ome just companies amid other companies.
But this never happened.   Instead,  AT&T and the ъBOCS
("the Baby Bells")  feel themselves wrenched from side to
side by state regulators, by Congress, by the FCC,  and
especially by the federal court of Judge Harold Greene,
the magistrate who ordered the Bell breakup and who has
been the de facto czar of American telecommunications
ever since 1983.

     Bell people feel that they exist in a kind of paralegal
limbo today.   They don't understand what's demanded of
them.   If it's "service," why aren't they treated like a
public
service?  And if it's money, then why aren't they free to
compete for it?  No one seems to know, really.   Those who
claim to know  keep changing their minds.  Nobody in
authority seems willing to grasp the nettle for once and
all.

     Telephone people from other countries are amazed
by the American telephone system today.  Not that it
works so well; for nowadays even the French telephone
system works, more or less.  They are amazed that the
American telephone system *still*  works *at all,* under
these strange conditions.

     Bell's  "One System" of long-distance service is now
only about eighty percent of a system, with the remainder
held by Sprint, MCI, and the midget long-distance
companies.   Ugly wars over dubious corporate practices
such as "slamming" (an underhanded method of snitching
clients from rivals) break out with some regularity in the
realm of long-distance service.  The battle to break Bell's
long-distance monopoly was long and ugly, and since the
breakup the battlefield has not become much prettier.
AT&T's famous shame-and-blame advertisements, which
emphasized the shoddy work and purported ethical
shadiness of their competitors,  were much remarked on
for their studied psychological cruelty.

     There is much bad blood in this industry, and much
long-treasured resentment.  AT&T's post-breakup
corporate logo, a striped sphere, is known in the industry
as the "Death Star"  (a reference from the movie *Star
Wars,* in which the "Death Star" was the spherical  high-
tech fortress of the harsh-breathing  imperial ultra-baddie,
Darth Vader.)   Even AT&T employees are less than
thrilled by the Death Star.   A popular (though banned) T-
shirt among AT&T employees bears the old-fashioned
Bell logo of the Bell System, plus the newfangled striped
sphere, with the before-and-after comments:  "This is your
brain -- This is your brain on drugs!"   AT&T made a very
well-financed and determined effort to break into the
personal computer market;  it was disastrous, and telco
computer experts are derisively known by their
competitors as "the pole-climbers."  AT&T and the Baby
Bell arbocks still seem to have few friends.

     Under conditions of sharp commercial competition, a
crash like that of January 15, 1990 was a major
embarrassment to AT&T.  It was a direct blow against their
much-treasured reputation for reliability.   Within days of
the crash AT&T's Chief Executive Officer, Bob Allen,
officially apologized, in terms of deeply pained  humility:

     "AT&T had a major service disruption last Monday.
We didn't live up to our own standards of quality, and we
didn't live up to yours. It's as simple as that.  And that's
not
acceptable to us.  Or to you.... We understand how much
people have come to depend upon AT&T service, so our
AT&T Bell Laboratories scientists and our network
engineers are doing everything possible to guard against a
recurrence.... We know there's no way to make up for the
inconvenience this problem may have caused you."

     Mr Allen's "open letter to customers" was printed in
lavish ads all over the country:  in the *Wall Street
Journal,*  *USA Today,*  *New York Times,*
*Los Angeles Times,*  *Chicago Tribune,* *Philadelphia
Inquirer,*  *San Francisco Chronicle Examiner,* *Boston
Globe,*  *Dallas Morning News,* *Detroit Free Press,*
*Washington Post,* *Houston Chronicle,* *Cleveland
Plain Dealer,* *Atlanta Journal Constitution,*
*Minneapolis Star Tribune,* *St. Paul Pioneer Press
Dispatch,*  *Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer,*
*Tacoma News Tribune,* *Miami Herald,* *Pittsburgh
Press,*  *St. Louis Post Dispatch,* *Denver Post,* *Phoenix
ъepublic Gazette* and *Tampa Tribune.*

     In another press release, AT&T went to some pains to
suggest that this "software glitch" *might* have happened
just as easily to MCI, although, in fact, it hadn't.  (MCI's
switching software was quite different from AT&T's --
though not necessarily any safer.)   AT&T also announced
their plans to offer a rebate of service on Valentine's Day
to make up for the loss during the Crash.

