tv Book TV CSPAN March 16, 2013 11:00pm-12:00am EDT
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it's very much dependent on what world events are there and it's also driven by a frustration that america is not -- more so just make up point. what she set out to do was not repaired damage but to improve it and make a possible have conversations with allies or countries that he didn't have a conversation with before. i think benghazi, it doesn't seem a moment that will be associated with the secretaries tenure. there is no escape from that. it happened on her watch. some questions still remain unanswered ,-com,-com ma questions that she could answer and questions at the cia in the and the pentagon and the white house have to answer but the nature of the political debate has blurred the picture a little bit. i think with the big picture with the information we have now i don't think it changes her legacy that much but it will definitely be used against her if she decides to run for president or if she reenters
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>> that was after words, book tv signature program in which others about lettuce nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, legislators, and others familiar with there material. airing every weekend on book tv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday, and 12:00 a.m. on monday. you can also watch online. go to a booktv.org and click on after words in that book tv series and topics list on the upper right hand side of the page. >> book tv airs every weekend on c-span2 for 48 hours. next, a history of the phone system and a flaw in its operation that allowed hackers or phone phreaks to make free long distance phone calls for the use of a blue box, a device that mimics tons used by at&t. heralded including interest --
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future apple computer's co-founder who built and sold the devices. this is about 45 minutes. book tv. [applause] >> thank you very much. i am always somewhat befuddled. those of you know, i know you are smart people. those of you who i don't know i hope to know better. you're all capable, i imagine, of reading the book and around. however, they took away my power projector so reading is what you're going to get tonight. in terms of the schedule, what we're going to do is talk a little bit about the book and read from a 2030 minutes. and we will have questions. and i will be signing. then it we will head to the
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trade building from here. we can have your wind, milkshakes to members, ever. it will be a group doing that. please join us if you like. so my book is about film freaks. you were a fall frites, that is great and that's all you need to know. not everybody here was a phone freak. a few words of explanation. if you go back to the 1930's and 1940's, the telephone system was an intensely manuel think. you have probably seen from old movies, operators plugging chords into jack's. and that was up telephone calls got maybeck and. and that worked pretty well. for the volume of calls the at the time. the telephone company employed about 100,000 women. always women because it was inconceivable that an operator could be manned during those days. about 100,000 of these people. they had done the forecast to run the numbers, and then you how popular the telephone was in a popular was going to beat and
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figure by 1965 there would need a million operators. there were two problems of that number. the first problem was that there aren't a million women in the workforce. so the second problem is even if you could find a million people to be operators the cost of ten would just be hard data. so what to do? the answer remarkably turned out to be automation. the phone company did was built these amazing machines that allow people to dial their own long-distance calls. this was a huge challenge. imagine building a machine that can somehow automatically figure out how to get a call from miami florida to san francisco california and talk to the intermediate machines, the intermediate switching machines and do this on its own, automatically bill for the calls, do everything to put the call through. except imagine building that machine in 1930 and 1940 when the transistor is not been
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invented, the computer is not been invented. today if your engineering, we have computers. we will be great. the suspect and. dublin the weight is that they get right to work on this problem, and they sold it. this of the using what mr. spock of bart track described as their stance. they had no cards. it did not have computers. in relays and vacuum tubes. but they build this astonishing long-distance telephone network that allegedly tell your own calls. they've built the largest machine in the world. he got from this manual thing to this amazing machine. but it was around 1955, 1960 at the telephone networks started
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attracting some unwanted attention. it was the tension mostly from teenagers, some of them were blind, and started looking at the networks and religious started becoming interested with them, started to play with it. what they had discovered was that there were -- when an engineer to they would call vulnerability in the network. in particular, the entire network was controlled by tones. so the way these machines communicated with each other was just by towns, by these little -- like to touch tones and then there was a master tone. just a pure tone. that indicated whether the trucklines trial, whether someone an answer the phone and not serious of these machines, playing tons to one another. the problem was that if you mail long-distance call, for example, it took the rotary thrown on the fraud. you dial long-distance call. right after you're done dialing you would hear these little
