🚀 go-pugleaf

Here's yet some more from the RISKS Digest on British PhoneCard toll fraud:

Will

----- Forwarded message # 1:
> From: Brian Randell <brian%kelpie.newcastle.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>
> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 16:12:23 gmt
> To: RISKS@csl.sri.com
> Subject: Phone Cards
> 
>               PHONE CARDS - THE PLOT THICKENS
> 
>      At PGN's implied request, I have tracked down, and talked to the Sunday
> Post reporter who wrote the original story on the phone card fraud.  These
> notes of my telephone conversation with him are being sent to RISKS with his
> explicit permission, though he asked that his name not be included.
> 
>      The Sunday Post was indeed asked by BT to publish a retraction, but
> have refused to do, though they have published a letter from BT expressing
> (BT's) full confidence in the phone card system.  Based on previous
> experiences - "we often get complaints at our stories" - the reporter
> regards the fact that BT did not push for a retraction, but instead merely
> settled for publication of their letter, as tantamount to an acceptance of
> the truth of the original story.
> 
>      He claims to be still sure that the fraud is possible, and to have seen
> it being worked, at several different phones, by the soldiers, in the
> presence of several other witnesses.  He does admit that he was himself later
> unable to demonstrate the fraud successfully to some BT engineers who
> travelled to Glasgow to meet him.  He however has since talked to one of the
> soldiers, who assures him that the fraud is still working, but will not
> reveal to the reporter, leave alone BT, where he (the reporter) went wrong
> in trying to duplicate the method of fraud.  (The other soldier - who did not
> want the original story published, because it would interfere with "free"
> international calls - is now refusing to talk to the reporter.)  Moreover the
> reporter claims to have received a phone call from a BT engineer at Watford,
> confirming the practicability of the fraud.
> 
> Brian Randell - Computing Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
> 
>   ARPA  : brian%cheviot.newcastle.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
>   UUCP  : <UK>!ukc!cheviot!brian
>   JANET : brian@uk.ac.newcastle.cheviot
> 
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