The phreaker ran the cable down the street and, if possible, around
the corner. He pulled it into the car and attached it to the waiting
computer modem. At least one of the five was proficient enough with
electronics hardware to have rigged up the computer and modem to the
car battery. The Phreaker's Five could now call any computer without
being traced or billed. The phone call charges would appear at the end
of a local resident's phone bill. Telecom did not itemise residential
telephone bills at the time. True, it was a major drama to zoom around
suburban streets in the middle of the night with computers, alligator
clips and battery adaptors in tow, but that didn't matter so much. In
fact, the thrill of such a cloak-and-dagger operation was as good as
the actual hacking itself. It was illicit. In the phreakers' own eyes,
it was clever. And therefore it was fun.
Craig Bowen didn't think much of the Phreakers Five's style of
phreaking. In fact, the whole growth of phreaking as a pastime
depressed him a bit. He believed it just didn't require the technical
skills of proper hacking. Hacking was, in his view, about the
exploration of a brave new world of computers.
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