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towns in the background. with some light. and if you have a certain kind of brain, which i know from looking at some of the people in this audience, some of you do, your those towns and you wonder, what are those? out as a work? and if i can hear the machine making those towns, made the machines can hear me if i make those towns. and it turns out you could. so if you had a bit of electronics to could make something of a blue box. this was born from 1975 just about. it is a little tone generator. maidstone's similar to a touchdown. makes the 2600-hertz noise. and it also makes these towns that sound like touchstones bart . and when something like this you could control the long-distance network. what does that mean? it means that you could, number
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one, make free phone calls. number two, more interesting, you could write -- route your calls manually from one place to another. so you want to call the phone next to you. it's easy. telephone number, but if you want to do something more challenging, you could write your call through anchorage alaska and then from anchorage to poughkeepsie in from poughkeepsie to portland, and you could stackup this routing of calls just for the sake of doing it, because it was interesting thing to do because that the and you say hello on one fun and less than half the second letter when you heard your voice and the other phone. in some cases you could even wiretap people using this technology. you could actually use these blue boxes to wiretapper : process. no, fortunately for the phone company not everybody is in my tracks genius in 1967 the. so not everybody can make a blue box. unfortunately for the phone company, the quaker oats company provided something called the captain crunch boatswain whistle
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in boxes of cereal. just a little plastic whistle and for a free premium and a chance at a cover-up levels above, you get that 26 other hearst don't. and so if you have one of these muscles you could then make free phone calls. so the phone phreaks for the people to figure this stuff out. and it turns out, you can read more about this in the book, there were the phone phreaks were just doing this for curiosity, the ones who were in is because their work, they had wanted to call each other. there were the people in the organized crime, but makers in the mob who wanted to use this to avoid prosecution by the feds, the yippies who wanted to use this technology is ticket to the as this government because they said, well, the fund company collect long-distance toll taxes. so it's a 10% tax and every long distance call. so if we teach people to make free phone calls you're depriving the government of the money that it needs to send people off to fight and die in vietnam. so they had all these different groups that want to use this
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technology. but the one that i really focus on and touched on in the book, but the one that this book turns up to secretly be about is the curiosity, the curious teenager's. my book is about people being playful, being curious about asking questions like what happens if i do this? if i can hear these towns, what if the machines in your me? what happens if i doubt this number is on the phone but? the team that just permeates my book. and i would like to share with you to stories. one of them is about a blind kid who was -- well to not let me just read about show. dahlia the phone and leave alone joe was about four years ago when his mother for a shot to death president. it was a shot he would hear again and again is to grow.
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his mother could be forgiven for raising her voice. she tried to be supportive. she really did. sometimes her son's obsession with the telephone was just a little much for her. besides, it didn't work. he sent turn the phrase into a little song, when he was in over and over tim self and a quiet voice. hang up the phone and leave it alone. hang up the phone and leave it alone. joe was born in 1949. his given name is joseph curran jr., but his family called and judge ito. his mom stay at home and took care of judge china sister. dad was a high-school yearbook photographer. struggling financially, the lead in the small but serviceable apartment in which virginia. i have a car, a dog. in many ways they appear to be a stereotypical postwar baby boom family. as we know appearances can be deceiving. joe was born blind as was the sister. the doctors to know what caused
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this. it could not have been anything. having to buy children. any parent will tell you that having kids is not easy. having to buy kids is much harder. sort of car that makes distress for anger, fighting. i will let you, says tony. parents by lot. then there was the incandescence of little joe's mind. when he was three he would pass to the adults to relent. before long he wanted and not just to reach him but to tell about the words were spelled. he would peas the letters together and form them into words and sentences. before i was for i knew how to be read to the people spelling words. so when i learned braille and are ready you how to read in london only amounted to. patella cooler if until the skynyrd teacher, plays thanks. wanted people to read to me by spelling words.
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then there were the obsessions. many, many of sessions. young joseph was famous for them. shower curtains or one. he loved the side that -- south the plastic shower curtain made. jill was another. constantly ask his mom to making jell-o saying repeatedly, when is the gillette going to jail. his fascination with brassieres. his sister recalled, it was all i could do to keep them from going outside the mother's breath wrapped around a set. the greatest of his obsessions was the telephone starting around the same time as he learned to read. i used as what time it was all the time. the phone company used to offer a free recording the you could dial that would tell you the correct time. they stopped using the table on the 73. he could run his fingers to the fingers of a cool metal dial. sicking the roughness of the bits of state.
