380 DEAR HACKER

380 DEAR HACKER

to dial a zero before your number but an automatic computer generated voice comes on and asks whether you’d like your collect call to be person to person or a plain old garden variety one. It then prompts for your name and tells you to wait while it connects. It then asks the person who picks up the phone on the other end if he or she will accept a collect call from (inserts your recorded voice) and if the answering person pushes

1 in tone mode, you get connected. If you listen carefully after you’ve given your name, you can hear other people’s pulse numbers as they dial their family or whomever. Is it possible that this system is some combi- nation of tone and pulse generated switching? When they first installed this system I found that all I had to do was cover the mouthpiece when it asked me for my name. It would stall for a few seconds and then put me through to the correct party, but not as a collect call! For some reason, doing this allowed you to call anywhere in the world free of charge, but not the 313 area code where the prison is located. They’ve since updated the system so that this little trick won’t work.

2. The county jail’s phone system is a little different. I’m going to go down there in a little while so I’m hoping someone can figure this out for me. The jail’s phones are regular payphones that accept money but don’t allow you to use your calling card. I haven’t tried dialing 10288 for an AT&T operator, but I do know that trying to get an operator the old- fashioned way (0) won’t work. You also can’t call outside the 313 area code. Weird, huh? Any ideas, people?

Wog The phone system uses pulse dialing to get to the MCI automated operator.

Perhaps some paranoid prison official thought inmates could hit touch tones and accept their own collect calls, so they disabled the touch tones. In any event, the pulse system has got nothing to do with MCI — it’s simply how your call gets placed by the local company. There are an almost unlimited number of possibilities with your county system — 800s, 950s, carrier access codes, collect calls, green box tones from the called party, maybe even black boxes if you’re in a primitive area. If you do manage to get an operator, the trick is to make sure she doesn’t see the class of service, which is undoubtedly showing up as a prison phone. It’s not easy and it’s different in every area.

BEHIND THE WALLS

Dear 2600:

I was at one point an avid reader but now I am in prison for about $753,000 in computer-related theft. I just wanted to ask if there’s anyone out there who would accept payment in the form of a money order or (preferably) stamps for single sheet printed (readable laser or equal preferred) for some of the Internet or hacker-related conferences, just one or two. Twenty-five to 40 pages at a time would be about the max. I’m willing to cover postage, paper, and toner costs and would

be eternally pleased. I am in need of some food for the gray matter, that’s a definite. Please, no sample books, magazines, or anything that could be “considered” of that nature because it will get refused without

a permit which are all currently used on my part. ES

Lancaster Correctional Trenton, FL