101 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
101 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
from Peninsula Times Tribune Saturday Juanuary 25, 1986
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>-= 'Phone Phreak' Eyes Computers =-<
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By John Raess
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If historians should ever trace the history of electronic outlawry jown as
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computer hacking, they probably will draw a line under the name of John T.
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Draper. Also known as "Cap'n Crunch" the 42-year-old draper was a leagandary
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figure in the electronics subculrture of Silicon Valley before it became famous.
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He also had a small following amound the security people at the Pacific
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Telephone Co., but they weren't admirers. For a handful of years in the late
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1960's and 70's Draper scampered through the telephone system like a rat in a
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garbage bin. Akthought not the first he was argubuly the most famous user - the
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phone company would say abuser - of el ectronic devices that tricked telephones
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into giving him free calls. His notoriety, curiousity and a notable laxity
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concerning communications law got him three criminal convictions for mousing
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around in the telephone system.
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The past 15 years have seen Draper move from electronics engineer to disc
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jokey to counterculture telephone guerrilla to federal prisoner to computer
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programmer. Once again he is at the cutting edge of homegrown electronics
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society, legitmately this time, writing computer programs in his cluttered
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one-bedroom apartment.
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Fifteen years ago Draper was a disc jockey and an engineer at a Cupertine
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radio station. Then he got the call that changed his life. It was from a blind
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San Jose teen-ager who began telling him about flukes in the telephone system.
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"Phone freaks," as they called themselvces could take advantage of certain
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toll-free numbers and open conference curcuits. It wasn't too much later that
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Draper earned his nickname.
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He discovered that a free whistle in boxes of Cp'n Crunch cereal could
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approxmiate the pitch of code tones for the telephone. Blow the right tones,
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and phone calls were free. One thing led to another and Draper soon was making
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"blue boxes," elecronic gadgets that could fool telephones out of free calls.
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[the press sure does have a lot to learn about Blue Boxes! -ed]
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Living in Mountain View and working as a disc jockey at the time Draper said
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he was one of a small handful of electronics hobbeyists who viewed the telephone
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systems as a vast, uncharted wilderness.
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"I treated it as a system I was mapping and exploring, and any calls I made
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personally, I paid for. But any calls I made while phone freaking, that was
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part of the hacking, that was different," Draper said recently.
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Phone Company officials failed to see the distinction. Draper was arrested
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and convicted in 1972 of violations of ferderal communications law and placed on
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probation. He was not the first phone phreaker to get arrested but probably the
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most celebrated. At the time, it was an attractive image: a b rillian 1960's
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anti-hero fighting a gigantic and pervasive bureaucracy. In 1976 he was
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conviceted again of a similair offense and this time he was sent to jail for
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four months.
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He said it was the hard stance taken by telephone comapny officials and
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prosecutors that took telephone tinkering out of its circle of faddists and made
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it and underground hit with the criminal set.
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"They should have patched up the (telephone) system, instead of making an
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example of me," he said, "waht eyh didn't count on was that by birtue of putting
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me in jail, they made thousands of Cap'n Crunches all over the world.
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"Once I got in I started telling everybody in jail what I knew. And those
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were the people who were really, really intersted in making free callss.
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"Because of that, it increased phone freaking by a magnitude of 100. No
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longer did you have a select few doing it. You had all these Mafia people
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setting up massive rip-offs."
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Once out of jail his fascination with the phone system continued. Fascination
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later became obseession and led to his third and final arrest. Sometimes in the
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mid-1970's Draper said, he became aware of a secret telephone circuit, one with
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sinister implications. [getting good, huh?] Other phone phreakers demonstrated
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to him that they could tap in - un detected - on any telephone conversation they
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wanted, he said.
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He said, "you could be anywhere in the world and listen to any conversation
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anywhere."
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"It was ued on me and it was demonstrated to me. I spent the next two years
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seartching for it. I was obsessed with trying to find it."
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The search got him his third conviction, for which he sepent four months in a
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Pennsylvania jail [hint! -ed.]
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It also earned him a three-day visit to testify before a federal grand jury in
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Des Moines, Iowa in 1979 [hint #2 - ed.]
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They asked me questions about (the secret circuit's) existence. Do I think it
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existed? Yes. I don't know if it still exists," he said.
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The investigation went to further than the federal grand jury(!).
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Roxanne Conlin, former U.S. attorney and now in private practice said no
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indictments arose from the investigation of the mysterious telephone circuit.
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But the grand jury emembers were charmed by Draper who gave the impression of a
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likeable but "erratic genius."
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[the article goes on about his currect suit against the company that published
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one of his programs.]
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