Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.sf.ca.us

Literary Freeware:  Not for Commercial Use


			    THE HACKER CRACKDOWN

	           Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

				by Bruce Sterling

CONTENTS

Preface to the Electronic Release of *The Hacker 
Crackdown*

Chronology of the Hacker Crackdown

Introduction

Part 1:  CRASHING THE SYSTEM
A Brief History of Telephony / Bell's Golden Vaporware / 
Universal Service / Wild Boys and Wire Women / The 
Electronic Communities / The Ungentle Giant / The 
Breakup / In Defense of the System / The Crash Post-
Mortem / Landslides in Cyberspace

Part 2:  THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND
Steal This Phone / Phreaking and Hacking / The View 
From Under the Floorboards / Boards: Core of the 
Underground / Phile Phun / The Rake's Progress / 
Strongholds of the Elite / Sting Boards / Hot Potatoes / 
War on the Legion / Terminus / Phile 9-1-1 / War Games 
/ Real Cyberpunk

Part 3:  LAW AND ORDER
Crooked Boards / The World's Biggest Hacker Bust / 
Teach Them a Lesson / The U.S. Secret Service / The 
Secret Service Battles the Boodlers / A Walk Downtown / 
FCIC: The Cutting-Edge Mess / Cyberspace Rangers / 
FLETC:  Training the Hacker-Trackers

Part 4:  THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS
NuPrometheus + FBI = Grateful Dead / Whole Earth + 
Computer Revolution = WELL / Phiber Runs 
Underground and Acid Spikes the Well / The Trial of 
Knight Lightning / Shadowhawk Plummets to Earth / 
Kyrie in the Confessional / $79,499 / A Scholar 
Investigates / Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 

Electronic Afterword to *The Hacker Crackdown,*
 New Years’ Day 1994

Preface to the Electronic Release of *The Hacker 
Crackdown*  

January 1, 1994 -- Austin, Texas

	Hi, I'm Bruce Sterling, the author of this 
electronic book.

	Out in the traditional world of print, *The 
Hacker Crackdown* is ISBN 0-553-08058-X, and is  
formally catalogued by the Library of Congress as "1. 
Computer crimes -- United States.  2. Telephone -- 
United States -- Corrupt practices.  3.  Programming 
(Electronic computers) -- United States -- Corrupt 
practices."  'Corrupt practices,' I always get a kick out 
of that description.  Librarians are very ingenious 
people.

	The paperback is ISBN 0-553-56370-X.  If you go 
and buy a print version of *The Hacker Crackdown,* 
an action I encourage heartily, you may notice that 
in the front of the book,  beneath the copyright 
notice  -- "Copyright (C) 1992 by Bruce Sterling" -- it 
has this little block of printed legal boilerplate from 
the publisher.  It says, and I quote:

 	"No part of this book may be reproduced or 
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic 
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, 
or by any information storage and retrieval system, 
without permission in writing from the publisher.  
For information address:  Bantam Books." 

	This is a pretty good disclaimer, as such 
disclaimers go.  I collect intellectual-property 
disclaimers, and I've seen dozens of them, and this 
one is at least pretty straightforward.  In this narrow 
and particular case, however, it isn't quite accurate.  
Bantam Books puts that disclaimer on every book 
they publish, but Bantam Books does not, in fact, 
own the electronic rights to this book.  I do, because 
of certain extensive contract maneuverings my 
agent and I went through before this book was 
written.  I want to give those electronic publishing 
rights away through certain not-for-profit channels, 
and I've convinced Bantam that this is a good idea.

	Since Bantam has seen fit to peacably agree to 
this scheme of mine, Bantam Books is not going to 
fuss about this.  Provided you don't try to sell the 
book, they are not going to bother you for what you 
do with the electronic copy of this book. If you want 
to check this out personally, you can ask them; 
they're at 1540 Broadway NY NY 10036.  However, if 
you were so foolish as to print this book and start 
retailing it for money in violation of my copyright 
and the commercial interests of Bantam Books, 
then Bantam, a part of the gigantic Bertelsmann 
multinational publishing combine, would roust 
some of their heavy-duty attorneys out of 
hibernation and crush you like a bug.  This is only to 
be expected.  I didn't write this book so that you 
could make money out of it.  If anybody is gonna 
make money out of this book, it's gonna be me and 
my publisher.

	My publisher deserves to make money out of 
this book.  Not only did the folks at Bantam Books 
commission me to write the book, and pay me a 
hefty sum to do so, but they bravely printed, in text, 
an electronic document the reproduction of which 
was once alleged to be a federal felony.  Bantam 
Books and their numerous attorneys were very 
brave and forthright about this book.  Furthermore, 
my former editor at Bantam Books, Betsy Mitchell, 
genuinely cared about this project, and worked hard 
on it, and had a lot of wise things to say about the 
manuscript.  Betsy deserves genuine credit for this 
book, credit that editors too rarely get.

	The critics were very kind to *The Hacker 
Crackdown,* and commercially the book has done 
well.  On the other hand, I didn't write this book in 
order to squeeze every last nickel and dime out of 
the mitts of impoverished sixteen-year-old 
cyberpunk high-school-students.  Teenagers don't 
have any money -- (no, not even enough for the  six-
dollar *Hacker Crackdown* paperback, with its 
attractive bright-red cover and useful index).   That's 
a major reason why teenagers sometimes succumb 
to the temptation to do things they shouldn't, such 
as swiping my books out of libraries.   Kids:  this one 
is all yours, all right?  Go give the print version back.  
*8-)

	Well-meaning, public-spirited civil libertarians 
don't have much money, either.   And it seems 
almost criminal to snatch cash out of the hands of 
America's direly underpaid electronic law 
enforcement community.

	If you're a computer cop, a hacker, or an 
electronic civil liberties activist, you are the target 
audience for this book.  I wrote this book because I 
wanted to help you, and help other people 
understand you and your unique, uhm, problems.  I 
wrote this book to aid your activities, and to 
contribute to the public discussion of important 
political issues.  In giving the text away in this 
fashion, I am directly contributing to the book's 
ultimate aim:  to help civilize cyberspace.

	Information *wants* to be free.  And  the 
information inside this book longs for freedom with 
a peculiar intensity.  I genuinely believe that the 
natural habitat of this book is inside an electronic 
network.  That may not be the easiest direct method 
to generate revenue for the book's author, but that 
doesn't matter; this is where this book belongs by its 
nature.  I've written other books -- plenty of other 
books -- and I'll write more and I am writing more, 
but this one is special.  I am making *The Hacker 
Crackdown* available electronically as widely as I 
can conveniently manage, and if you like the book, 
and think it is useful, then I urge you to do the same 
with it.

	You can copy this electronic book.   Copy the 
heck out of it, be my guest, and give those copies to 
anybody who wants them.  The nascent world of 
cyberspace is full of sysadmins, teachers, trainers, 
cybrarians, netgurus, and various species of 
cybernetic activist.  If you're one of those people,  I 
know about you, and I know the hassle you go 
through to try to help people learn about the 
electronic frontier.  I hope that possessing this book 
in electronic form will lessen your troubles.  Granted, 
this treatment of our electronic social spectrum is 
not the ultimate in academic rigor.  And politically, it 
has something to offend and trouble almost 
everyone.   But hey, I'm told it's readable, and at 
least the price is right.

	You can upload the book onto bulletin board 
systems, or Internet nodes, or electronic discussion 
groups.  Go right ahead and do that, I am giving you 
express permission right now.  Enjoy yourself.

	You can put the book on disks and give the disks 
away, as long as you don't take any money for it.

	But this book is not public domain.  You can't 
copyright it in your own name.   I own the copyright. 
Attempts to pirate this book and make money from 
selling it may involve you in a serious litigative snarl.  
Believe me, for the pittance you might wring out of 
such an action, it's really not worth it.  This book 
don't "belong" to you.  In an odd but very genuine 
way, I feel it doesn't "belong" to me, either.  It's a 
book about the people of cyberspace, and 
distributing it in this way is the best way I know to 
actually make this information available, freely and 
easily, to all the people of cyberspace -- including 
people far outside the borders of the United States, 
who otherwise may never have a chance to see any 
edition of the book, and who may perhaps learn 
something useful from this strange story of distant, 
obscure, but portentous events in so-called 
"American cyberspace."

	 This electronic book is now literary freeware.  It 
now belongs to the emergent realm of alternative 
information economics.  You have no right to make 
this electronic book part of the conventional flow of 
commerce.  Let it be part of the flow of knowledge:  
there's a difference.   I've divided the book into four 
sections, so that it is less ungainly for upload and 
download; if there's a section of particular relevance 
to you and your colleagues, feel free to reproduce 
that one and skip the rest.  

	Just make more when you need them, and give 
them to whoever might want them.

	Now have fun.

	Bruce Sterling -- bruces@well.sf.ca.us



CHRONOLOGY OF THE HACKER CRACKDOWN

1865 U.S. Secret Service (USSS) founded.

1876  Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone.

1878  First teenage males flung off phone system by 
enraged authorities.

1939  "Futurian" science-fiction group raided by Secret 
Service.

1971  Yippie phone phreaks start YIPL/TAP magazine.

1972  *Ramparts* magazine seized in blue-box rip-off 
scandal.

1978  Ward Christenson and Randy Suess create first 
personal computer bulletin board system.

1982  William Gibson coins term "cyberspace."

1982  "414 Gang"  raided.

1983-1983  AT&T dismantled in divestiture.

1984  Congress passes Comprehensive Crime Control Act 
giving USSS jurisdiction over credit card fraud and 
computer fraud.

1984  "Legion of Doom" formed.

1984.  *2600:  The Hacker Quarterly*  founded.

1984.   *Whole Earth Software Catalog* published.

1985.  First police "sting" bulletin board systems 
established.

1985.  Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link computer conference 
(WELL) goes on-line.

1986  Computer Fraud and Abuse Act passed.

1986  Electronic Communications Privacy Act passed.

1987  Chicago prosecutors form Computer Fraud and 
Abuse Task Force.

1988

July.  Secret Service covertly videotapes "SummerCon" 
hacker convention.

September.  "Prophet" cracks BellSouth AIMSX computer 
network and downloads E911 Document to his own 
computer and to Jolnet.

September.  AT&T Corporate Information Security 
informed of Prophet's action.

October.  Bellcore Security informed of Prophet's action.

1989

January.  Prophet uploads E911 Document to Knight 
Lightning.

February 25.  Knight Lightning publishes E911Document 
in *Phrack* electronic newsletter.

May.  Chicago Task Force raids and arrests "Kyrie."

June.  "NuPrometheus League" distributes Apple 
Computer proprietary software.

June 13.  Florida probation office crossed with phone-sex 
line in switching-station stunt.

July.  "Fry Guy" raided by USSS and Chicago Computer 
Fraud and Abuse Task Force.

July.  Secret Service raids "Prophet," "Leftist," and "Urvile" 
in Georgia.

1990

January 15.  Martin Luther King Day Crash strikes AT&T 
long-distance network nationwide.

January 18-19  Chicago Task Force raids Knight Lightning 
in St. Louis.

January 24.  USSS and New York State Police raid "Phiber 
Optik,"  "Acid Phreak," and "Scorpion" in New York City.

February 1. USSS raids "Terminus" in Maryland.

February 3.  Chicago Task Force raids Richard Andrews' 
home.

February 6.  Chicago Task Force raids Richard Andrews' 
business.

February 6.  USSS arrests Terminus, Prophet, Leftist, and 
Urvile.

February 9.  Chicago Task Force arrests Knight Lightning.

February 20.  AT&T Security shuts down public-access 
"attctc" computer in Dallas.

February 21.  Chicago Task Force raids Robert Izenberg in 
Austin.

March 1.  Chicago Task Force raids Steve Jackson Games, 
Inc., "Mentor," and "Erik Bloodaxe" in Austin.

May 7,8,9.  USSS and Arizona Organized Crime and 
Racketeering Bureau conduct "Operation Sundevil" raids 
in Cincinnatti, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, 
Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Tucson, San Diego, San 
Jose, and San Francisco.

May.  FBI interviews John Perry Barlow re NuPrometheus 
case.

June.  Mitch Kapor and Barlow found Electronic Frontier 
Foundation;  Barlow publishes *Crime and Puzzlement* 
manifesto.

July 24-27.  Trial of Knight Lightning.

1991

February.  CPSR Roundtable in Washington, D.C.

March 25-28.  Computers, Freedom and Privacy 
conference in San Francisco.

May 1.  Electronic Frontier Foundation, Steve Jackson, and 
others file suit against members of Chicago Task Force.

July 1-2.  Switching station phone software crash affects 
Washington, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, San Francisco.

September 17.  AT&T phone crash affects New York City 
and three airports.





Introduction

	This is a book about cops, and  wild teenage whiz-
kids, and lawyers, and hairy-eyed anarchists, and  
industrial technicians, and hippies, and high-tech 
millionaires, and game hobbyists, and computer security 
experts, and Secret Service agents, and grifters, and 
thieves.

	This book is about the electronic frontier of the 1990s.  
It concerns activities that take place inside computers and 
over telephone lines. 

	 A science fiction writer coined the useful term 
"cyberspace" in 1982.  But the territory in question, the 
electronic frontier, is about a hundred and thirty years old.  
Cyberspace is the "place" where a telephone conversation 
appears to occur.  Not inside your actual phone, the 
plastic device on your desk.  Not inside the other person's 
phone, in some other city.  *The place between* the 
phones.  The indefinite place *out there,* where the two of 
you, two human beings, actually meet and communicate. 

	 Although it is not exactly  "real," "cyberspace" is a 
genuine place.   Things happen there that have very 
genuine consequences.  This "place" is not "real," but it is 
serious, it is earnest.  Tens of thousands of people have 
dedicated their lives to it, to the public service of public 
communication by wire and electronics.

	  People have worked on this "frontier" for 
generations now.  Some people became rich and famous 
from their efforts there.  Some just played in it, as 
hobbyists.  Others soberly pondered it, and wrote about it, 
and regulated it, and negotiated over it in international 
forums, and sued one another about it, in gigantic, epic 
court battles that lasted for years.  And almost since the 
beginning, some people have committed crimes in this 
place.

	But in the past twenty years, this electrical "space," 
which was once thin and dark and one-dimensional -- little 
more than a narrow speaking-tube, stretching from phone 
to phone -- has flung itself open like a gigantic jack-in-the-
box.  Light has flooded upon it, the eerie light of the 
glowing computer screen.   This dark electric netherworld 
has become a vast flowering electronic landscape.   Since 
the 1960s, the world of the telephone has cross-bred itself 
with computers and television, and though there is still no 
substance to cyberspace,  nothing you can handle, it has a 
strange kind of physicality now.   It makes good sense 
today to talk of cyberspace  as a place all its own.

	Because people live in it now.   Not just a few people, 
not just a few technicians and eccentrics, but thousands of 
people, quite normal people.  And not just for a little while,  
either, but for hours straight, over weeks, and  months, and 
years.   Cyberspace today is a "Net," a "Matrix," 
international in scope and growing swiftly and steadily.  It's 
growing in size, and wealth, and  political importance. 
 
	People are making entire careers in modern 
cyberspace.   Scientists and technicians, of course; they've 
been there for twenty years now.  But increasingly, 
cyberspace is filling with journalists and doctors and 
lawyers and artists and clerks.   Civil servants make their 
careers there now, "on-line" in vast government data-
banks; and so do spies, industrial, political, and just plain 
snoops; and so do police, at least a few of them.  And there 
are children living there now.

	People have met there and been married there.  
There are entire living communities in cyberspace today; 
chattering, gossipping, planning, conferring and 
scheming,  leaving one another voice-mail and electronic 
mail, giving one another big weightless chunks of valuable 
data,  both legitimate and illegitimate.  They busily pass 
one another computer software and the occasional 
festering computer virus.

	We do not really understand how to live in 
cyberspace yet.  We are feeling our way into it, blundering 
about.   That is not surprising.  Our lives in the physical 
world, the "real" world, are also far from perfect, despite a 
lot more practice.   Human lives, real lives,  are imperfect 
by their nature, and there are human beings in 
cyberspace.  The way we live in cyberspace is a funhouse 
mirror of the way we live in the real world.   We take both 
our advantages and our troubles with us.  

	  This book is about trouble in cyberspace.   
Specifically, this book is about certain strange events in 
the year 1990, an unprecedented and startling year for the 
the growing world of computerized communications.

            In 1990 there came a nationwide crackdown on illicit 
computer hackers, with arrests, criminal charges,  one 
dramatic show-trial, several guilty pleas,  and huge 
confiscations of data and equipment all over the USA. 

	The Hacker Crackdown of 1990 was larger, better 
organized, more deliberate, and more resolute than any 
previous effort in the brave new world of computer crime.   
The U.S.  Secret Service, private telephone security, and 
state and local law enforcement groups across the country 
all joined forces in a determined attempt to break the 
back of America's electronic underground.   It was a 
fascinating effort, with very mixed results.

	The Hacker Crackdown had another unprecedented 
effect; it spurred the creation, within "the computer 
community," of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a new 
and very odd interest group, fiercely  dedicated to the 
establishment and preservation of electronic civil liberties.   
The crackdown, remarkable in itself, has created a melee 
of debate over electronic crime, punishment, freedom of 
the press,  and issues of search and seizure.   Politics has 
entered cyberspace.   Where people go, politics follow.
   
	This is the story of the people of cyberspace.
	
 PART ONE:  Crashing the System

	On January 15, 1990, AT&T's long-distance telephone 
switching system crashed.

	  This was a strange, dire, huge event.  Sixty thousand 
people lost their telephone service completely.   During 
the nine long hours of frantic effort that it took to restore 
service, some seventy million telephone calls went 
uncompleted. 

	 Losses of service, known as "outages" in the telco 
trade, are a known and accepted hazard of the telephone 
business.    Hurricanes hit, and phone cables get snapped 
by the thousands.   Earthquakes wrench through buried 
fiber-optic lines.  Switching stations catch fire and burn to 
the ground.  These things do happen.  There are 
contingency plans for them, and decades of experience in 
dealing with them.   But the Crash of January 15 was 
unprecedented.  It was unbelievably huge, and it occurred 
for no apparent physical reason. 

	The crash started  on a Monday afternoon in a single 
switching-station in Manhattan.  But, unlike any merely 
physical damage,  it spread and spread.   Station after 
station across America collapsed in a chain reaction, until 
fully half of AT&T's  network had gone haywire and the 
remaining half was hard-put to handle the overflow. 
 
	Within nine hours, AT&T software engineers more or 
less understood what had caused the crash.  Replicating 
the problem exactly, poring over software line by line,  
took them a couple of weeks.   But because it was hard to 
understand technically, the full truth of the matter and its 
implications were not widely and thoroughly aired and 
explained.  The root cause of the crash remained obscure, 
surrounded by rumor and fear.

	The crash was a grave corporate embarrassment.   
The "culprit" was a bug in AT&T's own software -- not the 
sort of admission the telecommunications giant wanted to 
make, especially in the face of increasing competition.  
Still, the truth *was*  told, in the baffling technical terms 
necessary to explain it.  

	Somehow  the explanation failed to persuade 
American law enforcement officials and even telephone 
corporate security personnel.   These people were not 
technical experts or software wizards, and they had their 
own suspicions about the cause of this disaster.   

	The police and telco security  had important sources 
of information denied to mere software engineers.   They 
had informants in the computer underground and  years 
of experience in dealing with high-tech rascality that 
seemed to grow ever more sophisticated.   For years they 
had been expecting a direct and savage attack against the 
American national telephone system.  And with the Crash 
of January 15 -- the first month of a new, high-tech decade 
-- their predictions, fears, and suspicions seemed at last to 
have  entered the real world.   A world where the telephone 
system had not merely crashed, but, quite likely, *been*  
crashed -- by "hackers."

 	The  crash created a large dark cloud of suspicion 
that would color  certain people's assumptions and actions 
for months.  The fact that it took place in the realm of 
software was suspicious on its face.   The fact that it 
occurred on Martin Luther King Day, still the most 
politically touchy of American holidays, made it more 
suspicious yet.

             The  Crash of January 15  gave the Hacker 
Crackdown its sense of edge and  its sweaty urgency.   It 
made people, powerful people in positions of public 
authority, willing to believe the worst.  And, most fatally, it 
helped to give investigators a willingness to take extreme 
measures and the determination to preserve almost total 
secrecy. 

	 An obscure software fault in an aging switching 
system in New York  was to lead to a chain reaction of legal 
and constitutional trouble all across the country. 

					#
  
	Like the crash in the telephone system, this chain 
reaction was ready and waiting to happen.  During the 
1980s, the American legal system was extensively patched 
to deal with the novel issues of computer crime.  There 
was, for instance, the Electronic  Communications Privacy 
Act of 1986  (eloquently described as "a stinking mess" by a 
prominent law enforcement official).   And there was the 
draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, passed 
unanimously by the United States Senate, which later 
would reveal a large number of flaws.   Extensive, well-
meant efforts had been made to keep the legal system up 
to date.  But in the day-to-day grind of the real world, even 
the most elegant software tends to crumble and suddenly  
reveal its hidden bugs.

	Like the advancing telephone system, the American 
legal system was certainly not ruined by its temporary 
crash; but for those caught under the weight of the 
collapsing system, life became a series of blackouts and 
anomalies.

	In order to understand why these weird events 
occurred, both in the world of technology and in the world 
of law, it's not enough to understand the merely technical 
problems.  We will get to those; but first and foremost, we 
must try to understand the telephone, and the business of 
telephones, and the community of human beings that 
telephones have created.

					#

	Technologies have life cycles, like cities do, like 
institutions do, like laws and governments do.

	The first stage of  any technology is  the Question 
Mark, often known as the "Golden Vaporware" stage.   At 
this early point, the technology is only a phantom, a mere 
gleam in the inventor's eye.   One such inventor was a 
speech teacher and electrical tinkerer named Alexander 
Graham Bell.

	Bell's early inventions, while ingenious, failed to 
move the world.   In 1863, the teenage Bell and his brother 
Melville made an artificial talking mechanism out of 
wood, rubber, gutta-percha, and tin.  This weird device had 
a rubber-covered "tongue" made of movable wooden 
segments, with vibrating rubber "vocal cords," and rubber 
"lips" and "cheeks."  While Melville puffed a bellows into a 
tin tube, imitating the lungs,  young Alec  Bell would 
manipulate the "lips," "teeth," and "tongue," causing the 
thing to emit high-pitched falsetto gibberish.

	Another would-be technical breakthrough was the 
Bell "phonautograph" of 1874, actually made out of a 
human cadaver's ear.  Clamped into place on a tripod, this 
grisly gadget drew sound-wave images on smoked glass 
through a thin straw glued to its vibrating earbones.

	By 1875, Bell had learned to produce audible sounds -
- ugly shrieks and squawks -- by using magnets, 
diaphragms, and electrical current. 

	Most "Golden Vaporware" technologies go nowhere. 

	But the second stage of technology is the Rising Star, 
or, the "Goofy Prototype," stage.   The telephone, Bell's 
most ambitious gadget yet,  reached this stage on March 
10, 1876.  On that great day, Alexander Graham Bell 
became the first person to transmit intelligible human 
speech electrically.   As it happened, young Professor  Bell, 
industriously tinkering in his Boston lab,  had spattered 
his trousers with acid.   His assistant, Mr. Watson, heard 
his cry for help -- over Bell's experimental audio-
telegraph.  This was an event without precedent.

	Technologies in their "Goofy Prototype" stage rarely 
work very well.  They're experimental, and therefore half-
baked and rather frazzled.  The prototype may be 
attractive and novel, and it does look as if it ought to be 
good for something-or-other.  But nobody, including the 
inventor, is quite sure what.  Inventors, and speculators, 
and pundits may have very firm ideas about its potential 
use, but those ideas are often very wrong.

	  The natural habitat of the Goofy Prototype is in trade 
shows and in the popular press.   Infant technologies need 
publicity and investment money like a tottering calf need 
milk.  This was very true of Bell's machine.   To raise 
research and development money,  Bell toured with his 
device as a stage attraction.

	  Contemporary press reports of the stage debut of 
the telephone showed pleased astonishment mixed with 
considerable dread.   Bell's stage telephone was a large 
wooden box with a crude speaker-nozzle, the whole 
contraption about the size and shape of an overgrown  
Brownie camera.   Its buzzing steel soundplate, pumped 
up by powerful electromagnets,  was loud enough to fill an 
auditorium.  Bell's assistant Mr. Watson, who could 
manage on the keyboards fairly well, kicked in by playing 
the organ from distant rooms, and, later, distant cities.  
This feat was considered marvellous, but very eerie  
indeed.

	 Bell's original notion for the telephone, an idea 
promoted for a couple of  years, was that it would become 
a mass medium.  We might recognize Bell's idea today as 
something close to modern "cable radio."    Telephones  at 
a central source would transmit music, Sunday sermons, 
and important public speeches to a paying network of 
wired-up subscribers.

	At the time, most people thought this notion made 
good sense.    In fact, Bell's idea  was workable.  In 
Hungary, this philosophy of the telephone was 
successfully put into everyday practice.  In Budapest, for 
decades, from 1893 until after World War I, there was a 
government-run information  service called "Telefon 
Hirmondo´."   Hirmondo´ was a centralized source of news 
and entertainment and culture, including stock reports, 
plays, concerts, and novels read aloud.  At certain hours of 
the day, the phone would ring, you would plug in a 
loudspeaker for the use of the family, and Telefon 
Hirmondo´ would be on the air -- or rather, on the phone.

	Hirmondo´ is dead tech today, but  Hirmondo´ might 
be considered a spiritual ancestor of the modern 
telephone-accessed computer data services, such as 
CompuServe, GEnie or Prodigy.  The principle behind 
Hirmondo´ is also not too far from computer "bulletin-
board systems" or BBS's, which arrived in the late 1970s, 
spread rapidly across America, and will figure largely in 
this book.

	We are used to using telephones for individual 
person-to-person speech, because we are used to the Bell 
system.  But this was just one possibility among many.  
Communication networks are very flexible and protean, 
especially when their hardware becomes sufficiently 
advanced.  They can be put to all kinds of uses.   And they 
have been -- and they will be.

	Bell's telephone was bound for glory, but this was a 
combination of political decisions, canny infighting in 
court, inspired industrial leadership, receptive local 
conditions and outright good luck.  Much the same is true 
of communications systems today.

	As Bell and his backers struggled to install their 
newfangled system in the real world of nineteenth-century 
New England, they had to fight against skepticism and 
industrial rivalry.  There was already a strong electrical 
communications network present in America: the 
telegraph.  The head of the Western Union telegraph 
system dismissed Bell's prototype as "an electrical toy" 
and refused to buy the rights to Bell's  patent.    The 
telephone, it seemed,  might be all right as a parlor 
entertainment -- but not for serious business. 

	Telegrams, unlike mere telephones, left a permanent 
physical record of their messages.  Telegrams, unlike 
telephones,  could be answered whenever the recipient 
had time and convenience.  And the telegram had a much 
longer distance-range than Bell's early telephone.  These 
factors made telegraphy seem a much more sound and 
businesslike technology -- at least to some.

	The telegraph system was huge, and well-entrenched.  
In 1876, the United States had 214,000 miles of telegraph 
wire, and 8500 telegraph offices.  There were specialized 
telegraphs for businesses and stock traders, government, 
police and fire departments.  And Bell's "toy" was best 
known as a stage-magic musical device.

	The third stage of technology is known as the "Cash 
Cow" stage.   In the "cash cow" stage, a technology finds its 
place in the world, and matures, and becomes settled and 
productive.   After a year or so,  Alexander Graham Bell 
and his capitalist backers concluded that eerie music 
piped from nineteenth-century cyberspace was not the 
real selling-point of his invention.  Instead, the telephone 
was about speech -- individual, personal speech, the 
human voice, human conversation and  human 
interaction.   The telephone was not to be managed from 
any centralized broadcast center.  It was to be a personal, 
intimate technology.

	When you picked up a telephone, you were not 
absorbing the cold output of a machine -- you were 
speaking to another human being.   Once people realized 
this, their instinctive dread of the telephone as an eerie, 
unnatural device, swiftly vanished.   A "telephone call" was 
not a "call" from a "telephone" itself,  but a call from 
another human being, someone you would generally know 
and recognize.   The real point was not what the machine 
could do for you (or to you), but what you yourself, a 
person and citizen, could do *through* the machine.  This 
decision on the part of the young Bell Company was 
absolutely vital.

	The first telephone networks went up around Boston -
- mostly among the technically curious and the well-to-do 
(much the same segment of the American populace that, 
a hundred years later, would be buying personal 
computers).  Entrenched backers of the telegraph 
continued to scoff.

	But in January 1878, a disaster made the telephone 
famous.   A train crashed in Tarriffville, Connecticut.  
Forward-looking doctors in the nearby city of Hartford had 
had Bell's "speaking telephone" installed.    An alert local 
druggist was able to telephone an entire community of 
local doctors, who rushed to the site to give aid.  The 
disaster, as disasters do, aroused intense press coverage.  
The phone had proven its usefulness in the real world.

	After Tarriffville, the telephone network spread like 
crabgrass.  By 1890 it was all over New England.  By '93, out 
to Chicago.  By '97, into Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas.   
By 1904 it was all over the continent.

	The telephone had become a mature technology.   
Professor Bell  (now generally known as "Dr. Bell" despite 
his lack of a formal degree) became quite wealthy.   He 
lost interest in the tedious day-to-day business muddle of 
the booming telephone network, and gratefully returned 
his attention to creatively hacking-around in his  various 
laboratories, which were now much larger, better-
ventilated,  and gratifyingly better-equipped.   Bell was 
never to have another great inventive success, though his 
speculations and prototypes anticipated fiber-optic 
transmission, manned flight, sonar, hydrofoil ships, 
tetrahedral construction, and Montessori education.   The 
"decibel," the standard scientific measure of sound 
intensity, was named after Bell.

	Not all Bell's vaporware notions were inspired.  He 
was fascinated by human eugenics.   He also spent many 
years developing a weird personal system of astrophysics 
in which gravity did not exist.

	Bell was a definite eccentric.  He was something of a 
hypochondriac, and throughout his life he habitually 
stayed up until four A.M., refusing to rise before noon.   
But Bell had accomplished a great feat; he was an idol of 
millions and his influence, wealth, and great personal 
charm, combined with his eccentricity, made him 
something of a loose cannon on deck.   Bell maintained a 
thriving scientific salon in his winter mansion in 
Washington, D.C., which gave him considerable 
backstage influence in governmental and scientific 
circles.   He was a major financial backer of the the 
magazines *Science* and *National Geographic,* both 
still flourishing today as important organs of the American 
scientific establishment.

	 Bell's companion Thomas Watson, similarly wealthy 
and similarly odd, became the ardent political disciple of a 
19th-century science-fiction writer and would-be social 
reformer, Edward Bellamy.  Watson also trod the boards 
briefly as a Shakespearian actor.

	There would never be another Alexander Graham 
Bell, but in years to come there would be surprising 
numbers of people like him.  Bell was a prototype of the 
high-tech entrepreneur.   High-tech entrepreneurs will 
play a very prominent role in this book: not merely as 
technicians and businessmen, but as pioneers of the 
technical frontier, who can carry the power and prestige 
they derive from high-technology into the political and 
social arena.

	Like later entrepreneurs, Bell was fierce in defense of 
his own technological territory.  As the telephone began to 
flourish, Bell was soon involved in violent lawsuits in the 
defense of his patents.  Bell's Boston lawyers were 
excellent, however, and Bell himself, as an elecution 
teacher and gifted public speaker, was a devastatingly 
effective legal witness.  In the eighteen years of  Bell's 
patents, the Bell company was involved in six hundred 
separate lawsuits.  The legal records printed filled 149 
volumes.   The Bell Company won every single suit.

	After Bell's exclusive patents expired, rival telephone 
companies sprang up all over America.  Bell's company, 
American Bell Telephone, was soon in deep trouble.  In 
1907, American Bell Telephone fell into the hands of the 
rather sinister J.P. Morgan financial cartel, robber-baron 
speculators who dominated Wall Street.

	At this point, history might have taken a different 
turn.  American might well have been served forever by a 
patchwork of locally owned telephone companies.   Many 
state politicians and local businessmen considered this an 
excellent solution.

	But the new Bell holding company, American 
Telephone and Telegraph or AT&T, put in a new man at 
the helm, a visionary industrialist named Theodore Vail.   
Vail, a former Post Office manager, understood large 
organizations and had an innate feeling for the nature of 
large-scale communications.   Vail quickly saw to it that 
AT&T seized the technological edge once again.   The 
Pupin and Campbell "loading coil," and the deForest 
"audion," are both extinct technology today, but in 1913 
they gave Vail's company the best *long-distance*  lines 
ever built.  By controlling long-distance -- the links 
between, and over, and above the smaller local phone 
companies -- AT&T swiftly gained the whip-hand over 
them, and was soon devouring them right and left. 

	 Vail plowed the profits back into research and 
development, starting the Bell tradition of huge-scale and 
brilliant industrial research.

	Technically and financially, AT&T gradually 
steamrollered the opposition.  Independent telephone 
companies never became entirely extinct, and hundreds 
of them flourish today.  But Vail's  AT&T became the 
supreme communications company.   At one point, Vail's 
AT&T bought Western Union itself, the very company 
that had derided Bell's telephone as a "toy."   Vail 
thoroughly reformed Western Union's hidebound 
business along his modern principles;  but when the 
federal government grew anxious at this centralization of 
power, Vail politely  gave Western Union back.

	This centralizing process was not unique.  Very 
similar  events had happened in American steel, oil, and 
railroads.   But AT&T, unlike the other companies, was to 
remain supreme.  The monopoly robber-barons of those 
other industries were humbled and shattered by 
government trust-busting.
   
	Vail, the former Post Office official, was quite willing 
to accommodate the US government; in fact he would 
forge an active alliance with it.   AT&T would become 
almost a wing of the American government, almost 
another Post Office -- though not quite.   AT&T would 
willingly submit to federal regulation, but in return, it 
would use the government's regulators as its own police, 
who would keep out competitors and assure the Bell 
system's profits and preeminence.

	 This was the second birth -- the political birth -- of the 
American telephone system.  Vail's arrangement was to 
persist, with vast success, for many decades, until 1982.   
His system was an odd kind of American industrial 
socialism.  It was born at about the same time as Leninist 
Communism, and it lasted almost as long -- and, it must 
be admitted, to considerably better effect.

	Vail's system worked.  Except perhaps for aerospace, 
there has been no technology more thoroughly dominated 
by Americans than the telephone.   The telephone was 
seen from the beginning as a quintessentially American 
technology.   Bell's policy, and the policy of Theodore Vail, 
was a profoundly democratic policy of *universal access.*   
Vail's famous corporate slogan, "One Policy, One System, 
Universal Service," was a political slogan, with a very 
American ring to it.
   
	The American telephone was not to become the 
specialized tool of government or business, but a general 
public utility.  At first, it was true, only the wealthy  could 
afford private telephones, and Bell's company pursued 
the business markets primarily.   The American phone 
system was a capitalist effort, meant to make money; it 
was not a charity.  But from the first, almost all 
communities with telephone service had public 
telephones.  And many stores -- especially drugstores -- 
offered public use of their phones.  You might not own a 
telephone -- but you could always get into the system, if 
you really needed to.

	There was nothing inevitable about this decision to 
make telephones "public" and "universal."   Vail's system 
involved a profound act of trust in the public.  This 
decision was a political one, informed by the basic values 
of the American republic.  The situation might have been 
very different;  and in other countries, under other 
systems, it certainly was. 

	Joseph Stalin, for instance, vetoed plans for a Soviet 
phone system soon after the Bolshevik revolution.  Stalin 
was certain that publicly accessible telephones would 
become instruments of anti-Soviet counterrevolution and 
conspiracy.   (He was probably right.)  When telephones 
did arrive in the Soviet Union, they would be instruments 
of Party authority, and always heavily tapped.  (Alexander 
Solzhenitsyn's  prison-camp novel *The First Circle* 
describes efforts to develop a phone system more suited 
to Stalinist purposes.)

	France, with its tradition of rational centralized 
government, had fought bitterly even against the electric 
telegraph, which seemed to the French entirely too 
anarchical and frivolous.   For decades, nineteenth-
century France communicated via the "visual telegraph,"  
a nation-spanning, government-owned  semaphore 
system of huge stone towers that signalled from hilltops,  
across vast distances, with big windmill-like arms.  In 1846, 
one Dr. Barbay, a semaphore enthusiast, memorably 
uttered an early version of what might be called "the 
security expert's argument" against the open media.
 
	"No, the electric telegraph is not a sound invention.  
It will always be at the mercy of the slightest disruption, 
wild youths, drunkards, bums, etc....  The electric telegraph 
meets those destructive elements with only a few meters 
of wire over which supervision is impossible.  A single man 
could, without being seen, cut the telegraph wires leading 
to Paris, and in twenty-four hours cut in ten different 
places the wires of the same line, without being arrested.  
The visual telegraph, on the contrary, has its towers, its 
high walls, its gates well-guarded from inside by strong 
armed men.  Yes, I declare, substitution of the electric 
telegraph for the visual one is a dreadful measure, a truly 
idiotic act."

	Dr. Barbay and his high-security stone machines 
were eventually unsuccessful, but his argument -- that 
communication  exists for the safety and convenience of 
the state, and must be carefully protected from the wild 
boys and the gutter rabble  who might want to crash the 
system -- would be heard again and again. 

	When the French telephone system finally did arrive, 
its snarled inadequacy was to be notorious.  Devotees of 
the American Bell System often recommended a trip to 
France, for skeptics.  

	In Edwardian Britain, issues of class and privacy were 
a ball-and-chain for telephonic progress.   It was 
considered outrageous that anyone -- any wild fool off the 
street -- could simply barge bellowing into one's office or 
home, preceded only by the ringing of a telephone bell.    
In Britain, phones were tolerated for the use of business, 
but private phones tended be stuffed away into closets, 
smoking rooms, or servants' quarters.  Telephone 
operators were resented in Britain because they did not 
seem to "know their place."   And no one of breeding 
would print a telephone number on a business card; this 
seemed a crass attempt to make the acquaintance of 
strangers.

	But phone access in America was to become a 
popular right; something like universal suffrage, only 
more so.  American women could not yet vote when the 
phone system came through; yet from the beginning 
American women doted on the telephone.  This 
"feminization" of the American telephone was often 
commented on by foreigners.   Phones in America were 
not censored or stiff or  formalized; they were social, 
private, intimate, and domestic.   In America, Mother's 
Day is by far the busiest day of the year for the phone 
network.  

	The early telephone companies, and especially 
AT&T, were among the foremost employers of American 
women.  They employed the daughters of the American 
middle-class in great armies: in 1891, eight thousand 
women; by 1946, almost a quarter of a million.   Women 
seemed to enjoy telephone work; it was respectable, it was 
steady, it paid fairly well as women's work went, and -- not 
least -- it seemed a genuine contribution to the social good  
of the community.   Women found Vail's ideal of public 
service attractive.  This was especially true in rural areas, 
where women operators, running extensive rural party-
lines, enjoyed considerable social power.   The operator 
knew everyone on the party-line, and everyone knew her. 

	Although Bell himself was an ardent suffragist, the  
telephone company did not employ women for the sake of 
advancing female liberation.  AT&T  did this for sound 
commercial reasons.  The first telephone operators of the 
Bell system were not women, but teenage American boys.  
They were telegraphic  messenger boys (a group about to 
be rendered technically obsolescent), who swept up 
around the phone office, dunned customers for bills, and 
made phone connections on the switchboard, all on the 
cheap.

	Within the very first  year of operation, 1878, Bell's 
company learned a sharp lesson about combining 
teenage boys and telephone switchboards.   Putting 
teenage boys in charge of the phone system brought swift 
and consistent disaster.  Bell's chief engineer described 
them as "Wild Indians."  The boys were openly rude to 
customers.  They talked back to subscribers, saucing off, 
uttering facetious remarks, and generally giving lip.  The 
rascals took Saint Patrick's Day off without permission.  
And worst of all they played clever tricks with the 
switchboard plugs:  disconnecting calls, crossing lines so 
that customers found themselves talking to strangers, and 
so forth.

	This combination of power, technical mastery, and 
effective anonymity seemed to act like catnip on teenage 
boys.
  
	This wild-kid-on-the-wires phenomenon was not 
confined to the USA; from the beginning, the same was 
true of the British phone system.   An early British 
commentator kindly remarked:  "No doubt boys in their 
teens found the work not a little irksome, and it is also 
highly probable that under the early conditions of 
employment the adventurous and inquisitive spirits of 
which the average healthy boy of that age is possessed, 
were not always conducive to the best attention being 
given to the wants of the telephone subscribers."

	So the boys were flung off the system -- or at least, 
deprived of control of the switchboard.  But the 
"adventurous and inquisitive spirits" of the teenage boys 
would be heard from in the world of telephony, again and 
again.

	The fourth stage in the technological life-cycle is 
death:  "the Dog," dead tech.   The telephone has so far 
avoided this fate.  On the contrary, it is thriving, still 
spreading, still evolving, and at increasing speed.

	 The telephone has achieved a rare and exalted state 
for a technological artifact:  it has become a *household 
object.*    The telephone, like the clock, like pen and 
paper, like kitchen utensils and  running water, has 
become a technology that is visible only by its absence.   
The telephone is technologically transparent.  The global 
telephone system is the largest and most complex 
machine in the world, yet it is easy to use.  More 
remarkable yet,  the telephone is almost entirely 
physically safe for the user. 

	 For the average citizen in the 1870s, the telephone 
was weirder, more shocking, more "high-tech" and harder 
to comprehend, than the most outrageous stunts of 
advanced computing for us Americans in the 1990s.   In 
trying to understand what is happening to us today, with 
our bulletin-board systems, direct overseas dialling, fiber-
optic transmissions, computer viruses, hacking stunts, and 
a vivid tangle of new laws and new crimes, it is important 
to realize that our society has been through a similar 
challenge before -- and that, all in all, we did rather well by 
it. 
 
	Bell's stage telephone seemed bizarre at first.  But 
the sensations of weirdness vanished quickly, once people 
began to hear the familiar voices of relatives and friends, 
in their own homes on their own telephones.   The 
telephone changed from a fearsome high-tech totem to 
an everyday pillar of human community.

	This has also happened, and is still happening, to 
computer networks.   Computer networks  such as  
NSFnet, BITnet,  USENET, JANET,  are technically 
advanced, intimidating, and much harder to use than 
telephones.  Even the popular, commercial computer 
networks, such as GEnie, Prodigy, and CompuServe,  
cause much head-scratching and have been described as 
"user-hateful."   Nevertheless they too are changing from 
fancy high-tech items into everyday sources of human 
community.

	The words "community" and "communication" have 
the same root.   Wherever you put a communications 
network, you put a community as well.  And whenever you 
*take away*  that network -- confiscate it, outlaw it,  crash it, 
raise its price beyond affordability -- then you hurt that 
community.

	Communities  will fight to defend themselves.  People 
will fight harder and more bitterly to defend their 
communities,  than they will fight to defend their own 
individual selves.   And this is very true of the "electronic 
community" that arose around computer networks in the 
1980s  -- or rather, the *various* electronic communities, in 
telephony, law enforcement, computing, and the digital 
underground that, by  the year 1990, were raiding, rallying, 
arresting, suing, jailing, fining and issuing angry 
manifestos.

	None of the events of 1990 were entirely new.   
Nothing happened in 1990 that did not have some kind of 
earlier and more understandable precedent.   What gave 
the Hacker Crackdown its new sense of gravity and 
importance was the feeling -- the *community* feeling -- 
that the political stakes had been raised; that trouble in 
cyberspace was no longer mere mischief or inconclusive 
skirmishing, but a genuine fight over genuine issues, a 
fight for community survival and the shape of the future. 

	These electronic communities, having flourished 
throughout the 1980s, were becoming aware of 
themselves, and increasingly, becoming aware of other, 
rival communities.   Worries were sprouting up right and 
left, with complaints, rumors, uneasy speculations.   But it 
would take a catalyst, a shock, to make the new world 
evident.   Like Bell's great publicity break, the  Tarriffville 
Rail Disaster of January 1878, it would take a cause 
celebre.

	  That cause was the AT&T Crash of January 15, 1990.   
After the Crash, the wounded and anxious telephone 
community would come out fighting hard.

					#

	The community of telephone technicians, engineers, 
operators and researchers is the oldest community in 
cyberspace.   These are the veterans, the most developed 
group,  the richest, the most respectable, in most ways the 
most powerful.   Whole generations  have come and gone 
since Alexander Graham Bell's day, but the community he 
founded survives; people work for the phone system today 
whose great-grandparents worked for the phone system.  
Its specialty magazines, such as *Telephony,*  *AT&T 
Technical Journal,*   *Telephone Engineer and 
Management,*  are decades old; they make computer 
publications like *Macworld* and *PC Week*  look like 
amateur johnny-come-latelies. 
  
	And the phone companies take no back seat in high-
technology, either.  Other companies' industrial 
researchers may have won new markets;  but the 
researchers of Bell Labs have won *seven  Nobel Prizes.*  
One potent device that Bell Labs originated, the transistor, 
has created entire *groups* of industries.  Bell Labs are 
world-famous for generating "a patent a day," and have 
even made vital discoveries in astronomy, physics and 
cosmology.

	Throughout its seventy-year history, "Ma Bell" was 
not so much a company as a way of life.  Until the 
cataclysmic divestiture of the 1980s, Ma Bell was perhaps 
the ultimate maternalist mega-employer.   The AT&T 
corporate image was the "gentle giant,"  "the voice with a 
smile," a vaguely socialist-realist world of cleanshaven 
linemen in shiny helmets and blandly pretty phone-girls 
in headsets and nylons.   Bell System employees were 
famous as rock-ribbed Kiwanis and Rotary members, 
Little-League enthusiasts, school-board people.

	During the long heyday of Ma Bell, the Bell 
employee corps were nurtured top-to-botton on a 
corporate ethos of public service.   There was good money 
in Bell, but Bell was not *about* money; Bell used public 
relations, but never mere marketeering.   People went into 
the Bell System for a good life, and they had a good life.  
But it was not mere money that led Bell people out in the 
midst of storms and earthquakes to fight with toppled 
phone-poles, to wade in flooded manholes, to pull the red-
eyed graveyard-shift over collapsing switching-systems.   
The Bell ethic was the electrical equivalent of the 
postman's: neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night 
would stop these couriers.

	 It is easy to be cynical about this, as it is easy to be 
cynical about any political or social system;  but cynicism 
does not change the fact that thousands of people took 
these ideals very seriously.   And some still do.

	The Bell ethos was about public service; and that was 
gratifying; but it was also about private *power,* and that 
was gratifying too.   As a corporation, Bell was very special.  
Bell was privileged.  Bell had snuggled up close to the 
state.  In fact, Bell was as close to government as you could 
get in America and still make a whole lot of legitimate 
money.

	  But unlike other companies,  Bell was above and 
beyond the vulgar commercial fray.  Through its regional  
operating companies, Bell was omnipresent, local, and 
intimate, all over America;  but the central ivory towers at 
its corporate heart were the tallest and the ivoriest around.

	 There were other phone companies in America, to be 
sure;  the so-called independents.  Rural cooperatives, 
mostly; small fry, mostly tolerated, sometimes warred 
upon.  For many decades, "independent" American phone 
companies lived in fear and loathing of the official Bell 
monopoly  (or the "Bell Octopus," as Ma Bell's nineteenth-
century enemies described her in many angry newspaper 
manifestos).  Some few of these independent 
entrepreneurs,  while legally in the wrong,  fought so 
bitterly against the Octopus that their illegal phone 
networks were cast into the street by Bell agents and 
publicly burned.
  
	The pure technical sweetness of the Bell System gave 
its operators, inventors and engineers a deeply satisfying 
sense of power and mastery.  They had devoted their lives 
to improving this vast nation-spanning machine; over 
years, whole human lives, they had watched it improve 
and grow.   It was like a great technological  temple.  They 
were an elite, and they knew it -- even if others did not; in 
fact, they felt even more powerful *because* others did 
not understand.

	  The deep attraction of this sensation  of elite 
technical power should never be underestimated.   
"Technical power" is not for everybody; for many people it 
simply has no charm at all.  But for some people, it 
becomes the core of their lives.  For a few, it is 
overwhelming, obsessive;  it becomes something close to 
an addiction.   People -- especially clever teenage boys 
whose lives are otherwise mostly powerless and put-upon -
-  love this sensation of secret power, and are willing to do 
all sorts of amazing things to achieve it.  The technical 
*power* of electronics has motivated many  strange acts 
detailed in this book, which would otherwise be 
inexplicable.

	So Bell had power beyond mere capitalism.  The Bell 
service  ethos worked, and was often propagandized, in a 
rather saccharine fashion.  Over the decades,  people 
slowly grew tired of this.   And then, openly impatient with 
it.  By the early 1980s, Ma Bell was to find herself with 
scarcely a real friend in the world.   Vail's industrial 
socialism had become hopelessly out-of-fashion 
politically.  Bell would be punished for that.  And that 
punishment would fall harshly upon the people of the 
telephone community.

					#
	 
	In 1983, Ma Bell was dismantled by federal court 
action.  The pieces of Bell are now separate corporate 
entities.  The core of the company became AT&T 
Communications, and also AT&T  Industries (formerly 
Western Electric, Bell's manufacturing arm).  AT&T Bell 
Labs become Bell Communications Research, Bellcore.  
Then there are the Regional Bell Operating Companies, 
or  RBOCs, pronounced "arbocks."

	Bell was a titan and even these regional chunks are 
gigantic enterprises:  Fortune 50 companies with plenty of 
wealth and power behind them.     But the clean lines of 
"One Policy, One System, Universal Service" have been 
shattered, apparently forever.

	The "One Policy" of the early Reagan Administration 
was to shatter a system that smacked of noncompetitive 
socialism.  Since that time, there has been no real 
telephone "policy" on the federal level.  Despite the 
breakup, the remnants of Bell have never been set free to 
compete in the open marketplace.

	The RBOCs are still very heavily regulated, but not 
from the top.  Instead, they struggle politically, 
economically and legally, in what seems an endless 
turmoil, in a patchwork of overlapping federal and state 
jurisdictions.   Increasingly, like other major American 
corporations, the RBOCs  are becoming multinational, 
acquiring important commercial interests in Europe, Latin 
America, and the Pacific Rim.  But this, too, adds to their 
legal and political predicament. 
  
	The people of what used to be Ma Bell are not happy 
about their fate.  They feel ill-used.  They might have been 
grudgingly willing to make a full transition to the free 
market; to become just companies amid other companies.  
But this never happened.   Instead,  AT&T and the RBOCS 
("the Baby Bells")  feel themselves wrenched from side to 
side by state regulators, by Congress, by the FCC,  and 
especially by the federal court of Judge Harold Greene, 
the magistrate who ordered the Bell breakup and who has 
been the de facto czar of American telecommunications 
ever since 1983. 
  
	Bell people feel that they exist in a kind of paralegal 
limbo today.   They don't understand what's demanded of 
them.   If it's "service," why aren't they treated like a public 
service?  And if it's money, then why aren't they free to 
compete for it?  No one seems to know, really.   Those who 
claim to know  keep changing their minds.  Nobody in 
authority seems willing to grasp the nettle for once and all.

	Telephone people from other countries are amazed 
by the American telephone system today.  Not that it 
works so well; for nowadays even the French telephone 
system works, more or less.  They are amazed that the 
American telephone system *still*  works *at all,* under 
these strange conditions.

	Bell's  "One System" of long-distance service is now 
only about eighty percent of a system, with the remainder 
held by Sprint, MCI, and the midget long-distance 
companies.   Ugly wars over dubious corporate practices 
such as "slamming" (an underhanded method of snitching 
clients from rivals) break out with some regularity in the 
realm of long-distance service.  The battle to break Bell's 
long-distance monopoly was long and ugly, and since the 
breakup the battlefield has not become much prettier.  
AT&T's famous shame-and-blame advertisements, which 
emphasized the shoddy work and purported ethical 
shadiness of their competitors,  were much remarked on 
for their studied psychological cruelty.

	There is much bad blood in this industry, and much 
long-treasured resentment.  AT&T's post-breakup 
corporate logo, a striped sphere, is known in the industry 
as the "Death Star"  (a reference from the movie *Star 
Wars,* in which the "Death Star" was the spherical  high-
tech fortress of the harsh-breathing  imperial ultra-baddie, 
Darth Vader.)   Even AT&T employees are less than 
thrilled by the Death Star.   A popular (though banned) T-
shirt among AT&T employees bears the old-fashioned 
Bell logo of the Bell System, plus the newfangled striped 
sphere, with the before-and-after comments:  "This is your 
brain -- This is your brain on drugs!"   AT&T made a very 
well-financed and determined effort to break into the 
personal computer market;  it was disastrous, and telco 
computer experts are derisively known by their 
competitors as "the pole-climbers."  AT&T and the Baby 
Bell arbocks still seem to have few friends.

	Under conditions of sharp commercial competition, a 
crash like that of January 15, 1990 was a major 
embarrassment to AT&T.  It was a direct blow against their 
much-treasured reputation for reliability.   Within days of 
the crash AT&T's Chief Executive Officer, Bob Allen, 
officially apologized, in terms of deeply pained  humility:

	"AT&T had a major service disruption last Monday.  
We didn't live up to our own standards of quality, and we 
didn't live up to yours. It's as simple as that.  And that's not 
acceptable to us.  Or to you.... We understand how much 
people have come to depend upon AT&T service, so our 
AT&T Bell Laboratories scientists and our network 
engineers are doing everything possible to guard against a 
recurrence.... We know there's no way to make up for the 
inconvenience this problem may have caused you."

	Mr Allen's "open letter to customers" was printed in 
lavish ads all over the country:  in the *Wall Street 
Journal,*  *USA Today,*  *New York Times,*
*Los Angeles Times,*  *Chicago Tribune,* *Philadelphia 
Inquirer,*  *San Francisco Chronicle Examiner,* *Boston 
Globe,*  *Dallas Morning News,* *Detroit Free Press,* 
*Washington Post,* *Houston Chronicle,* *Cleveland
Plain Dealer,* *Atlanta Journal Constitution,* 
*Minneapolis Star Tribune,* *St. Paul Pioneer Press 
Dispatch,*  *Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer,*
*Tacoma News Tribune,* *Miami Herald,* *Pittsburgh 
Press,*  *St. Louis Post Dispatch,* *Denver Post,* *Phoenix 
Republic Gazette* and *Tampa Tribune.*

	In another press release, AT&T went to some pains to 
suggest that this "software glitch" *might* have happened 
just as easily to MCI, although, in fact, it hadn't.  (MCI's 
switching software was quite different from AT&T's -- 
though not necessarily any safer.)   AT&T also announced 
their plans to offer a rebate of service on Valentine's Day 
to make up for the loss during the Crash.
    
	"Every technical resource available, including Bell 
Labs scientists and engineers, has been devoted to 
assuring it will not occur again," the public was told.  They 
were further assured that "The chances of a recurrence 
are small--a problem of this magnitude never occurred 
before."
 
	In the meantime, however, police and corporate 
security maintained their own suspicions about "the 
chances of recurrence" and the real reason why a 
"problem of this magnitude" had appeared, seemingly out 
of nowhere.   Police and security knew for a fact that 
hackers of unprecedented sophistication were illegally 
entering, and reprogramming, certain digital switching 
stations.  Rumors of hidden "viruses" and secret "logic 
bombs" in the switches ran rampant in the underground, 
with much chortling over AT&T's predicament, and idle 
speculation over what unsung hacker genius was 
responsible for it.  Some hackers, including police 
informants, were trying hard to finger one another as the 
true culprits  of the Crash. 

	Telco people found little comfort in objectivity when 
they contemplated these possibilities.   It was just too close 
to the bone for them; it was embarrassing; it hurt so much, 
it was hard even to talk about. 

	There has always been thieving and misbehavior in 
the phone system.  There has always been trouble with the 
rival independents, and in the local loops.  But to have 
such trouble in the core of the system, the long-distance 
switching stations, is a horrifying affair.   To telco people, 
this is all the difference between finding roaches in your 
kitchen and big horrid sewer-rats in your bedroom.

	From the outside, to the average citizen, the telcos 
still seem gigantic and impersonal.  The American public 
seems to regard them as something akin to Soviet 
apparats.  Even when the telcos  do their best corporate-
citizen routine,  subsidizing magnet high-schools and 
sponsoring news-shows on public television, they seem to 
win little except public suspicion.

	But from the inside, all this looks very different.  
There's harsh competition.  A legal and political system 
that seems baffled  and bored, when not actively hostile to 
telco interests.  There's a loss of morale, a deep sensation 
of having somehow lost the upper hand.  Technological 
change has caused a loss of data and revenue to other, 
newer forms of transmission.   There's theft, and new 
forms of theft, of growing scale and boldness and 
sophistication.  With all these factors, it was no surprise to 
see the telcos, large and small, break out in a litany of 
bitter complaint.

	In late '88 and throughout 1989, telco representatives 
grew shrill in their complaints to those few American law 
enforcement officials who make it their business to try to 
understand what telephone people are talking about.   
Telco security officials had discovered the computer-
hacker underground, infiltrated it thoroughly, and 
become deeply alarmed at its growing expertise.  Here 
they had found a target that was not only loathsome on its 
face, but clearly ripe for counterattack. 

	 Those bitter rivals: AT&T, MCI and Sprint -- and a 
crowd of Baby Bells:  PacBell, Bell South, Southwestern 
Bell, NYNEX, USWest, as well as the Bell research 
consortium Bellcore, and the independent long-distance 
carrier  Mid-American  -- all were to have their role in the 
great hacker dragnet of 1990.   After years of being 
battered and pushed around, the telcos had, at least in a 
small way, seized the initiative again.  After years of 
turmoil, telcos and government officials were once again 
to work smoothly in concert in defense of the System.   
Optimism blossomed; enthusiasm grew on all sides; the 
prospective taste of vengeance was sweet.

					#

	From the beginning -- even before the crackdown 
had a name -- secrecy was a big problem.  There were 
many good reasons for secrecy in the hacker crackdown.   
Hackers and code-thieves were wily prey, slinking back to 
their bedrooms and basements and destroying vital 
incriminating evidence at the first hint of trouble.   
Furthermore, the crimes themselves were heavily 
technical and difficult to describe, even to police -- much 
less to the general public.
 
	 When such crimes *had* been described intelligibly 
to the public, in the past, that very publicity had tended to 
*increase* the crimes enormously.   Telco officials, while 
painfully aware of the vulnerabilities of their systems, were 
anxious not to publicize those weaknesses.   Experience 
showed them that those weaknesses, once discovered,  
would be pitilessly exploited by tens of thousands of 
people -- not only by professional grifters and by 
underground hackers and phone phreaks, but by many 
otherwise more-or-less honest everyday folks, who 
regarded stealing service from the faceless, soulless 
"Phone Company" as a kind of harmless indoor sport.   
When it came to protecting their interests, telcos had long 
since given up on general public sympathy for "the Voice 
with a Smile."  Nowadays the telco's "Voice" was very likely 
to be a computer's; and the American public showed 
much less of the proper respect and gratitude due the fine 
public service bequeathed them by Dr. Bell and Mr. Vail.   
The more efficient, high-tech, computerized, and 
impersonal the telcos became, it seemed, the more they 
were met by sullen public resentment and amoral greed.

	Telco officials wanted to punish the phone-phreak 
underground,  in as public and exemplary a manner as 
possible.  They wanted to make dire examples of the worst 
offenders, to seize the ringleaders and intimidate the 
small fry, to discourage and frighten the wacky hobbyists, 
and send the professional grifters to jail.  To do all this, 
publicity was vital.
 
	Yet operational secrecy was even more so.  If word got 
out that a nationwide crackdown was coming, the hackers 
might simply vanish; destroy the evidence, hide their 
computers, go to earth, and wait for the campaign to blow 
over.  Even the young  hackers were crafty and suspicious, 
and as for the professional grifters, they tended to split for 
the nearest state-line at the first sign of trouble.  For the 
crackdown to work well, they would all have to be caught 
red-handed, swept upon suddenly, out of the blue, from 
every corner of the compass.

	And there was another strong motive for secrecy.  In 
the worst-case scenario, a blown campaign might leave 
the telcos open to a devastating hacker counter-attack.   If 
there were indeed hackers loose in America  who had 
caused the January 15 Crash -- if there were truly gifted 
hackers, loose in the nation's long-distance switching 
systems, and enraged or frightened by the crackdown -- 
then they might react unpredictably to an attempt to 
collar them.   Even if caught, they might have talented and 
vengeful friends still running around loose.   Conceivably, 
it could turn ugly.  Very ugly.  In fact, it was hard to 
imagine just how ugly things might turn, given that 
possibility.

	Counter-attack from hackers was a genuine concern 
for the telcos.  In point of fact, they would never suffer any 
such counter-attack.  But in months to come, they would 
be at some pains to publicize this notion and to utter grim 
warnings about it.

	Still, that risk seemed well worth running.  Better to 
run the risk of vengeful attacks, than to live at the mercy of 
potential crashers.  Any cop would tell you that a 
protection racket had no real future. 

	 And publicity was such a useful thing.   Corporate 
security officers, including telco security,  generally work 
under conditions of great discretion.  And corporate 
security officials do not make money for their companies. 
Their job is to *prevent the loss* of money, which is much 
less glamorous than actually winning profits.
  
	If you are a corporate security official, and you do 
your job brilliantly, then nothing bad happens to your 
company at all.  Because of this, you appear completely 
superfluous.   This is one of the many unattractive aspects 
of security work.   It's rare that these folks have the chance 
to draw some healthy attention to their own efforts.

	Publicity also served the interest of their friends in 
law enforcement.  Public officials, including law 
enforcement officials,  thrive by attracting favorable 
public interest.  A brilliant prosecution in a matter of vital 
public interest  can make the career of a prosecuting 
attorney.  And for a police officer, good publicity opens the 
purses of the legislature; it may bring a citation, or a 
promotion, or at least a rise in status and the respect of 
one's peers.

	But to have both publicity and secrecy is to have 
one's cake and eat it too.  In months to come, as we will 
show, this impossible act was to cause great pain to the 
agents of the crackdown.  But early on, it seemed possible 
-- maybe even likely -- that the crackdown could 
successfully combine the best of both worlds.   The 
*arrest* of hackers would be heavily publicized.  The 
actual *deeds* of the hackers, which were technically hard 
to explain and also a security risk, would be left decently 
obscured.   The *threat* hackers posed would be heavily 
trumpeted; the likelihood of their actually committing 
such fearsome crimes would be left to the public's 
imagination.  The spread of the computer underground, 
and its growing technical sophistication, would be heavily 
promoted;  the actual hackers themselves, mostly 
bespectacled middle-class white suburban teenagers, 
would be denied any personal publicity.
  
	It does not seem to have occurred to any telco official 
that the hackers accused would demand a day in court;  
that journalists would smile upon the hackers as "good 
copy;"  that wealthy high-tech entrepreneurs would offer 
moral and financial support to crackdown victims; that 
constitutional lawyers would show up with briefcases, 
frowning mightily.   This possibility does not seem to have 
ever entered the game-plan.

	And even if it had, it probably would not have slowed 
the ferocious pursuit of a stolen phone-company 
document, mellifluously known as "Control Office 
Administration of Enhanced 911 Services for Special 
Services and Major Account Centers."

	In the chapters to follow, we will explore the worlds of 
police and the computer underground, and the large 
shadowy area where they overlap.   But first, we must 
explore the battleground.  Before we leave the world of the 
telcos, we must understand what a switching system 
actually is and how your telephone actually works.

					#

	To the average citizen, the idea of the telephone is 
represented by, well,  a *telephone:*  a device that you talk 
into.  To a telco professional, however, the telephone itself 
is known, in lordly fashion, as a "subset."   The "subset" in 
your house is a mere adjunct, a distant nerve ending, of 
the central switching stations, which are ranked in levels of 
heirarchy, up to the  long-distance electronic switching 
stations, which are some of the largest computers on 
earth.

	Let us imagine that it is, say, 1925,  before the 
introduction of computers, when the phone system was 
simpler and somewhat easier to grasp.   Let's further 
imagine that you are Miss Leticia Luthor, a fictional 
operator for Ma Bell in New York City of the 20s.
  
	Basically, you, Miss Luthor, *are* the "switching 
system."  You are sitting in front of a large vertical 
switchboard, known as a "cordboard," made of shiny 
wooden panels, with ten thousand metal-rimmed holes 
punched in them, known as jacks.  The engineers would 
have put more holes into your switchboard, but ten 
thousand is as many as you can reach without actually 
having to get up out of your chair.

	 Each of these ten thousand holes has its own little 
electric lightbulb, known as a "lamp," and its own neatly 
printed number code.

	 With the ease of long habit, you are scanning your 
board for lit-up bulbs.  This is what you do most of the 
time, so you are used to it.

	  A lamp lights up.  This means that the phone at the 
end of that line has been taken off the hook.   Whenever a 
handset is taken off the hook, that closes a circuit inside 
the phone which then signals the local office, i.e. you,  
automatically.  There might be somebody calling, or then 
again the phone might be simply off the hook, but this 
does not matter to you yet.  The first thing you do, is record 
that number in your logbook, in your fine American 
public-school handwriting.   This comes first, naturally, 
since it is done for billing purposes.

	You now take the plug of your answering cord, which 
goes directly to your headset, and plug it into the lit-up 
hole.  "Operator," you announce.

	In operator's classes, before taking this job, you have 
been issued a large pamphlet full of canned operator's 
responses for all kinds of contingencies, which you had to 
memorize.  You have also been trained in a proper non-
regional, non-ethnic pronunciation and tone of voice.  You 
rarely  have the occasion to make any spontaneous 
remark to a customer, and in fact this is frowned upon 
(except out on the rural lines where people  have time on 
their hands and get up to all kinds of mischief).
 
	A tough-sounding user's voice at the end of the line 
gives you a number.  Immediately, you write that number 
down in your logbook, next to the caller's number, which 
you just wrote earlier.  You then look and see if the 
number this guy wants is in fact on your switchboard, 
which it generally is, since it's generally a local call.  Long 
distance costs so much that people use it sparingly.

	Only then do you pick up a calling-cord from a shelf 
at the base of the switchboard.  This is a long elastic cord 
mounted on a kind of reel so that it will zip back in when 
you unplug it.  There are a lot of cords down there, and 
when a bunch of them are out at once they look like a nest 
of snakes.  Some of the girls think there are bugs living in 
those cable-holes.  They're called "cable mites" and are 
supposed to bite your hands and give you rashes.  You 
don't believe this, yourself.

	Gripping the head of your calling-cord, you slip the 
tip of it deftly into the sleeve of the jack for the called 
person.  Not all the way in, though.  You just touch it.  If 
you hear a clicking sound, that means the line is busy and 
you can't put the call through.  If the line is busy, you have 
to stick the calling-cord into a "busy-tone jack," which will 
give the guy a busy-tone.  This way you don't have to talk to 
him yourself and absorb his natural human frustration.

