other people just didn’t know about. And I had no idea the impact it would end up having on my life. We just had to try it, to find out if it really worked. Over the next few months I started designing a “blue box,” an electronic gizmo that made the tones you needed to control the telephone network. I put so much attention into trying to make it the very best blue box in the world. It was digital, unlike the ones that everybody else had, and it had some of the cleverest, most off-the-wall design techniques I’ve ever put into anything I’ve ever built, even to this day. It was great, and it was my passport into the phone phreaks’ underground network. (Location 101)
The cleverest thing about SF and MF signaling was this: they allowed the switching machines to communicate by using the exact same wires that humans used to talk to each other. AT&T had spent millions of dollars running long-distance cables all across the United States. These cables were designed to carry voice, since that’s what AT&T’s human customers and operators used speak to one another. Instead of building a separate computer network for its switching machines, AT&T realized it could reuse its existing long-distance telephone circuits to carry both human voice and signaling information for each call. This would cost less than building a separate network and would be faster to deploy. This approach, called in-band signaling, meant that signaling information was sent in the same frequency band and over the same wires that were used for voice. It was an elegant and economical solution to the problem. (Location 953)
“Portland, right.” Telephone company operators were trained to use the word right, much like military radio operators are trained to say roger. (Location 1254)
Although there might not be anything wrong with betting a few bucks on the basketball game, the problem was, as one former FBI special agent put it, “it ends up feeding something else, like drugs, prostitution, loan sharking.” (Location 1790)
Note: wtf
After high school Engressia began taking classes at Dade County Junior College. Then, in the fall of 1968, he transferred to the University of South Florida in Tampa. He lived in Beta Hall, one of the dorms on campus. A little over a month into his first semester Engressia mentioned to some other students that he could whistle free long-distance calls. Yeah, right, was the response. Faced with such disbelief, Engressia responded with words that would change his life: “I can whistle like a bird and get any number (Location 2166)
you want anywhere. I’ll bet you a dollar I can.” Now then, some guy offers to bet you that he can whistle you a free long-distance call, using just his lips and nothing else, it’s a sure thing, right? A dollar was wagered. Whistling ensued. Engressia emerged slightly richer, his fellow students with egg on their faces. At least they got a phone call in the bargain. (Location 2170)
