You go around for a bike ride one day too collect payfone numbers for fun. You get a whole bunch just to find out that the call does not receave incoming calls. Phone Company's are heartless for those just looking for a friend. Someone to reach out too

Yeah, the phone compnies can suck the big one. So, maybe people use the payphones to deal drugs. So, maybe they use them for third-party calls and other messed-up shit. I don't see why that should stop them from letting the damn phones accept incoming calls. Hehehehe... some still work however, but they're mostly privately owned (i.e. outside markets). ;-) -The Nafotabiator

most COCOTs set their phones to refuse incoming calls because they lose money, or rather they don't *make* money, from incoming calls. if i call you at a payphone and we talk for a half hour that is a half hour in which the payphone owner can not possibly make any money. the drug-dealing thing is mostly, though not completely, urban lore. if the phone companies wanted to prevent drug-dealers from having ways of communicating (and why would the phone company be interested in preventing anyone from making a call?) they have a long way to go if they are starting from payphones.

A COCOT is a phone, not a company. Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephone. I understand the fascination with the PSTN; what I don't understand is why nobody takes the trouble to learn anything about it before they start throwing assertions around.

kiss my BFC.

No thanks. I see we're both surly today. I was discussing people who get hold of a term they're unclear on and then start kicking out nonsense with authority to make themselves seem like wizards. Hey, I think the phone system, and the telecomms nets that have followed, are fascinating as hell, and I've been hacking around with them since the early days of phreaking and boxing. So I took the trouble to sponge up as much data as I could. I don't have my self-worth bound up it, though. There's already far too much myth, misdirection, fronting, and plain old wrong (or outdated by decades) information out there on phreaking boards and the like. If we're going to stay one step ahead of Ma Bell and her unholy progeny, we need to have basic facts straight.

d()()d!!!!!!!!!!!111 january is male aggression month.

You tellum' Markus! Folks better know their terminology before they start slinging jargon round here! (It's aready confusing enuf for those of us trying to follow along in the libretto.)

what's a PSTN? what's a libretto? bah. i think i'll just take a vic and go pass out.

"Around here" meaning sorabji.com, no, we all get our money's worth out of our right to shoot our faces off without much regard to the facts. I meant "around here", The Payphone Project, which, though it comes up in the general message search by the regulars, generally attracts a different crowd with specialized interests, to wit, payphones and general skullduggery involving the public switched telephone network. A libretto is a type of Italian ham, sliced thinly and cured between the pages of a book, traditionally a large art book with those heavy, glossy pages.

"thinly sliced ham"??!?? for the love of god, man! leave those pigs alone!

The little known original lyrics: Hey! Butcher! Leave those pigs alone!

Y'all are so silly! You know good & well that a libretto is. And w/all the drama that goes on at these Payphone Project threads/us civillians sorely need one. BTW, Markus or Swine or whomever might know: Is it really true that the NSA monitors all overseas phone calls? Even the ones made from payphones? Even if they only eavesdrop for 10 sec. before moving on to another call? Yegads -- does our gov't. REALLY have the technology (& the staff!) to accomplish such a thing? Or is the monitoring done via computer? Also: Given the time & the proper equipment/wd any of you be capable of hooking up a relay system that wd make specific payphones in a specific locations ring simultaneously? I've been thinking abt a Sorabji Payphone Project Milennium thing. Everyone cd submit the # & address of one payphone from a major city in every state. And at 12:01am on New Year's Day/every single one of those phones wd start ringing. Just for the hell of it. I suggest using payphones in various mental institutions/brothels &/or police stations. Even if the phones don't accept incoming calls/there's still a way to make a payphone ring, right? I'd be willing to pay you a reasonable fee for rendering such services/of course. And I'm sure my fellow Sorbjians wd be more than happy to supply the phone #'s.

NSA doesn't monitor every overseas call, but they get a hell of a lot. They are sweeping signals only outside the US, so anything they get overseas could, and sometimes does, have the other termination point in the US, payphone or not. Their legal position is that these unavoidable intercepts aren't a problem, if they aren't fishing in US waters deliberately. They've gotten some interesting stuff, but it rarely gets acted upon unless it has serious national security implications. For example, there have been intercepts of politicians taking bribes, etc. but it doesn't usually get passed along to anyone relevant because of the sensitive implications of spying on American citizens. That's the job of J. Edgar's boys. The hundreds of millions of intercepts are scanned by computer, usually looking for spoken keywords. Incidentally, I can see the NSA headquarters building from my office window. Occasionally, I drive two minutes during my lunch hour and check out the National Cryptological Museum. Some pretty cool stuff in there, from ancient (1992) Crays to original Enigma and Purple machines. They've also got USS Liberty's flag, and you can buy NSA golfballs in the giftshop. If you're interested in an interesting (if slightly dated) general book on the SIGINT crew down the road, check out James Bamford's The Puzzle Palace.

Okay, I'll bite -- what's SIGINT? And speaking of cryptology & big-ass computers/I rented "Pi" last nite (sorry/my browser don't do math symbols). Very dark & claustrophobic looking-film (& so grainy you'd think he shot it on sand!). But man, did that guy have his crib wired or what? Just computer guts everywhere -- hanging from racks on the ceiling /overing every available surface. And that mysterious super-chip the Wall Street cabal gave him -- do new chips really have to go thru a declassification process/or was that just hype? Really killer concept tho' -- esp. becuz I knew a tiny bit abt Fibonacci's Numbers & Kabbalistic numerology. But the really weird part was the idea of the computer completing his program & suddenly becoming 'conscious' of itself & how it works. Which caused it to crash & burn & leave behind that weird goo -- which turned out to be organic matter/the same spiral patterns we see everywhere/when he put it under the microscope. I can't wait to see what this kid Aronofsky comes out w/next.

Signals Intelligence, a generic name for electronic eavedropping of voice, data, telemetry, radio, etc. Historical examples are overhearing Kremlin leaders' car phone conversations in Moscow, tapping the main Soviet army telephone cables in a tunnel in East Berlin, visual imagery of troop movements on the Kuwaiti border from satellites, sending aircraft stuffed with gear on overflights across the Soviet border to trip off air defense systems to get radar and command radio frequencies, reading individual keystrokes from the electromagnetic field around unshielded computer wires, using submarines in the Sea of Okhotsk to capture flight data broadcast from missile test firings, hearing conversations in a building by bouncing a laser beam off a window and reading the vibrations, and monitoring tactical battle communications traffic during the Six Day War from a ship in the Mediterranean and a station in Turkey.

And you'll do all this for a fee, yes? Send me yr e-mail addr, Markus (hehe).

Interruption: When I was a wee tot, my brother told me that if you left a public payphone off the hook for too long, it would explode, taking the entire building with it. I believed him, too. Okay, it's not a payphone number, but it's a payphone related story. It matters, darnit! Continue.

You Know This Country used to be America And a rewarding experience now it is so policed ,locked, blocked, and gated.And the phone companys will spend 2 dollars to get 1 dollar instead of being so money hungry they should just appreciate the wealth they already have. I hate the new phone companys they go up in their price every month when will it stop you selfish Bastard's?