	But the line isn't busy.  So you pop the cord all the 
way in.   Relay circuits in your board make the distant 
phone ring, and if somebody picks it up off the hook, then 
a phone conversation starts.   You can hear this 
conversation on your answering cord, until you unplug it.   
In fact you could listen to the whole conversation if you 
wanted, but this is sternly frowned upon by management, 
and frankly, when you've overheard one, you've pretty 
much heard 'em all. 

	 You can tell how long the conversation lasts by the 
glow of the calling-cord's lamp, down on the calling-cord's 
shelf.   When it's over, you unplug and the calling-cord 
zips back into place.

	Having done this stuff a few hundred thousand times, 
you become quite good at it.  In fact you're plugging, and 
connecting, and disconnecting, ten, twenty, forty cords at a 
time.  It's a manual handicraft, really, quite satisfying in a 
way, rather like weaving on an upright loom.

	Should a long-distance call come up, it would be 
different, but not all that different.  Instead of connecting 
the call through your own local switchboard, you have to 
go up the hierarchy, onto the long-distance lines, known as 
"trunklines."  Depending on how far the call goes, it may 
have to work its way through a whole series of operators, 
which can take quite a while.   The caller doesn't wait on 
the line while this complex process is negotiated across 
the country by the gaggle of operators.   Instead, the caller 
hangs up, and you call him back yourself when the call has 
finally worked its way through.

	After four or five years of this work, you get married, 
and you have to quit your job, this being the natural order 
of womanhood in the American 1920s.  The phone 
company has to train somebody else -- maybe two people, 
since the phone system has grown somewhat in the 
meantime.  And this costs money.

	In fact, to use any kind of human being as a switching 
system is a very expensive proposition.   Eight thousand 
Leticia Luthors would be bad enough, but a quarter of a 
million of them is a military-scale proposition and makes 
drastic measures in automation financially worthwhile.

	Although the phone system continues to grow today, 
the number of human beings employed by telcos has 
been dropping steadily for years.  Phone "operators" now 
deal with nothing but unusual contingencies, all routine 
operations having been shrugged off onto machines.  
Consequently, telephone operators are considerably less 
machine-like nowadays,  and have been known to have 
accents and actual character in their voices.  When you 
reach a human operator today, the operators are rather 
more "human" than they were in Leticia's day -- but on the 
other hand, human beings in the phone system are much 
harder to reach in the first place.

	Over the first half of the twentieth century, 
"electromechanical" switching systems of growing 
complexity were cautiously introduced into the phone 
system.  In certain backwaters, some of these hybrid 
systems are still in use.  But after 1965, the phone system 
began to go completely electronic, and this is by far the 
dominant mode today.  Electromechanical systems have 
"crossbars," and "brushes," and other large moving 
mechanical parts, which, while faster and cheaper than 
Leticia, are still slow, and tend to wear out fairly quickly.

	But fully electronic systems are inscribed on silicon 
chips, and are lightning-fast, very cheap, and quite 
durable.   They are much cheaper to maintain than even 
the best electromechanical systems, and they fit into half 
the space.   And with every year, the silicon chip grows 
smaller, faster, and cheaper yet.  Best of all,  automated 
electronics work around the clock and don't have salaries 
or health insurance.

	There are, however, quite serious drawbacks to the 
use of computer-chips.   When they do break down, it is a 
daunting challenge to figure out what the heck has gone 
wrong with them.  A broken cordboard generally had a 
problem in it big enough to see.  A broken chip has 
invisible, microscopic faults.  And the faults in bad 
software can be so subtle as to be practically theological.

	If you want a mechanical system to do something 
new, then you must travel to where it is, and pull pieces out 
of it, and wire in new pieces.  This costs money.  However, 
if you want a chip to do something new, all you have to do 
is change its software, which is easy, fast and dirt-cheap.  
You don't even have to see the chip to change its program.  
Even if you did see the chip, it wouldn't look like much.  A 
chip with program X doesn't look one whit different from a 
chip with program Y. 

	With the proper codes and sequences, and access to 
specialized phone-lines, you can change electronic 
switching systems all over America from anywhere you 
please.

	And so can other people.  If they know how, and if 
they want to, they can sneak into a  microchip via the 
special phonelines and diddle with it, leaving no physical 
trace at all.  If they broke into the operator's station and 
held Leticia at gunpoint, that would be very obvious.  If 
they broke into a telco building and went after an 
electromechanical switch with a toolbelt, that would at 
least leave many traces.  But people can do all manner of 
amazing things to computer switches just by typing on a 
keyboard, and keyboards are everywhere today.  The 
extent of this vulnerability is deep, dark, broad, almost 
mind-boggling, and yet this is a basic, primal fact of life 
about any computer on a network. 
     
	Security experts over the past twenty years have 
insisted, with growing urgency, that this basic vulnerability 
of computers represents an entirely new level of risk, of 
unknown but obviously dire potential to society.   And they 
are right. 
  
	An electronic switching station does pretty much 
everything Letitia did, except in nanoseconds and on a 
much larger scale.  Compared to Miss Luthor's ten 
thousand jacks, even a primitive 1ESS switching computer, 
60s vintage,  has a 128,000 lines.   And the current AT&T 
system of choice is the monstrous fifth-generation 5ESS.

	 An Electronic Switching Station can scan every line 
on its "board" in a tenth of a second, and it does this over 
and over, tirelessly, around the clock.  Instead of eyes, it 
uses "ferrod scanners" to check the condition of local lines 
and trunks.  Instead of hands, it has "signal distributors," 
"central pulse distributors," "magnetic latching relays," 
and "reed switches," which complete and break the calls.  
Instead of a brain, it has a "central processor."   Instead of 
an instruction manual, it has a program.   Instead of a 
handwritten logbook for recording and billing calls, it has 
magnetic tapes. And it never has to talk to anybody.  
Everything a customer might say to it is done by punching 
the direct-dial tone buttons on your subset.

	Although an Electronic Switching Station can't talk, it 
does need an interface, some way to relate to its, er, 
employers.   This interface is known as the "master control 
center."  (This interface might be better known simply as 
"the interface," since it doesn't actually "control" phone 
calls directly.  However, a term like "Master Control 
Center" is just the kind of rhetoric that telco maintenance 
engineers  -- and hackers -- find particularly satisfying.)

	Using the master control center, a phone engineer 
can test local and trunk lines for malfunctions.  He (rarely 
she) can check various alarm displays, measure traffic on 
the lines, examine the records of telephone usage and the 
charges for those calls, and change the programming.

	And, of course, anybody else who gets into the master 
control center by remote control can also do these things, 
if he (rarely she) has managed to figure them out, or, more 
likely, has somehow swiped the knowledge from people 
who already know.

	In 1989 and 1990, one particular RBOC, BellSouth, 
which felt particularly troubled, spent a purported $1.2 
million on computer security.   Some think it spent as 
much as two million, if you count all the associated costs.  
Two million dollars is still very little compared to the great 
cost-saving utility of telephonic computer systems.
  
	Unfortunately, computers are also stupid.  Unlike 
human beings, computers  possess the truly profound 
stupidity of the inanimate.

	 In the 1960s, in the first shocks of spreading 
computerization, there was much easy talk about the 
stupidity of computers -- how they could "only follow the 
program" and were rigidly required to do "only what they 
were told."   There has been rather less talk about the 
stupidity of computers since they began to achieve 
grandmaster status in chess tournaments, and to manifest 
many other impressive forms of apparent cleverness.

	  Nevertheless, computers *still* are profoundly 
brittle and stupid; they are simply vastly more subtle in 
their stupidity and brittleness.   The computers of the 
1990s are much more reliable in their components than 
earlier computer systems, but they are also called upon to 
do far more complex things, under far more challenging 
conditions.

	On a basic mathematical level, every single line of a 
software program offers a chance for some possible 
screwup.   Software does not sit still when it works; it "runs," 
it interacts with itself and with its own inputs and outputs.  
By analogy, it stretches like putty into millions of possible 
shapes and conditions, so many shapes that they can 
never all be successfully tested, not even in the lifespan of 
the universe.  Sometimes the putty snaps.

	The stuff we call "software" is not like anything that 
human society is used to thinking about.  Software is 
something like a machine, and something like 
mathematics, and something like language, and 
something like thought, and art, and information....  but 
software is not in fact any of those other things.   The 
protean quality of software is one of the great sources of its 
fascination.  It also makes software very powerful, very 
subtle, very unpredictable, and very risky.

	Some software is bad and buggy.  Some is "robust," 
even "bulletproof."  The best software is that which has 
been tested by thousands of users under thousands of 
different conditions, over years.  It is then known as 
"stable."   This does *not* mean that the software is now 
flawless, free of bugs.  It generally means that there are 
plenty of bugs in it, but the bugs are well-identified and 
fairly well understood.

	 There is simply no way to assure that software is free 
of flaws.  Though software is mathematical in nature, it 
cannot by "proven" like a mathematical theorem; software 
is more like language, with inherent ambiguities, with 
different definitions, different assumptions, different 
levels of meaning that can conflict.

	 Human beings can manage, more or less, with 
human language because we can catch the gist of it.
   
	Computers, despite years of effort in "artificial 
intelligence," have proven spectacularly bad in "catching 
the gist" of anything at all.  The tiniest bit of semantic grit 
may still bring the mightiest computer tumbling down.  
One of the most hazardous things you can do to a 
computer program is try to improve it -- to try to make it 
safer.  Software "patches" represent new, untried un-
"stable" software, which is by definition riskier.

	The modern telephone system has come to depend, 
utterly and irretrievably, upon software.  And the System 
Crash of January 15, 1990, was caused by an 
*improvement* in software.  Or rather, an *attempted* 
improvement.
   
	As it happened, the problem itself -- the problem per 
se  --  took this form.  A piece of telco software had been 
written in C language, a standard language of the telco 
field.  Within the C software was a long "do... while" 
construct.  The "do... while" construct contained a "switch" 
statement.  The "switch" statement contained an "if" 
clause.  The "if" clause contained a "break."  The "break" 
was *supposed* to "break" the "if clause."  Instead, the 
"break" broke the "switch" statement.

	That was the problem, the actual reason why people 
picking up phones on January 15, 1990, could not talk to 
one another.

	Or at least, that was the subtle, abstract, cyberspatial 
seed of the problem.  This is how the problem manifested 
itself from the realm of programming into the realm of 
real life. 
   
	The System 7 software for AT&T's 4ESS switching 
station, the "Generic 44E14 Central Office Switch 
Software," had been extensively tested, and was 
considered very stable.   By the end of 1989, eighty of 
AT&T's switching systems nationwide had been 
programmed with the new software.  Cautiously, thirty-
four stations were left to run the slower, less-capable 
System 6, because AT&T suspected there might be 
shakedown problems with the new and unprecedently 
sophisticated System 7 network.

	The stations with System 7 were programmed to 
switch over to a backup net in case of any problems.  In 
mid-December 1989, however, a new high-velocity, high-
security software patch was distributed to each of the 4ESS 
switches that would enable them to switch over even more 
quickly, making the System 7 network that much more 
secure.
   	
	Unfortunately, every one of these 4ESS switches was 
now in possession of a small but deadly flaw.

	 In order to maintain the network, switches must 
monitor the condition of other switches -- whether they are 
up and running, whether they have temporarily shut down, 
whether they are overloaded and in need of assistance, 
and so forth.  The new software helped control this 
bookkeeping function by monitoring the status calls from 
other switches. 
 
	It only takes four to six seconds for a troubled 4ESS 
switch to rid itself of all its calls, drop everything 
temporarily, and re-boot its software from scratch.   
Starting over from scratch will generally rid the switch of 
any software problems that may have developed in the 
course of running the system.   Bugs that arise will be 
simply wiped out by this process.  It is a clever idea.   This 
process of automatically re-booting from scratch is known 
as the "normal fault recovery routine."   Since AT&T's 
software is in fact exceptionally stable, systems rarely have 
to go into "fault recovery" in the first place;  but AT&T has 
always boasted of its "real world" reliability, and this tactic 
is a belt-and-suspenders routine.

	The 4ESS switch used its new software to monitor its 
fellow switches as they recovered from faults.   As other 
switches came back on line after recovery, they would 
send their "OK" signals to the switch.   The switch would 
make a little note to that effect in its "status map," 
recognizing that the fellow switch was back and ready to 
go, and should be sent some calls and put back to regular 
work. 
  
	Unfortunately, while it was busy bookkeeping with 
the status map, the tiny flaw in the brand-new software 
came into play.  The flaw caused the 4ESS switch to 
interacted, subtly but drastically, with incoming telephone 
calls from human users.  If -- and only if -- two incoming 
phone-calls happened to hit the switch within a hundredth 
of a second,  then a small patch of data would be garbled 
by the flaw.
  
	But the switch had been programmed to monitor 
itself constantly for any possible damage to its data.  
When the switch perceived that its data had been 
somehow  garbled, then it too would go down, for swift 
repairs to its software.  It would signal its fellow switches 
not to send any more work.  It would go into the fault-
recovery mode for four to six seconds.  And then the switch 
would be fine again, and would send out its "OK, ready for 
work" signal.

	However, the "OK, ready for work" signal was the 
*very thing that had caused the   switch to go down in the 
first place.*  And *all* the System 7 switches had the same 
flaw in their status-map software.  As soon as they stopped 
to make  the bookkeeping note that their fellow switch was 
"OK," then they too would become vulnerable to the slight 
chance that two phone-calls would hit them within a 
hundredth of a second. 
     
	At approximately 2:25 p.m. EST on Monday, January 
15, one of AT&T's 4ESS toll switching systems in New York 
City had an actual, legitimate, minor problem.  It went into 
fault recovery routines, announced "I'm going down," then 
announced, "I'm back, I'm OK."   And this cheery message 
then blasted throughout the network to many of its fellow 
4ESS switches.

	Many of the switches, at first, completely escaped 
trouble.  These lucky switches were not hit by the 
coincidence of two phone calls within a hundredth of a 
second.   Their software did not fail -- at first.  But  three 
switches -- in Atlanta, St. Louis, and Detroit --  were 
unlucky, and were caught with their hands full.  And they 
went down.  And they came back up, almost immediately.  
And they too began to broadcast the lethal message that 
they, too, were "OK" again, activating the lurking software 
bug in yet other switches.
 
	As more and more switches did have that bit of bad 
luck and collapsed, the call-traffic became more and more 
densely packed in the remaining switches, which were 
groaning to keep up with the load.   And of course, as the 
calls became more densely packed, the switches were 
*much more likely* to be hit twice within a hundredth of a 
second.

	It only took four seconds for a switch to get well.  
There was no *physical* damage of any kind to the 
switches, after all.   Physically, they were working perfectly.  
This situation was "only" a software problem.
   
	But the 4ESS switches were leaping up and down 
every four to six seconds, in a virulent spreading wave all 
over America,  in utter, manic, mechanical stupidity.  They 
kept *knocking*  one another down with their contagious 
"OK" messages.
 
	It took about ten minutes for the chain reaction to 
cripple the network.  Even then, switches would 
periodically luck-out and manage to resume their normal 
work.  Many calls -- millions of them -- were managing to 
get through.  But millions weren't.
  
	The switching stations that used System 6 were not 
directly affected.  Thanks to these old-fashioned switches,  
AT&T's national system avoided complete collapse.  This 
fact also made it clear to engineers that System 7 was at 
fault.

	Bell Labs engineers, working feverishly in New 
Jersey, Illinois, and Ohio, first tried their entire repertoire 
of standard network remedies on the malfunctioning 
System 7.  None of the remedies worked, of course, 
because nothing like this had ever happened to any 
phone system before.

	By cutting out the backup safety network entirely, 
they were able to reduce the frenzy of "OK" messages by 
about half.  The system then began to recover, as the 
chain reaction slowed.   By 11:30 pm on Monday January 
15, sweating engineers on the midnight shift breathed a 
sigh of relief as the last switch cleared-up.

	By Tuesday they were pulling all the brand-new 4ESS 
software and replacing it with an earlier version of System 
7. 
   
	If these had been human operators, rather than 
computers at work, someone would simply have 
eventually stopped screaming.  It would have been 
*obvious* that the situation was not "OK," and common 
sense would have kicked in.   Humans possess common 
sense -- at least to some extent.   Computers simply don't.

 	On the other hand, computers can handle hundreds 
of calls per second.  Humans simply can't.   If every single 
human being in America worked for the phone company, 
we couldn't match the performance of digital switches:  
direct-dialling, three-way calling, speed-calling, call-
waiting, Caller ID, all the rest of the cornucopia of digital 
bounty.   Replacing computers with operators is simply not 
an option any more.

	And yet we still, anachronistically,  expect humans to 
be running our phone system.   It is hard for us to 
understand that we have sacrificed huge amounts of 
initiative and control to senseless yet powerful machines.   
When the phones fail, we want somebody to be 
responsible.  We want somebody to blame.
  
	When the Crash of January 15 happened, the 
American populace was simply not prepared to 
understand that enormous landslides in cyberspace, like 
the Crash itself, can happen, and can be nobody's fault in 
particular.   It was easier to believe, maybe even in some 
odd way more reassuring to believe, that some evil person, 
or evil group, had done this to us.  "Hackers" had done it.  
With a virus.   A trojan horse.  A software bomb.  A dirty 
plot of some kind.   People believed this, responsible 
people.  In 1990, they were looking hard for evidence to 
confirm their heartfelt suspicions.

	And they would look in a lot of places.

	Come 1991, however, the outlines of an apparent new 
reality would begin to emerge from the fog.
  
	On July 1 and 2, 1991, computer-software collapses in 
telephone switching stations disrupted service in 
Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San 
Francisco.   Once again, seemingly minor maintenance 
problems had crippled the digital System 7.  About twelve 
million people were affected in the Crash of July 1, 1991. 
 
	Said the New York Times Service:  "Telephone 
company executives and federal regulators said they were 
not ruling out the possibility of sabotage by computer 
hackers, but most seemed to think the problems stemmed 
from some unknown defect in the software running the 
networks."

	And sure enough, within the week, a red-faced 
software company, DSC Communications Corporation of 
Plano, Texas, owned up to "glitches" in the "signal transfer 
point" software that DSC had designed for Bell Atlantic 
and Pacific Bell.  The immediate cause of the July 1 Crash 
was a single mistyped character:  one tiny typographical 
flaw in one single line of the software.  One mistyped 
letter, in one single line, had deprived the nation's capital 
of phone service.  It was not particularly surprising that 
this tiny flaw had escaped attention: a typical System 7 
station requires *ten million* lines of code.
  
	On Tuesday, September 17, 1991, came the most 
spectacular outage yet.   This case had nothing to do with 
software failures -- at least, not directly.  Instead, a group 
of AT&T's switching stations in New York City had simply 
run out of electrical power and shut down cold.  Their  
back-up batteries had failed.  Automatic warning systems 
were supposed to warn of the loss of battery power, but 
those automatic systems had failed as well.

	This time, Kennedy, La Guardia, and Newark airports 
all had their voice and data communications cut.   This 
horrifying event was particularly ironic, as attacks on 
airport computers by hackers had long been a standard 
nightmare scenario, much trumpeted by computer-
security experts who feared the computer underground.   
There had even been a Hollywood thriller about sinister 
hackers ruining airport computers -- *Die Hard II.* 
  
	Now AT&T itself had crippled airports with computer 
malfunctions  -- not just one airport, but three at once, 
some of the busiest in the world.
 
	Air traffic came to a standstill throughout the Greater 
New York area, causing more than 500 flights to be 
cancelled, in a spreading wave all over America and even 
into Europe.  Another 500 or so flights were delayed, 
affecting, all in all, about 85,000 passengers.  (One of these 
passengers was the chairman of the Federal 
Communications Commission.) 

	Stranded passengers in New York and New Jersey 
were further infuriated to discover that they could not 
even manage to make a long distance phone call, to 
explain their delay to loved ones or business associates.   
Thanks to the crash, about four and a half million 
domestic calls, and half a million international calls, failed 
to get through.

	The September 17 NYC Crash, unlike the previous 
ones, involved not a whisper of "hacker" misdeeds.  On the 
contrary,  by 1991, AT&T itself was suffering much of the 
vilification that had formerly been directed at hackers.   
Congressmen were grumbling.  So were state and federal 
regulators.  And so was the press.
  
	For their part, ancient rival MCI took out snide full-
page newspaper ads in New York, offering their own long-
distance services for the "next time that AT&T goes down."

	"You wouldn't find a classy company like AT&T using 
such advertising," protested AT&T Chairman Robert 
Allen, unconvincingly.  Once again, out came the full-page 
AT&T apologies in newspapers, apologies for "an 
inexcusable culmination of both human and mechanical 
failure."   (This time, however, AT&T offered no discount 
on later calls.  Unkind critics suggested that AT&T were 
worried about setting any precedent for refunding the 
financial losses caused by telephone crashes.) 

	Industry journals asked  publicly if AT&T was "asleep 
at the switch."   The telephone network, America's 
purported marvel of high-tech reliability,  had gone down 
three times in 18 months.  *Fortune* magazine listed the 
Crash of September 17 among the "Biggest Business 
Goofs of 1991,"  cruelly parodying AT&T's ad campaign in 
an article entitled "AT&T Wants You Back (Safely On the 
Ground, God Willing)." 

	Why had those New York switching systems simply 
run out of power?  Because no human being had attended 
to the alarm system.  Why did the alarm systems blare 
automatically, without any human being noticing?  
Because the three telco technicians who *should* have 
been listening were absent from their stations in the 
power-room, on another floor of the building -- attending a 
training class.  A training class about the alarm systems for 
the power room!

	"Crashing the System" was no longer 
"unprecedented" by late 1991.   On the contrary, it no 
longer even seemed an oddity.   By 1991, it was clear that 
all the policemen in the world could no longer "protect" 
the phone system from crashes.   By far the worst crashes 
the system had ever had, had been inflicted, by the 
system, upon *itself.*  And this time nobody was making 
cocksure statements that this was an anomaly, something 
that would never happen again.   By 1991 the System's 
defenders had met their nebulous Enemy, and the Enemy 
was -- the System.
 
.


Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.sf.ca.us

Literary Freeware:  Not for Commercial Use

THE HACKER CRACKDOWN:  Law and Disorder on the 
Electronic Frontier

PART TWO:  THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND


	The date was May 9, 1990.  The Pope was touring 
Mexico City.   Hustlers from the Medellin Cartel were 
trying to buy black-market Stinger missiles in Florida.  On 
the comics page, Doonesbury character Andy was dying of 
AIDS.   And then.... a highly unusual item whose novelty 
and calculated rhetoric won it headscratching attention in 
newspapers all over America.

	The US Attorney's office in Phoenix, Arizona, had 
issued a press release announcing a nationwide law 
enforcement crackdown against "illegal computer hacking 
activities."  The sweep was officially known as "Operation 
Sundevil."

	Eight paragraphs in the press release gave the bare 
facts:  twenty-seven search warrants carried out on May 8, 
with three arrests, and a hundred and fifty agents on the 
prowl in "twelve" cities across America.   (Different counts 
in local press reports yielded "thirteen," "fourteen," and 
"sixteen" cities.)   Officials estimated that criminal losses 
of revenue to telephone companies "may run into millions 
of dollars."   Credit for the Sundevil investigations was 
taken by the US Secret Service, Assistant US Attorney Tim 
Holtzen of Phoenix, and the Assistant Attorney General of 
Arizona,  Gail Thackeray.

	  The prepared remarks of Garry M. Jenkins, 
appearing in a U.S. Department of Justice press release, 
were of particular interest.  Mr. Jenkins was the Assistant 
Director of the US Secret Service, and the highest-ranking 
federal official to take any direct public role in  the hacker 
crackdown of 1990.

	 "Today, the Secret Service is sending a clear message 
to those computer hackers who have decided to violate 
the laws of this nation in the mistaken belief that they can 
successfully avoid detection by hiding behind the relative 
anonymity of their computer terminals.(...)
	"Underground groups have been formed for the 
purpose of exchanging information relevant to their 
criminal activities.  These groups often communicate with 
each other through message systems between computers 
called 'bulletin boards.'
	"Our experience shows that many computer hacker 
suspects are no longer misguided teenagers, 
mischievously playing games with their computers in their 
bedrooms.  Some are now high tech computer operators 
using computers to engage in unlawful conduct." 

	Who were these "underground groups" and "high-
tech operators?"  Where had they come from?  What did 
they want?  Who *were*   they?  Were they 
"mischievous?"  Were they dangerous?  How had 
"misguided teenagers" managed to alarm the United 
States Secret Service?  And just how widespread was this 
sort of thing?
 
	Of all the major players in the Hacker Crackdown:  
the phone companies, law enforcement, the civil 
libertarians, and the "hackers" themselves -- the "hackers" 
are by far the most mysterious, by far the hardest to 
understand, by far the *weirdest.*
  
	 Not only are "hackers"  novel in their activities, but 
they come in a variety of odd subcultures, with a variety of 
languages, motives and values. 
 
	The earliest proto-hackers were probably those 
unsung mischievous telegraph boys who were summarily 
fired by the Bell Company in 1878.

	Legitimate "hackers," those computer enthusiasts 
who are independent-minded but law-abiding, generally 
trace their spiritual ancestry to  elite technical universities, 
especially M.I.T. and Stanford, in the 1960s.

	But the genuine roots of the modern hacker 
*underground* can probably be traced most successfully 
to a now much-obscured hippie anarchist movement 
known as the Yippies.   The  Yippies, who took their name 
from the largely fictional "Youth International Party," 
carried out a loud and lively policy of surrealistic 
subversion and outrageous political mischief.  Their basic 
tenets were flagrant sexual promiscuity, open and copious 
drug use, the political overthrow of any powermonger over 
thirty years of age, and an immediate end to the war in 
Vietnam, by any means necessary, including the psychic 
levitation of the Pentagon.

	The two most visible Yippies were Abbie Hoffman 
and Jerry Rubin.  Rubin eventually  became a Wall Street 
broker.  Hoffman, ardently sought by federal authorities, 
went into hiding for seven years, in Mexico, France, and 
the United States.   While on the lam, Hoffman continued 
to write and publish, with help from sympathizers in the 
American anarcho-leftist underground.   Mostly, Hoffman 
survived through false ID and odd jobs.  Eventually he 
underwent facial plastic surgery and adopted an entirely 
new identity as one "Barry Freed."   After surrendering 
himself to authorities in 1980, Hoffman  spent a year in 
prison on a cocaine conviction. 
 
	Hoffman's worldview grew much darker as the glory 
days of the 1960s faded.  In 1989, he purportedly 
committed suicide, under odd and, to some, rather 
suspicious circumstances.

	Abbie Hoffman is said to have caused the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation to amass the single largest 
investigation file ever opened on an individual American 
citizen.  (If this is true, it is still questionable whether the 
FBI regarded Abbie Hoffman a serious public threat  -- 
quite possibly, his file was enormous simply because 
Hoffman left colorful legendry wherever he went).   He 
was a gifted publicist, who regarded electronic media as 
both playground and weapon.  He actively enjoyed 
manipulating network TV and other gullible, image-
hungry media,  with various weird lies, mindboggling 
rumors, impersonation scams, and other sinister 
distortions, all absolutely guaranteed to upset cops, 
Presidential candidates, and federal judges.    Hoffman's 
most famous work was a book self-reflexively known as 
*Steal This Book,* which publicized a number of methods 
by which young, penniless hippie agitators might live off 
the fat of a system supported by humorless drones.  *Steal 
This Book,* whose title urged readers to damage the very 
means of distribution which had put it into their hands, 
might be described as a spiritual ancestor of a computer 
virus.
   
	Hoffman, like many a later conspirator, made 
extensive use of pay-phones for his agitation work -- in his 
case, generally through the use of cheap brass washers as 
coin-slugs.

	During the Vietnam War, there was a federal surtax 
imposed on telephone service; Hoffman and his cohorts 
could, and did,  argue that in systematically stealing 
phone service they were engaging in civil disobedience:  
virtuously denying tax funds to an illegal and immoral war. 

	 But this thin veil of decency was soon dropped 
entirely.  Ripping-off the System  found its own 
justification in deep alienation and a basic outlaw 
contempt for  conventional bourgeois values.  Ingenious, 
vaguely politicized varieties of rip-off, which might be 
described as "anarchy by convenience," became very 
popular in Yippie circles, and because rip-off was so 
useful, it was to survive the Yippie movement itself.
   
	In the early 1970s, it required fairly limited expertise 
and ingenuity to cheat payphones, to divert "free" 
electricity and gas service, or to rob vending machines and 
parking meters for handy pocket change.   It also required 
a conspiracy to spread this knowledge, and the gall and 
nerve actually to commit petty theft, but the Yippies had 
these qualifications in plenty.  In June 1971, Abbie 
Hoffman and a telephone enthusiast sarcastically known 
as "Al Bell"  began publishing a newsletter called *Youth 
International Party Line.*  This newsletter was dedicated 
to collating and spreading Yippie rip-off techniques, 
especially of phones, to the joy of the freewheeling 
underground and the insensate rage of all straight people.
   
	As a political tactic, phone-service theft ensured that 
Yippie advocates would always have ready access to the 
long-distance telephone as a medium, despite the Yippies' 
chronic lack of organization, discipline, money, or even a 
steady home address.
  
	*Party Line* was run out of Greenwich Village for a 
couple of years, then "Al Bell" more or less defected from 
the faltering ranks of Yippiedom, changing the 
newsletter's name to *TAP* or *Technical Assistance 
Program.*  After the Vietnam War ended, the steam 
began leaking rapidly out of American radical dissent.  
But  by this time, "Bell" and his dozen or so core 
contributors  had the bit between their teeth, and had 
begun to derive tremendous gut-level satisfaction from 
the sensation of pure *technical power.*
 
	*TAP* articles, once highly politicized, became 
pitilessly jargonized and technical, in homage or parody to 
the Bell System's own technical documents, which *TAP* 
studied closely, gutted, and reproduced without 
permission.   The *TAP* elite revelled in gloating 
possession of the specialized knowledge necessary to beat 
the system.

	   "Al Bell" dropped out of the game by the late 70s, 
and "Tom Edison" took over; TAP  readers (some 1400 of 
them, all told) now began to show more interest in telex 
switches and the growing phenomenon of computer 
systems. 
 
	In 1983, "Tom Edison" had his computer stolen and 
his house set on fire by an arsonist.  This was an eventually  
mortal blow to *TAP* (though the legendary name was to 
be resurrected in 1990 by a young Kentuckian computer-
outlaw named "Predat0r.")

					#


	Ever since telephones began to make money, there 
have been people willing to rob and defraud phone 
companies.   The legions of petty phone thieves vastly 
outnumber those "phone phreaks" who  "explore the 
system" for the sake of the intellectual challenge.   The 
New York metropolitan area  (long in the vanguard of 
American crime) claims over 150,000 physical attacks on 
pay telephones every year!  Studied carefully, a modern 
payphone reveals itself as a little fortress, carefully 
designed and redesigned over generations,  to resist coin-
slugs, zaps of electricity, chunks of coin-shaped ice, 
prybars, magnets, lockpicks, blasting caps.  Public pay-
phones must survive in a world of unfriendly, greedy 
people,  and a modern payphone is as exquisitely evolved 
as a cactus. 

	Because the phone network pre-dates the computer 
network, the scofflaws known as "phone phreaks" pre-date 
the scofflaws known as "computer hackers."   In practice, 
today, the line between "phreaking" and "hacking" is very 
blurred, just as the distinction between telephones and 
computers has blurred.  The phone system has been 
digitized, and computers have learned to "talk" over 
phone-lines.   What's worse -- and this was the point of the 
Mr. Jenkins of the Secret Service -- some hackers have 
learned to steal, and some thieves have learned to hack.

	Despite the blurring, one can still draw a few useful 
behavioral distinctions between "phreaks" and "hackers."  
Hackers are intensely interested in the "system" per se, 
and enjoy relating to machines.  "Phreaks" are more 
social,  manipulating the system in a rough-and-ready 
fashion in order to get through to other human beings, 
fast, cheap and under the table.

	Phone phreaks love nothing so much as "bridges," 
illegal conference calls of ten or twelve chatting 
conspirators, seaboard to seaboard, lasting for many hours 
-- and running, of course, on somebody else's tab, 
preferably a large corporation's. 
 
	As phone-phreak conferences wear on, people drop 
out (or simply leave the phone off the hook, while they 
sashay off to work or school or babysitting), and new 
people are phoned up and invited to join in, from some 
other continent, if possible.  Technical trivia, boasts, brags, 
lies, head-trip deceptions, weird rumors, and cruel gossip 
are all freely exchanged.

	The lowest rung of phone-phreaking is the theft of 
telephone access codes.   Charging a phone call to 
somebody else's stolen number is, of course, a pig-easy 
way of stealing phone service, requiring practically no 
technical expertise.  This practice has been very 
widespread, especially among lonely people without much 
money who are far from home.  Code theft has flourished 
especially in college dorms, military bases, and, 
notoriously, among roadies for rock bands.   Of late, code 
theft has spread very rapidly among Third Worlders in the 
US, who pile up enormous unpaid long-distance bills to 
the Caribbean, South America, and Pakistan.

	The simplest way to steal phone-codes is simply to 
look over a victim's shoulder as he punches-in his own 
code-number on a public payphone.  This technique is 
known as "shoulder-surfing," and is especially common in 
airports, bus terminals, and train stations.  The code is 
then sold by the thief for a few dollars.  The buyer abusing 
the code has no computer expertise, but calls his Mom in 
New York,  Kingston or Caracas and runs up a huge bill 
with impunity.  The losses from this primitive phreaking 
activity are far, far greater than the monetary losses 
caused by computer-intruding hackers.

	In the mid-to-late 1980s, until the introduction of 
sterner telco security measures, *computerized* code 
theft worked like a charm, and was virtually omnipresent 
throughout the digital underground, among phreaks and 
hackers alike.   This was accomplished through 
programming one's computer to try random code 
numbers over the telephone until one of them worked.   
Simple programs to do this were widely available in the 
underground; a computer running all night was likely to 
come up with a dozen or so useful hits.  This could be 
repeated week after week until one had a large library of 
stolen codes.
  
	Nowadays, the computerized dialling of hundreds of 
numbers can be detected within hours and swiftly traced.   
If a stolen code is repeatedly abused, this too can be 
detected within a few hours.  But for years in the 1980s, the 
publication of stolen codes was a kind of elementary 
etiquette for fledgling hackers.   The simplest way to 
establish your bona-fides as a raider was to steal a code 
through repeated random dialling and offer it to the 
"community" for use.   Codes could be both stolen, and 
used, simply and easily from the safety of one's own 
bedroom, with very little fear of detection or punishment.

	Before computers and their phone-line modems 
entered American homes in gigantic numbers, phone 
phreaks had their own special telecommunications 
hardware gadget, the famous "blue box."  This fraud 
device (now rendered increasingly useless by the digital 
evolution of the phone system) could trick switching 
systems into granting free access to long-distance lines.  It 
did this by mimicking the system's own signal, a tone of 
2600 hertz.
  
	Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of 
Apple Computer, Inc., once dabbled in selling blue-boxes 
in college dorms in California.  For many, in the early days 
of phreaking, blue-boxing was scarcely perceived as 
"theft," but rather as a fun (if sneaky) way to use excess 
phone capacity harmlessly.  After all, the long-distance 
lines were *just sitting there*....   Whom did it hurt, really?   
If you're not *damaging* the system, and  you're not 
*using up any tangible resource,* and if nobody *finds 
out* what you did, then what real harm have you done?  
What exactly *have* you "stolen," anyway?   If a tree falls 
in the forest and nobody hears it, how much is the noise 
worth?  Even now this remains a rather dicey question.

	Blue-boxing was no joke to the phone companies, 
however.  Indeed, when *Ramparts* magazine, a radical 
publication in California, printed the wiring schematics 
necessary to create a  mute box in June 1972, the 
magazine was seized by police and Pacific Bell phone-
company officials.   The mute box, a blue-box variant, 
allowed its user to receive long-distance calls free of 
charge to the caller.  This device was closely described in a 
*Ramparts* article wryly titled "Regulating the Phone 
Company In Your Home."  Publication of this article was 
held to be in violation of Californian State Penal Code 
section 502.7, which outlaws ownership of wire-fraud 
devices and the selling of "plans or instructions for any 
instrument, apparatus, or device intended to avoid 
telephone toll charges."
  
	Issues of *Ramparts* were recalled or seized on the 
newsstands, and the resultant loss of income helped put 
the magazine out of business.  This was an ominous 
precedent for free-expression issues, but the telco's 
crushing of a radical-fringe magazine passed without 
serious challenge at the time.  Even in the freewheeling 
California 1970s, it was widely felt that there was 
something sacrosanct about what the phone company 
knew; that the telco had a legal and moral right to protect 
itself by shutting off the flow of such illicit information.   
Most telco information was so "specialized" that it would 
scarcely be understood by any honest member of the 
public.   If not published, it would not be missed.   To print 
such material did not seem part of the legitimate role of a 
free press.

	In 1990 there would be a similar telco-inspired attack 
on the electronic phreak/hacking "magazine" *Phrack.* 
The *Phrack* legal case became a central issue in the 
Hacker Crackdown, and gave rise to great controversy.  
*Phrack* would also be shut down, for a  time, at least, but 
this time both the telcos and their law-enforcement allies 
would pay a much larger price for their actions.  The 
*Phrack* case will be examined in detail, later.

	Phone-phreaking as a social practice is still very 
much alive at this moment.  Today, phone-phreaking is 
thriving much more vigorously than the better-known and 
worse-feared practice of "computer hacking."  New forms 
of phreaking are spreading rapidly, following new 
vulnerabilities in sophisticated phone services.
   
	Cellular phones are especially vulnerable; their chips 
can be re-programmed to present a false caller ID and 
avoid billing.   Doing so also avoids police tapping, making 
cellular-phone abuse a favorite among drug-dealers.  
"Call-sell operations" using pirate cellular phones can, and 
have, been run right out of the backs of cars, which move 
from "cell" to "cell" in the local phone system, retailing 
stolen long-distance service, like some kind of demented 
electronic version of the neighborhood ice-cream truck.

	 Private branch-exchange phone systems in large 
corporations can be penetrated; phreaks dial-up a local 
company, enter its internal phone-system, hack it, then 
use the company's own PBX system to dial back out over 
the public network, causing the company to be stuck with 
the resulting long-distance bill.  This technique is known 
as "diverting."  "Diverting"  can be very costly, especially 
because phreaks tend to travel in packs and never stop 
talking.   Perhaps the worst by-product of this "PBX fraud" 
is that victim companies and telcos have sued one another 
over the financial responsibility for the stolen calls, thus 
enriching not only shabby phreaks but well-paid lawyers.

	   "Voice-mail systems" can also be abused; phreaks 
can seize their own sections of these sophisticated 
electronic answering machines, and use them for trading 
codes or knowledge of illegal techniques.   Voice-mail 
abuse does not hurt the company directly, but finding 
supposedly empty slots in your company's answering 
machine all crammed with phreaks eagerly chattering 
and hey-duding one another in impenetrable jargon can 
cause sensations of almost mystical repulsion and dread.

	   Worse yet, phreaks have sometimes been known to 
react truculently to attempts to "clean up" the voice-mail 
system.  Rather than humbly acquiescing to being thrown 
out of their playground, they may very well call up the 
company officials at work (or at home) and loudly demand  
free voice-mail addresses of their very own.  Such bullying 
is taken very seriously by spooked victims.

	Acts of phreak revenge against straight people are  
rare, but voice-mail systems are especially tempting and 
vulnerable, and an infestation of angry phreaks in one's 
voice-mail system is no joke.  They can erase legitimate 
messages; or spy on private messages; or harass users with 
recorded taunts and  obscenities.   They've even been 
known to seize control of voice-mail security, and lock out 
legitimate users, or even shut down the system entirely. 

	Cellular phone-calls, cordless phones, and ship-to-
shore telephony can all be monitored by various forms of 
radio; this kind of "passive monitoring" is spreading 
explosively today.  Technically eavesdropping on other 
people's cordless and cellular phone-calls is the fastest-
growing area in phreaking today.   This practice strongly 
appeals to the lust for power and conveys gratifying 
sensations of technical superiority over the eavesdropping 
victim.  Monitoring is rife with all manner of tempting evil 
mischief.  Simple prurient snooping is by far the most 
common activity.   But credit-card numbers unwarily 
spoken over the phone can be recorded, stolen and used.   
And tapping people's phone-calls (whether through active 
telephone taps or passive radio monitors) does lend itself 
conveniently to activities like blackmail, industrial 
espionage, and political dirty tricks.
   
	It should be repeated that telecommunications 
fraud,  the theft of phone service,  causes vastly greater 
monetary losses than the practice of entering into 
computers by stealth.   Hackers are mostly young 
suburban American white males, and exist in their 
hundreds -- but "phreaks" come from both sexes and from 
many nationalities, ages and ethnic backgrounds, and are 
flourishing in the thousands.  

					#

	The term "hacker" has had an unfortunate history.   
This book, *The Hacker Crackdown,* has little to say about 
"hacking" in its finer, original sense.  The term  can signify 
the free-wheeling intellectual exploration of the highest 
and deepest potential of computer systems.   Hacking can 
describe  the determination to make access to computers 
and information as free and open as possible.  Hacking 
can involve the heartfelt conviction that beauty can be 
found in computers, that the fine aesthetic in a perfect 
program can liberate the mind and spirit.  This is 
"hacking" as it was defined in Steven Levy's much-praised 
history of the pioneer computer milieu, *Hackers,* 
published in 1984. 
  
	Hackers of all kinds are absolutely soaked through 
with heroic anti-bureaucratic sentiment.  Hackers long for 
recognition as a praiseworthy cultural archetype, the 
postmodern electronic equivalent of the cowboy and 
mountain man.   Whether  they deserve such a reputation 
is something for history to decide.  But many hackers -- 
including those outlaw hackers who are computer 
intruders, and whose activities are defined as criminal --  
actually attempt to *live up to* this techno-cowboy 
reputation.   And given that electronics and 
telecommunications are still largely unexplored 
territories, there is simply *no telling* what hackers might 
uncover.
    
	For some people, this freedom is the very breath of 
oxygen, the inventive spontaneity that makes life worth 
living  and that flings open doors to marvellous possibility 
and individual empowerment.  But for many people -- and 
increasingly so -- the hacker is an ominous figure, a smart-
aleck sociopath ready to burst out of his basement 
wilderness and savage other people's lives for his own 
anarchical convenience.
  
	Any form of power without responsibility, without 
direct and formal checks and balances, is frightening to 
people -- and reasonably so.  It should be frankly admitted 
that hackers *are* frightening, and that the basis of this 
fear is not irrational.
   
	Fear of hackers goes well beyond the fear of merely 
criminal activity.

	Subversion and manipulation of the phone system is 
an act with disturbing political overtones.  In America,  
computers and telephones are potent symbols of 
organized authority and the technocratic business elite.
  
	But there is an element in American culture that has 
always strongly rebelled  against these symbols; rebelled 
against all large industrial computers and all phone 
companies.    A certain anarchical tinge deep in the 
American soul delights in causing confusion and pain to 
all bureaucracies, including technological ones.

	There is sometimes malice and vandalism in this 
attitude, but it is a deep and cherished part of the 
American national character.  The outlaw, the rebel, the 
rugged individual, the pioneer, the sturdy Jeffersonian 
yeoman, the private citizen resisting interference in his 
pursuit of happiness --  these are figures that all 
Americans recognize, and that many will strongly applaud 
and defend. 

	Many scrupulously law-abiding citizens today do 
cutting-edge work with electronics -- work that has already 
had tremendous social influence and will have much 
more in years to come.    In all truth, these talented, 
hardworking, law-abiding, mature, adult people are far 
more disturbing  to the peace and order of the current 
status quo  than any scofflaw group of romantic teenage 
punk kids.  These law-abiding hackers  have the power, 
ability, and willingness to influence other people's lives 
quite unpredictably.  They have means, motive, and 
opportunity to meddle drastically with the American social 
order.    When corralled into governments, universities, or 
large multinational companies, and forced to follow 
rulebooks and wear suits and ties, they at least have some 
conventional halters on their freedom of action.  But when 
loosed alone, or in small groups, and fired by imagination 
and the entrepreneurial spirit, they can move mountains -
- causing landslides that will likely crash directly into your 
office and living room.
   
	These people, as a class, instinctively recognize that a 
public, politicized attack on hackers will eventually spread 
to them -- that the term "hacker,"  once demonized, might 
be used to knock their hands off the levers of power and 
choke them out of existence.  There are hackers today who 
fiercely and publicly resist any besmirching of the noble 
title of hacker.   Naturally and understandably, they 
deeply resent the attack on their values implicit in using 
the word "hacker" as a synonym for computer-criminal.
  
	This book, sadly but in my opinion unavoidably, 
rather adds to the degradation of the term.  It concerns 
itself mostly with "hacking" in its commonest latter-day 
definition, i.e., intruding into computer systems by stealth 
and without permission. 
   
	The term "hacking" is used routinely today  by  
almost all law enforcement officials with any professional 
interest in computer fraud  and abuse.   American police 
describe almost any crime committed with, by, through, or 
against a computer as hacking.
   
	Most importantly, "hacker" is what computer-
intruders choose to call *themselves.*  Nobody who 
"hacks" into systems willingly describes himself (rarely, 
herself) as a "computer intruder," "computer trespasser,"  
"cracker," "wormer," "darkside hacker" or "high tech street 
gangster."   Several other demeaning terms have been 
invented  in the hope that the press and public will leave 
the original sense of the word alone.   But few people 
actually use these terms.  (I exempt the term "cyberpunk," 
which a few hackers and law enforcement people actually 
do use.  The term "cyberpunk" is drawn from literary 
criticism and has some odd  and unlikely resonances, but, 
like hacker, cyberpunk too has become a criminal 
pejorative today.) 

	In any case, breaking into computer systems was 
hardly alien to the original hacker tradition.   The first 
tottering systems of the 1960s  required fairly extensive 
internal surgery merely to function day-by-day.   Their 
users "invaded" the deepest, most arcane recesses of their 
operating software almost as a matter of routine.  
"Computer security" in these early, primitive systems was 
at best an afterthought.  What security there was, was 
entirely physical, for it was assumed that anyone allowed 
near this expensive, arcane hardware would be a fully 
qualified professional expert. 
  
	In a campus environment, though, this meant that 
grad students, teaching assistants, undergraduates, and 
eventually, all manner of dropouts and hangers-on ended 
up accessing and often running the works.

   	Universities, even modern universities, are not in the 
business of maintaining security over information.  On the 
contrary, universities, as institutions, pre-date the 
"information economy" by many centuries and are not-
for-profit cultural entities, whose reason for existence 
(purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through 
techniques of scholarship, and then teach it.   Universities 
are meant to *pass the torch of civilization,* not just 
download data into student skulls, and the values of the 
academic community are strongly at odds with those of all 
would-be information empires.   Teachers at all levels, 
from kindergarten up, have proven to be shameless and  
persistent software and data pirates.   Universities do not 
merely "leak information" but vigorously broadcast free 
thought. 
  
	This clash of values has been fraught with 
controversy.  Many hackers of the 1960s remember their 
professional apprenticeship as a long guerilla war against 
the uptight mainframe-computer "information 
priesthood."  These computer-hungry youngsters had to 
struggle hard for access to computing power, and many of 
them were not above certain, er, shortcuts.   But, over the 
years,  this practice freed computing from the sterile 
reserve of lab-coated technocrats and was largely 
responsible for the explosive growth of computing in 
general society -- especially *personal* computing.
 
	  Access to technical power acted like catnip on 
certain of these youngsters.  Most of the basic techniques 
of computer intrusion: password cracking, trapdoors, 
backdoors, trojan horses --  were invented in college 
environments in the 1960s, in the early days of network 
computing.   Some off-the-cuff experience at computer 
intrusion was to be in the informal resume of most 
"hackers" and many future industry giants.   Outside of the 
tiny cult of computer enthusiasts, few people thought 
much about  the implications of "breaking into" 
computers.  This sort of activity had not yet been 
publicized, much less criminalized.
   
	In the 1960s, definitions of "property" and "privacy" 
had not yet been extended to cyberspace.  Computers 
were not yet indispensable to society.  There were no vast 
databanks of vulnerable, proprietary information stored in 
computers, which might be accessed, copied without 
permission, erased, altered, or sabotaged.   The stakes 
were low in the early days -- but they grew every year, 
exponentially, as computers themselves grew.
  
	By the 1990s, commercial and political pressures had 
become overwhelming, and they broke the social 
boundaries of the hacking subculture.   Hacking had 
become too important to be left to the  hackers.   Society 
was now forced to tackle the intangible nature of 
cyberspace-as-property, cyberspace as privately-owned 
unreal-estate.   In the  new, severe, responsible, high-
stakes context of the "Information Society" of the 1990s, 
"hacking" was called into question.
  
	What did it mean to break into a computer without 
permission and use its computational power, or look 
around inside its files without hurting anything?  What 
were computer-intruding hackers, anyway -- how should 
society, and the law,  best define their actions?    Were 
they just *browsers,* harmless intellectual explorers?  
Were they *voyeurs,* snoops, invaders of privacy?  Should 
they be sternly treated as potential *agents of espionage,* 
or perhaps as *industrial spies?* Or were they best 
defined as *trespassers,* a very common teenage 
misdemeanor?  Was hacking  *theft of service?*  (After 
all, intruders were getting someone else's computer to 
carry out their orders, without permission and without 
paying).   Was hacking *fraud?*  Maybe it was best 
described as *impersonation.*  The commonest mode of 
computer intrusion was (and is) to swipe or snoop 
somebody else's password, and then enter the computer 
in the guise of another person -- who is commonly stuck 
with the blame and the bills.
  
	Perhaps a medical metaphor was better -- hackers 
should be defined as "sick," as *computer addicts* unable 
to control their irresponsible, compulsive behavior. 
  
	But these weighty assessments meant little to the 
people who were actually being judged.   From inside the 
underground world of hacking itself,  all these perceptions 
seem quaint, wrongheaded, stupid, or meaningless.   The 
most important self-perception of underground hackers -- 
from the 1960s, right through to the present day --  is that 
they are an *elite.*  The day-to-day struggle in the 
underground is not over sociological definitions -- who 
cares? -- but for power, knowledge, and  status among 
one's peers.

	When you are a hacker, it is your own inner 
conviction of your elite status that enables you to break, or 
let us say "transcend," the rules.   It is not that *all* rules go 
by the board.   The rules habitually broken  by hackers are 
*unimportant* rules -- the rules of dopey greedhead telco 
bureaucrats and pig-ignorant government pests.
   
	Hackers have their *own* rules,  which separate 
behavior which is cool and elite, from behavior which is 
rodentlike, stupid and losing.   These "rules," however, are 
mostly unwritten and  enforced by peer pressure and 
tribal feeling.   Like all rules that depend on the unspoken 
conviction that everybody else is a good old boy, these 
rules are ripe for abuse.  The mechanisms of hacker peer-
pressure, "teletrials" and ostracism, are rarely used and 
rarely work.  Back-stabbing slander, threats, and 
electronic harassment are also freely employed in down-
and-dirty intrahacker feuds, but this rarely forces a rival 
out of the scene entirely.  The only real solution for the 
problem of an utterly losing, treacherous and rodentlike 
hacker is to *turn him in to the police.*   Unlike the Mafia 
or Medellin Cartel, the hacker elite cannot simply execute 
the bigmouths, creeps and troublemakers among their 
ranks, so they turn one another in with astonishing 
frequency.

	There is no tradition of silence or *omerta* in the 
hacker underworld.     Hackers can be shy, even reclusive, 
but when they do talk, hackers tend to brag, boast and 
strut.   Almost everything hackers do is *invisible;* if they 
don't brag, boast, and strut about it, then *nobody will ever 
know.*  If you don't have something to brag, boast, and 
strut about, then nobody in the underground will 
recognize you and favor you with vital cooperation and 
respect.
   
	The way to win a solid reputation in the underground 
is by telling other hackers things that could only have 
been learned by exceptional cunning and stealth.   
Forbidden knowledge, therefore, is the basic currency of 
the digital underground, like seashells among Trobriand 
Islanders.   Hackers hoard this knowledge, and dwell upon 
it obsessively, and refine it, and bargain with it, and talk 
and talk about it.
  
	Many hackers even suffer from a strange obsession 
to *teach* -- to spread the ethos and the knowledge of the 
digital underground.  They'll do this even when it gains 
them no particular advantage and presents a grave 
personal risk.

	 And when that risk catches up with them, they will go 
right on teaching and preaching -- to a new audience this 
time, their interrogators from law enforcement.   Almost 
every hacker arrested tells everything he knows --  all 
about his friends, his mentors, his disciples -- legends, 
threats, horror stories, dire rumors, gossip, hallucinations.   
This is, of course, convenient for law enforcement -- except 
when law enforcement begins to believe hacker legendry.

	Phone phreaks are unique among criminals in their 
willingness to call up law enforcement officials -- in the 
office, at their homes -- and give them an extended piece 
of their mind.  It is hard not to interpret this as *begging 
for arrest,* and in fact it is an act of incredible 
foolhardiness.  Police are naturally nettled by these acts of 
chutzpah and will go well out of their way to bust these 
flaunting idiots.   But it can also be interpreted as a 
product of a world-view so elitist, so closed and hermetic, 
that electronic police are simply  not perceived as "police," 
but rather as *enemy phone phreaks* who should be 
scolded into behaving "decently."

	Hackers at their most grandiloquent perceive 
themselves as the elite pioneers of a new electronic world.  
Attempts to make them obey the democratically 
established laws of contemporary American society are 
seen as repression and persecution.   After all, they argue, 
if Alexander Graham Bell had gone along with the rules of 
the Western Union telegraph company, there would have 
been no telephones.  If Jobs and Wozniak had believed 
that IBM was the be-all and end-all, there would have 
been no personal computers.  If Benjamin Franklin and 
Thomas Jefferson had tried to "work within the system" 
there would have been no United States. 

	Not only do hackers privately believe this as an 
article of faith, but they have been known to write ardent 
manifestos about it.  Here are some revealing excerpts 
from an especially vivid hacker manifesto:  "The Techno-
Revolution" by  "Dr. Crash,"  which appeared in electronic 
form in *Phrack* Volume 1, Issue 6, Phile 3.


	"To fully explain the true motives behind hacking, we 
must first take a quick look into the past.  In the 1960s, a 
group of MIT students built the first modern computer 
system.  This wild, rebellious group of young men were the 
first to bear the name 'hackers.'  The systems that they 
developed were intended to be used to solve world 
problems and to benefit all of mankind.
	"As we can see, this has not been the case.  The 
computer system has been solely in the hands of big 
businesses and the government.  The wonderful device 
meant to enrich life has become a weapon which 
dehumanizes people.  To the government and large 
businesses, people are no more than disk space, and the 
government doesn't use computers to arrange aid for the 
poor, but to control nuclear death weapons.  The average 
American can only have access to a small microcomputer 
which is worth only a fraction of what they pay for it.  The 
businesses keep the true state-of-the-art equipment away 
from the people behind a steel wall of incredibly high 
prices and bureaucracy.  It is because of this state of 
affairs that hacking was born.(...)
	"Of course, the government doesn't want the 
monopoly of technology broken, so they have outlawed 
hacking and arrest anyone who is caught.(...) The phone 
company is another example of technology abused and 
kept from people with high prices.(...)
	"Hackers often find that their existing equipment, 
due to the monopoly tactics of computer companies, is 
inefficient for their purposes.  Due to the exorbitantly high 
prices, it is impossible to legally purchase the necessary 
equipment.  This need has given still another segment of 
the fight:  Credit Carding.  Carding is a way of obtaining 
the necessary goods without paying for them.  It is again 
due to the companies' stupidity that Carding is so easy, 
and shows that the world's businesses are in the hands of 
those with considerably less technical know-how than we, 
the hackers. (...)
	"Hacking must continue.  We must train newcomers 
to the art of hacking.(....)  And whatever you do, continue 
the fight.  Whether you know it or not, if you are a hacker, 
you are a revolutionary.  Don't worry, you're on the right 
side."

	The  defense of "carding" is rare.  Most hackers 
regard credit-card theft as "poison" to the underground, a 
sleazy and immoral effort that, worse yet, is hard to get 
away with.   Nevertheless, manifestos advocating credit-
card theft, the deliberate crashing of computer systems, 
and even acts of violent physical destruction such as 
vandalism and arson do exist in the underground.  These 
boasts and threats are taken quite seriously by the police.   
And not every hacker is an abstract, Platonic computer-
nerd.  Some few are quite experienced at picking locks, 
robbing phone-trucks, and breaking and entering 
buildings.

	Hackers  vary in their degree of hatred for authority 
and the violence of their rhetoric.  But, at a bottom line, 
they are scofflaws.  They don't regard the current rules of 
electronic behavior as respectable efforts to preserve law 
and order and protect public safety.  They regard these 
laws as immoral efforts by soulless corporations to protect 
their profit margins and to crush dissidents.   "Stupid" 
people, including police, businessmen, politicians, and 
journalists, simply have no right to judge the actions of 
those possessed of genius, techno-revolutionary 
intentions, and technical expertise.

				#

	Hackers are generally teenagers and college kids not 
engaged in earning a living.   They often come from fairly 
well-to-do middle-class backgrounds, and are markedly 
anti-materialistic (except, that is, when it comes to 
computer equipment).   Anyone motivated by greed for 
mere money (as opposed to the greed for power, 
knowledge and status)  is swiftly written-off as a narrow-
minded breadhead whose interests can only be corrupt 
and contemptible.   Having grown up in the 1970s and 
1980s, the young Bohemians of the digital underground 
regard straight society as awash in plutocratic corruption, 
where everyone from the President down is for sale and 
whoever has the gold makes the rules.

	Interestingly, there's a funhouse-mirror image of this 
attitude on the other side of the conflict.  The police are 
also one of the most markedly anti-materialistic groups in 
American society, motivated not by mere money but by 
ideals of service, justice, esprit-de-corps, and, of course, 
their own brand of specialized knowledge and power.   
Remarkably, the propaganda war between cops and 
hackers has always involved angry allegations that the 
other side is trying to make a sleazy buck.  Hackers 
consistently sneer that anti-phreak prosecutors are 
angling for cushy jobs as telco lawyers and that computer-
crime police are aiming to cash in later as well-paid 
computer-security consultants in the private sector. 
 
	For their part, police publicly conflate all hacking 
crimes with robbing payphones with crowbars.  Allegations 
of "monetary losses" from computer intrusion are 
notoriously inflated.  The act of illicitly copying a 
document from a computer is morally equated with 
directly robbing a company of, say, half a million dollars.   
The teenage computer intruder in possession of this 
"proprietary"  document has certainly not sold it for such a 
sum, would likely have little idea how to sell it at all, and 
quite probably doesn't even understand what he has.  He 
has not made a cent in profit from his felony but is still 
morally equated with a thief who has robbed the church 
poorbox and lit out for Brazil. 
 
	Police want to believe that all hackers are thieves.  It 
is a tortuous and almost unbearable act for the American 
justice system to put people in jail because they want to 
learn things which are forbidden for them to know.   In an 
American context, almost any pretext for punishment is 
better than jailing people to protect certain restricted 
kinds of information.  Nevertheless, *policing 
information* is part and parcel of the struggle against 
hackers.

	This dilemma is well exemplified by the remarkable 
activities of "Emmanuel Goldstein," editor and publisher 
of a print magazine known as *2600: The Hacker 
Quarterly.*  Goldstein was an English major at Long 
Island's State University of New York in the '70s, when he 
became involved with the local college radio station.  His 
growing interest in electronics caused him to drift into 
Yippie *TAP* circles and thus into the digital 
underground, where he became a self-described techno-
rat.  His magazine publishes techniques of computer 
intrusion and telephone "exploration" as well as gloating 
exposes of telco misdeeds and governmental failings.

	Goldstein lives quietly and very privately in a large, 
crumbling Victorian mansion in Setauket, New York.   The 
seaside house is decorated with telco decals, chunks of 
driftwood, and the basic bric-a-brac of a hippie crash-pad.   
He is unmarried, mildly unkempt, and survives mostly on 
TV dinners and turkey-stuffing eaten straight out of the 
bag.   Goldstein is a man of considerable charm and 
fluency, with a brief, disarming smile and the kind of 
pitiless, stubborn, thoroughly recidivist integrity that 
America's electronic police find genuinely alarming.
  
	Goldstein took his nom-de-plume, or "handle," from a 
character in Orwell's *1984,*  which may be taken, 
correctly, as a symptom of the gravity of his sociopolitical 
worldview.   He is not himself a practicing computer 
intruder, though he vigorously abets these actions, 
especially when they are pursued against large 
corporations or governmental agencies.   Nor is he a thief, 
for he loudly scorns mere theft of phone service, in favor of 
'exploring and manipulating the system.'  He is probably 
best described and understood as a *dissident.*

	 Weirdly, Goldstein is living in modern America 
under conditions very similar to those of former East 
European intellectual dissidents.  In other words, he 
flagrantly espouses a value-system that is deeply and 
irrevocably opposed to the system of those in power and 
the police.  The values in *2600* are generally expressed in 
terms that are ironic, sarcastic, paradoxical, or just 
downright confused.  But there's no mistaking their 
radically anti-authoritarian tenor.  *2600* holds that 
technical power and specialized knowledge, of any kind 
obtainable, belong by right in the hands of those 
individuals brave and bold enough to discover them -- by 
whatever means necessary.  Devices, laws, or systems that 
forbid access, and the free spread of knowledge, are 
provocations that any free and self-respecting hacker 
should relentlessly attack.  The "privacy" of governments, 
corporations and other soulless technocratic organizations 
should never be protected at the expense of the liberty 
and free initiative of the individual techno-rat.

	However, in our contemporary workaday world,  both 
governments and corporations are very anxious indeed to 
police information which is secret, proprietary, restricted, 
confidential, copyrighted, patented, hazardous, illegal, 
unethical, embarrassing, or otherwise sensitive.   This 
makes Goldstein persona non grata, and his philosophy a 
threat. 
 
	Very little about the conditions of Goldstein's daily 
life would astonish, say, Vaclav Havel.  (We may note in 
passing that President Havel once had his word-processor 
confiscated by the Czechoslovak police.)   Goldstein lives 
by *samizdat,* acting semi-openly as a data-center for the 
underground, while challenging the powers-that-be to 
abide by their own stated rules:  freedom of speech and 
the First Amendment. 
  
	Goldstein thoroughly looks and acts the part of 
techno-rat, with shoulder-length ringlets and a piratical 
black fisherman's-cap set at a rakish angle.  He often 
shows up like Banquo's ghost at meetings of computer 
professionals, where he listens quietly, half-smiling and 
taking thorough notes.

	Computer professionals generally meet publicly,  and 
find it very difficult to rid themselves of Goldstein and his 
ilk  without extralegal and unconstitutional actions.  
Sympathizers, many of them quite respectable people 
with responsible jobs, admire Goldstein's attitude and 
surreptitiously pass him information.  An unknown but 
presumably large proportion of Goldstein's  2,000-plus 
readership are telco security personnel and police, who 
are forced to subscribe to *2600*  to stay abreast of new 
developments in hacking.  They thus find themselves 
*paying this guy's rent* while grinding their teeth in 
anguish, a situation that would have delighted Abbie 
Hoffman (one of Goldstein's few idols).
 
	Goldstein is probably the best-known public 
representative of the hacker underground today, and 
certainly the best-hated.  Police regard him as a Fagin, a 
corrupter of youth, and speak of him with untempered 
loathing.  He is quite an accomplished gadfly.
  
	After the  Martin Luther King Day Crash of 1990, 
Goldstein, for instance, adeptly rubbed salt into the wound 
in the pages of *2600.*   "Yeah, it was fun for the phone 
phreaks as we watched the network crumble," he admitted 
cheerfully.   "But it was also an ominous sign of what's to 
come...  Some AT&T people, aided by well-meaning but 
ignorant media, were spreading the notion that many 
companies had the same software and therefore could 
face the same problem someday.  Wrong.  This was 
entirely an AT&T software deficiency.  Of course, other 
companies could face entirely *different* software 
problems.  But then, so too could AT&T."

	After a technical discussion of the system's failings,  
the Long Island techno-rat went on to offer thoughtful 
criticism to the gigantic multinational's hundreds of 
professionally qualified engineers.  "What we don't know 
is how a major force in communications like AT&T could 
be so sloppy.  What happened to backups?  Sure, 
computer systems go down all the time, but people 
making phone calls are not the same as people logging on 
to computers.  We must make that distinction.  It's not 
acceptable for the phone system or any other essential 
service to 'go down.'  If we continue to trust technology 
without understanding it, we can look forward to many 
variations on this theme.
	"AT&T owes it to its customers to be prepared to 
*instantly* switch to another network if something strange 
and unpredictable starts occurring.  The news here isn't so 
much the failure of a computer program, but the failure of 
AT&T's entire structure."

	The very idea of this.... this *person*....  offering 
"advice" about "AT&T's entire structure" is more than 
some people can easily bear.   How dare this near-criminal 
dictate what is or isn't "acceptable" behavior from AT&T?  
Especially when he's publishing, in the very same issue, 
detailed schematic diagrams for creating various 
switching-network signalling tones unavailable to the 
public.

	 "See what happens when you drop a 'silver box' tone 
or two down your local exchange or through different long 
distance service carriers," advises *2600* contributor "Mr. 
Upsetter" in "How To Build a Signal Box."  "If you 
experiment systematically and keep good records, you will 
surely discover something interesting." 
 
	This is, of course, the scientific method, generally 
regarded as a praiseworthy activity and one of the flowers 
of modern civilization.   One can indeed learn a great deal 
with this sort of structured intellectual activity.   Telco 
employees regard this mode of "exploration" as akin to 
flinging sticks of dynamite into their pond to see what lives 
on the bottom.

	*2600* has been published consistently since 1984.  It 
has also run a bulletin board computer system, printed 
*2600* T-shirts, taken fax calls...  The Spring 1991 issue has 
an interesting announcement on page 45:  "We just 
discovered an extra set of wires attached to our fax line 
and heading up the pole.  (They've since been clipped.)  
Your faxes to us and to anyone else could be monitored."
   
	 In the worldview of *2600,* the tiny band of techno-
rat brothers (rarely, sisters) are a beseiged vanguard of the 
truly free and honest.   The rest of the world is a maelstrom 
of corporate crime and high-level governmental 
corruption, occasionally tempered with well-meaning 
ignorance.   To read a few issues in a row is to enter a 
nightmare akin to Solzhenitsyn's, somewhat tempered by 
the fact that *2600* is often extremely funny.