     "Every technical resource available, including Bell
Labs scientists and engineers, has been devoted to
assuring it will not occur again," the public was told.
They
were further assured that "The chances of a recurrence
are small--a problem of this magnitude never occurred
before."

     In the meantime, however, police and corporate
security maintained their own suspicions about "the
chances of recurrence" and the real reason why a
"problem of this magnitude" had appeared, seemingly out
of nowhere.   Police and security knew for a fact that
hackers of unprecedented sophistication were illegally
entering, and reprogramming, certain digital switching
stations.  ъumors of hidden "viruses" and secret "logic
bombs" in the switches ran rampant in the underground,
with much chortling over AT&T's predicament, and idle
speculation over what unsung hacker genius was
responsible for it.  Some hackers, including police
informants, were trying hard to finger one another as the
true culprits  of the Crash.

     Telco people found little comfort in objectivity when
they contemplated these possibilities.   It was just too
close
to the bone for them; it was embarrassing; it hurt so much,
it was hard even to talk about.

     There has always been thieving and misbehavior in
the phone system.  There has always been trouble with the
rival independents, and in the local loops.  But to have
such trouble in the core of the system, the long-distance
switching stations, is a horrifying affair.   To telco
people,
this is all the difference between finding roaches in your
kitchen and big horrid sewer-rats in your bedroom.

     From the outside, to the average citizen, the telcos
still seem gigantic and impersonal.  The American public
seems to regard them as something akin to Soviet
apparats.  Even when the telcos  do their best corporate-
citizen routine,  subsidizing magnet high-schools and
sponsoring news-shows on public television, they seem to
win little except public suspicion.

     But from the inside, all this looks very different.
There's harsh competition.  A legal and political system
that seems baffled  and bored, when not actively hostile to
telco interests.  There's a loss of morale, a deep sensation
of having somehow lost the upper hand.  Technological
change has caused a loss of data and revenue to other,
newer forms of transmission.   There's theft, and new
forms of theft, of growing scale and boldness and
sophistication.  With all these factors, it was no surprise
to
see the telcos, large and small, break out in a litany of
bitter complaint.

     In late '88 and throughout 1989, telco representatives
grew shrill in their complaints to those few American law
enforcement officials who make it their business to try to
understand what telephone people are talking about.
Telco security officials had discovered the computer-
hacker underground, infiltrated it thoroughly, and
become deeply alarmed at its growing expertise.  Here
they had found a target that was not only loathsome on its
face, but clearly ripe for counterattack.

      Those bitter rivals: AT&T, MCI and Sprint -- and a
crowd of Baby Bells:  PacBell, Bell South, Southwestern
Bell, NYNEX, USWest, as well as the Bell research
consortium Bellcore, and the independent long-distance
carrier  Mid-American  -- all were to have their role in the
great hacker dragnet of 1990.   After years of being
battered and pushed around, the telcos had, at least in a
small way, seized the initiative again.  After years of
turmoil, telcos and government officials were once again
to work smoothly in concert in defense of the System.
Optimism blossomed; enthusiasm grew on all sides; the
prospective taste of vengeance was sweet.

                         #

     From the beginning -- even before the crackdown
had a name -- secrecy was a big problem.  There were
many good reasons for secrecy in the hacker crackdown.
Hackers and code-thieves were wily prey, slinking back to
their bedrooms and basements and destroying vital
incriminating evidence at the first hint of trouble.
Furthermore, the crimes themselves were heavily
technical and difficult to describe, even to police -- much
less to the general public.

      When such crimes *had* been described intelligibly
to the public, in the past, that very publicity had tended
to
*increase* the crimes enormously.   Telco officials, while
painfully aware of the vulnerabilities of their systems,
were
anxious not to publicize those weaknesses.   Experience
showed them that those weaknesses, once discovered,
would be pitilessly exploited by tens of thousands of
people -- not only by professional grifters and by
underground hackers and phone phreaks, but by many
otherwise more-or-less honest everyday folks, who
regarded stealing service from the faceless, soulless
"Phone Company" as a kind of harmless indoor sport.
When it came to protecting their interests, telcos had long
since given up on general public sympathy for "the Voice
with a Smile."  Nowadays the telco's "Voice" was very likely
to be a computer's; and the American public showed
much less of the proper respect and gratitude due the fine
public service bequeathed them by Dr. Bell and Mr. Vail.
The more efficient, high-tech, computerized, and
impersonal the telcos became, it seemed, the more they
were met by sullen public resentment and amoral greed.

