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It's Memorial Day weekend, 1981, a little before one in the morning.

17-year-old Kevin Mittnik is way steep and a dumpster outside a phone company facility

in downtown Los Angeles.

Mittnik's dropped out of high school, earned his GED, and now spends his nights hacking

the phone lines, an activity known as phone freaking.

It began as a hobby, but now it's a full time obsession, occupying close to 16 hours

a day, and sometimes it requires getting your hands dirty.

Literally.

Mittnik sifts through Styrofoam cups, coffee grounds, and used clean access.

There's nothing here.

It calls out to his friend in the next dumpster.

Where'd you find?

His friend, who goes only by the name Roscoe, is a few years older than Mittnik, and a student

at the University of Southern California.

He's also one of the few people Mittnik knows whose phone freaking skills can keep up with

his.

Roscoe pokes his head out of the dumpster, didly squat, and bets some other freaks got

here earlier and picked a clean.

This particular phone facility houses Cosmos, the mainframe computer storing the phone

company's maintenance and signal records.

...