ms for creating various
switching-network signalling tones unavailable to the public.

"See what happens when you drop a 'silver box' tone or two down your
local exchange or through different long distance service carriers,"
advises 2600 contributor "Mr. Upsetter" in "How To Build a Signal Box."
"If you experiment systematically and keep good records, you will
surely discover something interesting."

This is, of course, the scientific method, generally regarded as a
praiseworthy activity and one of the flowers of modern civilization.
One can indeed learn a great deal with this sort of structured
intellectual activity. Telco employees regard this mode of
"exploration" as akin to flinging sticks of dynamite into their pond to
see what lives on the bottom.

2600 has been published consistently since 1984. It has also run a
bulletin board computer system, printed 2600 T-shirts, taken fax
calls.... The Spring 1991 issue has an interesting announcement on
page 45: "We just discovered an extra set of wires attached to our fax
line and heading up the pole. (They've since been clipped.) Your faxes
to us and to anyone else could be monitored." In the worldview of 2600,
the tiny band of techno-rat brothers (rarely, sisters) are a besieged
vanguard of the truly free and honest. The rest of the world is a
maelstrom of corporate crime and high-level governmental corruption,
occasionally tempered with well-meaning ignorance. To read a few
issues in a row is to enter a nightmare akin to Solzhenitsyn's,
somewhat tempered by the fact that 2600 is often extremely funny.

Goldstein did not become a target of the Hacker Crackdown, though he
protested loudly, eloquently, and publicly about it, and it added
considerably to his fame. It was not that he is not regarded as
dangerous, because he is so regarded. Goldstein has had brushes with
the law in the past: in 1985, a 2600 bulletin board computer was
seized by the FBI, and some software on it was formally declared "a
burglary tool in the form of a computer program." But Goldstein escaped
direct repression in 1990, because his magazine is printed on paper,
and recognized as subject to Constitutional freedom of the press
protection. As was seen in the Ramparts case, this is far from an
absolute guarantee. Still, as a practical matter, shutting down 2600
by court-order would create so much legal hassle that it is simply
unfeasible, at least for the present. Throughout 1990, both