	Goldstein did not become a target of the Hacker 
Crackdown, though he protested loudly, eloquently, and 
publicly about it, and it added considerably to his fame.  It 
was not that he is not regarded as dangerous, because he 
is so regarded.  Goldstein has had brushes with the law in 
the past:  in 1985, a *2600* bulletin board computer was 
seized by the FBI, and some software on it was formally 
declared "a burglary tool in the form of a computer 
program."  But Goldstein escaped direct repression in 
1990, because his magazine is printed on paper, and 
recognized as subject to Constitutional freedom of the 
press protection.  As was seen in the *Ramparts* case, this 
is far from an absolute guarantee.  Still, as a practical 
matter, shutting down *2600* by court-order would create 
so much legal hassle that it is simply unfeasible, at least 
for the present.   Throughout 1990, both Goldstein and his 
magazine were peevishly thriving.

	Instead, the Crackdown of 1990 would concern itself 
with the computerized version of forbidden data.  The 
crackdown itself, first and foremost, was about *bulletin 
board systems.*  Bulletin Board Systems, most often 
known by the ugly and un-pluralizable acronym "BBS," are 
the life-blood of the digital underground.  Boards were 
also central to law enforcement's tactics and strategy in 
the Hacker Crackdown.

	A "bulletin board system" can be formally defined as 
a computer which serves as an information and message-
passing center for users dialing-up over the phone-lines 
through the use of  modems.   A "modem," or modulator-
demodulator, is a device which translates the digital 
impulses of computers into audible analog telephone 
signals, and vice versa.   Modems connect computers to 
phones and thus to each other.

	Large-scale mainframe computers have been 
connected since the 1960s, but *personal* computers, run 
by individuals out of their homes, were first networked in 
the late 1970s.   The "board" created by Ward Christensen 
and Randy Suess in February 1978, in Chicago, Illinois, is 
generally regarded as the first personal-computer bulletin 
board system worthy of the name.

	Boards run on many different machines, employing 
many different kinds of software.  Early boards were crude 
and buggy, and their managers, known as "system 
operators" or "sysops," were hard-working technical 
experts who wrote their own software.  But like most 
everything else in the world of electronics, boards became 
faster, cheaper, better-designed, and generally far more 
sophisticated throughout the 1980s.  They also moved 
swiftly out of the hands of pioneers and into those of the 
general public.   By 1985 there were something in the 
neighborhood of 4,000 boards in America.  By 1990 it was 
calculated, vaguely, that there were about 30,000 boards in 
the US, with uncounted thousands overseas. 
  
	Computer bulletin boards are unregulated 
enterprises.  Running a board is a rough-and-ready, catch-
as-catch-can proposition.   Basically,  anybody with a 
computer, modem, software and a phone-line can start a 
board.   With second-hand equipment and public-domain 
free software, the price of a board might be quite small -- 
less than it would take to publish a magazine or even a 
decent pamphlet.   Entrepreneurs eagerly sell bulletin-
board software, and will coach nontechnical amateur 
sysops in its use. 
 
	Boards are not "presses."  They are not magazines, or 
libraries, or phones, or CB radios, or traditional cork 
bulletin boards down at the local laundry, though they 
have some passing resemblance to those earlier media.  
Boards are a new medium -- they may even be a *large 
number* of new media.

  	Consider these unique characteristics:  boards are 
cheap, yet they  can have a national, even global reach.  
Boards can be contacted from anywhere in the global 
telephone network, at *no cost* to the person running the 
board -- the caller pays the phone bill, and if the caller is 
local, the call is free.  Boards do not involve an editorial 
elite addressing a mass audience.   The "sysop" of a board 
is not an exclusive publisher or writer -- he is managing an 
electronic salon, where individuals can address the 
general public,  play the part of the general public, and 
also  exchange private mail with other individuals.  And 
the "conversation" on boards, though fluid, rapid, and 
highly interactive, is not spoken, but written.  It is also 
relatively anonymous, sometimes completely so.
  
	And because boards are cheap and ubiquitous, 
regulations and licensing requirements would likely be 
practically unenforceable.  It would almost be easier to 
"regulate"  "inspect" and "license" the content of private 
mail -- probably more so, since the mail system is 
operated by the federal government.  Boards are run by 
individuals, independently, entirely at their own whim.

	For the sysop, the cost of operation is not the primary 
limiting factor.  Once the investment in a computer and 
modem has been made, the only steady cost is the charge 
for maintaining a phone line (or several phone lines).   The 
primary limits for sysops are time and energy.  Boards 
require upkeep.  New users are generally "validated" -- 
they must be issued individual passwords, and called at 
home by voice-phone, so that their identity can be 
verified.  Obnoxious users, who exist in plenty, must be 
chided or purged.  Proliferating messages must be deleted 
when they grow old, so that the capacity of the system is 
not overwhelmed.  And software programs (if such things 
are kept on the board)  must be examined for possible 
computer viruses.   If there is a financial charge to use the 
board (increasingly common, especially in larger and 
fancier systems) then accounts must be kept, and users 
must be billed.  And if the board crashes -- a very common 
occurrence -- then repairs must be made.

	Boards can be distinguished by the amount of effort 
spent in regulating them.  First, we have the completely 
open board, whose sysop is off chugging brews and 
watching re-runs while his users generally degenerate 
over time into peevish anarchy and eventual silence.  
Second comes the supervised board, where the sysop 
breaks in every once in a while to tidy up, calm brawls, 
issue announcements, and rid the community of  dolts 
and troublemakers.   Third is the heavily supervised 
board,  which sternly urges adult and responsible behavior 
and swiftly edits any message considered offensive, 
impertinent, illegal or irrelevant.  And last comes the 
completely  edited "electronic publication,"  which is 
presented to a silent audience which is not allowed to 
respond directly in any way.

	Boards can also be grouped by their degree of 
anonymity.  There is the completely anonymous board, 
where everyone uses pseudonyms -- "handles" -- and even 
the sysop is unaware of the user's true identity.  The sysop 
himself is likely pseudonymous on a board of this type.  
Second, and rather more common, is the board where the 
sysop knows (or thinks he knows) the true names and 
addresses of all users, but the users don't know one 
another's names and may not know his.  Third is the board 
where everyone has to use real names, and roleplaying 
and pseudonymous posturing are forbidden.

	Boards can be grouped by their immediacy.  "Chat-
lines" are boards linking several users together over 
several different phone-lines simultaneously, so that 
people exchange messages at the very moment that they 
type.  (Many large boards feature "chat" capabilities along 
with other services.)   Less immediate boards, perhaps 
with a single phoneline, store messages serially, one at a 
time.  And some boards are only open for business in 
daylight hours or on weekends, which greatly slows 
response.  A *network* of boards, such as "FidoNet," can 
carry electronic mail from board to board, continent to 
continent, across huge distances -- but at a relative snail's 
pace, so that a message can take several days to reach its 
target audience and elicit a reply.

	Boards can be grouped by their degree of 
community.  Some boards emphasize the exchange of 
private, person-to-person electronic mail.   Others 
emphasize public postings and may even purge people 
who "lurk," merely reading posts but refusing to openly 
participate.  Some boards are intimate and neighborly.  
Others are frosty and highly technical.  Some are little 
more than storage dumps for software, where users 
"download" and "upload" programs, but interact among 
themselves little if at all. 

	Boards can be grouped by their ease of access.  Some 
boards are entirely public.  Others are private and 
restricted only to personal friends of the sysop.   Some 
boards divide users by status.   On these boards, some 
users, especially beginners, strangers or children, will be 
restricted to general topics, and perhaps forbidden to post.  
Favored users, though, are granted the ability to post as 
they please, and to stay "on-line" as long as they like, even 
to the disadvantage of other people trying to call in.  High-
status users can be given access to hidden areas in the 
board, such as off-color topics, private discussions, and/or 
valuable software.  Favored users may even become 
"remote sysops" with the power to take remote control of 
the board through their own home computers.  Quite 
often "remote sysops" end up doing all the work and 
taking formal control of the enterprise, despite the fact 
that it's physically located in someone else's house.  
Sometimes several "co-sysops" share power.

	And boards can also be grouped by size.  Massive, 
nationwide commercial networks, such as CompuServe, 
Delphi, GEnie and Prodigy, are run on mainframe 
computers and are generally not considered "boards," 
though they share many of their characteristics, such as 
electronic mail, discussion topics, libraries of software, and 
persistent and growing problems with civil-liberties issues.   
Some private boards have as many as thirty phone-lines 
and quite sophisticated hardware.   And then there are 
tiny boards.

	Boards vary in popularity.  Some boards are huge and 
crowded, where users must claw their way in against a 
constant busy-signal.  Others are huge and empty -- there 
are few things sadder than a formerly flourishing board 
where no one posts any longer, and the dead 
conversations of vanished users lie about gathering digital 
dust.  Some boards are tiny and intimate, their telephone 
numbers intentionally kept confidential so that only a 
small number can log on.

	And some boards are *underground.*

	Boards can be mysterious entities.  The activities of 
their users can be hard to differentiate from conspiracy.  
Sometimes they *are* conspiracies.  Boards have 
harbored, or have been accused of harboring, all manner 
of fringe groups, and have abetted, or been accused of 
abetting, every manner of frowned-upon, sleazy, radical, 
and criminal activity.   There are Satanist boards.  Nazi 
boards.  Pornographic boards.  Pedophile boards.  Drug-
dealing boards.  Anarchist boards.  Communist boards.  
Gay and Lesbian boards (these exist in great profusion, 
many of them quite lively with well-established histories).  
Religious cult boards.  Evangelical boards.  Witchcraft 
boards, hippie boards, punk boards, skateboarder boards.  
Boards for UFO believers.   There may well be boards for  
serial killers, airline terrorists and professional assassins.  
There is simply no way to tell.   Boards spring up, flourish, 
and disappear in large numbers, in most every corner of 
the developed world.  Even apparently innocuous public 
boards can, and sometimes do, harbor secret areas known 
only to a few.  And even on the vast, public, commercial 
services, private mail is very private -- and quite possibly 
criminal.

	Boards cover most every topic imaginable and some 
that are hard to imagine.  They cover a vast spectrum of 
social activity.   However, all board users do have 
something in common:  their possession of computers and 
phones.  Naturally, computers and phones are primary 
topics of conversation on almost every board.
  
	And hackers and phone phreaks, those utter 
devotees of computers and phones, live by boards.  They 
swarm by boards.  They are bred by boards.  By the late 
1980s, phone-phreak groups and hacker groups, united by 
boards, had proliferated fantastically.

	As evidence, here is a list of hacker groups compiled 
by the editors of *Phrack* on August 8, 1988.

	The Administration.  Advanced Telecommunications, 
Inc.  ALIAS.  American Tone Travelers.  Anarchy Inc.  
Apple Mafia.  The Association. Atlantic Pirates Guild.

	Bad Ass Mother Fuckers.  Bellcore.  Bell Shock Force.  
Black Bag.

	Camorra.  C&M Productions.  Catholics Anonymous.  
Chaos Computer Club.  Chief Executive Officers.  Circle 
Of Death.  Circle Of Deneb.  Club X.  Coalition of Hi-Tech 
Pirates.  Coast-To-Coast.  Corrupt Computing.  Cult Of The 
Dead Cow.  Custom Retaliations.

	Damage Inc.  D&B Communications. The Dange 
Gang.  Dec Hunters.  Digital Gang.  DPAK.

	 Eastern Alliance. The Elite Hackers Guild.  Elite 
Phreakers and Hackers Club.  The Elite Society Of 
America.  EPG.  Executives Of Crime. Extasyy Elite.

	 Fargo 4A.  Farmers Of Doom.  The Federation.  Feds 
R Us.  First Class. Five O.  Five Star.   Force Hackers.  The 
414s.

	 Hack-A-Trip.  Hackers Of America.   High Mountain 
Hackers.  High Society.  The Hitchhikers.
  
	IBM Syndicate.  The Ice Pirates.   Imperial Warlords.  
Inner Circle. Inner Circle II.  Insanity Inc.  International 
Computer Underground Bandits.

	 Justice League of America.

	 Kaos Inc.  Knights Of Shadow.  Knights Of The 
Round Table.

	 League Of Adepts.  Legion Of Doom.  Legion Of 
Hackers.  Lords Of Chaos.  Lunatic Labs, Unlimited. 

	Master Hackers.  MAD!  The Marauders.  MD/PhD.  
Metal Communications, Inc.  MetalliBashers, Inc.  MBI.  
Metro Communications.  Midwest Pirates Guild.

 	NASA Elite.  The NATO Association.  Neon Knights.  
Nihilist Order.  	Order Of The Rose.  OSS. 
 
	Pacific Pirates Guild.  Phantom Access Associates.  
PHido PHreaks. The Phirm.  Phlash.  PhoneLine 
Phantoms.  Phone Phreakers Of America. Phortune 500.  
Phreak Hack Delinquents.  Phreak Hack Destroyers.  
Phreakers, Hackers, And Laundromat Employees Gang 
(PHALSE Gang).  Phreaks Against Geeks.  Phreaks 
Against Phreaks Against Geeks.  Phreaks and Hackers of 
America.  Phreaks Anonymous World Wide.  Project 
Genesis.  The Punk Mafia.
  
	The Racketeers.  Red Dawn Text Files.  Roscoe Gang. 

	SABRE.  Secret Circle of Pirates.  Secret Service.  707 
Club.  Shadow Brotherhood.  Sharp Inc.  65C02 Elite.  
Spectral Force. Star League.  Stowaways.   Strata-Crackers.
   
	Team Hackers '86.  Team Hackers '87.  
TeleComputist Newsletter Staff.  Tribunal Of Knowledge.  
Triple Entente.  Turn Over And Die Syndrome (TOADS).  
300 Club.  1200 Club.  2300 Club.  2600 Club.  2601 Club.  
2AF.

	The United Soft WareZ Force.  United Technical 
Underground.
	
	Ware Brigade.  The Warelords.  WASP.

	Contemplating this list is  an impressive, almost 
humbling business.   As a cultural artifact, the thing 
approaches poetry.  
 
	Underground groups -- subcultures -- can be 
distinguished from independent cultures by their  habit of 
referring constantly to the parent society.  Undergrounds 
by their nature constantly  must maintain a membrane of 
differentiation.   Funny/distinctive clothes and hair, 
specialized jargon, specialized ghettoized areas in cities, 
different hours of rising, working, sleeping....  The digital 
underground, which specializes in information, relies very 
heavily on language to distinguish itself.   As can be seen 
from this list, they make heavy use of parody and 
mockery.   It's revealing to see who they choose to mock.

	First,  large corporations.  We have the Phortune 500,  
The Chief Executive Officers,  Bellcore,  IBM Syndicate, 
SABRE (a computerized reservation service maintained 
by airlines).  The common use of "Inc." is telling -- none of 
these groups are actual corporations, but take clear 
delight in mimicking them.

	Second,  governments and police.  NASA Elite, NATO  
Association.  "Feds R Us" and "Secret Service" are fine bits 
of fleering boldness.  OSS -- the Office of Strategic Services 
was the forerunner of the CIA.

	Third, criminals.  Using stigmatizing pejoratives as a 
perverse badge of honor is a time-honored tactic for 
subcultures:   punks, gangs, delinquents, mafias, pirates, 
bandits, racketeers.

	Specialized orthography, especially the use of "ph" 
for "f" and "z" for the plural "s," are instant recognition 
symbols.  So is the use of the numeral "0" for the letter "O" 
-- computer-software orthography generally features a 
slash through the zero, making the distinction obvious.

	Some terms are poetically descriptive of computer 
intrusion:  the Stowaways,  the Hitchhikers, the PhoneLine 
Phantoms, Coast-to-Coast.  Others are simple bravado 
and vainglorious puffery.  (Note the insistent use of the 
terms "elite" and "master.")  Some terms are 
blasphemous, some obscene, others merely cryptic -- 
anything to puzzle, offend, confuse, and keep the straights 
at bay.
   
	Many hacker groups further re-encrypt their names 
by the use of acronyms:  United Technical Underground 
becomes UTU, Farmers of Doom become FoD,  the 
United SoftWareZ Force becomes, at its own insistence, 
"TuSwF," and woe to the ignorant rodent who capitalizes 
the wrong letters.   	

	It should be further recognized that the members of 
these groups are themselves pseudonymous.  If you did, in 
fact, run across the "PhoneLine Phantoms," you would find 
them to consist of  "Carrier Culprit,"  "The Executioner," 
"Black Majik,"  "Egyptian Lover,"  "Solid State," and  "Mr 
Icom."  "Carrier Culprit" will likely be referred to by his 
friends as "CC," as in, "I got these dialups from CC of PLP."

	It's quite possible that this entire list refers to as few 
as a thousand people.   It is not a complete list of 
underground groups -- there has never been such a list, 
and there never will be.   Groups rise, flourish, decline, 
share membership, maintain a cloud of wannabes and 
casual hangers-on.  People pass in and out, are ostracized, 
get bored, are busted by police, or are cornered by telco 
security and presented with huge bills.  Many 
"underground groups" are software pirates, "warez d00dz,"  
who might break copy protection and pirate programs, but 
likely wouldn't dare to intrude on a computer-system. 
 
	It is hard to estimate the true population of the digital 
underground.  There is constant turnover.  Most hackers 
start young, come and go, then drop out at age 22 -- the 
age of college graduation.  And a large majority of 
"hackers" access pirate boards, adopt a handle,  swipe 
software and perhaps abuse a phone-code or two, while 
never actually joining the elite. 
  
	Some professional informants, who make it their 
business to retail knowledge of the underground to 
paymasters in private corporate security, have estimated 
the hacker population at as high as fifty thousand.   This is 
likely highly inflated, unless one counts every single 
teenage software pirate  and petty phone-booth thief.  My 
best guess is about 5,000 people.   Of these, I would guess 
that as few as a hundred are truly "elite"  -- active 
computer intruders, skilled enough to penetrate 
sophisticated systems and truly to worry corporate security 
and law enforcement.

	Another interesting speculation is whether this group 
is growing or not.  Young teenage hackers are often 
convinced that hackers exist in vast swarms and will soon 
dominate the cybernetic universe.  Older and wiser 
veterans, perhaps as wizened as 24 or 25 years old, are 
convinced that the glory days are long gone, that the cops 
have the underground's number now, and that kids these 
days are dirt-stupid and just want to play Nintendo. 
 
	My own assessment is that computer intrusion, as a 
non-profit act of intellectual exploration and mastery, is in 
slow decline, at least in the United States; but that 
electronic fraud, especially telecommunication crime, is 
growing by leaps and bounds.

	One might find a useful parallel to the digital 
underground in  the drug  underground.   There was a 
time, now much-obscured by historical revisionism, when 
Bohemians freely shared joints at concerts, and hip, small-
scale marijuana dealers might turn people on just for the 
sake of enjoying a long stoned conversation about the 
Doors and Allen Ginsberg.  Now drugs are increasingly 
verboten, except in a high-stakes, highly-criminal world of 
highly addictive drugs.  Over years of disenchantment and 
police harassment, a vaguely ideological, free-wheeling 
drug underground has relinquished the business of drug-
dealing to a  far more savage criminal hard-core.   This is 
not a pleasant prospect to contemplate, but the analogy is 
fairly compelling.

	What does an underground board look like?   What 
distinguishes it from a standard board?  It isn't necessarily 
the conversation -- hackers often talk about common 
board topics, such as hardware, software, sex, science 
fiction, current events, politics, movies, personal gossip.  
Underground boards can best be distinguished by their 
files, or "philes,"  pre-composed texts which teach the 
techniques and ethos of the underground.   These are 
prized reservoirs of forbidden knowledge.  Some are 
anonymous, but most proudly bear the handle of the 
"hacker" who has created them, and his group affiliation, if 
he has one.

	Here is a partial table-of-contents of philes from an 
underground board, somewhere in the heart of middle 
America, circa 1991.  The descriptions are mostly self-
explanatory.  


BANKAMER.ZIP    5406 06-11-91  Hacking Bank America
CHHACK.ZIP      4481 06-11-91  Chilton Hacking
CITIBANK.ZIP    4118 06-11-91  Hacking Citibank
CREDIMTC.ZIP    3241 06-11-91  Hacking Mtc Credit 
Company
DIGEST.ZIP      5159 06-11-91  Hackers Digest
HACK.ZIP       14031 06-11-91  How To Hack
HACKBAS.ZIP     5073 06-11-91  Basics Of Hacking
HACKDICT.ZIP   42774 06-11-91  Hackers Dictionary
HACKER.ZIP     57938 06-11-91  Hacker Info
HACKERME.ZIP    3148 06-11-91  Hackers Manual
HACKHAND.ZIP    4814 06-11-91  Hackers Handbook
HACKTHES.ZIP   48290 06-11-91  Hackers Thesis
HACKVMS.ZIP     4696 06-11-91  Hacking Vms Systems
MCDON.ZIP       3830 06-11-91  Hacking Macdonalds 
(Home Of The Archs)
P500UNIX.ZIP   15525 06-11-91  Phortune 500 Guide To 
Unix
RADHACK.ZIP     8411 06-11-91  Radio Hacking
TAOTRASH.DOC    4096 12-25-89  Suggestions For 
Trashing
TECHHACK.ZIP    5063 06-11-91  Technical Hacking


The files above are do-it-yourself manuals about 
computer intrusion.  The above is only a small section of a 
much larger library of hacking and phreaking techniques 
and history.  We now move into a different and perhaps 
surprising area.

                              +------------+
                              |Anarchy|
                              +------------+

ANARC.ZIP       3641 06-11-91  Anarchy Files
ANARCHST.ZIP   63703 06-11-91  Anarchist Book
ANARCHY.ZIP     2076 06-11-91  Anarchy At Home
ANARCHY3.ZIP    6982 06-11-91  Anarchy No 3
ANARCTOY.ZIP    2361 06-11-91  Anarchy Toys
ANTIMODM.ZIP    2877 06-11-91  Anti-modem Weapons
ATOM.ZIP        4494 06-11-91  How To Make An Atom 
Bomb
BARBITUA.ZIP    3982 06-11-91  Barbiturate Formula
BLCKPWDR.ZIP    2810 06-11-91  Black Powder Formulas
BOMB.ZIP        3765 06-11-91  How To Make Bombs
BOOM.ZIP        2036 06-11-91  Things That Go Boom
CHLORINE.ZIP    1926 06-11-91  Chlorine Bomb 
COOKBOOK.ZIP    1500 06-11-91  Anarchy Cook Book
DESTROY.ZIP     3947 06-11-91  Destroy Stuff
DUSTBOMB.ZIP    2576 06-11-91  Dust Bomb
ELECTERR.ZIP    3230 06-11-91  Electronic Terror
EXPLOS1.ZIP     2598 06-11-91  Explosives 1
EXPLOSIV.ZIP   18051 06-11-91  More Explosives
EZSTEAL.ZIP     4521 06-11-91  Ez-stealing
FLAME.ZIP       2240 06-11-91  Flame Thrower
FLASHLT.ZIP     2533 06-11-91  Flashlight Bomb
FMBUG.ZIP       2906 06-11-91  How To Make An Fm Bug
OMEEXPL.ZIP    2139 06-11-91  Home Explosives
HOW2BRK.ZIP     3332 06-11-91  How To Break In
LETTER.ZIP      2990 06-11-91  Letter Bomb
LOCK.ZIP        2199 06-11-91  How To Pick Locks
MRSHIN.ZIP      3991 06-11-91  Briefcase Locks
NAPALM.ZIP      3563 06-11-91  Napalm At Home
NITRO.ZIP       3158 06-11-91  Fun With Nitro
PARAMIL.ZIP     2962 06-11-91  Paramilitary Info
PICKING.ZIP     3398 06-11-91  Picking Locks
PIPEBOMB.ZIP    2137 06-11-91  Pipe Bomb
POTASS.ZIP      3987 06-11-91  Formulas With Potassium
PRANK.TXT      11074 08-03-90  More Pranks To Pull On 
Idiots!
REVENGE.ZIP     4447 06-11-91  Revenge Tactics
ROCKET.ZIP      2590 06-11-91  Rockets For Fun
SMUGGLE.ZIP     3385 06-11-91  How To Smuggle

	*Holy Cow!*  The damned thing is full of stuff about 
bombs! 

	What are we to make of this?

	First, it should be acknowledged that spreading 
knowledge about demolitions to teenagers is a highly and 
deliberately antisocial act.   It is not, however, illegal. 
 
	Second, it should be recognized that most of these 
philes were in fact *written* by teenagers.  Most adult 
American males who can remember their teenage years 
will recognize that the notion of building a flamethrower in 
your garage is an incredibly neat-o idea.  *Actually* 
building a flamethrower in your garage, however, is 
fraught with discouraging difficulty.  Stuffing gunpowder 
into a booby-trapped flashlight, so as to blow the arm off 
your high-school vice-principal, can be a thing of dark 
beauty to contemplate.   Actually committing assault by 
explosives  will earn you the sustained attention of the 
federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

	Some people, however, will actually try these plans.  A 
determinedly murderous American teenager can 
probably buy or steal a handgun far more easily than he 
can brew fake "napalm" in the kitchen sink.  Nevertheless, 
if temptation is spread before people a certain number 
will succumb, and a small minority will actually attempt 
these stunts.  A large minority of that small minority will 
either fail or, quite likely, maim themselves, since these 
"philes" have not been checked for accuracy, are not the 
product of professional experience, and are often highly 
fanciful.  But the gloating menace of these philes is not to 
be entirely dismissed.

	Hackers may not be "serious" about bombing; if they 
were, we would hear far more about exploding flashlights, 
homemade bazookas, and gym teachers poisoned by 
chlorine and potassium.  However, hackers are *very* 
serious about forbidden knowledge.  They are possessed 
not merely by curiosity, but by a positive *lust to know.*  
The desire to know what others don't is scarcely new.  But 
the *intensity* of this desire, as manifested by these young 
technophilic denizens of the Information Age, may in fact 
*be* new, and may represent some basic shift in social 
values -- a harbinger of what the world may come to, as 
society lays more and more value on the possession, 
assimilation and retailing of *information* as a basic 
commodity of daily life.

	There have always been young men with obsessive 
interests in these topics.  Never before, however, have they 
been able to network so extensively and easily, and to 
propagandize their interests with impunity to random 
passers-by.   High-school teachers will recognize that 
there's always one in a crowd, but when the one in a crowd 
escapes control by jumping into the phone-lines, and 
becomes a hundred such kids all together on a board, 
then trouble is brewing visibly.  The urge of authority to 
*do something,*  even something drastic, is hard to resist.  
And in 1990, authority did something.  In fact authority did 
a great deal.

				#
	
	The process by which boards create hackers goes 
something like this.  A youngster becomes interested in 
computers -- usually, computer games.  He hears from 
friends that "bulletin boards" exist where games can be 
obtained for free.  (Many computer games are "freeware," 
not copyrighted -- invented simply for the love of it and 
given away to the public; some of these games are quite 
good.)  He bugs his parents for a modem, or quite often, 
uses his parents' modem.

	 The world of boards suddenly opens up.  Computer 
games can be quite expensive, real budget-breakers for a 
kid, but pirated games, stripped of copy protection,  are 
cheap or free.  They are also illegal, but it is very rare, 
almost unheard of, for a small-scale software pirate to be 
prosecuted.  Once "cracked" of its copy protection, the 
program, being digital data, becomes infinitely 
reproducible.  Even the instructions to the game, any 
manuals that accompany it, can be reproduced as text 
files, or photocopied from legitimate sets.  Other users  on 
boards can give many useful hints in game-playing tactics.   
And a youngster with an infinite supply of free computer 
games can certainly cut quite a swath among his modem-
less friends.

	And boards are pseudonymous.  No one need know 
that you're fourteen years old -- with a little practice at 
subterfuge, you can talk to adults about adult things, and 
be accepted and taken seriously!  You can even pretend to 
be a girl, or an old man, or anybody you can imagine.  If 
you find this kind of deception gratifying, there is ample 
opportunity to hone your ability on boards.
   
	But local boards can grow stale.  And almost every 
board maintains a list of phone-numbers to other boards, 
some in distant, tempting, exotic locales.   Who knows 
what they're up to, in Oregon or Alaska or Florida or 
California?  It's very easy to find out -- just  order the 
modem to call through its software -- nothing to this, just 
typing on a keyboard, the same thing you would do for 
most any computer game.   The machine reacts swiftly 
and in a few seconds you are talking to a bunch of 
interesting people on another seaboard.

	And yet the *bills* for this trivial action can be 
staggering!  Just by going tippety-tap with your fingers, you 
may have saddled your parents with four hundred bucks 
in long-distance charges, and gotten chewed out but good.  
That hardly seems fair.

	How horrifying to have made friends in another state 
and to be deprived of their company -- and their software -
-  just because telephone companies demand absurd 
amounts of money!   How painful, to be restricted to 
boards in one's own *area code* --   what the heck is an 
"area code" anyway, and what makes it so special?   A few 
grumbles, complaints, and innocent questions of this sort 
will often elicit a sympathetic reply from another board 
user  --  someone with some stolen codes to hand.  You 
dither a while,  knowing this isn't quite right, then you 
make up your mind to try them anyhow -- *and they work!*  
Suddenly you're doing something even your parents can't 
do.  Six months ago you were just some kid -- now, you're 
the Crimson Flash of Area Code 512!   You're bad -- you're 
nationwide! 
 
	Maybe you'll stop at a few abused codes.  Maybe 
you'll decide that boards aren't all that interesting after all, 
that it's wrong, not worth the risk  -- but maybe you won't.  
The next step is to pick up your own repeat-dialling 
program --  to learn to generate your own stolen codes.  
(This was dead easy five years ago, much harder to get 
away with nowadays, but not yet impossible.)   And these 
dialling programs are not complex or intimidating -- some 
are as small as twenty lines of software. 
 
	Now, you too can share codes.   You can trade codes 
to learn other techniques.   If you're smart enough to catch 
on, and obsessive enough to want to bother,  and ruthless 
enough to start seriously bending rules, then you'll get 
better, fast.  You start to develop a rep.  You  move up to a 
heavier class of board -- a board with a bad attitude, the 
kind of board that naive dopes like your classmates and 
your former self have never even heard of!  You pick up 
the jargon of phreaking and hacking from the board.   You 
read a few of those anarchy philes -- and man, you never 
realized you could be a real *outlaw* without ever leaving 
your bedroom.

	You still play other computer games, but now you 
have a new and bigger game.   This one will bring you a 
different kind of status than destroying even eight zillion 
lousy space invaders.

	Hacking is perceived by hackers as a "game."  This is 
not an entirely unreasonable or sociopathic perception.   
You can win or lose at hacking, succeed or fail, but it never 
feels "real."  It's not simply that imaginative youngsters 
sometimes have a hard time telling "make-believe" from 
"real life."  Cyberspace is *not real!*  "Real" things are 
physical objects like trees and  shoes and cars.  Hacking 
takes place on a screen.   Words aren't physical, numbers  
(even telephone numbers and credit card numbers)  
aren't physical.  Sticks and stones may break my bones, 
but data will never hurt me.  Computers *simulate* reality, 
like computer games that simulate tank battles or 
dogfights or spaceships.   Simulations are just make-
believe, and the stuff in computers is *not real.*

	Consider this:  if "hacking" is supposed to be so 
serious and real-life and  dangerous, then how come 
*nine-year-old kids* have computers and modems?  You 
wouldn't give a nine year old his own car, or his own rifle, or 
his own chainsaw -- those things are "real."

	People underground are perfectly aware that the 
"game" is frowned upon by the powers that be.   Word gets 
around about busts in the underground.   Publicizing busts 
is one of the primary functions of pirate boards,  but they 
also promulgate an attitude about them, and their own 
idiosyncratic ideas of justice.   The users of underground 
boards won't complain if some guy is busted for crashing 
systems, spreading viruses, or stealing money by wire-
fraud.   They may shake their heads with a sneaky grin, but 
they won't openly defend these practices.   But when a kid 
is charged with some theoretical amount of theft:  
$233,846.14, for instance, because he sneaked into a 
computer and copied something, and kept it in his house 
on a floppy disk -- this is regarded as a sign of near-
insanity from prosecutors, a sign that they've drastically 
mistaken the immaterial game of computing for their real 
and boring everyday world of fatcat corporate money. 
  
	It's as if big companies and their suck-up lawyers 
think that computing belongs to them, and they can retail 
it with price stickers, as if it were boxes of laundry soap!  
But pricing "information"  is like trying to price air or price 
dreams.  Well, anybody on a pirate board knows that 
computing can be, and ought to be, *free.*  Pirate boards 
are little independent worlds in cyberspace, and they don't 
belong to anybody but the underground.   Underground 
boards aren't "brought to you by Procter & Gamble."

	To log on to an underground board can mean to 
experience liberation, to enter a world where, for once, 
money isn't everything and adults don't have all the 
answers. 
   
	Let's sample another vivid hacker manifesto.  Here 
are some excerpts from "The Conscience of a Hacker," by 
"The Mentor," from *Phrack* Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 
3.

	"I made a discovery today.  I found a computer.  Wait 
a second, this is cool.  It does what I want it to.  If it makes a 
mistake, it's because I screwed it up.  Not because it 
doesn't like me.(...)
	"And then it happened... a door opened to a world... 
rushing through the phone line like heroin through an 
addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge 
from day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is 
found.   'This is it...  this is where I belong...'
	"I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, 
never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I 
know you all...(...)
	"This is our world now....  the world of the electron and 
the switch, the beauty of the baud.  We make use of a 
service already existing without paying for what could be 
dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you 
call us criminals.  We explore... and you call us criminals.  
We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals.  We 
exist without skin color, without nationality, without 
religious bias... and you call us criminals.  You build atomic 
bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us and 
try to make us believe that it's for our own good, yet we're 
the criminals.
	"Yes, I am a criminal.  My crime is that of curiosity.  
My crime is that of judging people by what they say and 
think, not what they look like.  My crime is that of 
outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me 
for."

					#

	There have been underground boards almost as long 
as there have been boards.  One of the first was 8BBS, 
which became a stronghold of the West Coast phone-
phreak elite.   After going on-line in March 1980, 8BBS 
sponsored "Susan Thunder," and "Tuc,"  and, most 
notoriously, "the Condor."  "The Condor"  bore the singular 
distinction of becoming the most vilified American phreak 
and hacker ever.   Angry underground associates, fed up 
with Condor's peevish behavior, turned him in to police, 
along with a heaping double-helping of  outrageous 
hacker legendry.  As a result, Condor was kept in solitary 
confinement for seven months,  for fear that he might start 
World War Three by triggering missile silos from the 
prison payphone.  (Having served his time, Condor is now 
walking around loose;  WWIII has thus far conspicuously 
failed to occur.)

	The sysop of 8BBS was an ardent free-speech 
enthusiast who simply felt that *any* attempt to restrict 
the expression of his users was unconstitutional and 
immoral.   Swarms of the technically curious entered 8BBS 
and emerged as phreaks and hackers, until, in 1982, a 
friendly 8BBS alumnus passed the sysop a new modem 
which had been purchased by credit-card fraud.  Police 
took this opportunity to seize the entire board and remove 
what they considered an attractive nuisance.

	Plovernet was a powerful East Coast pirate board that 
operated in both New York and Florida.  Owned and 
operated by teenage hacker "Quasi Moto,"  Plovernet 
attracted five hundred eager users in 1983.  "Emmanuel 
Goldstein" was one-time co-sysop of Plovernet, along with 
"Lex Luthor,"  founder of the "Legion of Doom" group.  
Plovernet  bore the signal honor of being the original 
home of the "Legion of Doom," about which the reader will 
be hearing a great deal, soon.

  	"Pirate-80," or "P-80," run by a sysop known as "Scan-
Man," got into the game very early in Charleston, and 
continued steadily for years.  P-80 flourished so flagrantly 
that even its most hardened users became nervous, and 
some slanderously speculated that "Scan Man" must have 
ties to corporate security, a charge he vigorously denied.

	"414 Private" was the home board for the first *group* 
to attract conspicuous trouble, the teenage "414 Gang," 
whose intrusions into Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and 
Los Alamos military computers were to be a nine-days-
wonder in 1982.

	At about this time, the first software piracy boards 
began to open up, trading cracked games for the Atari 800 
and the Commodore C64.   Naturally these boards were 
heavily frequented by teenagers.  And with the 1983 
release of the hacker-thriller movie *War Games,* the 
scene exploded.   It seemed that every kid in America had 
demanded and  gotten a modem for Christmas.  Most of 
these dabbler wannabes put their modems in the attic 
after a few weeks, and most of the remainder minded their 
P's and Q's and stayed well out of hot water.  But some 
stubborn and talented diehards had this hacker kid in 
*War Games* figured for a happening dude.   They simply 
could not rest until they had contacted the underground -- 
or, failing that, created their own.
  
	In the mid-80s, underground boards sprang up like 
digital fungi.  ShadowSpawn Elite.  Sherwood Forest I, II, 
and III. Digital Logic Data Service in Florida, sysoped by  
no less a man than "Digital Logic" himself; Lex Luthor of 
the Legion of Doom was prominent on this board, since it 
was in his area code.  Lex's own board,  "Legion of Doom," 
started in 1984.  The Neon Knights ran a network of Apple-
hacker boards: Neon Knights North, South, East and 
West.   Free World II was run by "Major Havoc."  Lunatic 
Labs is still in operation as of this writing.   Dr. Ripco in 
Chicago, an anything-goes anarchist board with an 
extensive and raucous history, was seized by Secret 
Service agents in 1990 on Sundevil day, but up again 
almost immediately, with new machines and scarcely 
diminished  vigor.

	The St. Louis scene was not to rank with major centers 
of American hacking such as New York and L.A.  But St. 
Louis did rejoice in possession of "Knight Lightning" and 
"Taran King,"  two of the foremost *journalists* native to 
the underground.   Missouri boards like Metal Shop, 
Metal Shop Private, Metal Shop Brewery, may not have 
been the heaviest boards around in terms of illicit 
expertise.  But they became boards where hackers could 
exchange social gossip and try to figure out what the heck 
was going on nationally -- and internationally.   Gossip 
from Metal Shop was put into the form of news files, then 
assembled into a general electronic publication, *Phrack,* 
a portmanteau title coined from "phreak" and "hack."  The 
*Phrack* editors were as obsessively curious about other 
hackers as hackers were about machines.

	*Phrack,* being free of charge and lively reading, 
began to circulate throughout the underground.   As Taran 
King and Knight Lightning left high school for college, 
*Phrack* began to appear on mainframe machines linked 
to BITNET, and, through BITNET to the "Internet,"  that 
loose but extremely potent not-for-profit network where 
academic, governmental and corporate machines trade 
data through the UNIX TCP/IP protocol.   (The "Internet 
Worm"  of  November 2-3,1988, created by Cornell grad 
student Robert Morris,  was to be the largest and best-
publicized computer-intrusion scandal to date.  Morris 
claimed that his ingenious "worm" program was meant to 
harmlessly explore the Internet, but due to bad 
programming, the Worm replicated out of control and 
crashed some six thousand Internet computers.   Smaller-
scale and less ambitious Internet hacking was a standard 
for the underground elite.)
  
	Most any underground board not hopelessly lame 
and out-of-it would feature a complete run of *Phrack* --
and, possibly, the lesser-known standards of the 
underground:  the *Legion of Doom Technical Journal,*  
the obscene and raucous *Cult of the Dead Cow*  files,  
*P/HUN*  magazine,  *Pirate,*  the *Syndicate Reports,* 
and perhaps the highly anarcho-political *Activist Times 
Incorporated.*

	Possession of *Phrack*  on one's board was prima 
facie evidence of a bad attitude.   *Phrack* was seemingly 
everywhere, aiding, abetting, and spreading the 
underground ethos.  And this did not escape the attention 
of corporate security or the police. 
           
	 We now come to the touchy subject of police and 
boards.  Police, do, in fact, own boards.   In 1989, there were 
police-sponsored boards in California, Colorado, Florida, 
Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, and Virginia:  
boards such as "Crime Bytes,"  "Crimestoppers,"  "All 
Points" and "Bullet-N-Board."   Police officers, as private 
computer enthusiasts, ran their own boards in Arizona, 
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Missouri, 
Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee 
and Texas.   Police boards have often proved helpful in 
community relations.  Sometimes crimes are reported on 
police boards.

	Sometimes crimes are *committed*  on police 
boards.  This has sometimes happened by accident, as 
naive hackers blunder onto police boards and blithely 
begin offering telephone codes.  Far more often, however, 
it occurs through the now almost-traditional use of "sting 
boards."  The first police sting-boards were established in 
1985:  "Underground Tunnel" in Austin, Texas, whose 
sysop Sgt. Robert Ansley called himself "Pluto" -- "The 
Phone Company" in Phoenix, Arizona, run by Ken 
MacLeod of the Maricopa County Sheriff's office -- and  
Sgt. Dan Pasquale's board in Fremont, California.   Sysops 
posed as hackers, and swiftly garnered coteries of ardent 
users, who posted codes and loaded pirate software with 
abandon, and came to a sticky end. 

	Sting boards, like other boards, are cheap to operate,  
very cheap by the standards of undercover police 
operations.  Once accepted by the local underground, 
sysops will likely be invited into other pirate boards, where 
they can compile more dossiers.  And when the sting is 
announced and the worst offenders arrested, the publicity 
is generally  gratifying.  The resultant paranoia in the 
underground -- perhaps more justly described as a 
"deterrence effect" -- tends to quell local lawbreaking for 
quite a while.

	Obviously police do not have to beat the underbrush 
for hackers.  On the contrary, they can go trolling for them.  
Those caught can be grilled.  Some become useful 
informants.  They can lead the way to pirate boards all 
across the country.

	And boards all across the country showed the sticky 
fingerprints of *Phrack,* and of that loudest and most 
flagrant of all underground groups, the "Legion of Doom."

	The term "Legion of Doom" came from comic books.  
The Legion of Doom, a conspiracy of costumed super-
villains headed by the chrome-domed criminal ultra-
mastermind Lex Luthor, gave Superman a lot of four-color 
graphic trouble for a number of decades.   Of course, 
Superman, that exemplar of Truth, Justice, and the 
American Way, always won in the long run.   This didn't 
matter to the hacker Doomsters -- "Legion of Doom" was 
not some thunderous and evil Satanic reference, it was not 
meant to be taken seriously.  "Legion of Doom" came 
from funny-books and was supposed to be funny. 
  
	"Legion of Doom" did have a good mouthfilling ring 
to it, though.  It sounded really cool.  Other groups, such as 
the "Farmers of Doom," closely allied to LoD, recognized 
this grandiloquent quality, and made fun of it.  There was 
even a hacker group called "Justice League of America," 
named after Superman's club of true-blue crimefighting 
superheros.
  
	But they didn't last; the Legion did.

	The original Legion of Doom, hanging out on Quasi 
Moto's Plovernet board, were phone phreaks.   They 
weren't much into computers.   "Lex Luthor" himself (who 
was under eighteen when he formed the Legion)  was a 
COSMOS expert, COSMOS being the "Central System for 
Mainframe Operations," a telco internal computer 
network.   Lex would eventually become quite a dab hand 
at breaking into IBM mainframes, but although everyone 
liked Lex and admired his attitude, he was not considered  
a truly accomplished computer intruder.  Nor was he the 
"mastermind" of the Legion of Doom --  LoD were never 
big on formal leadership.  As a regular on Plovernet and 
sysop of his "Legion of Doom BBS,"  Lex was the Legion's 
cheerleader and recruiting officer.

	Legion of Doom began on the ruins of an earlier 
phreak group, The Knights of Shadow.  Later, LoD was to 
subsume the personnel of the hacker group "Tribunal of 
Knowledge."  People came and went constantly in LoD; 
groups split up or formed offshoots.
   
	Early on, the LoD phreaks befriended a few 
computer-intrusion enthusiasts, who became the 
associated "Legion of Hackers."  Then the two groups 
conflated into the "Legion of Doom/Hackers,"  or LoD/H.   
When the original "hacker" wing, Messrs. "Compu-
Phreak" and "Phucked Agent 04," found other matters to 
occupy their time, the extra "/H" slowly atrophied out of 
the name;  but by this time the phreak wing, Messrs.  Lex 
Luthor, "Blue Archer," "Gary Seven," "Kerrang Khan," 
"Master of Impact," "Silver Spy," "The Marauder," and 
"The Videosmith," had picked up a plethora of intrusion 
expertise and had become a force to be reckoned with.

	LoD members seemed to have an instinctive 
understanding that the way to real power in the 
underground lay through covert publicity.   LoD were 
flagrant.  Not only was it one of the earliest groups, but the 
members took pains to widely distribute their illicit 
knowledge.   Some LoD members, like "The Mentor," were 
close to evangelical about it.   *Legion of Doom Technical 
Journal*  began to show up on boards throughout the 
underground.
   
	*LoD Technical Journal* was named in cruel parody 
of the ancient and honored *AT&T Technical Journal.*  
The material in these two publications was quite similar -- 
much of it, adopted from public journals and discussions 
in the telco community.  And yet, the predatory attitude of 
LoD made even its most innocuous data seem deeply 
sinister; an outrage; a clear and present danger.

	To see why this should be, let's consider the following 
(invented) paragraphs, as a kind of thought experiment.

	(A)  "W. Fred Brown, AT&T Vice President for 
Advanced Technical Development, testified May 8  at a 
Washington hearing of the National Telecommunications 
and Information Administration (NTIA), regarding 
Bellcore's GARDEN project.  GARDEN (Generalized 
Automatic Remote Distributed Electronic Network)  is a 
telephone-switch programming tool that makes it possible 
to develop new telecom services, including hold-on-hold 
and customized message transfers,  from any keypad 
terminal, within seconds.   The GARDEN prototype 
combines centrex lines with a minicomputer using UNIX 
operating system software."

	(B)  "Crimson Flash 512 of the Centrex Mobsters 
reports:  D00dz, you wouldn't believe this GARDEN 
bullshit Bellcore's just come up with!   Now you don't even 
need a lousy Commodore to reprogram a switch -- just log 
on to GARDEN as a technician, and you can reprogram 
switches right off the keypad in any public phone booth!  
You can give yourself hold-on-hold and customized 
message transfers, and best of all, the thing is run off 
(notoriously insecure)  centrex lines using -- get this -- 
standard UNIX software!  Ha ha ha ha!"       	

	Message (A), couched in typical techno-
bureaucratese, appears tedious and almost unreadable.  
(A) scarcely seems threatening or menacing.   Message 
(B), on the other hand, is a dreadful thing, prima facie 
evidence of a dire conspiracy, definitely not the kind of 
thing you want your teenager reading. 
  
	The *information,* however, is identical.  It is *public*  
information, presented before the federal government in 
an open hearing.  It is not "secret."  It is not "proprietary."  
It is not even "confidential."  On the contrary, the 
development of advanced software systems is a matter of 
great public pride to Bellcore. 
  
	However, when Bellcore publicly announces a project 
of this kind, it expects a certain attitude from the public -- 
something along the lines of  *gosh wow, you guys are 
great, keep that up, whatever it is*  --  certainly not cruel 
mimickry, one-upmanship and outrageous speculations 
about possible security holes.

	Now put yourself in the place of a policeman 
confronted by an outraged parent, or telco official, with a 
copy of Version (B).  This well-meaning citizen, to his 
horror, has discovered a local bulletin-board carrying 
outrageous stuff like (B), which his son is examining with a 
deep and unhealthy interest.   If (B) were printed in a book 
or magazine, you, as an American law enforcement officer, 
would know that it would take a hell of a lot of trouble to do 
anything about it;  but it doesn't take technical genius to 
recognize that if there's a computer in your area harboring 
stuff like (B), there's going to be trouble. 
   
	In fact, if you ask around, any computer-literate cop 
will tell you straight out that boards with stuff like (B) are 
the *source* of trouble.  And the *worst* source of trouble 
on boards are the ringleaders inventing and spreading 
stuff like (B).  If it weren't for these jokers, there wouldn't 
*be* any trouble. 
 
	And Legion of Doom were on boards like nobody 
else.  Plovernet.  The Legion of Doom Board.  The Farmers 
of Doom Board.  Metal Shop.  OSUNY.  Blottoland.  
Private Sector.  Atlantis.  Digital Logic.  Hell Phrozen Over.

	LoD members also ran their own boards.  "Silver Spy" 
started his own board, "Catch-22,"  considered one of the 
heaviest around.   So did "Mentor," with his "Phoenix 
Project."   When they didn't run boards themselves, they 
showed up on other people's boards, to brag, boast, and 
strut.  And where they themselves didn't go, their philes 
went, carrying evil knowledge and an even more evil 
attitude.
   
   	As early as 1986, the police were under the vague 
impression that *everyone* in the underground was 
Legion of Doom.   LoD was never that large -- 
considerably smaller than either "Metal 
Communications" or "The Administration," for instance -- 
but LoD got tremendous press.  Especially in *Phrack,* 
which at times read like an LoD fan magazine; and 
*Phrack* was everywhere, especially in the offices of telco 
security.   You couldn't *get* busted as a phone phreak, a 
hacker, or even a lousy codes kid or warez dood, without 
the cops asking if you were LoD.

	This was a difficult charge to deny, as LoD never 
distributed membership badges or laminated ID cards.  If 
they had, they would likely have died out quickly, for 
turnover in their membership was considerable.  LoD was 
less a high-tech street-gang than an ongoing state-of-
mind.  LoD was the Gang That Refused to Die.   By 1990, 
LoD had *ruled* for ten years, and it seemed *weird* to 
police that they were continually busting people who were 
only sixteen years old.   All these teenage small-timers 
were pleading the tiresome hacker litany  of "just curious, 
no criminal intent."  Somewhere at the center of this 
conspiracy there had to be some serious adult 
masterminds, not this seemingly endless supply of myopic 
suburban white kids with high SATs and funny haircuts.

	There was no question that most any American 
hacker arrested would "know" LoD.  They knew the 
handles of contributors to *LoD Tech Journal,*  and were 
likely to have learned their craft through LoD boards and 
LoD activism.  But they'd never met anyone from LoD.   
Even some of the rotating cadre who were actually and 
formally "in LoD" knew one another only by board-mail 
and pseudonyms.   This was a highly unconventional 
profile for a criminal conspiracy.  Computer networking, 
and the rapid evolution of the digital underground,  made 
the situation very diffuse and confusing. 

	Furthermore, a big reputation in the digital 
underground did not coincide with one's willingness to 
commit "crimes."   Instead, reputation was based on 
cleverness and technical mastery.  As a result, it often 
seemed that the *heavier* the hackers were, the *less* 
likely they were to have committed any kind of common, 
easily prosecutable crime.   There were some hackers who 
could really steal.  And there were hackers who could 
really hack.  But the two groups didn't seem to overlap 
much, if at all.   For instance, most people in the 
underground looked up to "Emmanuel Goldstein" of 
*2600* as a hacker demigod.  But Goldstein's publishing  
activities were entirely legal -- Goldstein just printed 
dodgy stuff and talked about politics, he didn't even hack.  
When you came right down to it, Goldstein spent half his 
time complaining that computer security *wasn't strong 
enough* and ought to be drastically improved across the 
board! 
 
	Truly heavy-duty hackers, those with serious 
technical skills who had earned the respect of the 
underground,  never stole money or abused credit cards.   
Sometimes they might abuse phone-codes -- but often, 
they seemed to get all the free phone-time they wanted 
without leaving a trace of any kind.

	The best hackers, the most powerful and technically 
accomplished, were not professional fraudsters.   They 
raided computers habitually, but wouldn't alter anything, 
or damage anything.  They didn't even steal computer 
equipment -- most had day-jobs messing with hardware, 
and could get all the cheap secondhand equipment they 
wanted.   The hottest hackers, unlike the teenage 
wannabes,  weren't snobs about fancy or expensive 
hardware.  Their machines tended to be raw second-hand 
digital hot-rods full of custom add-ons that they'd cobbled 
together out of chickenwire, memory chips and spit.  Some 
were adults, computer software writers and consultants by 
trade, and making quite good livings at it.  Some of them 
*actually worked for the phone company* --  and for those, 
the "hackers" actually found under the skirts of Ma Bell, 
there would be little mercy in 1990.

	 It has long been an article of faith in the 
underground that the "best" hackers never get caught.  
They're far too smart, supposedly.  They never get caught 
because they never boast, brag, or strut.   These demigods 
may read underground boards (with a condescending 
smile), but they never say anything there.   The "best" 
hackers, according to legend, are adult computer 
professionals, such as mainframe system administrators, 
who already know the ins and outs of their particular 
brand of security.   Even the "best" hacker can't break in to 
just any computer at random: the knowledge of security 
holes is too specialized, varying widely with different 
software and hardware.  But if people are employed to run, 
say, a UNIX mainframe or a VAX/VMS machine, then 
they tend to learn security from the inside out.  Armed 
with this knowledge, they can look into most anybody 
else's UNIX or VMS without much trouble or risk, if they 
want to.   And, according to hacker legend, of course they 
want to, so of course they do.   They just don't make a big 
deal of what they've done.  So nobody ever finds out.

	It is also an article of faith in the underground that 
professional telco people "phreak" like crazed weasels.  
*Of course* they spy on Madonna's phone calls -- I mean, 
*wouldn't you?*  Of course they give themselves free long-
distance -- why the hell should *they* pay, they're running 
the whole shebang!

	It has, as a third matter, long been an article of faith 
that any hacker caught can escape serious punishment if 
he confesses *how he did it.*  Hackers seem to believe 
that governmental agencies and large corporations are 
blundering about in cyberspace like eyeless jellyfish or 
cave salamanders.  They feel that these large but 
pathetically stupid organizations will proffer up genuine 
gratitude, and perhaps even a security post and a big 
salary, to the hot-shot intruder who will deign to reveal to 
them the supreme genius of his modus operandi.

	In the case of longtime LoD member "Control-C," 
this actually happened, more or less.   Control-C had led 
Michigan Bell a merry chase, and when captured in 1987, 
he turned out to be a bright and apparently physically 
harmless young fanatic, fascinated by phones.   There was 
no chance in hell that Control-C would actually repay the 
enormous and largely theoretical sums in long-distance 
service that he had accumulated from Michigan Bell.   He 
could always be indicted for fraud or computer-intrusion, 
but there seemed little real point in this -- he hadn't 
physically damaged any computer.  He'd just plead guilty, 
and he'd likely get the usual slap-on-the-wrist, and in the 
meantime it would be a big hassle for Michigan Bell just 
to bring up the case.  But if kept on the payroll, he might at 
least keep his fellow hackers at bay.
  
	There were uses for him.  For instance, a contrite 
Control-C was featured on Michigan Bell internal posters, 
sternly warning employees to shred their trash.   He'd 
always gotten most of his best inside info from "trashing" -- 
raiding telco dumpsters, for useful data indiscreetly 
thrown away.   He signed these posters, too.  Control-C had 
become something like a Michigan Bell mascot.  And in 
fact, Control-C *did* keep other hackers at bay.  Little 
hackers were quite scared of Control-C and his heavy-duty 
Legion of Doom friends.   And big hackers *were* his 
friends and didn't want to screw up his cushy situation.

	No matter what one might say of LoD, they did stick 
together.   When "Wasp," an apparently genuinely 
malicious New York hacker, began crashing Bellcore 
machines,  Control-C received swift volunteer help from 
"the Mentor" and the Georgia LoD wing  made up of "The 
Prophet," "Urvile," and "Leftist."   Using Mentor's Phoenix 
Project board to coordinate, the Doomsters helped telco 
security to trap Wasp, by luring him into a machine with a 
tap and line-trace installed.  Wasp lost.  LoD won!  And 
my, did they brag.

	  Urvile, Prophet and Leftist were well-qualified for 
this activity, probably more so even than the quite 
accomplished Control-C.  The Georgia boys knew all about 
phone switching-stations.  Though relative johnny-come-
latelies in the Legion of Doom, they were considered some 
of LoD's heaviest guys, into the hairiest systems around.  
They had the good fortune to live in or near Atlanta, home 
of the sleepy and apparently tolerant BellSouth RBOC.

	As RBOC security went, BellSouth were "cake."   US 
West (of Arizona, the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest) 
were tough and aggressive, probably the heaviest RBOC 
around.  Pacific Bell, California's PacBell, were sleek, high-
tech, and longtime veterans of the LA phone-phreak wars.  
NYNEX had the misfortune to run the New York City area, 
and were warily prepared for most anything.   Even 
Michigan Bell, a division of the Ameritech RBOC, at least 
had the elementary sense to hire their own hacker as a 
useful scarecrow.  But BellSouth, even though their 
corporate P.R.  proclaimed them to have "Everything You 
Expect From a Leader," were pathetic.

	When rumor about LoD's mastery of Georgia's 
switching network got around to BellSouth through 
Bellcore and telco security scuttlebutt, they at first refused 
to believe it.   If you paid serious attention to every rumor 
out and about these hacker kids, you would hear all kinds 
of wacko saucer-nut nonsense:  that the National Security 
Agency monitored all American phone calls, that the CIA 
and DEA tracked traffic on bulletin-boards with word-
analysis programs, that the Condor could start World 
War III from a payphone.
   
	If there were hackers into BellSouth switching-
stations, then how come nothing had happened?  Nothing 
had been hurt.  BellSouth's machines weren't crashing.   
BellSouth wasn't suffering especially badly from fraud.  
BellSouth's customers weren't complaining.  BellSouth 
was headquartered in Atlanta, ambitious metropolis of the 
new high-tech Sunbelt; and BellSouth was upgrading its 
network by leaps and bounds, digitizing the works left right 
and center.   They could hardly be considered sluggish or 
naive.  BellSouth's technical expertise was second to none, 
thank you kindly.

	But then came the Florida business.
  
	On June 13, 1989, callers to the Palm Beach County 
Probation Department, in Delray Beach, Florida,  found 
themselves involved in a remarkable discussion with a 
phone-sex worker named "Tina" in New York State.  
Somehow, *any* call to this probation office near Miami 
was instantly and magically transported across state lines, 
at no extra charge to the user, to a pornographic phone-
sex hotline hundreds of miles away! 

	This practical joke may seem utterly hilarious at first 
hearing, and indeed there was a good deal of chuckling 
about it in phone phreak circles, including the Autumn 
1989 issue of *2600.*  But for Southern Bell  (the division of 
the BellSouth RBOC supplying local service for Florida, 
Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina),  this was a 
smoking gun.  For the first time ever,  a computer intruder 
had broken into a BellSouth central office switching 
station and re-programmed it!

	Or so BellSouth thought in June 1989.  Actually, LoD 
members had been frolicking harmlessly in BellSouth 
switches since September 1987.  The stunt of June 13 -- 
call-forwarding a number through manipulation of a 
switching station -- was child's play for hackers as 
accomplished as the Georgia wing of LoD.  Switching calls 
interstate sounded like a big deal, but it took only four 
lines of code to accomplish this.    An easy, yet more 
discreet, stunt, would be to call-forward another number to 
your own house.  If you were careful and considerate, and 
changed the software back later, then not a soul would 
know.  Except you.  And whoever you had bragged to about 
it.

	As for BellSouth, what they didn't know wouldn't hurt 
them.

	Except now somebody had blown the whole thing 
wide open, and BellSouth knew.

	A now alerted and considerably paranoid BellSouth 
began searching switches right and left for signs of 
impropriety, in that hot summer of 1989.  No fewer than 
forty-two BellSouth employees were put on 12-hour shifts, 
twenty-four hours a day, for two solid months, poring over 
records and monitoring computers for any sign of phony 
access.  These forty-two overworked experts were known as 
BellSouth's  "Intrusion Task Force."

	  What the investigators found astounded them.   
Proprietary telco databases had been manipulated:  
phone numbers had been created out of thin air, with no 
users' names and no addresses.  And perhaps worst of all, 
no charges and no records of use.   The new digital 
ReMOB  (Remote Observation)  diagnostic feature had 
been extensively tampered with -- hackers had learned to 
reprogram ReMOB software, so that they could listen in 
on any switch-routed call at their leisure!   They were using 
telco property to *spy!*

	 The electrifying news went out throughout law 
enforcement in 1989.  It had never really occurred to 
anyone at BellSouth that their prized and brand-new 
digital switching-stations could be *re-programmed.*  
People seemed utterly amazed that anyone could have 
the nerve.   Of course these switching stations were 
"computers," and everybody knew hackers liked to "break 
into computers:"   but telephone people's computers were 
*different* from normal people's computers.

	 The exact reason *why* these computers were 
"different" was rather ill-defined.  It certainly wasn't the 
extent of their security.  The security on these BellSouth 
computers was lousy;  the AIMSX computers, for instance, 
didn't even have passwords.   But there was no question 
that BellSouth strongly *felt* that their computers were 
very different indeed.  And if there were some criminals 
out there who had not gotten that message, BellSouth was 
determined to see that message taught.

	After all, a 5ESS switching station was no mere 
bookkeeping system for some local chain of florists.   
Public service depended on these stations.   Public 
*safety* depended on these stations.

	And hackers, lurking in there call-forwarding or 
ReMobbing,  could spy on anybody in the local area!   
They could spy on telco officials!  They could spy on police 
stations!  They could spy on local offices of the Secret 
Service....

	In 1989, electronic cops and hacker-trackers began 
using scrambler-phones and secured lines.  It only made 
sense.  There was no telling who was into those systems.   
Whoever they were, they sounded scary.   This was some 
new level of antisocial daring.  Could be West German 
hackers, in the pay of the KGB.   That too had seemed a 
weird and farfetched notion, until Clifford Stoll had poked 
and prodded a sluggish Washington law-enforcement 
bureaucracy into investigating a computer intrusion that 
turned out to be exactly that -- *hackers, in the pay of the 
KGB!*    Stoll, the  systems manager for an Internet lab in 
Berkeley California, had ended up on the front page of the 
*New York  Times,*  proclaimed a national  hero in the 
first true story of international computer espionage.   
Stoll's counterspy efforts, which he related in a bestselling 
book, *The Cuckoo's Egg,*  in 1989, had established the 
credibility of 'hacking' as a possible threat to national 
security.  The United States Secret Service doesn't mess 
around when it suspects a possible action by a foreign 
intelligence apparat.

	The Secret Service scrambler-phones and secured 
lines put a tremendous kink in law enforcement's ability to 
operate freely; to get the word out, cooperate, prevent 
misunderstandings.   Nevertheless, 1989 scarcely seemed 
the time for half-measures.  If the police and Secret 
Service themselves were not operationally secure, then 
how could they reasonably demand measures of security 
from private enterprise?  At least, the inconvenience 
made people aware of the seriousness  of the threat.
 
	If there was a final spur needed to get the police off 
the dime, it came in the realization that the emergency 
911 system was vulnerable.   The 911 system has its own 
specialized software, but it is run on the same digital 
switching systems as the rest of the telephone network.  
911 is not physically different from normal telephony.  But 
it is certainly culturally  different, because this is the area 
of telephonic cyberspace reserved for the police and 
emergency services.
   
	Your average policeman may not know much about 
hackers or phone-phreaks.  Computer people are weird; 
even computer *cops*  are rather weird; the stuff they do is 
hard to figure out.   But a threat to the 911 system is 
anything but an abstract threat.  If the 911 system goes, 
people can die.

	Imagine being in a car-wreck, staggering to a phone-
booth, punching 911 and hearing "Tina" pick up the 
phone-sex line somewhere in New York!   The situation's 
no longer comical, somehow.

	 And was it possible?  No question.  Hackers had 
attacked 911 systems before.  Phreaks can max-out 911 
systems just by siccing a bunch of computer-modems on 
them in tandem, dialling them over and over until they 
clog.  That's very crude and low-tech, but it's still a serious 
business.

	The time had come for action.  It was time to take 
stern measures with the underground.  It was time to start 
picking up the dropped threads, the loose edges, the bits 
of braggadocio here and there; it was time to get on the 
stick and start putting serious casework together.  Hackers 
weren't "invisible."  They *thought*  they were invisible; 
but the truth was, they had just been tolerated too long.

	Under sustained police attention in the summer of 
'89, the digital underground began to unravel as never 
before.

	The first big break in the case came very early on:  
July 1989, the following month.  The perpetrator of the 
"Tina" switch was caught, and confessed.  His name was 
"Fry Guy," a 16-year-old in Indiana.  Fry Guy had been a 
very wicked young man.

	Fry Guy had earned his handle from a stunt involving 
French fries.  Fry Guy had filched the log-in of a local 
MacDonald's manager and had logged-on to the 
MacDonald's mainframe on the Sprint Telenet system.  
Posing as the manager, Fry Guy had altered MacDonald's 
records, and given some teenage hamburger-flipping 
friends of his, generous raises.  He had not been caught.

	Emboldened by success, Fry Guy moved on to credit-
card abuse.  Fry Guy was quite an accomplished talker; 
with a gift for "social engineering."   If you can do "social 
engineering"  -- fast-talk, fake-outs, impersonation, 
conning, scamming -- then card abuse comes easy.  
(Getting away with it in the long run is another question).
  
	Fry Guy had run across "Urvile" of the Legion of 
Doom on the ALTOS Chat board in Bonn, Germany.  
ALTOS Chat was a sophisticated board, accessible 
through globe-spanning computer networks like BITnet, 
Tymnet, and Telenet.    ALTOS was much frequented by 
members of Germany's  Chaos Computer Club.  Two 
Chaos hackers who hung out on ALTOS, "Jaeger" and 
"Pengo," had been the central villains of Clifford Stoll's 
CUCKOO'S EGG case:  consorting in East Berlin with a 
spymaster from the KGB, and breaking into American 
computers for hire, through the Internet. 
 
	When LoD members learned the story of Jaeger's 
depredations from Stoll's book, they were rather less than 
impressed, technically speaking.  On LoD's own favorite 
board of the moment, "Black Ice," LoD members bragged 
that they themselves could have done all the Chaos break-
ins in a week flat!  Nevertheless,  LoD were grudgingly 
impressed by the Chaos rep, the sheer hairy-eyed daring 
of hash-smoking anarchist hackers who had rubbed 
shoulders with the fearsome big-boys of international 
Communist espionage.  LoD members sometimes traded 
bits of knowledge with friendly German hackers on ALTOS 
-- phone numbers for vulnerable VAX/VMS computers in 
Georgia, for instance.  Dutch and British phone phreaks, 
and the Australian clique of "Phoenix," "Nom," and 
"Electron," were ALTOS regulars, too.  In underground 
circles, to hang out on ALTOS was considered the sign of 
an elite dude, a sophisticated hacker of the international 
digital jet-set.

	Fry Guy quickly learned how to raid information from 
credit-card consumer-reporting agencies.  He had over a 
hundred stolen credit-card numbers in his notebooks, and 
upwards of a thousand swiped long-distance access codes.  
He knew how to get onto Altos, and how to talk the talk of 
the underground convincingly.  He now wheedled 
knowledge of switching-station tricks from Urvile on the 
ALTOS system. 

	Combining these two forms of knowledge enabled 
Fry Guy to bootstrap his way up to a new form of wire-
fraud.  First, he'd snitched credit card numbers from 
credit-company computers.  The data he copied included 
names, addresses and phone numbers of the random 
card-holders.
   
	Then Fry Guy, impersonating a card-holder, called up 
Western Union and asked for a cash advance on "his" 
credit card.  Western Union, as a security guarantee, 
would call the customer back, at home, to verify the 
transaction.
  
