TAP is the original phone-phreaking and hacking newsletter. It predated 2600, Phrack, and the many hacking publications that followed. It started in June 1971 as the Youth International Party Line (YIPL), a mimeographed sheet by Al Bell and Abbie Hoffman that mixed phone phreaking with New Left politics. With issue 21 it became TAP, initially standing for “Technological American Party” and later “Technological Assistance Program.”
Over its run it covered how to build blue boxes, red boxes, black boxes, credit card codes, lock picking, pirate radio, and a long catalog of methods for unauthorized access, fraud, and theft of service. The original run of 91 issues went from June 1971 to March 1984.
These techniques targeted networks and systems that have not existed for decades. They don’t work today, and the activities they described were mostly illegal. At the time, however, TAP was one of the few publications carrying very hard-to-find technical specifics and discoveries, so it circulated widely among those interested in telecommunications, computers, and solving puzzles.
Looking back, it was a strange mix. Part of it was pure curiosity, the urge to map out complex, mysterious networks and figure out how everything worked. Part of it was the growing realization that these supposedly secure systems were wide open. And a substantial portion simply provided practical advice on stealing long-distance service, electricity, gas, cable television, and other utilities, which the editors framed as a form of resistance or ‘revolution.’
The technical material was often fascinating, but the editors’ open endorsement of using techniques for theft helped reinforce the perception of all hackers as thieves, including among prosecutors.
As readership grew, interest in obtaining free services started overshadowing technical curiosity. Overuse made the exploits less and less effective and increasingly risky to experiment with. Because government agencies, utilities, and prosecutors also subscribed, techniques that appeared in print quickly became known to the very organizations they targeted.
Beginning of the end
In 1983 someone broke into editor Tom Edison’s apartment (which also served as the TAP office), stole the mailing list, financial records, computer, and stereo, and set the place on fire. Edison left the project. Cheshire Catalyst continued publishing TAP for several more issues into 1984 before it ended at issue 91. In a 1994 talk Catalyst speculated that the firebombing had been carried out by individuals connected to AT&T security, but emphasized that this was unconfirmed.
Later revivals under different editors produced material that was either unrelated to the original run or merely reprinted it and are not included here (they can be found on the Internet Archive).
The end of TAP also coincided with a major change in the telecommunications landscape. On January 1, 1984, AT&T was divested, ending the Bell System monopoly that had been TAP’s primary target throughout most of its run.
This archive is presented as a historical record of how restricted technical information circulated before the public Internet. It is catalogued under ISSN 0194-3936, Wikidata Q2383604, and OCLC 11801135.
The Archive
Click any title below to view and download a cleaned-up PDF scan of the original newsletter. Most come from the Computer History Museum via a gift of Jim Warren, with a few from private collections and archive.org. These aren’t raw copies: we restructured the pages for better readability on any device and re-ran OCR for improved discovery and search. Some of the later scans are pretty rough, so if you have cleaner copies, please get in touch and we’ll replace them. Want to be notified of any updates? Join the mailing list.
