FBI Illegally Tapped Phone Phreaks In 1969

xmedar writes "In his talks about the history of Apple, Woz has often recounted how the 1971 Esquire article 'Secrets of the Little Blue Box' set him on the road to phone phreaking. Now someone has obtained the FBI file of one of the phreaks, Joe Engressia (who later changed his name to Joybubbles), via Freedom of Information requests. The file reveals that Engressia was illegally wiretapped by the FBI and the phone company back in 1969. J. Edgar Hoover considered the blind college student a national security risk and wrote a memo about him to John Ehrlichman."

Incoming republicans

Claiming that illegal wiretapping must not be that bad if we've had it for 40 years without knowing.

Re:Incoming republicans

The difference is that under the USA PATRIOT act, this could have been done legally, despite still being immoral and pointless.

illegal acts to find illegal acts?

Did anyone expect otherwise from the Nixon Administration? :)

Funny... "illegal wiretapping" of an illegal activity on the phone wires. There's an irony in here somewhere.

Re:Incoming republicans

Just because Bush is worse than Nixon doesn't mean Nixon wasn't really bad. He was.

Well...

Well I guess this proves it. Government's ideas of what is a "security risk" and illegal wiretapping happened before Bush.

Re:Well...

"But... but... all the other world leaders are doing in!"
"If all the other world leaders jumped of a cliff, would you?"
/sulk

My Reply:

Hopefully, yes.

Re:My Reply:

If I was Control, you'd have jumped off the cliff.
If you were Control, you'd have jumped off the cliff.
Neither of us have jumped off the cliff, so obviously I'm not Control.

Re:Well...

This just in, governments afraid of people thinking outside of the box and applying this to means the government does not approve. Film at 11.

It's hardly news that governments, no matter of what time and day, are mostly absorbed with the will to retain power and don't really enjoy giving away any to its subjects. That's why most governments are actually so keen on retaining the "power monopoly", i.e. being the only ones able to tell what's "right" or "wrong". That's the business they're in.

Re:Well...

The reasons for the fall of the GDR (and the east bloc in general) are many. Most of them having to do with the "west" being there. First of all, they couldn't keep up with the arms race. Basically, the arms race between east and west was an economy war. Who could waste more resources on weapons that weren't meant to be used?

And second, the people in the GDR had a prime example of a better world. They could see that their peers in the west were better off, driving better cars, living better lives and generally have it better than they do. Such a display of a preferable way of living does make people unhappy.

We lack such a "better" country today. We don't have a Federal Republic of Germany to compare ourselves too and see first of all how inapt our governments are and second, that there is a better way to live.

That's sorely lacking.

Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

The law works like this: If YOU break it, you BROKE it. If EVERYONE breaks it, it is BROKEN. If the GOVERNMENT breaks it, the government is BROKEN.

Just because the law has been broken for a long time does not mean it should be ignored now. Fix the government..

Start with voting against every single incumbent - except for the libertarian-leaning and third-party outsiders..

Re:Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

Screw that, voting probably won't help.* Do what I'm doing:

I never got around to finishing my bachelor's because, frankly, I was too busy working. Now I'm doing it. And once that's done, I'm going to law school. Once I have a few years of experience with the law, I'm running for office, and I'm going to do everything I can to fix what's wrong with our government.

If every decent, respectable, person on Slashdot did the same thing, we could make some real changes in this country.

*I say this because we're not guaranteed of getting the right kind of people in office, unless we are those people. Don't wait for someone to fix all the problems we have, start being a part of the solution.

Re:Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

Decent, respectable people on Slashdot?

You're new here, aren't you?

Re:Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

I never got around to finishing my bachelor's because, frankly, I was too busy working. Now I'm doing it. And once that's done, I'm going to law school. Once I have a few years of experience with the law, I'm running for office, and I'm going to do everything I can to fix what's wrong with our government.

Many politicians start off with the same idealism like you are describing. Chances are that when you reach your goal, you will have been robbed of it. It's naive to think that you can stay true to your ideas and still become successful (i.e. appear appealing to as many voters as possible).