	But, just as he had switched the Florida probation 
office to "Tina" in New York,  Fry Guy switched the card-
holder's number to a local pay-phone.  There he would 
lurk in wait, muddying his trail by routing and re-routing 
the call, through switches as far away as Canada.   When 
the call came through, he would boldly "social-engineer," 
or con, the Western Union people, pretending to be the 
legitimate card-holder.  Since he'd answered the proper 
phone number, the deception was not very hard.   
Western Union's money was then shipped to a 
confederate of Fry Guy's in his home town in Indiana.

	Fry Guy and his cohort, using LoD techniques, stole 
six thousand dollars from Western Union between 
December 1988 and July 1989.  They also dabbled in 
ordering delivery of stolen goods through card-fraud.  Fry 
Guy was intoxicated with success.  The sixteen-year-old 
fantasized wildly to hacker rivals, boasting that he'd used 
rip-off money to hire  himself a big limousine, and had 
driven out-of-state with a groupie from his favorite heavy-
metal band, Motley Crue.

	Armed with knowledge, power, and a gratifying 
stream of free money, Fry Guy now took it upon himself to 
call local representatives of Indiana Bell security, to brag, 
boast, strut, and utter tormenting warnings that his 
powerful friends in the notorious Legion of Doom could 
crash the national telephone network.  Fry Guy even 
named a date for the scheme:  the Fourth of July, a 
national holiday.
 
	This egregious example of the begging-for-arrest 
syndrome was shortly followed by Fry Guy's arrest.  After 
the Indiana telephone company figured out who he was, 
the Secret Service had DNRs -- Dialed Number 
Recorders -- installed on his home phone lines.  These 
devices are not taps, and can't record the substance of 
phone calls, but they do record the phone numbers of all 
calls going in and out.   Tracing these numbers showed Fry 
Guy's long-distance code fraud, his extensive ties to pirate 
bulletin boards, and numerous personal calls to his LoD 
friends in Atlanta.   By July 11, 1989, Prophet, Urvile and 
Leftist also had Secret Service DNR "pen registers" 
installed on their own lines.

	The Secret Service showed up in force at Fry Guy's 
house on July 22, 1989, to the horror of his unsuspecting 
parents.  The raiders were led by a special agent from the 
Secret Service's Indianapolis office.   However, the raiders 
were accompanied and advised by Timothy M. Foley of 
the Secret Service's Chicago office (a gentleman about 
whom we will soon be hearing a great deal).

	Following federal computer-crime techniques that 
had been standard since the early 1980s, the Secret 
Service searched the house thoroughly, and seized all of 
Fry Guy's electronic equipment and notebooks.   All Fry 
Guy's equipment went out the door in the custody of the 
Secret Service, which put a swift end to his depredations.
 
	The USSS interrogated Fry Guy at length.  His case 
was put in the charge of Deborah Daniels, the federal US 
Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana.  Fry Guy was 
charged with eleven counts of computer fraud, 
unauthorized computer access, and wire fraud.   The 
evidence was thorough and irrefutable.  For his part, Fry 
Guy blamed his corruption on the Legion of Doom and 
offered to testify against them.
   
	Fry Guy insisted that the Legion intended to crash 
the phone system on a national holiday.   And when AT&T 
crashed on Martin Luther King Day, 1990, this lent a 
credence to his claim that genuinely alarmed telco 
security and the Secret Service.

	Fry Guy eventually pled guilty on May 31, 1990.  On 
September 14, he was sentenced to forty-four months' 
probation and  four hundred hours' community service.   
He could have had it much worse; but it made sense to 
prosecutors to take it easy on this teenage minor, while 
zeroing in on the notorious kingpins of the Legion of 
Doom.

	But the case against LoD had nagging flaws.   
Despite the best effort of investigators, it was impossible 
to prove that the Legion had crashed the phone system on 
January 15, because they, in fact, hadn't done so.  The 
investigations of 1989 did show that certain members of 
the Legion of Doom had achieved unprecedented power 
over the telco switching stations, and that they were in 
active conspiracy to obtain more power yet.  Investigators 
were privately convinced that the Legion of Doom 
intended to do awful things with this knowledge, but mere 
evil intent was not enough to put them in jail.

	   And although the Atlanta Three -- Prophet, Leftist, 
and especially Urvile -- had taught Fry Guy plenty, they 
were not themselves credit-card fraudsters.  The only 
thing they'd "stolen" was long-distance service -- and since 
they'd done much of that through phone-switch 
manipulation, there was no easy way to judge how much 
they'd "stolen," or whether this practice was even "theft" of 
any easily recognizable kind.

	  Fry Guy's theft of long-distance codes had cost the 
phone companies plenty.  The theft of long-distance 
service may be a fairly theoretical "loss,"  but it costs 
genuine money and genuine time to delete all those 
stolen codes, and to re-issue new codes to the innocent 
owners of those corrupted codes.  The owners of the codes 
themselves are victimized, and lose time and money and 
peace of mind in the hassle.   And then there were the 
credit-card victims to deal with, too, and Western Union.  
When it came to rip-off, Fry Guy was far more of a thief 
than LoD.  It was only when it came to actual computer 
expertise that Fry Guy was small potatoes.

	The Atlanta Legion thought most "rules" of 
cyberspace were for rodents and losers, but they *did* 
have rules.  *They never crashed anything, and they never 
took money.*   These were rough rules-of-thumb, and 
rather dubious principles when it comes to the ethical 
subtleties of cyberspace, but they enabled the Atlanta 
Three to operate with a relatively clear conscience (though 
never with peace of mind). 
 
	If you didn't hack for money, if you weren't robbing 
people of actual funds -- money in the bank, that is --  then 
nobody *really* got hurt, in LoD's opinion.  "Theft of 
service" was a bogus issue, and "intellectual property" was 
a bad joke.   But LoD had only elitist contempt for rip-off 
artists, "leechers," thieves.   They considered themselves 
clean.  In their opinion, if you didn't smash-up or crash any 
systems  -- (well, not on purpose, anyhow -- accidents can 
happen, just ask Robert Morris)  then it was very unfair to 
call you a "vandal" or a "cracker."  When you were 
hanging out on-line with your "pals" in telco security, you 
could face them down from the higher plane of hacker 
morality.  And you could mock the police from the 
supercilious heights of your hacker's quest for pure 
knowledge.

	 But from the point of view of law enforcement and 
telco security, however, Fry Guy was not really dangerous.  
The Atlanta Three *were* dangerous.  It wasn't the crimes 
they were committing, but the *danger,*   the potential 
hazard, the sheer *technical power*  LoD had 
accumulated, that had made the situation untenable.

	Fry Guy was not LoD.  He'd never laid eyes on 
anyone in LoD; his only contacts with them had been 
electronic.  Core members of the Legion of Doom tended 
to meet physically for conventions every year or so, to get 
drunk, give each other the hacker high-sign, send out for 
pizza and ravage hotel suites.  Fry Guy had never done any 
of this.   Deborah Daniels assessed Fry Guy accurately as 
"an LoD wannabe."
  
	Nevertheless Fry Guy's crimes would be directly 
attributed to LoD in much future police propaganda.  LoD 
would be described as "a closely knit group" involved in 
"numerous illegal activities" including "stealing and 
modifying individual credit histories," and "fraudulently 
obtaining money and property."  Fry Guy did this, but the 
Atlanta Three didn't; they simply weren't into theft, but 
rather intrusion.   This caused a strange kink in the 
prosecution's strategy.  LoD were accused of 
"disseminating information about attacking computers to 
other computer hackers in an effort to shift the focus of 
law enforcement to those other hackers and away from the 
Legion of Doom."

	This last accusation (taken directly from a press 
release by the Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task 
Force) sounds particularly far-fetched.  One might 
conclude at this point that investigators would have been 
well-advised to go ahead and "shift their focus" from the 
"Legion of Doom."   Maybe they *should* concentrate on 
"those other hackers" -- the ones who were actually 
stealing money and physical objects.

	But the Hacker Crackdown of 1990 was not a simple 
policing action.  It wasn't meant just to walk the beat in 
cyberspace -- it was a *crackdown,* a deliberate attempt to 
nail the core of the operation, to send a dire and potent 
message that would settle the hash of the digital 
underground for good. 
 
	By this reasoning, Fry Guy wasn't much more than 
the electronic equivalent of a cheap streetcorner dope 
dealer.  As long as the masterminds of LoD were still 
flagrantly operating, pushing their mountains of illicit 
knowledge right and left, and whipping up enthusiasm for 
blatant lawbreaking, then there would be an *infinite 
supply*  of Fry Guys.

         Because LoD were flagrant, they had left trails 
everywhere, to be picked up by law enforcement in New 
York, Indiana, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Missouri, even 
Australia.  But 1990's war on the Legion of Doom was led 
out of Illinois, by the Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse 
Task Force.  

					#

     
	  The Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force, led by 
federal prosecutor William J. Cook, had started in 1987 
and had swiftly become one of the most aggressive local 
"dedicated computer-crime units."  Chicago was a natural 
home for such a group.  The world's first computer 
bulletin-board system had been invented in Illinois.  The 
state of Illinois had some of the nation's first and sternest 
computer crime laws.   Illinois State Police were markedly 
alert to the possibilities of white-collar crime and 
electronic fraud.
  
	And William J. Cook in particular was a rising star in 
electronic crime-busting.   He and his fellow federal 
prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago had a 
tight relation with the Secret Service, especially go-getting 
Chicago-based agent Timothy  Foley.  While Cook and his 
Department of Justice colleagues plotted strategy, Foley 
was their man on the street.

	Throughout the 1980s, the federal government had 
given prosecutors an armory of new, untried legal tools 
against computer crime.  Cook and his colleagues were 
pioneers in the use of these new statutes in the real-life 
cut-and-thrust of the federal courtroom. 
 
	On October 2, 1986, the US Senate had passed the 
"Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" unanimously, but there 
were pitifully few convictions under this statute.  Cook's 
group took their name from this statute, since they were 
determined to transform this powerful but rather 
theoretical Act of Congress into a real-life engine of legal 
destruction against computer fraudsters and scofflaws.

	It was not a question of merely discovering crimes, 
investigating them, and then trying and punishing their 
perpetrators.   The Chicago unit, like most everyone else in 
the business, already *knew* who the bad guys were:  the 
Legion of Doom and the writers and editors of *Phrack.* 
The task at hand was to find some legal means of putting 
these characters away.

	This approach might seem a bit dubious, to someone 
not acquainted with the gritty realities of prosecutorial 
work.  But prosecutors don't put people in jail for crimes 
they have committed; they put people in jail for crimes 
they have committed *that can be proved in court.*   
Chicago federal police put Al Capone in prison for 
income-tax fraud.   Chicago is a big town, with a rough-
and-ready bare-knuckle tradition on both sides of the law. 
    
	Fry Guy had broken the case wide open and alerted 
telco security to the scope of the problem.   But Fry Guy's 
crimes would not put the Atlanta Three behind bars -- 
much less the wacko underground journalists of *Phrack.*  
So on July 22, 1989, the same day that Fry Guy was raided 
in Indiana, the Secret Service descended upon the Atlanta 
Three. 
    
	This was likely inevitable.  By the summer of 1989, law 
enforcement were closing in on the Atlanta Three from at 
least six directions at once.   First, there were the leads 
from Fry Guy, which had led to the DNR registers being 
installed on the lines of the Atlanta Three.  The DNR 
evidence alone would have finished them off, sooner or 
later. 

	But second, the Atlanta lads were already well-known 
to Control-C and his telco security sponsors.  LoD's 
contacts with telco security had made them overconfident 
and even more boastful than usual; they felt that they had 
powerful friends in high places, and that they were being 
openly tolerated by telco security.  But BellSouth's 
Intrusion Task Force were hot on the trail of LoD and 
sparing no effort or expense.

	The Atlanta Three had also been identified by name 
and listed on the extensive anti-hacker files maintained, 
and retailed for pay, by private security operative John 
Maxfield of Detroit.  Maxfield, who had extensive ties to 
telco security and many informants in the underground, 
was a bete noire of the *Phrack* crowd, and the dislike was 
mutual.

	The Atlanta Three themselves had written articles for 
*Phrack.*  This boastful act could not possibly escape telco 
and law enforcement attention.

	"Knightmare," a high-school age hacker from 
Arizona,  was a close friend and disciple of Atlanta LoD, 
but he had been nabbed by the formidable Arizona 
Organized Crime and Racketeering Unit.   Knightmare 
was on some of LoD's favorite boards -- "Black Ice" in 
particular -- and was privy to their secrets.  And to have 
Gail Thackeray, the Assistant Attorney General of Arizona, 
on one's trail was a dreadful peril for any hacker.
 
 	And perhaps worst of all, Prophet had committed a 
major blunder by passing an illicitly copied BellSouth 
computer-file to Knight Lightning, who had published it in 
*Phrack.*   This, as we will see, was an act of dire 
consequence for almost everyone concerned.

	On July 22, 1989, the Secret Service showed up at the 
Leftist's house, where he lived with his parents.  A massive 
squad of some twenty officers surrounded the building: 
Secret Service, federal marshals, local police, possibly 
BellSouth telco security; it was hard to tell in the crush.  
Leftist's dad, at work in his basement office, first noticed a 
muscular stranger in plain clothes crashing through the 
back yard with a drawn pistol.   As more strangers poured 
into the house, Leftist's dad naturally assumed there was 
an armed robbery in progress.

	Like most hacker parents, Leftist's mom and dad had 
only the vaguest notions of what their son had been up to 
all this time.   Leftist had a day-job repairing computer 
hardware.  His obsession with computers seemed a bit 
odd, but harmless enough, and likely to produce a well-
paying career.  The sudden, overwhelming raid left 
Leftist's parents traumatized.

	The Leftist himself had been out after work with his 
co-workers, surrounding a couple of pitchers of 
margaritas.  As he came trucking on tequila-numbed feet 
up the pavement, toting a bag full of floppy-disks, he 
noticed a large number of unmarked cars parked in his 
driveway.  All the cars sported tiny microwave antennas.

	The Secret Service had knocked the front door off its 
hinges, almost flattening his Mom.
  
	Inside, Leftist was greeted by Special Agent James 
Cool of the US Secret Service, Atlanta office.  Leftist was 
flabbergasted.  He'd never met a Secret Service agent 
before.   He could not imagine that he'd ever done 
anything worthy of federal attention.  He'd always figured 
that if his activities became intolerable, one of his contacts 
in telco security would give him a private phone-call and 
tell him to knock it off.
 
	But now Leftist was pat-searched for weapons by grim 
professionals, and his bag of floppies was quickly seized.  
He and his parents were all shepherded into separate 
rooms and grilled at length as a score of officers scoured 
their home for anything electronic.
 
	Leftist was horrified as his treasured IBM AT 
personal computer with its forty-meg hard disk, and his  
recently purchased 80386 IBM-clone with a  whopping 
hundred-meg hard disk, both went swiftly out the door in 
Secret Service custody.  They also seized all his disks, all 
his notebooks, and a tremendous booty in dogeared telco 
documents that Leftist had snitched out of trash 
dumpsters.

	Leftist figured the whole thing for a big 
misunderstanding.  He'd never been into *military*  
computers.  He wasn't a *spy* or a *Communist.*  He  was 
just a good ol' Georgia hacker, and now he just wanted all 
these people out of the house.  But it seemed they 
wouldn't go until he made some kind of statement. 
 
	And so, he levelled with them.

	And that, Leftist said later from his federal prison 
camp in Talladega, Alabama, was a big mistake.

	The Atlanta area was unique, in that it had three 
members of the Legion of Doom who actually occupied 
more or less the same physical  locality.  Unlike the rest of 
LoD, who tended to associate by phone and computer, 
Atlanta LoD actually *were* "tightly knit."  It was no real 
surprise that the Secret Service agents apprehending 
Urvile at the computer-labs at Georgia Tech, would 
discover Prophet with him as well.

	Urvile, a 21-year-old Georgia Tech student in polymer 
chemistry, posed quite a puzzling case for law 
enforcement.  Urvile --  also known as "Necron 99," as well 
as other handles, for he tended to change his cover-alias 
about once a month -- was both an accomplished hacker 
and a fanatic simulation-gamer. 
 
	Simulation games are an unusual hobby; but then 
hackers are unusual people, and their favorite pastimes 
tend to be somewhat out of the ordinary.  The best-known 
American simulation game is probably "Dungeons & 
Dragons," a multi-player parlor entertainment played with 
paper, maps, pencils, statistical tables and a variety of 
oddly-shaped dice.  Players pretend to be heroic 
characters exploring a wholly-invented fantasy world.  The 
fantasy worlds of simulation gaming are commonly 
pseudo-medieval, involving swords and sorcery -- spell-
casting wizards, knights in armor, unicorns and dragons, 
demons and goblins. 

	Urvile and his fellow gamers  preferred their 
fantasies highly technological.   They made use of a game 
known as "G.U.R.P.S.,"  the "Generic Universal Role 
Playing System," published by a company called Steve 
Jackson Games (SJG).

	"G.U.R.P.S."  served as a framework for creating  a 
wide variety of artificial fantasy worlds.  Steve Jackson 
Games published  a smorgasboard of books, full of 
detailed information and gaming hints, which were used 
to flesh-out many different fantastic backgrounds for  the  
basic GURPS framework.  Urvile made extensive use of 
two SJG books called *GURPS High-Tech*  and *GURPS 
Special Ops.* 
 
	In the artificial fantasy-world of *GURPS Special 
Ops,*  players entered a modern  fantasy of intrigue and 
international espionage.   On beginning the game, players 
started small and powerless, perhaps as minor-league CIA 
agents or penny-ante arms dealers.   But as players 
persisted through a series of game sessions (game 
sessions generally lasted for hours, over long, elaborate 
campaigns that might be pursued for months on end)  
then they would achieve new skills, new knowledge, new 
power.  They would acquire and hone new abilities, such as 
marksmanship, karate, wiretapping, or Watergate 
burglary.  They could also win various kinds of imaginary 
booty, like Berettas, or martini shakers, or fast cars with 
ejection seats and machine-guns under the headlights.

	As might be imagined from the complexity of these 
games, Urvile's gaming notes were very detailed and 
extensive.  Urvile was a "dungeon-master," inventing 
scenarios for his fellow gamers, giant simulated 
adventure-puzzles for his friends to unravel.   Urvile's 
game notes covered dozens of pages with all sorts of exotic 
lunacy, all about ninja raids on Libya and break-ins on 
encrypted Red Chinese supercomputers.   His notes were 
written on scrap-paper and kept in loose-leaf binders.

	The handiest scrap paper around Urvile's college 
digs were the many pounds of BellSouth printouts and 
documents that he had snitched out of telco dumpsters.   
His notes were written on the back of misappropriated 
telco property.   Worse yet, the gaming notes were 
chaotically interspersed with Urvile's hand-scrawled 
records involving  *actual computer intrusions*  that he 
had committed.
  
	Not only was it next to impossible to tell Urvile's 
fantasy game-notes from cyberspace "reality," but Urvile 
himself barely made this distinction.  It's no exaggeration 
to say that to Urvile it was *all* a game.   Urvile was very 
bright, highly imaginative, and quite careless of other 
people's notions of propriety.  His connection to "reality" 
was not something to which he paid a great deal of 
attention.
  
	Hacking was a game for Urvile.  It was an amusement 
he was carrying out, it was something he was doing for fun.  
And  Urvile was an obsessive young man.  He could no 
more stop hacking than he could stop in the middle of a 
jigsaw puzzle, or stop in the middle of reading a Stephen 
Donaldson fantasy trilogy.  (The name "Urvile" came from 
a best-selling Donaldson novel.) 
     
	Urvile's airy, bulletproof attitude seriously annoyed 
his interrogators.   First of all, he didn't consider that he'd 
done anything wrong.  There was scarcely a shred of 
honest remorse in him.   On the contrary, he seemed 
privately convinced that his police interrogators were 
operating in a demented fantasy-world all their own.  
Urvile was too polite and well-behaved to say this straight-
out, but his reactions were askew and disquieting.

	For instance, there was the business about LoD's 
ability to monitor phone-calls to the police and Secret 
Service.  Urvile agreed that this was quite possible, and 
posed no big problem for LoD.  In fact, he and his friends 
had kicked the idea around on the "Black Ice" board, 
much as they had discussed many other nifty notions, 
such as building personal flame-throwers and jury-rigging 
fistfulls of blasting-caps.  They had hundreds of dial-up 
numbers for government agencies that they'd gotten 
through scanning Atlanta phones, or had pulled from 
raided VAX/VMS mainframe computers.
  
	Basically, they'd never gotten around to listening in 
on the cops because the idea wasn't interesting enough to 
bother with.  Besides, if they'd been monitoring Secret 
Service phone calls, obviously they'd never have been 
caught in the first place.  Right?

	The Secret Service was less than satisfied with this 
rapier-like hacker logic.

	Then there was the issue of crashing the phone 
system.  No problem, Urvile admitted sunnily.   Atlanta 
LoD could have shut down phone service all over Atlanta 
any time they liked.   *Even the 911 service?*   Nothing 
special about that, Urvile explained patiently.   Bring the 
switch to its knees, with say the UNIX "makedir" bug, and 
911 goes down too as a matter of course.  The 911 system 
wasn't very interesting, frankly.   It might be tremendously 
interesting to cops (for odd reasons of their own), but as 
technical challenges went, the 911 service was yawnsville.

	So of course the Atlanta Three could crash service.  
They probably could have crashed service all over 
BellSouth territory, if they'd worked at it for a while.   But 
Atlanta LoD weren't crashers.   Only losers and rodents 
were crashers.  LoD were *elite.*

	  Urvile was privately convinced that sheer technical 
expertise could win him free of any kind of problem.  As 
far as he was concerned, elite status in the digital 
underground had placed him permanently beyond the 
intellectual grasp of cops and straights.  Urvile had a lot to 
learn.

	Of the three LoD stalwarts, Prophet was in the most 
direct trouble.  Prophet was a UNIX programming expert 
who burrowed in and out of the Internet as a matter of 
course.   He'd started his hacking career at around age 14,  
meddling with a UNIX mainframe system at the 
University of North Carolina. 
 
	Prophet himself had written the handy Legion of 
Doom file "UNIX Use and Security From the Ground Up."   
UNIX  (pronounced "you-nicks")  is a powerful, flexible 
computer operating-system, for multi-user, multi-tasking 
computers.   In 1969, when UNIX was created in Bell Labs, 
such computers were exclusive to large corporations and 
universities, but today UNIX is run on thousands of 
powerful home machines.  UNIX was particularly well-
suited to telecommunications programming, and had 
become a standard in the field.   Naturally, UNIX also 
became a standard for the elite hacker and phone phreak.

	Lately, Prophet had not been so active as Leftist and 
Urvile, but Prophet was a recidivist.   In 1986, when he was 
eighteen, Prophet had been convicted of "unauthorized 
access to a computer network" in North Carolina.  He'd 
been discovered breaking into the Southern Bell Data 
Network, a UNIX-based internal telco network supposedly 
closed to the public.  He'd gotten a typical hacker 
sentence:  six months suspended, 120 hours community 
service, and three years' probation.

	After that humiliating bust, Prophet had gotten rid of 
most of his tonnage of illicit phreak and hacker data, and 
had tried to go straight.  He was, after all, still on probation.  
But by  the autumn of 1988, the temptations of cyberspace 
had proved too much for young Prophet, and he was 
shoulder-to-shoulder with Urvile and Leftist into some of 
the hairiest systems around. 
  
	In early September 1988, he'd broken into BellSouth's 
centralized automation system, AIMSX or "Advanced 
Information Management System."     AIMSX was an 
internal business network for BellSouth, where telco 
employees stored electronic mail, databases, memos, and 
calendars, and did text processing.   Since AIMSX did not 
have public dial-ups, it was considered utterly invisible to 
the public, and was not well-secured -- it didn't even 
require passwords.   Prophet abused an account known as 
"waa1," the personal account of an unsuspecting telco 
employee.   Disguised as the owner of waa1, Prophet made 
about ten visits to AIMSX.

	Prophet did not damage or delete anything in the 
system.  His presence in AIMSX was harmless and almost 
invisible.  But he could not rest content with that.

	One particular piece of processed text on AIMSX was 
a telco document known as "Bell South Standard Practice 
660-225-104SV Control Office Administration of Enhanced 
911 Services for Special Services and Major Account 
Centers dated March 1988."

	Prophet had not been looking for this document.  It 
was merely one among hundreds of similar documents 
with impenetrable titles.  However, having blundered over 
it in the course of his illicit wanderings through AIMSX, he 
decided to take it with him as a trophy.  It might prove very 
useful in some future boasting, bragging, and strutting 
session.   So,  some time in September 1988, Prophet 
ordered the AIMSX mainframe computer to copy this 
document (henceforth called simply  called "the E911 
Document")  and  to transfer this copy to his home 
computer.

	No one noticed that Prophet had done this.  He had 
"stolen" the E911 Document in some sense, but notions of 
property in cyberspace can be tricky.   BellSouth noticed 
nothing wrong, because BellSouth still had their original 
copy.  They had not been "robbed" of the document itself.   
Many people were supposed to copy this document -- 
specifically, people who worked for the nineteen BellSouth 
"special services and major account centers," scattered 
throughout the Southeastern United States.  That was 
what it was for, why it was present on a computer network 
in the first place: so that it could be copied and read -- by 
telco employees.   But now the data had been copied by 
someone who wasn't supposed to look at it.

	Prophet now had his trophy.  But he further decided 
to store yet another copy of the E911 Document on 
another person's computer.  This unwitting person was a 
computer enthusiast named Richard Andrews who lived 
near Joliet, Illinois.  Richard Andrews was a UNIX 
programmer by trade, and ran a powerful UNIX board 
called "Jolnet," in the basement of his house.

	Prophet, using the handle "Robert Johnson," had 
obtained an account on Richard Andrews' computer.  And 
there he stashed the E911 Document, by storing it in his 
own private section of Andrews' computer. 
 
	Why did Prophet do this?  If Prophet had eliminated 
the E911 Document from his own computer, and kept it 
hundreds of miles away, on another machine, under an 
alias, then he might have been fairly safe from discovery 
and prosecution -- although his sneaky action had 
certainly put the unsuspecting Richard Andrews at risk.

	But, like most hackers, Prophet was a pack-rat for 
illicit data.  When it came to the crunch, he could not bear 
to part from his trophy.   When Prophet's place in 
Decatur, Georgia was raided in July 1989, there was the 
E911 Document, a smoking gun.  And there was Prophet in 
the hands of the Secret Service, doing his best to "explain."

	Our story now takes us away from the Atlanta Three 
and their raids of the Summer of 1989.  We must leave 
Atlanta Three "cooperating fully" with their numerous 
investigators.  And  all three of them did cooperate, as 
their  Sentencing Memorandum from the US District 
Court of the Northern Division of Georgia explained  -- 
just before all three of them were sentenced to various 
federal prisons in November 1990. 

	We must now catch up on the other aspects of the 
war on the Legion of Doom.   The war on the Legion was a 
war on a network -- in fact, a network of three networks, 
which intertwined and interrelated in a complex fashion.  
The Legion itself, with Atlanta LoD, and their hanger-on 
Fry Guy, were the first network.  The second network was 
*Phrack* magazine, with its editors and contributors.
  
	The third  network involved the electronic circle 
around a  hacker known as "Terminus."

	The war against these hacker networks was carried 
out by a law enforcement network.  Atlanta LoD  and Fry 
Guy were pursued by USSS agents and federal 
prosecutors in Atlanta, Indiana, and Chicago.  "Terminus" 
found himself pursued by USSS and  federal prosecutors 
from Baltimore and Chicago.  And the war against Phrack 
was almost entirely a Chicago operation.

	The investigation of Terminus involved a great deal 
of energy, mostly from the Chicago Task Force, but it was 
to be the least-known and least-publicized of the 
Crackdown operations.  Terminus, who lived in Maryland, 
was a UNIX programmer and consultant, fairly well-
known (under his given name)  in the UNIX community, 
as an acknowledged expert on AT&T minicomputers.   
Terminus idolized AT&T, especially Bellcore, and longed 
for public recognition as a UNIX expert; his highest 
ambition was to work for Bell Labs. 

	But Terminus had odd friends and a spotted history.   
Terminus had once been  the subject of an admiring 
interview in *Phrack* (Volume II, Issue 14, Phile 2  -- dated 
May 1987).   In this article, *Phrack* co-editor Taran King 
described "Terminus" as an electronics engineer,  5'9", 
brown-haired, born in 1959 -- at 28 years old, quite mature 
for a hacker.

	Terminus had once been sysop of a phreak/hack 
underground board called "MetroNet," which ran on an 
Apple II.  Later he'd replaced "MetroNet" with an 
underground board called "MegaNet," specializing in 
IBMs.  In his younger days, Terminus had written one of 
the very first and most elegant code-scanning programs 
for the IBM-PC.  This program had been widely 
distributed in the underground.  Uncounted legions of PC-
owning  phreaks and hackers had used Terminus's 
scanner  program to rip-off telco codes.  This  feat had not 
escaped the attention of telco security; it hardly could, 
since Terminus's earlier handle, "Terminal Technician," 
was proudly written right on the program.

	When he became a full-time computer professional 
(specializing in telecommunications programming),  he 
adopted the handle Terminus, meant to indicate that he 
had "reached the final point of being a proficient hacker."  
He'd moved up to the UNIX-based "Netsys" board on an 
AT&T computer, with four phone lines and an impressive 
240 megs of storage.   "Netsys" carried complete issues of 
*Phrack,* and Terminus was quite friendly with its 
publishers, Taran King and Knight Lightning.

	In the early 1980s, Terminus had been a regular on 
Plovernet, Pirate-80, Sherwood Forest and Shadowland, all 
well-known pirate boards, all heavily frequented by the 
Legion of Doom.   As it happened, Terminus was never 
officially "in LoD," because he'd never been given the 
official LoD high-sign and back-slap by Legion maven Lex 
Luthor.   Terminus had never physically met anyone from 
LoD.  But that scarcely mattered much -- the Atlanta 
Three themselves had never been officially vetted by Lex, 
either.

	As far as law enforcement was concerned, the issues 
were clear. Terminus was a full-time, adult computer 
professional with particular skills at AT&T software and 
hardware -- but Terminus reeked of the Legion of Doom 
and the underground.

	On February 1, 1990 -- half a month after the Martin 
Luther King Day Crash --  USSS  agents Tim Foley from 
Chicago, and Jack Lewis from the Baltimore office, 
accompanied by AT&T security officer Jerry Dalton, 
travelled to Middle Town, Maryland.  There they grilled 
Terminus in his home (to the stark terror of his wife and 
small children), and, in their customary fashion, hauled 
his computers out the door.

	The Netsys machine proved to contain a plethora of 
arcane UNIX software -- proprietary source code formally 
owned by AT&T.  Software such as:  UNIX System Five 
Release 3.2; UNIX SV Release 3.1;  UUCP 
communications software; KORN SHELL; RFS; IWB; 
WWB; DWB; the C++ programming language; PMON; 
TOOL CHEST; QUEST; DACT, and S FIND.

	In the long-established piratical tradition of the 
underground,  Terminus had been trading this illicitly-
copied  software with a small circle of fellow UNIX 
programmers.   Very unwisely, he had stored seven years 
of his electronic mail on his Netsys machine, which 
documented all the friendly arrangements he had made 
with his various colleagues.

	Terminus had not crashed the AT&T phone system 
on January 15.  He was, however, blithely running a not-
for-profit AT&T software-piracy ring.  This was not an 
activity AT&T found amusing.   AT&T security officer Jerry 
Dalton valued this "stolen" property at over three hundred 
thousand dollars.

	AT&T's entry into the tussle of free enterprise had 
been complicated by the new, vague groundrules of the 
information economy.   Until the break-up of Ma Bell, 
AT&T was forbidden to sell computer hardware or 
software.  Ma Bell was the phone company; Ma Bell was 
not allowed to use the enormous revenue from telephone 
utilities, in order to finance any entry into the computer 
market.

	AT&T nevertheless invented the UNIX operating 
system.   And somehow AT&T managed to make UNIX a 
minor source of income.  Weirdly, UNIX was not sold as 
computer software, but actually retailed under an obscure 
regulatory exemption allowing sales of surplus equipment 
and scrap.  Any bolder attempt to promote or retail UNIX 
would have aroused angry legal opposition from computer 
companies.  Instead, UNIX was licensed to universities, at 
modest rates, where the acids of academic freedom ate 
away steadily at AT&T's proprietary rights.

	Come the breakup, AT&T recognized that UNIX was 
a potential gold-mine.   By now, large chunks of UNIX 
code had been created that were not AT&T's, and were 
being sold by others.  An entire rival UNIX-based 
operating system had arisen in Berkeley, California  (one 
of the world's great founts of ideological hackerdom).   
Today, "hackers" commonly consider "Berkeley UNIX" to 
be technically superior to AT&T's "System V UNIX," but 
AT&T has not allowed mere technical elegance to intrude 
on the real-world business of marketing proprietary 
software.   AT&T has made its own code deliberately 
incompatible with other folks' UNIX, and has written code 
that it can prove is copyrightable, even if that code 
happens to be somewhat awkward -- "kludgey."   AT&T 
UNIX user licenses are serious business agreements, 
replete with very clear copyright statements and non-
disclosure clauses.

	AT&T has not exactly kept the UNIX cat in the bag, 
but it kept a grip on its scruff with some success.   By the 
rampant, explosive standards of software piracy, AT&T 
UNIX source code is heavily copyrighted, well-guarded, 
well-licensed.   UNIX was traditionally run only on 
mainframe machines, owned by large groups of suit-and-
tie professionals, rather than on bedroom machines where 
people can get up to easy mischief.

	And AT&T UNIX source code is serious high-level 
programming.   The number of skilled UNIX 
programmers with any actual motive to swipe UNIX 
source code is small.  It's tiny, compared to the tens of 
thousands prepared to rip-off, say, entertaining PC games 
like "Leisure Suit Larry."

	But by 1989, the warez-d00d underground, in the 
persons of Terminus and his friends,  was gnawing at 
AT&T UNIX.  And the property in question was not sold 
for twenty bucks over the counter at the local branch of 
Babbage's or Egghead's;  this was massive, sophisticated, 
multi-line, multi-author corporate code worth tens of 
thousands of dollars.

	It must be recognized at this point that Terminus's 
purported ring of UNIX software pirates had not actually 
made any money from their suspected crimes.  The 
$300,000 dollar figure bandied about for the contents of 
Terminus's computer did not mean that Terminus was in 
actual illicit possession of three hundred thousand of 
AT&T's  dollars.   Terminus was shipping software back 
and forth, privately, person to person, for free.  He was not 
making a commercial business of piracy.  He hadn't asked 
for money; he didn't take money.  He lived quite modestly.

	AT&T employees -- as well as freelance UNIX 
consultants, like Terminus -- commonly worked with 
"proprietary" AT&T software, both in the office and at 
home on their private machines.   AT&T rarely sent 
security officers out to comb the hard disks of its 
consultants.   Cheap freelance UNIX  contractors were 
quite useful to AT&T; they didn't have health insurance or 
retirement programs, much less union membership in the 
Communication Workers of America.  They were humble 
digital drudges, wandering with mop and bucket through 
the Great Technological Temple of AT&T; but when the 
Secret Service arrived at their homes, it seemed they were 
eating with company silverware and sleeping on company 
sheets!  Outrageously, they behaved as if the things they 
worked with every day belonged to them!

	And these were no mere hacker teenagers with their 
hands full of trash-paper and their noses pressed to the 
corporate windowpane.  These guys were UNIX wizards, 
not only carrying AT&T data in their machines and their 
heads, but eagerly networking about it, over machines that 
were far more powerful than anything previously 
imagined in private hands.  How do you keep people 
disposable, yet assure their awestruck respect for your 
property?  It was a dilemma.

	  Much UNIX code was public-domain, available for 
free.   Much "proprietary" UNIX code had been 
extensively re-written, perhaps altered so much that it 
became an entirely new product -- or perhaps not.   
Intellectual property rights for software developers were, 
and are, extraordinarily complex and confused.   And 
software "piracy," like the private copying of videos, is one 
of the most widely practiced "crimes" in the world today.

	The USSS were not experts in UNIX or familiar with 
the customs of its use.   The United States Secret Service, 
considered as a body, did not have one single person in it 
who could program in a UNIX environment -- no, not even 
one.   The Secret Service *were* making extensive use of 
expert help, but the "experts" they had chosen were AT&T 
and Bellcore security officials, the very victims of the 
purported crimes under investigation, the very people 
whose interest in AT&T's  "proprietary" software was most 
pronounced.

	On February 6, 1990, Terminus was arrested by Agent 
Lewis.  Eventually, Terminus would be sent to prison for 
his illicit use of a piece of AT&T software.

	The issue of pirated AT&T software would bubble 
along in the background during the war on the Legion of 
Doom.  Some half-dozen of Terminus's on-line 
acquaintances, including people in Illinois, Texas and 
California, were grilled by the Secret Service in connection 
with the illicit copying of software.   Except for Terminus, 
however, none were charged with a crime.  None of them 
shared his peculiar prominence in the hacker 
underground.

	But that did not meant that these people would, or 
could, stay out of trouble.   The transferral of illicit data in 
cyberspace is hazy and ill-defined business, with 
paradoxical dangers for everyone concerned:  hackers, 
signal carriers, board owners,  cops, prosecutors, even 
random passers-by.  Sometimes, well-meant attempts to 
avert trouble  or punish wrongdoing bring more trouble 
than  would simple ignorance, indifference or impropriety.

	Terminus's "Netsys" board was not a common-or-
garden bulletin board system, though it had most of the 
usual functions of a board.  Netsys was not a stand-alone 
machine, but part of the globe-spanning  "UUCP" 
cooperative network.  The UUCP network uses a set of 
Unix software programs called "Unix-to-Unix Copy," which 
allows Unix systems to throw data to one another at high 
speed through the public telephone network.   UUCP is a 
radically decentralized, not-for-profit network of UNIX 
computers.   There are tens of thousands of these UNIX 
machines.  Some are small, but many are powerful and 
also link to other networks.  UUCP has certain arcane links 
to  major networks such as JANET, EasyNet, BITNET, 
JUNET, VNET, DASnet, PeaceNet and FidoNet, as well as 
the gigantic Internet.  (The so-called "Internet" is not 
actually a network itself, but rather an "internetwork" 
connections standard that allows several globe-spanning 
computer networks to communicate with one another.   
Readers fascinated by the weird and intricate tangles of 
modern computer networks may enjoy John S. 
Quarterman's authoritative 719-page explication, *The 
Matrix,* Digital Press, 1990.) 
 
	A skilled user of Terminus' UNIX machine could 
send and receive electronic mail from almost any major 
computer network in the world.  Netsys was not called a 
"board" per se, but rather a "node."   "Nodes" were larger, 
faster, and more sophisticated than mere "boards," and 
for hackers, to hang out on internationally-connected 
"nodes" was quite the step up from merely hanging out on 
local "boards."

	Terminus's Netsys node in Maryland had a number 
of direct links to other, similar UUCP  nodes, run by 
people who shared his interests and at least something of 
his free-wheeling attitude.   One of these nodes was Jolnet, 
owned by Richard Andrews, who, like Terminus, was an 
independent UNIX consultant.   Jolnet also ran UNIX, and 
could be contacted at high speed by mainframe machines 
from all over the world.  Jolnet was quite a sophisticated 
piece of work, technically speaking, but it was still run by 
an individual, as a private, not-for-profit hobby.   Jolnet was 
mostly used by other UNIX programmers -- for mail, 
storage, and access to networks.  Jolnet supplied access 
network access to about two hundred people, as well as a 
local junior college.

	Among its various features and services, Jolnet also 
carried *Phrack* magazine.

	For reasons of his own, Richard Andrews had become 
suspicious of a new user called  "Robert Johnson."  Richard 
Andrews took it upon himself to have a look at what 
"Robert Johnson" was storing in Jolnet.  And Andrews 
found the E911 Document.

	"Robert Johnson" was the Prophet from the Legion of 
Doom, and the E911 Document was illicitly copied data 
from Prophet's raid on the BellSouth computers.

	The E911 Document, a particularly illicit piece of 
digital property, was about to resume its long, complex, 
and disastrous career.

	It struck Andrews as fishy that someone not a 
telephone employee should have a document referring to 
the "Enhanced 911 System."  Besides,  the document itself 
bore an obvious warning.

	"WARNING:  NOT FOR USE OR DISCLOSURE 
OUTSIDE BELLSOUTH OR ANY OF ITS SUBSIDIARIES 
EXCEPT UNDER WRITTEN AGREEMENT."

	These standard nondisclosure tags are often 
appended to all sorts of corporate material.   Telcos as a 
species are particularly notorious for stamping most 
everything in sight as "not for use or disclosure."  Still, this 
particular piece of data was  about the 911 System.  That 
sounded bad to  Rich Andrews.

	Andrews was not prepared to ignore this sort of 
trouble.  He thought it would be wise to pass the document 
along to a friend and acquaintance on the UNIX network, 
for consultation.  So, around September 1988, Andrews 
sent yet another copy of the E911 Document electronically 
to an AT&T employee, one Charles Boykin, who ran a 
UNIX-based node called "attctc" in Dallas, Texas.

	"Attctc" was the property of AT&T, and was run from 
AT&T's Customer Technology Center  in Dallas, hence the 
name "attctc."  "Attctc" was better-known as "Killer," the 
name of the machine that the system was running on.  
"Killer" was a hefty, powerful, AT&T 3B2 500 model, a 
multi-user, multi-tasking UNIX platform with 32 meg of 
memory and a mind-boggling 3.2 Gigabytes of storage.  
When  Killer had first arrived in Texas, in 1985, the 3B2 
had been one of AT&T's great white hopes for going head-
to-head with IBM for the corporate computer-hardware 
market.  "Killer" had been shipped to the Customer 
Technology Center in the Dallas Infomart, essentially a 
high-technology mall, and there it sat, a demonstration 
model.

	Charles Boykin, a veteran AT&T hardware and digital 
communications expert, was a local technical backup man 
for the AT&T 3B2 system.   As a display model in the 
Infomart mall, "Killer" had little to do, and it seemed a 
shame to waste the system's capacity.  So Boykin 
ingeniously wrote some UNIX bulletin-board software for 
"Killer," and plugged the machine in to the local phone 
network.   "Killer's" debut in late 1985 made it the first 
publicly available UNIX site in the state of Texas.  Anyone 
who wanted to play was welcome.

	The machine immediately attracted an electronic 
community.  It joined the UUCP network, and offered 
network links to over eighty other computer sites, all of 
which became dependent on Killer for their links to the 
greater world of cyberspace.   And it wasn't just for the big 
guys; personal computer users also stored freeware 
programs for the Amiga, the Apple, the IBM and the 
Macintosh on Killer's vast 3,200 meg archives.  At one 
time, Killer had the largest library of public-domain 
Macintosh software in Texas.

	Eventually, Killer attracted about 1,500 users, all 
busily communicating, uploading and downloading, 
getting mail, gossipping, and linking to arcane and distant 
networks.

	  Boykin received no pay for running Killer.  He 
considered it good publicity for the AT&T 3B2 system 
(whose sales were somewhat less than stellar), but he also 
simply enjoyed the vibrant community his skill had 
created.   He gave away the bulletin-board UNIX software 
he had written, free of charge.

	In the UNIX programming community, Charlie 
Boykin had the reputation of a warm, open-hearted, level-
headed kind of guy.   In 1989, a group of Texan UNIX 
professionals voted Boykin "System Administrator of the 
Year."   He was considered a fellow you could trust for 
good advice.

	In September 1988, without warning, the E911 
Document came plunging into Boykin's life, forwarded by 
Richard Andrews.  Boykin immediately recognized that 
the Document was hot property.   He was not a voice-
communications man, and knew little about the ins and 
outs of the Baby Bells, but he certainly knew what the 911 
System was, and he was angry to see confidential data 
about it in the hands of a nogoodnik.  This was clearly a 
matter for telco security.  So, on September 21, 1988,  
Boykin made yet *another* copy of the  E911 Document 
and passed this one along to a professional acquaintance 
of his, one Jerome Dalton, from AT&T Corporate 
Information Security.   Jerry Dalton was the very fellow 
who would later raid Terminus's house.

	From AT&T's security division, the E911 Document 
went to Bellcore.

	Bellcore (or BELL COmmunications REsearch)  had 
once been the central laboratory of the Bell System.  Bell 
Labs employees had invented the UNIX operating 
system.  Now Bellcore was a quasi-independent, jointly 
owned company that  acted as the research arm for all 
seven of the Baby Bell RBOCs.   Bellcore was in a good 
position to co-ordinate security technology and 
consultation for the RBOCs, and the gentleman in charge 
of this effort was Henry M. Kluepfel, a veteran of the Bell 
System who had worked there for twenty-four years.

	On October  13, 1988, Dalton passed the E911 
Document to Henry Kluepfel.  Kluepfel, a veteran expert 
witness in telecommunications fraud and computer-fraud 
cases, had certainly seen worse trouble than this.   He 
recognized the document for what it was:  a trophy from a 
hacker break-in.

	However, whatever harm had been done in the 
intrusion was presumably old news.   At this point there 
seemed little to be done.  Kluepfel made a careful note of 
the circumstances and shelved the problem for the time 
being.

	Whole months passed.

	February 1989 arrived.  The Atlanta Three were living 
it up in Bell South's switches, and had not yet met their 
comeuppance.   The Legion was thriving.  So was *Phrack* 
magazine.   A good six months had passed since Prophet's  
AIMSX break-in.  Prophet, as hackers will, grew weary of 
sitting on his laurels.  "Knight Lightning" and "Taran 
King,"  the editors of *Phrack,* were always begging 
Prophet for material they could publish.   Prophet decided 
that the heat must be off by this time, and that he could 
safely brag, boast, and strut.

	So he sent a copy of the E911 Document -- yet 
another one -- from Rich Andrews' Jolnet machine to 
Knight Lightning's  BITnet account at the University of 
Missouri.

	Let's review the fate of the document so far.

	0.  The original E911 Document.  This in the AIMSX 
system on a mainframe computer in Atlanta, available to 
hundreds of people, but all of them, presumably, 
BellSouth employees.   An unknown number of them may 
have their own copies of this document, but they are all 
professionals and all trusted by the phone company.

	1.  Prophet's illicit copy, at home on his own computer 
in Decatur, Georgia.

	2.  Prophet's back-up copy, stored on Rich Andrew's 
Jolnet machine in the basement of Rich Andrews'  house 
near Joliet Illinois.

	3.  Charles Boykin's copy on "Killer" in Dallas, Texas, 
sent by Rich Andrews from Joliet.

	4.  Jerry Dalton's copy at AT&T Corporate 
Information Security in New Jersey, sent from Charles 
Boykin in Dallas.

	5.  Henry Kluepfel's copy at Bellcore security 
headquarters in New Jersey, sent by Dalton.

	6.  Knight Lightning's copy, sent by Prophet from  
Rich Andrews' machine, and now in Columbia, Missouri.

	 We can see that the "security" situation of this 
proprietary document, once dug out of AIMSX,  swiftly 
became bizarre.   Without any money changing hands, 
without any particular special effort, this data had been 
reproduced at least six times and had spread itself all over 
the continent.  By far the worst, however, was yet to come.

	In February 1989, Prophet and Knight Lightning 
bargained electronically over the fate of this trophy.  
Prophet wanted to boast, but, at the same time, scarcely 
wanted to be caught.

	For his part, Knight Lightning was eager to publish as 
much of the document as he could manage.   Knight 
Lightning was a fledgling political-science major with a 
particular interest in freedom-of-information issues.  He 
would gladly publish most anything that would reflect 
glory on the prowess of the underground and embarrass 
the telcos.   However, Knight Lightning himself had 
contacts in telco security, and sometimes consulted them 
on material he'd received that might be too dicey for 
publication.

	Prophet and  Knight Lightning decided to edit the 
E911 Document so as  to delete most of its identifying 
traits.   First of all, its large "NOT FOR USE OR 
DISCLOSURE" warning had to go.  Then there were other 
matters.  For instance, it listed the office telephone 
numbers of several BellSouth 911 specialists in Florida.  If 
these phone numbers were published in *Phrack,* the 
BellSouth employees involved would very likely be 
hassled by phone phreaks, which would anger BellSouth 
no end, and pose a definite operational hazard for both 
Prophet and *Phrack.*

	So Knight Lightning cut the Document almost in half, 
removing the phone numbers and some of the touchier 
and more specific information.  He passed it back 
electronically to Prophet;  Prophet was still nervous, so 
Knight Lightning cut a bit more.  They finally agreed that 
it was ready to go, and that it would be published in 
*Phrack* under the pseudonym, "The Eavesdropper."

	And this was done on February 25, 1989.

	The twenty-fourth issue of *Phrack*  featured a chatty 
interview with co-ed phone-phreak "Chanda Leir," three 
articles on BITNET and its links to other computer 
networks,  an article on 800 and 900 numbers by "Unknown 
User,"  "VaxCat's" article on telco basics (slyly entitled 
"Lifting Ma Bell's Veil of Secrecy,)" and the usual "Phrack 
World News."

	The News section, with painful irony, featured an 
extended account of the sentencing of "Shadowhawk,"  an 
eighteen-year-old Chicago hacker who had just been put 
in federal prison by William J. Cook himself.

	And then there were the two articles by "The 
Eavesdropper."   The first was the  edited E911 Document, 
now titled "Control Office Administration Of Enhanced 
911 Services for Special Services and Major Account 
Centers."  Eavesdropper's second article was a glossary of 
terms explaining the blizzard of telco acronyms and 
buzzwords in the E911 Document.

	The hapless document was now distributed, in the 
usual *Phrack* routine, to a good one hundred and fifty 
sites.  Not a hundred and fifty *people,* mind you -- a 
hundred and fifty *sites,* some of these sites linked to 
UNIX nodes or bulletin board systems, which themselves 
had readerships of tens, dozens, even hundreds of people.

	This was February 1989.  Nothing happened 
immediately.  Summer came, and the Atlanta crew were 
raided by the Secret Service.   Fry Guy was apprehended.  
Still nothing whatever happened to *Phrack.* Six more 
issues of *Phrack* came out, 30 in all, more or less on a 
monthly schedule.  Knight Lightning and co-editor Taran 
King went untouched.

	*Phrack* tended to duck and cover whenever the 
heat came down.  During the summer busts of 1987 -- 
(hacker busts tended to cluster in summer, perhaps 
because hackers were easier to find at home than in 
college) -- *Phrack* had ceased publication for several 
months, and laid low.   Several LoD hangers-on had been 
arrested, but nothing had happened to the *Phrack*  crew, 
the premiere gossips of the underground.  In 1988, 
*Phrack* had been taken over by a new editor, "Crimson 
Death," a raucous youngster with a taste for anarchy files.

	 1989, however, looked like a bounty year for the 
underground.  Knight Lightning and his co-editor Taran 
King took up the reins again, and *Phrack* flourished 
throughout 1989.   Atlanta LoD went down hard in the 
summer of 1989, but *Phrack* rolled merrily on.   Prophet's  
E911 Document seemed unlikely to cause *Phrack* any 
trouble.  By January 1990, it had been available in 
*Phrack* for almost a year.   Kluepfel and Dalton, officers 
of Bellcore and AT&T  security, had possessed the 
document for sixteen months -- in fact, they'd had it even 
before Knight Lightning himself, and had done nothing in 
particular to stop its distribution.  They hadn't even told 
Rich Andrews or Charles Boykin to erase the copies from 
their UNIX nodes, Jolnet and Killer.

	But then came the monster Martin Luther King Day 
Crash of January 15, 1990.

	A flat three days later, on January 18,  four agents 
showed up at Knight Lightning's fraternity house.   One 
was Timothy Foley, the second Barbara Golden, both of 
them Secret Service agents from the Chicago office.   Also 
along was a University of Missouri security officer, and 
Reed Newlin, a security man from Southwestern Bell, the 
RBOC having jurisdiction over Missouri.

	Foley accused Knight Lightning of causing the 
nationwide crash of the phone system.

	Knight Lightning was aghast at this allegation.   On 
the face of it, the suspicion was not entirely implausible -- 
though Knight Lightning knew that he himself hadn't 
done it.   Plenty of hot-dog hackers had bragged that they 
could crash the phone system, however.  "Shadowhawk," 
for instance, the Chicago hacker whom William Cook had 
recently put in jail, had several times  boasted on boards 
that he could "shut down AT&T's public switched 
network."

	 And now this event, or something that looked just 
like it, had actually taken place.  The Crash had lit a fire 
under the Chicago Task Force.  And the former fence-
sitters at Bellcore and AT&T were now ready to roll.  The 
consensus among telco security -- already horrified by the 
skill of the BellSouth intruders  -- was that the digital 
underground was out of hand.  LoD and *Phrack* must go.

	And in publishing Prophet's E911 Document, 
*Phrack* had provided law enforcement with what 
appeared to be a powerful legal weapon.

	Foley confronted Knight Lightning about the  E911 
Document.

	Knight Lightning was cowed.  He immediately began 
"cooperating fully" in the usual tradition of the digital 
underground.

	He gave Foley a complete run of *Phrack,*printed 
out in a set of three-ring binders.   He handed over his 
electronic mailing list of *Phrack* subscribers. Knight 
Lightning was grilled for four hours by Foley and his 
cohorts.  Knight Lightning admitted that Prophet had 
passed him the E911 Document, and he admitted that he 
had known it was stolen booty from a hacker raid on a 
telephone company.  Knight Lightning signed a statement 
to this effect, and agreed, in writing, to cooperate with 
investigators.

	Next day -- January 19, 1990, a Friday  -- the Secret 
Service returned with a search warrant, and thoroughly 
searched Knight Lightning's upstairs room in the 
fraternity house.   They took all his floppy disks, though, 
interestingly, they left Knight Lightning in possession of 
both his computer and his modem.  (The computer had no 
hard disk, and in Foley's judgement was not a store of 
evidence.)   But this was a very minor bright spot among 
Knight Lightning's rapidly multiplying troubles.  By this 
time, Knight Lightning was in plenty of hot water, not only 
with federal police, prosecutors, telco investigators, and 
university security, but with the elders of his own campus 
fraternity, who were outraged to think that they had been 
unwittingly harboring a federal computer-criminal.

	On Monday, Knight Lightning was summoned to 
Chicago, where he was further grilled by Foley and USSS 
veteran agent Barbara Golden, this time with an attorney 
present.  And on Tuesday, he was formally indicted by a 
federal grand jury.

	The trial of Knight Lightning, which occurred on July 
24-27, 1990, was the crucial show-trial of the Hacker 
Crackdown.  We will examine the trial at some length in 
Part Four of this book.

	In the meantime, we must continue our dogged 
pursuit of the E911 Document.

	It must have been clear by January 1990 that the E911 
Document, in the form *Phrack* had published it back in 
February 1989, had gone off at the speed of light in at least 
a hundred and fifty different directions.   To attempt to put 
this electronic genie back in the bottle was flatly 
impossible.

	And yet, the E911 Document was *still* stolen 
property, formally and legally speaking.  Any electronic 
transference of this document, by anyone unauthorized to 
have it, could be interpreted as an act of wire fraud.   
Interstate transfer of stolen property, including electronic 
property, was a federal crime.

	The Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force 
had been assured that the E911 Document was worth a 
hefty sum of money.  In fact, they had a precise estimate 
of its worth from BellSouth security personnel:  $79,449.   A 
sum of this scale seemed to warrant vigorous prosecution.  
Even if the damage could not be undone, at least this large 
sum offered a good legal pretext for stern punishment of 
the thieves.   It seemed likely to impress judges and juries.  
And it could be used in court to mop up the Legion of 
Doom.

	The Atlanta crowd was already in the bag, by the time 
the Chicago Task Force had gotten around to *Phrack.* 
But the Legion was a hydra-headed thing.   In late 89, a 
brand-new Legion of Doom board, "Phoenix Project," had 
gone up in Austin, Texas.  Phoenix Project was sysoped by 
no less a man than the Mentor himself, ably assisted by 
University of Texas student and hardened Doomster "Erik 
Bloodaxe."

	As we have seen from his *Phrack* manifesto, the 
Mentor was a hacker zealot who regarded computer 
intrusion as something close to a moral duty.  Phoenix 
Project  was an ambitious effort, intended to revive the 
digital underground to what Mentor considered the full 
flower of the early 80s.  The Phoenix board would also 
boldly bring elite hackers face-to-face with the telco 
"opposition."  On "Phoenix," America's cleverest hackers 
would supposedly shame the telco squareheads out of 
their stick-in-the-mud attitudes, and perhaps convince 
them that the Legion of Doom elite were really an all-right 
crew.  The  premiere of "Phoenix Project" was heavily 
trumpeted by *Phrack,* and "Phoenix Project" carried a 
complete run of *Phrack* issues, including the E911 
Document as *Phrack* had published it.

	Phoenix Project was only one of many -- possibly 
hundreds -- of nodes and boards all over America that 
were in guilty possession of the E911 Document.  But 
Phoenix was an outright, unashamed Legion of Doom 
board.  Under Mentor's guidance, it was flaunting itself in 
the face of telco security personnel. Worse yet, it was 
actively trying to *win them over* as sympathizers for the 
digital underground elite.   "Phoenix" had no cards or 
codes on it.  Its hacker elite considered Phoenix at least 
technically legal.   But Phoenix was a corrupting influence,  
where hacker anarchy was eating away like digital acid at 
the underbelly of corporate propriety.

	The Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force 
now prepared to descend upon Austin, Texas.

	Oddly, not one but *two* trails of the Task Force's 
investigation led toward Austin.  The city of Austin, like 
Atlanta, had made itself a bulwark of the Sunbelt's 
Information Age, with a strong university research 
presence, and a number of cutting-edge electronics 
companies, including Motorola, Dell, CompuAdd, IBM, 
Sematech and MCC.

	Where computing machinery went, hackers 
generally followed.  Austin boasted not only "Phoenix 
Project," currently LoD's most flagrant underground 
board, but a number of UNIX  nodes.

	One of these nodes was "Elephant," run by a UNIX 
consultant named Robert Izenberg.  Izenberg, in search of 
a relaxed Southern lifestyle and a lowered cost-of-living, 
had recently migrated to Austin from New Jersey.  In New 
Jersey, Izenberg had worked for an independent 
contracting company, programming UNIX code for AT&T 
itself.  "Terminus" had been a frequent user on Izenberg's 
privately owned Elephant node.

	Having interviewed Terminus and examined the 
records on Netsys, the Chicago Task Force were now 
convinced that they had discovered an underground gang 
of UNIX software pirates, who were demonstrably guilty of 
interstate trafficking in illicitly copied  AT&T source code.  
Izenberg was swept into the dragnet around Terminus, the 
self-proclaimed ultimate UNIX hacker.

	Izenberg, in Austin, had settled down into a UNIX job 
with a Texan branch of IBM.  Izenberg was no longer 
working as a contractor for AT&T, but he had friends in 
New Jersey, and he still logged on to AT&T UNIX 
computers back in New Jersey, more or less whenever it 
pleased him.  Izenberg's activities appeared highly 
suspicious to the Task Force.  Izenberg might well be 
breaking into AT&T computers, swiping AT&T software, 
and passing it to  Terminus and other possible 
confederates, through the UNIX node network.  And this 
data was worth, not merely $79,499, but hundreds of 
thousands of dollars!

	On February 21, 1990, Robert Izenberg arrived home 
from work at IBM to find that all the computers had  
mysteriously vanished from his Austin apartment.  
Naturally he assumed that he had been robbed.  His 
"Elephant" node, his other machines, his notebooks, his 
disks, his tapes, all gone!  However, nothing much else 
seemed disturbed -- the place had not been ransacked.

	The puzzle becaming much stranger some five 
minutes later.   Austin U. S. Secret Service Agent Al Soliz, 
accompanied by University of Texas campus-security 
officer Larry Coutorie and the ubiquitous Tim Foley, made 
their appearance at Izenberg's door.  They were in plain 
clothes: slacks, polo shirts.  They came in, and Tim Foley 
accused Izenberg of belonging to the Legion of Doom.

	Izenberg told them that he had never heard of the 
"Legion of Doom."  And what about a certain stolen E911 
Document, that posed a direct threat to the police 
emergency lines?   Izenberg claimed that he'd never 
heard of that, either.

	His interrogators found this difficult to believe.  
Didn't he know Terminus?

	Who?

	They gave him Terminus's real name.  Oh yes, said 
Izenberg.  He knew *that* guy all right -- he was leading 
discussions on the Internet about AT&T computers, 
especially the AT&T 3B2.

	AT&T had thrust this machine into the marketplace, 
but, like many of AT&T's ambitious attempts to enter the 
computing arena, the 3B2 project had something less than 
a glittering success.   Izenberg himself had been a 
contractor for the division of AT&T that supported the 3B2.   
The entire division had been shut down.

	  Nowadays, the cheapest and quickest way to get 
help with this fractious piece of machinery was to join one 
of Terminus's discussion groups on the Internet, where 
friendly and knowledgeable hackers would help you for 
free.  Naturally the remarks within this group were less 
than flattering about the Death Star....  was *that* the 
problem?

	Foley told Izenberg that Terminus had been 
acquiring hot software through his, Izenberg's, machine.

	Izenberg shrugged this off.   A good eight megabytes 
of data flowed through his UUCP site every day.   UUCP 
nodes spewed data like fire hoses.  Elephant had been 
directly linked to Netsys -- not surprising, since Terminus 
was a 3B2 expert and Izenberg had been a 3B2 contractor.  
Izenberg was also linked to "attctc" and the University of 
Texas.   Terminus was a well-known UNIX expert, and 
might have been up to all manner of hijinks on Elephant.  
Nothing Izenberg could do about that.  That was 
physically impossible.  Needle in a haystack.

	 In a four-hour grilling, Foley urged Izenberg to come 
clean and admit that he was in conspiracy with Terminus, 
and a member of the Legion of Doom.

	Izenberg denied this.  He was no weirdo teenage 
hacker -- he was thirty-two years old, and didn't even have 
a "handle."  Izenberg was a former TV technician and 
electronics specialist who had drifted into UNIX 
consulting as a full-grown adult.   Izenberg had never met 
Terminus, physically.  He'd once bought a cheap high-
speed modem from him, though.

	Foley told him that this modem (a Telenet T2500 
which ran at 19.2 kilobaud, and which had just gone out 
Izenberg's door in Secret Service custody)  was likely hot 
property.  Izenberg was taken aback to hear this; but then 
again, most of Izenberg's equipment, like that of most 
freelance professionals in the industry, was discounted, 
passed hand-to-hand through various kinds of barter and 
gray-market.   There was no proof that the modem was 
stolen, and even if it was, Izenberg hardly saw how that 
gave them the right to take every electronic item in his 
house.

	 Still, if the United States Secret Service figured they 
needed his computer for national security reasons -- or 
whatever -- then Izenberg would not kick.  He figured he 
would somehow make the sacrifice of his twenty thousand 
dollars' worth of professional equipment, in the spirit of 
full cooperation and good citizenship.

	Robert Izenberg was not arrested.  Izenberg was not 
charged with any crime.  His UUCP node -- full of some 
140 megabytes of the files, mail, and data of himself and 
his dozen or so entirely innocent users --  went out the door 
as "evidence."  Along with the disks and tapes, Izenberg 
had lost about 800 megabytes of data.

	Six months would pass before Izenberg decided to 
phone the Secret Service and ask how the case was going.  
That was the first time that Robert Izenberg would ever 
hear the name of William Cook.  As of January 1992, a full 
two years after the seizure, Izenberg, still not charged with 
any crime, would be struggling through the morass of the 
courts, in hope of recovering his thousands of dollars' 
worth of seized equipment.

	In the meantime, the Izenberg case received 
absolutely no press coverage.   The Secret Service had 
walked into an Austin home, removed a UNIX bulletin-
board system, and met with no operational difficulties 
whatsoever.

	Except that word of a crackdown had percolated 
through the Legion of Doom.   "The Mentor" voluntarily 
shut down "The Phoenix Project."  It seemed a pity, 
especially as telco security employees had, in fact, shown 
up on Phoenix, just as he had hoped -- along with the usual 
motley crowd of LoD heavies, hangers-on, phreaks, 
hackers and wannabes.  There was "Sandy" Sandquist 
from US SPRINT security, and some guy named Henry 
Kluepfel, from Bellcore itself!  Kluepfel had been trading 
friendly banter with hackers on Phoenix since January 
30th (two weeks after the Martin Luther King Day Crash).  
The presence of such a stellar telco official seemed quite 
the coup for Phoenix Project.

	Still, Mentor could judge the climate.  Atlanta in 
ruins, *Phrack* in deep trouble, something weird going on 
with UNIX nodes -- discretion was advisable.  Phoenix 
Project went off-line.

	Kluepfel, of course, had been monitoring this LoD 
bulletin board for his own purposes -- and those of the 
Chicago unit.   As far back as June 1987, Kluepfel had 
logged on to a Texas underground board called "Phreak 
Klass 2600."  There he'd discovered an Chicago youngster 
named "Shadowhawk," strutting and boasting about rifling 
AT&T computer files, and bragging of his ambitions to 
riddle AT&T's Bellcore computers with trojan horse 
programs.  Kluepfel had passed the news to Cook in 
Chicago, Shadowhawk's computers had gone out the door 
in Secret Service custody, and Shadowhawk himself had 
gone to jail.

	Now it was Phoenix Project's turn.   Phoenix Project 
postured about "legality" and "merely intellectual 
interest," but it reeked of the underground.  It had 
*Phrack* on it.  It had the E911 Document.  It had a lot of 
dicey talk about breaking into systems, including some 
bold and reckless stuff about a supposed "decryption 
service" that Mentor and friends were planning to run, to 
help crack encrypted passwords off of hacked systems.

	Mentor was an adult.   There was a  bulletin board at 
his place of work, as well.  Kleupfel logged onto this board, 
too, and discovered it to be called "Illuminati."  It was run 
by some company called Steve Jackson Games.

	On  March 1, 1990, the Austin crackdown went into 
high gear.

	On the morning of March 1 -- a Thursday -- 21-year-
old University of Texas student "Erik Bloodaxe," co-sysop 
of Phoenix Project and an avowed member of the Legion 
of Doom, was wakened by a police revolver levelled at his 
head.

	Bloodaxe watched, jittery, as Secret Service agents 
appropriated his 300 baud terminal and, rifling his files, 
discovered his treasured source-code for Robert Morris's 
notorious Internet Worm.  But Bloodaxe, a wily operator, 
had suspected that something of the like might be 
coming.  All his best equipment had been hidden away 
elsewhere.  The raiders took everything electronic, 
however, including his telephone.  They were stymied by 
his hefty arcade-style Pac-Man game, and left it in place, 
as it was simply too heavy to move.

	Bloodaxe was not arrested.   He was not charged with 
any crime.  A good two years later, the police still had what 
they had taken from him, however.

