Why Phones?
What made people into phone phreaks? What was their motivation for hacking the phone system, even when some of them faced harsh consequences?
One reason was simply to explore. The phone system was the only computer network accessible to most people in the 60s and 70s, and their hacker nature compelled its exploration. It was accessed using audio signals, so they could make their own equipment. It was shoddily protected, and when exploits were found, the providers often tried to guard it with legal threats, making it almost mandatory to look for further compromises.
Another reason was to steal service for whatever reason, of course, including getting free calls and creating community spaces for them to interact.
A further well-publicized reason was the justification of fighting The Man. There are always reasons to hate the phone company, of course, including civil liberty violations which continue today. The monopolistic nature of the providers in the 60s and 70s made it easy to regard the phone company as another tentacle of the government, and phreaking was considered part of the fight against the gears of the war machine, with phreaker groups organized as offshoots of the Yippies.
I have always considered phreaking to be similar to fare evasion on public transportation. When I was hopping turnstiles in Chicago as a youth, there was a push to make the CTA free as a social service, with claims that 90 percent of fare money collected being spent to handle the money itself. Planka, a modern-day group in Sweden an Norway, has a similar agenda. Members pay dues and commit to sneak on to public transportation whenever they can, and in return get legal assistance if they are caught. If the government doesn’t want to socialize a service, fine - the people can do it for them. The feeling of stealing service with one’s wiles is a rush, especially if it can be justified with logic, however tortured, and now that I have fully repented of my sordid criminal past, I will miss the secret passages I ferreted out on the El and the payment card hacks I learned on the Bart.
Futel is quite different from phone phreaks and other urban hackers in its most basic operation, of course. For one, we buy our service and give it away. But we are inspired by them and share similar motivation, in exploring ways to use the machine we all live in by repurposing its parts.
For an excellent history of the phone phreak movement, read Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley.
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