0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (09/13/90)
..in a footnote <Digest vol10, iss637), our Moderator suggests, > "... some children, phreaks and assorted other folks consider it >quite a funny joke to conference two unrelated parties via >three-way calling, then let them (the two called parties) squabble >with each other while the perpetrator goes spastic with laughter >at his little prank. PAT]" Well, it brings to mind three incidents that I guess can now be told: 1.) The good old "testboard," of course, had the ability to "conference in" several parties, while the person on the testboard could cut off their own talk path, leaving the two parties talking to each other. In an earlier, simpler DDD network, simply dialing an area code plus 121 got the "Inward Operator." a.k.a "Assistance" to the public's view for an entire area code. In a yet-to-be-divulged corner of Long Lines, it was a favorite pastime to dial 809+121 (San Juan, Puerto Rico) and 808+121 (Honolulu, Hawaii) and let two Ernestines of the Lily Tomlin era argue about which had called which and what they were supposed to do. Meantime, gales of laughter could be heard around the monitoring loudspeaker in a testroom thousands of miles from either of them! 2.) In a similar fashion, happenstance listening found an FX between two cities that got dialed up every morning and contained a day-long dialog between two receptionists of the same company. One was named "Rusty." Rusty's nightly romantic exploits in a major seaside resort city, if true, would provide years of material for one of today's "Confessions" 900 numbers! They were replete with details of Rusty's specialized wardrobe and tools of her nighttime trade. Needless to say, the day shift had a monitor speaker plugged into THAT FX daily. (I almost swallowed my chewing gum more than once!) After a long period <months> of unobtrusive listening, a testboardman <whose name is yet to be divulged> began to pop in with comments that could be heard only by Rusty and not her audience at the other end. Rusty would respond, leaving her private audience puzzled at who Rusty was talking to. That would cause the discussion to turn to suggestions of reporting eavesdroppers on the phone. However, no reports were ever filed when it got around to, "But what if they ask what we were talking about?" (It would have been hilarious, anyway, because the self-same room that was doing the listening was the place the trouble reporting number was in ... in fact, the self-same people!) 3.) The highest level of development of this art might be classified as an early form of the "Talking to God" service recently purported to have emerged in Italy. This one was over on the 17B Board, where thousands of DDD message trunks terminated in ports of the 4A toll switching machine. Each evening, as the network peaked with the 7 PM rush for cheap rates, it wasn't difficult to find a circuit on which a couple of good old Bible-toting down south mommas were commiserating about their physical aches and heartaches over the foibles of their "chilluns." When one finally asked, as they always did, for the Lord to intervene, an obliging testboardman would plug into the four-wire transmit toward the requester and play God on the Telephone. Invariably, the poor dear would literally swoon and shush the questioning other, who couldn't hear God talking! One can imagine the testimony of miracles next Sunday morning at the country church! But of course, NOBODY ever listens in on YOUR calls...why, the Company would NEVER permit that! Boy, I sure hope the Statute of Limitations has run out on this! [Moderator's Note: I still don't think it is funny. I regard it as a major violation of trust; and I'm sure you are aware that had the employees involved in this little prank been caught and the subscriber's involved elected to sue, telco would have had to pay financially and the employees involved probably would have lost their jobs. PAT]
0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (09/17/90)
Summarizing the story thus far: In a footnote <Digest vol10, iss637), our Moderator suggests, >> "... some children, phreaks and assorted other folks consider it >>quite a funny joke to conference two unrelated parties via >>three-way calling, then let them (the two called parties) squabble >>with each other while the perpetrator goes spastic with laughter >>at his little prank. PAT]" This writer responded in an article in Digest V10, Issue 646, describing three incidents of internal phreaking that occurred in the monolithic era. They included connecting two inward operators in Puerto Rico and Hawaii to each other; listening in and engaging some lewd conversation on an intercity FX, and interposing as God on DDD trunks. Our Moderator was rightfully irate about such abuses, saying: >[Moderator's Note: I still don't think it is funny. I regard it as a >major violation of trust ... No doubt about it, Dear Moderator. The point in exposing this to you was to show just how widespread such