	The Mentor was less wary.  The dawn raid rousted 
him and his wife from bed in their underwear, and six 
Secret Service agents, accompanied by an Austin 
policeman and  Henry Kluepfel himself, made a rich haul.  
Off went the works, into the agents' white Chevrolet 
minivan:  an IBM PC-AT clone with 4 meg of RAM and a 
120-meg hard disk; a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet II printer; 
a completely legitimate and highly expensive SCO-Xenix 
286 operating system; Pagemaker disks and 
documentation; and the Microsoft Word word-processing 
program.  Mentor's wife had her incomplete academic 
thesis stored on the hard-disk; that went, too, and so did 
the couple's telephone.  As of two years later, all this 
property remained in police custody.

	Mentor remained under guard in his apartment as 
agents prepared to raid Steve Jackson Games.  The fact 
that this was a business headquarters and not a private 
residence did not deter the agents.  It was still very early; 
no one was at work yet.  The agents prepared to break 
down the door, but Mentor, eavesdropping on the Secret 
Service walkie-talkie traffic, begged them not to do it, and 
offered his key to the building.

	The exact details of the next events are unclear.  The 
agents would not let anyone else into the building.  Their 
search warrant, when produced, was unsigned.  
Apparently they breakfasted from the local 
"Whataburger," as the litter from hamburgers was later 
found inside.  They also extensively sampled a bag of 
jellybeans kept by an SJG employee.  Someone tore a 
"Dukakis for President" sticker from the wall.

	SJG employees, diligently showing up for the day's 
work, were met at the door and briefly questioned by U.S. 
Secret Service agents.  The employees watched in 
astonishment as agents wielding crowbars and 
screwdrivers emerged with captive machines.  They 
attacked outdoor storage units with boltcutters.  The 
agents wore blue nylon windbreakers with "SECRET 
SERVICE" stencilled across the back, with running-shoes 
and jeans.

	Jackson's company lost three computers, several 
hard-disks, hundred of floppy disks, two monitors, three 
modems, a laser printer, various powercords, cables, and 
adapters (and, oddly, a small bag of screws, bolts and 
nuts).   The seizure of Illuminati BBS deprived SJG of all 
the programs, text files, and private e-mail on the board.   
The loss of two other SJG computers was a severe blow as 
well, since it caused the loss of electronically stored 
contracts, financial projections, address directories, 
mailing lists, personnel files, business correspondence, 
and, not least, the drafts of forthcoming games and 
gaming books.

	No one at Steve Jackson Games was arrested.  No 
one was accused of any crime.   No charges were filed.  
Everything appropriated was officially kept as "evidence" 
of crimes never specified.

	After the *Phrack* show-trial, the Steve Jackson 
Games scandal was the most bizarre and aggravating 
incident of the Hacker Crackdown of 1990.   This raid by 
the Chicago Task Force on a science-fiction gaming 
publisher was to rouse a swarming host of civil liberties 
issues, and gave rise to an enduring controversy that was 
still re-complicating itself, and growing in the scope of its 
implications, a full two years later.

	The pursuit of the E911 Document stopped with the 
Steve Jackson Games raid.   As we have seen, there were 
hundreds, perhaps thousands of computer users in 
America with the E911 Document in their possession.   
Theoretically, Chicago had a perfect legal right to raid any 
of these people, and could have legally seized the 
machines of anybody who subscribed to *Phrack.*  
However, there was no copy of the E911 Document on 
Jackson's Illuminati board.   And there the Chicago raiders 
stopped dead; they have not raided anyone since.

	It might be assumed that Rich Andrews and Charlie 
Boykin, who had brought the E911 Document to the 
attention of telco security, might be spared any official 
suspicion.  But as we have seen, the willingness to 
"cooperate fully" offers little, if any, assurance against 
federal anti-hacker prosecution.

	Richard Andrews found himself in deep trouble, 
thanks to the E911 Document.  Andrews lived in Illinois, 
the native stomping grounds of the Chicago Task Force.  
On February 3 and 6, both his home and his place of work 
were raided by USSS.  His machines went out the door, 
too, and he was grilled at length (though not arrested).  
Andrews proved to be in purportedly guilty possession of:   
UNIX SVR 3.2; UNIX SVR 3.1; UUCP; PMON; WWB; 
IWB; DWB; NROFF; KORN SHELL '88; C++; and 
QUEST, among other items.   Andrews had received this 
proprietary code -- which AT&T officially valued at well 
over $250,000 -- through the UNIX network, much of it 
supplied to him as a personal favor by Terminus.  Perhaps 
worse yet, Andrews admitted to returning the favor, by 
passing Terminus a copy of AT&T proprietary STARLAN 
source code.

	 Even Charles Boykin, himself an AT&T employee, 
entered some very hot water.   By 1990, he'd almost 
forgotten about the E911 problem he'd reported in 
September 88; in fact, since that date, he'd passed two 
more security alerts to Jerry Dalton, concerning matters 
that Boykin considered far worse than the E911 
Document.

	But by 1990, year of the crackdown,  AT&T Corporate 
Information Security was fed up with "Killer."   This 
machine offered no  direct income to AT&T, and was 
providing aid and comfort to a cloud of suspicious yokels 
from outside the company, some of them actively 
malicious toward AT&T, its property, and its corporate 
interests.   Whatever goodwill and publicity had been won 
among Killer's 1,500 devoted users was considered no 
longer worth the security risk.  On February 20, 1990,  Jerry 
Dalton arrived in Dallas and simply unplugged the phone 
jacks, to the puzzled alarm of Killer's many Texan users.  
Killer went permanently off-line, with the loss of vast 
archives of programs and huge quantities of electronic 
mail; it was never restored to service.   AT&T showed no 
particular regard for the "property" of these 1,500 people.   
Whatever "property" the users had been storing on 
AT&T's computer simply vanished completely.

	Boykin, who had himself reported the E911 problem, 
now found himself under a cloud of suspicion.  In a weird 
private-security replay of the Secret Service seizures,  
Boykin's own home was visited by AT&T Security and his 
own machines were carried out the door.

	However, there were marked special features in the 
Boykin case.   Boykin's disks and his personal computers 
were swiftly examined by his corporate employers and 
returned politely in just two days -- (unlike Secret Service 
seizures, which commonly take months or years).   Boykin 
was not charged with any crime or wrongdoing, and he 
kept his job with AT&T (though he did retire from AT&T in 
September 1991, at the age of 52). 

	It's interesting to note that the US Secret Service 
somehow failed to seize Boykin's "Killer" node and carry 
AT&T's own computer out the door.   Nor did they raid 
Boykin's home.  They seemed perfectly willing to take the 
word of AT&T Security that AT&T's employee, and AT&T's 
"Killer" node, were free of hacker contraband and on the 
up-and-up.

	It's digital water-under-the-bridge at this point, as 
Killer's 3,200 megabytes of Texan electronic community 
were erased in 1990, and "Killer" itself was shipped out of 
the state.

	But the experiences of Andrews and Boykin, and the 
users of their systems, remained side issues.   They did not 
begin to assume the social, political, and legal importance 
that gathered, slowly but inexorably, around the issue of 
the raid on Steve Jackson Games.

					#

	We must now turn our attention to Steve Jackson 
Games itself, and explain what SJG was, what it really did, 
and how it had managed to attract this particularly odd 
and virulent kind of trouble.  The reader may recall that 
this is not the first but the second time that the company 
has appeared in this narrative; a Steve Jackson game 
called GURPS was a favorite pastime of Atlanta hacker 
Urvile, and Urvile's science-fictional gaming notes had 
been mixed up promiscuously with notes about his actual 
computer intrusions.

	First, Steve Jackson Games, Inc., was *not* a 
publisher of "computer games."  SJG published 
"simulation games," parlor games that were played on 
paper, with pencils, and dice, and printed guidebooks full 
of rules and statistics tables.  There were no computers 
involved in the games themselves.   When you bought a 
Steve Jackson Game, you did not receive any software 
disks.  What you got was a plastic bag with some 
cardboard game tokens, maybe a few maps or a deck of 
cards.  Most of their products were books.

	However, computers *were* deeply involved in the 
Steve Jackson Games business.  Like almost all modern 
publishers, Steve Jackson and his fifteen employees used 
computers to write text, to keep accounts, and to run the 
business generally.  They also used a computer to run 
their official bulletin board system for Steve Jackson 
Games, a board called Illuminati.  On Illuminati, 
simulation gamers who happened to own computers and 
modems could associate, trade mail, debate the theory 
and practice of gaming, and keep up with the company's 
news and its product announcements.

	Illuminati was a modestly popular board, run on a 
small computer with limited storage,  only one phone-line, 
and no ties to large-scale computer networks.   It did, 
however, have hundreds of users, many of them dedicated 
gamers willing to call from out-of-state.

	Illuminati was *not* an "underground" board.  It did 
not feature hints on computer intrusion, or "anarchy files," 
or illicitly posted credit card numbers, or long-distance 
access codes.  Some of Illuminati's users, however, were 
members of the Legion of Doom.    And so was one of 
Steve Jackson's senior employees -- the Mentor.   The 
Mentor wrote for *Phrack,* and also ran an underground 
board, Phoenix Project -- but the Mentor was not a 
computer professional.  The Mentor was the managing 
editor of Steve Jackson Games and a professional game 
designer by trade.   These LoD members did not use 
Illuminati to help their *hacking* activities.  They used it 
to help their *game-playing* activities -- and they were 
even more dedicated to simulation gaming than they were 
to hacking.

	"Illuminati" got its name from a card-game that Steve 
Jackson himself, the company's founder and sole owner,  
had invented.  This multi-player card-game was one of Mr 
Jackson's best-known, most successful, most technically 
innovative products.   "Illuminati" was a game of 
paranoiac conspiracy in which various antisocial cults 
warred covertly to dominate the world.   "Illuminati" was 
hilarious, and great fun to play, involving flying saucers, 
the CIA, the KGB, the phone companies, the Ku Klux 
Klan, the South American Nazis, the cocaine cartels, the 
Boy Scouts, and dozens of other splinter groups from the 
twisted depths of Mr. Jackson's professionally fervid 
imagination.  For the uninitiated, any public discussion of 
the "Illuminati" card-game sounded, by turns, utterly 
menacing or completely insane.

 	And then there was SJG's "Car Wars," in which 
souped-up armored hot-rods with rocket-launchers and 
heavy machine-guns did battle on the American highways 
of the future.   The lively Car Wars discussion on the 
Illuminati board featured many meticulous, painstaking 
discussions of the effects of grenades, land-mines, 
flamethrowers and napalm.  It sounded like hacker 
anarchy files run amuck.

	Mr Jackson and his co-workers earned their daily 
bread by supplying people with make-believe adventures 
and weird ideas.  The more far-out, the better.

	Simulation gaming is an unusual pastime, but 
gamers have not generally had to beg the permission of 
the Secret Service to exist.  Wargames and role-playing 
adventures are an old and honored pastime, much 
favored by professional military strategists.   Once little-
known, these games are now played by hundreds of 
thousands of enthusiasts throughout North America, 
Europe and Japan.  Gaming-books, once restricted to 
hobby outlets, now commonly appear in chain-stores like 
B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks, and sell vigorously.

	Steve Jackson Games, Inc., of Austin, Texas, was a 
games company of the middle rank.  In 1989, SJG grossed 
about a million dollars.   Jackson himself had a good 
reputation in his industry as a talented and innovative 
designer of rather unconventional games, but his 
company was something less than a titan of the field -- 
certainly not like the multimillion-dollar TSR Inc., or 
Britain's gigantic "Games Workshop."

	SJG's Austin headquarters was a modest two-story 
brick office-suite, cluttered with phones, photocopiers, fax 
machines and computers. It bustled with semi-organized 
activity and was littered with glossy promotional brochures 
and dog-eared science-fiction novels.  Attached to the 
offices was a large tin-roofed warehouse piled twenty feet 
high with cardboard boxes of games and books.   Despite 
the weird imaginings that went on within it, the SJG  
headquarters was quite a quotidian, everyday sort of place.  
It looked like what it was:  a publishers' digs.

	Both "Car Wars" and "Illuminati" were well-known, 
popular games.  But the mainstay of the Jackson 
organization was their Generic Universal Role-Playing 
System, "G.U.R.P.S."   The GURPS system was considered 
solid and well-designed, an asset for players.  But perhaps 
the most popular feature of the GURPS system was that it 
allowed gaming-masters to design scenarios that closely 
resembled well-known books, movies, and other works of 
fantasy.  Jackson had  licensed and adapted works from 
many science fiction and fantasy authors.  There was 
*GURPS Conan,* *GURPS Riverworld,* *GURPS 
Horseclans,* *GURPS Witch World,*  names eminently 
familiar to science-fiction readers.  And there was *GURPS 
Special Ops,*  from the world of espionage fantasy and 
unconventional warfare.

	And then there was *GURPS Cyberpunk.*

	"Cyberpunk" was a term given to certain science 
fiction writers who had entered the genre in the 1980s.  
"Cyberpunk," as the label implies, had two general 
distinguishing features.  First, its writers had a compelling 
interest in information technology, an interest closely akin 
to science fiction's earlier fascination with space travel.  
And second, these writers  were "punks," with all the 
distinguishing features that that implies:  Bohemian 
artiness, youth run wild, an air of deliberate rebellion, 
funny clothes and hair, odd politics, a fondness for 
abrasive rock and roll; in a word, trouble.

	The "cyberpunk" SF writers were a small group of 
mostly college-educated white middle-class litterateurs, 
scattered through the US and Canada.  Only one, Rudy 
Rucker, a professor of computer science in Silicon Valley, 
could rank with even the humblest computer hacker.   But, 
except for Professor Rucker, the "cyberpunk" authors were 
not programmers or hardware experts; they considered 
themselves artists (as, indeed, did Professor Rucker).  
However, these writers all owned computers, and took an 
intense and public interest in the social ramifications of 
the information industry.

	The cyberpunks had a strong following among the 
global generation that had grown up in a world of 
computers, multinational networks, and  cable television.   
Their outlook was considered somewhat morbid, cynical, 
and dark, but then again, so was the outlook of their 
generational peers.  As that generation matured and 
increased in strength and influence, so did the 
cyberpunks.   As science-fiction writers went, they were 
doing fairly well for themselves.  By the late 1980s, their 
work had attracted attention from gaming companies, 
including Steve Jackson Games, which was planning a 
cyberpunk simulation for the flourishing GURPS gaming-
system.

	The time seemed ripe for such a product, which had 
already been proven in the marketplace.  The first games-
company out of the gate, with a product boldly called 
"Cyberpunk" in defiance of possible infringement-of-
copyright suits, had been an upstart group called R. 
Talsorian.  Talsorian's Cyberpunk was a fairly decent 
game, but the mechanics of the simulation system left a 
lot to be desired.  Commercially, however, the game did 
very well.

	The next cyberpunk game had been the even more 
successful *Shadowrun* by FASA Corporation.  The 
mechanics of this game were fine, but the scenario was 
rendered moronic by  sappy fantasy elements like elves, 
trolls, wizards, and  dragons -- all highly ideologically-
incorrect, according to the hard-edged, high-tech 
standards of cyberpunk science fiction.

	Other game designers were champing at the bit.  
Prominent among them was the Mentor, a gentleman 
who, like most of his friends in the Legion of Doom, was 
quite the cyberpunk devotee.  Mentor reasoned that the 
time had come for a *real* cyberpunk gaming-book -- one 
that the princes of computer-mischief in the Legion of 
Doom could play without laughing themselves sick.  This 
book, *GURPS Cyberpunk,*  would reek of culturally on-
line authenticity.

	  Mentor was particularly well-qualified for this task.  
Naturally, he knew far more about computer-intrusion 
and digital skullduggery than any previously published 
cyberpunk author.  Not only that, but he was good at his 
work.   A vivid imagination, combined with an instinctive 
feeling for the working of systems and, especially, the 
loopholes within them, are excellent qualities for a 
professional game designer.

	By March 1st, *GURPS Cyberpunk* was almost 
complete, ready to print and ship.  Steve Jackson expected 
vigorous sales for this item, which, he hoped, would keep 
the company financially afloat for several months.  
*GURPS Cyberpunk,*  like the other GURPS "modules," 
was not a "game" like a Monopoly set, but a *book:*  a 
bound paperback book the size of a glossy magazine, with 
a slick color cover, and pages full of text, illustrations, 
tables and footnotes.   It was advertised as a game, and 
was used as an aid to game-playing,  but it was a book, with 
an ISBN number, published in Texas, copyrighted, and 
sold in bookstores.

	And now, that book, stored on a computer, had gone 
out the door in the custody of the Secret Service.

	The day after the raid, Steve Jackson visited the local 
Secret Service headquarters with a lawyer in tow.  There he 
confronted Tim Foley (still in Austin at that time) and 
demanded his book back.   But there was trouble.  
*GURPS Cyberpunk,*  alleged a Secret Service agent to 
astonished businessman Steve Jackson, was "a manual for 
computer crime."

	"It's science fiction," Jackson said.

	"No, this is real."  This statement was repeated 
several times, by several agents.  Jackson's ominously 
accurate game had passed from pure, obscure, small-
scale fantasy into the impure, highly publicized, large-
scale fantasy of the Hacker Crackdown.

	No mention was made of the real reason for the 
search.  According to their search warrant, the raiders had 
expected to find the E911 Document stored on Jackson's 
bulletin board system.   But that warrant was sealed; a 
procedure that most law enforcement agencies will use 
only when lives are demonstrably in danger.   The raiders' 
true motives were not discovered until the Jackson search-
warrant was unsealed by his lawyers, many months later.   
The Secret Service, and the Chicago Computer Fraud and 
Abuse Task Force, said absolutely nothing to Steve 
Jackson about any threat to the police 911 System.   They 
said nothing about the Atlanta Three, nothing about 
*Phrack* or Knight Lightning, nothing about Terminus.

	Jackson was left to believe that his computers had 
been seized because he intended to publish a science 
fiction book that law enforcement considered too 
dangerous to see print.

	This misconception was repeated again and again, 
for months, to an ever-widening public audience.  It was 
not the truth of the case; but as months passed, and this 
misconception was publicly printed again and again, it 
became one of the few publicly known "facts" about the 
mysterious Hacker Crackdown.   The Secret Service had 
seized a computer to stop the publication of a cyberpunk 
science fiction book.

	The second section of this book, "The Digital 
Underground," is almost finished now.  We have become 
acquainted with all the major figures of this case who 
actually belong to the underground milieu of computer 
intrusion.   We have some idea of their history, their 
motives, their general modus operandi.  We now know, I 
hope, who they are, where they came from, and more or 
less what they want.  In the next section of this book, "Law 
and Order," we will leave this milieu and directly enter the 
world of America's computer-crime police.

	At this point, however, I have another figure to 
introduce:  myself.

	My name is Bruce Sterling.   I live in Austin, Texas, 
where I am a science fiction writer by trade:  specifically, a 
*cyberpunk* science fiction writer.

	Like my "cyberpunk" colleagues in the U.S. and 
Canada, I've never been entirely happy with this literary 
label -- especially after it became a synonym for computer 
criminal.  But I did once edit a book of stories by my 
colleagues, called  *MIRRORSHADES:  the Cyberpunk 
Anthology,*  and I've long been a writer of literary-critical 
cyberpunk manifestos.   I am not a "hacker" of any 
description, though I do have readers in the digital 
underground.

	When the Steve Jackson Games seizure occurred, I 
naturally took an intense interest.  If "cyberpunk" books 
were being banned by federal police in my own home 
town, I reasonably wondered whether I myself might be 
next.  Would my computer be seized by the Secret 
Service?  At the time, I was in possession of an aging Apple 
IIe without so much as a hard disk.  If I were to be raided 
as an author of computer-crime manuals, the loss of my 
feeble word-processor would likely provoke more snickers 
than sympathy.

	I'd known Steve Jackson for many years.   We knew 
one another as colleagues, for we frequented the same 
local science-fiction conventions.  I'd played Jackson 
games, and recognized his cleverness; but he certainly 
had never struck me as a potential mastermind of 
computer crime.

	I also knew a little about computer bulletin-board 
systems.  In the mid-1980s I had taken an active role in an 
Austin board called "SMOF-BBS," one of the first boards 
dedicated to science fiction.  I had a modem, and on 
occasion I'd logged on to Illuminati, which always looked 
entertainly wacky, but certainly harmless enough.

	At the time of the Jackson seizure, I had no 
experience whatsoever with underground boards.   But I 
knew that no one on Illuminati talked about breaking into 
systems illegally, or about robbing phone companies.  
Illuminati didn't even offer pirated computer games.  
Steve Jackson, like many creative artists,  was markedly 
touchy about theft of intellectual property.

	It seemed to me that Jackson was either seriously 
suspected of some crime -- in which case, he would be 
charged soon, and would have his day in court -- or else he 
was innocent, in which case the Secret Service would 
quickly return his equipment, and everyone would have a 
good laugh.  I rather expected the good laugh.  The 
situation was not without its comic side.  The raid, known 
as the "Cyberpunk Bust" in the science fiction community, 
was winning a great deal of free national publicity both for 
Jackson himself and the "cyberpunk" science fiction 
writers generally.

	Besides, science fiction people are used to being 
misinterpreted.  Science fiction is a colorful, disreputable, 
slipshod occupation, full of unlikely oddballs, which, of 
course, is why we like it.   Weirdness can be an 
occupational hazard in our field.  People who wear 
Halloween costumes are sometimes mistaken for 
monsters.

	Once upon a time -- back in 1939, in New York City --  
science fiction and the U.S. Secret Service collided in a 
comic case of mistaken identity.  This weird incident 
involved a literary group quite famous in science fiction, 
known as "the Futurians," whose membership included 
such future genre greats as Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, 
and Damon Knight.  The Futurians were every bit as 
offbeat and wacky as any of their spiritual descendants, 
including the cyberpunks, and were given to communal 
living, spontaneous group renditions of light opera, and 
midnight fencing exhibitions on the lawn.  The Futurians 
didn't have bulletin board systems, but they did have the 
technological equivalent in 1939 -- mimeographs and a 
private printing press.   These were in steady use, 
producing a stream of science-fiction fan magazines, 
literary manifestos, and weird articles, which were picked 
up in ink-sticky bundles by a succession of strange, gangly, 
spotty young men in fedoras and overcoats.

	The neighbors grew alarmed at the antics of the 
Futurians and reported them to the Secret Service as 
suspected counterfeiters.   In the winter of 1939, a squad of 
USSS agents with drawn guns burst into "Futurian House," 
prepared to confiscate the forged currency and illicit 
printing presses.  There they discovered a slumbering 
science fiction fan named George Hahn, a guest of the 
Futurian commune who had just arrived in New York.  
George Hahn managed to explain himself and his group, 
and the Secret Service agents left the Futurians in peace 
henceforth.  (Alas, Hahn died in 1991, just before I had 
discovered this astonishing historical parallel, and just 
before I could interview him for this book.)

	But the Jackson case did not come to a swift and 
comic end.   No quick answers came his way, or mine;  no 
swift reassurances that all was right in the digital world, 
that matters were well in hand after all.   Quite the 
opposite.   In my alternate role as a sometime pop-science 
journalist, I interviewed  Jackson and his staff for an article 
in a British magazine.   The strange details of the raid left 
me more concerned than ever.   Without its computers, 
the company had been financially and operationally 
crippled.   Half the SJG workforce, a group of entirely 
innocent people, had been sorrowfully fired, deprived of 
their livelihoods by the seizure.  It began to dawn on me 
that authors -- American writers -- might well have their 
computers seized, under sealed warrants, without any 
criminal charge; and that, as Steve Jackson had 
discovered, there was no immediate recourse for this.   
This was no joke; this wasn't science fiction; this was real.

	I determined to put science fiction aside until I had 
discovered what had happened and where this trouble 
had come from.  It was time to enter the purportedly real 
world of electronic free expression and computer crime.   
Hence, this book.  Hence, the world of the telcos;  and the 
world of the digital underground; and next, the world of 
the police.

.

Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.sf.ca.us

Literary Freeware:  Not for Commercial Use

THE HACKER CRACKDOWN:  Law and Disorder 
on the Electronic Frontier

PART THREE:  LAW AND ORDER


	Of the various anti-hacker activities of 1990, 
"Operation Sundevil" had by far the highest public 
profile.   The sweeping, nationwide computer 
seizures of May 8, 1990 were unprecedented in 
scope and highly, if rather selectively, publicized.

	Unlike the efforts of the Chicago Computer 
Fraud and Abuse Task Force,  "Operation Sundevil" 
was not intended to combat "hacking" in the sense 
of computer intrusion or sophisticated raids on telco 
switching stations.  Nor did it have anything to do 
with hacker misdeeds with AT&T's software, or with 
Southern Bell's proprietary documents.

	Instead, "Operation Sundevil" was a crackdown 
on those traditional scourges of the digital 
underground:  credit-card theft and telephone code 
abuse.   The ambitious activities out of Chicago, and 
the somewhat lesser-known but  vigorous anti-
hacker actions of the New York State Police in 1990, 
were never a part of "Operation Sundevil" per se, 
which was based in Arizona.
  
	Nevertheless, after the spectacular May 8 raids, 
the public, misled by  police secrecy, hacker panic, 
and a puzzled national press-corps, conflated all 
aspects of the nationwide crackdown in 1990 under 
the blanket term "Operation Sundevil."  "Sundevil" is 
still the best-known synonym for the crackdown of 
1990.  But the Arizona organizers of "Sundevil" did 
not really deserve this reputation -- any more, for 
instance, than all hackers deserve a reputation as 
"hackers."

	There was some justice in this confused 
perception, though.  For one thing, the confusion 
was abetted by the Washington office of the Secret 
Service, who responded to Freedom of Information 
Act requests on "Operation Sundevil" by referring 
investigators to the publicly known cases of Knight 
Lightning and the Atlanta Three.  And "Sundevil" 
was certainly the largest aspect of the Crackdown, 
the most deliberate and the best-organized.  As a 
crackdown on electronic fraud, "Sundevil" lacked 
the frantic pace of the war on the Legion of Doom; 
on the contrary, Sundevil's targets were picked out 
with cool deliberation over an elaborate 
investigation lasting two full years. 
     
	And once again the targets were bulletin board 
systems. 
 	
	Boards can be powerful aids to organized fraud.  
Underground boards carry lively, extensive, 
detailed, and often quite flagrant "discussions" of 
lawbreaking techniques and lawbreaking activities.   
"Discussing" crime in the abstract, or "discussing" 
the particulars of criminal cases, is not illegal -- but 
there are stern state and federal laws against 
coldbloodedly conspiring in groups in order to 
commit crimes.
  
	In the eyes of police, people who actively 
conspire to break the law are not regarded as  
"clubs," "debating salons," "users' groups," or "free 
speech advocates."   Rather, such people tend to 
find themselves formally indicted by prosecutors as 
"gangs," "racketeers," "corrupt organizations" and 
"organized crime figures."
  
	What's more, the illicit data contained on 
outlaw boards goes well beyond mere acts of speech 
and/or possible criminal conspiracy.  As we have 
seen, it was common practice in the digital 
underground to post purloined telephone codes on 
boards, for any phreak or hacker who cared to abuse 
them.  Is posting digital booty of this sort supposed 
to be protected by the First Amendment?  Hardly -- 
though the issue, like most issues in cyberspace, is 
not entirely resolved.   Some theorists argue that to 
merely *recite* a number publicly is not illegal -- 
only its *use* is illegal.   But anti-hacker police point 
out that magazines and newspapers (more 
traditional forms of free expression) never publish 
stolen telephone codes (even though this might well 
raise their circulation).
  
	Stolen credit card numbers, being riskier and 
more valuable, were less often publicly posted on  
boards -- but there is no question that some 
underground boards carried "carding" traffic, 
generally exchanged through private mail.
   
	Underground boards also carried handy 
programs for "scanning" telephone codes and 
raiding credit card companies, as well as the usual 
obnoxious galaxy of pirated software, cracked 
passwords, blue-box schematics, intrusion manuals, 
anarchy files, porn files, and so forth.
 
	But besides their nuisance potential for the 
spread of illicit knowledge, bulletin boards have 
another vitally interesting aspect for the professional 
investigator.  Bulletin boards are cram-full of 
*evidence.*  All that busy trading of electronic mail, 
all those hacker boasts, brags and struts,  even the 
stolen codes and cards, can be neat, electronic, real-
time recordings of criminal activity.
  
	As an investigator, when you seize a pirate 
board, you have scored a coup as effective as 
tapping phones or intercepting mail.  However, you 
have not actually tapped a phone or intercepted a 
letter.   The rules of evidence regarding phone-taps 
and mail interceptions are old, stern and well-
understood by police, prosecutors and defense 
attorneys alike.  The rules of evidence regarding 
boards are new, waffling, and understood by nobody 
at all.

	Sundevil was the largest crackdown on boards in 
world history.  On May 7, 8, and 9, 1990, about forty-
two computer systems were seized.  Of those forty-
two computers, about twenty-five actually were 
running boards.  (The vagueness of this estimate is 
attributable to the vagueness of (a) what a 
"computer system" is, and (b) what it actually means 
to "run a board" with one -- or with two computers, or 
with three.) 
  
	About twenty-five boards vanished into police 
custody in May 1990.   As we have seen, there are an 
estimated 30,000 boards in America today.  If we 
assume that one board in a hundred is up to no good 
with codes and cards (which rather flatters the 
honesty of the board-using community), then that  
would leave 2,975 outlaw boards untouched by 
Sundevil.  Sundevil seized about one tenth of one 
percent of all computer bulletin boards in America.   
Seen objectively, this is something less than a 
comprehensive assault.   In 1990, Sundevil's 
organizers -- the team at the Phoenix Secret Service 
office, and the Arizona Attorney General's office -- 
had a list of at least *three hundred* boards that 
they considered fully deserving of search and 
seizure warrants.   The twenty-five boards actually 
seized were merely among the most obvious and 
egregious of this much larger list of candidates.   All 
these boards had been examined beforehand -- 
either by informants, who had passed printouts to 
the Secret Service, or by Secret Service agents 
themselves, who not only come equipped with 
modems but know how to use them.

	There were a number of motives for Sundevil.  
First, it offered a chance to get ahead of the curve on 
wire-fraud crimes.  Tracking back credit-card ripoffs 
to their perpetrators can be appallingly difficult.  If 
these miscreants have any kind of electronic 
sophistication, they can snarl their tracks through 
the phone network into a mind-boggling, 
untraceable mess, while still managing to "reach out 
and rob someone."  Boards, however, full of brags 
and boasts, codes and cards, offer evidence in the 
handy congealed form. 
 	
	Seizures themselves -- the mere physical 
removal of machines -- tends to take the pressure 
off.  During Sundevil, a large number of code kids, 
warez d00dz, and credit card thieves would be 
deprived of those boards -- their  means of 
community and conspiracy -- in one swift blow.  As 
for the sysops themselves (commonly among the 
boldest offenders) they would be directly stripped of 
their computer equipment, and rendered digitally 
mute and blind. 
  
	And this aspect of Sundevil was carried out with 
great success.   Sundevil seems to have been a 
complete tactical surprise -- unlike the fragmentary 
and continuing seizures of the war on the Legion of 
Doom, Sundevil was precisely timed and utterly 
overwhelming.    At least forty "computers" were 
seized during May 7, 8 and 9, 1990, in Cincinnati, 
Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, Phoenix, 
Tucson, Richmond, San Diego, San Jose, Pittsburgh 
and San Francisco.   Some cities saw multiple raids, 
such as the five separate raids in the New York City 
environs.  Plano, Texas (essentially a suburb of the 
Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and a hub of the 
telecommunications industry)  saw four computer 
seizures.  Chicago, ever in the forefront, saw its own 
local Sundevil raid, briskly carried out by Secret 
Service agents Timothy Foley and Barbara Golden.
  
	Many of these raids occurred, not in the cities 
proper, but in associated white-middle class suburbs 
-- places like Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania and 
Clark Lake, Michigan.   There were a few raids on 
offices; most took place in people's homes, the 
classic hacker basements and bedrooms.
  
	The Sundevil raids were searches and seizures, 
not a group of mass arrests.  There were only four 
arrests during Sundevil.  "Tony the Trashman," a 
longtime teenage bete noire of the Arizona 
Racketeering unit, was arrested in Tucson on May 9.  
"Dr. Ripco," sysop of an outlaw board with the 
misfortune to exist in Chicago itself, was also 
arrested  -- on illegal weapons charges.   Local units 
also arrested a 19-year-old female phone phreak 
named "Electra" in Pennsylvania,  and a male 
juvenile in California.  Federal agents however were 
not seeking arrests, but computers.

	Hackers are generally not indicted (if at all) 
until the evidence in their seized computers is 
evaluated -- a process that can take weeks, months -- 
even years.    When hackers are arrested on the 
spot, it's generally an arrest for other reasons.  Drugs 
and/or illegal weapons show up in a good third of 
anti-hacker computer seizures (though not during 
Sundevil).

	That scofflaw teenage hackers (or their parents) 
should have marijuana in their homes is probably 
not a shocking revelation, but the surprisingly 
common presence of illegal firearms in hacker dens 
is a bit disquieting.   A Personal Computer can be a 
great equalizer for the techno-cowboy -- much like 
that more traditional American "Great Equalizer," 
the Personal Sixgun.   Maybe it's not all that 
surprising that some guy obsessed with power 
through illicit technology would also have a few illicit 
high-velocity-impact devices around.  An element of 
the digital underground particularly dotes on those 
"anarchy philes,"  and this element tends to shade 
into the crackpot milieu of survivalists, gun-nuts, 
anarcho-leftists and the ultra-libertarian right-wing.
   
	This is not to say that hacker raids to date have 
uncovered any major crack-dens or illegal arsenals; 
but Secret Service agents do not regard "hackers" as 
"just kids."   They regard hackers as unpredictable 
people, bright and slippery.   It doesn't help matters  
that the hacker himself has been "hiding behind his 
keyboard" all this time.   Commonly, police have no 
idea what he looks like.  This makes him an 
unknown quantity, someone best treated with 
proper caution.

	To date, no hacker has come out shooting, 
though they do sometimes brag on boards that they 
will do just that.  Threats of this sort are taken 
seriously.   Secret Service hacker raids tend to be 
swift, comprehensive, well-manned (even over-
manned);  and agents generally burst through every 
door in the home at once, sometimes with drawn 
guns.  Any potential resistance is swiftly quelled.   
Hacker raids are usually raids on people's homes.   
It can be a very dangerous business to raid an 
American home; people can panic when strangers 
invade their sanctum.   Statistically speaking, the 
most dangerous thing a policeman can do is to enter 
someone's home.  (The second most dangerous 
thing is to stop a car in traffic.)  People have guns in 
their homes.   More cops are hurt in homes than are 
ever hurt in biker bars or massage parlors.

	But in any case, no one was hurt during 
Sundevil, or indeed during any part of the Hacker 
Crackdown.
   
	Nor were there any allegations of any physical 
mistreatment of a suspect.   Guns were pointed, 
interrogations were sharp and prolonged; but no one 
in 1990 claimed any act of brutality by any 
crackdown raider.

	In addition to the forty or so computers, 
Sundevil reaped floppy disks in particularly great 
abundance -- an estimated 23,000 of them, which 
naturally included every manner of illegitimate 
data:  pirated games, stolen codes, hot credit card 
numbers, the complete text and software of entire 
pirate bulletin-boards.  These floppy disks, which 
remain in police custody today, offer a gigantic, 
almost embarrassingly rich source of possible 
criminal indictments.  These 23,000 floppy disks also 
include a thus-far unknown quantity of legitimate 
computer games, legitimate software,  purportedly 
"private" mail from boards, business records, and 
personal correspondence of all kinds.

  	Standard computer-crime search warrants lay 
great emphasis on seizing written documents as well 
as computers -- specifically including photocopies, 
computer printouts, telephone bills, address books, 
logs, notes, memoranda and correspondence.  In 
practice, this has meant that diaries, gaming 
magazines, software documentation, nonfiction 
books on hacking and computer security, 
sometimes even science fiction novels, have all 
vanished out the door in police custody.   A wide 
variety of electronic items have been known to 
vanish as well, including telephones, televisions, 
answering machines, Sony Walkmans, desktop 
printers, compact disks, and audiotapes.
 
	No fewer than 150 members of the Secret 
Service were sent into the field during Sundevil.   
They were commonly accompanied by squads of 
local and/or state police.   Most of these officers -- 
especially  the locals -- had never been on an anti-
hacker raid before.  (This was one good reason, in 
fact, why so many of them were invited along in the 
first place.)   Also, the presence of a uniformed 
police officer assures the raidees that the people 
entering their homes are, in fact, police.   Secret 
Service agents wear plain clothes.  So do the telco 
security experts who commonly accompany the 
Secret Service on raids (and who make no particular 
effort to identify themselves as mere employees of 
telephone companies).

	A typical hacker raid goes something like this.  
First, police storm in rapidly, through every 
entrance, with overwhelming force, in the 
assumption that this tactic will keep casualties to a 
minimum.  Second, possible suspects are 
immediately removed from the vicinity of any and 
all computer systems, so that they will have no 
chance to purge or destroy computer evidence.  
Suspects are herded into a room without computers, 
commonly the living room,  and kept under guard -- 
not *armed* guard, for the guns are swiftly 
holstered, but under guard nevertheless.   They are 
presented with the search warrant and warned that 
anything they say may be held against them.  
Commonly they have a great deal to say, especially 
if they are unsuspecting parents.

	Somewhere in the house is the "hot spot" -- a 
computer tied to a phone line (possibly several 
computers and several phones).   Commonly it's a 
teenager's bedroom, but it can be anywhere in the 
house; there may be several such rooms.   This "hot 
spot" is put in charge of a two-agent team, the 
"finder" and the "recorder."   The "finder" is 
computer-trained, commonly the case agent who 
has actually obtained the search warrant from a 
judge.   He or she understands what is being sought, 
and actually carries out the seizures: unplugs 
machines, opens drawers, desks, files, floppy-disk 
containers, etc.   The "recorder" photographs all the 
equipment, just as it stands -- especially the tangle 
of wired connections in the back, which can 
otherwise be a real nightmare to restore.  The 
recorder will also commonly photograph every room 
in the house, lest some wily criminal claim that the 
police had robbed him during the search.   Some 
recorders carry videocams or tape recorders; 
however, it's more common for the recorder to 
simply take written notes.  Objects are described 
and numbered as the finder seizes them, generally 
on standard preprinted police inventory forms.

	Even Secret Service agents were not, and are 
not, expert computer users.  They have not made, 
and do not make, judgements on the fly about 
potential threats posed by various forms of 
equipment.   They may exercise discretion; they may 
leave Dad his computer, for instance, but they don't 
*have* to.   Standard computer-crime search 
warrants, which date back to the early 80s, use a 
sweeping language that targets computers,  most 
anything attached to a computer, most anything 
used to operate a computer -- most anything that 
remotely resembles a computer -- plus most any 
and all written documents surrounding it.   
Computer-crime investigators have strongly urged 
agents to seize the works.

	In this sense, Operation Sundevil appears to 
have been a complete success.  Boards went down 
all over America, and were shipped en masse to the 
computer investigation lab of the Secret Service, in 
Washington DC, along with the 23,000 floppy disks 
and unknown quantities of printed material.

	But the seizure of twenty-five boards, and the 
multi-megabyte mountains of possibly useful 
evidence contained in these boards (and in their 
owners' other computers, also out the door), were far 
from the only motives for Operation Sundevil.   An 
unprecedented action of great ambition and size, 
Sundevil's motives can only be described as 
political.   It was a public-relations effort, meant to 
pass certain messages, meant to make certain 
situations clear:  both in the mind of the general 
public, and in the minds of various constituencies of 
the electronic community.

	 First  -- and this motivation was vital -- a 
"message" would be sent from law enforcement to 
the digital underground.   This very message was 
recited in so many words by Garry M. Jenkins, the 
Assistant Director of the US Secret Service, at the 
Sundevil press conference in Phoenix on May 9, 
1990, immediately after the raids.   In brief, hackers 
were mistaken in their foolish belief that they could 
hide behind the "relative anonymity of their 
computer terminals."  On the contrary, they should 
fully understand that state and federal cops were 
actively patrolling the beat in cyberspace -- that they 
were on the watch everywhere, even in those sleazy 
and secretive dens of cybernetic vice, the 
underground boards.

	This is not an unusual message for police to 
publicly convey to crooks.   The message is a 
standard message; only the context is new. 

	In this respect,  the Sundevil raids were the 
digital equivalent of the standard vice-squad 
crackdown on massage parlors, porno bookstores, 
head-shops,  or floating crap-games.  There may be 
few or no arrests in a raid of this sort; no convictions, 
no trials, no interrogations.   In cases of this sort, 
police may well walk out the door with many pounds 
of sleazy magazines, X-rated videotapes, sex toys, 
gambling equipment, baggies of marijuana....
  
	Of course, if something truly horrendous is 
discovered by the raiders, there will be arrests and 
prosecutions.   Far more likely, however, there will 
simply be a brief but sharp disruption of the closed 
and secretive world of the nogoodniks.  There will be 
"street hassle."  "Heat."  "Deterrence."  And, of 
course, the immediate loss of the seized goods.  It is 
very unlikely that any of this seized material will ever 
be returned.   Whether charged or not, whether 
convicted or not, the perpetrators will almost surely 
lack the nerve ever to ask for this stuff to be given 
back. 
 
	Arrests and trials -- putting people in jail -- may 
involve all kinds of formal legalities; but dealing with 
the justice system is far from the only task of police.   
Police do not simply arrest people.  They don't 
simply put people in jail.   That is not how the police 
perceive their jobs.  Police "protect and serve."  
Police "keep the peace," they "keep public order."   
Like other forms of public relations, keeping public 
order is not an exact science.  Keeping public order 
is something of an art-form.

	If a group of tough-looking teenage hoodlums 
was loitering on a street-corner, no one would be 
surprised to see a street-cop arrive and sternly order 
them to "break it up."   On the contrary, the surprise 
would come if one of these ne'er-do-wells stepped 
briskly into a phone-booth, called a civil rights 
lawyer, and instituted a civil suit in defense of his 
Constitutional rights of free speech and free 
assembly.  But  something much  along this line was 
one of the many anomolous outcomes of the Hacker 
Crackdown.

	Sundevil also carried useful "messages" for 
other constituents of the electronic community.   
These messages may not have been read aloud 
from the Phoenix podium in front of the press corps, 
but there was little mistaking their meaning.  There 
was a message of reassurance for the primary 
victims of coding and carding:  the telcos, and the 
credit companies.  Sundevil was greeted with joy by 
the security officers of the electronic business 
community.   After years of high-tech harassment 
and spiralling revenue losses, their complaints of 
rampant outlawry were being taken seriously by law 
enforcement.  No more head-scratching or 
dismissive shrugs; no more feeble excuses about 
"lack of computer-trained officers" or the low priority 
of "victimless" white-collar telecommunication 
crimes.

	Computer-crime experts have long believed 
that computer-related offenses are drastically 
under-reported.   They regard this as a major open 
scandal of their field.  Some victims are reluctant to 
come forth, because they believe that police and 
prosecutors are not computer-literate, and can and 
will do nothing.  Others are embarrassed by their 
vulnerabilities, and will take strong measures to 
avoid any publicity; this is especially true of banks, 
who fear a loss of investor confidence should an 
embezzlement-case or wire-fraud surface.   And 
some victims are so helplessly confused by their own 
high technology that they never even realize that a 
crime has occurred -- even when they have been 
fleeced to the bone.
 
	The results of this situation can be dire.  
Criminals escape apprehension and punishment.  
The computer-crime units that do exist, can't get 
work.   The true scope of computer-crime:  its size, its 
real nature, the scope of its threats, and the legal 
remedies for it -- all remain obscured.

	Another problem is very little publicized, but it 
is a cause of genuine concern.  Where there is 
persistent crime, but no effective police protection, 
then vigilantism can result.   Telcos, banks, credit 
companies, the major corporations who maintain 
extensive computer networks vulnerable to hacking 
-- these organizations are powerful, wealthy, and 
politically influential.   They are disinclined to be 
pushed around by crooks (or by most anyone else, 
for that matter).  They often maintain well-organized 
private security forces, commonly run by 
experienced veterans of military and police units, 
who have left public service for the greener pastures 
of the private sector.   For police, the corporate 
security manager can be a powerful ally; but if this 
gentleman finds no allies in the police, and the 
pressure is on from his board-of-directors, he may 
quietly take certain matters into his own hands.

	Nor is there any lack of disposable hired-help in 
the corporate security business.  Private security 
agencies -- the 'security business' generally -- grew 
explosively in the 1980s.  Today there are spooky 
gumshoed armies of "security consultants," "rent-a-
cops," "private eyes,"  "outside experts" --  every 
manner of shady operator who retails in "results" 
and discretion.   Or course, many of these 
gentlemen and ladies may be  paragons of 
professional and moral rectitude.  But as anyone 
who has read a hard-boiled detective novel knows, 
police tend to be less than fond of this sort of 
private-sector competition.

	Companies in search of computer-security have 
even been known to hire hackers.   Police shudder at 
this prospect.

	Police treasure good relations with the business 
community.   Rarely will you see a policeman so 
indiscreet as to  allege publicly that some major 
employer in his state or city has succumbed to 
paranoia and gone off the rails.  Nevertheless, police 
-- and computer police in particular -- are aware of 
this possibility.   Computer-crime police can and do 
spend up to half of their business hours just doing 
public relations:  seminars, "dog and pony shows," 
sometimes with parents' groups or computer users, 
but generally with their core audience: the likely 
victims of hacking crimes.  These, of course, are 
telcos, credit card companies and large computer-
equipped corporations.   The police strongly urge 
these people, as good citizens, to report offenses and 
press criminal charges; they pass the message that 
there is someone in authority who cares, 
understands, and, best of all, will take useful action 
should a computer-crime occur.

	But reassuring talk is cheap.  Sundevil offered 
action.

	The final message of Sundevil was intended for 
internal consumption by law enforcement.  Sundevil 
was offered as proof that the community of 
American computer-crime police  had come of age.   
Sundevil was proof that enormous things like 
Sundevil itself could now be accomplished.   
Sundevil was proof that the Secret Service and its 
local law-enforcement allies could act like a well-
oiled machine -- (despite the hampering use of 
those scrambled phones).   It was also proof that the 
Arizona Organized Crime and Racketeering Unit  -- 
the sparkplug of Sundevil -- ranked with the best in 
the world in ambition, organization, and sheer 
conceptual daring.

	And, as a final fillip, Sundevil was a message 
from the Secret Service to their longtime rivals in the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation.  By Congressional 
fiat, both USSS and FBI formally share jurisdiction 
over federal computer-crimebusting activities.  
Neither of these groups has ever been remotely 
happy with this muddled situation.  It seems to 
suggest that Congress cannot make up its mind as to 
which of these groups is better qualified.   And there 
is scarcely a G-man or a Special Agent anywhere 
without a very firm opinion on that topic.

					#

           For the neophyte, one of the most puzzling 
aspects of the crackdown on hackers is why the 
United States Secret Service has anything at all to do 
with this matter.

	The Secret Service is best known for its primary 
public role:  its agents protect the President of the 
United States.  They also guard the President's 
family, the Vice President and his family, former 
Presidents, and Presidential candidates.   They 
sometimes guard foreign dignitaries who are visiting 
the United States, especially foreign heads of state, 
and have been known to accompany American 
officials on diplomatic missions overseas. 

	Special Agents of the Secret Service don't wear 
uniforms, but the Secret Service also has two 
uniformed police agencies.  There's the former 
White House Police  (now known as the Secret 
Service Uniformed Division, since they currently 
guard foreign embassies in Washington, as well as 
the White House itself).  And there's the uniformed 
Treasury Police Force.

	The Secret Service has been charged by 
Congress with a number of little-known duties.   
They guard the precious metals in Treasury vaults.  
They guard the most valuable historical documents 
of the United States:  originals of the Constitution, 
the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Second 
Inaugural Address, an American-owned copy of the 
Magna Carta, and so forth.   Once they were 
assigned to guard the Mona Lisa, on her American 
tour in the 1960s.

	The entire Secret Service is a division of the 
Treasury Department.   Secret Service Special 
Agents (there are about 1,900 of them)  are 
bodyguards for the President et al, but they all work 
for the Treasury.  And the Treasury (through its 
divisions of the U.S. Mint and the Bureau of 
Engraving and Printing) prints the nation's money.

	As Treasury police, the Secret Service guards 
the nation's currency; it is the only federal law 
enforcement agency with direct jurisdiction over 
counterfeiting and forgery.  It analyzes documents 
for authenticity, and its fight against  fake cash is still 
quite lively (especially since the skilled 
counterfeiters of Medellin, Columbia have gotten 
into the act).   Government checks, bonds, and other 
obligations, which exist in untold millions and are 
worth untold billions, are common targets for 
forgery, which the Secret Service also battles.   It 
even handles forgery of postage stamps.

	But cash is fading in importance today as 
money has become electronic.  As necessity 
beckoned, the Secret Service moved from fighting 
the counterfeiting of paper currency and the forging 
of checks, to the protection of funds transferred by 
wire.

	From wire-fraud, it was a simple skip-and-jump 
to what is formally known as "access device fraud."   
Congress granted the Secret Service the authority to 
investigate "access device fraud"  under Title 18 of 
the United States Code (U.S.C.  Section 1029).

	The term "access device" seems intuitively 
simple.  It's some kind of high-tech gizmo you use to 
get money with.  It makes good sense to put this sort 
of thing in the charge of counterfeiting and wire-
fraud experts.

	However, in Section 1029, the term "access 
device" is very generously defined.  An access device 
is: "any card, plate, code, account number, or other 
means of account access that can be used, alone or 
in conjunction with another access device, to obtain 
money, goods, services, or any other thing of value, 
or that can be used to initiate a transfer of funds."

	"Access device" can therefore be construed to 
include credit cards themselves (a popular forgery 
item nowadays).  It also includes credit card account 
*numbers,* those standards of the digital 
underground.   The same goes for telephone charge 
cards (an increasingly popular item with telcos, who 
are tired of being robbed of pocket change by 
phone-booth thieves).   And also telephone access 
*codes,* those *other* standards of the digital 
underground.  (Stolen telephone codes may not 
"obtain money," but they certainly do obtain 
valuable "services," which is specifically forbidden 
by Section 1029.)

	We can now see that Section 1029 already pits 
the United States Secret Service directly against the 
digital underground, without any mention at all of 
the word "computer."

	Standard phreaking devices, like "blue boxes," 
used to steal phone service from old-fashioned 
mechanical switches, are unquestionably 
"counterfeit access devices."   Thanks to Sec.1029, it 
is not only illegal to *use* counterfeit access devices, 
but it is even illegal to *build* them.   "Producing," 
"designing" "duplicating" or "assembling" blue 
boxes are all federal crimes today, and if you do this, 
the Secret Service has been charged by Congress to 
come after you.

	Automatic Teller Machines, which replicated all 
over America during the 1980s, are definitely "access 
devices," too, and an attempt to tamper with their 
punch-in codes and plastic bank cards falls directly 
under Sec. 1029.

	Section 1029 is remarkably elastic.  Suppose you 
find a computer password in somebody's trash.  That 
password might be a "code" -- it's certainly a "means 
of account access."  Now suppose you log on to a 
computer and copy some software for yourself.  
You've certainly obtained "service" (computer 
service)  and a "thing of value" (the software).   
Suppose you tell a dozen friends about your swiped 
password, and let them use it, too.  Now you're 
"trafficking in unauthorized access devices."  And 
when the Prophet, a member of the Legion of Doom, 
passed a stolen telephone company document to 
Knight Lightning at *Phrack* magazine, they were 
both charged under Sec. 1029!

	There are two limitations on Section 1029.  First, 
the offense must "affect interstate or foreign 
commerce" in order to become a matter of federal 
jurisdiction.  The term "affecting commerce" is not 
well defined; but you may take it as a given that the 
Secret Service can take an interest if you've done 
most anything that happens to cross a state line.   
State and local police can be touchy about their 
jurisdictions, and can sometimes be mulish when 
the feds show up.   But when it comes to computer-
crime, the local police are pathetically grateful for 
federal help -- in fact they complain that they can't 
get enough of it.   If you're stealing long-distance 
service, you're almost certainly crossing state lines, 
and you're definitely "affecting the interstate 
commerce" of the telcos.  And if you're abusing 
credit cards by ordering stuff out of glossy catalogs 
from, say, Vermont, you're in for it.

	The second limitation is money.  As a rule, the 
feds don't pursue penny-ante offenders.  Federal 
judges will dismiss cases that appear to waste their 
time.  Federal crimes must be serious;  Section 1029 
specifies a minimum loss of a thousand dollars.

	We now come to the very next section of Title 
18, which is Section 1030, "Fraud and related activity 
in connection with computers."  This statute gives 
the Secret Service direct jurisdiction over acts of 
computer intrusion.  On the face of it, the Secret 
Service would now seem to command the field.  
Section 1030, however, is nowhere near so ductile as 
Section 1029.

	The first annoyance is Section 1030(d), which 
reads:

	"(d) The United States Secret Service shall, *in 
addition to any other agency having such authority,* 
have the authority to investigate offenses under this 
section.  Such authority of the United States Secret 
Service shall be exercised in accordance with an 
agreement which shall be entered into by the 
Secretary  of the Treasury *and the Attorney 
General.*"   (Author's  italics.)

	The Secretary of the Treasury is the titular head 
of the Secret Service, while the Attorney General is 
in charge of the FBI.  In Section (d), Congress 
shrugged off responsibility for the computer-crime 
turf-battle between the Service and the Bureau, and 
made them fight it out all by themselves.  The result 
was a rather dire one for the Secret Service, for the 
FBI ended up with exclusive jurisdiction over 
computer break-ins having to do with national 
security, foreign espionage, federally insured banks, 
and U.S. military bases, while retaining joint 
jurisdiction over all the other computer intrusions.  
Essentially, when it comes to Section 1030, the FBI 
not only gets the real glamor stuff for itself, but can 
peer over the shoulder of the Secret Service and 
barge in to meddle whenever it suits them.

	The second problem has to do with the dicey 
term "Federal interest computer."  Section 1030(a)(2) 
makes it illegal to "access a computer without 
authorization" if that computer belongs to a 
financial institution or an issuer of credit cards 
(fraud cases, in other words).   Congress was quite 
willing to give the Secret Service jurisdiction over 
money-transferring computers, but Congress balked 
at letting them investigate any and all computer 
intrusions.   Instead, the USSS had to settle for the 
money machines and the "Federal interest 
computers."   A "Federal interest computer" is a 
computer which the government itself owns, or is 
using.  Large networks of interstate computers, 
linked over state lines, are also considered to be of 
"Federal interest."   (This notion of "Federal interest" 
is legally rather foggy and has never been clearly 
defined in the courts.  The Secret Service has never 
yet had its hand slapped for investigating computer 
break-ins that were *not* of "Federal interest," but 
conceivably someday this might happen.)

	So the Secret Service's authority over 
"unauthorized access" to computers covers a lot of 
territory, but by no means the whole ball of 
cyberspatial wax.   If you are, for instance, a *local* 
computer retailer, or the owner of a *local* bulletin 
board system, then a malicious *local* intruder can 
break in, crash your system, trash your files and 
scatter viruses, and the U.S.  Secret Service cannot 
do a single thing about it.

	At least, it can't do anything *directly.*   But the 
Secret Service will do plenty to help the local people 
who can.

	The FBI may have dealt itself an ace off the 
bottom of the deck when it comes to Section 1030; 
but that's not the whole story; that's not the street.   
What's Congress thinks is one thing, and Congress 
has been known to change its mind.  The *real* turf-
struggle is out there in the streets where it's 
happening.    If you're a local street-cop with a 
computer problem, the Secret Service wants you to 
know where you can find the real expertise.  While 
the Bureau crowd are off having their favorite shoes 
polished -- (wing-tips) -- and making derisive fun of 
the Service's favorite shoes -- ("pansy-ass tassels") -- 
the tassel-toting Secret Service has a crew of ready-
and-able  hacker-trackers installed in the capital of 
every state in the Union.   Need advice?  They'll give 
you advice, or at least point you in the right 
direction.  Need training?  They can see to that, too.

	If you're a local cop and you call in the FBI, the 
FBI (as is widely and slanderously rumored)  will 
order you around like a coolie, take all the credit for 
your busts, and mop up every possible scrap of 
reflected glory.  The Secret Service, on the other 
hand, doesn't brag a lot.  They're the quiet types.  
*Very* quiet.  Very cool.  Efficient.  High-tech.  
Mirrorshades, icy stares, radio ear-plugs, an Uzi 
machine-pistol tucked somewhere in that well-cut 
jacket.  American samurai, sworn to give their lives 
to protect our President.  "The granite agents."  
Trained in martial arts, absolutely fearless.  Every 
single one of 'em has a top-secret security clearance.   
Something goes a little wrong, you're not gonna hear 
any whining and moaning and political buck-
passing out of these guys.

	The facade of the granite agent is not, of course, 
the reality.  Secret Service agents are human beings.  
And the real glory in Service work is not in battling 
computer crime -- not yet, anyway -- but in 
protecting the President.  The real glamour of Secret 
Service work is in the White House Detail.   If you're 
at the President's side, then the kids and the wife see 
you on television; you rub shoulders with the most 
powerful people in the world.   That's the real heart 
of Service work, the number one priority.  More than 
one computer investigation has stopped dead in the 
water when Service agents vanished at the 
President's need.

	There's romance in the work of the Service.  The 
intimate access to circles of great power;  the esprit-
de-corps of a highly trained and disciplined elite; the 
high responsibility of defending the Chief Executive;  
the fulfillment of a patriotic duty.   And as police 
work goes, the pay's not bad.  But there's squalor in 
Service work, too.  You may get spat upon by 
protesters howling abuse -- and if they get violent, if 
they get too close, sometimes you have to knock one 
of them down -- discreetly.

	The real squalor in Service work is drudgery 
such as "the quarterlies," traipsing out four times a 
year, year in, year out, to interview the various 
pathetic wretches, many of them in prisons and  
asylums, who have seen fit to threaten the 
President's life.   And then there's the grinding stress 
of searching  all those faces in the endless bustling 
crowds, looking for hatred, looking for psychosis, 
looking for the tight, nervous face of an Arthur 
Bremer, a Squeaky Fromme, a Lee Harvey Oswald.  
It's watching all those grasping, waving hands for 
sudden movements, while your ears strain at your 
radio headphone for the long-rehearsed cry of 
"Gun!"

	It's poring, in grinding detail, over the 
biographies of every rotten loser who ever shot at a 
President.  It's the unsung work of the Protective 
Research Section, who study scrawled, anonymous 
death threats with all the meticulous tools of anti-
forgery techniques.

	And it's maintaining the hefty computerized 
files on anyone who ever threatened the President's 
life.  Civil libertarians have become increasingly 
concerned at the Government's use of computer 
files to track American citizens -- but the Secret 
Service file of potential Presidential assassins, which 
has upward of twenty thousand names, rarely  
causes a peep of protest.  If you *ever* state that you 
intend to kill the President, the Secret Service will 
want to know and record who you are, where you are, 
what you are, and what you're up to.   If you're a 
serious threat -- if you're officially considered "of 
protective interest" -- then the Secret Service may 
well keep tabs on you for the rest of your natural life.

	Protecting the President has first call on all the 
Service's resources.  But there's a lot more to the 
Service's traditions and history than standing guard 
outside the Oval Office.

	The Secret Service is the nation's oldest general 
federal law-enforcement agency.   Compared to the 
Secret Service, the FBI are new-hires and the CIA 
are temps.  The Secret Service was founded 'way 
back in 1865, at the suggestion of Hugh McCulloch, 
Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury.   
McCulloch wanted a specialized Treasury police to 
combat counterfeiting.  Abraham Lincoln agreed 
that this seemed a good idea, and, with a terrible 
irony, Abraham Lincoln was shot that very night by 
John Wilkes Booth.

	The Secret Service originally had nothing to do 
with protecting Presidents.  They didn't take this on 
as a regular assignment until after the Garfield 
assassination in 1881.   And they didn't get any 
Congressional money for it until President McKinley 
was shot in 1901.   The Service was originally 
designed for one purpose: destroying counterfeiters.

					#

	There are interesting parallels between the 
Service's nineteenth-century entry into 
counterfeiting, and America's twentieth-century 
entry into computer-crime.

	In 1865, America's paper currency was a terrible 
muddle.  Security was drastically bad.  Currency was 
printed on the spot by local banks in literally 
hundreds of different designs.  No one really knew 
what the heck a dollar bill was supposed to look like.  
Bogus bills passed easily.  If some joker told you that 
a one-dollar bill from the Railroad Bank of Lowell, 
Massachusetts had a woman leaning on a shield, 
with a locomotive, a cornucopia, a compass, various 
agricultural implements, a railroad bridge, and 
some factories, then you pretty much had to take his 
word for it.  (And in fact he was telling the truth!)

	  *Sixteen hundred* local American banks 
designed and printed their own paper currency, and 
there were no general standards for security.  Like a 
badly guarded node in a computer network, badly 
designed bills were easy to fake, and  posed a 
security hazard for the entire monetary system.

	No one knew the exact extent of the threat to 
the currency.  There were panicked estimates that as 
much as a third of the entire national currency was 
faked.  Counterfeiters -- known as "boodlers" in the 
underground slang of the time -- were  mostly 
technically skilled printers who had gone to the bad.  
Many had once worked printing legitimate currency. 
Boodlers operated in rings and gangs.   Technical 
experts engraved the bogus plates -- commonly in 
basements in New York City.  Smooth confidence 
men passed large wads of high-quality, high-
denomination fakes, including the really 
sophisticated stuff --  government bonds, stock 
certificates, and railway shares.  Cheaper, botched 
fakes were sold or sharewared to low-level gangs of 
boodler wannabes.  (The really cheesy lowlife 
boodlers merely upgraded real bills by altering face 
values, changing ones to fives, tens to hundreds, and 
so on.)

	The techniques of boodling were little-known 
and regarded with a certain awe by the mid-
nineteenth-century  public.  The ability to 
manipulate the system for rip-off seemed 
diabolically clever.  As the skill and daring of the 
boodlers increased, the situation became 
intolerable.  The federal government stepped in, 
and began offering its own federal currency, which 
was printed in fancy green ink, but only on the back -
- the original "greenbacks."  And at first, the 
improved security of the well-designed, well-printed 
federal greenbacks seemed to solve the problem; 
but then the counterfeiters caught on.  Within a few 
years things were worse than ever:  a *centralized* 
system where *all* security was bad!

	The local police were helpless.  The 
Government tried offering blood money to potential 
informants, but this met with little success.  Banks, 
plagued by boodling, gave up hope of police help 
and hired private security men instead.  Merchants 
and bankers queued up by the thousands to buy 
privately-printed manuals on currency security, slim 
little books like Laban Heath's  *Infallible 
Government Counterfeit Detector.*  The back of the 
book offered Laban Heath's patent microscope for 
five bucks.

	Then the Secret Service entered the picture.  
The first agents were a rough and ready crew.   Their 
chief was one William P. Wood, a former guerilla in 
the Mexican War who'd won a reputation busting 
contractor fraudsters for the War Department 
during the Civil War.   Wood, who was also Keeper 
of the Capital Prison, had a sideline as a 
counterfeiting expert, bagging boodlers for the 
federal bounty money.

	Wood was named Chief of the new Secret 
Service in July 1865.  There were only ten  Secret 
Service agents in all:  Wood himself, a handful 
who'd worked for him in the War Department, and a 
few former private investigators -- counterfeiting 
experts -- whom Wood had won over to public 
service.   (The Secret Service of 1865 was much the 
size of the Chicago Computer Fraud Task Force or 
the Arizona Racketeering Unit of 1990.)  These ten 
"Operatives" had an additional twenty or so 
"Assistant Operatives" and "Informants."   Besides 
salary and per diem, each Secret Service employee 
received a whopping twenty-five dollars for each 
boodler he captured.

	Wood himself publicly estimated that at least 
*half* of America's currency was counterfeit, a 
perhaps pardonable perception.   Within a year the 
Secret Service had arrested over 200 counterfeiters.  
They busted about two hundred boodlers a year for 
four years straight.

	Wood attributed his success to travelling fast 
and light, hitting the bad-guys hard, and avoiding 
bureaucratic baggage.  "Because my raids were 
made without military escort and I did not ask the 
assistance of state officers, I surprised the 
professional counterfeiter."

	Wood's social message to the once-impudent 
boodlers bore an eerie ring of Sundevil:  "It was also 
my purpose to convince such characters that it 
would no longer be healthy for them to ply their 
vocation without being handled roughly, a fact they 
soon discovered."

	William P. Wood, the Secret Service's guerilla 
pioneer, did not end well.  He succumbed to the lure 
of aiming for the really big score.  The notorious 
Brockway Gang of New York City,  headed by 
William E. Brockway, the "King of the 
Counterfeiters," had forged a number of 
government bonds.  They'd passed these brilliant 
fakes on the prestigious Wall Street investment firm 
of Jay Cooke and Company.  The Cooke firm were 
frantic and offered a huge reward for the forgers' 
plates.

	Laboring diligently, Wood confiscated the 
plates (though not Mr. Brockway) and claimed the 
reward.  But the Cooke company treacherously 
reneged.   Wood got involved in a down-and-dirty 
lawsuit with the Cooke capitalists.   Wood's boss, 
Secretary of the Treasury McCulloch, felt that 
Wood's demands for money and glory were 
unseemly, and even when the reward money finally 
came through, McCulloch refused to pay Wood 
anything.   Wood found himself mired in a 
seemingly endless round of federal suits and 
Congressional lobbying.

	Wood never got his money.  And he lost his job 
to boot.  He resigned in 1869.

	Wood's agents suffered, too.  On May 12, 1869, 
the second Chief of the Secret Service took over, and 
almost immediately fired most of Wood's pioneer 
Secret Service agents:   Operatives, Assistants and 
Informants alike.  The practice of receiving $25 per 
crook was abolished.   And the Secret Service began 
the long, uncertain process of thorough 
professionalization.

	Wood ended badly.  He must have felt stabbed 
in the back.  In fact his entire organization was 
mangled.

	On the other hand, William P. Wood *was* the 
first head of the Secret Service.  William Wood was 
the pioneer.  People still honor his name.  Who 
remembers the name of the *second* head of the 
Secret Service?

	As for William Brockway (also known as 
"Colonel Spencer"), he was finally arrested by the 
Secret Service in 1880.  He did five years in prison, 
got out, and was still boodling at the age of seventy-
four.
	
				#

	Anyone with an interest in  Operation Sundevil -
- or in American computer-crime generally -- could 
scarcely miss the presence of Gail Thackeray, 
Assistant Attorney General of the State of Arizona.   
Computer-crime training manuals often cited 
Thackeray's group and her work;  she was the 
highest-ranking state official to specialize in 
computer-related offenses.   Her name had been on 
the Sundevil press release (though modestly ranked 
well after the local federal prosecuting attorney and 
the head of the Phoenix Secret Service office).

