Thanks for going into more detail on the REMOB fantasy.

Can you tell the group what facilities are available that actually do allow a technician to monitor a particular line (or group of lines), e.g. what could a telco emp or a phone phreak do (regarding a short or long term wiretap) if they wanted? And what facilities are *actually used* when a court-ordered wiretap is implemented? My impression is that the two are different.

John

I'm glad you brought up this subject, John, because there is indeed a good deal of misinformation in this area. I'll start off with some of the numerous facilities available to a telco technician. The first I'll mention is MLT (Mechanized Loop or Line Testing), a system which is part of the LCAMOS group of systems (Loop and Cable Admini- stration Maintenance Operations System). Used by Repair Service Attendants, it's seamlessly accessed through LMOS (Loop Maintenance Operations System), when the attendant specifies a 'mask' (form type) that would involve a real- time test to be performed. At the heart of LMOS is a System 370-type pro- cessor. Attendants access the various functions through a Front End (FE) system, commonly running Unix. The data comprising customer records and their corresponding trouble reports/service histories is kept on a high- capacity storage system (nicknamed the HICAPs). Each front-end accesses data from different HICAPs for the respective areas they cover. Getting back to masks, when the attendant gets a call on 611, upon the customer hanging up, they usually issue the TEST mask, which accesses MLT which in turn establishes a metallic connection to the phone line. MLT then carries out impedance, capacitance, frequency/amplitude response tests (at 404Hz, 1004Hz, and 2804Hz, standard), tests for line activity, etc., etc. The attendant then has the option to open a trouble record (using the ESTablish mask), to initiate further testing and repair, possibly dispatching someone, etc. I'm getting a bit off topic, but I thought some background was in order rather than just saying "MLT monitors lines, so there". What I'm driving at in this scenario is that there is also a mask known as TV, for Trouble Verification. The /FORm associated with this mask requests such information as the phone number, the 3-digit employee code, a callback number for security, and the type of TV (RCA, Magnavox, Toshiba, just kidding :), types being talk, (the attendant can be heard) or monitor without speech path, to name the most relevant. It would not be impossible to substitute "someone with a computer and the know-how" in the place of the word "attendant", but don't overestimate this possibility. It's bragged about FAR more than it is actually done. But it remains a possibility. I'll continue this in successive messages, so it's in manageable chunks.