Re:Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

The problem with government and large government is that it tends to feed itself upon the hard work of the populace, while not actually doing anything, claiming all the "good stuff" (we created 100k jobs last year ....) while denying any of the bad stuff.

Hence the "Crisis" crisis (tm). Everything is a "crisis".

Health Care ... CRISIS!
Environment ... CRISIS!
Energy/Oil ... CRISIS!
Republicans ... CRISIS!
Democrats ... CRISIS!
Terroism ... CRISIS!
Drugs ... CRISIS!
Immigration ... CRISIS!

Do I need to go on??? Every Crisis listed above (and all the others) somehow cry for government involvement as if government has solved any crisis.

And all the reasonable solutions tend to be dismissed by those who are crying CRISIS!!!!! at every turn.

The problem is, they don't have any good solutions besides "more government". More rules, More laws, more policy!

NO MORE! All the rules and laws haven't solved a single problem, and many have caused more problems than they solved.

Government is not the solution, it is the problem. Man barely (if at all) is able to rule himself, what make you think that some other man can rule you better than yourself????

Re:Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

You're absolutely right, every solution that our politicians are offering is just "more government", even though it's never been shown to solve anything.

I was listening to some idiot on talk radio tonight, talking about how passing more laws would stop illegal aliens from coming into the country (never mind that they're already breaking one immigration law, why not two?) He seemed to think that requiring even more paperwork and proof of citizenship from new employees would accomplish something. I was struck by how far this country has come, when the concept of requiring huge amounts of papers to prove you have the right to a job is now a respectable enough position for people not to be shouted down over it instantly. Who in their right minds thinks that requiring (people claiming to be) citizens to produce evidence of their citizenship just to earn a living is a good thing?

People need to stop thinking government has the answers. It barely even understands what the questions are.

Re:Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

You're absolutely right, every solution that our politicians are offering is just "more government", even though it's never been shown to solve anything.

An election is a job interview. When you elect a lawmaker, you are picking somebody for the profession of making laws. Naturally, if a person is good at that profession, he will make as many laws as possible. Every two, four, or six years, he has to re-interview for his job, so he wants to be able to get in front of people and explain what a good job he did making laws.

Lawmakers offer "more government" because a careful (s)election process proved that the majority of people thought that person actually would be good at making more government. It's the whole point.

Of course, if I ever run for office, I'll pledge to be incompetant at the job.

Re:Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

a) get a group of people who regularly go through the laws and remove the crap.
b) have most of your laws expire after a certain time unless manually renewed - the lifespan is linked to how many legislators required to pass that sort of law.
c) all of the above.

Re:Doesn't mean it should be fixed..

Also true to a point.

I usually point the blame at the media. Basically what I call the "cult of the loser" that's running rampart.

The examples are manifold. Let's start with afternoon talk shows. What do you get to see? Some washouts who sit there, telling you that they've been unemployed for years, living off wellfare and that it's all a great party. Message: Being unemployed and mooching off society isn't something to be ashamed of, it makes you a TV star.

Then we switch over to court TV. Here again, petty cases that are little more than neighborhood bickering. Message: Be a jerk and sue without any reason, and you are a celebrity.

We switch over to early evening shows and watch The Simpsons (as much as I love them, they broadcast the same message). A total and complete loser in a dead end job experiencing the most interesting adventures, simply by being a loudmouth and constant nuisance, his son being an elementary school soon-to-be-dropout and quite "successful" with his peers while Lisa, the brain in the family, usually gets the short end of the stick. Message: Be dumb and loud and you're successful in life.

Works just as well for everything else, from King of Queens to Home Improvement.

And finally the day culminates in American Idol, the show where it is carried to the extreme. Be loud, be a complete washout, have the intelligence of a doorknob and be a freak, as long as you can look cute and sing halfway decently (the latter is optional), you can become a huge teenage hero!

Do you need anything more?