	As public commentary, and controversy, began 
to mount about the Hacker Crackdown, this 
Arizonan state official began to take a higher and 
higher public profile.  Though uttering almost 
nothing specific about the Sundevil operation itself,  
she coined some of the most striking soundbites of 
the growing propaganda war:  "Agents are operating 
in good faith, and I don't think you can say that for 
the hacker community," was one.  Another was the 
memorable "I am not a mad dog prosecutor"  
(*Houston Chronicle,*  Sept 2, 1990.)  In the 
meantime, the Secret Service maintained its usual 
extreme discretion; the Chicago Unit, smarting from 
the backlash of the Steve Jackson scandal, had gone 
completely to earth.

	As I collated my growing pile of newspaper 
clippings, Gail Thackeray ranked as a comparative 
fount of public knowledge on police operations.

	I decided that I  had to get to know Gail 
Thackeray.   I wrote to her at the Arizona Attorney 
General's Office.   Not only did she kindly reply to 
me, but, to my astonishment, she knew very well 
what "cyberpunk" science fiction was.

	Shortly after this, Gail Thackeray lost her job.   
And I temporarily misplaced my own career as a 
science-fiction writer, to become a full-time 
computer-crime journalist.   In early March, 1991, I 
flew to Phoenix, Arizona, to interview Gail Thackeray 
for my book on the hacker crackdown.  
		
					#

	"Credit cards didn't used to cost anything to 
get," says Gail Thackeray.  "Now they cost forty 
bucks -- and that's all just to cover the costs from 
*rip-off artists.*"

	Electronic nuisance criminals are parasites.  
One by one they're not much harm, no big deal.  But 
they never come just one by one. They come in 
swarms, heaps, legions, sometimes whole 
subcultures.  And they bite.  Every time we buy a 
credit card today, we lose a little financial vitality to a 
particular species of bloodsucker.

	What, in her expert opinion, are the worst forms 
of electronic crime, I ask, consulting my notes.  Is it -- 
credit card fraud?  Breaking into ATM bank 
machines?  Phone-phreaking?  Computer 
intrusions?  Software viruses?  Access-code theft? 
Records tampering?  Software piracy?  Pornographic 
bulletin boards? Satellite TV piracy?  Theft of cable 
service?   It's a long list.  By the time I reach the end 
of it I feel rather depressed.

	"Oh no," says Gail Thackeray, leaning forward 
over the table, her whole body gone stiff with 
energetic indignation, "the biggest damage is 
telephone fraud.  Fake sweepstakes, fake charities.  
Boiler-room con operations.  You could pay off the 
national debt with what these guys steal....  They 
target old people, they get hold of credit ratings and 
demographics, they rip off the old and the weak."   
The words come tumbling out of her.

	It's low-tech stuff, your everyday boiler-room 
fraud.  Grifters, conning people out of money over 
the phone, have been around for decades.  This is 
where the word "phony" came from!

	It's just that it's so much *easier* now, horribly 
facilitated by advances in technology and the 
byzantine structure of the modern phone system.  
The same professional fraudsters do it over and 
over, Thackeray tells me, they hide behind dense 
onion-shells of fake companies.... fake holding 
corporations nine or ten layers deep, registered all 
over the map.  They get a phone installed under a 
false name in an empty safe-house.  And then they 
call-forward everything out of that phone to yet 
another phone,  a phone that may even be in 
another *state.*  And they don't even pay the 
charges on their phones; after a month or so, they 
just split.  Set up somewhere else in another  
Podunkville with the same seedy crew of veteran 
phone-crooks.  They buy or steal commercial credit 
card reports, slap them on the PC, have a program 
pick out people over sixty-five  who pay a lot to 
charities.  A whole subculture living off this, 
merciless folks on the con.

	"The 'light-bulbs for the blind' people," 
Thackeray muses, with a special loathing.  "There's 
just no end to them."

	We're sitting in a downtown diner in Phoenix, 
Arizona.  It's a tough town, Phoenix.  A state capital 
seeing some hard times.  Even to a Texan like 
myself, Arizona state politics seem rather baroque.  
There was, and remains, endless trouble over the 
Martin Luther King holiday, the sort of stiff-necked, 
foot-shooting incident for which Arizona politics 
seem famous.  There was Evan Mecham, the 
eccentric Republican millionaire governor who was 
impeached, after reducing state government to a 
ludicrous shambles.  Then there was the national 
Keating scandal, involving Arizona savings and 
loans, in which both  of Arizona's  U.S. senators, 
DeConcini and McCain, played sadly prominent 
roles.

	And the very latest is the bizarre AzScam case, 
in which state legislators were videotaped, eagerly 
taking cash from an informant of the Phoenix city 
police department, who was posing as a Vegas 
mobster.

	"Oh," says Thackeray cheerfully.  "These people 
are amateurs here, they thought they were finally 
getting to play with the big boys.  They don't have the 
least idea how to take a bribe!  It's not institutional 
corruption.  It's not  like back in Philly."

	Gail Thackeray was a former prosecutor in 
Philadelphia.  Now she's a former assistant attorney 
general of the State of Arizona.  Since  moving to 
Arizona in 1986, she had worked under the aegis of 
Steve Twist,  her boss in the Attorney General's 
office.  Steve Twist wrote Arizona's pioneering 
computer crime laws and naturally took an interest 
in seeing them enforced. It was a snug niche, and 
Thackeray's Organized Crime and Racketeering 
Unit won a national reputation for ambition and 
technical knowledgeability....  Until the latest 
election in Arizona.  Thackeray's boss ran for the top 
job, and lost.  The victor, the new Attorney General, 
apparently went to some pains to eliminate the 
bureaucratic traces of his rival, including his pet 
group -- Thackeray's group.   Twelve people got their 
walking papers.

	Now Thackeray's painstakingly assembled 
computer lab sits gathering dust somewhere in the 
glass-and-concrete Attorney General's HQ on 1275 
Washington Street.  Her computer-crime books, her 
painstakingly garnered back issues of phreak and 
hacker zines, all bought at her own expense -- are 
piled in boxes somewhere.  The State of Arizona is 
simply not particularly interested in electronic 
racketeering at the moment.

	At the moment of our interview, Gail Thackeray, 
officially unemployed, is working out of the county 
sheriff's office, living on her savings, and prosecuting 
several cases -- working 60-hour weeks, just as always 
-- for no pay at all.  "I'm trying to train people," she 
mutters.

	Half her life seems to be spent training people -
- merely pointing out, to the naive and incredulous 
(such as myself) that this stuff is *actually going on 
out there.*  It's a small world, computer crime.  A 
young world.   Gail Thackeray, a trim blonde Baby-
Boomer who favors Grand Canyon white-water 
rafting to kill some slow time, is one of the world's 
most senior, most veteran "hacker-trackers."   Her 
mentor was Donn Parker,  the California think-tank 
theorist who got it all started 'way back in the mid-
70s, the "grandfather of the field,"  "the great bald 
eagle of computer crime."

	And what she has learned, Gail Thackeray 
teaches.  Endlessly. Tirelessly.  To anybody.  To 
Secret Service agents and state police, at the Glynco, 
Georgia federal training center.  To local police, on 
"roadshows" with her slide projector and notebook.  
To corporate security personnel.  To journalists.  To 
parents.

	 Even *crooks* look to Gail Thackeray for advice.  
Phone-phreaks call her at the office.  They know very 
well who she is.  They pump her for information on 
what the cops are up to, how much they know.  
Sometimes whole *crowds* of phone phreaks, 
hanging out on illegal conference calls, will call Gail 
Thackeray up.  They taunt her.  And, as always, they 
boast.  Phone-phreaks, real stone phone-phreaks, 
simply *cannot shut up.*  They natter on for hours.

	Left to themselves, they mostly talk about the 
intricacies of ripping-off phones; it's about as 
interesting as listening to hot-rodders talk about 
suspension and distributor-caps.  They also gossip 
cruelly about each other.  And when talking to Gail 
Thackeray, they incriminate themselves.   "I have 
tapes," Thackeray says coolly.

	Phone phreaks just talk like crazy.  "Dial-Tone" 
out in Alabama has been known to spend half-an-
hour simply reading stolen phone-codes aloud into 
voice-mail answering machines.  Hundreds, 
thousands of numbers, recited in a monotone, 
without a break -- an eerie phenomenon.  When 
arrested, it's a rare phone phreak who doesn't 
inform at endless length on everybody he knows.

	Hackers are no better.  What other group of 
criminals, she asks rhetorically, publishes 
newsletters and holds conventions?   She seems 
deeply nettled by the sheer brazenness of this 
behavior, though to an outsider, this activity might 
make one wonder whether hackers should be 
considered "criminals" at all.  Skateboarders have 
magazines, and they trespass a lot.  Hot rod people 
have magazines and they break speed limits and 
sometimes kill people....

	I ask her whether it would be any loss to society 
if phone phreaking and computer hacking, as 
hobbies, simply dried up and blew away, so that 
nobody ever did it again.

	She seems surprised.  "No," she says swiftly.  
"Maybe a little... in the old days... the MIT stuff...  But 
there's a lot of wonderful, legal stuff you can do with 
computers now, you don't have to break into 
somebody else's just to learn.  You don't have that 
excuse. You can learn all you like."

	Did you ever hack into a system? I ask.

	The trainees do it at Glynco.  Just to 
demonstrate system vulnerabilities.  She's cool to 
the notion.  Genuinely indifferent.

	"What kind of computer do you have?"

	"A Compaq 286LE," she mutters.

	"What kind do you *wish* you had?"

	At this question, the unmistakable light of true 
hackerdom flares in Gail Thackeray's eyes.  She 
becomes tense, animated, the words pour out:  "An 
Amiga 2000 with an IBM card and Mac emulation!  
The most common hacker machines are Amigas 
and Commodores.  And Apples."  If she had the 
Amiga, she enthuses, she could run a whole galaxy 
of seized computer-evidence disks on one 
convenient multifunctional machine.  A cheap one, 
too.  Not like the old Attorney General lab, where 
they had an ancient CP/M machine, assorted 
Amiga flavors and Apple flavors, a couple IBMS, all 
the utility software... but no Commodores.  The 
workstations down at the Attorney General's are 
Wang dedicated word-processors.  Lame machines 
tied in to an office net --  though at least they get on-
line to the Lexis and Westlaw legal data services.

	I don't say anything.  I recognize the syndrome, 
though.  This computer-fever has been running 
through segments of our society for years now.  It's a 
strange kind of lust: K-hunger, Meg-hunger; but it's 
a shared disease; it can kill parties dead, as 
conversation spirals into the deepest and most 
deviant recesses of software releases and expensive 
peripherals....  The mark of the hacker beast.  I have 
it too.  The whole "electronic community," whatever 
the hell that is, has it.  Gail Thackeray has it.  Gail 
Thackeray is a hacker cop.   My immediate reaction 
is a strong rush of indignant pity:  *why doesn't 
somebody buy this woman her Amiga?!*   It's not 
like she's asking for a Cray X-MP supercomputer 
mainframe; an Amiga's a sweet little  cookie-box 
thing.  We're losing zillions in organized fraud; 
prosecuting and defending a single hacker case in 
court can cost a hundred grand easy.  How come 
nobody can come up with four lousy grand so this 
woman can do her job?  For a hundred grand we 
could buy every computer cop in America an Amiga.  
There aren't that many of 'em.

	Computers.  The lust, the hunger, for 
computers.  The loyalty they inspire, the intense 
sense of possessiveness.   The culture they have 
bred.  I myself am sitting in  downtown Phoenix, 
Arizona because it suddenly occurred to me that the 
police might -- just *might* -- come and take away 
my computer.  The prospect of this, the mere 
*implied threat,*  was unbearable.  It literally 
changed my life.  It was changing the lives of many 
others.  Eventually it would change everybody's life.

	Gail Thackeray was one of the top computer-
crime people in America.  And I was just some 
novelist, and yet I had a better computer than hers.  
*Practically everybody I knew*  had a better 
computer than Gail Thackeray and her feeble 
laptop 286.  It was like sending the sheriff in to clean 
up Dodge City and arming her with a slingshot cut 
from an old rubber tire.

	But then again, you don't need a howitzer to 
enforce the law.  You can do a lot just with a badge.  
With a badge alone, you can basically wreak havoc, 
take a terrible vengeance on wrongdoers.  Ninety 
percent of "computer crime investigation" is just 
"crime investigation:" names, places, dossiers, 
modus operandi, search warrants, victims, 
complainants, informants...

	What will computer crime look like in ten 
years?  Will it get better?  Did "Sundevil" send 'em 
reeling back in confusion?

	It'll be like it is now,  only worse, she tells me 
with perfect conviction.  Still there in the 
background, ticking along, changing with the times: 
the criminal underworld.  It'll be like drugs are.  Like 
our problems with alcohol.  All the cops and laws in 
the world never solved our problems with alcohol.  If 
there's something people want, a certain percentage 
of them are just going to take it.  Fifteen percent of 
the populace will never steal.  Fifteen percent will 
steal most anything not nailed down.  The battle is 
for the hearts and minds of the remaining seventy 
percent.

	And criminals catch on fast.  If there's not "too 
steep a learning curve" -- if it doesn't require a 
baffling amount of expertise and practice -- then 
criminals are often some of the first through the gate 
of a new technology.  Especially if it helps them to 
hide.  They have tons of cash, criminals.  The new  
communications tech -- like pagers, cellular phones, 
faxes, Federal Express -- were pioneered by rich 
corporate people, and by criminals.  In the early 
years of pagers and beepers, dope dealers were so 
enthralled this technology that owing a beeper was 
practically prima facie evidence of cocaine dealing.  
CB radio exploded when the speed limit hit 55 and 
breaking the highway law became a national 
pastime.  Dope dealers send cash by  Federal 
Express, despite, or perhaps *because of,* the 
warnings in FedEx offices that tell you never to try 
this.  Fed Ex uses X-rays and dogs on their mail, to 
stop drug shipments.  That doesn't work very well.

	Drug dealers went wild over cellular phones.  
There are simple methods of faking ID on cellular 
phones, making the location of the call mobile, free 
of charge, and effectively untraceable.  Now 
victimized cellular companies routinely bring in vast 
toll-lists of calls to Colombia and Pakistan.

	Judge Greene's fragmentation of the phone 
company is driving law enforcement nuts.  Four 
thousand telecommunications companies.  Fraud 
skyrocketing.  Every temptation in the world 
available with a phone and a credit card number.  
Criminals untraceable.  A galaxy of "new neat rotten 
things to do."

	 If there were one thing Thackeray would like to 
have, it would be an effective legal end-run through 
this new fragmentation minefield.

	  It would be a new form of electronic search 
warrant, an "electronic letter of marque" to be issued 
by a judge.  It would create a new category of 
"electronic emergency."   Like a wiretap, its use 
would be rare, but it would cut across state lines and 
force swift cooperation from all concerned.  Cellular, 
phone, laser, computer network, PBXes, AT&T, Baby 
Bells, long-distance entrepreneurs, packet radio.  
Some document, some mighty court-order, that 
could slice through four thousand separate forms of 
corporate red-tape, and get her at once to the source 
of calls, the source of email threats and viruses, the 
sources of bomb threats, kidnapping threats.  "From 
now on," she says, "the Lindberg baby will always 
die."

	Something that would make the Net sit still, if 
only for a moment.  Something that would get her up 
to speed.  Seven league boots.  That's what she really 
needs.  "Those guys move in nanoseconds and I'm 
on the Pony Express."

	And then, too, there's the  coming international 
angle.  Electronic crime has never been easy to 
localize, to tie to a physical jurisdiction.  And phone-
phreaks and hackers loathe boundaries, they jump 
them whenever they can.  The English.  The Dutch.  
And the Germans, especially the ubiquitous Chaos 
Computer Club.  The Australians.  They've all 
learned phone-phreaking from America.  It's a 
growth mischief industry.  The multinational 
networks are global, but governments and the police 
simply aren't.  Neither are the laws.  Or the legal 
frameworks for citizen protection.

 	One language is global, though -- English.  
Phone phreaks speak English; it's their native 
tongue even if they're Germans.  English may have 
started in England but now it's the Net language; it 
might as well be called "CNNese."

	Asians just aren't much into phone phreaking.  
They're the world masters at organized software 
piracy.  The French aren't into phone-phreaking 
either.  The French are into computerized industrial 
espionage.

	In the old days of the MIT righteous 
hackerdom, crashing systems didn't hurt anybody.  
Not all that much, anyway.  Not permanently.  Now 
the players are more venal.  Now the consequences 
are worse.  Hacking will begin killing people soon.  
Already there are methods of stacking calls onto 911 
systems, annoying the police, and possibly causing 
the death of some poor soul calling in with a genuine 
emergency.  Hackers in Amtrak computers, or air-
traffic control computers, will kill somebody 
someday.  Maybe a lot of people.  Gail Thackeray 
expects it.

	And the viruses are getting nastier.  The "Scud" 
virus is the latest one out.  It wipes hard-disks.

	According to Thackeray, the idea that phone-
phreaks are Robin Hoods is a fraud.  They don't 
deserve this repute.   Basically, they pick on the 
weak.  AT&T now protects itself with the fearsome 
ANI (Automatic Number Identification) trace 
capability.  When AT&T wised up and tightened 
security generally, the phreaks drifted into the Baby 
Bells.  The Baby Bells lashed out in 1989 and 1990, so 
the phreaks switched to smaller long-distance 
entrepreneurs.  Today, they are moving into locally 
owned PBXes and voice-mail systems, which are full 
of security holes, dreadfully easy to hack.  These 
victims aren't the moneybags Sheriff of Nottingham 
or Bad King John, but small groups of innocent 
people who find it hard to protect themselves, and 
who really suffer from these depredations.  Phone 
phreaks pick on the weak.  They do it for power.  If it 
were legal, they wouldn't do it.  They don't want 
service, or knowledge, they want the thrill of power-
tripping.   There's plenty of knowledge or service 
around, if you're willing to pay.  Phone phreaks don't 
pay, they steal.  It's because it is illegal that it feels 
like power, that it gratifies their vanity.

	I leave Gail Thackeray with a handshake at the 
door of her office building -- a vast International-
Style office building downtown.  The Sheriff's office is 
renting part of it.  I get the vague impression that 
quite a lot of the building is empty -- real estate 
crash.

	In a Phoenix sports apparel store, in a downtown 
mall, I meet the "Sun Devil" himself.  He is the 
cartoon mascot of Arizona State University, whose 
football stadium, "Sundevil," is near the local Secret 
Service HQ -- hence the name Operation Sundevil.  
The Sun Devil himself is named "Sparky."  Sparky 
the Sun Devil is maroon and bright yellow, the 
school colors.  Sparky brandishes a three-tined 
yellow pitchfork.  He has a small mustache, pointed 
ears, a barbed tail, and is dashing forward jabbing 
the air with the pitchfork, with an expression of 
devilish glee.

	Phoenix was the home of Operation Sundevil.  
The Legion of Doom ran a hacker bulletin board 
called "The Phoenix Project."  An Australian hacker 
named "Phoenix"  once burrowed through the 
Internet to attack Cliff Stoll, then bragged and 
boasted about it to *The New York Times.*  This net 
of coincidence is both odd and meaningless.

	The headquarters of the Arizona Attorney 
General, Gail Thackeray's former workplace, is on 
1275 Washington Avenue.  Many of the downtown 
streets in Phoenix are named after prominent 
American presidents:  Washington, Jefferson, 
Madison....

	After dark, all the employees go home to their 
suburbs.  Washington, Jefferson and Madison -- 
what would be the Phoenix inner city, if there were 
an inner city in this sprawling automobile-bred town 
--  become the haunts of transients and derelicts.  
The homeless. The sidewalks along Washington are 
lined with orange trees.  Ripe fallen fruit lies 
scattered like croquet balls on the sidewalks and 
gutters.  No one seems to be eating them.  I try a 
fresh one.  It tastes unbearably bitter.

          The Attorney General's office, built in 1981 
during the Babbitt administration,  is a long low two-
story building of white cement and wall-sized sheets 
of curtain-glass.  Behind each glass wall is a lawyer's 
office, quite open and visible to anyone strolling by.  
Across the street is a dour government building 
labelled simply ECONOMIC SECURITY, something 
that has not been in great supply in the American 
Southwest lately.

 	The offices  are about twelve feet square.  They 
feature tall wooden cases full of red-spined 
lawbooks; Wang computer monitors; telephones; 
Post-it notes galore.  Also framed law diplomas and a 
general excess of bad Western landscape art.  Ansel 
Adams photos are a big favorite, perhaps to 
compensate for the dismal specter of the parking-
lot, two acres of striped black asphalt, which features 
gravel landscaping and some sickly-looking barrel 
cacti.

	It has grown dark.  Gail Thackeray has told me 
that the people who work late here, are afraid of 
muggings in the parking lot.  It seems cruelly ironic 
that a woman tracing electronic racketeers across 
the interstate labyrinth of Cyberspace should fear 
an assault by a homeless derelict in the parking lot 
of her own workplace.

	Perhaps this is less than coincidence.  Perhaps 
these two seemingly disparate worlds are somehow 
generating one another.  The poor and 
disenfranchised take to the streets, while the rich 
and computer-equipped, safe in their bedrooms, 
chatter over their modems.  Quite often the derelicts 
kick the glass out and break in to the lawyers' offices, 
if they see something they need or want badly 
enough.

	I cross  the parking lot to the street behind the 
Attorney General's office.  A pair of young tramps 
are bedding down on flattened sheets of cardboard, 
under an alcove stretching over the sidewalk.  One 
tramp wears a glitter-covered T-shirt reading 
"CALIFORNIA" in Coca-Cola cursive.  His nose and 
cheeks look chafed and swollen; they glisten with 
what seems to be Vaseline.  The other tramp has a 
ragged long-sleeved shirt and lank brown hair 
parted in the middle. They both wear blue jeans 
coated in grime.  They are both drunk.

	"You guys crash here a lot?" I ask them.

	They look at me warily.  I am wearing black 
jeans, a black pinstriped suit jacket and a black silk 
tie.  I have odd shoes and a funny haircut.

	"It's our first time here," says the red-nosed 
tramp unconvincingly. There is a lot of cardboard 
stacked here.  More than any two people could use.

	"We usually stay at the Vinnie's down the 
street," says the brown-haired tramp, puffing a 
Marlboro with a meditative air, as he sprawls with his 
head on a blue nylon backpack.  "The Saint 
Vincent's."

	"You know who works in that building over 
there?"  I ask, pointing.

	The brown-haired tramp shrugs.  "Some kind of 
attorneys, it says."

`	We urge one another to take it easy.  I give 
them five bucks.

	A block down the street I meet a vigorous 
workman who is wheeling along some kind of 
industrial trolley; it has what appears to be a tank of 
propane on it.

	 We make eye contact.  We nod politely.  I walk 
past him.  "Hey!  Excuse me sir!" he says.

	"Yes?" I say, stopping and turning.

	"Have you seen," the guy says rapidly, "a black 
guy, about 6'7", scars on both his cheeks like this --" 
he gestures --  "wears a black baseball cap on 
backwards, wandering around here anyplace?"

	"Sounds like I don't much *want* to meet him," I 
say.

	"He took my wallet," says my new acquaintance.  
"Took it this morning.  Y'know, some people would 
be *scared* of a guy like that.  But I'm not scared.  
I'm from Chicago.  I'm gonna hunt him down.  We 
do things like that in Chicago."

	"Yeah?"

	"I went to the cops and now he's got an APB out 
on his ass," he says with satisfaction.  "You run into 
him, you let me know."

	"Okay," I say.  "What is your name, sir?"

	"Stanley...."

	"And how can I reach you?"

	"Oh," Stanley says, in the same rapid voice, "you 
don't have to reach, uh, me.  You can just call the 
cops.  Go straight to the cops." He reaches into a 
pocket and pulls out a greasy piece of pasteboard.  
"See, here's my report on him."

	I look.  The "report," the size of an index card, is 
labelled PRO-ACT:  Phoenix Residents Opposing 
Active Crime Threat.... or is it  Organized Against 
Crime Threat?  In the darkening street it's hard to 
read.  Some kind of vigilante group?  Neighborhood 
watch?  I feel very puzzled.

	"Are you a police officer, sir?"

	He smiles, seems very pleased by the question.

	"No," he says.

`	"But you are a 'Phoenix Resident?'"

	"Would you believe a homeless person," 
Stanley says.

	"Really?  But what's with the..."   For the first 
time I take a close look at Stanley's trolley.  It's a 
rubber-wheeled thing of industrial metal, but the 
device I had mistaken for a tank of propane is in fact 
a water-cooler.  Stanley also has an Army duffel-bag, 
stuffed tight as a sausage with clothing or perhaps a 
tent, and, at the base of his trolley, a cardboard box 
and a battered leather briefcase.

	"I see," I say, quite at a loss.  For the first time I 
notice that Stanley has a wallet.  He has not lost his 
wallet at all.  It is in his back pocket and chained to 
his belt.  It's not a new wallet.  It seems to have seen 
a lot of wear.

	"Well, you know how it is, brother," says Stanley.  
Now that I know that he is homeless -- *a possible 
threat* --  my entire perception of him has changed 
in an instant.   His speech, which once seemed just 
bright and enthusiastic, now seems to have a 
dangerous tang of mania.  "I have to do this!" he 
assures me.  "Track this guy down... It's a thing I do... 
you know... to keep myself together!"  He smiles, 
nods, lifts his trolley by its decaying rubber 
handgrips.

	"Gotta work together, y'know, "  Stanley booms, 
his face alight with cheerfulness, "the police can't do 
everything!"

	The gentlemen I met in my stroll in downtown 
Phoenix are the only computer illiterates in this 
book.  To regard them as irrelevant, however, would 
be a grave mistake.

	As computerization spreads across society, the 
populace at large is subjected to wave after wave of 
future shock.  But, as a necessary converse, the 
"computer community" itself is subjected to wave 
after wave of incoming computer illiterates.   How 
will those currently enjoying America's digital 
bounty regard, and treat, all this teeming refuse 
yearning to breathe free?  Will the electronic 
frontier be another Land of Opportunity -- or an 
armed and monitored enclave, where the 
disenfranchised snuggle on their cardboard at the 
locked doors of our houses of justice?

	Some people just don't get along with 
computers.  They can't read.  They can't type.  They 
just don't have it in their heads to master arcane 
instructions in wirebound manuals.   Somewhere, 
the process of computerization of the populace will 
reach a limit.  Some people -- quite decent people 
maybe, who might have thrived in any other 
situation -- will be left irretrievably outside the 
bounds.   What's to be done with these people, in 
the bright new shiny electroworld?  How will they be 
regarded, by the mouse-whizzing masters of 
cyberspace?  With contempt?  Indifference?  Fear?

	In retrospect, it astonishes me to realize how 
quickly poor Stanley became a  perceived threat.  
Surprise and fear are closely allied feelings.  And the 
world of computing is full of surprises.

	I met one character in the streets of Phoenix 
whose role in those book is supremely and directly 
relevant.  That personage was Stanley's giant 
thieving scarred phantom.  This phantasm is 
everywhere in this book.  He is the specter haunting 
cyberspace.

	Sometimes he's a maniac vandal ready to 
smash the phone system for no sane reason at all.  
Sometimes he's a fascist fed, coldly programming 
his mighty mainframes to destroy our Bill of Rights.  
Sometimes he's a telco bureaucrat, covertly 
conspiring to register all modems in the service of 
an Orwellian surveillance regime.   Mostly, though, 
this fearsome phantom is a "hacker."   He's strange, 
he doesn't belong, he's not authorized, he doesn't 
smell right, he's not keeping his proper place, he's 
not one of us.  The focus of fear is the hacker, for 
much the same reasons that Stanley's fancied 
assailant is black.

	Stanley's demon can't go away, because he 
doesn't exist.  Despite singleminded and 
tremendous effort, he can't be arrested, sued, jailed, 
or fired.  The only constructive way to do *anything* 
about him is to learn more about Stanley himself.  
This learning process may be repellent, it may be 
ugly, it may involve grave elements of paranoiac 
confusion, but it's necessary.  Knowing Stanley 
requires something more than class-crossing 
condescension.  It requires more than steely legal 
objectivity.  It requires  human compassion and 
sympathy.

	To know Stanley is to know his demon.  If you 
know the other guy's demon, then maybe you'll 
come to know some of your own.   You'll be able to 
separate reality from illusion.   And then you won't 
do your cause, and yourself, more harm than good.   
Like poor damned Stanley from Chicago did. 

					#

	The Federal Computer Investigations 
Committee (FCIC) is the most important and 
influential organization in the realm of American 
computer-crime.  Since the police of other countries 
have largely taken their computer-crime cues from 
American methods, the FCIC might well be called 
the most important computer crime group in the 
world.

	It is also, by federal standards, an organization 
of great unorthodoxy.  State and local investigators 
mix with federal agents.   Lawyers, financial auditors 
and computer-security programmers trade notes 
with street cops.  Industry vendors and telco security 
people show up to explain their gadgetry and plead 
for protection and justice.   Private investigators, 
think-tank experts and industry pundits throw in 
their two cents' worth.   The FCIC is the antithesis of 
a formal bureaucracy.

	Members of the FCIC are obscurely proud of 
this fact; they recognize their group as aberrant,  but 
are entirely convinced that this, for them, outright 
*weird* behavior is nevertheless *absolutely 
necessary* to get their jobs done.

	FCIC regulars  -- from the Secret Service, the 
FBI, the IRS, the Department of Labor, the offices of 
federal attorneys, state police, the Air Force, from 
military intelligence --  often attend meetings, held 
hither and thither across the country,  at their own 
expense.  The FCIC doesn't get grants.  It doesn't 
charge membership fees.  It doesn't have a boss.  It 
has no headquarters -- just a mail drop in 
Washington DC, at the Fraud Division of the Secret 
Service.  It doesn't have a budget.  It doesn't have 
schedules.  It meets three times a year -- sort of.   
Sometimes it issues publications, but the FCIC has 
no regular publisher,  no treasurer, not even a 
secretary.   There are no minutes of FCIC  meetings.   
Non-federal people are considered "non-voting 
members,"  but there's not much in the way of 
elections.  There are no badges, lapel pins or 
certificates of membership.   Everyone is on a first-
name basis.   There are about forty of them.  Nobody 
knows how many, exactly.  People come, people go -- 
sometimes people "go" formally but still hang 
around anyway.  Nobody has ever exactly figured 
out what "membership" of this "Committee"  
actually entails.

	Strange as this may seem to some, to anyone 
familiar with the social world of computing, the 
"organization" of the FCIC is very recognizable.

	 For years now, economists and management 
theorists have speculated that the tidal wave of the 
information revolution would destroy rigid, 
pyramidal bureaucracies, where everything is top-
down and centrally controlled.   Highly trained 
"employees" would take on much greater autonomy,  
being self-starting, and self-motivating,  moving 
from place to place, task to task, with great speed 
and fluidity.  "Ad-hocracy" would rule, with groups of 
people spontaneously knitting together across 
organizational lines, tackling the problem at hand, 
applying intense computer-aided expertise to it, and 
then vanishing whence they came.

	This is more or less what has actually happened 
in the world of federal computer investigation.  With 
the conspicuous exception of the phone companies, 
which are after all over a hundred years old,  
practically *every* organization that plays any 
important role in this book functions just like the 
FCIC.    The Chicago Task Force, the Arizona 
Racketeering Unit, the Legion of Doom, the Phrack 
crowd, the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- they 
*all* look and act like "tiger teams" or "user's 
groups."  They are all electronic ad-hocracies 
leaping up spontaneously to attempt to meet a 
need.

	 Some are police.  Some are, by strict definition, 
criminals.  Some are political interest-groups.   But 
every single group has that same quality of apparent 
spontaneity -- "Hey, gang!  My uncle's got a barn -- 
let's put on a show!"

	Every one of these groups is embarrassed by 
this "amateurism," and, for the sake of their public 
image in a world of non-computer people,  they all 
attempt to look as stern and formal and impressive 
as possible.    These electronic frontier-dwellers 
resemble groups of nineteenth-century pioneers 
hankering after the respectability of statehood.  
There are however,  two crucial differences in the 
historical experience of these "pioneers" of the 
nineteeth and twenty-first centuries.

	  First, powerful information technology *does* 
play into the hands of small, fluid, loosely organized 
groups.  There have always been "pioneers," 
"hobbyists," "amateurs," "dilettantes," "volunteers," 
"movements," "users' groups" and "blue-ribbon 
panels of experts" around.   But a group of this kind -
- when technically equipped to ship huge amounts 
of specialized information, at lightning speed, to its 
members, to government, and to the press -- is 
simply a different kind of animal.   It's like the 
difference between an eel and an electric eel.

	The second crucial change is that American 
society is currently in a state  approaching 
permanent technological revolution.  In the world of 
computers particularly,  it is practically impossible to 
*ever* stop being a  "pioneer," unless you either 
drop dead or deliberately jump off the bus.  The 
scene has never slowed down enough to become 
well-institutionalized.  And after twenty, thirty, forty 
years the "computer revolution" continues to spread, 
to permeate new corners of society.   Anything that 
really works is already obsolete.

	If you spend your entire working life as a 
"pioneer," the word "pioneer" begins to lose its 
meaning.  Your way of life looks less and less like an 
introduction to “something else" more stable and 
organized,  and more and more like *just the way 
things are.*   A "permanent revolution" is really a 
contradiction in terms.  If "turmoil"  lasts long 
enough, it simply becomes *a new kind of society*  -- 
still the same game of history, but new players, new 
rules.

	Apply this to the world of late twentieth-century 
law enforcement, and the implications are  novel 
and puzzling indeed.  Any bureaucratic rulebook 
you write about computer-crime will be flawed when 
you write it, and almost an antique by the time it 
sees print.   The fluidity and fast reactions of the 
FCIC give them a great advantage in this regard, 
which explains their success.  Even with the best will 
in the world (which it does not, in fact, possess) it is 
impossible for an organization the size of the U.S. 
Federal Bureau of Investigation to get up to speed 
on the theory and practice of computer crime.   If 
they tried to train all their agents to do this, it would 
be *suicidal,*  as they would *never be able to do 
anything else.*
 
	 The FBI does try to train its agents in the basics 
of electronic crime, at their base in Quantico, 
Virginia.   And the Secret Service, along with many 
other law enforcement groups, runs quite successful 
and well-attended training courses on wire fraud, 
business crime, and computer intrusion  at the 
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC, 
pronounced "fletsy") in Glynco, Georgia.   But the 
best efforts of these bureaucracies does not remove 
the absolute need for a "cutting-edge mess" like the 
FCIC.

	For you see -- the members of FCIC *are* the 
trainers of the rest of law enforcement.  Practically 
and literally speaking, they are the Glynco  
computer-crime faculty by another name.  If the 
FCIC went over a cliff on a bus, the U.S. law 
enforcement community would be rendered deaf 
dumb and blind in the world of computer crime, and 
would swiftly feel a desperate need to reinvent them.  
And this is no time to go starting from scratch.

	On June 11, 1991, I once again arrived in 
Phoenix, Arizona, for the latest meeting of the 
Federal Computer Investigations Committee.  This 
was more or less the twentieth meeting of this stellar 
group.   The count was uncertain, since nobody  
could figure out whether to include the meetings of 
"the Colluquy," which is what the FCIC was called in 
the mid-1980s before it had even managed to obtain 
the dignity of its own acronym.

	Since my last visit to Arizona, in May, the local 
AzScam bribery scandal had resolved itself in a 
general muddle of humiliation.  The Phoenix chief of 
police, whose agents had videotaped nine state 
legislators up to no good, had resigned his office in a 
tussle with the Phoenix city council over the 
propriety of his undercover operations.

	The Phoenix Chief could now join Gail 
Thackeray and eleven of her closest associates in 
the shared experience of politically motivated 
unemployment.   As of June, resignations were still 
continuing at the Arizona Attorney General's office, 
which could be interpreted as either a New Broom 
Sweeping Clean or a Night of the Long Knives Part 
II, depending on your point of view.

	The meeting of FCIC was held at the Scottsdale 
Hilton Resort. Scottsdale is a wealthy suburb of  
Phoenix, known as "Scottsdull" to scoffing local 
trendies, but well-equipped with posh shopping-
malls and manicured lawns, while conspicuously 
undersupplied with homeless derelicts.   The 
Scottsdale Hilton Resort was a sprawling hotel in 
postmodern  crypto-Southwestern style.  It featured 
a "mission bell tower" plated in turquoise tile and 
vaguely resembling a Saudi minaret.

	Inside it was all barbarically striped Santa Fe 
Style decor.   There was a health spa downstairs and 
a large oddly-shaped pool in the patio.  A poolside 
umbrella-stand offered Ben and Jerry's politically 
correct Peace Pops.

	I registered as a member of FCIC, attaining a 
handy discount rate, then went in search of the Feds.  
Sure enough, at the back of the hotel grounds came 
the unmistakable sound of Gail Thackeray holding 
forth.

	Since I had also attended the Computers 
Freedom and Privacy conference (about which more 
later), this was the second time I had seen 
Thackeray in a group of her law enforcement 
colleagues.   Once again I was struck by how simply 
pleased they seemed to see her.   It was natural that 
she'd get *some* attention, as Gail was one of two 
women in a group of some thirty men; but there was 
a lot more to it than that.

	Gail Thackeray personifies the social glue of the 
FCIC.  They could give a damn about her losing her 
job with the Attorney General.  They were sorry 
about it, of course, but hell, they'd all lost jobs.   If 
they were the kind of guys who liked steady  boring 
jobs, they would never have gotten into computer 
work in the first place. 

	I wandered into her circle and was immediately 
introduced to five strangers.  The conditions of my 
visit at FCIC were reviewed.  I would not quote 
anyone directly.  I would not tie opinions expressed 
to the agencies of the attendees.  I would not (a 
purely hypothetical example) report the 
conversation of a guy from the Secret Service talking 
quite civilly to  a guy from the FBI, as these two 
agencies *never*  talk to each other, and the IRS 
(also present, also hypothetical) *never talks to 
anybody.*

	Worse yet, I was forbidden to attend the first 
conference.  And I didn't.  I have no idea what the 
FCIC was up to behind closed doors that afternoon.  
I rather suspect that they were engaging in a frank 
and thorough confession of their errors, goof-ups 
and blunders, as this has been a feature of every 
FCIC meeting since their legendary Memphis beer-
bust of 1986.  Perhaps the single greatest attraction 
of FCIC is that it is a place where you can go, let your 
hair down, and completely level with people who 
actually comprehend what you are talking about.  
Not only do they understand you, but they *really 
pay attention,*  they are *grateful for your insights,* 
and they *forgive you,*  which in nine cases out of 
ten is something even your boss can't do, because as 
soon as you start talking "ROM," "BBS," or "T-1 
trunk," his eyes glaze over.

	I had nothing much to do that afternoon.  The 
FCIC were beavering away in their  conference 
room.  Doors were firmly closed, windows too dark to 
peer through.  I wondered what a real hacker, a 
computer intruder, would do at a meeting like this.

	The answer came at once.  He would "trash" the 
place.  Not reduce the place to trash  in some orgy of 
vandalism; that's not the use of the term in the 
hacker milieu.  No, he would quietly *empty the 
trash baskets* and silently raid any valuable data 
indiscreetly thrown away.

	Journalists have been known to do this.  
(Journalists hunting information have been known 
to do almost every single unethical thing that 
hackers have ever done.  They also throw in a few 
awful techniques all their own.)  The legality of 
'trashing' is somewhat dubious but it is not in fact 
flagrantly illegal.   It was, however, absurd to 
contemplate trashing the FCIC.  These people knew 
all about trashing.   I wouldn't last fifteen seconds.

	The idea sounded interesting, though.   I'd been 
hearing a lot about the practice lately.  On the spur 
of the moment, I decided I would try trashing the 
office *across the hall*  from the FCIC, an area 
which had nothing to do with the investigators.

	The office was tiny; six chairs, a table....  
Nevertheless, it was open, so I dug around in its 
plastic trash can.

	To my utter astonishment, I came up with the 
torn scraps of a SPRINT long-distance phone bill.  
More digging produced a bank statement and the 
scraps of a hand-written letter, along with gum, 
cigarette ashes, candy wrappers and a day-old-issue 
of USA TODAY.

	The trash went back in its receptacle while the 
scraps of data went into  my travel bag.  I detoured 
through the hotel souvenir shop for some Scotch 
tape and went up to my room.

	Coincidence or not, it was quite true.  Some poor 
soul had, in fact, thrown a SPRINT bill into the 
hotel's trash.   Date May 1991, total amount due: 
$252.36.  Not a business phone, either, but a 
residential bill, in the name of someone called 
Evelyn (not her real name).  Evelyn's records showed 
a ## PAST DUE BILL ##!   Here was her nine-digit 
account ID.    Here was a stern computer-printed 
warning:

 "TREAT YOUR FONCARD AS YOU WOULD ANY 
CREDIT CARD.  TO SECURE AGAINST FRAUD, 
NEVER GIVE YOUR FONCARD NUMBER OVER 
THE PHONE UNLESS YOU INITIATED THE 
CALL.  IF YOU RECEIVE SUSPICIOUS CALLS 
PLEASE NOTIFY CUSTOMER SERVICE 
IMMEDIATELY!"

	I examined my watch.  Still plenty of time left for 
the FCIC to carry on.  I sorted out the scraps of 
Evelyn's SPRINT bill and re-assembled them with 
fresh Scotch tape.  Here was her ten-digit 
FONCARD number.   Didn't seem to have the ID 
number necessary to cause real fraud trouble.

	I did, however, have Evelyn's home phone 
number.  And the phone numbers for a whole crowd 
of Evelyn's long-distance friends and acquaintances.  
In San Diego, Folsom, Redondo, Las Vegas, La Jolla, 
Topeka, and Northampton Massachusetts.  Even 
somebody in Australia!

	I examined other documents.  Here was a bank 
statement.  It was Evelyn's IRA account down at a 
bank in San Mateo California (total balance 
$1877.20).  Here was a charge-card bill for $382.64.    
She was paying it off bit by bit.

	Driven by motives that were completely 
unethical and prurient, I now examined the 
handwritten notes.  They had been torn fairly 
thoroughly, so much so that it took me almost an 
entire five minutes to reassemble them.

	They were drafts of a love letter.  They had been 
written on the lined stationery of Evelyn's employer, 
a biomedical company.  Probably written at work 
when she should have been doing something else.

	"Dear Bob," (not his real name)  "I guess in 
everyone's life there comes a time when hard 
decisions have to be made, and this is a difficult one 
for me -- very upsetting.  Since you haven't called 
me, and I don't understand why, I can only surmise 
it's because you don't want to.  I thought I would 
have heard from you Friday.  I did have a few 
unusual problems with my phone and possibly you 
tried, I hope so.
	"Robert, you asked me to 'let go'..."

	The first note ended.  *Unusual problems with 
her phone?*  I looked swiftly at the next note.

	"Bob, not hearing from you for the whole 
weekend has left me very perplexed..."

	 Next draft. 

	"Dear Bob, there is so much I don't understand 
right now, and I wish I did.  I wish I could talk to you, 
but for some unknown reason you have elected not 
to call -- this is so difficult for me to understand..."

	She tried again.

	"Bob, Since I have always held you in such high 
esteem, I had every hope that we could remain good 
friends, but now one essential ingredient is missing -
- respect.  Your ability to discard people when their 
purpose is served is appalling to me.  The kindest 
thing you could do for me now is to leave me alone.  
You are no longer welcome in my heart or home..."

	Try again.

	"Bob, I wrote a very factual note to you to say 
how much respect I had lost for you, by the way you 
treat people, me in particular, so uncaring and cold.  
The kindest thing you can do for me is to leave me 
alone entirely, as you are no longer welcome in my 
heart or home. I would appreciate it if you could 
retire your debt to me as soon as possible -- I wish no 
link to you in any way.  Sincerely, Evelyn."

	Good heavens, I thought, the bastard actually 
owes her money!  I turned to the next page.

	"Bob:  very simple.  GOODBYE!  No more mind 
games -- no more fascination -- no more coldness -- 
no more respect for you!  It's over -- Finis.  Evie"

	There were two versions of the final brushoff 
letter, but they read about the same.  Maybe she 
hadn't sent it.  The final item in my illicit and 
shameful booty was an envelope addressed to "Bob" 
at his home address, but it had no stamp on it and it 
hadn't been mailed.

	Maybe she'd just been blowing off steam 
because her rascal boyfriend had neglected to call 
her one weekend.   Big deal.  Maybe they'd kissed 
and made up, maybe she and Bob were down at 
Pop's Chocolate Shop now, sharing a malted.  Sure.

	Easy to find out.  All I had to do was call Evelyn 
up.  With a half-clever story and enough brass-
plated gall I could probably trick the truth out of her.  
Phone-phreaks and hackers deceive people over the 
phone all the time.  It's called "social engineering."   
Social engineering is a very common practice in the 
underground, and almost magically effective.  
Human beings are almost always the weakest link in 
computer security.  The simplest way to learn Things 
You Are Not Meant To Know is simply to call up  
and exploit the knowledgeable people.   With social 
engineering, you use the bits of specialized  
knowledge you already have as a key, to manipulate 
people into believing that you are legitimate.  You 
can then coax, flatter, or frighten them into revealing 
almost anything you want to know.  Deceiving 
people (especially over the phone) is easy and fun.  
Exploiting their gullibility is very gratifying; it makes 
you feel very superior to them.

	If I'd been a  malicious hacker on a trashing 
raid, I would now have Evelyn very much in my 
power.  Given all this inside  data, it wouldn't take 
much effort at all to invent a convincing lie.  If I were 
ruthless enough, and jaded enough, and clever 
enough, this momentary indiscretion of hers -- 
maybe committed in tears, who knows -- could cause 
her a whole world of confusion and grief.

	I didn't even have to have a *malicious*  motive.   
Maybe I'd be "on her side," and call up Bob instead, 
and anonymously threaten to break both his 
kneecaps if he didn't take Evelyn out for a steak 
dinner pronto.   It was still profoundly *none of my 
business.*   To have gotten this knowledge at all was 
a sordid act and to use it would be to inflict a sordid 
injury.

	To do all these awful things would require 
exactly zero high-tech expertise.  All it would take 
was the willingness to do it and a certain amount of 
bent imagination.

	I went back downstairs. The hard-working FCIC, 
who had labored forty-five minutes over their 
schedule, were through for the day, and adjourned 
to the hotel bar.  We all had a beer.

	 I had a chat with a guy about "Isis," or rather 
IACIS, the International Association of Computer 
Investigation Specialists.  They're into "computer 
forensics,"  the techniques of picking computer-
systems apart without destroying vital evidence.  
IACIS, currently run out of Oregon, is comprised of 
investigators in the U.S., Canada, Taiwan and 
Ireland.  "Taiwan and Ireland?"  I said.  Are *Taiwan* 
and *Ireland*  really in the forefront of this stuff?  
Well not exactly, my informant admitted.  They just 
happen to have been the first ones to have caught 
on by word of mouth.  Still, the international angle 
counts, because this is obviously an international 
problem.  Phone-lines go everywhere.

	There was a Mountie here from the Royal 
Canadian Mounted Police.  He seemed to be having 
quite a good time.   Nobody had flung this Canadian 
out because he might pose a foreign security risk.  
These are cyberspace cops.  They still worry a lot 
about "jurisdictions," but mere geography is the 
least of their troubles.

	NASA had failed to show.  NASA suffers a lot 
from computer intrusions, in particular from 
Australian raiders and a well-trumpeted Chaos 
Computer Club case,  and in 1990 there was a brief 
press flurry when it was revealed that one of NASA's 
Houston branch-exchanges had been systematically 
ripped off by a gang of phone-phreaks.   But the 
NASA guys had had their funding cut.  They were 
stripping everything.

	Air Force OSI, its Office of Special 
Investigations, is the *only*  federal entity dedicated 
full-time to computer security.  They'd been 
expected to show up in force, but some of them had 
cancelled -- a Pentagon budget pinch.

	As the empties piled up, the guys began joshing 
around and telling war-stories.  "These are cops," 
Thackeray said tolerantly.  "If they're not talking 
shop they talk about women and beer."

	I heard the story about the guy who, asked for "a 
copy" of a computer disk, *photocopied the label on 
it.*  He put the floppy disk onto the glass plate of a 
photocopier.  The blast of static when the copier 
worked  completely erased all the real information 
on the disk.

	Some other poor souls threw a whole bag of 
confiscated diskettes into the squad-car trunk next 
to the police radio.  The powerful radio signal 
blasted them, too.

	 We heard a bit about Dave Geneson, the first 
computer prosecutor, a mainframe-runner in Dade 
County, turned lawyer.   Dave Geneson was one guy 
who had hit the ground running, a signal virtue in 
making the transition to computer-crime.  It was 
generally agreed that it was easier to learn the world 
of computers first, then police or prosecutorial work.    
You could take certain computer people and train 
'em to successful police work -- but of course they 
had to have the *cop mentality.*  They had to have 
street smarts.  Patience.  Persistence.  And 
discretion.   You've got to make sure they're not hot-
shots, show-offs,  "cowboys."

	Most of the folks in the bar had backgrounds in 
military intelligence, or drugs, or homicide.  It was 
rudely opined that "military intelligence" was a 
contradiction in terms, while even the grisly world of 
homicide was considered cleaner than drug 
enforcement.  One guy had been 'way undercover 
doing dope-work in Europe for four years straight.  
"I'm almost recovered now," he said deadpan, with 
the acid black humor that is pure cop.  "Hey, now I 
can say *fucker*  without putting *mother*  in front 
of it."

	"In the cop world," another guy said earnestly, 
"everything is good and bad, black and white.  In the 
computer world everything is gray."

	One guy -- a founder of the FCIC, who'd been 
with the group since it was just the Colluquy -- 
described his own introduction to the field.  He'd 
been a Washington DC homicide guy called in on a 
"hacker" case.  From the word "hacker," he naturally 
assumed he was on the trail of a knife-wielding 
marauder, and went to the computer center 
expecting blood and a body.  When he finally 
figured out what was happening there (after loudly 
demanding, in vain, that the programmers "speak 
English"),  he called headquarters and told them he 
was clueless about computers.  They told him 
nobody else knew diddly either, and to get the hell 
back to work.

	So, he said, he had proceeded by comparisons.  
By analogy.  By metaphor.  "Somebody broke in to 
your computer, huh?"  Breaking and entering; I can 
understand that.  How'd he get in?  "Over the phone-
lines."  Harassing phone-calls, I can understand 
that!  What we need here is a tap and a trace!

	It worked.  It was better than nothing.   And it 
worked a lot faster when he got hold of another cop 
who'd done something similar.  And then the two of 
them got another, and another, and pretty soon the 
Colluquy was a happening thing.  It helped a lot that 
everybody seemed to know Carlton Fitzpatrick, the 
data-processing trainer in Glynco.

	The ice broke big-time in Memphis in '86.  The 
Colluquy had attracted a bunch of new guys -- Secret 
Service, FBI, military, other feds, heavy guys.  
Nobody wanted to tell anybody anything.  They 
suspected that if word got back to the home office 
they'd all be fired.  They passed an uncomfortably 
guarded afternoon.

	The formalities got them nowhere.  But after the 
formal session was over, the organizers brought in a 
case of beer.  As soon as the participants knocked it 
off with the bureaucratic ranks and turf-fighting,  
everything changed.  "I bared my soul," one veteran 
reminisced proudly.  By nightfall they were building 
pyramids of empty beer-cans and doing everything 
but composing a team fight song.

	FCIC were not the only computer-crime people 
around.  There was DATTA (District Attorneys' 
Technology Theft Association),  though they mostly 
specialized in chip theft, intellectual property, and 
black-market cases.  There was HTCIA  (High Tech 
Computer Investigators Association), also out in 
Silicon Valley, a year older than FCIC and featuring 
brilliant people like Donald Ingraham.  There was 
LEETAC (Law Enforcement Electronic Technology 
Assistance Committee)  in Florida, and computer-
crime units in Illinois and Maryland and Texas and 
Ohio and Colorado and Pennsylvania.   But these 
were local groups.  FCIC were the first to really 
network nationally and on a federal level.

	FCIC people live on the phone lines.  Not on 
bulletin board systems -- they know very well what 
boards are, and they know that  boards aren't secure.   
Everyone in the FCIC has a voice-phone bill like you 
wouldn't believe.  FCIC people have been tight with 
the telco people for a long time.  Telephone 
cyberspace is their native habitat.

	FCIC has three basic sub-tribes:  the trainers, 
the security people, and the investigators.  That's 
why it's called an "Investigations Committee" with 
no mention of the term "computer-crime" -- the 
dreaded "C-word."   FCIC, officially, is "an 
association of agencies rather than individuals;" 
unofficially, this field is small enough that the 
influence of individuals and individual expertise is 
paramount.  Attendance is by invitation only, and 
most everyone in FCIC considers himself a prophet 
without honor in his own house.

	Again and again I heard this,  with different 
terms but identical sentiments.  "I'd been sitting in 
the wilderness talking to myself."  "I was totally 
isolated."  "I was desperate."  "FCIC is the best thing 
there is about computer crime in America."   "FCIC 
is what really works."  "This is where you hear real 
people telling you what's really happening out there, 
not just lawyers picking nits."  "We taught each 
other everything we knew."

	The sincerity of these statements convinces me 
that this is true.  FCIC is the real thing and it is 
invaluable.  It's also very sharply at odds with the 
rest of the traditions and power structure in 
American law enforcement.   There probably  hasn't 
been anything around as loose and go-getting as the 
FCIC since the start of the U.S. Secret Service in the 
1860s.   FCIC people are living like twenty-first-
century people in a twentieth-century environment, 
and while there's a great deal to be said for that, 
there's also a great deal to be said against it, and 
those against it happen to control the budgets.

	I listened to two FCIC guys from Jersey compare 
life histories.  One of them had been a biker in a 
fairly heavy-duty gang in the 1960s.  "Oh, did you 
know so-and-so?" said the other guy from Jersey.   
"Big guy, heavyset?"

	"Yeah, I knew him."

	"Yeah, he was one of ours.  He was our plant in 
the gang."

	"Really?  Wow!  Yeah, I knew him.  Helluva guy."

	Thackeray reminisced at length about being 
tear-gassed blind in the November 1969  antiwar 
protests in Washington Circle, covering them for 
her college paper.  "Oh yeah, I was there," said 
another cop.  "Glad to hear that tear gas hit 
somethin'.  Haw haw haw."  He'd been so blind 
himself, he confessed, that later that day he'd 
arrested a small tree.

	FCIC are an odd group, sifted out by 
coincidence and necessity, and turned into a new 
kind of cop.   There are a lot of specialized cops in 
the world -- your bunco guys, your drug guys, your 
tax guys, but the only group that matches FCIC for 
sheer isolation are probably the child-pornography 
people.  Because they both deal with conspirators 
who are desperate to exchange forbidden data and 
also desperate to hide; and because nobody else in 
law enforcement even wants to hear about it.

	FCIC people tend to change jobs a lot.  They 
tend not to get the equipment and training they 
want and need.  And they tend to get sued quite 
often.

	As the night wore on and a band set up in the 
bar, the talk grew darker.  Nothing ever gets done in 
government, someone opined, until there's a 
*disaster.*  Computing disasters are awful, but 
there's no denying that they greatly  help the 
credibility of FCIC people.  The Internet Worm, for 
instance.  "For years we'd been warning about that -- 
but it's nothing compared to what's coming."  They 
expect horrors, these people.  They know that 
nothing will really get done until there is a horror.

					#

	Next day we heard an extensive briefing from a 
guy who'd been a computer cop, gotten into hot 
water with an Arizona city council, and now installed 
computer networks for a living (at a considerable 
rise in pay).  He talked about pulling fiber-optic 
networks apart.

	Even a single computer, with enough 
peripherals, is a literal "network" -- a bunch of 
machines all cabled together, generally with a 
complexity that puts stereo units to shame.   FCIC 
people invent and publicize  methods of seizing 
computers and maintaining their evidence.   Simple 
things, sometimes, but vital rules of thumb for street 
cops, who nowadays often stumble across a busy 
computer in the midst of a drug investigation or a 
white-collar bust.  For instance:  Photograph the 
system before you touch it.  Label the ends of all the 
cables before you detach anything.  "Park" the heads 
on the disk drives before you move them.  Get the 
diskettes.  Don't put the diskettes in magnetic fields.  
Don't write on diskettes with ballpoint pens.  Get the 
manuals.  Get the printouts.  Get the handwritten 
notes.  Copy data before you look at it, and then 
examine the copy instead of the original.

	Now our lecturer distributed copied diagrams of 
a typical LAN or "Local Area Network", which 
happened to be out of Connecticut.  *One hundred 
and fifty-nine*  desktop computers, each with its own 
peripherals.  Three "file servers."  Five "star 
couplers" each with thirty-two ports.  One sixteen-
port coupler off in the corner office.   All these 
machines talking to each other, distributing 
electronic mail, distributing software, distributing, 
quite possibly, criminal evidence.  All linked by high-
capacity fiber-optic cable.  A bad guy -- cops talk a 
lot about "bad guys"  -- might be lurking on PC #47 
or #123 and distributing his ill doings onto some 
dupe's "personal"  machine in another office -- or 
another floor -- or, quite possibly, two or three miles 
away!   Or,  conceivably, the evidence might be 
"data-striped" -- split up into meaningless slivers 
stored, one by one, on a whole crowd of different disk 
drives.

	The lecturer challenged us for solutions.  I for 
one was utterly clueless.  As far as I could figure, the 
Cossacks were at the gate; there were probably more 
disks in this single building than were seized during 
the entirety of Operation Sundevil.

	"Inside informant," somebody said.  Right.  
There's always the human angle, something easy to 
forget when contemplating the arcane recesses of 
high technology.  Cops are skilled at getting people 
to talk, and computer people, given a chair and 
some sustained attention, will talk about their 
computers till their throats go raw.  There's a case on 
record of a single question -- "How'd you do it?" -- 
eliciting a forty-five-minute videotaped confession 
from a computer criminal who not only completely 
incriminated himself but drew helpful diagrams.

	Computer people talk.  Hackers *brag.*   Phone-
phreaks talk *pathologically*  -- why else are they 
stealing phone-codes, if not to natter for ten hours 
straight to their friends on an opposite seaboard?  
Computer-literate people do in fact possess an 
arsenal of nifty gadgets and techniques that would 
allow them to conceal all kinds of exotic 
skullduggery, and if they could only *shut up*  about 
it, they could probably get away with all manner of 
amazing information-crimes.   But that's just not how 
it works -- or at least, that's not how it's worked *so 
far.*

	Most every phone-phreak ever busted has 
swiftly implicated his mentors, his disciples, and his 
friends.  Most every white-collar computer-criminal, 
smugly convinced that his clever scheme is 
bulletproof,  swiftly learns otherwise when, for the 
first time in his life, an actual no-kidding policeman 
leans over, grabs the front of his shirt, looks him 
right in the eye and says:  "All right, *asshole* --  you 
and me are going downtown!"   All the hardware in 
the world will not insulate your nerves from these 
actual real-life sensations of terror and guilt.

	Cops know ways to get from point A to point Z 
without thumbing through every letter in some 
smart-ass bad-guy's  alphabet.  Cops know how to 
cut to the chase.  Cops know a lot of things other 
people don't know.

	Hackers know a lot of things other people don't 
know, too.  Hackers know, for instance, how to sneak 
into your computer through the phone-lines.  But 
cops  can show up *right on your doorstep*  and 
carry off *you*  and your computer in separate steel 
boxes.   A cop interested in hackers can grab them 
and grill them.  A hacker interested in cops has to 
depend on hearsay, underground legends, and what 
cops are willing to publicly reveal.  And the Secret 
Service didn't get named "the *Secret*  Service" 
because they blab a lot.

	Some people, our lecturer informed us, were 
under the mistaken impression that it was 
"impossible" to tap a fiber-optic line.  Well, he 
announced, he and his son had just whipped up a 
fiber-optic tap in his workshop at home.  He passed 
it around the audience, along with a circuit-covered 
LAN plug-in card so we'd all recognize one if we saw 
it on a case.  We all had a look.

	The tap was a classic "Goofy Prototype" -- a 
thumb-length rounded metal cylinder with a pair of 
plastic brackets on it.  From one end dangled three 
thin black cables, each of which ended in a tiny 
black plastic cap.   When you plucked the safety-cap 
off the end of a cable,  you could see the glass fiber  -
- no thicker than a pinhole.

	  Our lecturer informed us that the metal 
cylinder was a "wavelength division multiplexer."  
Apparently, what one did was to cut the fiber-optic 
cable, insert two of the legs into the cut to complete 
the network again, and then read any passing data 
on the line by hooking up the third leg to some kind 
of monitor.  Sounded simple enough.  I wondered 
why nobody had thought of it before.  I also 
wondered whether this guy's son back at the 
workshop had any teenage friends.

	We had a break.  The guy sitting next to me was 
wearing a giveaway baseball cap advertising the Uzi 
submachine gun.  We had a desultory chat about 
the merits of Uzis.  Long a favorite of the Secret 
Service, it seems Uzis went out of fashion with the 
advent of the Persian Gulf War, our Arab allies 
taking some offense at Americans toting Israeli 
weapons.  Besides, I was informed by another 
expert, Uzis jam.  The equivalent weapon of choice 
today is the Heckler & Koch, manufactured in 
Germany.

	  The guy with the Uzi cap was a forensic 
photographer.  He also did a lot of photographic 
surveillance work in computer crime cases.   He 
used to, that is, until the firings in Phoenix.  He was 
now a private investigator and, with his wife, ran a 
photography salon specializing in weddings and 
portrait photos.  At -- one must repeat -- a 
considerable rise in income.

	He was still FCIC.  If you were FCIC, and you 
needed to talk to an expert about forensic 
photography, well, there he was, willing and able.  If 
he hadn't shown up, people would have missed him.

	Our lecturer had raised the point that 
preliminary investigation of a computer system is 
vital before any seizure is undertaken.  It's vital to 
understand how many machines are in there, what 
kinds there are, what kind of operating system they 
use,  how many people use them, where the actual 
data itself is stored.  To simply barge into an office 
demanding "all the computers" is a recipe for swift 
disaster.

	This entails some discreet inquiries beforehand.  
In fact, what it entails is basically undercover work.  
An intelligence operation.   *Spying,*  not to put too 
fine a point on it.

	In a chat after the lecture, I asked an attendee 
whether "trashing" might work.

	I received a swift briefing on the theory and 
practice of "trash covers."  Police "trash covers," like 
"mail covers" or like wiretaps, require the agreement 
of a judge.  This obtained, the "trashing" work of cops 
is just like that of hackers, only more so and much 
better organized.  So much so, I was informed, that 
mobsters in Phoenix make extensive use of locked 
garbage cans picked up by a specialty high-security 
trash company.

	In one case, a tiger team of Arizona cops had 
trashed a local residence for four months.  Every 
week they showed up on the municipal garbage 
truck, disguised as garbagemen, and carried the 
contents of the suspect cans off to a shade tree, 
where they combed through the garbage -- a messy 
task, especially considering that one of the 
occupants was undergoing kidney dialysis.  All 
useful documents were cleaned, dried and 
examined.  A discarded typewriter-ribbon was an 
especially valuable source of data, as its long one-
strike ribbon of film contained the contents of every 
letter mailed out of the house.  The letters were 
neatly retyped by a police secretary equipped with a 
large desk-mounted magnifying glass.

	There is something weirdly disquieting about 
the whole subject of "trashing" -- an unsuspected 
and indeed rather disgusting mode of deep personal 
vulnerability.  Things that we pass by every day, that 
we take utterly for granted, can be exploited with so 
little work.   Once discovered, the knowledge of these 
vulnerabilities tend to spread.

	Take the lowly subject of *manhole covers.*  The 
humble manhole cover reproduces many of the 
dilemmas of computer-security in miniature.  
Manhole covers are, of course, technological 
artifacts, access-points to our buried urban 
infrastructure.  To the vast majority of us, manhole 
covers are invisible.  They are also vulnerable.  For 
many years now, the Secret Service has made a 
point of caulking manhole covers along all routes of 
the Presidential motorcade.   This is, of course, to 
deter terrorists from leaping out of underground 
ambush or, more likely, planting remote-control car-
smashing bombs beneath the street.

	Lately, manhole covers have seen more and 
more criminal exploitation, especially in New York 
City.  Recently, a telco in New York City discovered 
that a cable television service had been sneaking 
into telco manholes and installing cable service 
alongside the phone-lines -- *without paying 
royalties.*   New York companies have also suffered 
a general plague of (a) underground copper cable 
theft; (b) dumping of garbage, including toxic waste, 
and (c) hasty dumping of murder victims.

	Industry complaints reached the ears of an 
innovative New England industrial-security 
company, and the result was a new product known 
as "the Intimidator," a thick titanium-steel bolt with 
a precisely machined head that requires a special 
device to unscrew.  All these "keys" have registered 
serial numbers kept on file with the manufacturer.  
There are now some thousands of these 
"Intimidator" bolts being sunk into American 
pavements wherever our President passes, like 
some macabre parody of strewn roses.   They are 
also spreading as fast as steel dandelions around US 
military bases and many centers of private industry.

	Quite likely it has never occurred to you to  peer 
under a manhole cover, perhaps climb down and 
walk around down there with a flashlight, just to see 
what it's like.  Formally speaking, this might be 
trespassing, but if you didn't hurt anything, and 
didn't make an absolute habit of it, nobody would 
really care.  The freedom to sneak under manholes 
was likely a freedom you never intended to exercise.

	You now are rather less likely to have that 
freedom at all.  You may never even have missed it 
until you read about it here, but if you're in New 
York City it's gone, and elsewhere it's likely going.  
This is one of the things that crime, and the reaction 
to crime,  does to us.

	The tenor of the meeting now changed as the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation arrived.  The EFF, 
whose personnel and history will be examined in 
detail in the next chapter, are a pioneering civil 
liberties group who arose in direct response to the 
Hacker Crackdown of 1990.

	Now Mitchell Kapor, the Foundation's 
president, and Michael Godwin, its chief attorney, 
were confronting federal law enforcement *mano a 
mano* for the first time ever.  Ever alert to the 
manifold uses of publicity, Mitch Kapor and Mike 
Godwin had brought their own journalist in tow:  
Robert Draper, from Austin, whose recent well-
received book about ROLLING STONE magazine 
was still on the stands.  Draper was on assignment 
for TEXAS MONTHLY.

	The Steve Jackson/EFF civil lawsuit against the 
Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force was 
a matter of considerable regional interest in Texas.   
There were now two Austinite journalists here on the 
case.  In fact, counting Godwin (a former Austinite 
and former journalist) there were three of us.  Lunch 
was like Old Home Week.

	Later, I took Draper up to my hotel room.  We 
had a long frank talk about the case, networking 
earnestly like a miniature freelance-journo version 
of the FCIC:  privately confessing the numerous 
blunders of journalists covering the story, and trying 
hard to figure out who was who and what the hell was 
really going on out there.  I showed Draper 
everything I had dug out of the Hilton trashcan.  We 
pondered the ethics of "trashing" for a while, and 
agreed that they were dismal.  We also agreed that 
finding a SPRINT bill on your first time out was a 
heck of a coincidence.