abuses were in the "good old days." As to the employees getting caught, my recent comments about a benign, complacent environment of employees and managers didn't seem to be understood. In the cases cited here, supervisors and managers would as often be part of it as not. The ONLY case of an employee who ever got caught was one who was feeding horse race results from the telegraph channels to the bookies. He only got caught because the FBI caught the bookies and traced it back to him. Despite his being clearly identified and his part of it making national press, he merely got transferred off the telegraph board over to the toolroom 50 feet away, and enjoyed the rest of his admittedly promotionless career to retirement on the phone in the toolroom. I never saw him walk back to the telegraph board to read the race results. By the time I came on that scene, he was running a sales operation for bridal hope chests and kitchenware from that phone..of course, on the public's "expense" for operating the monolithic "phone company." ... just another form of violation of the public trust. You've queried in one place why we would EVER have broken up AT&T and caused ourselves all the problems we now have. The purpose was to give you some evidence of just how far from the public trust the monopoly establishment had wandered ... and in a myriad of ways the anti-trust court case never even got to. None of these stories was unique. The people in that office weren't the first. Such "tricks" were going on all over the country. If you want a whole book full of them, I can supply them. Just square the issue for our less sophisticated readers' paranoia, rest assured that today, a combination of (digital) technology and reduced profit margins makes it far, FAR less likely that such things continue. It's just not so easy to get into a digital timeslot, and there aren't enough idle employees hanging around any more to engage such games. Why, indeed, should we ever have broken up the Bell monolith? How is it we have so many unforeseen problems to solve? Why, indeed, do we find so many scammy practices and people involved? The answer is simple; Rot had penetrated far deeper than anyone on the "outside" might imagine. And last point: Why on earth would they be so quick to recognize misuse of the network? What's the old conundrum ... it takes one to know one? Pin them down to how much personal practice they have had at doing it. I doubt there's a former local exchange switchman in this nation (and most countries) who hasn't engaged in some international calling "phreaking!" Diogenes' lantern would have failed inside the monolithic Telco, too. Why do you think I left them? Why do you think I bring these tales up now decades later? Simple ... I still feel a sense of outrage at informing you of them.
jimmy@denwa.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) (09/17/90)
In article <12159@accuvax.nwu.edu> 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) writes: [description of telco employees listening in to calls] >But of course, NOBODY ever listens in on YOUR calls...why, the Company >would NEVER permit that! >[Moderator's Note: I still don't think it is funny. I regard it as a >major violation of trust; I always laugh when I hear telephone company spokespeople make the (expected) claim that their employees would never ever listen in to calls. Everyone I know who has ever worked in a central office has great stories about the calls they listened in to. The employees in the central offices serving Beverly Hills, for example, often liked to put famous people's lines up on the C.O. loudspeakers. I hear Lucille Ball's were pretty fun to listen to.
ted@cs.brown.edu (Tony Davis) (09/17/90)
In article <12230@accuvax.nwu.edu> 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) writes: [Deleted discussion of abuse during Ma Bell's monopoly.] >Such "tricks" were going on all over the country. If you want a >whole book full of them, I can supply them. Please post some of them. I'd like to hear both your story and our Moderator's. What are the arguments for and against the breakup of AT&T? Tony Davis ted@cs.brown.edu [Moderator's Note: The fact that some employees of AT&T in the past acted like jerks is not a sufficient reason to have broken them up, that's for sure. PAT]
onymouse@ames.arc.nasa.gov (John Debert) (09/17/90)
