December 12–19, 1996

critic pick

six pick

Unauthorized Access/ Eyeshocker Express

What do hackers and taggers have in common? Well, their hobbies often inspire them to break the law, but more importantly two short documentaries about them will be shown one after another on December 17. Unauthorized Access (1994) talks to hacker Phiber Optik about being sentenced to a year and a day for breaking into sensitive phone company files. It also illustrates how hackers use red boxes to get free phone calls and explains how Westinghouse's computer files were accessed by a teenager working out of his home. Eyeshocker Express (1993) zips through the streets of Philadelphia surveying all the gleaming graffiti tags there are to find. Infamous old school tagger Cornbread recounts his heyday in the late '60s, and the producer snidely includes an interview with then-Anti-Graffiti Network head, Tim Spencer (who died in April of this year).

Tue., Dec 17th on DUTV, Channel 54. Eyeshocker Express at 8:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Unauthorized Access at 9 p.m. and 1 a.m.

— Neil Gladstone