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with this ticket dial the time himself. he would tell 737 constantly just to listen to the voice. when they noticed that the three was the orioles win the seven was seven. i thought, well, if three is three away in 7708 and 92 is to weigh in force for way in all that. judge of the number at random, remembering the digits as the dow. he heard a ringing signal. a woman's voice answered. i ask, is this 439011 and said yes. what do you want. i said, oh, i just might have a dial. playing in the real world my stink a double play in the world the telephone was fantastic. the fun and interesting things to listen to. even had people who would talk to him, and it was challenging. it was more than a playground. it was a laboratory, a place for located right things up and conduct as many experiments as he wanted. awhirl the possibility, a world prefaced with the most intoxicating of words, if.
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the way i learned that a dial characterizes the way i've learned about telephone systems all my life. you make a theory, you think something. then you try it out. perform experiments. had that not work that would have either had to make another theory or see what that did work and he says. not simply trial and error, but added trial and error. although he did not know that the time, the adults had a name for this. they called the scientific method. years later nobel prize-winning physicist richard feynman right, the principle of science, the definition almost is the following to the test of all knowledge is experiment. so he went on to become the centerpiece of the network of phone phreaks that formed in the late 1960's. in the way they form this kind of interesting. he had figured out how the whistle signals with his lips. he was good that he made a bet
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with somebody in college and the dollar was later did he won the bet. they got along this is all of it. recent crowds of people were following him around the college campus in florida began to whistle calls for him. it was very much longer after this that he ran afoul of at&t security in the police. and this was 1969. he almost a kicked off campus for this, but he managed to leave in the. the news coverage became a focal point. you can just imagine how works. you are a 15 year-old kid who is interested in his son's death in 1969. probably the only one the you know of. and then somebody, maybe a well-meaning parents were a friend hands you a copy of the news differences to make a read this article about the skin in florida who can whistle free calls. thinking you're going to find it interesting. of course what you do is second on going to call him. so pretty soon you have this network of phone phreaks going on.
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the judge wasn't the first. other kids have been doing this since the late 1950's, early 1960's. and what i would like to do now is actually have another curious kid who is a sophomore at harvard in 1967 to the entrance to this. >> sort of one and all started. [indiscernible] you know, i noticed that they're running an ad in the classified section. and it had better, financing the team.
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fifteen book. in the plate. something in st. louis, missouri . it was completely gripping. held every day for a couple of weeks. >> i'm going to pick up know from where the guy who was just carrying that has just done a letter. he showed the letter to everyone that day, but nobody can read it. later that evening he sat in the kitchen table in his dorm room and stood at the letter. one of his roommates came home. shock that he might actually be doing something that looks like hallmark is are made as what he was working on the repass the
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letter across the table and told about it. from a took one look at it and said it looks like russian. he said, that's what i thought, but the characters don't seem right. yeah, they're not. in fact, his arm its luster of love for a moment, in fact, their mere writing. >> what? >> you know, mayor redding. the letters are written backwards. see? sure enough. backwards. his roommate went to the mayor and transcribe the reverse lettering. it was an expression letter. fortunately his army was taking a russian class and sat back down at the table and transcend the letter. dear jake, thank you very much for your reply. however, sears the data you have a need. as riley in rising to keep yourself and not interfere. this is serious business and you can get into trouble. he sat back. some of it put a critic and and the newspaper had responded and said in a letter in writing.
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in 1967 during the cold war. spy ring. it just didn't get much cooler than this. intriguing, terrifying even. far better than going to class. he nailed his reply that date in english, not in meriden. actually, i do have you know book, and i would like to talk to you, sincerely jake. the full brunt was perforated so it could be torn in half in the writing was an english. dear jake, if you have the information i need he should be able to complete the other half of this card and mail it back to me and then we can continue our discussion, sincerely. flick that the other half of the postcard. and focus is on. complete the following sequence.
