What Does a Network Do?
1970 - 1978
Ward Christensen and Randy Suess develop the Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS) in Chicago. Opened to the public the following year, it is the first electronic message-posting network.
Christensen, a physicist by education and a mainframe programmer by profession, was an electronics hobbyist in his spare time. By the late 1970s he had become expert at programming computers to transfer files from one machine to another via modems and telephone lines.
Christensen and Suess lived in Chicago, where winters bring below-freezing temperatures and piles of snow, and in January 1978 there was plenty of indoor time for programming and fiddling with digital equipment. The idea had been building for awhile, and that winter they decided to devise a simple computer communication system. Christensen developed the software and Suess assembled the hardware.
On February 16, 1978, their system is complete; they name it the Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS). When it finally goes online to the public in 1979, Christensen manages the system under the title "system operator" (soon shortened to "sysop"). CBBS operates like a virtual thumb-tack bulletin board. Participants can post messages to a public "board," and others can read and respond to those messages, creating an ongoing virtual discussion.
In November 1978 Christensen and Suess publish an article in Byte magazine, describing CBBS and outlining the technology for devising virtual bulletin boards. The article drums up interest in CBBS and gives others the opportunity to build their own systems.
Since the ARPAnet is still restricted to defense-funded institutions, CBBS is the first civilian experiment in creating virtual community (apart from time-sharing systems). In 1979 most individuals who own computers and modems -- or have access to and knowledge of computing hardware -- are computer hobbyists and scientists. So at first, most topics on CBBS hover within the realm of computers and electronic communication, but eventually the talk broadens.
CBBS kindles a revolution in electronic communication. Virtual bulletin boards begin popping up around the country; they are given the generic name BBS, for bulletin board system. Some cover a range of topics, and others are intended for highly specific discussions. By the early 1990s most BBSs are connected to the Internet, and a whole new virtual world is introduced to BBS members, who had previously roamed within the limited parameters of one system (or in some cases several interconnected systems).
In the mid-1990s membership to BBSs begins to decrease, as the graphics-oriented World Wide Web bursts on the scene and grabs computer users' attention.
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In June 1972 Ramparts, a radical magazine in California, was closed down by police at the request of the telephone company. Mistakenly believing they were covered by the First Amendment, Ramparts published material that had long existed in the geek world: designs for a "blue box." A blue box is a mechanical device able to mimic a 2600 hertz tone, allowing the user to access long-distance lines for free. Blue-box building has been a time-honored hacker pastime, done by such computer luminaries as Stewart Nelson (one of the earliest MIT hackers) and Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computer.
Blue boxing was hardly the earliest form of phone hacking, otherwise known as "phreaking." In The Hacker Crackdown, author Bruce Sterling points out that the practice is as old as Alexander Graham Bell himself -- the earliest telephone operators were teenage boys, who were later replaced by women because the boys routinely played pranks with incoming calls. The debate about whether phreaking deserves to be considered a serious crime has a long history. Sterling puts it this way: "If you're not damaging the phone system, and you're not using up any tangible resource, and if nobody finds out what you did, then what real harm have you done? What exactly have you 'stolen,' anyway?" Phone companies have always felt differently, of course, viewing their maintenance of the nation's phone lines to be a public trust. During the 1970s, the public trust was precisely what was coming under critique. When a federal tax was placed on phone service during the Vietnam War, the Yippies -- members of the Youth International Party -- advocated stealing phone service as a legitimate way to protest the war. Party Line, the phreaking newsletter founded by Yippies Abbie Hoffman and "Al Bell," inspired a later group known as TAP (Technical Assistance Program). By the time "Tom Edison" took over the TAP newsletter, its 1400 readers had shifted their interests according to changes in the phone industry: instead of building blue boxes, they were learning how to hack computerized telex switches. When Edison's computer was stolen and his house was set on fire in 1983, the TAP newsletter died out. But by this time, underground BBSs (bulletin board systems) devoted to phreaking were flourishing, and "philes" (files detailing tricks of the phreaking trade) were available to anyone with a modem and a password. Because today's telephone networks are increasingly digital -- consisting of components like cellular routes, voice mail systems, and satellite linkups -- it's hard to tell the difference between a computer hacker and a phreaker. But while hackers are primarily stereotyped as American teenage males, phreakers run the gamut of gender, age, and nationality. This may explain the fact that while hackers have their champions in the computing world, there have been no texts examining the history of phreaking to date. Furthermore, because exploring phone companies' computers is a federal offense, the most stringently prosecuted hacking crimes today are phone system hacks. The message is clear: if you hack a phone company, you go to jail. |