From article <12230@accuvax.nwu.edu>, by 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin): > Just square the issue for our less sophisticated readers' paranoia, > rest assured that today, a combination of (digital) technology and > reduced profit margins makes it far, FAR less likely that such things > continue. It's just not so easy to get into a digital timeslot, and > there aren't enough idle employees hanging around any more to engage > such games. What's to keep the folks at the SCC's from eavesdropping? The SCC's are staffed around the clock and have the power to listen in on all calls in the Bell network as well as the power to kill dialtone and battery. (I once received a call from someone who told me to "stop doing it" and afterward I was without dialtone for an hour or so. I later found out that someone at the Richmond (CA) SCC had done it but I never found out why.) The frames may no longer have anyone in them but there is always someone "in the network". jd onymouse@netcom.UUCP [Moderator's Note: I had a guy in the Chicago-Wabash CO rip me off once many years ago (1974). He ran my bill up several hundred units two or three months in a row before I caught on, making calls by going on my line in the frames. I guess he figured because my number ended in /00/ (WEbster 9-4600) it was a large company and I would never notice the difference. PAT]
mtv@milton.u.washington.edu (David Schanen) (09/17/90)
>..... it was a favorite pastime to dial 809+121 (San Juan, >Puerto Rico) and 808+121 (Honolulu, Hawaii) and let two Ernestines of >the Lily Tomlin era argue about which had called which and what they >were supposed to do. Meantime, gales of laughter could be heard >around the monitoring loudspeaker in a testroom thousands of miles >from either of them! >[Moderator's Note: I still don't think it is funny. I regard it as a >major violation of trust.... PAT] This reminds me of the time I worked for a company that had a ten button set at the receptionist's desk with a broken mechanism allowing you to push several lines at once. Every now and then I would hit all ten lines and call 800 directory assistance. :) Dave Internet: mtv@milton.u.washington.edu * UUNET: ...uunet!uw-beaver!u!mtv [Moderator's Note: Did you think it was funny at the time? Do you still think it is funny? PAT]
bakerj@ncar.ucar.edu (Jon Baker) (09/19/90)
> [Moderator's Note: The fact that some employees of AT&T in the past > acted like jerks is not a sufficient reason to have broken them up, > that's for sure. PAT] Sure it is. Such behavior is the lowest-level manifestation of what 'the company' had become. Directly or indirectly, this activity was representative of the company's attitude and philosophy - the overall AT&T gestalt, if you will. [Moderator's Note: Then we disagree on the extent of the 'jerk-ism', and its prevalence in the old Bell System. My experience was that the fools there were only a very small percentage of the total work force. Most of the people were hard workers, dedicated to the welfare of the customers. As my former neighbor here in Rogers Park, Charlie Brown, former Chairman of AT&T, once said, (speaking of MCI) "When's the last time *they* had a couple of their men working working in the mountains of Montana in January accidentally fall off a cliff and kill themselves in the line of duty while trying to restore phone service to a community which had lost all its links in a severe storm the day before?" And *that* to me is what the old Bell System was about: people who cared, and got the job done right. PAT]
dricejb@husc6.harvard.edu> (09/22/90)
In article <12329@accuvax.nwu.edu> asuvax!mothra!bakerj@ncar.ucar.edu (Jon Baker) writes: >> [Moderator's Note: The fact that some employees of AT&T in the past >> acted like jerks is not a sufficient reason to have broken them up, >> that's for sure. PAT] >Sure it is. Such behavior is the lowest-level manifestation of what >'the company' had become. Directly or indirectly, this activity was >representative of the company's attitude and philosophy - the overall >AT&T gestalt, if you will. >[Moderator's Note: Then we disagree on the extent of the 'jerk-ism', >and its prevalence in the old Bell System. My experience was that the >fools there were only a very small percentage of the total work force. >Most of the people were hard workers, dedicated to the welfare of the >customers. I agree that really serious forms of jerk-ism, like breaking into people's calls from the frame, was uncommon before, and is probably uncommon today. I suspect that milder forms of jerk-ism, like listening to those calls, was as common as idle time in the frame. The breakup seems to have reduced that idle time, judging from telco employment statistics. Electronic exchanges have also contributed to this -- by eliminating most needs for monitoring personnel, less people are standing around the frame, busy or not. Pre-breakup telco personnel were dedicated professionals, at least when they weren't on strike. But there probably were too many of them, and the subset of them who worked in the business office all too often were not interested in serving the customer, but rather the company. About the breakup, I don't think it was morally necessary. I do think that it was necessary to remove all monopolies, local and long-distance. (The fact that the local monopolies have not been eliminated does not change my opinion.) I also think that given the political clout of the higher echelons of AT&T, something like the breakup would have been necessary to get through to them that things were supposed to change. Craig Jackson dricejb@drilex.dri.mgh.com {bbn,axiom,redsox,atexnet,ka3ovk}!drilex!{dricej,dricejb}