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what equipment with the students at harvard and mit using? he spent every waking hour over the next several days working on a poster of questions. the numbers repeated over and over. 604-23-4121. it was a directory assistance. but it somehow sounded right. or the shot anyway. he picked up the phone and dialed. a woman's business like most answered on the first during. clean or clean? he had not. he said the phone. a rate cut six your four. the phone books of british columbia. where was that? western canada. he looked around his dorm room top down and have listened to the page numbers columbia.
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the big cities have names recognize, vancouver and prince george. the smaller towns of less familiar names. at dinner that night he mentioned the phone call to another of his roommates. out, that's interesting. my girlfriend is an inward. it's some kind of special telephone operator. you should doctor. she might feel their up to figure out some of the stuff. giver call. he did. explained that it's an operator's operator. when an operator needs assistance in making policy calls the inward operator for the destination city. that completes the call to a local number. how do i call? you can't. they have special phone numbers the only operators can dial. if you wanted to call the new york when you have to tell something like 212-04-9121. one-to-one is what gets to the
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inward and 049 is a routing code this is the york. new york is 212, but you can dial numbers like 049121 from a regular phone. seems to have found a way by nearly (604)234-1212. well, i'm mystified. he should not be able to. maybe he cited fridge. here's how you can tell. call them up and as the to complete a call to somebody. if they really had it will be able to no problem. and i know anybody in canada. that's okay. they can go anywhere. and sometimes get calls from the test or with the phone company asking us to complete calls to places for testing purposes. just tell them you're with the test board. the confident and selfish toward enacting no you're doing and it will give you any trouble. >> okay. outright that. any idea what ms my stand for? >> well, it could be multi frequency. but the frequency? what's that? >> it's a system that upper is to make calls. and like those touchdowns used for push button filing, bissau's
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different. >> okay. thanks. they said goodbye. he had not. he picked up the phone again and out (604)234-1212. once again, the business-no voice answered. hi. yes. this is the test board. could you connect me to (619)374-8491 please. one moment. there was a pause. the long-distance hissed that lauder. a click, another pause, more his. another click. in a ringing signal. hello. his friend david san diego. he chatted with his friend for a few manson and a nap. he felt as if he were floating. it became magical. act like you know what you're doing and it will give you any trouble. it worked. so he had actually, it turns out car rediscovered a bunch of work the students at harvard and mit had done in 1961. the book goes into a lot of crazy detail about that.
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but i would like to tie this all back to curiosity. as some of you may know, some better than others, i get to a little bit of trouble back in junior high and high school. and it was curiosity that led me into it. i have added some time afterwards, but as i went on to get an engineering degree and become an engineer in and do other stuff later, i was always curious about this. where did this stuff come from? where did the idea of phone phreaking come from? because i entered in 1978 to well after each:00 it got involved, and there were people involved in years earlier than that. i just wanted to know. i was curious. when and this started. he started it. why did this started. i was into does a six, actually browsing of a tapir article. by the way, i think that so many
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disasters start off with the phrase i was browsing. so i looked at the phone. that, well, the stuff that is here i know is wrong. the other half might be right, but there are no citations. he knows. that was my trip down the rabbit hole. was very, very lucky to have a generous grants and the life, the back of the room who supported me for several years. use the euphemism several years, worked on this book. and, you know, i was working, like i said, to write a book on his street. really when i was doing was scratching a 30 euro that's that was curious about. in the process and discovered a couple of things that just really amazed me. the biggest one, i think, was when i initially was writing the book i was going to write about the phone phreaks. my editor said, what did you also write about the phone company, the development of at&t in the development of long-distance networks and with
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the phone company had to do to make this. i said, sure, that sounds like a good idea. i came back blown away. what did folks at at&t due to build a nation long distance network, given the tools that to work with the problems that were facing it was just incredible. i reflect a little bit of that in the book. the other thing was the extent to which the freaks, especially the early phone phreaks 20 to make this stuff work. and i talked about this in the book. blind kids listening to the phone able to hear these towns. they don't have, you know, the internet at their fingertips. they have their years and their wits and they're clever people and it worked really hard and basically reverse engineered the system. you have the engineers in their verse engineers. both just during the astonishing work. and in the end it was really these things that struck me most of all, the curiosity of the people doing this.
