   ESS (FILE 1)

        [2600 -- February 1984]

   There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being
watched at any given moment.  How often, or on what system, the
Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.  It
was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.  But
at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.
You had to live--did live, from habit that became instict--in the
assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in
darkness, every movement scrutinized.

       From Nineteen Eighty-Four

   ESS is the big brother of the Bell family.  Its very name strikes
fear and apprehension into the hearts of most phreakers, and for a
very good reason. ESS (Electronic Switching System) knows the full
story on every telephone hooked into it.  While it may be paranoid to
say that all phreaking will come to a screeching halt under ESS, it's
certainly realistic to admit that any phreak whose central office
turns to ESS will have to be a lot more careful.

   Here's why.

   With electronic switching, every single digit dialed is recorded.
This is useful not only for nailing phreaks but for settling billing
disputes. In the past, there has been no easy way for the phone
company to show you what numbers you dialed locally.  If you
protested long enough and loud enough, they might have put a pen
register on your line to record everything and prove it to you. Under
ESS, the actual printout (which will be dug out of a vault somewhere
if needed) shows every last digit dialed. Every 800 call, every call
to directory assistance, repair service, the operator, every
rendition of the 1812 Overture, everything!  Here is an example of a
typical printout, which shows time of connect, length of connect, and
number called.

 DATE   TIME    LENGTH  UNITS     NUMBER

 0603   1518       3     1        456-7890
 0603   1525       5     3        345-6789
 0603   1602       1     0        0000-411
 0603   1603       1     0        800-555-1212
 0603   1603      10     2.35*    212-345-6789
 0603   1624       1     0        0000-000 (TSPS)

   A thousand calls to '800' will show up as just that--a thousand
calls to '800'! Every touch tone or pulse is kept track of and for
most phreaks, this in itself won't be very pretty.

   Somewhere in the hallowed halls of 195 Broadway, a Traffic
Engineer did an exhaustive study of all 800 calls over the past few
years, and reached the following conclusions:i(1) Legitimate calls to
800 numbers last an average of 3 minutes or less.  Of the illegal
(i.e phreakers) calls made via 800 lines, more than 80% lasted 5
minutes or longer; (2) The average residential telephone subscriber
makes five such calls to an 800 number per month. Whenever phreakers
are being watched, that number was significantly higher. As a result
of this study, one feature of ESS is a daily log called the '800
Exceptional Calling Report.'

   Under ESS, one simply does not place a 2600 hertz tone on the
line, unless of course, they want a Telco security representative and
a policeman at their door within an hour!  The new generics of ESS
(the #5) now in production, with an operating prototype in Geneva,
Illinois, allow the system to silently detect all 'foreign' tones not
available on the customer's phone.  You have exactly twelve buttons
on your touch-tone (R) phone.  ESS knows what they are, and you had
best not sound any other tones on the line, since the new #5 is
programmed to silently notify a human being in the central office,
while continuing with your call as though nothing were wrong! Someone
will just punch a few keys on their terminal, and the whole sordid
story will be right in front of them, and printed out for action by
the security representatives as needed.

   Tracing of calls for whatever reason (abusive calls, fraud calls,
etc.) is done by merely asking the computer right from a terminal in
the security department.  With ESS, everything is right up front,
nothing hidden or concealed in electromechanical frames, etc.  It's
merely a software program! And a program designed for ease in
operation by the phone company.  Call tracing has become very
sophisticated and immediate.  There's no more running in the frames
and looking for long periods of time.  ROM chips in computers work
fast, and that is what ESS is all about.

   Phone phreaks are not the only reason for ESS, but it was one very
important one.  The first and foremost reason for ESS is to provide
the phone company with better control on billing and equipment
records, faster handling of calls (i.e. less equipment tied up in the
office at any one time), and to help agencies such as the FBI keep
better account of who was calling who from where, etc.  When the FBI
finds out that someone whose calls they want to trace is on a ESS
exchange, they are thrilled because it's so much easier for them
then.

   The United States won't be 100% ESS until sometime in the mid
1990's.  But in real practice, all phone offices in almost every city
are getting some of the most basic modifications brought about by
ESS.  '911' service is an ESS function.  So is ANI (Automatic Number
Identification) on long distance calls. 'Dial tone first' pay phones
are also an ESS function. None of these things were available prior
to ESS.  The amount of pure fraud calling via bogus credit card,
third number billing, etc. on Bell's lines led to the decision to
rapidly install the ANI, for example, even if the rest of the ESS was
several years away in some cases.

   Depending on how you choose to look at the whole concept of ESS,
it can be either one of the most advantageous innovations of all time
or one of the scariest.  The system is good for consumers in that it
can take a lot of activity and do lots of things that older systems
could never do.  Features such as direct dialing overseas, call
forwarding (both of which open up new worlds of phreaking), and call
holding are steps forward, without question.  But at the same time,
what do all of the nasty implications mentioned further back mean to
the average person on the sidewalk?  The system is perfectly capable
of monitoring anyone, not just phone phreaks! What would happen if
the nice friendly government we have somehow got overthrown and a
mean nasty one took its place?  With ESS, they wouldn't have to do
too much work, just come up with some new software.  Imagine a phone
system that could tell authorities how many calls you placed to
certain types of people, i.e. blacks, communists, laundromat service
employees... ESS could do it, if so programmed.