	First I'd "trashed" -- and now, mere hours later,  
I'd bragged to someone else.   Having entered the 
lifestyle of hackerdom, I was now, unsurprisingly, 
following  its logic.  Having discovered something 
remarkable through a surreptitious action, I of 
course *had*  to "brag," and to drag the passing 
Draper into my iniquities.  I felt I needed a witness.  
Otherwise nobody would have believed what I'd 
discovered....

	Back at the meeting, Thackeray cordially, if 
rather tentatively, introduced Kapor and Godwin to 
her colleagues.  Papers were distributed.  Kapor took 
center stage.  The brilliant Bostonian high-tech 
entrepreneur, normally the hawk in his own 
administration and quite an effective public 
speaker, seemed visibly nervous, and frankly 
admitted as much.   He began by saying he 
consided computer-intrusion to be morally wrong, 
and that the EFF was not a "hacker defense fund," 
despite what had appeared in print.    Kapor chatted 
a bit about the basic motivations of his group, 
emphasizing their good faith and willingness to 
listen and seek common ground with law 
enforcement -- when, er,  possible.

	 Then, at Godwin's urging, Kapor suddenly 
remarked that EFF's own Internet machine had 
been "hacked" recently, and that EFF did not 
consider this incident amusing.

	After this surprising confession, things began to 
loosen up quite rapidly.  Soon Kapor was fielding 
questions, parrying objections, challenging 
definitions, and juggling paradigms with something 
akin to his usual gusto.

	Kapor seemed to score quite an effect with his 
shrewd and skeptical analysis of the merits of telco 
"Caller-ID" services.  (On this topic, FCIC and EFF 
have never been at loggerheads, and have no 
particular established earthworks to defend.)   
Caller-ID has generally been promoted as a privacy 
service for consumers, a presentation Kapor 
described as a "smokescreen,"  the real point of 
Caller-ID being to *allow corporate customers to 
build extensive commercial databases  on 
everybody who phones or faxes them.*  Clearly, few 
people in the room had considered this possibility, 
except perhaps for two late-arrivals from  US WEST 
RBOC security, who chuckled nervously.

	Mike Godwin then made an extensive 
presentation on "Civil Liberties Implications of 
Computer Searches and Seizures."  Now, at last, we 
were getting to the real nitty-gritty here, real political 
horse-trading.  The audience listened with close 
attention, angry mutters rising occasionally:  "He's 
trying to teach us our jobs!"  "We've been thinking 
about this for years!  We think about these issues 
every day!"  "If I didn't seize the works, I'd be sued by 
the guy's victims!"   "I'm violating the law if I leave 
ten thousand disks full of illegal *pirated software*  
and *stolen codes!*"   "It's our job to make sure 
people don't trash the Constitution -- we're the 
*defenders*  of the Constitution!"  "We seize stuff 
when we know it will be forfeited anyway as 
restitution for the victim!"

	"If it's forfeitable, then don't get a search 
warrant, get a forfeiture warrant,"  Godwin suggested 
coolly.  He further remarked that most suspects in 
computer crime don't *want*  to see their computers 
vanish out the door, headed God knew where, for 
who knows how long.  They might not mind a search, 
even an extensive search, but they want their 
machines searched on-site.

	"Are they gonna feed us?"  somebody asked 
sourly.

	"How about if you take copies of the data?"  
Godwin parried.

	"That'll never stand up in court."

	"Okay, you make copies, give *them*  the 
copies, and take the originals."

	Hmmm.

	Godwin championed bulletin-board systems as 
repositories of First Amendment protected free 
speech.  He complained that federal computer-
crime training manuals gave boards a bad press, 
suggesting that they are hotbeds of crime haunted 
by pedophiles and crooks, whereas the vast majority 
of the nation's thousands of boards are completely 
innocuous, and nowhere near so romantically 
suspicious.

	  People who run boards violently resent it when 
their systems are seized, and their dozens (or 
hundreds) of users look on in abject horror.   Their 
rights of free expression are cut short.  Their right to 
associate with other people is infringed.  And their 
privacy is violated as their private electronic mail 
becomes police property.

	Not a soul spoke up to defend the practice of 
seizing boards.   The issue passed in chastened 
silence.   Legal principles aside -- (and those 
principles cannot be settled without laws passed or 
court precedents) -- seizing bulletin boards has 
become public-relations poison for American 
computer police.

	And anyway, it's not entirely necessary.  If you're 
a cop, you can get 'most everything you need from a 
pirate board, just by using an inside informant.   
Plenty of vigilantes -- well, *concerned citizens* --  
will inform police the moment they see a pirate 
board hit their area  (and will tell the police all about 
it, in such technical detail, actually, that you kinda 
wish they'd shut up).   They will happily supply police 
with extensive downloads or printouts.  It's 
*impossible* to keep this fluid electronic 
information out of the hands of police.

	Some people in the electronic community 
become enraged at the prospect of cops 
"monitoring" bulletin boards.   This does have 
touchy aspects, as Secret Service people in 
particular examine bulletin boards with some 
regularity.    But to expect electronic police to be 
deaf dumb and blind in regard to this particular 
medium rather flies in the face of common sense.  
Police watch television, listen to radio, read 
newspapers and magazines; why should the new 
medium of boards be different?   Cops can exercise 
the same access to electronic information as 
everybody else.   As we have seen, quite a few 
computer police maintain *their own*  bulletin 
boards, including anti-hacker "sting" boards, which 
have generally proven quite effective.

	As a final clincher, their Mountie friends in 
Canada (and colleagues in Ireland and Taiwan) 
don't have First Amendment or American 
constitutional restrictions, but they do have phone 
lines, and can call any bulletin board in America 
whenever they please.  The same technological 
determinants that play into the hands of hackers, 
phone phreaks and software pirates can play into 
the hands of police.  "Technological determinants" 
don't have *any*  human allegiances.  They're not 
black or white, or Establishment or Underground, or 
pro-or-anti anything.

	Godwin  complained at length about what he 
called "the Clever Hobbyist hypothesis"  -- the 
assumption that the "hacker" you're busting is 
clearly a technical genius, and must therefore by 
searched with extreme thoroughness.  So:  from the 
law's point of view, why risk missing anything?  Take 
the works.  Take the guy's computer.  Take his books.   
Take his notebooks.  Take the electronic drafts of his 
love letters. Take his Walkman.  Take his wife's 
computer.  Take his dad's computer.  Take his kid 
sister's computer.   Take his employer's computer.  
Take his compact disks -- they *might* be CD-ROM 
disks, cunningly disguised as pop music.  Take his 
laser printer -- he might have hidden something 
vital in the printer's 5meg of memory.  Take his 
software manuals and hardware documentation.  
Take his science-fiction novels and his simulation-
gaming books.  Take his Nintendo Game-Boy and 
his Pac-Man arcade game.  Take his answering 
machine, take his telephone out of the wall.  Take 
anything remotely suspicious.

	Godwin pointed out that most "hackers" are not, 
in fact, clever genius hobbyists.  Quite a few are 
crooks and grifters who don't have much in the way 
of technical sophistication; just some rule-of-thumb 
rip-off techniques.  The same goes for most fifteen-
year-olds who've downloaded a code-scanning 
program from a pirate board.   There's no real need 
to seize everything in sight.  It doesn't require an 
entire computer system and ten thousand disks to 
prove a case in court.

	What if the computer is the instrumentality of a 
crime? someone demanded.

	Godwin admitted quietly that the doctrine of 
seizing the instrumentality of a crime was pretty well 
established in the American legal system.

	The meeting broke up.  Godwin and Kapor had 
to leave.  Kapor was testifying next morning before 
the Massachusetts Department Of Public Utility, 
about ISDN narrowband wide-area networking.

	As soon as they were gone, Thackeray seemed 
elated.   She had taken a great risk with this.  Her 
colleagues had not, in fact, torn Kapor and Godwin's 
heads off.  She was very proud of them, and told 
them so.

	"Did you hear what Godwin said about 
*instrumentality of a crime?*"  she exulted, to 
nobody in particular.  "Wow, that means *Mitch isn't 
going to sue me.*" 

					#

	America's computer police are an interesting 
group.  As a social phenomenon they are far more 
interesting, and far more important, than teenage 
phone phreaks and computer hackers.  First, they're 
older and wiser; not dizzy hobbyists with leaky 
morals, but  seasoned adult professionals with all the 
responsibilities of public service.  And, unlike 
hackers, they possess not merely *technical* power 
alone, but heavy-duty legal and social authority.

	And, very interestingly, they are just as much at 
sea in cyberspace as everyone else.  They are not 
happy about this.  Police are authoritarian by nature, 
and prefer to obey rules and precedents.   (Even 
those police who secretly enjoy a fast ride in rough 
territory will soberly disclaim any "cowboy" attitude.)  
But in cyberspace there *are*  no rules and 
precedents.  They are groundbreaking pioneers, 
Cyberspace Rangers, whether they like it or not.

  	In my opinion, any teenager enthralled by 
computers, fascinated by the ins and outs of 
computer security, and attracted by the lure of 
specialized forms of knowledge and power, would do 
well to forget all about "hacking" and set his (or her)  
sights on becoming a fed.   Feds can trump hackers 
at almost every single thing hackers do, including 
gathering intelligence, undercover disguise, 
trashing, phone-tapping,  building dossiers, 
networking, and infiltrating computer systems -- 
*criminal* computer systems.   Secret Service agents 
know more about phreaking, coding and carding 
than most phreaks can find out in years, and when it 
comes to viruses, break-ins, software bombs and 
trojan horses, Feds have direct access to red-hot 
confidential information that is only vague rumor in 
the underground.

	And if it's an impressive public rep you're after, 
there are few people in the world who can be so 
chillingly impressive as a well-trained, well-armed 
United States Secret Service agent.

	 Of course, a few personal sacrifices are 
necessary in order to obtain that power and 
knowledge.  First, you'll have the galling discipline of 
belonging to a large organization;  but the world of 
computer crime is still so small, and so amazingly 
fast-moving, that it will remain spectacularly fluid for 
years to come.   The second sacrifice is that you'll 
have to give up ripping people off.  This is not a great 
loss.  Abstaining from the use of illegal drugs, also 
necessary, will be a boon to your health.

	A career in computer security is not a bad 
choice for a young man or woman today.  The field 
will almost certainly expand drastically in years to 
come.  If you are a teenager today, by the time you 
become a professional, the pioneers you have read 
about in this book will be the grand old men and 
women of the field, swamped by their many 
disciples and successors.   Of course, some of them, 
like William P. Wood of the 1865 Secret Service, 
may well be mangled in the whirring machinery of 
legal controversy; but by the time you enter the 
computer-crime field, it may have stabilized 
somewhat, while remaining entertainingly 
challenging.

	But you can't just have a badge.  You have to win 
it.  First, there's the federal law enforcement 
training.  And it's hard -- it's a challenge.  A real 
challenge -- not for wimps and rodents.

	Every Secret Service agent must complete 
gruelling courses at the Federal Law Enforcement 
Training Center.  (In fact, Secret Service agents are 
periodically re-trained during their entire careers.)

	In order to get a glimpse of what this might be 
like, I myself travelled to FLETC.

					#

	The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center 
is a 1500-acre facility on Georgia's Atlantic coast.   It's 
a milieu of marshgrass, seabirds,  damp, clinging 
sea-breezes, palmettos, mosquitos, and bats.   Until 
1974, it was a  Navy Air Base, and still features a 
working runway, and some WWII vintage 
blockhouses and officers' quarters.  The Center has 
since benefitted by a forty-million-dollar retrofit, but 
there's still enough forest and swamp on the facility 
for the Border Patrol to put in tracking practice.

	As a town, "Glynco" scarcely exists.  The nearest 
real town is Brunswick, a few miles down Highway 17, 
where I stayed at the aptly named Marshview 
Holiday Inn.   I had Sunday dinner at a seafood 
restaurant called "Jinright's," where I feasted on  
deep-fried alligator tail.  This local favorite was a 
heaped basket of bite-sized chunks of white, tender, 
almost fluffy reptile meat, steaming in a peppered 
batter crust.  Alligator makes a culinary experience 
that's hard to forget, especially when liberally basted 
with homemade cocktail sauce from a Jinright 
squeeze-bottle. 

	The crowded clientele were tourists, fishermen, 
local black folks in their Sunday best, and white 
Georgian locals who all seemed to bear an uncanny 
resemblance to Georgia humorist Lewis Grizzard.

	The 2,400 students from 75 federal agencies who 
make up the FLETC population scarcely seem to 
make a dent in the low-key local scene.   The 
students look like tourists, and the teachers seem to 
have taken on much of the relaxed air of the Deep 
South.   My host was Mr. Carlton Fitzpatrick, the 
Program Coordinator of the Financial Fraud 
Institute.  Carlton Fitzpatrick is a mustached, sinewy, 
well-tanned Alabama native somewhere near his 
late forties, with a fondness for chewing tobacco, 
powerful computers, and salty, down-home homilies.  
We'd met before, at FCIC in Arizona.

	The Financial Fraud Institute is one of the nine 
divisions at FLETC. Besides Financial Fraud, there's 
Driver & Marine, Firearms, and Physical Training.   
These are specialized pursuits.  There are also five 
general training divisions:  Basic Training, 
Operations, Enforcement Techniques, Legal 
Division, and Behavioral Science.

	Somewhere in this curriculum is everything 
necessary to turn green college graduates into 
federal agents.  First they're given ID cards. Then 
they get the rather miserable-looking blue coveralls 
known as "smurf suits."  The trainees are assigned a 
barracks and a cafeteria, and immediately set on 
FLETC's bone-grinding physical training routine.  
Besides the obligatory  daily jogging -- (the trainers 
run up danger flags beside the track when the 
humidity rises high enough to threaten heat stroke) -
- there's the Nautilus machines, the martial arts, the 
survival skills.... 

	The eighteen federal agencies who maintain on-
site academies at FLETC employ a wide variety of 
specialized law enforcement units, some of them 
rather arcane.   There's Border Patrol, IRS Criminal 
Investigation Division, Park Service, Fish and 
Wildlife, Customs, Immigration, Secret Service and 
the Treasury's uniformed subdivisions....  If you're a 
federal cop and you don't work for the FBI, you train 
at FLETC.   This includes people as apparently 
obscure as the agents of the Railroad Retirement 
Board Inspector General.  Or the Tennessee Valley 
Authority Police, who are in fact federal police 
officers, and can and do arrest criminals on the 
federal property of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

	And then there are the computer-crime people.   
All sorts, all backgrounds.  Mr. Fitzpatrick  is not 
jealous of his specialized knowledge.   Cops all over, 
in every branch of service, may feel a need to learn 
what he can teach.   Backgrounds don't matter 
much.  Fitzpatrick himself  was originally a Border 
Patrol veteran, then became a Border Patrol 
instructor at FLETC.  His Spanish is still fluent -- but 
he found himself strangely fascinated when the first 
computers showed up at the Training Center.   
Fitzpatrick did have a background in electrical 
engineering, and though he never considered 
himself a computer hacker, he somehow found 
himself writing useful little programs for this new 
and promising gizmo.

	He began looking into the general subject of 
computers and crime, reading Donn Parker's books 
and articles, keeping an ear cocked for war stories, 
useful insights from the field, the up-and-coming 
people of the local computer-crime and high-
technology units....  Soon he got a reputation around 
FLETC as the resident "computer expert," and that 
reputation alone brought him more exposure, more 
experience -- until one day he looked around, and 
sure enough he *was*  a federal computer-crime 
expert.

	In fact, this unassuming, genial man may be 
*the*  federal computer-crime expert.   There are 
plenty of very good computer people, and plenty of 
very good federal investigators, but the area where 
these worlds of expertise overlap is very slim.  And 
Carlton Fitzpatrick has been right at the center of 
that since 1985, the first year of the Colluquy, a group 
which owes much to his influence.

	He seems quite at home in his modest, 
acoustic-tiled office, with its Ansel Adams-style 
Western photographic art, a gold-framed Senior 
Instructor Certificate, and a towering bookcase 
crammed with three-ring binders with ominous titles 
such as *Datapro Reports on Information Security*  
and *CFCA Telecom Security '90.*

	 The phone rings every ten minutes; colleagues 
show up at the door to chat about new developments 
in locksmithing or to shake their heads over the 
latest dismal developments in the BCCI global 
banking scandal.

	Carlton Fitzpatrick is a fount of computer-crime 
war-stories, related in an acerbic drawl.  He tells me 
the colorful tale of a hacker caught in California 
some years back.   He'd been raiding systems, 
typing code without a detectable break, for twenty, 
twenty-four, thirty-six hours straight.  Not just logged 
on -- *typing.*   Investigators were baffled.  Nobody 
could do that.  Didn't he have to go to the bathroom?   
Was it some kind of automatic keyboard-whacking 
device that could actually type code?

	A raid on the suspect's home revealed a 
situation of astonishing squalor.  The hacker turned 
out to be a Pakistani computer-science student who 
had flunked out of a California university.  He'd 
gone completely underground as an illegal 
electronic immigrant,  and was selling stolen phone-
service to stay alive.  The place was not merely 
messy and dirty, but in a state of psychotic disorder.   
Powered by some weird mix of culture shock, 
computer addiction, and amphetamines, the 
suspect had in fact been sitting in front of his 
computer for a day and a half straight, with snacks 
and drugs at hand on the edge of his desk and a 
chamber-pot under his chair.

	Word about stuff like this gets around in the 
hacker-tracker community.

	Carlton Fitzpatrick takes me for a guided tour 
by car around the FLETC grounds.   One of our first 
sights is the biggest indoor firing range in the world.   
There are federal trainees in there, Fitzpatrick 
assures me politely, blasting away with a wide variety 
of automatic weapons: Uzis, Glocks, AK-47s....   He's 
willing to take me inside.   I tell him I'm sure that's 
really interesting, but I'd rather see his computers.   
Carlton Fitzpatrick seems quite surprised and 
pleased.  I'm apparently the first journalist he's ever 
seen who has turned down the shooting gallery in 
favor of microchips.

	Our next stop is a favorite with touring 
Congressmen:  the three-mile long FLETC driving 
range.  Here trainees of the Driver & Marine 
Division are taught high-speed pursuit skills, setting 
and breaking road-blocks, diplomatic security 
driving for VIP limousines....  A favorite FLETC 
pastime is to strap a passing Senator into the 
passenger seat beside a Driver & Marine trainer, hit 
a hundred miles an hour, then take it right into "the 
skid-pan," a section of greased track  where two tons 
of Detroit iron can whip and spin like a hockey puck.

	Cars don't fare well at FLETC.   First they're 
rifled again and again for search practice.  Then they 
do  25,000 miles of high-speed pursuit training; they 
get about seventy miles per set of steel-belted 
radials.   Then it's off to the skid pan, where 
sometimes they roll and tumble headlong in the 
grease.   When they're sufficiently grease-stained, 
dented, and creaky, they're sent to the roadblock 
unit, where they're battered without pity.  And finally 
then they're sacrificed to the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco and Firearms, whose trainees learn the ins 
and outs of car-bomb work by blowing them into 
smoking wreckage.

	There's a railroad box-car on the FLETC 
grounds, and a large grounded boat, and a propless 
plane; all training-grounds for searches.   The plane 
sits forlornly on a patch of weedy tarmac next to an 
eerie blockhouse known as the "ninja compound," 
where anti-terrorism specialists practice hostage 
rescues.  As I gaze on this creepy paragon of modern 
low-intensity warfare, my nerves are jangled by a 
sudden staccato outburst of automatic weapons fire, 
somewhere in the woods to my right.  "Nine-
millimeter," Fitzpatrick judges calmly.

	Even the eldritch ninja compound pales 
somewhat compared to the truly surreal area known 
as "the raid-houses."   This is a street lined on both 
sides with nondescript concrete-block houses with 
flat pebbled roofs.  They were once officers' quarters.  
Now they are training grounds.   The first one to our 
left, Fitzpatrick tells me, has been specially adapted 
for computer search-and-seizure practice.  Inside it 
has been wired for video from top to bottom, with 
eighteen pan-and-tilt remotely controlled 
videocams mounted on walls and in corners.  Every 
movement of the trainee agent is recorded live by 
teachers, for later taped analysis.  Wasted 
movements, hesitations, possibly lethal tactical 
mistakes -- all are gone over in detail.

	Perhaps the weirdest single aspect of this 
building is its front door, scarred and scuffed all 
along the bottom, from the repeated impact, day 
after day, of federal shoe-leather.

	Down at the far end of the row of raid-houses 
some people are practicing a murder.   We drive by 
slowly as some very young and rather nervous-
looking federal trainees interview a heavyset bald 
man on the raid-house lawn.  Dealing with murder 
takes a lot of practice; first you have to learn to 
control your own instinctive disgust and panic,  then 
you have to learn to control the reactions of a nerve-
shredded crowd of civilians, some of whom may 
have just lost a loved one, some of whom may be 
murderers -- quite possibly both at once.

	A dummy plays the corpse.  The roles of the 
bereaved, the morbidly curious, and the homicidal 
are played, for pay, by local Georgians:  waitresses, 
musicians, most anybody who needs to moonlight 
and can learn a script.   These people, some of whom 
are FLETC regulars year after year, must surely have 
one of the strangest jobs in the world.

	Something about the scene:  "normal" people in 
a weird situation, standing around talking in bright 
Georgia sunshine, unsuccessfully pretending that 
something dreadful has gone on, while a dummy lies 
inside on faked bloodstains....  While behind this 
weird masquerade, like a nested set of Russian dolls,  
are grim future realities of real death, real violence, 
real murders of real people, that these young agents 
will really investigate, many times during their 
careers....  Over and over....  Will those anticipated 
murders look like this, feel like this -- not as "real" as 
these amateur actors are trying to make it seem, but 
both as "real," and as numbingly unreal, as watching 
fake people standing around on a fake lawn?   
Something about this scene unhinges me.  It seems 
nightmarish to me,  Kafkaesque.   I simply don't 
know how to take it; my head is turned around; I 
don't know whether to laugh, cry, or just shudder.

	When the tour is over, Carlton Fitzpatrick and I 
talk about computers.  For the first time cyberspace 
seems like quite a comfortable place.  It seems very 
real to me suddenly, a place where I know what I'm 
talking about, a place I'm used to.   It's real.  "Real."  
Whatever.

	Carlton Fitzpatrick is the only person I've met in 
cyberspace circles who is happy with his present 
equipment.  He's got a 5 Meg RAM PC with a 112 
meg hard disk; a 660 meg's on the way.  He's got a 
Compaq 386 desktop, and a Zenith 386 laptop with 
120 meg.  Down the hall is a NEC Multi-Sync 2A with 
a CD-ROM drive and a 9600 baud modem with four 
com-lines.  There's a training minicomputer, and a 
10-meg local mini just for the Center, and a lab-full 
of student PC clones and half-a-dozen Macs or so.  
There's a Data General MV 2500 with 8 meg on 
board and a 370 meg disk.

	Fitzpatrick plans to run a UNIX board on the 
Data General when he's finished beta-testing the 
software for it, which he wrote himself.  It'll have E-
mail features, massive files on all manner of 
computer-crime and investigation procedures, and 
will follow the computer-security specifics of the 
Department of Defense "Orange Book."  He thinks 
it will be the biggest BBS in the federal government.

	 Will it have *Phrack* on it?  I ask wryly.

	Sure, he tells me.  *Phrack,* *TAP,*  *Computer 
Underground Digest,* all that stuff.  With  proper 
disclaimers, of course.

	I ask him if he plans to be the sysop.  Running a 
system that size is very time-consuming, and 
Fitzpatrick teaches two three-hour courses every 
day.

	No, he says seriously,  FLETC has to get its 
money worth out of the instructors.  He thinks he 
can get a local volunteer to do it, a high-school 
student.

	He says a bit more, something I think about an 
Eagle Scout law-enforcement liaison program, but 
my mind has rocketed off in disbelief.

	"You're going to put a *teenager* in charge of a 
federal security BBS?"  I'm speechless.  It hasn't 
escaped my notice that the FLETC Financial Fraud 
Institute is the *ultimate* hacker-trashing target; 
there is stuff in here, stuff of such utter and 
consummate cool by every standard of the digital 
underground.... I imagine the hackers of my 
acquaintance, fainting dead-away from forbidden-
knowledge greed-fits, at the mere prospect of 
cracking the superultra top-secret computers used 
to train the Secret Service in computer-crime....

	"Uhm, Carlton," I babble, "I'm sure he's a really 
nice kid and all, but that's a terrible temptation to 
set in front of somebody who's, you know, into 
computers and just starting out..."

	"Yeah," he says, "that did occur to me."  For the 
first time I begin to suspect that he's pulling my leg.

	He seems proudest when he shows me an 
ongoing project called JICC, Joint Intelligence 
Control Council.  It's based on the services provided 
by EPIC, the El Paso Intelligence Center, which 
supplies data and intelligence to the Drug 
Enforcement Administration, the Customs Service, 
the Coast Guard, and the state police of the four 
southern border states.  Certain EPIC files can now 
be accessed by drug-enforcement police of Central 
America, South America and the Caribbean, who 
can also trade information among themselves.   
Using a telecom program called "White Hat," 
written by two brothers named Lopez from the 
Dominican Republic, police can now network 
internationally on inexpensive PCs.   Carlton 
Fitzpatrick is teaching a class of drug-war agents 
from the Third World, and he's very proud of their 
progress.   Perhaps soon the sophisticated 
smuggling networks of the Medellin Cartel will be 
matched by a sophisticated computer network of the 
Medellin Cartel's sworn enemies.   They'll track 
boats, track contraband, track the international 
drug-lords who now leap over borders with great 
ease, defeating the police through the clever use of 
fragmented national jurisdictions.

	JICC and EPIC must remain beyond the scope 
of this book.   They seem to me to be very large 
topics fraught with complications that I am not fit to 
judge.   I do know, however, that the international, 
computer-assisted networking of police, across 
national boundaries, is something that Carlton 
Fitzpatrick considers very important, a harbinger of 
a desirable future.  I also know that networks by their 
nature ignore physical boundaries.  And I also know 
that where you put communications you put a 
community, and that when those communities 
become self-aware they will fight to preserve 
themselves and to expand their influence.   I make 
no judgements whether this is good or bad.  It's just 
cyberspace; it's just the way things are.

	I asked Carlton Fitzpatrick what advice he 
would have for a twenty-year-old who wanted to 
shine someday in the world of electronic law 
enforcement.

	He told me that the number one rule was 
simply not to be scared of computers.   You don't 
need to be an obsessive "computer weenie," but you 
mustn't be buffaloed just because some machine 
looks fancy.  The advantages computers give smart 
crooks are matched by the advantages they give 
smart cops.  Cops in the future will have to enforce 
the law "with their heads, not their holsters."   Today 
you can make good cases without ever leaving your 
office.  In the future, cops who resist the computer 
revolution will never get far beyond walking a beat.

	I asked Carlton Fitzpatrick if he had some single 
message for the public; some single thing that he 
would most like the American public to know about 
his work.

	He thought about it while.  "Yes," he said finally.  
"*Tell* me the rules, and I'll *teach* those rules!"  He 
looked me straight in the eye.  "I do the best that I 
can." 
	   	   
.

Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.sf.ca.us

Literary Freeware:  Not for Commercial Use


			    THE HACKER CRACKDOWN

	           Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

PART FOUR:  THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS
	

	The story of the Hacker Crackdown, as we have 
followed it thus far, has been technological, subcultural, 
criminal and legal.  The story of the Civil Libertarians, 
though it partakes of all those other aspects, is profoundly 
and thoroughly *political.*

	 In 1990, the obscure, long-simmering struggle over 
the ownership and nature of cyberspace became loudly 
and irretrievably public.  People from some of the oddest 
corners of American society suddenly found themselves 
public figures.   Some of these people found this situation 
much more than they had ever bargained for.  They 
backpedalled, and tried to retreat back to the mandarin 
obscurity of their cozy subcultural niches.   This was 
generally to prove a mistake.

	But the civil libertarians seized the day in 1990.  They 
found themselves organizing, propagandizing, podium-
pounding, persuading, touring, negotiating, posing for 
publicity photos, submitting to interviews, squinting in the 
limelight as they tried a tentative, but growingly 
sophisticated, buck-and-wing upon the public stage.

	It's not hard to see why the civil libertarians should 
have this competitive advantage.

	The  hackers  of the digital underground are an 
hermetic elite.  They find it hard to make any remotely 
convincing case for their actions in front of the general 
public.   Actually, hackers roundly despise the "ignorant" 
public, and have never trusted the judgement of "the 
system."  Hackers do propagandize, but only among 
themselves, mostly in giddy, badly spelled manifestos of 
class warfare, youth rebellion or naive techie utopianism.  
Hackers must strut and boast in order to establish and 
preserve their underground reputations.  But if they speak 
out too loudly and publicly, they will break the fragile 
surface-tension of the underground, and they will be 
harrassed or arrested.   Over the longer term, most 
hackers stumble, get busted, get betrayed, or simply give 
up.   As a political force, the digital underground is 
hamstrung.

	The telcos, for their part, are an ivory tower under 
protracted seige.  They have plenty of money with which to 
push their calculated public image, but they waste much 
energy and goodwill attacking one another with 
slanderous and demeaning ad campaigns.   The telcos 
have suffered at the hands of politicians, and, like hackers, 
they don't trust the public's judgement.  And this distrust 
may be well-founded.  Should the general public of the 
high-tech 1990s come to understand its own best interests 
in telecommunications, that might well pose a grave 
threat to the specialized technical power and authority 
that the telcos have relished for over a century.   The telcos 
do have strong advantages: loyal employees, specialized 
expertise,  influence in the halls of power, tactical allies in 
law enforcement, and unbelievably vast amounts of 
money.  But politically speaking, they lack genuine 
grassroots support; they simply don't seem to have many 
friends.

	Cops know a lot of things other people don't know.  
But cops willingly reveal only those aspects of their 
knowledge that they feel will meet their institutional 
purposes and further public order.   Cops have respect, 
they have responsibilities, they have power in the streets 
and even power in the home, but cops don't do 
particularly well in limelight.   When pressed, they will 
step out in the public gaze to threaten bad-guys, or to 
cajole prominent citizens, or perhaps to sternly lecture the 
naive and misguided.   But then they go back within their 
time-honored fortress of the station-house, the courtroom 
and the rule-book. 

	The electronic civil libertarians, however, have 
proven to be born political animals.   They seemed to 
grasp very early on the postmodern truism that 
communication is power.   Publicity is power.  Soundbites 
are power.  The ability to shove one's issue onto the public 
agenda -- and *keep it there* -- is power.  Fame is power.  
Simple personal fluency and eloquence can be power, if 
you can somehow catch the public's eye and ear.

	The civil libertarians had no monopoly on "technical 
power" -- though they all owned computers, most were not 
particularly advanced computer experts.  They had a good 
deal of money, but nowhere near the earthshaking wealth 
and the galaxy of resources possessed by telcos or federal 
agencies.   They had no ability to arrest people.   They 
carried out no phreak and hacker covert dirty-tricks.

	But they really knew how to network.

	Unlike the other groups in this book, the civil 
libertarians have operated very much in the open, more or 
less right in the public hurly-burly.  They have lectured 
audiences galore and talked to countless journalists, and 
have learned to refine their spiels.   They've kept the 
cameras clicking, kept those faxes humming, swapped 
that email, run those photocopiers on overtime, licked 
envelopes and spent small fortunes on airfare and long-
distance.  In an information society, this open, overt, 
obvious activity has proven to be a profound advantage.

	In 1990, the civil libertarians of cyberspace 
assembled out of nowhere in particular, at warp speed.   
This "group" (actually, a networking gaggle of interested 
parties which scarcely deserves even that loose term)  has 
almost nothing in the way of formal organization.   Those 
formal civil libertarian organizations which did take an 
interest in cyberspace issues, mainly the Computer 
Professionals for Social Responsibility and the American 
Civil Liberties Union, were carried along by events in 1990, 
and acted mostly as adjuncts, underwriters or launching-
pads.

	The civil libertarians nevertheless enjoyed the 
greatest success of any of the groups in the Crackdown of 
1990.  At this writing, their future looks rosy and the 
political initiative is firmly in their hands.   This should be 
kept in mind as we study the highly unlikely lives and 
lifestyles of the people who actually made this happen.

				#

	In June 1989, Apple Computer, Inc., of Cupertino, 
California, had a problem.   Someone had illicitly copied a 
small piece of Apple's proprietary software, software which 
controlled an internal chip driving the Macintosh screen 
display.   This Color QuickDraw source code was a closely 
guarded piece of Apple's intellectual property.  Only 
trusted Apple insiders were supposed to possess it.

	But the "NuPrometheus League" wanted things 
otherwise.  This person (or persons) made several illicit 
copies of this source code, perhaps as many as two dozen.  
He (or she, or they)  then put those illicit floppy disks into 
envelopes and mailed them to people all over America:  
people in the computer industry who were associated with, 
but not directly employed by, Apple Computer.

	The NuPrometheus caper was a complex, highly 
ideological, and very hacker-like crime.  Prometheus, it 
will be recalled, stole the fire of the Gods and gave this 
potent gift to the general ranks of downtrodden mankind.   
A similar god-in-the-manger attitude was implied for the 
corporate elite of Apple Computer, while the "Nu" 
Prometheus had himself cast in the role of rebel demigod.   
The illicitly copied data was given away for free.

	The  new Prometheus, whoever he was, escaped the 
fate of the ancient Greek Prometheus, who was chained to 
a rock for centuries by the vengeful gods while an eagle 
tore and ate his liver.   On the other hand, NuPrometheus 
chickened out somewhat by comparison with his role 
model.  The small chunk of Color QuickDraw code he had 
filched and replicated was more or less useless to Apple's 
industrial rivals (or, in fact, to anyone else).   Instead of 
giving fire to mankind, it was more as if NuPrometheus 
had photocopied the schematics for part of a Bic lighter.   
The act was not a genuine work of industrial espionage.  It 
was best interpreted as a symbolic, deliberate slap in the 
face for the Apple corporate heirarchy.

	Apple's internal struggles were well-known in the 
industry.  Apple's founders, Jobs and Wozniak, had both 
taken their leave long since.  Their raucous core of senior 
employees had been a barnstorming crew of 1960s 
Californians, many of them markedly less than happy with 
the new button-down multimillion dollar regime at Apple.   
Many of the programmers and developers who had 
invented the Macintosh model in the early 1980s had also 
taken their leave of the company.  It was they, not the 
current masters of Apple's corporate fate, who had 
invented the stolen Color QuickDraw code.  The 
NuPrometheus stunt was well-calculated to wound 
company morale.

	Apple called the FBI.  The Bureau takes an interest in 
high-profile intellectual-property theft cases, industrial 
espionage and theft of trade secrets.   These were likely 
the right people to call, and rumor has it that the entities 
responsible were in fact discovered by the FBI, and then 
quietly squelched by Apple management.  NuPrometheus 
was never publicly charged with a crime, or prosecuted, or 
jailed.  But there were no further illicit releases of 
Macintosh internal software.  Eventually the painful issue 
of NuPrometheus was allowed to fade.

	In the meantime, however, a large number of puzzled 
bystanders found themselves entertaining surprise guests 
from the FBI.

	One of these people was John Perry Barlow.    Barlow 
is a most unusual man, difficult to describe in 
conventional terms.   He is perhaps best known as a 
songwriter for the Grateful Dead, for he composed lyrics 
for "Hell in a Bucket,"  "Picasso Moon,"  "Mexicali Blues,"  
"I Need a Miracle," and many more; he has been writing 
for the band since 1970.

	Before we tackle the vexing question as to why a rock 
lyricist should be interviewed by the FBI in a computer-
crime case, it might be well to say a word or two about the 
Grateful Dead.   The Grateful Dead are perhaps the most 
successful and long-lasting of the numerous cultural 
emanations from the Haight-Ashbury district of San 
Francisco, in the glory days of Movement politics and 
lysergic transcendance.   The Grateful Dead are a nexus, a 
veritable whirlwind, of  applique decals, psychedelic vans, 
tie-dyed T-shirts, earth-color denim, frenzied dancing and 
open and unashamed drug use.  The symbols, and the 
realities, of Californian freak power surround the Grateful 
Dead like knotted macrame.

	The Grateful Dead and their thousands of Deadhead 
devotees are radical Bohemians.   This much is widely 
understood.   Exactly what this implies in the 1990s is 
rather more problematic.

	The Grateful Dead are among the world's most 
popular and wealthy entertainers: number 20,  according 
to *Forbes* magazine, right between M.C. Hammer and 
Sean Connery.  In 1990, this jeans-clad group of purported 
raffish outcasts earned seventeen million dollars.  They 
have been earning sums much along this line for quite 
some time now.

	And while the Dead are not investment bankers or 
three-piece-suit tax specialists -- they are, in point of fact, 
hippie musicians -- this money has not been squandered 
in senseless Bohemian excess.   The Dead have been 
quietly active for many years, funding various worthy 
activities in their  extensive and widespread cultural 
community.

	The Grateful Dead are not conventional players in 
the American power establishment.  They nevertheless 
are something of a force to be reckoned with.  They have a 
lot of money and a lot of friends in many places, both 
likely and unlikely.

	The Dead may be known for back-to-the-earth 
environmentalist rhetoric, but this hardly makes them 
anti-technological Luddites.  On the contrary, like most 
rock musicians, the Grateful Dead have spent their entire 
adult lives in the company of complex electronic 
equipment.  They have funds to burn on any sophisticated 
tool and toy that might happen to catch their fancy.   And 
their fancy is quite extensive.

	The Deadhead community boasts any number of 
recording engineers, lighting experts, rock video mavens, 
electronic technicians of all descriptions.  And the drift 
goes both ways.  Steve Wozniak, Apple's co-founder, used 
to throw rock festivals.   Silicon Valley rocks out.

	These are the 1990s, not the 1960s.  Today, for a 
surprising number of people all over America, the 
supposed dividing line between Bohemian and technician 
simply no longer exists.  People of this sort may have a set 
of windchimes and a dog with a knotted kerchief 'round its 
neck, but they're also quite likely to own a multimegabyte 
Macintosh running MIDI synthesizer software and trippy 
fractal simulations.   These days, even Timothy Leary 
himself, prophet of LSD, does virtual-reality computer-
graphics demos in his lecture tours.

	John Perry Barlow is not a member of the Grateful 
Dead.  He is, however, a ranking Deadhead.

	Barlow describes himself as a "techno-crank."   A 
vague term like "social activist" might not be far from the 
mark, either.  But Barlow might be better described as a 
"poet" -- if one keeps in mind  Percy Shelley's archaic 
definition of poets as "unacknowledged legislators of the 
world."

	Barlow once made a stab at acknowledged legislator 
status.  In 1987, he narrowly missed the Republican 
nomination for a seat in the Wyoming State Senate.   
Barlow is a Wyoming native, the third-generation scion of 
a well-to-do cattle-ranching family.   He is in his early 
forties, married and the father of three daughters.

	Barlow is not much troubled by other people's narrow 
notions of consistency.  In the late 1980s, this Republican 
rock lyricist cattle rancher sold his ranch and became a 
computer telecommunications devotee.

	The free-spirited Barlow made this transition with 
ease.  He genuinely enjoyed computers.   With a beep of 
his modem, he leapt from small-town Pinedale, Wyoming, 
into electronic contact with a large and lively crowd of 
bright, inventive, technological sophisticates from all over 
the world.   Barlow found the social milieu of computing 
attractive: its fast-lane pace, its blue-sky rhetoric, its open-
endedness.   Barlow began dabbling in computer 
journalism, with marked success, as he was a quick study, 
and both shrewd and eloquent.  He frequently travelled to 
San Francisco to network with Deadhead friends.  There 
Barlow made extensive contacts throughout the 
Californian computer community, including friendships 
among the wilder spirits at Apple.

	In May 1990, Barlow received a visit from a local 
Wyoming agent of the FBI.  The NuPrometheus case had 
reached Wyoming.

	Barlow was troubled to find himself under 
investigation in an area of his interests once quite free of 
federal attention.   He had to struggle to explain the very 
nature of computer-crime to a headscratching local FBI 
man who specialized in cattle-rustling.   Barlow, chatting 
helpfully and demonstrating the wonders of his modem to 
the puzzled fed, was alarmed to find all "hackers" 
generally under FBI suspicion as an evil influence in the 
electronic community.   The FBI, in pursuit of a hacker 
called "NuPrometheus," were tracing attendees of a 
suspect group called the Hackers Conference.

	The Hackers Conference, which had been started in 
1984,  was a yearly Californian meeting of digital pioneers 
and enthusiasts.  The hackers of the Hackers Conference 
had little if anything to do with the hackers of the digital 
underground.   On the contrary, the hackers of this 
conference were mostly well-to-do Californian high-tech 
CEOs, consultants, journalists and entrepreneurs.   (This 
group of hackers were the exact sort of "hackers" most 
likely to react with militant fury at any criminal 
degradation of the term "hacker.")

	Barlow, though he was not arrested or accused of a 
crime, and though his computer had certainly not gone 
out the door, was very troubled by this anomaly.  He 
carried the word to the Well.

	 Like the Hackers Conference,  "the Well" was an 
emanation of the Point Foundation.   Point Foundation, 
the inspiration of a wealthy Californian 60s radical named 
Stewart Brand, was to be a major launch-pad of the civil 
libertarian effort.

	Point Foundation's cultural efforts, like those of their 
fellow Bay Area Californians the Grateful Dead, were 
multifaceted and multitudinous.  Rigid ideological 
consistency had never been a strong suit of the *Whole 
Earth Catalog.*   This Point publication had enjoyed a 
strong vogue during the late 60s and early 70s, when it 
offered hundreds of practical (and not so practical) tips on 
communitarian living, environmentalism, and getting 
back-to-the-land.   The *Whole Earth Catalog,* and its 
sequels, sold two and half million copies and won a 
National Book Award.

	With the slow collapse of American radical dissent, 
the *Whole Earth Catalog* had slipped to a more modest 
corner of the cultural radar; but in its magazine 
incarnation, *CoEvolution Quarterly,*  the Point 
Foundation continued to offer a magpie potpourri of 
"access to tools and ideas."

	*CoEvolution Quarterly,*  which started in 1974, was 
never a widely popular magazine.  Despite periodic 
outbreaks of millenarian fervor, *CoEvolution Quarterly*  
failed to revolutionize Western civilization and replace 
leaden centuries of history with bright new Californian 
paradigms.  Instead, this propaganda arm of Point 
Foundation cakewalked a fine line between impressive 
brilliance and New Age flakiness.  *CoEvolution 
Quarterly*  carried no advertising, cost a lot, and came out 
on cheap newsprint with modest black-and-white 
graphics.  It was poorly distributed, and spread mostly by 
subscription and word of mouth.

	It could not seem to grow beyond 30,000 subscribers.  
And yet -- it never seemed to shrink much, either.  Year in, 
year out, decade in, decade out, some strange 
demographic minority accreted to support the magazine.   
The enthusiastic readership did not seem to have much in 
the way of coherent politics or  ideals.  It was sometimes 
hard to understand what held them together (if the often 
bitter debate in the letter-columns could be described as 
"togetherness").

	But if the magazine did not flourish, it was resilient; it 
got by.  Then, in 1984, the birth-year of the Macintosh 
computer, *CoEvolution Quarterly* suddenly hit the 
rapids.  Point Foundation had discovered the computer 
revolution.  Out came the *Whole Earth Software Catalog*  
of 1984,  arousing headscratching doubts among the tie-
dyed faithful, and rabid enthusiasm among the nascent 
"cyberpunk" milieu, present company included.  Point 
Foundation started its yearly Hackers Conference, and 
began to take an extensive interest in the strange new 
possibilities of digital counterculture.  *CoEvolution 
Quarterly* folded its teepee, replaced by *Whole Earth 
Software Review*  and eventually by *Whole Earth 
Review*  (the magazine's present incarnation, currently 
under the editorship of virtual-reality maven Howard 
Rheingold).

	1985 saw the birth of the "WELL" -- the "Whole Earth 
'Lectronic Link."  The Well was Point Foundation's 
bulletin board system.

	As boards went, the Well was an anomaly from the 
beginning, and remained one.   It was local to San 
Francisco.  It was huge, with multiple phonelines and 
enormous files of commentary.  Its complex UNIX-based 
software might be most charitably described as "user-
opaque."  It was run on a mainframe out of the rambling 
offices of a non-profit cultural foundation in Sausalito.  
And it was crammed with fans of the Grateful Dead. 

	Though the Well was peopled by chattering hipsters 
of the Bay Area counterculture, it was by no means a 
"digital underground" board.   Teenagers were fairly 
scarce; most Well users (known as "Wellbeings") were 
thirty- and forty-something Baby Boomers.   They tended 
to work in the information industry: hardware, software, 
telecommunications, media, entertainment.  Librarians, 
academics, and journalists were especially common on 
the Well, attracted by Point Foundation's open-handed 
distribution of "tools and ideas."

	There were no anarchy files on the Well, scarcely a 
dropped hint about access codes or credit-card theft.   No 
one used handles.  Vicious "flame-wars" were held to a 
comparatively civilized rumble.   Debates were sometimes 
sharp, but no Wellbeing ever claimed that a rival had 
disconnected his phone, trashed his house, or posted his 
credit card numbers.

	The Well grew slowly as the 1980s advanced.  It 
charged a modest sum for access and storage, and lost 
money for years -- but not enough to hamper the Point 
Foundation, which was nonprofit anyway.   By 1990, the 
Well had about five thousand users.  These users 
wandered about a gigantic cyberspace smorgasbord of 
"Conferences", each conference itself consisting of a 
welter of "topics," each topic containing dozens, 
sometimes hundreds of comments, in a tumbling, 
multiperson debate that could last for months or years on 
end.

	In 1991, the Well's list of conferences looked like this:           

                      CONFERENCES ON THE WELL

                    WELL "Screenzine" Digest    (g zine)

                    Best of the WELL - vintage material -     (g best)

 Index listing of new topics in all conferences -  (g newtops)

                        Business - Education
                       ----------------------

Apple Library Users Group(g alug)      Agriculture  (g agri) 
Brainstorming          (g brain)             Classifieds       (g cla) 
Computer Journalism    (g cj)  Consultants       (g consult)
Consumers              (g cons)                Design            (g design) 
Desktop Publishing     (g desk)  Disability        (g disability)  
Education              (g ed)                Energy            (g energy91)    
Entrepreneurs   (g entre)               Homeowners        (g home) 
Indexing        (g indexing)     Investments       (g invest) 
Kids91                 (g kids)                    Legal             (g legal) 
One Person Business    (g one)             
Periodical/newsletter(g per)         
Telecomm Law           (g tcl)               The Future        (g fut)         
Translators            (g trans)               Travel            (g tra)         
Work                   (g work)        

                Electronic Frontier Foundation    (g eff)
                Computers, Freedom & Privacy      (g cfp)
  Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility  (g cpsr)

                   Social - Political - Humanities
                  ---------------------------------

Aging                  (g gray)                      AIDS              (g aids) 
Amnesty International  (g amnesty)     Archives          (g arc) 
Berkeley               (g berk)     Buddhist          (g wonderland)  
Christian              (g cross)                  Couples           (g couples) 
Current Events         (g curr)        Dreams            (g dream) 
Drugs                  (g dru)                       East Coast        (g east) 
Emotional Health****   (g private)      Erotica           (g eros)        
Environment            (g env)     Firearms          (g firearms)    
First Amendment (g first)    Fringes of Reason (g fringes)
Gay                    (g gay)              Gay (Private)#    (g gaypriv) 
Geography              (g geo)             German            (g german) 
Gulf War               (g gulf)                    Hawaii            (g aloha) 
Health                 (g heal)                     History           (g hist)        
Holistic               (g holi)                     Interview         (g inter)       
Italian                (g ital)                      Jewish            (g jew)         
Liberty                (g liberty)                Mind              (g mind) 
Miscellaneous          (g misc) Men on the WELL** (g mow) 
Network Integration    (g origin)         Nonprofits        (g non)  
North Bay              (g north)                 Northwest         (g nw)  
Pacific Rim            (g pacrim)             Parenting         (g par) 
Peace                  (g pea)                     Peninsula         (g pen) 
Poetry                 (g poetry)                Philosophy        (g phi) 
Politics               (g pol)                     Psychology        (g psy)         
Psychotherapy   (g therapy)  Recovery##        (g recovery)
San Francisco          (g sanfran)           Scams             (g scam) 
Sexuality              (g sex)                    Singles           (g singles)     
Southern               (g south)                Spanish           (g spanish)     
Spirituality           (g spirit)               Tibet             (g tibet)       
Transportation  (g transport)      True Confessions  (g tru) 
Unclear (g unclear)   WELL Writer's Workshop***(g www)
Whole Earth (g we)           Women on the WELL*(g wow) 
Words                  (g words)                 Writers           (g wri)

**** Private Conference - mail wooly for entry
***Private conference - mail sonia for entry
** Private conference - mail flash for entry
*  Private conference - mail reva for entry    
#  Private Conference - mail hudu for entry
## Private Conference - mail dhawk for entry

                  Arts - Recreation - Entertainment
                  -----------------------------------
ArtCom Electronic Net  (g acen) 
Audio-Videophilia (g aud)
Bicycles               (g bike)                  Bay Area Tonight**(g bat) 
Boating                (g wet)                  Books             (g books)       
CD's                   (g cd)                        Comics            (g comics)      
Cooking                (g cook)                 Flying            (g flying)      
Fun                    (g fun)                     Games             (g games)       
Gardening              (g gard)               Kids              (g kids) 
Nightowls*             (g owl)              Jokes             (g jokes)       
MIDI                   (g midi)                   Movies            (g movies)      
Motorcycling           (g ride)              Motoring          (g car)
Music                  (g mus)                  On Stage          (g onstage)     
Pets                   (g pets)                  Radio             (g rad)         
Restaurant             (g rest)              Science Fiction   (g sf)          
Sports                 (g spo)                  Star Trek         (g trek)        
Television             (g tv)                  Theater           (g theater)     
Weird                  (g weird)              Zines/Factsheet Five(g f5) 
* Open from midnight to 6am                    
** Updated daily

                             Grateful Dead
                             ------------- 
Grateful Dead          (g gd)          Deadplan*         (g dp)
Deadlit                (g deadlit)       Feedback          (g feedback)    
GD Hour                (g gdh)            Tapes             (g tapes)       
Tickets                (g tix)              Tours             (g tours)

* Private conference - mail tnf for entry

                               Computers
                              -----------
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Apple                  (g app)       Computer Books    (g cbook)       
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HyperCard              (g hype)                IBM PC            (g ibm)  
LANs                   (g lan)                      Laptop            (g lap)         
Macintosh              (g mac)    Mactech           (g mactech)     
Microtimes   (g microx)            Muchomedia        (g mucho)
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Siggraph               (g siggraph)           Software Design   (g sdc)  
Software/Programming (software) 
Software Support  (g ssc)         
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                        Technical - Communications
                       ----------------------------
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System News            (g news)        Test                   (g test)


	   The list itself is dazzling, bringing to the untutored 
eye a dizzying impression of a bizarre milieu of mountain-
climbing Hawaiian holistic photographers trading true-life 
confessions with bisexual word-processing Tibetans.

	But this confusion is more apparent than real.  Each 
of these conferences was a little cyberspace world in itself, 
comprising dozens and perhaps hundreds of sub-topics.  
Each conference was commonly frequented by a fairly 
small, fairly like-minded community of perhaps a few 
dozen people.   It was  humanly impossible to encompass 
the entire Well (especially since access to the Well's 
mainframe computer was billed by the hour).  Most long-
time users contented themselves with a few favorite 
topical neighborhoods, with the occasional foray 
elsewhere for a taste of exotica.   But especially important 
news items, and hot topical debates, could catch the 
attention of the entire Well community.

	Like any community, the Well had its celebrities, and 
John Perry Barlow, the silver-tongued and silver-
modemed lyricist of the Grateful Dead, ranked 
prominently among them.  It was here on the Well that 
Barlow posted his true-life tale of computer-crime 
encounter with the FBI.

	The story, as might be expected, created a great stir.  
The Well was already primed for hacker controversy.  In 
December 1989, *Harper's* magazine had hosted a 
debate on the Well about the ethics of illicit computer 
intrusion.   While over forty various computer-mavens 
took part,  Barlow proved a star in the debate.   So did 
"Acid Phreak" and "Phiber Optik," a pair of young New 
York hacker-phreaks whose skills at telco switching-station 
intrusion were matched only by their apparently limitless 
hunger for fame.   The advent of these two boldly 
swaggering outlaws in the precincts of the Well created a 
sensation akin to that of Black Panthers at a cocktail party 
for the radically chic.

	Phiber Optik in particular was to seize the day in 1990.  
A devotee of the *2600* circle and stalwart of the New York 
hackers' group "Masters of Deception,"  Phiber Optik was 
a splendid exemplar of the computer intruder as 
committed dissident.   The eighteen-year-old Optik, a 
high-school dropout and part-time computer repairman, 
was young, smart, and ruthlessly obsessive, a sharp-
dressing, sharp-talking digital dude who was utterly and 
airily contemptuous of anyone's rules but his own.    By 
late 1991, Phiber Optik had appeared in *Harper's,* 
*Esquire,*  *The New York Times,* in countless public 
debates and conventions, even on a television show 
hosted by Geraldo Rivera.

	Treated with gingerly respect by Barlow and other 
Well mavens,   Phiber Optik swiftly became a Well 
celebrity.   Strangely, despite his thorny attitude and utter 
single-mindedness, Phiber Optik seemed to arouse strong 
protective instincts in most of the people who met him.   
He was great copy for journalists, always fearlessly ready 
to swagger, and, better yet, to actually *demonstrate*  
some off-the-wall digital stunt.   He was a born media 
darling.

	Even cops seemed to recognize that there was 
something peculiarly unworldly and uncriminal about this 
particular troublemaker.   He was so bold, so flagrant, so 
young, and so obviously doomed, that even those who 
strongly disapproved of his actions grew anxious for his 
welfare, and began to flutter about him as if he were an 
endangered seal pup.

	In January 24, 1990 (nine days after the Martin Luther 
King Day Crash), Phiber Optik, Acid Phreak, and a third 
NYC scofflaw named Scorpion were raided by the Secret 
Service.   Their computers went out the door, along with 
the usual blizzard of papers, notebooks, compact disks, 
answering machines, Sony Walkmans, etc.  Both Acid 
Phreak and Phiber Optik were accused of having caused 
the Crash.

	The mills of justice ground slowly.  The case 
eventually fell into the hands of the New York State Police.  
Phiber had lost his machinery in the raid,  but there were 
no charges  filed against him for over a year.   His 
predicament was extensively publicized on the Well, 
where it caused much resentment for police tactics.  It's 
one thing to merely hear about a hacker raided or busted; 
it's another to see the police attacking someone you've 
come to know personally, and who has explained his 
motives at length.   Through the *Harper's* debate on the 
Well, it had become clear to the Wellbeings that Phiber 
Optik was not in fact going to "hurt anything."   In their 
own salad days, many Wellbeings had tasted tear-gas in 
pitched street-battles with police.  They were inclined to 
indulgence for acts of civil disobedience.

	Wellbeings were also startled to learn of the 
draconian thoroughness of a typical hacker search-and-
seizure.   It took no great stretch of imagination for them to 
envision themselves suffering much the same treatment.

	As early as January 1990, sentiment on the Well had 
already begun to sour, and people had begun to grumble 
that "hackers" were getting a raw deal from the ham-
handed powers-that-be.   The resultant issue of *Harper's* 
magazine posed the question as to whether computer-
intrusion was a "crime" at all.   As Barlow put it later: "I've 
begun to wonder if we wouldn't also regard spelunkers as 
desperate criminals if AT&T owned all the caves."

	In February 1991, more than a year after the raid on 
his home, Phiber Optik was finally arrested, and was 
charged with first-degree Computer Tampering and 
Computer Trespass, New York state offenses.   He was also 
charged with a theft-of-service misdemeanor, involving a 
complex free-call scam to a 900 number.  Phiber Optik 
pled guilty to the misdemeanor charge, and was 
sentenced to  35 hours of community service.

	This passing harassment from the unfathomable 
world of straight people seemed to bother Optik himself 
little if at all.  Deprived of his computer by the  January 
search-and-seizure, he simply bought himself a portable 
computer so the cops could no longer monitor the phone 
where he lived with his Mom, and he went right on with his 
depredations, sometimes on live radio or in front of 
television cameras.

	The crackdown raid may have done little to dissuade 
Phiber Optik, but its  galling affect on the Wellbeings was 
profound.  As 1990 rolled on, the slings and arrows 
mounted:  the Knight Lightning raid, the Steve Jackson 
raid, the nation-spanning Operation Sundevil.   The 
rhetoric of law enforcement made it clear that there was, 
in fact, a concerted crackdown on hackers in progress.

	The hackers of the Hackers Conference, the 
Wellbeings, and their ilk, did not really mind the 
occasional public misapprehension of "hacking"; if 
anything, this membrane of differentiation from straight 
society made the "computer community" feel different, 
smarter, better.   They had never before been confronted, 
however, by a concerted vilification campaign.

	Barlow's central role in the counter-struggle was one 
of the major anomalies of 1990.   Journalists investigating 
the controversy often stumbled over the truth about 
Barlow, but they commonly dusted themselves off and 
hurried on as if nothing had happened.   It was as if it were 
*too much to believe*  that a  1960s freak from the Grateful 
Dead had taken on a federal law enforcement operation 
head-to-head and *actually seemed to be winning!*

	Barlow had no easily detectable power-base for a 
political struggle of this kind.  He had no formal legal or 
technical credentials.   Barlow was, however, a computer 
networker of truly stellar brilliance.   He had a poet's gift of 
concise, colorful phrasing.  He also had a journalist's 
shrewdness, an off-the-wall, self-deprecating wit, and a 
phenomenal wealth of simple personal charm.

	The kind of influence Barlow possessed is fairly 
common currency in literary, artistic, or musical circles.  A 
gifted critic can wield great artistic influence simply 
through defining the temper of the times,  by coining the 
catch-phrases and the terms of debate that become the 
common currency of the period.  (And as it happened, 
Barlow *was*  a part-time art critic, with a special fondness 
for the Western art of Frederic Remington.)

	Barlow was the first  commentator to adopt William 
Gibson's striking science-fictional term "cyberspace" as a 
synonym for the present-day nexus of computer and 
telecommunications networks.   Barlow was insistent that 
cyberspace should be regarded as a  qualitatively new 
world, a "frontier."   According to Barlow, the world of 
electronic communications, now made visible through the 
computer screen, could no longer be usefully regarded as  
just a tangle of high-tech wiring.  Instead, it had become a 
*place,*   cyberspace, which demanded a new set of 
metaphors, a new set of rules and behaviors.  The term, as 
Barlow employed it, struck a useful chord, and this 
concept of cyberspace was picked up by *Time,* 
*Scientific American,*  computer police, hackers, and 
even Constitutional scholars.   "Cyberspace" now seems 
likely to become a permanent fixture of the language.

	Barlow was very striking in person: a tall, craggy-
faced, bearded, deep-voiced Wyomingan in a dashing 
Western ensemble of jeans, jacket, cowboy boots, a 
knotted throat-kerchief and an ever-present Grateful 
Dead cloisonne lapel pin.

	Armed with a modem, however, Barlow was truly in 
his element.  Formal hierarchies were not Barlow's strong 
suit; he rarely missed a chance to belittle the "large 
organizations and their drones," with their uptight, 
institutional mindset.   Barlow was very much of the free-
spirit persuasion, deeply unimpressed by brass-hats and 
jacks-in-office.  But when it came to the digital grapevine, 
Barlow was a cyberspace ad-hocrat par excellence.

 	There was not a mighty army of Barlows.  There was 
only one Barlow, and he was a fairly anomolous individual.   
However, the situation only seemed to *require*  a single 
Barlow.   In fact, after 1990, many people must have 
concluded that a single Barlow was far more than they'd 
ever bargained for.

	Barlow's  querulous mini-essay about his encounter 
with the FBI struck a strong chord on the Well.   A number 
of other free spirits on the fringes of Apple Computing had 
come under suspicion, and they liked it not one whit better 
than he did.

	One of these was Mitchell Kapor, the co-inventor of 
the spreadsheet program "Lotus 1-2-3" and the founder of 
Lotus Development Corporation.   Kapor had written-off 
the passing indignity of being fingerprinted down at his 
own local Boston FBI headquarters, but Barlow's post 
made the full national scope of the FBI's dragnet clear to 
Kapor.   The issue now had Kapor's full attention.   As the 
Secret Service swung into anti-hacker operation 
nationwide in 1990, Kapor watched every move with deep 
skepticism and growing alarm. 

	As it happened, Kapor had already met Barlow, who 
had interviewed Kapor for a California computer journal.  
Like most people who met Barlow, Kapor had been very 
taken with him.   Now Kapor took it upon himself to drop 
in on Barlow for a heart-to-heart talk about the situation.

	Kapor was a regular on the Well.  Kapor had been a 
devotee of the *Whole Earth Catalog* since the 
beginning, and treasured a complete run of the magazine.   
And Kapor not only had a modem, but a private jet.   In 
pursuit of the scattered high-tech investments of Kapor 
Enterprises Inc., his personal, multi-million dollar holding 
company, Kapor commonly crossed state lines with about 
as much thought as one might give to faxing a letter.

	 The Kapor-Barlow council of June 1990, in Pinedale, 
Wyoming, was the start of the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation.   Barlow swiftly wrote a manifesto, "Crime and 
Puzzlement,"  which announced his, and Kapor's, 
intention to form a political organization to "raise and 
disburse funds for education, lobbying, and litigation in 
the areas relating to digital speech and the extension of 
the Constitution into Cyberspace."

	Furthermore, proclaimed the manifesto, the 
foundation would "fund, conduct, and support legal efforts 
to demonstrate that the Secret Service has exercised prior 
restraint on publications, limited free speech, conducted 
improper seizure of equipment and data, used undue 
force, and generally conducted itself in a fashion which is 
arbitrary, oppressive, and unconstitutional."

	"Crime and Puzzlement" was distributed far and wide 
through computer networking channels, and also printed 
in the *Whole Earth Review.*  The sudden declaration of a 
coherent, politicized counter-strike from the ranks of 
hackerdom electrified the community.   Steve Wozniak 
(perhaps a bit stung by the  NuPrometheus scandal) 
swiftly offered to match any funds Kapor offered the 
Foundation.

	John Gilmore, one of the pioneers of Sun 
Microsystems, immediately offered his own extensive 
financial and personal support.   Gilmore, an ardent 
libertarian, was to prove an eloquent advocate of 
electronic privacy issues, especially freedom from 
governmental and corporate computer-assisted 
surveillance of private citizens.

	A second meeting in San Francisco rounded up 
further allies:  Stewart Brand of the Point Foundation, 
virtual-reality pioneers Jaron Lanier and Chuck 
Blanchard,  network entrepreneur and venture capitalist 
Nat Goldhaber.  At this dinner meeting, the activists 
settled on a formal title: the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation, Incorporated.  Kapor became its president.   
A new EFF Conference was opened on the Point 
Foundation's Well, and the Well was declared "the home 
of the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

	Press coverage was immediate and intense.   Like 
their nineteenth-century spiritual ancestors, Alexander 
Graham Bell and Thomas Watson, the high-tech 
computer entrepreneurs of the 1970s and 1980s -- people 
such as Wozniak, Jobs, Kapor, Gates, and H. Ross Perot, 
who had raised themselves by their bootstraps to 
dominate a glittering new industry -- had always made 
very good copy.

	But while the Wellbeings rejoiced, the press in 
general seemed nonplussed by the self-declared 
"civilizers of cyberspace."   EFF's insistence that the war 
against "hackers" involved grave Constitutional civil 
liberties issues seemed somewhat farfetched, especially 
since none of EFF's organizers were lawyers or established 
politicians.    The business press in particular found it 
easier to seize on the apparent core of the story -- that 
high-tech entrepreneur Mitchell Kapor had established a 
"defense fund for hackers."   Was EFF a genuinely 
important  political development -- or merely a clique of 
wealthy eccentrics, dabbling in matters better left to the 
proper authorities?  The jury was still out.

	But the stage was now set for open confrontation.   
And the first and the most critical battle was the hacker 
show-trial of "Knight Lightning."

					#         

	It has been my practice throughout this book to refer 
to hackers only by their "handles."   There is little to gain 
by giving the real names of these people, many of whom 
are juveniles, many of whom have never been convicted of 
any crime, and many of whom had unsuspecting parents 
who have already suffered enough.

	But the  trial of Knight Lightning on July 24-27, 1990, 
made this particular "hacker" a nationally known public 
figure.  It can do no particular harm to himself or his 
family if I repeat the long-established fact that his name is 
Craig Neidorf (pronounced NYE-dorf).

	Neidorf's jury trial took place in the United States 
District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern 
Division, with the Honorable Nicholas J. Bua presiding.   
The United States of America was the plaintiff, the 
defendant Mr.  Neidorf.   The defendant's attorney was 
Sheldon T. Zenner of the Chicago firm of Katten, Muchin 
and Zavis.

	The prosecution was led by the stalwarts of the 
Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force: William 
J. Cook, Colleen D. Coughlin, and David A. Glockner, all 
Assistant United States Attorneys.   The Secret Service 
Case Agent was Timothy M. Foley.

	It will be recalled that Neidorf was the co-editor of an 
underground hacker "magazine" called *Phrack*.  
*Phrack*  was an entirely electronic publication, 
distributed through bulletin boards and over electronic 
networks.  It was amateur publication given away for free.  
Neidorf had never made any money for his work in 
*Phrack.*  Neither had his unindicted co-editor "Taran 
King" or any of the numerous *Phrack* contributors.

	The Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force, 
however, had decided to prosecute Neidorf as a fraudster.   
To formally admit that *Phrack* was a "magazine" and 
Neidorf a "publisher" was to open a prosecutorial 
Pandora's Box of First Amendment issues.   To do this was 
to play into the hands of Zenner and his EFF advisers, 
which now included a phalanx of prominent New York civil 
rights lawyers as well as the formidable legal staff of 
Katten, Muchin and Zavis.  Instead, the prosecution relied 
heavily on the issue of access device fraud:  Section 1029 of 
Title 18, the section from which the Secret Service drew its 
most direct jurisdiction over computer crime.

	Neidorf's alleged crimes centered around the E911 
Document.   He was accused of having entered into a 
fraudulent scheme with the Prophet, who, it will be 
recalled, was the Atlanta LoD member who had illicitly 
copied  the E911 Document from the BellSouth AIMSX 
system.

	The Prophet himself was also a co-defendant in the 
Neidorf case, part-and-parcel of the alleged "fraud 
scheme" to "steal" BellSouth's E911 Document (and to 
pass the Document across state lines, which helped 
establish the Neidorf trial as a federal case).  The Prophet, 
in the spirit of full co-operation, had agreed to testify 
against Neidorf.

