First Bay Area arrest for blue boxing
Sometime around spring in 1971, one of Dennie's sighted friends called me up and
said "Read the San Jose Mercury". In there was a news article about this
dude that was selling blue boxes to organized crime members. I was appalled that
someone would leave so many traces. We learned they were using long distance information
numbers to blue box from. Argggh!!! Every self respecting phone freak knows that
information numbers didn't "Sup" (Supervise - IE: go off hook). Back then,
555 - 1212 numbers were free. When an information operator answered, the off-hook
signal would NOT get passed back, thus the billing equipment wouldn't register as
a charged call.
When the information number is used with a blue box, which "Diverted" the
call, that nasty off-hook would "register". This immediately registered
as a bogus call, and the billing computer printed out this anomaly.
It didn't take Ma bell security long to figure out what was going on, so they tapped
the line because the false registering of completed information calls was ruled as
"just cause" for a wiretap.
This person's arrest caused an uproar among the blind phreaks who attempted and succeeded
in contacting this individual who independently discovered this fluke but didn't
know how to recognize the Sup condition (Which was hard to do).
This person, as revenge against the phone company, contacted an independent writer
Ron Rosenbaum who wrote a very controversial article for the October
1971 issue of Esquire called "The Secret of the little blue box",
and blew the lid off of ATT's "Secret", which was actually blatantly printed
in the Bell System Technical Journal". In fact, an old ATT TV commercial was
made that bragged about how fast "Multi-frequency" technology can switch
calls, and how these lines were used for BOTH signaling and voice. This dude discovered
accidentally how to clear a line using 2600 and put two and two together. He didn't
understand supervisory signals or other internal codes. Thus, a very revealing article
about the secret internal workings of Ma Bell was available for everyone to see.
At first, lots of college students figured this out, as they had direct access to
the Technical Journals. Then, as more and more people got busted, more and more figured
it out.