Auto-dialing Falwell

[David Dalton]

There has been a great deal of interest in the man from Georgia who
auto-dialed Jerry Falwell's 800 number hundreds of times a day for eight
months. For those who have missed news reports, this is the text of a piece
written for the Washington Post. All facts are current as of Jan. 7. I pass it
along with no comment...

------------------------------------------------------------------------

| By the Washington Post
|
| ATLANTA -- For now, at least, the Rev. Jerry Falwell has exorcised the
Demon Dialer.
| But an angry computer commando, as a protest against TV evangelists,
vows to keep right on bedeviling the $100 million fund-raising machine of the
Moral Majority (or the Liberty Federation, as Falwell recently announced his
group will be called) with his $200 Atari home computer.
| ``I'll give you a demonstration,'' said Edward Johnson, 46, a
bespectacled computer consultant, pecking away at a keyboard in his
one-bedroom walk-up apartment here.
| That activates his modem's auto-dailer. Bleep, bleep, bleep goes the
video arcade echo on his speaker phone as his Atari rings up Falwell's world
headquarters in Lynchburg, Va.
| ``Old-Time Gospel Hour,'' says an operator. ``Can I help you?''
| Johnson grinned. His computer is programmed to tie up the line for 30
seconds, then it hangs up and dials again, as it has every 30 seconds, 24
hours a day, seven days a week, for the last eight months. ``Here we go
again,'' he said, and the computer dials 1-800-446-5000.
| ``Old-Time Gospel Hour,'' says the operator. ``Help you?'' Click.
| ``You can tell by the tone of voice they're not too happy,'' he said.
| Indeed, Falwell officials estimate their first high-tech protester
cost them close to $1 million in lost pledges on a blessed WATS line, which
fields some 1 million calls a year, before Southern Bell detectives ordered
Johnson to hang up on Dec. 20 or face criminal charges -- using the telephone
to harass is a federal felony. The besieged switchboard raises at least half
of Falwell's $100 million budget, used to support a TV ministry, missionary
work, Bible study, an anti-abortion crusade and the like.
| ``He has robbed the poor and needy of many thousands of dollars,''
said Falwell in a press released that warned others who would do ``injury to
the cause of Christ by similar illegal acts.''
| But Johnson accuses TV evangelists of persuading elderly viewers to
part with money they can ill afford to spend, buying religious trinkets and
false hope while the on-the-air preachers use their tax-free status to
subsidize and promote often incendiary views.
| ``They're making millions because there aren't any laws to protect the
gullible from such a powerful medium,'' said Johnson, who says he nearly lost
his family farm to TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggert.
| After one rip-roaring TV sermon, he said, his 68-year-old mother, Mary
Johnson of Sylvester, was ready to sign over the family's 150 acres in south
Georgia. A virtual shut-in, she lives alone on land his father, who died 12
years ago, once planted with soybeans, peanuts and corn. But Johnston stepped
in and, along with an older brother, Raymond, talked her out of it.
| ``She once bought two Singer sewing machines from different salesmen
in the same week,'' he said.
| Johnson's crusade began one Sunday morning, April 7, when, he
remembers, Jimmy Swaggert on a local affiliate accused gays of ``spreading
AIDS like flies'' at bathhouses.
| A political activist and card-carrying member of the American Civil
Liberties Union, Johnson got angry. ``He was implying that you should treat
those people like flies,'' he said. He considered it unfair and inflammatory.
And, of course, he almost lost the farm.
| He wrote the Federal Communications Commission to complain. He tapped
a second computer to mount a letter-writing campaign to congressmen and
senators. And he dispatched copies of those letters to Falwell, who had his
name. But it would take Falwell eight months to unearth Atari Central.
| He targeted Falwell because he's the ``most politically active'' TV
evangelist, and his mother had sent him hundreds of dollars. ``If we get
Falwell, Swaggart will fall of his own weight,'' said Johnson, who is single
and lives alone.
| Weaned on old-time religion growing up in Worth County, Ga., he joined
the Air Force out of high school, worked for a large computer firm as an
engineer, then settled into consulting.
| He has nothing against religion, he says, but he compares his beliefs
more to Spinoza and Einstein than to fundamentalist TV preachers.
| But what better way to protest than slow down their collection plate,
he argues. So he began dialing 1-800 ...
| ``Old-Time Gospel Hour,'' said the operator. ``Tap the phone if you
can hear me, honey. We'll pray for you.''
| ``At first,'' said Johnson, ``they thought I was deaf.''
| For a time, he tried debating the operators to keep them busy. ``But
it was always, `God bless you,' or `God loves you.' They were so sweet, I kind
of felt sorry for them. They were programmed to be nice.''
| So it was back to the computer. ``A computer is totally impersonal,''
he said. ``It can't feel sorry for you. It's relentless. It shows no mercy.''
| Toward the end, operators were answering the dead lines: ``Edward
Johnson, is that you?''
| They stopped thinking the caller was deaf.
| ``My computer kept the pressure on,'' he said. ``It had a great
demoralizing effect.''
| On Nov. 15, Falwell officials reported trouble on the line. ``They
came to us with a simple technical problem,'' recalled Wayne Jackson, an AT&T
spokesman. ``They were getting hangups and lines jammed.''
| Technicians ruled out a glitch and put on a tracer. It was touchy
going. Johnson's Atari was programmed to dial and hang up fast, to avoid
leaving fingerprints. But AT&T got its man.
| On Dec. 17 ``we figured out it was coming from 404 area code,'' said
Jackson, and officials in Atlanta were alerted. Three days later, Southern
Bell security took over and Johnson was identified as the high priest of the
first church of Atari protest.
| ``It's amazing,'' said Richard Miles, a company spokesman. ``As big as
Atlanta is, within 30 minutes, we had tracked him down.'' The phone company
gave him a choice: stop calling Falwell or lose his telephone. Johnson pulled
his own plug.
| Will Falwell take the Demon Dialer to court? ``Our attorneys are
considering the options,'' said Duane Ward, his PR director.
| Before his computer sniping, Johnson protested such local issues as a
road for Jimmy Carter's presidential library that cut through his neighborhood
-- until demonstrators stopped it. From his window, he gazed at idled
earthmovers for inspiration, their cabs spray-painted, ``Long Live the
Trees!''
| Suddenly Johnson, who once lived a life of quiet resignation, is,
however briefly, a media star. He attributes his inspiration to rage.
| He says it's not over yet.
| ``I'm encouraging all hackers to reach out and touch Jerry Falwell,''
he said. ``If he's the Moral Majority, this is a good way of taking a vote.''

