💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~solderpunk › phlog › on-phones-and-phreaks.txt captured on 2022-07-16 at 15:59:53.
⬅️ Previous capture (2020-09-24)
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On phones and phreaks --------------------- The other day I tuned into Anonradio at a time when there was nothing on the schedule. To my surprise I started hearing a very technical (and ridiculously nerdy) discussion on the small sounds that different kinds of telephone exchanges make when long distance calls are placed through them. The presenter had a very professional radio voice, too, and I suspect this was enough of a clue for SDF user Cat to let me know it was probably something by "Evan Doorbell". Indeed it was, and it turns out the guy has a whole series of podcasts entitled "How I became a phone phreak" that you can listen to on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/evan-doorbell, for as long as SoundCloud still exists). Its tremendously interesting and well presented stuff, and I've been listening to it on and off for the last few days, as well as reading lots of Wikipedia articles about the PSTN (thanks to SDF user Tomasino for answering some of my questions on Mastodon!). I have been *aware* of the old phreaking culture for a very long time (in fact, at one point I wore a "Blue Box" tshirt from 2600 magazine, back when I thought they were cool), but never took part in it or really understood it. Possibly this was due in large part that I'm too young to have participated back when the scene was thriving. I'm young enough to have used landlines and payphones because there was no other option, and I even remember using a pulse dialing phone (and, later, disassembling our old pulse dial phone once we got a touch tone and hooking it up to a bulb out of an old flashlight, so the light would blink a number of times matching the digit you dialed, which at the time I thought was super cool), but in-band control of the telphone system, so that you could hear and record the exchanges communicating with one another, was totally dead in Australia by that time. I also could never shake the perception that, even though people talked about the thrill of "exploring the phone system", 90% of phreaking was about getting free phonecalls, or being able to play obnoxious pranks on people, or eavesdrop on people, or other stuff that teenage me was far too much of a square to want to have anything to do with. Even if that was true, though, after listening to Evan Doorbell's show and doing a lot of reading, I now actually *totally* understand how a person could genuinely be fascinated by exploring the phone system with no mallicious intent. I don't think that as a kid I appreciated the timeframe that a lot of this stuff was happening. The phreaks were doing their thing in the 60s and 70s. They didn't have home computers and they sure as hell didn't have the internet. The idea of a hierarchically structured network of electronic devices with international scope that you could operate from your home must have seemed pretty incredible to right kind of person, as the PSTN was the only thing like it that existed. It was the nearest thing to an internet before there was an internet, but it wasn't advertised as such and it took curiosity, persistence and ingenuity to figure out to correctly think of it and use it as such. It must have been really fascinating. I've been an ARPA member of SDF for a few months now, and must admit that when I signed up I had approximately zero interest in the VoIP functionality that this entitled me to. I'm starting to rethink this, especially after learning that SDF's VoIP system is hooked into something called C*NET, or The Telephone Collector's Network (https://www.ckts.info/), which, as I understand it, will let me use my internet connection to dial into all kinds of interesting obsolete phone hardware, including stuff which should make audible sounds as a side effect of doing what it does. Seems fun to play around with. Do any other SDF members make use of the VoIP functionality on a regular basis? Drop me an email if this is something you have interest in /experience with.