####################################### # # # Ma Bell # # # # From The Book # # Getting Even # # # # By George Hayduke # # # # Typed by Papa Smurf # # And The Atari Bandit # # # ####################################### The Ultimate Gay - The Jackal. Call him 415/386-4558 and see how faggy he is! Did you ever see those office signs that say, THINK? In one telephone company office I visited, I saw signs saying, SNEER. People have been messing with Ma Bell for as long as that corporate dictator has been monopolizing telephone serivce. For years stories have circulated about using strips of Scotch tape on coins, which allows their use again and again in pay phones. Do you know what a number-fourteen washer will accomplish in a pay pay phone? The Yippies and other groups have developed marvelously ingenoius ways of sabotaging telephone-company operations. Some of their literature is sheer technological genius, almost as if it were written by a Bell Laboratories dropout. I once spoke with a radical who had become a "mole", an agent of his political beliefs who secreted himself away in five years of deep cover working as a technician for Illinois Bell. His purpose was to learn about the technical side of the comapny so he could later control or destroy telephonic communication. Gordon Alexander presents an alternative manner, simple but novel in these complex days. A professional dirty trickster for more than twenty years, Alexander uses the dangerous but simple method of physically cutting phone lines. If you are looking for instructions on how to safely cut Ma Bell's lines here, forget it. Unless you know what you are doing and have the proper equipment you could easily light up like an insect hitting an electric buig trap. I said it was simple; I didn't say it was easy or safe. Lee Jenner, an accountant, suggests that you overpay your telephone bill if you're alienated from Ma Bell. He says, "Overpayby a constant 17 cents a month. Make it consistent. Then, after a few months, underpay by 17 cents. Start another pattern for a while of overpayment; then underpay again. It drives them nuts." Jenner continues, "The local Telephone company had screwed a client of mine and refused to even give him the time of the day. He started this 17-cent bit, and before the year was out he had the manager of the local company begging him to stop. It worked totally to his satisfaction." Meanwhile, on other battlefield fronts, Bell-hater Leo Garry says you should have your printer (No, NOT the one connected to the computer) make a bunch of OUT OF ORDER signs with the local Ma Bell's logo on them. Hang them on every publc telephone you find. Speaking of pay fones, only punks and idiots damage them. Much as you may hate them, they're the only game in town. If you've ever needed a payfone in an emergency, you know what I mean. You can play games with your local service representative (MaBelltalk for a salesperson) by ordering phones and equipment for marks or ordering service shutoffs. Always make these types of calls from a payphone, for obvious reasons. Bandit calling may have been developed by Yippees. Cerainly they are among its champions, both as practicioners and as cheerleaders. Aside from the blue boxes, which make free calls for you, there is a tactic that can be used by the nontechnical wizard and dosen't cost you anything. It's the use of the bogus credit-card numbers, and it works like this. (NOTE- This file is way out of date. We all know the Other method, don't we? AT&T credit card calling is VERY dangerous and I wouldn't advise it at all. -Papa Smurf) Always use a payfone and not always the same one. Next, you need a credit-card number. Here is where knowledge of Ma Bell's codes comes in. For that information check Overthrow, a tabloid published by the Youth International Party. A subscription costs you $10 a year, but each issue contains all sorts of other dirty tricks, as well as an updated listing on not only Ma Bell's codes, but also the complete credit-card numbers for many corporations, public utilities, and government agencies. To order a subscription, send $10 to Overthrow, P.O. box 392, Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y. 10013. It's a good investment, according to most readers. After you get the credit-card codes or numbers, the Yippees claim, the rest of the bandit calling is simple. You simply dial the long distance operator from your payfone and sound very, very businesslike when you say "This is a credit card call, and my number is . I want to call ." Be sure you can tell a suspicious operator the area code from which the card was supposedly issued. If the operator wants to know who holds the card, either make up a legitimate-sounding company name or use the name of the agency or company whose card number it really is, depending on the circumstance. It helps if your party at the other end of the call knows what's happening. Talk straight and businesslike for the first 5 minutes, as a snoopy operator-- that's the way Ma Bell trains them-- might stay on the line that long to listen in. Avoic sensitive subjects like your name, politics, drugs, or dirty tricks, since you never know who is recording calls these days. Break off the call within 12 minutes. Obvoiusly, your callee should act very dumb when Ma Bell's security people do come to investigate a month or so after the fraud is discovered. And don't let them intimidate you or your friends, either. They're good at that-- many of them are former federal or state police. One Bell employee told me that their security people utilize wrrantless wiretaps, blackmail, and physical surveillance to catch persons suspected of making bandit calls. The employee also told me these tactics are used against persons who even PUBLICIZE such practices. I consider myself warned. So should you. Ma Bell can be one nasty mother. By the time you read this, though, the game may be up. In Washington state, the Supreme Court there upheld the conviction of a newspaper for publishing the fone company's secret codes. The telephone company, which has both security and propaganda sections that rival the government's, was working furiously behind the scenes to influence the verdict. Abbie Hoffman (Author of TAP) suggested this next trick, so if it dosen't work, call him. Restrict Hoffman's idea to corporate, utility, or institutional telephone systems. Cut the female end off an ordinary extension cord. Unscrew the mouthpiece on the telephone in any office. You will see a terminal for a red wire and one for a black wire. Attach one of the wires from the extension cord tothe red and one to the black. Finally, plug the extension cord into a power socket. According to Hoffman, you are sending 120 volts of electricity back through equipment designed for 6 volts. He says this will knock out thousands of other telephones and the main switchboard, "if all goes right." Even if his numbers are somewhat exaggerated, you've had a good day.