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that is reflected in my curiosity trying to figure them out and learn about the. so that is what i have to read to you tonight. i would be delighted to take questions if you have any. [inaudible question] >> 2600. 2600 magazine to well, let me rewind that just a sec. 2600 magazine started in 1984. the hacker quarterly. and before 2600 there was actually the phone phreak magazine which published from 7184. it kind of 2600 was the successor and a lot of ways. i've read 26 under the law. like the curiosity that it embodied. the problem that comes up with curiosity is curiosity is the crime in my opinion. crime is a crime. the problem is the curiosity often leads people to do things
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that are illegal. people do illegal things for lots of reasons, sex and money, drugs and illegal, whenever. it turns out curiosity is one of those things. i think that is the thing that i sort of struggle the little bit as i was writing this book and then also resulting now, the curiosity is, think of awesome. it is actually advocating and you should go out and break into a computer, try some of these files now whenever it is. that part at all like. but from a curiosity perspective, from an information perspective a lot of stuff like that. >> what if any other titles did you come up with? >> the titles. this is a long story and is not really good story. and give you the short version. we originally were going to call it phone phreaks. actually, originally ridge is going to college freaks. my friend jennifer said that free to be a great title.
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and this is freaks with a ph. the interesting, the publisher rebelled. elected this and said this is not going to sell. we love the book and what to sell, and is not going to. and so we had essentially a weekend to come up with a new tile. now, the great news was we had the perfect coverage to go with it which is that my editor had found on the web a fantastic graphic art that somebody had done. they had taken in all 500 series order iphone and had this is similar to its component pieces, photographed each piece individually and then reassembled it as an exposure diagram of a dislike you get in shop class is something. so you have this done with all the pieces flying out. looking at this and like, well. he came up with it but my wife exploding the phone. ocala exploding the phone because that is with these guys did. it took the phone and tore apart and reassembled it in a way that it was somehow bigger than
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itself. and we elected that and said, yeah, that's great. that's will call it. alito the publisher that. the publisher liked it. today's letter at a massive case of buyer's remorse. rachael was certain that she was going to be blamed for the rest of life as the person who run the title of my book that i came around elected. then the publisher called and said, we can't erase the image. so we went back and forth on a bunch of things, but in the and we came up with was this, which and actually very happy with. so that's how we got to exploding the phone. and in the end, it seemed like a good title. it would have been parallel. i'm really very happy. [inaudible question] >> you can do will lead. i don't remember exactly the search. see it again. >> not referenced in the book. >> correct.
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>> one of the 60 year-old kids in 1969. just finished reading your book a few days ago. >> i'm glad. >> i was impressed with the historical research that you did. i'm curious. howdy doody get this information about the early, early. how did you learn about them? >> so, the historical research was actually in a lot of ways what i enjoyed the most. that was why people were afraid it was never going to get done because i enjoy that more than writing. exactly right. the problem with curiosity as it is endless. i interviewed more than 100 people for this book, both on the phone company side in a phone phreaks side. the fbi agents and all that. i mean, i also filed a little more than 400 freedom of information act requests. a lot of the material in this book comes from those. get to the point that i was in the holiday cards to the staff of the freedom of mission is to
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cease from the department of defense careless use. in terms of one of the things i learned from that was that these things move at their own pace. and so i talk about this in the sources and that's part of the book. and talking to some phone freak and aston's of question he said, no, you have to talk to john. i mike, john. sure, of course, all talk to john. john was a student berkeley in 1972 or maybe 7374. okay. dizzy of the last in? >> i know. >> great series of the year-and-a-half when my phone rings. it's just some guy in the psychic and a this is john. was a student at berkeley, a phone freak. one check in with you. i heard you're writing a book. that turned out to be the john. things like that, you can't force that are there is no way to my notice be the reaction that, so you just have to be patient. terms of pre start, this was
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from 1964 and 1962 at 70. it developed a system called green star which is basically a toll fraud surveillance network that would keep track of the phone system and do a statistical sampling the cme fraudulent calls the thinker actually going on. what was interesting about that was it had already come out in the press. so as far as at&t was concerned it was like this was a secret. and so when i actually talked to the director of switching from bell labs he is like, oh, you want to find out about this green stuff thing and give me the names of people to talk to. the people were quite forthcoming about a. so it was one of those things where it was a secret hiding in plain sight other questions.
