Stranded passengers in New York and New Jersey were further infuriated to discover that they could not even manage to make a long distance phone call, to explain their delay to loved ones or business associates. Thanks to the crash, about four and a half million domestic calls, and half a million international calls, failed to get through.
The September 17 NYC Crash, unlike the previous ones, involved not a whisper of "hacker" misdeeds. On the contrary, by 1991, AT&T itself was suffering much of the vilification that had formerly been directed at hackers. Congressmen were grumbling. So were state and federal regulators. And so was the press.
For their part, ancient rival MCI took out snide full-page newspaper ads in New York, offering their own long-distance services for the "next time that AT&T goes down."
"You wouldn't find a classy company like AT&T using such advertising," protested AT&T Chairman Robert Allen, unconvincingly. Once again, out came the full-page AT&T apologies in newspapers, apologies for "an inexcusable culmination of both human and mechanical failure." (This time, however, AT&T offered no discount on later calls. Unkind critics suggested that AT&T were worried about setting any precedent for refunding the financial losses caused by telephone crashes.)
Industry journals asked publicly if AT&T was "asleep at the switch." The telephone network, America's purported marvel of high-tech reliability, had gone down three times in 18 months. Fortune magazine listed the Crash of September 17 among the "Biggest Business Goofs of 1991," cruelly parodying AT&T's ad campaign in an article entitled "AT&T Wants You Back (Safely On the Ground, God Willing)."
Why had those New York switching systems simply run out of power? Because no human being had attended to the alarm system. Why did the alarm systems blare automatically, without any human being noticing? Because the three telco technicians who SHOULD have been listening were absent from their stations in the power-room, on another floor of the building—attending a training class. A training class about the alarm systems for the power room!
"Crashing the System" was no longer "unprecedented" by late 1991. On the contrary, it no longer even seemed an oddity. By 1991, it was clear that all the policemen in the world could no longer "protect" the phone system from crashes. By far the worst crashes the system had ever had, had been inflicted, by the system, upon ITSELF. And this time nobody was making cocksure statements that this was an anomaly, something that would never happen again. By 1991 the System's defenders had met their nebulous Enemy, and the Enemy was—the System.
PART TWO: THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND
The date was May 9, 1990. The Pope was touring Mexico City. Hustlers from the Medellin Cartel were trying to buy black-market Stinger missiles in Florida. On the comics page, Doonesbury character Andy was dying of AIDS. And then ... a highly unusual item whose novelty and calculated rhetoric won it headscratching attention in newspapers all over America.