22 May 2013

800 Historical Phone Phreaking Docs Posted

To: coldwarcomms[at]yahoogroups.com
From: Phil Lapsley <phil_cwc[at]lapsley.org>
Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 09:27:27 +0530
Subject: [coldwarcomms] 800 historical phone phreaking documents posted

While researching my book on phone phreaking, "Exploding The Phone", I amassed an unenviably large collection of papers -- newspaper and magazine articles, memos, FBI files, etc. -- related to phone phreaking, some of which may be relevant to members of this group.

Scanned PDFs of most of these docs, totaling about 800 files, are now available on the book's web site. A handful of examples:

* Flyer for a 1973 phone phreak convention in NYC:

http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx0285.pdf

* Bell Labs memo discussing the 1971 Esquire article:

http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx0397.pdf

* An FBI file on a 1974 investigation into a mass-produced blue box
disguised as a desk calculator:

http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx0859.pdf

(Thanks to the numerous phone phreaks who donated many of these docs.)

You can search the database of documents at

http://explodingthephone.com/search.php

An example search might be:

http://explodingthephone.com/search.php?q=engressia

which will get you documents related to Joe Engressia, the famous blind kid once described as the "Grandaddy of phone phreaking."

Finally, I've also posted some "extras" that I just couldn't fit into the book. These range from small essays or stories to interview transcripts to more technical notes on various aspects of the old network. They can be found at

http://explodingthephone.com/extras

Enjoy,

Phil