phreaking

phreaking, fraudulent manipulation of telephone signaling in order to make free phone calls. Phreaking involved reverse engineering the specific tones used by phone companies to route long distance calls. By emulating those tones, “phreaks” could make free calls around the world. Phreaking largely ended in 1983 when telephone lines were upgraded to common channel interoffice signaling (CCIS), which separated signaling from the voice line.

The term phreak comes from a combination of the words phone, free, and freak. Phone phreaking first began in the 1960s when people discovered that various whistles could re-create the 2,600 MHz pitch of the phone routing signal. Some people could whistle in a perfect 2,600 MHz pitch, most notably a blind man, Joe Engressia (also known as Joybubbles), who became known as the whistling phreaker. John Draper, a friend of Engressia, discovered that a whistle distributed as a prize in Captain Crunch cereal emitted a perfect 2,600 MHz pitch, thus earning him the moniker “Captain Crunch.” As phreaking evolved, the use of what was known as a blue box, or Mfer, became the most-common way of manipulating the phone signal. Blue boxes were self-constructed transmitters that gave the user access to the same 12 tones used by phone operators, as described in the Bell System Technical Journal (1954 and 1960). Early phreakers were known to examine dumpsters outside phone company offices and other locations in order to find discarded manuals or equipment.

Phreaking entered the popular imagination in October 1971 when Esquire featured the story “The Secrets of the Little Blue Box” by Ron Rosenbaum. The practice became popular on university campuses, prompting future Apple Inc. founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to make blue boxes long before they built their first Macintosh.

During the 1970s phreaking became associated with political radicalism. Abbie Hoffman, leader of the Youth International Party, became interested in phreaking as a means of resisting the monopoly of American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T). In 1971 Hoffman and a phreaker known as “Al Bell” began publishing a newsletter called Party Line, which described ways of subverting telephone lines for their own uses. In 1973 Party Line became known as TAP, standing for “technological assistance program.” Hoffman advocated liberating the telephone lines because he believed that taking control of communications systems would be a crucial action for mass revolt. By the mid-1970s AT&T had revealed that it lost approximately $30 million per year to telephone fraud, including phreaking.

In 1983 telephone lines were upgraded to CCIS to separate signaling from the voice line, effectively ending phreaking. Although phreaking largely died out, the spirit of phreaking infused computer hacking. Many phreakers became hackers when personal computers and modems became available during the early 1980s and thus perpetuated their antibureaucratic sentiments and belief that lines of communication should be free.