[Will Martin]

When I first heard/saw this story on TV news some weeks ago, my initial
reaction was, "You mean that there was only ONE person doing this?" It
is such an obvious tactic and so easy to do with an autodialer that I
thought that hundreds of people had been doing it for years. Was it just
that no one else thought of it before? After all, calling 800 numbers
costs you nothing, so it seems a pretty simple and cheap way to get back
at any organization with an 800 number, whether it be a TV evangelist or
some business selling Slim Whitman records or Vegematics.

If this guy really was the first, I would think that NOW there are
hundreds of people doing it! (Might as well get some good out of your
phone line when you're not home... :-)

Will

[Dave Kirby]

In article <1...@gladys.UUCP> dal...@gladys.UUCP (David Dalton) writes:
>``I'm encouraging all hackers to reach out and touch Jerry Falwell,''
>he said. ``If he's the Moral Majority, this is a good way of taking
>a vote.''

First, thank you, Mr. Dalton, for posting the article. There was a very
brief blurb about it in the Memphis paper, and I was curious about the
details.

The above statement by Mr. Johnson probably made his lawyers cringe.
Here, in print, is a person inciting others to join in harrassment. He
has just sealed the verdict on any criminal trial he might face. I
know I would hate to be his defence lawyer.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Kirby ( ...!ihnp4!akgub!cylixd!dave)

[Roy Smith]

> Harassing phone calls are illegal most everywhere and you could probably
> sue someone doing that sort of thing and recover the costs

To quote from the "NYNEX White Pages" for Manhattan, under "Consumer Rights
and Responsibilities":

Harassment by telephone.

It is a crime under both state and federal laws for anyone
to make obscene or harassing telephone calls. These laws
have penalties of imprisonment and/or a fine.

--
Roy Smith <allegra!phri!roy>
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

[Philip Kos]

> Harassing phone calls are illegal most everywhere and you could probably

> sue someone doing that sort of thing and recover the costs (which should
> be precisely calculatable from phone company records) if not more.
> --
> +1 617-492-8860 Donald E. Eastlake, III
> ARPA: dee@CCA-UNIX usenet: {decvax,linus}!cca!dee

Perhaps I'm missing something (not being a net.legal reader, and having to
put up with a remarkably sporadic news feed), but do these calls fit the
*legal* definition of a "harassing call"? From what I seem to remember,
they don't, but then I'm frequently wrong. Anybody here know?

"Oh, drat these computers,
Phil Kos they're so naughty and so
The Johns Hopkins Hospital complex! I could pinch
Baltimore, MD them."
- A. Martian

[Ron Natalie <ron>]

> > Harassing phone calls are illegal most everywhere and you could probably
> > sue someone doing that sort of thing and recover the costs (which should
> > be precisely calculatable from phone company records) if not more.
> > --
> > +1 617-492-8860 Donald E. Eastlake, III
> > ARPA: dee@CCA-UNIX usenet: {decvax,linus}!cca!dee
>
> Perhaps I'm missing something (not being a net.legal reader, and having to
> put up with a remarkably sporadic news feed), but do these calls fit the
> *legal* definition of a "harassing call"? From what I seem to remember,
> they don't, but then I'm frequently wrong. Anybody here know?
>

I've fallen into this class. It's a grey area as to what is harassing,
but it is almost certain that if someone tells you that you are harassing
them, and you continue to do it, that you are harassing them.

-Ron

[Bob Parnass, AJ9S]

x
My local Illinois Bell telephone directory (for Oswego,
Illinois) contains this warning:

WARNING

Illinois law defines harassment as the use of the
telephone to make lewd or indecent comment or
request with intent to offend....to abuse,
threaten, or harass (whether conversation takes
place or not)...to cause another's telephone to
ring repeatedly with intent to harass...to know-
ingly allow one's telephone to be used for any of
these purposes.

The law provides a penalty of up to six months in
jail and/or a $500 fine.

> > Perhaps I'm missing something (not being a net.legal reader, and having to
> > put up with a remarkably sporadic news feed), but do these calls fit the
> > *legal* definition of a "harassing call"? From what I seem to remember,
> > they don't, but then I'm frequently wrong. Anybody here know?
> >
> I've fallen into this class. It's a grey area as to what is harassing,
> but it is almost certain that if someone tells you that you are harassing
> them, and you continue to do it, that you are harassing them.
>
> -Ron

--
===============================================================================
Bob Parnass, Bell Telephone Laboratories - ihnp4!ihu1h!parnass - (312)979-5414