People believe what they see on TV. They idolize the people they see there and they learn from them. Especially when it's "real" people (like in the first mentioned afternoon "reality" shows). They may not be heros, but they show you that it's ok to be a slob, that it's no shame to mooch off the rest of the country, that it's acceptable to be a nuisance to everyone around.

And far too often the message that sticks is: Why not be an annoying, mooching slob yourself, "everyone" does it.

That's ok

The phreaks illegally tapped the FBI at the same time!

Re:That's ok

I still love Rutger Hauer's quote in Blade Runner "Aren't you supposed to be the good guy?" It applies more and more to the behaviour of Western Governments these days. (Yes I know a lot of the other's are misbehaving, but that doesn't mean they should become the norm that we strive for.)

If it CAN be done, it WILL be done

If it CAN be done, it WILL be done. Back then "being paranoid" was standard for Phreaks and considered a good thing. Honestly, I think that things are FAR WORSE now, then under Nixon. If they want to get your for something, they will. We've had enough examples of "the law be damned" over the past dozen years or so that it should be clear to all. The things that you have to fear are getting caught up in the "justice system" at all. You'll be facing incompetent, sometimes evil, always political and usually aggressive investigators, lawyers and judges. Anybody who's ever done work with or for an attorney knows that they are the most technophobic people you'll ever meet, and while this can work in your favor, most often it doesn't. This won't get fixed because they don't recognize a problem. Be very afraid!

Joe was amazing!

Though I never met him personally, I know that he had perfect pitch. In other words his ears WERE a frequency counter! Rumor was that he could whistle MF tones-he didn't need the blue box that the rest of us used.

My BB was made with 555 timers in a calculator box and keypad bought from Poly Paks (anyone remember them?). I used a simple 1N914 diode matrix on the back of the keypad (with all its traces hacked away so it was just a bunch of SPST pushbuttons) to apply power to the different 555's configured as astables. For example, pushing the #1 powered on the 700 and 900 Hz oscillators, etc. The astables were all summed by a 741 opamp and then fed an old telco earpiece with the clipping diode across the back removed. Though everything was square waves, the switching equipment didn't seem to care at all and the box worked GREAT! I'd simply acoustically couple it to a handset mouthpiece and call anywhere I wanted.

The display on the unit lit up: 'FUCH BELL' when the CE keypad button was pressed. I couldn't make a K with an 8 segment display :)

I came very close to being busted-a NET security person came to my apt. about 3 months after I left school. Apparently they had a pen tracer on our dorm telephone there and heard my name mentioned. I called his bluff by confronting him ("How did you HEAR my name if all you had a court order to do was use a pen tracer?") and he went away. That day I stopped MFing.

I never met Woz-though we had some common friends. John Draper (AKA: Captain Crunch-called that because he discovered that a small whistle that came with in some Captain Crunch cereal boxes whistled 2600 hz-the main frequency that the entire tandem long distance system ran on) did come to visit me for a few days-he was ok but socially inept. If they illegally wiretapped Joe, then I'd be sure there's also an illegal file on John D. as well-he was HUGE in the phreaking scene at the time.

Ahh, the good old days-today it's too not worth phreaking because VOIP and other technologies make things so cheap that it's not worth the risk any more.

Re:If you are illegally hacking phone systems

You don't really have much of a leg to stand on.

That level of ignorance is dangerous. In short, two wrongs don't make a right. If he was breaking the law, there is a procedure in place to deal with it. Investigate, go to a judge and get a warrant, go to a grand jury and indict. It was wrong then, and it's wrong now.

As soon as they make "dangerous thoughts" illegal, some asshole will be saying the same thing about you when they are violating your rights.

LK

Re:If you are illegally hacking phone systems

Not to mention that flagrant law breaking by law enforcement agencies may allow the bad guys to walk free. There's a fascinating documentary about the Weather Underground [wikipedia.org] wherein it is stated that many of the members got off simply with fines because the FBI routinely went way across the line in conducting their investigations. These were terrorists essentially, with a penchant for bombing public buildings.