predicament, and idle
speculation over what unsung hacker genius was responsible for it.
Some hackers, including police informants, were trying hard to finger
one another as the true culprits of the Crash.

Telco people found little comfort in objectivity when they contemplated
these possibilities. It was just too close to the bone for them; it
was embarrassing; it hurt so much, it was hard even to talk about.

There has always been thieving and misbehavior in the phone system.
There has always been trouble with the rival independents, and in the
local loops. But to have such trouble in the core of the system, the
long-distance switching stations, is a horrifying affair. To telco
people, this is all the difference between finding roaches in your
kitchen and big horrid sewer-rats in your bedroom.

From the outside, to the average citizen, the telcos still seem
gigantic and impersonal. The American public seems to regard them as
something akin to Soviet apparats. Even when the telcos do their best
corporate-citizen routine, subsidizing magnet high-schools and
sponsoring news-shows on public television, they seem to win little
except public suspicion.

But from the inside, all this looks very different. There's harsh
competition. A legal and political system that seems baffled and
bored, when not actively hostile to telco interests. There's a loss of
morale, a deep sensation of having somehow lost the upper hand.
Technological change has caused a loss of data and revenue to other,
newer forms of transmission. There's theft, and new forms of theft, of
growing scale and boldness and sophistication. With all these factors,
it was no surprise to see the telcos, large and small, break out in a
litany of bitter complaint.

In late '88 and throughout 1989, telco representatives grew shrill in
their complaints to those few American law enforcement officials who
make it their business to try to understand what telephone people are
talking about. Telco security officials had discovered the
computer-hacker underground, infiltrated it thoroughly, and become
deeply alarmed at its growing expertise. Here they had found a target
that was not only loathsome on its face, but clearly ripe for
counterattack.

Those bitter rivals: AT&T, MCI and Sprint--and a crowd of Baby Bells:
PacBell, Bell South, Southwestern Bell, NYNEX, USWest, as well as the
Bell research consortium Bellcore, and the independent long-distance
carr