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                               Mirror Box
                            (Caller ID Box)

The Mirror Box is, in today's terms, basically a garden variety Caller
ID box. When it was originally conceived, however, it was something else
entirely.  In earlier versions of this document, I had lumped it in with
the Lame (Consumertronics) Orange Box because the text file I had on
this suggested that it operated much the same way.

However, recently the original inventor of the Mirror Box contacted my
colleague Death Me0w and and told him a couple of interesting things.

First, his text file had been woefully misquoted in the proto-cyberspace
that was the BBS underground where I originally got wind of its
existence.

Unfortunately the misquotes changed enough details about the Mirror Box
that it seemed really unlikely - since the purpose of this document is to
cut through the bullshit and lameness of the 80's textfile scene, the
record needs to be set straight on the Mirror Box.

Second, as early as 1983, Ma Bell was experimenting with an early form
of today's Caller ID service in two market areas, and the Caller ID
signal was present in those areas on every subscriber's line for some
time, unbeknownst to the public.

That means that someone with the correct hardware, living in the correct
market area, really COULD get free Caller ID at one time, if he knew it
was there and how to exploit it.  And now, Fatal Error has shown that he
did just that.

 Plausibility: Very.  It may never be known how many local exchanges
               temporarily had free Caller ID without the public being
               aware of its existence, and I am sure that the
               tantalizing question of who, besides phone companies and
               Fatal Error, DID know about and exploit Caller ID, will
               make an excellent future text file.

 Obsolescence: Both totally obsolete and not at all, depending on how
               you look at it - FE's original Mirror Box would likely
               need little or no modification to work as a regular
               Caller ID, but now that Caller ID is both widespread and
               profitable, don't count on it going free any time soon.

 Skill:        To reverse engineer the Caller ID stream in the absence
               of any published data is a notable accomplishment.
               Building the combination of hardware and software
               necessary to decode the stream would have been far beyond
               the author's wider audience, but may have been understood
               and even possibly duplicated by some members of the inner
               circle of hackers FE originally wrote for.

 Risks:        Assuming construction was competent, there would have
               been very little risk of being detected using the device,
               and if caught, the worst liability one would have faced
               would be a tariff violation - connecting an unauthorized
               device to the pre-divestiture phone network.  It seems
               unlikely that Bell, wanting to keep quiet about this
               technology, would have exposed it by prosecuting someone
               for using it without authorization...