[HaBi 1]    TAP No. 23 - November '73

TAP No. 23 - November '73 TECHNOLOGICAL AMERICAN PARTY The Energy Crisis was finally spotlighted this month by the Pres. to the American Public. It was "suggested" to the people that cutting down highway speeds, shortening school hours (good news in some respects), turning off your home and office lights when unneeded, and lowering the thermostat would give us a savings of considerable magnitude in fuel consumption. The second part of project Independence would be to develop within this country a source of energy which would free us from "reliance on a foreign enemy... er, energy"... It seems that this country can only be moved ahead in times of crisis, so instead of preventative structurinq of our life systems we get problematic solutions. That is to say we do not really rid ourselves of the disease, we only change its name and place and again wait for a crisis. Take for instance Gas consumption. A better way to take the same amount of fuel and stretch its potential use would be to expend scientific skills in the development of a gasoline engine with better mileage. Almost all the American car manufacturers have reduced amounts of miles per gallon this year in their cars. And why not? Along with the oil interests they stand only to win. The Pres. also said cars usually only have one person in them. Anyone who's stood out on the road for hours, freezing their ass off could have told us that. Us hitch-hikers are probably going to be blamed for the high speeds that frightened motorists travel at (the same mentality, that blames phone phreaks for rising phone rates). We know that the American People are being fed advertisements that make us CONSUME. But you didn't really expect Pres. to get up there and admit that our entire economy (that means his friends' profits) depends upon a continuous increase in CONSUMPTION, which is what caused the whole mess. Buy, Buy, Buy, Throw Away, Throw Away, Oops, better conserve, we'll raise our prices so don't worry! The same could be said for all gas appliances, and ever, manufacturers of electric lights. Couldn't a low consumption high-brightness bulb be immediately produced? You bet your blue box! But the most recent trend among the Science communities is to use their abilities in developing either weapons of destruction, or useless niceties like better floor wax, instant cheese dip or pocket calculators (for adding up all your purchases). Let's pray that before we start unrestricted strip mining and other rapings we can get maximum output from already existing fuels and decrease our consumption by using decent mass transit sharinq with others. Three color TV's per family! Now is the time for Bell Labs to come forward and tell us what the fuck they've been puttering around with that would help us instead of lowering AT&Ts construction costs and boosting profits. The Electric and Gas companies are huge monopolies who have the nerve to sell us the Sun's energy. They have free reign over the rates they charge, the quality of the smoke we're forced to breathe and the oceans and lakes they conveniently dump their wastes into. And (don't forget that they plan to risk all our lives by installing unsafe nuclear power plants in the midst of population centers. We'll probably find out sooner or later of the corruption &payoffs that allow the Atomic Energy Commission to ignore our health and safety, but in the meantime it's comforting to know that these death machines cost money, and we can ut down their revenue and put It to better purposes. Power phreaks have been around a long time, but on such small scale that the companies haven't done much to stop That will probably change, but they move like turtles ad won't be able to do anything on a large scale for years. ~y then we'll be ten more steps ahead. Besides, God is on our side. Pay strict attention to the safety rules. We all know that strict obedience to the rules is the only way to get power anyway. More power to you! Electricity works on the same basic principle in all types meters around the country, though the meters may look slightly different. First a word about safety. You will be working with 110 volts like any normal outlet in your home, but you will be closer to that current than if you were plugging in a toaster. So you must know how to be careful. 110 volts can kill you. TAP guarantees that if you stand in a puddle of water, 110 volts will kill you. The same goes for working with wet or sweaty hands or feet. Remember the bathtub in Goldfinger? When you work on electrical lines, wear gloves. If you are too bumed out by gloves, at least wear rubber-soled shoes. And kep dry - Don't stand on a damp floor! If you use your head and work slowly, keeping safety in mind, you will not get hocked. It may seem like a dangerous expedition but it's actually simple to do and a lot of fun. So locate your electric meter, which is usually found in the basement of apartment buildings, or on the outside of houses, put on your gloves and rubbers and get to work. Stand on a rubber mat if you're standing on dirt or dampness. If your electrical meter is among others and isn't clearly marked for your apartment, have a friend turn all your lights on and