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>> of the publisher and you get together. >> short. al qaeda, publisher. this is an inspirational tale. and the luckiest person in the world, not just because i'm married rachael, but also because i manage to get a publisher through a complete bum luck. i had been working on this but for several years. the way you get publisher normally is write a book proposal concerns sample chapters and use in eastern agent, trying to nation and the aged and shops around your proposal and sample chapters to a publisher. i had been -- i had written a proposal and had some sample chapters. there were sitting around gathering dust on my hard drive. i was too afraid that if i sent them to anybody they would like them and i would be rejected and that will be terrible and the end of it. my wife and i made espousal deal as he sometimes will.
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the big aficionado of burning man. have gone for many years now. in the deal that i come with free to was that i could get to burning man in 2010 if i would simply send the book proposal to an agent or a publisher. did have to be -- this is the lowest possible bar imaginable. it gets the bad thing off of the hard drive and out into the u.s. now. so then to bring that takes place at the end of august. august 1st 2010 and i can do it. the legitimate calendar. this is a piece of garbage. no one wants to publish this. so about a week later agony no from grove atlantic saying i'm an editor. i understand you're writing a book on the history of phone phreaking. we do have a proposal or some sample chapters the consent to me? an asset, like a yes. would. as it happens. added to give my name. well, i was reading on my ipads
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and recycle magazine content from esquire magazine in 1971 which an article about fall freaks. he said to my thought that was totally fascinating and i went to google some of the characters and was curious if anyone and written about it. icebound the obituary for one of the characters in new york times and they quoted. i looked to be had published a think messiahs in your still working on it. as said, okay. the center of the proposal. this is right after i sent the proposal. and a week later recall back and said, we read your proposal. we love it. want to make you an offer right now. that's all i got my publisher. i cannot really have imagined that it is a repeatable process. it works for me. >> heavily my next book will be tell divorce of tightened one.
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>> or another but? >> the best way into that is the previous trading. what else captivates you? is there something new every facet by. rachael said no. it was conceivable like to read another book. when i learned is to miss this time. so if i can figure out a way write a book that will be part-time the tin affect my actually having a responsible, normal job or if i could figure out a way of writing a book that would be happy with it and be able to crank than a year as opposed to five that will be something i consider doing. most well-liked is the research.
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other questions? >> rates as john tucker there. i was finishing a book. i can finish the book for pretty much anywhere. so she is there with ibm. we are there on a two-year assignment and will be back in october as the current plan. i did actually, though, when i got there i immediately tried to find the indian phone company because i figured maybe they have some old electromechanical telephone switching equipment that will be cool to see. and i wrote to them. a that talking to a pretty high of guy. all the mechanical stuff is long gone. we'll have it anymore. he is an interesting guy. a little bit better. and he said he retired from the phone company. a phone company, their equivalent of at&t is called the s&l.
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would you at least at the museum? i get back a one money now that said they have no sense of service, much less a sense of history. he knew that they did not have a museum. >> added a change your relationship? >> how did readiness to is my relationship? it didn't directly in the sense that i still dial calls the same way and all that. it actually use a rotary phone a my brother's house a few weeks ago. oh, my god. that's low. i don't know how we ever dealt with that. the thing that it did do was it just made me realize how much work went into getting as the phone system that we have. we have then that we have today. mike was saying earlier. an incredible amount of work. it's also interesting that really allows us into all what will take recordings of telephone calls in the tell -- 1960's.
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beatty's klaxon clocks or whenever. the circuits are noisy. costs have more character than. in contrast we have, i'm sorry, what? and sorry, what? the call dropped. i have horizon. so you know, i appreciate against both the modern conveniences and also the old system the qualities of the old network. >> put together, if they had broken up at&t before it put together the system? >> and sorry, say it again? >> but together our system if the phone companies or as fragmented as there were. >> is a good question.
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i don't really know. i would say the internet is may be an answer to that. there is no one company at that point that on the internet and there was an especially during its earlier development. the interoperable the and standards, the minister make a work. so i think there is in existence for to doing it that way. i don't know. at&t said it was pretty monolithic and did things. but it worked. >> it's interesting. >> absolutely. it did not always work, but eventually they get the king sent out. all right. other questions? all right. thank you very much for coming. all be doing a signing appeared. and then after words burgers and year. >> for more information visit the authors website, exploding the phone.
