Here's another quick post in which I highlight one of my favorite end notes in the book. This one is from chapter 7 and concerns AT&T's electronic toll fraud surveillance system. This system randomly monitored some 33 million American long-distance phone calls, looking for evidence of fraud. It was originally called Greenstar, a name which AT&T attorney Bill Caming demanded be changed because "it just sounds illegal." The end-note:
During my interviews with Bill Caming I often used the term Greenstar in our discussions. Ever the AT&T attorney, he would periodically correct me: "No, that's not its name. That was an internal code name that we stopped using." Sometime later I visited the AT&T Archives in Warren, New Jersey, which maintains a computerized index of old Bell System files. I typed in "Greenstar" and watched the display light up like a Christmas tree as it found relevant documents. When I mentioned this to Caming a few days later, he gave a rueful laugh and responded, "Well, I guess you can't keep a good name down."
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