off simultaneously and then look for the meter that starts and stops. You can tell the meter is starting by the little rotatting wheel in front that turns the gears of the little pointers. When you've located your meter, how about jumping it? That will slow the meter down to a crawl, even if you use a lot of electricity, which of course conservation minded TAPPERs don't do, nor do they rip off, blah, blah, ... This requires removing the meter. The meter simply pulls out with a little wiggling, but it is oftener than not clamped on tight with a ring of metal, which unscrews with a screwdriver. Sometimes an additional lock is put on the ring, called a rollersmith lock. You can't cut a rollersmith lock, but you can make a "key" for it and take it off. The insert shows how to pick this lock. Remove the ring by bending it slightly, then grab the meter with both hands and pull it straight out. The meter has prongs which fit into sockets on the wall panel. The electricity flows from one socket, into the meter, and out of the meter into the socket which leads up to your home. Now that the meter is out the electricity is turned off. Now we have many choices open to us. We can: Turn the meter pointers backwards to some point. Break the meter, or jam it up. Bypass the meter with a jumper so the meter doesn't move. Bypass the meter with a thin jumper so the meter moves slower. Turn the electricity on if it had been turned off. TURNING BACK METER This involves opening the meter case and moving the little dials with your hand. Often there will be a small wire with a lead seal that you have to break in order to open the case. Just cut it off, they never check anyway. hen unscrew the glass case one-eigth of a turn, and renove the glass, turn the dials, and close it back up. Be sure to move the dials back to an actual number. This is tricky thing to do, and you also have to make sure that you don't get your meter read with the reading less than it was before. If they see you used negative electricity they may have a few questions for you. Get to know when the meter reader comes, how often and on what dates. After he comes, read the meter, and turn it back to that point right before his next visit. Add a few token kilowatt-hours so they look like you went- on a trip and left a clock on. Put the meter, ring, and a little dirt back on to make it look lonely. Be sure to push the meter in straight and firm. BREAKING OR JAMMING METER This is dangerous because you can't control it precisely. Rather, you get an anarchistic situation which may result in the meter burning up and the meter , reader noticing it. Jamming the meter is accomplished by opening up the case and bending or rusting a few gears to make it stop or to slow down. Stopping the meter isn't recommended because almost everybody's meter is moving continuously and it may look suspicious if your meter is completely dead. But physically jamming the meter usually will stop it completely rather than slow it down. A better way to slow it down is to install a shunt wire inside the meter. We'll show how it's done once we get a few meters from the readers to do research on. Meanwhile you can shunt the meter outside of it's case. SHUNTING THE METER If we look at a diagram of how the electricity is led thru the meter to your home, we see that a jumper wire from point A to point B could carry electricity around the meter. Thus, it would be free. Since the wires in and around the meter are thick, our jumper wire will have to be thick to be able to carry all the electricity so that none goes thru the meter. A piece of insulated #14 wire will do the trick. Remove your meter from the meter pan. The back of the meter will have prongs which plug into sockets in the pan. Take a 9" piece of insulated solid copper wire, #14 or #16. Wrap it around the proper terminals, thereby bypassing the meter. In our N. Y. example with a 3-wire Westinghouse meter (for places with both 110 and 220 volts), the proper terminals are the two vertically-oriented pairs. There is a horizontal ground terminal; don't connect on to it with the jumpers. The jumpers may have to go to different terminals on other different types of meters, and you can find out the proper terminals with a simple ohmmeter ($4 or less at electronics stores). Since the proper terminals to be shunted already have internal shunts, the ohmmeter will measure less than 1 ohm, between those terminals that are to be shunted by you. That means the meter will do the same thing as when you touch the two meter wires together when you hit the correct terminals to be shunted. In our example, jumping pins A and B will give you free 110, jumping pins C and D will give free 220. Pin E is ground, and don't jump that to anything. When installing jumper wires, strip off the insulation 2" from the end and wrap it around the prong as shown. The wire must be wrapped around the part of the prong near the plastic base of the meter or it won't fit back into the sockets in the meter pan. Be sure the bare part of the wire touches only the proper prongs and stays clear of all others. Now, carefully fit the prongs into the sockets and firmly push the meter into the pan. It may not go flush, but push it in and put