     Telco officials wanted to punish the phone-phreak
underground,  in as public and exemplary a manner as
possible.  They wanted to make dire examples of the worst
offenders, to seize the ringleaders and intimidate the
small fry, to discourage and frighten the wacky hobbyists,
and send the professional grifters to jail.  To do all this,
publicity was vital.

     Yet operational secrecy was even more so.  If word got
out that a nationwide crackdown was coming, the hackers
might simply vanish; destroy the evidence, hide their
computers, go to earth, and wait for the campaign to blow
over.  Even the young  hackers were crafty and suspicious,
and as for the professional grifters, they tended to split
for
the nearest state-line at the first sign of trouble.  For
the
crackdown to work well, they would all have to be caught
red-handed, swept upon suddenly, out of the blue, from
every corner of the compass.

     And there was another strong motive for secrecy.  In
the worst-case scenario, a blown campaign might leave
the telcos open to a devastating hacker counter-attack.   If
there were indeed hackers loose in America  who had
caused the January 15 Crash -- if there were truly gifted
hackers, loose in the nation's long-distance switching
systems, and enraged or frightened by the crackdown --
then they might react unpredictably to an attempt to
collar them.   Even if caught, they might have talented and
vengeful friends still running around loose.   Conceivably,
it could turn ugly.  Very ugly.  In fact, it was hard to
imagine just how ugly things might turn, given that
possibility.

     Counter-attack from hackers was a genuine concern
for the telcos.  In point of fact, they would never suffer
any
such counter-attack.  But in months to come, they would
be at some pains to publicize this notion and to utter grim
warnings about it.

     Still, that risk seemed well worth running.  Better to
run the risk of vengeful attacks, than to live at the mercy
of
potential crashers.  Any cop would tell you that a
protection racket had no real future.

      And publicity was such a useful thing.   Corporate
security officers, including telco security,  generally work
under conditions of great discretion.  And corporate
security officials do not make money for their companies.
Their job is to *prevent the loss* of money, which is much
less glamorous than actually winning profits.

     If you are a corporate security official, and you do
your job brilliantly, then nothing bad happens to your
company at all.  Because of this, you appear completely
superfluous.   This is one of the many unattractive aspects
of security work.   It's rare that these folks have the
chance
to draw some healthy attention to their own efforts.

     Publicity also served the interest of their friends in
law enforcement.  Public officials, including law
enforcement officials,  thrive by attracting favorable
public interest.  A brilliant prosecution in a matter of
vital
public interest  can make the career of a prosecuting
attorney.  And for a police officer, good publicity opens
the
purses of the legislature; it may bring a citation, or a
promotion, or at least a rise in status and the respect of
one's peers.

     But to have both publicity and secrecy is to have
one's cake and eat it too.  In months to come, as we will
show, this impossible act was to cause great pain to the
agents of the crackdown.  But early on, it seemed possible
-- maybe even likely -- that the crackdown could
successfully combine the best of both worlds.   The
*arrest* of hackers would be heavily publicized.  The
actual *deeds* of the hackers, which were technically hard
to explain and also a security risk, would be left decently
obscured.   The *threat* hackers posed would be heavily
trumpeted; the likelihood of their actually committing
such fearsome crimes would be left to the public's
imagination.  The spread of the computer underground,
and its growing technical sophistication, would be heavily
promoted;  the actual hackers themselves, mostly
bespectacled middle-class white suburban teenagers,
would be denied any personal publicity.

     It does not seem to have occurred to any telco official
that the hackers accused would demand a day in court;
that journalists would smile upon the hackers as "good
copy;"  that wealthy high-tech entrepreneurs would offer
moral and financial support to crackdown victims; that
constitutional lawyers would show up with briefcases,
frowning mightily.   This possibility does not seem to have
ever entered the game-plan.

