Letter from Prison (Winter, 1992 1993) -------------------------------------- The following information comes to us from a prisoner in California. We've removed the name and location to protect his or her identity. I would like to let you know how much I enjoy your magazine. My opportunities to enjoy computer "fun" and phreaking are about zero right now since I am engaged in involuntary solitude. It is with some interest, therefore, that I have followed your reports of rejection by Federal prisons and by the Texas Department of (In)Corrections. As you now know, prison inmates whose First Amendment rights are protected only by Federal law have a tough way to go. The Federal Prison Rulebook allows a warden to reject a publication "if it is determined detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution or if it might facilitate criminal activity." This rule was held valid under (in spite of?) the Constitution's First Amendment by the U.S. Supreme Court (Thornburgh vs. Abbott (1989) 490 US 401, 104 L Ed 2d 459, 109 S Ct 1874). Much to my delight (and surprise) it seems that the great state of California is somewhat more liberal about prisoners' rights to read "questionable" literature than the Federal standard. California Penal Code, sections 2600 (!) and 2601 are, together, sometimes called, "The [California] prisoner's bill of rights." The only restriction on reading material is a restriction against printed matter, which depicts the manufacture of weapons, explosives, poisons, or destructive devices, or which depicts sexual assaults against Department of Corrections employees. No other subject matter can be legally excluded. Lest you think that the First Amendment is completely healthy in California, here are some examples to show that it is not: A friend of mine was recently refused two issues of Hustler magazine. One issue had an article on Asian street gangs in the U.S.A. The other had an article about female inmates in the California Youth Authority (convicted delinquent children) being raped by staff members. Both articles were called "a threat to institution security." Sound familiar? Mailroom personnel here have clearly exceeded their authority and the case is headed for court. Two years ago I was refused a Loompanics book catalog because pages 85-86 were not allowed. I later discovered that the offending pages contained a tongue-in-cheek article on how to use the catalog itself as a weapon. A friend of mine was denied a book on computer hacking that he ordered from Loompanics. He did not contest the refusal, but should have. I received "Out of the Inner Circle" by Bill Landreth with no problem. The exclusion of "unsolicited advertising" literature allowed by CCR, sec. 3147(I)(1) is also much abused. I sent in reader service cards to "Byte" and "Popular Communications" magazines requesting 42 different brochures. I received one reply. One year later I sent off again, this time for 44 brochures. I also informed the mailroom in advance that the brochures were coming. It's been six months now with no responses so I guess it's time to sharpen up my pencils and oil up the typewriter. (Electronic typewriters are not allowed here. They are terrified that we will hide something in the 4K RAM and they won't know how to access it.) Still, we at least have a fighting chance to beat the censors. A considerable body of case law exists to support P.C. 2600 and 2601. If I can't play with phones and computers, I might as well learn about the law. Prison Phreaking I have not tried phreaking here and probably will not (will not be able to, I mean). All phones have "this phone is subject to being monitored" signs above them. A beep tone sounds at 15 second intervals. Occasionally, the monitor circuit can be heard clicking on. Phones can be turned off and on remotely from a single, central, location. The phones themselves are of a type very common as pay phones. They are approximately 21 inches high by eight inches wide by seven inches deep; black case with blue front plate; no coin deposit slot but does have a coin return slot; a Bell System emblem is on the right side of the blue front plate about halfway up; coin return piece says "Bell System Made by Western Electric" on it. The local carrier is Pac Bell and the longdistance carrier is MCI, as of about two years ago. Prior to that it was AT&T. Calls are collect only. Alternate carrier access is blocked as is 800 access. 10777### brings a ringing signal and a recorded message saying, "An alternate carrier access number is not needed to complete this call. Please hang up and place your call again." 10333### brings the same. Dialing an 800 number brings a recorded message that says, "This call cannot be completed as dialed." A normally placed call from here (collect) is placed in the standard way: 0, area code, plus seven-digit number and brings on a live operator identifying him/herself as an MCI operator and asking for the caller's name. They then disappear and check for call acceptance without the caller hearing any conversation with the called party until after the call is accepted. Perhaps I can look forward to automation in the future. Normal access to local directory assistance (555-1212) is also blocked. A recording informs the caller that the number cannot be reached. I tried 555-1212, 411, plus 555-1212 with my area code, and preceded by 1 and 0. These all bring up prerecorded rejections except for the last (0+), which brings on an MCI operator who sounds perplexed that anyone would try to call collect to directory assistance and says they won't accept collect calls. Long distance information, anywhere in the U.S.A., is available by dialing (area code) 555-1212, with or without a 1 in front. Best of all it's free. Sometimes local information can also be obtained by dialing information in an adjacent area code. As I said, alternate carrier access is blocked here, but another prison I was in had 10777### and 10333### direct access to alternate carriers. Unfortunately this access was blocked due to "overuse." We switched to an 800 access number until - finally - all 800 access was blocked. The fun lasted about one year. At the time my wife had a legitimate Sprint card (which supplied the 800 access number) and I usually used her legal code number to call home (I was more cautious than most). We discovered that 10777### leaves a calling phone number record, which appears on the bill. Using 800 access causes the bill to say "western wide area access call" in the calling number column of the bill. These cost 75 cents extra over direct access calls. We also tried having people direct dial to the jail pay phone to avoid operator assistance charges yet still be legal. But the phones were blocked to incoming calls. They did not even have their numbers posted on the phones. We got it off of phone bills. To this day I marvel at the nimble-fingered few who could come up with valid nine digit Sprint codes in 10 to 15 minutes. There is magic there. I could do it in an average of one and a half hours. I would blunder around with a "used up" nine digit code number until I got a valid first seven digits (I made it through code number and 10 digit phone number before getting reject tone) then plodded along through the 100 possible combinations of last two digits (00 to 99) until a "hit" occurred. It was slow, grueling work but God damn it, somebody had to do it after "Nimble Fingers" went home. Interestingly enough, Sprint seemed to prefer an electronic war rather than working with law enforcement. On occasion jail guards were spotted watching phones (from 50 feet away) with binoculars as guys dialed. On another occasion two guards rushed a guy who had been dialing continuously for over an hour and took his notes away from him (a 00 to 99 grid) but nothing came of it. A lieutenant in the jail even said that they had called Sprint repeatedly with information, in case Sprint wanted to prosecute, but "they didn't seem to care." However, we lost 10777### and 10333### access. Once, at about number 17 while running a 00 to 99 sequence, I had an operator come on the line asking if I was having a problem. I switched to random number choice on the grid and had no more problems. But the code numbers were going dead in shorter and shorter time spans. Before loss of 800 access killed our fun the code numbers were lasting only two or three days. There is a proposed bill that could grant the Director of Corrections the power to choose which long-distance carrier to use in all California prisons. Think of the revenues involved! There is a 15- to 25-million-dollar-per-year payback to the prisons for supplying phone locations (to captive customers with no choice of alternate carrier and no other way to call than "collect"). This money may be up for grabs soon and screw the poor families who are forced to pay the "operator assistance" charge for all calls or else forgo phone calls. A logical compromise to the high expense vs. phone fraud problem would be to allow use of "Call Me" cards, which can only be used to call the card holder s home number yet avoid operator assistance charges. But it is difficult to establish meaningful communication with minds that ban TV remote controls because "transmitting devices" are forbidden in California prisons, and electronic typewriters are considered a "threat to institution security." We used to have a large collection of California phone books in our library. They were all locked away when a guard supposedly found his own home address listed in one. This place makes me think of the sign I once saw: "Help, the paranoids are after me."