computer hackers - book - 2010 - Phone Losers of America

Phone Losers of America
Brad Carter
Big Beef Bueno Books
2010
297 pages

This book is part of a trend of 1980s/90s hack/phreak textfile groups who are printing anthologies or memoirs of their histories.  In 2006 the Cult of the Dead Cow published The Book of Cao, an anthology of their txt files, while 2600 magazine (which has always a print magazine rather than a t-phile group) has published a ‘best of’ anthology in addition to an anthology of letters sent by readers titled Dear Hacker.  Phone Losers of America is different from these other books in that it is a memoir, rather than an anthology, of Brad Carter (aka RedBoxChilliPepper) and his phone/hacker related pranks and adventures.

    Brad Carter is the spiritual figurehead of the Phone Losers of America, otherwise referred to as the PLA.  The PLA can be interpreted as a loose confederation of telephone prankster hackers who use www.phonelosers.org and its discussion forums as their headquarters.  The PLA can also be thought of as Brad Carter and his friends, and the PLA mission may include anything amusing that they do.  In addition to authoring this book, and editing (as well as writing, for the most part) 46 PLA .txt files, Carter also sporadically releases episodes of two different podcasts: PLA Radio, and Big Beef Bueno Podcast, and hosts the prank call focused radio program, The Phone Show.  Carter’s activities are significant in the hacker world in that he and his associates eschew the white-grey hat hacker ethical pretensions in favour of exploiting the new frontier of network telecommunications as a vast forum for pranks and obnoxious behavior.  

Carter’s text is divided into 23 chapters of varying formats.  The PLA are known for embellishing their texts with dramatic or comedic flourish, and while Carter presents his book as a memoir, it begins with a brief bit of fiction about himself (named Alex in the text) and a friend. The pair were dumpster diving at a local telco office one night when a garbage truck picked up a dumpster while his friend was hiding in it.  Alex fled town, believing that his friend, Doug, had died, and in flight his PLA adventures began.  Following this opening, the each of the subsequent chapters (with some deviation) delve into a particular prank that Carter has pulled, either by himself or with accomplices.  Some chapters recall the targetting of a particularly notable rube, some of whom are familiar to follwers of PLA forums or radio.  Many of the chapters are re-written PLA text files detailing phonehijinks with cordless phones and other things, but some are escapades from after the text-file era, for example Carter’s replacement of a sign on a lawn of a McDonalds.  Carter painstakingly mimiced the logo and the format of a sign that read “Our Team is Empowered to Guarantee Your Satisfaction” to instead read “Our Team is Well Endowed to Guarantee Your Pleasure”.  This episode is unique in that it did not directly involve the internet or telephone in any way, but it is the sort of adventure Carter devoted much of his time to.

Many of Carter’s chapters detail activities that were meant to amuse.  In the chapter titled 'eBay Feedback', for example, Carter notes that he has been a frequent user of eBay for many years, and that at some point he decided to play with the comments section.  Carter would leave strange or silly comments on another sellers profile, with regards to a purchase, while leaving their seller rating intact.  While this is an internet based prank, rather than telephone based, it reminds me of something I read about the legality of prank phone calls.  I’ve read that the reason no one has ever been convicted of making prank phone calls is because making a call for the purposing of amusing the callee fits within the bounds of correct telephone use.  

Travel is another theme of Phone Losers of America.  Carter moved frequently around the United States, and as he described in a chapter titled ‘Homelessness’, he occasionally lived without a home and instead lived in bus stations or his vehicle.  In addition to this, Carter described (in a chapter that I’m not sure is fiction or not) acquiring free air-travel within the united states via credit card fraud.  Carter’s textual identity is certainly unstable, but he positions himself as alternating between jet-set fraudster, and nihilistic vagabond prankster.  

    Phone Losers of America is interesting because it embraces an aspect of the computer underground that is unacknowledged by most books about hackers.  That is the potential for fun and mischief that a dominant reliance on computer technology has opened.  Unlike Michael Calce in Mafiaboy, Brad Carter does not present Alex as interested in showing off his technological prowess or driven for the hidden knowledge that lies somewhere beyond a password prompt.  Alex appears to be motivated by a desire to laugh at the anger of others.  He he disregards emerging forms of etiquette and directs most of his technological knowledge towards achieve this.