the ring over the meter and screw it shut. Forget the lock if you removed one. What will happen now is that the shunt will bypass some of the electricity around your meter, but not all. The thinner wires (#16) will only bypass some of the electricity. The meter will run slower than it normally would. The larger wires (#14 or #12) will stop the meter almost completely. This is a mixed blessing, because it looks suspicious and should only be done in fiscal emergencies. We'll let you know better and easier ways to bypass meters as soon as we hear from you about them. RESTORING POWER Two ways of commonly cutting off your electricity are removing your meter (Yea!) or by slipping little rubber sleeves over the prongs of the meter, thus preventing the prongs from contacting the sockets. To get around these methods is easy. Just put in another meter, or jump the socket with wires. If you do this, be prepared for a visit from a Electric Co. representative. Be ignorant but nice. "A jumper? What the heck Is a jumper?" Or you can jump the socket from behind the meter pan so that even if the meter is gone they won't see the wires. This will hopefully be explained in a future issue. To remove the plastic sleeves from the meter prongs is easy, but they'll notice (maybe) that your meter reading is going up and your wheel is moving, so you should install jumpers too. In fact, you can leave on the sleeves and very carefully install the jumpers so the meter is dead but the jumpers are live. That may require some work, though. ANY IDEAS? Or, you can do the safest trip of all, and that's to steal it from your landlord. Only do this if you hate your landlord, but of course don't do it anyway. Just tap the wires from a hall light or an outside light and run them into your apartment. The maximum current you can use is then determined by the fuse of the hall or outside light circuit. If you use too much current, the fuse will blow and you'll have to wait until it's replaced to get electricity from that circuit. When wiring outside, use thick, weatherproof cable. All power wiring must be done intelligently. Otherwise you can have a fire. So here is how to figure your current demands: Each appliance you use eats up a certain number of watts. 110 volt appliances use 1 amp (or ampere) for every 100 watts of power. 220 volt appliances use 1/2 amp for ever 100 watts. You'll usually be using 110 volts, so obtain #16 wire for handling up to 1000 watts, and #14 wire for 1000 watts or more. Hardware stores will have all the plugs and sockets and wire you need with people who can show you how to hook it up. Hide all "tap" jobs by routing the wires through walls above ceilings. Camouflaging sometimes helps. If you off of a hall light, be sure to replace the bulb each time it blows. If someone else does it they may see your handiwork. Whenever you do a tap job, pay attention to safety rules. If possible, turn off the circuit while you're working on it. Find the switch or the fuse that turns it off. If you must work on it while it's live, get a friend who knows how. It's dangerous, and one must use insulated tools and have enough dexterity to be able to work with gloves on. We suggest you find the fuse and have someone hold a flashlight. If anyone asks, you're just changing the bulb. Dear TAP, I am enclosing this little thought; though I am sure that no one would ever use it for illegal purposes, it is an interesting theory. In many of the older electric co. installations I am told that the wheel they used was of a ferrous alloy, and I have heard of people who, at peak electrical periods (in evenings) attached a small but powerful magnet to either the top or the sides of the electrical meter and actually slowed the meter down so that they were in effect receiving free electricity. Unfortunately the newer meters have aluminum. wheels, however the motors which turn them must still be affected by magnetism. (and could possibly be slowed?). Dear TAP, The part in your article that reads "Women are especially urged to take the course as they usually have a fear of electrical concepts.. . " should read something like "as they usually have been strongly discouraged from learning electrical concepts. " The problem is not women's timidity, but sex-role stereotyping. But it's good you mentioned women in particular. -S., D. C. - Note: We should also mention that people of both sexes are strongly discouraged from learning electronics so as to keep us technologically naive and sell us more expensive garbage. Also, of course, to prevent us from tampering with the system. And to keep people on different levels. Course B, Alternating Current is ready. The correspondence courses are 50c per course (free if you can't afford it). We think that after reading 6 of the courses you should be able to build any project that we've published. We're trying to make it a simple and fast way to learn to build electronics. The first course is Basic Electricity Course A. Dear TAP, If anyone there is into short wave and has a receiver that can tune 17, 436.5 Kc. (ITT's frequency) for facsimile transmission, you can intercept all sorts of memos, schematics, dtc. , by hooking it up to a Xerox 400 Telecopier (rents for $50 a