Joe Engressia
In 1957, a blind seven year old boy, who had developed perfect pitch, discovered that by whistling a specific tone he could cause an automated phone recording to stop playing. The boy, Joe Engressia, had inadvertently become the father of modern phone phreaking. A decade later, the FBI raided his home and confiscated his equipment. Engressia had been listening in on a “non-classified military telephone system”, which the FBI perceived as a “Security matter: - Espionage: Interception of Communications”, while the phone company itself believed Engressia’s actions to be “strictly for their own amusement and [the] harassment of [the] phone company”. The FBI viewed Engressia with such suspicion that J. Edgar Hoover himself sent a memo to the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the U.S. Secret Service, and the counselor to President Nixon warning about Engressia’s activities.
| Previous page on path | Phone Phreaking, page 4 of 9 | Next page on path |
Discussion of "Joe Engressia"
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...