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>> the british navy had a large impact on the war of 1812. while in alexandria viejo with the help of our local cable partner comcast we sat down with denver branson to discuss the navy's role. his book is that even a necessity. the 18th-century atlanta quarreled. its next here on book tv. >> the british empire in the 18th century was really a maritime empire. as an island nation depended heavily on trade and controlling the trade of various colonial territories. for this to work, you have a powerful navy. the navy needed man. and so british naval ships release sale the world. especially concentrated in the atlantic. and this is how the system
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affected american colonists. british naval vessels came into various ports. there are often losing men. death, disease, and desertion. the only way that they could resupply their ships was to capture columnists. so in that way america was introduced to really what i can't think of as the nasty underside of this british system that in many ways they benefited from an appreciated but does some hint of camino, what was really involved and the obligations of being a british subject. the issue was important for the american colonies throughout the 18th century. it was always one of the most unpopular parts aborning to the british empire. one thing that they did as americans today, the american colonists actually love to be part of the british empire overall. all the way through the seven
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years' war in 1763. in that sense the american revolution was something of an aberration. but there were these issues that emerged early on. m1 was impressed me. and during the american revolutionary era it was incredibly unpopular in the 17 sixties. the 17 70's that american independence, it appears a declaration of independence is one of the grievances against george the third. it continued during the american revolutionary war. american vessels captured by the british. sailors are usually given a choice. they could join the british naval vessel what they could go into horrible prison in england. some ended up serving on british naval ships. so, you know, the american revolution ended in 1783. a decade later the british war and a new war with france. the french revolution and
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eventually napoleonic wars. those wars last from 17931815. the british navy needed more men than ever did before. in the final years of the war, about 140,000 sailors. and so it could not release their anyone. one of the practices of the british navy was ships to sea from other countries and check to see if any british sailors were on board because it was illegal and the british system to serve for another country. and one place that a british sailor both to hide when the american merchant ships. and so when the british stop american merchant ships on the high seas, this was seen as a violation of american sovereignty. and they -- various american ministrations starting with george russ and in continuing with john adams, thomas jefferson, ultimately james
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madison, they all rejected this, something as in violation of america sovereign rights. the british navy essentially needed more sailors than were available at the time. sailors in the british empire worked on merchant ships and naval ships. this was fine in peace, but in times of war there was essentially more need than there was a time. so with the british navy did, they used a forceful conscription system of impressment which was actually legal to violently apprehend man , put them on ships because the american colonies were members of the british empire, that meant that american sailors also could be impressed. and once a sailor was impressed on a ship, he was essentially on that vessel until the war ended,
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until he died, or until he escaped. those were the only roads out of the situation. often compared to slavery in its own time. the systems are different, but to have some similarities. when a sailor was impressed we have some first hand accounts. they often liken themselves to enslave africans. the real important difference is where the slavery was permit, it was hereditary. passed down to the following generations. and, of course, few, if any benefits. impressment only lasted for the duration of the particular work and then sailors winfrey. there were still paid a wage by the british navy, and i think the single most important difference between the two systems is that we have amazing
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records of enslaved africans who wanted to be impressed. that means to monday sought freedom in the british navy. so that clearly shows that impressment provided a certain amount of freedom that was in variable under slavery. indentured servants in colonial america worked under a certain term of service. the indentured servitude worked, a labor in england the did not have great prospects could come to america and essentially the cost of the voyage, that person placed to work for a certain number of years, usually 47. that indenture, the person was free. ideally he would give some benefit. so in my book i compare impressment of indentured servitude to slavery. we often think of the 18th-century as the age of enlightenment and the age of
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liberty. it certainly was those things, but it was also the era of servitude. more people crossed the atlantic ocean to come to the western hemisphere under some condition of on freedom than freedom. we don't have exact figures about the number of men who were impressed. that is because the navy cannot keep track. when ever a person under the ship camino, the person's name was written down, but their exact circumstances are not clear. and so exact estimates for the number of men that were impressed, some are between half and two-thirds for any given war. so even those numbers, we can safely say that about a quarter were impressed during the 18th century. that makes it the second most common form of forced labor, for service in the british empire after slavery. a great quotation from a british
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admiral. he said that all volunteers to when they find out they can get away. by that he meant that when a sailor was captured by president he was offered a bounty if you would like to take it. if the ticket he was automatically of volunteer. you would take the bounty? the one problem in taking the bounty is that at that point that sailor had no legal recourse to get out of the navy. and there were certain legal means the seller could skate. that was the quickest way. the navy could only impress seamen. so if the person could show that they had some other occupation that they were impressed with legally the naked get back. one way that this happened is your family on shore. and so this institution affected a lot of people.