     And even if it had, it probably would not have slowed
the ferocious pursuit of a stolen phone-company
document, mellifluously known as "Control Office
Administration of Enhanced 911 Services for Special
Services and Major Account Centers."

     In the chapters to follow, we will explore the worlds
of
police and the computer underground, and the large
shadowy area where they overlap.   But first, we must
explore the battleground.  Before we leave the world of the
telcos, we must understand what a switching system
actually is and how your telephone actually works.

                         #

     To the average citizen, the idea of the telephone is
represented by, well,  a *telephone:*  a device that you
talk
into.  To a telco professional, however, the telephone
itself
is known, in lordly fashion, as a "subset."   The "subset"
in
your house is a mere adjunct, a distant nerve ending, of
the central switching stations, which are ranked in levels
of
heirarchy, up to the  long-distance electronic switching
stations, which are some of the largest computers on
earth.

     Let us imagine that it is, say, 1925,  before the
introduction of computers, when the phone system was
simpler and somewhat easier to grasp.   Let's further
imagine that you are Miss Leticia Luthor, a fictional
operator for Ma Bell in New York City of the 20s.

     Basically, you, Miss Luthor, *are* the "switching
system."  You are sitting in front of a large vertical
switchboard, known as a "cordboard," made of shiny
wooden panels, with ten thousand metal-rimmed holes
punched in them, known as jacks.  The engineers would
have put more holes into your switchboard, but ten
thousand is as many as you can reach without actually
having to get up out of your chair.

      Each of these ten thousand holes has its own little
electric lightbulb, known as a "lamp," and its own neatly
printed number code.

      With the ease of long habit, you are scanning your
board for lit-up bulbs.  This is what you do most of the
time, so you are used to it.

       A lamp lights up.  This means that the phone at the
end of that line has been taken off the hook.   Whenever a
handset is taken off the hook, that closes a circuit inside
the phone which then signals the local office, i.e. you,
automatically.  There might be somebody calling, or then
again the phone might be simply off the hook, but this
does not matter to you yet.  The first thing you do, is
record
that number in your logbook, in your fine American
public-school handwriting.   This comes first, naturally,
since it is done for billing purposes.

     You now take the plug of your answering cord, which
goes directly to your headset, and plug it into the lit-up
hole.  "Operator," you announce.

     In operator's classes, before taking this job, you have
been issued a large pamphlet full of canned operator's
responses for all kinds of contingencies, which you had to
memorize.  You have also been trained in a proper non-
regional, non-ethnic pronunciation and tone of voice.  You
rarely  have the occasion to make any spontaneous
remark to a customer, and in fact this is frowned upon
(except out on the rural lines where people  have time on
their hands and get up to all kinds of mischief).

     A tough-sounding user's voice at the end of the line
gives you a number.  Immediately, you write that number
down in your logbook, next to the caller's number, which
you just wrote earlier.  You then look and see if the
number this guy wants is in fact on your switchboard,
which it generally is, since it's generally a local call.
Long
distance costs so much that people use it sparingly.

     Only then do you pick up a calling-cord from a shelf
at the base of the switchboard.  This is a long elastic cord
mounted on a kind of reel so that it will zip back in when
you unplug it.  There are a lot of cords down there, and
when a bunch of them are out at once they look like a nest
of snakes.  Some of the girls think there are bugs living in
those cable-holes.  They're called "cable mites" and are
supposed to bite your hands and give you rashes.  You
don't believe this, yourself.

     Gripping the head of your calling-cord, you slip the
tip of it deftly into the sleeve of the jack for the called
person.  Not all the way in, though.  You just touch it.  If
you hear a clicking sound, that means the line is busy and
you can't put the call through.  If the line is busy, you
have
to stick the calling-cord into a "busy-tone jack," which
will
give the guy a busy-tone.  This way you don't have to talk
to
him yourself and absorb his natural human frustration.

     But the line isn't busy.  So you pop the cord all the
way in.   ъelay circuits in your board make the distant
phone ring, and if somebody picks it up off the hook, then
a phone conversation starts.   You can hear this
conversation on your answering cord, until you unplug it.
In fact you could listen to the whole conversation if y