month). -ML, PENMYLVANIA THE CODE BOOK All About Unbreakable Codes and How to Use Them by Michael E. Marotte REVISED SECOND EDITION Completely revised and updated, and greatly expanded to include the latest developments in cryptology. THE CODE BOOK is the only book written for the layman to reveal little known methods of writing unbreakable codes. Now you can keep whatever secrets you want - from anyone! Financial records, directions to buried or hidden valuables, secret formulas, times and places for clandestine meetings, or whatever information you want to keep from the prying eyes of Big Brother! Complete instructions for writing codes by hand, using pocket calculators, and using microcomputers are explained in easily understandable language. No knowledge of mathematics or cryptology is needed to understand the eesy-to-follow directions in THE CODE BOOK! Here are a few of the topics covered in this amazing new book: One-time pads · Modulo based codes · Rivest functions · Public key systems · Function ciphers · One-way codes · Obfuscation · Goedelized ciphers · Secrets and secrecy · Random alphabets · And much, much more, Including an extensive bibliogaphy and tables of random numbers Obscure secrets known only to international espionage agents and professional cryptographers - now revealed for YOU to use. Everything you need to know in order to write unbreakable codes and have complete privacy of information is revealed in this astonishing new book. Order your copy now. You will be very pleased, we know. 1983, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2", 84 pp, illustrated, soft cover. THE CODE BOOK: $7.95 (ORDER NUMBER 10038) Dear TAP, Two good books on sabotage: Beasty Business, (computer sabotage) $1. 95 British Book Center Fcotage (general sabotage), $1. 95 Pocket Books. Also try Laissez- Faire Books, 208 Mercer St., N. Y. , N. Y. -D. , NY- Dear TAP, A friend showed me an amazing catalog from American Colonial Armament, 1 Riverside Road, Riverside, Ill. 60546. In addition to a large selection of electronic bugs, bug detectors, surveillance units, and other electronic goodies, it contains weapons, police equipment, army surplus and books. Just about everything Abbie mentions in Steal This Book. it's a little right wingy in tone, but a real trip to read. Cost is $2.00. Keep up the excellent work. -OHIO- PICKING THE LOCK To make a key for a rollersmith lock, take a 2" nail, size 8D or slightly larger, and bend up the tip a little as shown. You may have to tap it with a hammer to insert it a full inch and an eighth. Then use the bent tip to hook one of the rings inside. Pull the nail out very slowly and powerfully with a big pliers or visegrips. The spring in the lock is very hard and it will slip out a few times before you get it, but when it does the lock will open up. If you can't get it, just get a hacksaw and cut out the ring. Dear TAP, Better tell people to turn off most if not all the power in the house when they pull the meter. When you put it back in, if there is a good load it could blow out. Just throw the main switch at the fuse box. There is a meter direct wired here that is working fine. - FLORIDA - Dear TA P, Brainstorm ! If you want to find out who owns a local #, call the business office and say "Service rep please, 329 residence (or whatever the exchange is, and whether business or residence)". The operator will switch you, and when the rep. answers, order an out-of-town directory. They'll ask you a number of questions, and then they'll ask for your phone # so that they can get your name and address. Give them the number you want to check, and then when the rep comes on and says, "Alright, Mr. Roberts, I'll handle your request", complete the call. and then check the directory for which Mr. Roberts matches the number. This is a way to get around the telco ripoff of allowing law agencies to find who owns a number, but not Joe Public. -TEXAS- Abbie's case has gone to court with a motion to drop all charges on the grounds that cocaine is improperly classified as a narcotic with heroin. The judge complimented the defense on the extent of their research and documentation but refused the motion. His case goes to trial soon & money is desperately needed, so if you can help with a few bucks please send it to: Abbie Hoffman & Friends Defense Fund, 1340 Broadway, N. Y. , N. Y. 10012, don't send cash! TAP has courses on Basic Electricity that are easily understood, no matter how little knowledge of Electronics you already have. You learn by building useful projects and experiments such as those in TAP. In fact, you should be able to build any project in TAP after 6 courses, which are 50c each (free if you can't afford it). 3 courses are available now, A-Basic Electricity, B-Alternating Current, and C-Basic Phones, with more coming soon. We urge you to send for them if you want a quick education in electricity. If you want to meet other phreaks in your area, and are willing to be met, write to Meat. We'll accumulate a list of names and match you up with someone nearby as soon as possible, and notify you both. T-shirts will be coming soon, but we don't have them yet. They'll look like choice no. 1 in Issue 22.

[HaBi 1]    TAP No. 23 - November '73