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i just the men who were captured . wives and mothers and other relatives would petition the british admiralty to get them and cut to get the men out. they could file for writ of habeas corpus. in this basically meant that they were captured illegally. at that point the navy would have to show the courts that this person actually was a sailor and that he belonged in the navy. there was always a certain amount of controversy about press gangs and whether they were on the up and up, you know, whether they acted properly. there were certainly susceptible to bribes. men got out of service that way. and so, you know, really, a lot of lodging's about the press in recruiting. you should always be careful when you're sipping your ale whatever because some reporter
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could always put a shilling inside of the glass. if you excepted-chilling, just like the bounty to you essentially were saying that you were volunteering for service. so you would want to drink that. that's one reason according to legend that to the state spyglasses the owner glass, clear, so you can see what your drinking. there are some amazing moments in the atlantic world. one of the displaced just after 1747 when a small british fleet, admiral charles mills was sailing home from canada to the caribbean. they stopped over in boston. like so many british commanders to meet new demand. so he did with the british do. he took about 50 men.
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this caused boston to explode in protest. he had violated some unwritten rules about impressed and messages at the time. the most important one was that the british navy was not to take massachusetts sailors. that is, men were born in the colony. that is exactly what it. and so the crowd rose up. they actually captured the officers. in a sense they turned around and impressed the british navy officers and held them hostage and took over the town for three days. the governor of massachusetts fled. he went into one of the islands in boston, harvard. the only thing that ended the locomotion was that he threatened to fire on the town if they did not release officers at this time, young sam adams. twenty-five years old and had
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recently completed his master's a harvard which was about when it was legitimate to oppose civil government. he decided that this was more of those times. and the right against the british navy was justified. and so in that sense it helped to bring a wellspring of ideas. really kind of an amazing moment the story of impressment happen in the early 70's 70's. american revolution, but during the time of tension between the american colonies in great britain. the british navy began for a possible war over the islands which remains a controversial issue to the state. and at various people wanted to explore whether this was actually legal. could the british actually capture men and put them on ships. so we have records of benjamin franklin educating himself and
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reading one of the leading rulings that said impressment was legal. he wrote on the margins of this ruling all kinds of sarcastic comments against the whole british system of government which she decided that if this was legal and showed that if they did not release support liberty. his solution was that if regular sailors could be impressed and that means that judges should be impressed, british naval officers can be impressed. even the king himself should be liable to imprisonment. that was franklin solution. almost at the exact same time the jurors the third was reviewing the same legal decision and came under the complete opposite conclusion. he decided that it was perfectly legal. that the king should be able to command your service as subjects when he needed them.
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this is the case a difference for style and substance. brad franken has been created in writing and the margin of the ruling in making of his own solution, george the third very diligently had recorded the legal ruling in his own hand line by line by line. a recent increase in -- conclusion that he was happy with the issue of impressment networks. i tell the book, the eve of necessity because britain found itself really in a compromise position. in order to establish and continued the world dominance that it had it in essence had to violate one of its own principles. the british are associated with liberal -- liberty in the 18th century, something that as americans we sometimes forget. and so when they resorted to impressment which was a system
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that was so controversial and for so many was the opposite. in a sense it violated the primary ideals. for society's going forward if the relative values are and what is necessary. continue their way and whether it's worth it. >> for more information on book tv recent visit to alexandria, virginia and the many other cities visited by our local content vehicles, go to c-span.org / local content. >> we have allowed a human rights nightmare to occur on our watch. in the years since dr. king's death, of vast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and jim crow. a system of mass incarceration that no doubt has dr. king turning in his grave today. ..
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