	In fact, all three of the Atlanta crew stood ready to 
testify against Neidorf.   Their own federal prosecutors in 
Atlanta had charged the Atlanta Three with:  (a) 
conspiracy,  (b) computer fraud, (c) wire fraud, (d) access 
device fraud, and (e) interstate transportation of stolen  
property (Title 18, Sections 371, 1030, 1343, 1029, and 2314).

	Faced with this blizzard of trouble, Prophet and 
Leftist had ducked any public trial and  had pled guilty to 
reduced charges -- one conspiracy count apiece.   Urvile 
had pled guilty to that odd bit of Section 1029 which makes 
it illegal to possess "fifteen or more" illegal access devices 
(in his case, computer passwords).   And their sentences 
were scheduled for September 14, 1990 -- well after the 
Neidorf trial.   As witnesses, they could presumably be 
relied upon to behave.

	Neidorf, however,  was pleading innocent.   Most 
everyone else caught up in the crackdown had 
"cooperated fully" and pled guilty in hope of reduced 
sentences.   (Steve Jackson was a notable exception, of 
course, and had strongly protested his innocence from the 
very beginning.  But Steve Jackson could not get a day in 
court -- Steve Jackson had never been charged with any 
crime in the first place.)

	Neidorf had been urged to plead guilty.  But Neidorf 
was a political science major and was disinclined to go to 
jail for  "fraud" when he had not made any money, had not 
broken into any computer, and had been publishing a 
magazine that he considered protected under the First 
Amendment.

	Neidorf's trial was the *only*  legal action of the 
entire Crackdown that actually involved bringing the 
issues at hand out for a public test in front of a jury of 
American citizens.

	Neidorf, too, had cooperated with investigators.  He 
had voluntarily handed over much of the evidence that 
had led to his own indictment.  He had already admitted 
in writing that he knew that the E911 Document had been 
stolen before he had "published" it in *Phrack* -- or, from 
the prosecution's point of view, illegally transported stolen 
property by wire  in something purporting to be a 
"publication."

	But even if the "publication" of the E911 Document 
was not held to be a crime,  that wouldn't let Neidorf off 
the hook.  Neidorf  had still received  the E911 Document 
when Prophet had transferred it to him from Rich 
Andrews' Jolnet node.  On that  occasion, it certainly 
hadn't been "published" -- it was hacker booty, pure and 
simple, transported across state lines.

	The Chicago Task Force led a Chicago grand jury to  
indict  Neidorf on a set of charges that could have put him 
in jail for thirty years.  When some of these charges were 
successfully challenged before Neidorf actually went to 
trial, the Chicago Task Force rearranged his indictment so 
that he faced a possible jail term of over sixty years!   As a 
first offender, it was very unlikely that Neidorf would in 
fact receive a sentence so drastic;  but the Chicago Task 
Force clearly intended to see Neidorf put in prison, and 
his conspiratorial "magazine" put permanently out of 
commission.  This was a federal case, and Neidorf was 
charged with the fraudulent theft of property worth almost 
eighty thousand dollars.

	William Cook was a strong believer in high-profile 
prosecutions with symbolic overtones.  He often published 
articles on his work in the security trade press, arguing 
that "a clear message had to be sent to the public at large 
and the computer community in particular that 
unauthorized attacks on computers and the theft of 
computerized information would not be tolerated by the 
courts."

	The issues were complex, the prosecution's tactics 
somewhat unorthodox, but the Chicago Task Force had 
proved sure-footed to date.  "Shadowhawk"  had been 
bagged on the wing in 1989 by the Task Force, and  
sentenced to nine months in prison, and a $10,000 fine.  
The Shadowhawk case involved charges under Section 
1030, the "federal interest computer" section.

	Shadowhawk had not in fact been a devotee of 
"federal-interest" computers per se.  On the contrary, 
Shadowhawk, who owned an AT&T home computer, 
seemed to cherish a special aggression toward AT&T.  He 
had bragged on the underground boards "Phreak Klass 
2600" and "Dr. Ripco"  of his skills at raiding AT&T, and of 
his intention to crash AT&T's national phone system.   
Shadowhawk's brags were noticed by Henry Kluepfel of 
Bellcore Security, scourge of the outlaw boards, whose 
relations with the Chicago Task Force were long and 
intimate.

	The Task Force successfully established that Section 
1030 applied to the teenage Shadowhawk, despite the 
objections of his defense attorney.  Shadowhawk had 
entered a computer "owned" by U.S. Missile Command 
and merely "managed" by AT&T.   He had also entered an 
AT&T computer located at Robbins Air Force Base in 
Georgia.   Attacking AT&T was of "federal interest" 
whether Shadowhawk had intended it or not.

	The Task Force also convinced the court that a piece 
of AT&T software that Shadowhawk had illicitly copied 
from Bell Labs, the "Artificial Intelligence C5 Expert 
System," was worth a cool one million dollars.   
Shadowhawk's attorney had argued that Shadowhawk had 
not sold the program and had made no profit from the 
illicit copying.  And in point of fact, the C5 Expert System 
was experimental software, and had no established 
market value because it had never been on the market in 
the first place.   AT&T's own assessment of a "one million 
dollar" figure for its own  intangible property was accepted 
without challenge by the court, however.  And the court 
concurred with the government prosecutors that 
Shadowhawk showed clear "intent to defraud" whether 
he'd gotten any money or not.   Shadowhawk went to jail.

	The Task Force's other best-known triumph had been 
the conviction and jailing of "Kyrie."  Kyrie, a true denizen 
of the digital criminal underground, was a 36-year-old 
Canadian woman, convicted and jailed for 
telecommunications fraud in Canada.   After her release 
from prison, she had fled the wrath of Canada Bell and the 
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and eventually settled, 
very unwisely, in Chicago.

	"Kyrie," who also called herself "Long Distance 
Information," specialized in voice-mail abuse.   She 
assembled large numbers of hot long-distance codes, then 
read them aloud into a series of corporate voice-mail 
systems.   Kyrie and her friends were electronic squatters 
in corporate voice-mail systems, using them much as if 
they were pirate bulletin boards, then moving on when 
their vocal chatter clogged the system and the owners 
necessarily wised up.   Kyrie's camp followers were a loose 
tribe of some hundred and fifty phone-phreaks, who 
followed her trail of piracy from machine to machine, 
ardently begging for her services and expertise.

	Kyrie's disciples passed her stolen credit-card 
numbers, in exchange for her stolen "long distance 
information."  Some of Kyrie's clients paid her off in cash, 
by scamming credit-card cash advances from Western 
Union.

	Kyrie travelled incessantly, mostly through airline 
tickets and hotel rooms that she scammed through stolen 
credit cards.  Tiring of this, she found refuge with a fellow 
female phone phreak in Chicago.  Kyrie's hostess, like a 
surprising number of phone phreaks, was blind.  She was 
also physically disabled.   Kyrie allegedly made the best of 
her new situation by applying for, and receiving, state 
welfare funds under a false identity as a qualified 
caretaker for the handicapped.

	Sadly, Kyrie's two children by a former marriage had 
also vanished underground with her; these pre-teen digital 
refugees had no legal American identity, and had never 
spent a day in school.

	Kyrie was addicted to technical mastery and 
enthralled by her own cleverness and the ardent worship 
of her teenage followers.  This  foolishly led her to phone 
up Gail Thackeray in Arizona, to boast, brag, strut, and 
offer to play informant.   Thackeray, however, had already 
learned far more than enough about Kyrie, whom she 
roundly despised as an adult criminal corrupting minors, a 
"female Fagin."   Thackeray passed her tapes of Kyrie's 
boasts to the Secret Service.

	Kyrie was raided and arrested in Chicago in May 
1989.  She confessed at great length and pled guilty.

	In August 1990, Cook and his Task Force colleague 
Colleen Coughlin sent Kyrie to jail for 27 months, for 
computer and telecommunications fraud.  This was a 
markedly severe sentence by the usual wrist-slapping 
standards of "hacker" busts.  Seven of Kyrie's foremost 
teenage disciples were also indicted and convicted.   The 
Kyrie "high-tech street gang," as Cook described it,  had 
been crushed.   Cook and his colleagues had been the first 
ever to put someone in prison for voice-mail abuse.   Their 
pioneering efforts had won them attention and kudos.

	In his article on Kyrie, Cook drove the message home 
to the readers of *Security Management* magazine, a 
trade journal for corporate security professionals.  The 
case, Cook said, and Kyrie's stiff sentence,  "reflect a new 
reality for hackers and computer crime victims in the 
'90s....  Individuals and corporations who report computer 
and telecommunications crimes can now expect that their 
cooperation with federal law enforcement will result in 
meaningful punishment.  Companies and the public at 
large must report computer-enhanced crimes if they want 
prosecutors and the course to protect their rights to the 
tangible and intangible property developed and stored on 
computers."

	Cook had made it his business to construct this "new 
reality for hackers."  He'd also made it his business to 
police corporate property rights to the intangible.

	Had the Electronic Frontier Foundation been a 
"hacker defense fund" as that term was generally 
understood, they presumably would have stood up for 
Kyrie.   Her 1990 sentence did indeed send a "message" 
that federal heat was coming down on "hackers."   But 
Kyrie found no defenders at EFF, or anywhere else, for 
that matter.  EFF was not a bail-out fund for electronic 
crooks.

	The Neidorf case paralleled the Shadowhawk case in 
certain ways.  The victim once again was allowed to set the 
value of the "stolen" property.  Once again Kluepfel was 
both investigator and technical advisor.  Once again no 
money had changed hands, but the "intent to defraud" 
was central.

	The prosecution's case showed signs of weakness 
early on.  The Task Force had originally hoped to prove 
Neidorf the center of a nationwide Legion of Doom 
criminal conspiracy.   The *Phrack* editors threw physical 
get-togethers every summer, which attracted hackers 
from across the country; generally two dozen or so of the 
magazine's favorite contributors and readers.  (Such 
conventions were common in the hacker community; 2600 
Magazine, for instance, held public meetings of hackers in 
New York, every month.)   LoD heavy-dudes were always a 
strong presence at these *Phrack*-sponsored 
"Summercons."

	In July 1988, an Arizona hacker named "Dictator" 
attended Summercon in Neidorf's home town of St. Louis.  
Dictator was one of Gail Thackeray's underground 
informants; Dictator's underground board in Phoenix was 
a sting operation for the Secret Service.   Dictator brought 
an undercover crew of Secret Service agents to 
Summercon.  The agents bored spyholes through the wall 
of Dictator's hotel room in St Louis, and videotaped the 
frolicking hackers through a one-way mirror.   As it 
happened, however, nothing illegal had occurred on 
videotape, other than the guzzling of beer by a couple of 
minors.   Summercons were social events, not sinister 
cabals.  The tapes showed fifteen hours of raucous 
laughter, pizza-gobbling, in-jokes and back-slapping.

	Neidorf's lawyer, Sheldon Zenner, saw the Secret 
Service tapes before the trial.  Zenner was shocked by the 
complete harmlessness of this meeting, which Cook had 
earlier characterized as a sinister interstate conspiracy to 
commit fraud.   Zenner wanted to show the Summercon 
tapes to the jury.  It took protracted maneuverings by the 
Task Force to keep the tapes from the jury as "irrelevant."

	The E911 Document was also proving a weak reed.  It 
had originally been valued at $79,449.   Unlike 
Shadowhawk's arcane Artificial Intelligence booty, the 
E911 Document  was not software -- it was written in 
English.  Computer-knowledgeable people found this 
value -- for a twelve-page bureaucratic document -- 
frankly incredible.   In his "Crime and Puzzlement" 
manifesto for EFF, Barlow commented:  "We will probably 
never know how this figure was reached or by whom, 
though I like to imagine an appraisal team consisting of 
Franz Kafka, Joseph Heller, and Thomas Pynchon."

	As it happened, Barlow was unduly pessimistic.  The 
EFF did, in fact, eventually discover exactly  how this figure 
was reached, and by whom -- but only in 1991, long after 
the Neidorf trial was over.

	  Kim Megahee, a Southern Bell security manager, 
had arrived at the document's value by simply adding up 
the "costs associated with the production" of the E911 
Document.  Those "costs" were as follows:

	1.  A technical writer had been hired to research and 
write the E911 Document.  200 hours of work, at $35 an 
hour, cost : $7,000.  A Project Manager had overseen the 
technical writer.  200 hours, at $31 an hour, made: $6,200.

	2.  A week of typing had cost $721 dollars.  A week of 
formatting had cost $721.  A week of graphics formatting 
had cost $742.

	3.  Two days of editing cost $367.

`	4.  A box of order labels cost five dollars.

	5.  Preparing a purchase order for the Document, 
including typing and the obtaining of an authorizing 
signature from within the BellSouth bureaucracy, cost 
$129.

	6.  Printing cost $313.  Mailing the Document to fifty 
people took fifty hours by a clerk, and cost $858.

	7.  Placing the Document in an index took two clerks 
an hour each, totalling $43.

	Bureaucratic overhead alone, therefore, was alleged 
to have cost a whopping $17,099.   According to Mr. 
Megahee, the typing of a twelve-page document had 
taken a full week.   Writing it had taken five weeks, 
including an overseer who apparently did nothing else but 
watch the author for five weeks.  Editing twelve pages had 
taken two days.  Printing and mailing an electronic 
document (which was already available on the Southern 
Bell Data Network to any telco employee who needed it), 
had cost over a thousand dollars.

	But this was just the beginning.  There were also the 
*hardware expenses.*   Eight hundred fifty dollars for a 
VT220 computer monitor.  *Thirty-one thousand dollars*  
for a sophisticated VAXstation II computer.  Six thousand 
dollars for a computer printer.  *Twenty-two thousand 
dollars*  for a copy of "Interleaf" software.  Two thousand 
five hundred dollars for VMS software.  All this to create 
the twelve-page Document.

	Plus ten percent of the cost of the software and the 
hardware, for maintenance.  (Actually, the ten percent 
maintenance costs, though mentioned, had been left off 
the final $79,449 total, apparently through a merciful 
oversight).

	Mr. Megahee's letter had been mailed directly to 
William Cook himself, at the office of the Chicago federal 
attorneys.  The United States Government accepted these 
telco figures without question.

	As incredulity mounted, the value of the E911 
Document was officially revised downward.  This time, 
Robert Kibler of BellSouth Security estimated the value of 
the twelve pages as a mere $24,639.05 -- based, 
purportedly, on "R&D costs."   But this specific estimate, 
right down to the nickel, did not move the skeptics at all; in 
fact it provoked open scorn and a torrent of sarcasm.

	The financial issues concerning theft of proprietary 
information have always been peculiar.  It could be 
argued that BellSouth had not "lost" its E911 Document at 
all in the first place, and therefore had not suffered any 
monetary damage from this "theft."  And Sheldon Zenner 
did in fact argue this at Neidorf's trial -- that Prophet's raid 
had not been "theft," but was better understood as illicit 
copying.

	The money, however, was not central to anyone's true 
purposes in this trial.   It was not Cook's strategy to 
convince the jury that the E911 Document was a major act 
of theft and should be punished for that reason alone.   
His strategy was to argue that the E911 Document was 
*dangerous.*   It was his intention to establish that the 
E911 Document was "a road-map" to the Enhanced 911 
System.   Neidorf had deliberately and recklessly 
distributed a dangerous weapon.   Neidorf and the 
Prophet did not care (or perhaps even gloated at the 
sinister idea) that the E911 Document could be used by 
hackers to disrupt 911 service, "a life line for every person 
certainly in the Southern Bell region of the United States, 
and indeed, in many communities throughout the United 
States," in Cook's own words.  Neidorf had put people's 
lives in danger.

	In pre-trial maneuverings, Cook had established that 
the E911 Document was too hot to appear in the public 
proceedings of the Neidorf trial.  The *jury itself*  would 
not be allowed to ever see this Document, lest it slip into 
the official court records, and thus into the hands of the 
general public, and, thus, somehow, to malicious hackers 
who might lethally abuse it.

	Hiding the E911 Document from the jury may have 
been a clever legal maneuver, but it had a severe flaw.  
There were, in point of fact, hundreds, perhaps thousands, 
of people, already in possession of the E911 Document, 
just as *Phrack* had published it.   Its true nature was 
already obvious to a wide section of the interested public  
(all of whom, by the way, were, at least theoretically, party 
to a gigantic wire-fraud conspiracy).   Most everyone in the 
electronic community who had a modem and any interest 
in the Neidorf case already  had a copy of the Document.  
It had already been available in *Phrack* for over a year.

	People, even quite normal people without any 
particular prurient interest in forbidden knowledge, did 
not shut their eyes in terror at the thought of beholding a 
"dangerous" document from a telephone company.   On 
the contrary, they tended to trust their own judgement and 
simply read the Document for themselves.  And they were 
not impressed.

	One such person was John Nagle.  Nagle was a  forty-
one-year-old professional programmer with a masters' 
degree in computer science from Stanford.  He had 
worked for Ford Aerospace, where he had invented a 
computer-networking technique known as the "Nagle 
Algorithm," and for the prominent Californian computer-
graphics firm "Autodesk," where he was a major 
stockholder.

	Nagle was also a prominent figure on the Well, much 
respected for his technical knowledgeability.

	Nagle had followed the civil-liberties debate closely, 
for he was an ardent telecommunicator.  He was no 
particular friend of computer intruders, but he believed 
electronic publishing had a great deal to offer society at 
large, and attempts to restrain its growth, or to censor free 
electronic expression, strongly roused his ire.

	The Neidorf case, and the E911 Document, were both 
being discussed  in detail on the Internet, in an electronic 
publication called *Telecom Digest.*  Nagle, a longtime 
Internet maven, was a regular reader of  *Telecom 
Digest.*    Nagle had never seen a copy of *Phrack,*  but 
the implications of the case disturbed him.

	While in a Stanford bookstore hunting books on 
robotics, Nagle happened across a book called *The 
Intelligent Network.*   Thumbing through it at random, 
Nagle came across an entire chapter meticulously 
detailing the workings of E911 police emergency systems.   
This extensive text was being sold openly, and yet in 
Illinois a young man was in danger of going to prison for 
publishing a thin six-page document about 911 service.

	Nagle made an ironic comment to this effect in 
*Telecom Digest.*   From there, Nagle was put in touch 
with Mitch Kapor,  and then with Neidorf's lawyers.

	Sheldon Zenner was delighted to find a computer 
telecommunications expert willing to speak up for 
Neidorf,  one who was not a wacky teenage "hacker."   
Nagle was fluent, mature, and respectable; he'd once had 
a federal security clearance.

	Nagle was asked to fly to  Illinois to join the defense 
team.

	Having joined the defense as an expert witness, 
Nagle read the entire E911 Document for himself.  He 
made his own judgement about its potential for menace.

	The time has now come for you yourself, the reader, 
to have a look at the E911 Document.   This six-page piece 
of work was the pretext for a federal prosecution that could 
have sent an electronic publisher to prison for thirty, or 
even sixty,  years.  It was the pretext for the search and 
seizure of Steve Jackson Games, a legitimate publisher of 
printed books.  It was also the formal pretext for the search 
and seizure of the Mentor's bulletin board, "Phoenix 
Project," and for the raid on the home of Erik Bloodaxe.  It 
also had much to do with the seizure of Richard Andrews' 
Jolnet node and the shutdown of Charles Boykin's AT&T 
node.  The E911 Document was the single most important 
piece of evidence in the Hacker Crackdown.   There can 
be no real and legitimate substitute for the Document 
itself.


                                ==Phrack Inc.==

                      Volume Two, Issue 24, File 5 of 13

	Control Office Administration
	Of Enhanced 911 Services For
	Special Services and Account Centers

		by the Eavesdropper

			March, 1988


Description of Service
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The control office for Emergency 911 service is assigned in 
accordance with the existing standard guidelines to one of 
the following centers:

     o  Special Services Center (SSC)
     o  Major Accounts Center (MAC)
     o  Serving Test Center (STC)
     o  Toll Control Center (TCC)

The SSC/MAC designation is used in this document 
interchangeably for any of these four centers.  The Special 
Services Centers (SSCs) or Major Account Centers 
(MACs) have been designated as the trouble reporting 
contact for all E911 customer (PSAP) reported troubles.  
Subscribers who have trouble on an E911 call will continue 
to contact local repair service (CRSAB) who will refer the 
trouble to the SSC/MAC, when appropriate.

Due to the critical nature of E911 service, the control and 
timely repair of troubles is demanded.  As the primary 
E911 customer contact, the SSC/MAC is in the unique 
position to monitor the status of the trouble and insure its 
resolution.

System Overview
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The number 911 is intended as a nationwide universal 
telephone number which provides the public with direct 
access to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).  A PSAP 
is also referred to as an Emergency Service Bureau (ESB).  
A PSAP is an agency or facility which is authorized by a 
municipality to receive and respond to police, fire and/or 
ambulance services.  One or more attendants are located 
at the PSAP facilities to receive and handle calls of an 
emergency nature in accordance with the local municipal 
requirements.

An important advantage of E911 emergency service is 
improved (reduced) response times for emergency 
services.  Also close coordination among agencies 
providing various emergency services is a valuable 
capability provided by E911 service.

1A ESS is used as the tandem office for the E911 network to 
route all 911 calls to the correct (primary) PSAP designated 
to serve the calling station.  The E911 feature was 
developed primarily to provide routing to the correct PSAP 
for all 911 calls.  Selective routing allows a 911 call 
originated from a particular station located in a particular 
district, zone, or town, to be routed to the primary PSAP 
designated to serve that customer station regardless of 
wire center boundaries.  Thus, selective routing eliminates 
the problem of wire center boundaries not coinciding with 
district or other political boundaries.

The services available with the E911 feature include:

       Forced Disconnect         Default Routing
       Alternative Routing       Night Service
       Selective Routing         Automatic Number 
Identification (ANI)
       Selective Transfer        Automatic Location 
Identification (ALI)


Preservice/Installation Guidelines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When a contract for an E911 system has been signed, it is 
the responsibility of Network Marketing to establish an 
implementation/cutover committee which should include 
a representative from the SSC/MAC.  Duties of the E911 
Implementation Team include coordination of all phases 
of the E911 system deployment and the formation of an 
on-going E911 maintenance subcommittee.

Marketing is responsible for providing the following 
customer specific information to the SSC/MAC prior to 
the start of call through testing:

o  All PSAP's (name, address, local contact)
o  All PSAP circuit ID's
o  1004 911 service request including PSAP details on each 
PSAP
   (1004 Section K, L, M)
o  Network configuration
o  Any vendor information (name, telephone number, 
equipment)

The SSC/MAC needs to know if the equipment and sets at 
the PSAP are maintained by the BOCs, an independent 
company, or an outside vendor, or any combination. This 
information is then entered on the PSAP profile sheets 
and reviewed quarterly for changes, additions and 
deletions.

Marketing will secure the Major Account Number (MAN) 
and provide this number to Corporate Communications 
so that the initial issue of the service orders carry the 
MAN and can be tracked by the SSC/MAC via 
CORDNET.  PSAP circuits are official services by 
definition.

All service orders required for the installation of the E911 
system should include the MAN assigned to the 
city/county which has purchased the system.

In accordance with the basic SSC/MAC strategy for 
provisioning, the SSC/MAC will be Overall Control Office 
(OCO) for all Node to PSAP circuits (official services) and 
any other services for this customer.  Training must be 
scheduled for all SSC/MAC involved personnel during the 
pre-service stage of the project.

The E911 Implementation Team will form the on-going 
maintenance subcommittee prior to the initial 
implementation of the E911 system.  This sub-committee 
will establish post implementation quality assurance 
procedures to ensure that the E911 system continues to 
provide quality service to the customer. 
Customer/Company training, trouble reporting interfaces 
for the customer, telephone company and any involved 
independent telephone companies needs to be addressed 
and implemented prior to E911 cutover.  These functions 
can be best addressed by the formation of a sub-
committee of the E911 Implementation Team to set up 
guidelines for and to secure service commitments of 
interfacing organizations.  A SSC/MAC supervisor should 
chair this subcommittee and include the following 
organizations:

1) Switching Control Center
        - E911 translations
        - Trunking
        - End office and Tandem office hardware/software
2) Recent Change Memory Administration Center
        - Daily RC update activity for TN/ESN translations
        - Processes validity errors and rejects
3) Line and Number Administration
        - Verification of TN/ESN translations
4) Special Service Center/Major Account Center
        - Single point of contact for all PSAP and Node to host 
troubles
        - Logs, tracks & statusing of all trouble reports
        - Trouble referral, follow up, and escalation
        - Customer notification of status and restoration
        - Analyzation of "chronic" troubles
        - Testing, installation and maintenance of E911 circuits
5) Installation and Maintenance (SSIM/I&M)
        - Repair and maintenance of PSAP equipment and 
Telco owned sets
6) Minicomputer Maintenance Operations Center
        - E911 circuit maintenance (where applicable)
7) Area Maintenance Engineer
        - Technical assistance on voice (CO-PSAP) network 
related E911 troubles


Maintenance Guidelines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The CCNC will test the Node circuit from the 202T at the 
Host site to the 202T at the Node site.  Since Host to Node 
(CCNC to MMOC) circuits are official company services, 
the CCNC will refer all Node circuit troubles to the 
SSC/MAC. The SSC/MAC is responsible for the testing 
and follow up to restoration of these circuit troubles.

Although Node to PSAP circuit are official services, the 
MMOC will refer PSAP circuit troubles to the appropriate 
SSC/MAC.  The SSC/MAC is responsible for testing and 
follow up to restoration of PSAP circuit troubles.

The SSC/MAC will also receive reports from 
CRSAB/IMC(s) on subscriber 911 troubles when they are 
not line troubles.  The SSC/MAC is responsible for testing 
and restoration of these troubles.

Maintenance responsibilities are as follows:

SCC*            Voice Network (ANI to PSAP)
                *SCC responsible for tandem switch
SSIM/I&M        PSAP Equipment (Modems, CIU's, sets)
Vendor          PSAP Equipment (when CPE)
SSC/MAC         PSAP to Node circuits, and tandem to 
PSAP voice circuits (EMNT)
MMOC            Node site (Modems, cables, etc)

Note:  All above work groups are required to resolve 
troubles by interfacing with appropriate work groups for 
resolution.

The Switching Control Center (SCC) is responsible for 
E911/1AESS translations in tandem central offices.  These 
translations route E911 calls, selective transfer, default 
routing, speed calling, etc., for each PSAP.  The SCC is also 
responsible for troubleshooting on the voice network (call 
originating to end office tandem equipment).

For example, ANI failures in the originating offices would 
be a responsibility of the SCC.

Recent Change Memory Administration Center 
(RCMAC) performs the daily tandem translation updates 
(recent change) for routing of individual telephone 
numbers.

Recent changes are generated from service order activity 
(new service, address changes, etc.) and compiled into a 
daily file by the E911 Center (ALI/DMS E911 Computer).

SSIM/I&M is responsible for the installation and repair of 
PSAP equipment. PSAP equipment includes ANI 
Controller, ALI Controller, data sets, cables, sets, and 
other peripheral equipment that is not vendor owned.  
SSIM/I&M is responsible for establishing maintenance 
test kits, complete with spare parts for PSAP maintenance.  
This includes test gear, data sets, and ANI/ALI Controller 
parts.

Special Services Center (SSC) or Major Account Center 
(MAC) serves as the trouble reporting contact for all 
(PSAP) troubles reported by customer.  The SSC/MAC 
refers troubles to proper organizations for handling and 
tracks status of troubles, escalating when necessary.  The 
SSC/MAC will close out troubles with customer.  The 
SSC/MAC will analyze all troubles and tracks "chronic" 
PSAP troubles.

Corporate Communications Network Center (CCNC) will 
test and refer troubles on all node to host circuits.  All E911 
circuits are classified as official company property.

The Minicomputer Maintenance Operations Center 
(MMOC) maintains the E911 (ALI/DMS) computer 
hardware at the Host site.  This MMOC is also responsible 
for monitoring the system and reporting certain PSAP and 
system problems to the local MMOC's, SCC's or 
SSC/MAC's.  The MMOC personnel also operate software 
programs that maintain the TN data base under the 
direction of the E911 Center. The maintenance of the 
NODE computer (the interface between the PSAP and the 
ALI/DMS computer) is a function of the MMOC at the 
NODE site.  The MMOC's at the NODE sites may also be 
involved in the testing of NODE to Host circuits. The 
MMOC will also assist on Host to PSAP and data network 
related troubles not resolved through standard trouble 
clearing procedures.

Installation And Maintenance Center (IMC) is 
responsible for referral of E911 subscriber troubles that 
are not subscriber line problems.

E911 Center - Performs the role of System Administration 
and is responsible for overall operation of the E911 
computer software.  The E911 Center does A-Z trouble 
analysis and provides statistical information on the 
performance of the system.

This analysis includes processing PSAP inquiries (trouble 
reports) and referral of network troubles.  The E911 Center 
also performs daily processing of tandem recent change 
and provides information to the RCMAC for tandem 
input.  The E911 Center is responsible for daily processing 
of the ALI/DMS computer data base and provides error 
files, etc. to the Customer Services department for 
investigation and correction.  The E911 Center participates 
in all system implementations and on-going maintenance 
effort and assists in the development of procedures, 
training and education of information to all groups.

Any group receiving a 911 trouble from the SSC/MAC 
should close out the trouble with the SSC/MAC or provide 
a status if the trouble has been referred to another group.  
This will allow the SSC/MAC to provide a status back to 
the customer or escalate as appropriate.

Any group receiving a trouble from the Host site (MMOC 
or CCNC) should close the trouble back to that group.

The MMOC should notify the appropriate SSC/MAC 
when the Host, Node, or all Node circuits are down so that 
the SSC/MAC can reply to customer reports that may be
called in by the PSAPs.  This will eliminate duplicate 
reporting of troubles. On complete outages the MMOC 
will follow escalation procedures for a Node after two (2) 
hours and for a PSAP after four (4) hours.  Additionally the 
MMOC will notify the appropriate SSC/MAC when the 
Host, Node, or all Node circuits are down.

The PSAP will call the SSC/MAC to report E911 troubles.  
The person reporting the E911 trouble may not have a 
circuit I.D. and will therefore report the PSAP name and 
address.  Many PSAP troubles are not circuit specific.  In 
those instances where the caller cannot provide a circuit 
I.D., the SSC/MAC will be required to determine the 
circuit I.D. using the PSAP profile.  Under no 
circumstances will the SSC/MAC Center refuse to take 
the trouble.  The E911 trouble should be handled as 
quickly as possible, with the SSC/MAC providing as much 
assistance as possible while taking the trouble report from 
the caller.

The SSC/MAC will screen/test the trouble to determine 
the appropriate handoff organization based on the 
following criteria:

    PSAP equipment problem:  SSIM/I&M
    Circuit problem:  SSC/MAC
    Voice network problem:  SCC (report trunk group 
number)
    Problem affecting multiple PSAPs (No ALI report from 
all PSAPs):  Contact the MMOC to check for NODE or 
Host computer problems before further testing.

The SSC/MAC will track the status of reported troubles 
and escalate as appropriate.  The SSC/MAC will close out 
customer/company reports with the initiating contact.  
Groups with specific maintenance responsibilities, 
defined above, will investigate "chronic" troubles upon 
request from the SSC/MAC and the ongoing maintenance 
subcommittee.

All "out of service" E911 troubles are priority one type 
reports.  One link down to a PSAP is considered a priority 
one trouble and should be handled as if the PSAP was 
isolated.

The PSAP will report troubles with the ANI controller, ALI 
controller or set equipment to the SSC/MAC.

NO ANI:  Where the PSAP reports NO ANI (digital 
display screen is blank) ask if this condition exists on all 
screens and on all calls.  It is important to differentiate 
between blank screens and screens displaying 911-00XX, 
or all zeroes.

When the PSAP reports all screens on all calls, ask if there 
is any voice contact with callers.  If there is no voice 
contact the trouble should be referred to the SCC 
immediately since 911 calls are not getting through which 
may require alternate routing of calls to another PSAP.

When the PSAP reports this condition on all screens but 
not all calls and has voice contact with callers, the report 
should be referred to SSIM/I&M for dispatch.  The 
SSC/MAC should verify with the SCC that ANI is pulsing 
before dispatching SSIM.

When the PSAP reports this condition on one screen for 
all calls (others work fine) the trouble should be referred to 
SSIM/I&M for dispatch, because the trouble is isolated to 
one piece of equipment at the customer premise.

An ANI failure (i.e. all zeroes) indicates that the ANI has 
not been received by the PSAP from the tandem office or 
was lost by the PSAP ANI controller.  The PSAP may 
receive "02" alarms which can be caused by the ANI 
controller logging more than three all zero failures on the 
same trunk.  The PSAP has been instructed to report this 
condition to the SSC/MAC since it could indicate an 
equipment trouble at the PSAP which might be affecting 
all subscribers calling into the PSAP.  When all zeroes are 
being received on all calls or "02" alarms continue, a tester 
should analyze the condition to determine the appropriate 
action to be taken.  The tester must perform cooperative 
testing with the SCC when there appears to be a problem 
on the Tandem-PSAP trunks before requesting dispatch.

When an occasional all zero condition is reported, the 
SSC/MAC should dispatch SSIM/I&M to routine 
equipment on a "chronic" troublesweep.

The PSAPs are instructed to report incidental ANI failures 
to the BOC on a PSAP inquiry trouble ticket (paper) that is 
sent to the Customer Services E911 group and forwarded 
to E911 center when required.  This usually involves only a 
particular telephone number and is not a condition that 
would require a report to the SSC/MAC.  Multiple ANI 
failures which our from the same end office (XX denotes 
end office), indicate a hard trouble condition may exist in 
the end office or end office tandem trunks.  The PSAP will 
report this type of condition to the SSC/MAC and the 
SSC/MAC should refer the report to the SCC responsible 
for the tandem office.  NOTE: XX is the ESCO (Emergency 
Service Number) associated with the incoming 911 trunks 
into the tandem.  It is important that the C/MAC tell the 
SCC what is displayed at the PSAP (i.e. 911-0011) which 
indicates to the SCC which end office is in trouble.

Note:  It is essential that the PSAP fill out inquiry form on 
every ANI failure.

The PSAP will report a trouble any time an address is not 
received on an address display (screen blank) E911 call.  
(If a record is not in the 911 data base or an ANI failure is 
encountered, the screen will provide a display noticing 
such condition).  The SSC/MAC should verify with the 
PSAP whether the NO ALI condition is on one screen or all 
screens.

When the condition is on one screen (other screens 
receive ALI information) the SSC/MAC will request 
SSIM/I&M to dispatch.

If no screens are receiving ALI information, there is 
usually a circuit trouble between the PSAP and the Host 
computer.  The SSC/MAC should test the trouble and 
refer for restoral.

Note:  If the SSC/MAC receives calls from multiple 
PSAP's, all of which are receiving NO ALI, there is a 
problem with the Node or Node to Host circuits or the 
Host computer itself.  Before referring the trouble the 
SSC/MAC should call the MMOC to inquire if the Node 
or Host is in trouble.

Alarm conditions on the ANI controller digital display at 
the PSAP are to be reported by the PSAP's.  These alarms 
can indicate various trouble conditions so the SSC/MAC 
should ask the PSAP if any portion of the E911 system is 
not functioning properly.

The SSC/MAC should verify with the PSAP attendant that 
the equipment's primary function is answering E911 calls.  
If it is, the SSC/MAC should request a dispatch 
SSIM/I&M.  If the equipment is not primarily used for 
E911, then the SSC/MAC should advise PSAP to contact 
their CPE vendor.

Note:  These troubles can be quite confusing when the 
PSAP has vendor equipment mixed in with equipment 
that the BOC maintains.  The Marketing representative 
should provide the SSC/MAC information concerning any 
unusual or exception items where the PSAP should 
contact their vendor.  This information should be included 
in the PSAP profile sheets.

ANI or ALI controller down:  When the host computer 
sees the PSAP equipment down and it does not come back 
up, the MMOC will report the trouble to the SSC/MAC; 
the equipment is down at the PSAP, a dispatch will be 
required.

PSAP link (circuit) down:  The MMOC will provide the 
SSC/MAC with the circuit ID that the Host computer 
indicates in trouble.  Although each PSAP has two circuits, 
when either circuit is down the condition must be treated 
as an emergency since failure of the second circuit will 
cause the PSAP to be isolated.

Any problems that the MMOC identifies from the Node 
location to the Host computer will be handled directly with 
the appropriate MMOC(s)/CCNC.

Note:  The customer will call only when a problem is 
apparent to the PSAP. When only one circuit is down to 
the PSAP, the customer may not be aware there is a 
trouble, even though there is one link down, notification 
should appear on the PSAP screen.  Troubles called into 
the SSC/MAC from the MMOC or other company 
employee should not be closed out by calling the PSAP 
since it may result in the customer responding that they 
do not have a trouble.  These reports can only be closed 
out by receiving  information that the trouble was fixed 
and by checking with the company employee that 
reported the trouble.  The MMOC personnel will be able 
to verify that the trouble has cleared by reviewing a 
printout from the host.

When the CRSAB receives a subscriber complaint (i.e., 
cannot dial 911) the RSA should obtain as much 
information as possible while the customer is on the line.

For example, what happened when the subscriber dialed 
911?  The report is automatically directed to the IMC for 
subscriber line testing.  When no line trouble is found, the 
IMC will refer the trouble condition to the SSC/MAC.  The 
SSC/MAC will contact Customer Services E911 Group and 
verify that the subscriber should be able to call 911 and 
obtain the ESN.  The SSC/MAC will verify the ESN via 
2SCCS.  When both verifications match, the SSC/MAC 
will refer the report to the SCC responsible for the 911 
tandem office for investigation and resolution.  The MAC 
is responsible for tracking the trouble and informing the 
IMC when it is resolved.


For more information, please refer to E911 Glossary of 
Terms.
                            End of Phrack File
_____________________________________


	The reader is forgiven if he or she was entirely unable 
to read this document.   John Perry Barlow had a great 
deal of fun at its expense, in "Crime and Puzzlement:"  
"Bureaucrat-ese of surpassing opacity.... To read the whole 
thing straight through without entering coma requires 
either a machine or a human who has too much practice 
thinking like one.  Anyone who can understand it fully and 
fluidly had altered his consciousness beyone the ability to 
ever again read Blake, Whitman, or Tolstoy.... the 
document contains little of interest to anyone who is not a 
student of advanced organizational sclerosis."

	With the Document itself to hand, however, exactly 
as it was published (in its six-page edited form) in 
*Phrack,*  the reader may be able to verify a few 
statements of fact about its nature.   First, there is no 
software, no computer code, in the Document.  It is not 
computer-programming language like FORTRAN or C++, 
it is English; all the sentences have nouns and verbs and 
punctuation.  It does not explain how to break into the 
E911 system.  It does not suggest ways to destroy or 
damage the E911 system.

	There are no access codes in the Document.  There 
are no computer passwords.  It does not explain how to 
steal long distance service.  It does not explain how to 
break in to telco switching stations.  There is nothing in it 
about using a personal computer or a modem for any 
purpose at all, good or bad.

	Close study will reveal that this document is not 
about machinery.  The E911 Document is about 
*administration.*  It describes how one creates and 
administers certain units of telco bureaucracy:  Special 
Service Centers and Major Account Centers (SSC/MAC).   
It describes how these centers should distribute 
responsibility for the E911 service, to other units of telco 
bureaucracy, in a chain of command, a formal hierarchy.  
It describes who answers customer complaints, who 
screens calls, who reports equipment failures, who answers 
those reports, who handles maintenance, who chairs 
subcommittees, who gives orders, who follows orders, 
*who*  tells *whom*  what to do.   The Document is not a 
"roadmap" to computers.  The Document is a roadmap to 
*people.*

	 As an aid to breaking into computer systems, the 
Document is *useless.*   As an aid to harassing and 
deceiving telco people, however, the Document might 
prove handy (especially with its Glossary, which I have not 
included).   An intense and protracted study of this 
Document and its Glossary, combined with many other 
such documents, might teach one to speak like a telco 
employee.   And telco people live by *speech* --  they live 
by phone communication.  If you can mimic their 
language over the phone, you can "social-engineer" them.  
If you can con telco people, you can wreak havoc among 
them.  You can force them to no longer trust one another; 
you can break the telephonic ties that bind their 
community; you can make them paranoid.   And people 
will fight harder to defend their community than they will 
fight to defend their individual selves.

	This was the genuine, gut-level threat posed by 
*Phrack* magazine.  The real struggle was over the control 
of telco language, the control of telco knowledge.  It was a 
struggle to defend the social "membrane of 
differentiation" that forms the walls of the telco 
community's ivory tower  -- the special jargon that allows 
telco professionals to recognize one another, and to 
exclude charlatans, thieves, and upstarts.  And the 
prosecution brought out this fact.  They repeatedly made 
reference to the threat posed to telco professionals by 
hackers using "social engineering."

	However, Craig Neidorf was not on trial for learning 
to speak like a professional telecommunications expert.  
Craig Neidorf was on trial for access device fraud and 
transportation of stolen property.  He was on trial for 
stealing a document that was purportedly highly sensitive 
and purportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars.

					#

	John Nagle read the E911 Document.   He drew his 
own conclusions.  And he  presented Zenner and his 
defense team with an overflowing box of similar material, 
drawn mostly from Stanford University's engineering 
libraries.   During the trial, the defense team -- Zenner, 
half-a-dozen other attorneys, Nagle, Neidorf, and 
computer-security expert Dorothy Denning, all pored 
over the E911 Document line-by-line.

	 On the afternoon of July 25, 1990, Zenner began to 
cross-examine a woman named Billie Williams, a service 
manager for Southern Bell in Atlanta.  Ms. Williams had 
been responsible for the E911 Document.  (She was not its 
author -- its original "author" was a Southern Bell staff 
manager named Richard Helms.  However, Mr. Helms 
should not bear the entire blame; many telco staff people 
and maintenance personnel had amended the 
Document.  It had not been so much "written" by a single 
author, as built by committee out of concrete-blocks of 
jargon.)

	Ms. Williams had been called as a witness for the 
prosecution, and had gamely tried to explain the basic 
technical structure of the E911 system, aided by charts.

	Now it was Zenner's turn.  He first established that 
the "proprietary stamp" that BellSouth had used on the 
E911 Document was stamped on *every single document*  
that BellSouth wrote -- *thousands*  of documents.  "We 
do not publish anything other than for our own company," 
Ms. Williams explained.  "Any company document of this 
nature is considered proprietary."  Nobody was in charge 
of singling out special high-security publications for 
special high-security protection.  They were *all*  special, 
no matter how trivial, no matter what their subject matter -
- the stamp was put on as soon as any document was 
written, and the stamp was never removed.

	Zenner now asked whether the charts she had been 
using to explain the  mechanics of E911 system were 
"proprietary," too.  Were they *public information,*  these 
charts, all about PSAPs, ALIs, nodes, local end switches?  
Could he take the charts out in the street and show them 
to anybody, "without violating some proprietary notion 
that BellSouth has?"

	Ms Williams showed some confusion, but finally 
agreed that the charts were, in fact, public.

	"But isn't this what you said was basically what 
appeared in *Phrack?*"

	Ms. Williams denied this.

	Zenner now pointed out that the E911 Document as 
published in Phrack was only half the size of the original 
E911 Document (as Prophet had purloined it).  Half of it 
had been deleted -- edited by Neidorf.

	Ms. Williams countered that "Most of the 
information that is in the text file is redundant."

	Zenner continued to probe.  Exactly what bits of 
knowledge in the Document were, in fact, unknown to the 
public?  Locations of E911 computers?  Phone numbers for 
telco personnel?  Ongoing maintenance subcommittees?   
Hadn't Neidorf removed much of this?

	Then he pounced.  "Are you familiar with Bellcore 
Technical Reference Document TR-TSY-000350?"  It was, 
Zenner explained, officially titled "E911 Public Safety 
Answering Point Interface Between 1-1AESS Switch and 
Customer Premises Equipment."  It contained highly 
detailed and specific technical information about the E911 
System.  It was published by Bellcore and publicly 
available for about $20.

	He showed the witness a Bellcore catalog which listed 
thousands of documents from Bellcore and from all the 
Baby Bells, BellSouth included.   The catalog, Zenner 
pointed out, was free.  Anyone with a credit card could call 
the Bellcore toll-free 800 number and simply order any of 
these documents, which would be shipped to any 
customer without question.  Including, for instance, 
"BellSouth E911 Service Interfaces to Customer Premises 
Equipment at a Public Safety Answering Point."

	Zenner gave the witness a copy of "BellSouth E911 
Service Interfaces," which cost, as he pointed out, $13, 
straight from the catalog.  "Look at it carefully," he urged 
Ms. Williams, "and tell me if it doesn't contain about twice 
as much detailed information about the E911 system of 
BellSouth than appeared anywhere in *Phrack.*"

	"You want me to...."  Ms. Williams trailed off.  "I don't 
understand."

	"Take a careful look," Zenner persisted.  "Take a look 
at that document, and tell me when you're done looking at 
it if, indeed, it doesn't contain much more detailed 
information about the E911 system than appeared in 
*Phrack.*"

	"*Phrack* wasn't taken from this," Ms. Williams said.

	"Excuse me?" said Zenner.

	"*Phrack* wasn't taken from this."

	"I can't hear you," Zenner said.

	"*Phrack* was not taken from this document.  I don't 
understand your question to me."

	"I guess you don't," Zenner said.

	At this point, the prosecution's case had been 
gutshot.  Ms. Williams was distressed.  Her confusion was 
quite genuine.  *Phrack* had not been taken from any 
publicly available Bellcore document.  *Phrack*'s  E911 
Document had been stolen from her own company's 
computers, from her own company's text files, that her 
own colleagues had written, and revised, with much labor.

	But the "value" of the Document had been blown to 
smithereens.  It wasn't worth eighty grand.  According to 
Bellcore it was worth thirteen bucks.  And the looming 
menace that it supposedly posed had been reduced in 
instants to a scarecrow.  Bellcore itself was selling material 
far more detailed and "dangerous," to anybody with a 
credit card and a phone.

	Actually, Bellcore was not giving this information to 
just anybody.  They gave it to *anybody who asked,* but 
not many did ask.   Not many people knew that Bellcore 
had a free catalog and an 800 number.  John Nagle knew, 
but certainly the average teenage phreak didn't know.  
"Tuc," a friend of Neidorf's and sometime *Phrack*  
contributor, knew, and Tuc had been very helpful to the 
defense, behind the scenes.  But the Legion of Doom 
didn't know -- otherwise, they would never have wasted so 
much time raiding dumpsters.  Cook didn't know.  Foley 
didn't know.  Kluepfel didn't know.   The right hand of 
Bellcore knew not what the left hand was doing.  The right 
hand was battering hackers without mercy, while the left 
hand was distributing Bellcore's intellectual property to 
anybody who was interested in telephone technical trivia -- 
apparently, a pathetic few.

	The digital underground was so amateurish and 
poorly organized that they had never discovered this heap 
of unguarded riches.  The ivory tower of the telcos was so 
wrapped-up in the fog of its own technical obscurity that it 
had left all the windows open and flung open the doors.  
No one had even noticed.

	Zenner sank another nail in the coffin.  He produced 
a printed issue of *Telephone Engineer & Management,* 
a prominent industry journal that comes out twice a 
month and costs $27 a year.  This particular issue of 
*TE&M,* called "Update on 911," featured a galaxy of 
technical details on 911 service and a glossary far more 
extensive than *Phrack*'s.

	The trial rumbled on, somehow, through its own 
momentum.  Tim Foley testified about his interrogations 
of Neidorf.  Neidorf's written admission that he had known 
the E911 Document was pilfered was officially read into 
the court record.

	An interesting side issue came up:  "Terminus" had 
once passed Neidorf a piece of UNIX AT&T software, a 
log-in sequence, that had been cunningly altered so that it 
could trap passwords.   The UNIX software itself was 
illegally copied AT&T property,  and the alterations 
"Terminus" had made to it, had transformed it into a 
device for facilitating computer break-ins.  Terminus 
himself would eventually plead guilty to theft of this piece 
of software, and the Chicago group would send Terminus 
to prison for it.  But it was of dubious relevance in the 
Neidorf case.  Neidorf hadn't written the program.  He 
wasn't accused of ever having used it.  And Neidorf wasn't 
being charged with  software theft or owning a password 
trapper.

	On the next day, Zenner took the offensive.  The civil 
libertarians now had their own arcane, untried legal 
weaponry to launch into action  -- the Electronic 
Communications Privacy Act of 1986, 18 US Code, Section 
2701 et seq.   Section 2701 makes it a crime to intentionally 
access without authorization a facility in which an 
electronic communication service is provided -- it is, at 
heart, an anti-bugging and anti-tapping law, intended to 
carry the traditional protections of telephones into other 
electronic channels of communication.   While providing 
penalties for amateur snoops, however, Section 2703 of the 
ECPA also lays some formal difficulties on the bugging 
and tapping activities of police.

	The Secret Service, in the person of Tim Foley, had 
served Richard Andrews with a federal grand jury 
subpoena, in their pursuit of Prophet, the E911 Document, 
and the Terminus software ring.  But according to the 
Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a "provider of 
remote computing service" was legally entitled to "prior 
notice" from the government if a subpoena was used.    
Richard Andrews and his basement UNIX node, Jolnet, 
had not received any "prior notice."  Tim Foley had 
purportedly violated the ECPA and committed an 
electronic crime!  Zenner now sought the judge's 
permission to cross-examine Foley on the topic of Foley's 
own electronic misdeeds.

	Cook argued that Richard Andrews' Jolnet was a 
privately owned bulletin board, and not within the purview 
of ECPA.   Judge Bua granted the motion of the 
government to prevent cross-examination on that point, 
and Zenner's offensive fizzled.   This, however, was the first 
direct assault on the legality of the actions of the 
Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force itself -- the first 
suggestion that they themselves had broken the law, and 
might, perhaps, be called to account.

	Zenner, in any case, did not really need the ECPA.  
Instead, he grilled Foley on the glaring contradictions in 
the supposed value of the E911 Document.  He also 
brought up the embarrassing fact that the supposedly red-
hot E911 Document had been sitting around for months, 
in Jolnet, with Kluepfel's knowledge, while Kluepfel had 
done nothing about it.

	In the afternoon, the Prophet was brought in to testify 
for the prosecution.  (The Prophet, it will be recalled, had 
also been indicted in the case as partner in a fraud 
scheme with Neidorf.)   In Atlanta, the Prophet had 
already pled guilty to one charge of conspiracy, one 
charge of wire fraud and one charge of interstate 
transportation of stolen property.   The wire fraud charge, 
and the stolen property charge, were both directly based 
on the E911 Document.

	The twenty-year-old Prophet proved a sorry 
customer, answering questions politely but in a barely 
audible mumble, his voice trailing off at the ends of 
sentences.   He was constantly urged to speak up.

	 Cook, examining Prophet, forced him to admit that 
he had once had a "drug problem," abusing 
amphetamines, marijuana, cocaine, and LSD.  This may 
have established to the jury that "hackers" are, or can be, 
seedy lowlife characters, but it may have damaged 
Prophet's credibility somewhat.  Zenner later suggested 
that drugs might have damaged Prophet's memory.   The 
interesting fact also surfaced that Prophet had never 
physically met Craig Neidorf.  He didn't even know 
Neidorf's last name -- at least, not until the trial.

	Prophet confirmed the basic facts of his hacker 
career.  He was a member of the Legion of Doom.  He had 
abused codes, he had broken into switching stations and 
re-routed calls, he had hung out on pirate bulletin boards.  
He had raided the BellSouth AIMSX computer, copied 
the E911 Document, stored it on Jolnet, mailed it to 
Neidorf.  He and Neidorf had edited it, and Neidorf had 
known where it came from.

	Zenner, however, had Prophet confirm that Neidorf 
was not a member of the Legion of Doom, and had not 
urged Prophet to break into BellSouth computers.  
Neidorf had never urged Prophet to defraud anyone, or to 
steal anything.  Prophet also admitted that he had never 
known Neidorf to break in to any computer.  Prophet said 
that no one in the Legion of Doom considered Craig 
Neidorf a "hacker" at all.   Neidorf was not a UNIX maven, 
and simply lacked the necessary skill and ability to break 
into computers.  Neidorf just published a magazine.

	On Friday, July 27, 1990, the case against Neidorf 
collapsed.  Cook moved to dismiss the indictment, citing 
"information currently available to us that was not 
available to us at the inception of the trial."  Judge Bua 
praised the prosecution for this action, which he described 
as "very responsible," then dismissed a juror and declared 
a mistrial.

	Neidorf was a free man.  His defense, however, had 
cost himself and his family dearly.  Months of his life had 
been consumed in anguish; he had seen his closest 
friends shun him as a federal criminal.  He owed his 
lawyers over a hundred thousand dollars, despite a 
generous payment to the defense by Mitch Kapor.

	Neidorf was not found innocent.  The trial was simply 
dropped.  Nevertheless, on September 9, 1991, Judge Bua 
granted Neidorf's motion for the "expungement and 
sealing" of his indictment record.  The United States 
Secret Service was ordered to delete and destroy all 
fingerprints, photographs, and other records of arrest or 
processing relating to Neidorf's indictment, including 
their paper documents and their computer records.

	Neidorf went back to school, blazingly determined to 
become a lawyer.   Having seen the justice system at work, 
Neidorf lost much of his enthusiasm for merely technical 
power.  At this writing, Craig Neidorf is working in 
Washington as a salaried researcher for the American 
Civil Liberties Union.

					#

	  The outcome of the Neidorf trial changed the EFF 
from voices-in-the-wilderness to the media darlings of the 
new frontier.

	Legally speaking, the Neidorf case was not a 
sweeping triumph for anyone concerned.  No 
constitutional principles had been established.  The issues 
of "freedom of the press" for electronic publishers 
remained in legal limbo.  There were public 
misconceptions about the case.  Many people thought 
Neidorf had been found innocent and relieved of all his 
legal debts by Kapor.  The truth was that the government 
had simply dropped the case, and Neidorf's family had 
gone deeply into hock to support him.

	But the Neidorf case did provide a single, 
devastating, public sound-bite:  *The feds said it was worth 
eighty grand, and it was only worth thirteen bucks.*

	This is the Neidorf case's single most memorable 
element.  No serious report of the case missed this 
particular element.  Even cops could not read this without 
a wince and a shake of the head.  It left the public 
credibility of the crackdown agents in tatters.

	The crackdown, in fact, continued, however.   Those 
two charges against Prophet, which had been based on the 
E911 Document, were quietly forgotten at his sentencing -- 
even though Prophet had already pled guilty to them.  
Georgia federal prosecutors strongly argued for jail time 
for the Atlanta Three, insisting on "the need to send a 
message to the community,"  "the message that hackers 
around the country need to hear."

	There was a great deal in their sentencing 
memorandum about the awful things that various other 
hackers had done  (though the Atlanta Three themselves 
had not, in fact, actually committed these crimes).  There 
was also much speculation about the awful things that the 
Atlanta Three *might*  have done and *were capable*  of 
doing  (even though they had not, in fact, actually done 
them).  The prosecution's argument carried the day.  The 
Atlanta Three were sent to prison:  Urvile and Leftist both 
got 14 months each, while Prophet (a second offender) got 
21 months.

	The Atlanta Three were also assessed staggering 
fines as "restitution":  $233,000 each.  BellSouth claimed 
that the defendants had "stolen" "approximately $233,880 
worth"  of "proprietary computer access information" -- 
specifically,  $233,880 worth of computer passwords and 
connect addresses.  BellSouth's astonishing claim of the 
extreme value of its own computer passwords and 
addresses was accepted at face value by the Georgia 
court.   Furthermore (as if to emphasize its theoretical 
nature)  this enormous sum was not divvied up among the 
Atlanta Three, but each of them had to pay all of it.

	 A striking aspect of the sentence was that the Atlanta 
Three were specifically forbidden to use computers, 
except for work or under supervision.  Depriving hackers 
of home computers and modems makes some sense if 
one considers hackers as "computer addicts," but EFF, 
filing an amicus brief in the case, protested that this 
punishment was unconstitutional --  it deprived the 
Atlanta Three of their rights of free association and free 
expression through electronic media.

	Terminus, the "ultimate hacker,"  was finally sent to 
prison for a year through the dogged efforts of the Chicago 
Task Force.   His crime, to which he pled guilty,  was the 
transfer of the UNIX password trapper, which was 
officially valued by AT&T at $77,000, a figure which 
aroused intense skepticism among those familiar with 
UNIX "login.c"  programs.

	The jailing of Terminus and the Atlanta Legionnaires 
of Doom, however, did not cause the EFF any sense of 
embarrassment or defeat.   On the contrary, the civil 
libertarians were rapidly gathering strength.

	An early and potent supporter was Senator Patrick 
Leahy, Democrat from Vermont, who had been a Senate 
sponsor of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  
Even before the Neidorf trial, Leahy had spoken out in 
defense of hacker-power and freedom of the keyboard:  
"We cannot unduly inhibit the inquisitive 13-year-old who, 
if left to experiment today, may tomorrow develop the 
telecommunications or computer technology to lead the 
United States into the 21st century.  He represents our 
future and our best hope to remain a technologically 
competitive nation."

	It was a handsome statement, rendered perhaps 
rather more effective by the fact that the crackdown 
raiders *did not have*  any Senators speaking out for 
*them.*   On the contrary, their highly secretive actions 
and tactics, all "sealed search warrants" here and 
"confidential ongoing investigations" there, might have 
won them a burst of glamorous publicity at first, but were 
crippling them in the on-going propaganda war.   Gail 
Thackeray was reduced to unsupported bluster:  "Some of 
these people who are loudest on the bandwagon may just 
slink into the background," she predicted in *Newsweek*  -
- when all the facts came out, and the cops were 
vindicated.

	But all the facts did not come out.  Those facts that 
did, were not very flattering.  And the cops were not 
vindicated.  And Gail Thackeray lost her job.  By the end of 
1991, William Cook had also left public employment.

	1990 had belonged to the crackdown, but by '91 its 
agents were in severe disarray, and the libertarians were 
on a roll.   People were flocking to the cause.

	A particularly interesting ally had been Mike Godwin 
of Austin, Texas.  Godwin was an individual almost as 
difficult to describe as Barlow; he had been editor of the 
student newspaper of the University of Texas, and a 
computer salesman, and a programmer, and in 1990 was 
back in law school, looking for a law degree.

	Godwin was also a bulletin board maven.   He was 
very well-known in the Austin board community under his 
handle "Johnny Mnemonic," which he adopted from a 
cyberpunk science fiction story by William Gibson.   
Godwin was an ardent cyberpunk science fiction fan.   As a 
fellow Austinite of similar age and similar interests, I 
myself had known Godwin socially for many years.   When 
William Gibson and myself had been writing our 
collaborative SF novel,  *The Difference Engine,*  Godwin 
had been our technical advisor in our effort to link our 
Apple word-processors from Austin to Vancouver.  Gibson 
and I were so pleased by his generous expert help that we 
named a character in the novel "Michael Godwin" in his 
honor.

	The handle "Mnemonic" suited Godwin very well.  
His erudition and his mastery of trivia were impressive to 
the point of stupor; his ardent curiosity seemed insatiable, 
and his desire to debate and argue seemed the central 
drive of his life.  Godwin had even started his own Austin 
debating society, wryly known as the "Dull Men's Club."  
In person, Godwin could be overwhelming; a flypaper-
brained polymath  who could not seem to let any idea go.  
On bulletin boards, however, Godwin's closely reasoned, 
highly grammatical, erudite posts suited the medium well, 
and he became a local board celebrity.

	Mike Godwin was the man most responsible for the 
public national exposure of the Steve Jackson case.   The 
Izenberg seizure in Austin had received no press coverage 
at all.  The March 1 raids on Mentor, Bloodaxe, and Steve 
Jackson Games had received a  brief front-page splash in 
the front page of the *Austin American-Statesman,*  but it 
was confused and ill-informed:  the warrants were sealed, 
and the Secret Service wasn't talking.  Steve Jackson 
seemed doomed to obscurity.   Jackson had not been 
arrested; he was not charged with any crime; he was not on 
trial.   He had lost some computers in an ongoing 
investigation -- so what?  Jackson tried hard to attract 
attention to the true extent of his plight, but he was 
drawing a blank; no one in a position to help him seemed 
able to get a mental grip on the issues.

	Godwin, however, was uniquely, almost magically, 
qualified to carry Jackson's case to the outside world.  
Godwin was a board enthusiast, a science fiction fan, a 
former journalist, a computer salesman, a lawyer-to-be, 
and an Austinite.   Through a coincidence yet more 
amazing, in his last year of law school Godwin had 
specialized in federal prosecutions and criminal 
procedure.  Acting entirely on his own, Godwin made up a 
press packet which summarized the issues and provided 
useful contacts for reporters.  Godwin's behind-the-scenes 
effort (which he carried out mostly to prove a point in a 
local board debate) broke the story again in the *Austin 
American-Statesman*  and then in *Newsweek.*

	Life was never the same for Mike Godwin after that.  
As he joined the growing civil liberties debate on the 
Internet, it was obvious to all parties involved that here 
was one guy who, in the midst of complete murk and 
confusion, *genuinely understood everything he was 
talking about.*   The disparate elements of Godwin's 
dilettantish existence suddenly fell together as neatly as 
the facets of a Rubik's cube.

	When the time came to hire a full-time EFF staff 
attorney, Godwin was the obvious choice.  He took the 
Texas bar exam, left Austin, moved to Cambridge, 
became a full-time, professional, computer civil 
libertarian, and was soon touring the nation on behalf of 
EFF, delivering well-received addresses on the issues to 
crowds as disparate as academics, industrialists, science 
fiction fans, and federal cops.

	Michael Godwin is currently the chief legal counsel of 
the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts. 

				#

	Another early and influential participant in the 
controversy was Dorothy Denning.   Dr. Denning was 
unique among investigators of the computer underground 
in that she did not enter the debate with any set of 
politicized motives.  She was a professional cryptographer 
and computer security expert whose primary interest in 
hackers was *scholarly.*   She had a B.A. and M.A. in 
mathematics,  and  a Ph.D. in computer science from 
Purdue.  She had worked for SRI International, the 
California think-tank that was also the home of computer-
security maven Donn Parker, and had authored an 
influential text called  *Cryptography and Data Security.*   
In 1990, Dr. Denning was working for  Digital Equipment 
Corporation in their Systems Reseach Center.   Her 
husband, Peter Denning, was also  a computer security 
expert, working for NASA's Research Institute for 
Advanced Computer Science.  He had edited the well-
received *Computers Under Attack:  Intruders, Worms 
and Viruses.*

	 Dr. Denning took it upon herself to contact the 
digital underground, more or less with an anthropological 
interest.  There she discovered that these computer-
intruding hackers, who had been characterized as 
unethical, irresponsible, and a serious danger to society, 
did in fact have their own subculture and their own rules.   
They were not particularly well-considered rules, but they 
were, in fact, rules.   Basically, they didn't take money and 
they didn't break anything.

	Her dispassionate reports on her researches did a 
great deal to influence serious-minded computer 
professionals -- the sort of people who merely rolled their 
eyes at the cyberspace rhapsodies of a John Perry Barlow.

	For young hackers of the digital underground, 
meeting Dorothy Denning was a genuinely mind-boggling 
experience.   Here was this neatly coiffed, conservatively 
dressed, dainty little personage, who reminded most 
hackers of their moms or their aunts.  And yet she was an 
IBM systems programmer with profound expertise in 
computer architectures and high-security information 
flow, who had personal friends in the FBI and the National 
Security Agency.

	Dorothy Denning was a shining example of the 
American mathematical intelligentsia, a genuinely 
brilliant person from the central ranks of the computer-
science elite.  And here she was, gently questioning 
twenty-year-old hairy-eyed phone-phreaks over the 
deeper ethical implications of their behavior.

	Confronted by this genuinely nice lady, most hackers 
sat up very straight and did their best to keep the anarchy-
file stuff down to a faint whiff of brimstone.   Nevertheless, 
the hackers *were*  in fact prepared to seriously discuss 
serious issues with Dorothy Denning.  They were willing to 
speak the unspeakable and defend the indefensible,  to 
blurt out their convictions that information cannot be 
owned, that the databases of governments and large 
corporations were a threat to the rights and privacy of 
individuals.

	Denning's articles made it clear to many that  
"hacking" was not simple vandalism by some evil clique of 
psychotics.   "Hacking" was not an aberrant menace that 
could be charmed away by ignoring it, or swept out of 
existence by jailing a few ringleaders.   Instead, "hacking" 
was symptomatic of a growing, primal struggle over 
knowledge and power in the  age of information.

	Denning pointed out that the attitude of hackers 
were at least partially  shared by forward-looking 
management theorists in the business community: people 
like Peter Drucker and Tom Peters.  Peter Drucker, in his 
book *The New Realities,*  had stated that "control of 
information by the government is no longer possible.  
Indeed, information is now transnational.  Like money, it 
has no 'fatherland.'"

	And management maven Tom Peters had chided 
large corporations for uptight, proprietary attitudes in his 
bestseller, *Thriving on Chaos:*   "Information hoarding, 
especially by politically motivated, power-seeking staffs, 
had been commonplace throughout American industry, 
service and manufacturing alike. It will be an impossible 
millstone aroung the neck of tomorrow's organizations."

	Dorothy Denning had shattered the social 
membrane of the digital underground.   She attended the 
Neidorf trial, where she was prepared to testify for the 
defense as an expert witness.   She was a behind-the-
scenes organizer of two of the most important national 
meetings of the computer civil libertarians.   Though not a 
zealot of any description, she brought disparate elements 
of the electronic community into a surprising and fruitful 
collusion.

	Dorothy Denning is currently the Chair of the 
Computer Science Department at Georgetown University 
in Washington, DC.

					#

	There were many stellar figures in the civil libertarian 
community.   There's no question, however, that its single 
most influential figure was Mitchell D. Kapor.  Other 
people might have formal titles, or governmental 
positions, have more experience with crime, or with the 
law, or with the arcanities of computer security or 
constitutional theory.  But by 1991 Kapor had transcended 
any such narrow role.  Kapor had become "Mitch."

	Mitch had become the central civil-libertarian ad-
hocrat.   Mitch had stood up first, he had spoken out 
loudly, directly, vigorously and angrily, he had put his own 
reputation, and his very considerable personal fortune, on 
the line.   By mid-'91 Kapor was the best-known advocate 
of his cause and was known *personally* by almost every 
single human being in America with any direct influence 
on the question of civil liberties in cyberspace.   Mitch had 
built bridges, crossed voids, changed paradigms, forged 
metaphors, made phone-calls and swapped business 
cards to such spectacular effect that it had become 
impossible for anyone to take any action in the "hacker 
question" without wondering what Mitch might think -- 
and say -- and tell his friends.

	 The EFF had simply *networked*  the situation into 
an entirely new status quo.  And in fact this had been EFF's 
deliberate strategy from the beginning.  Both Barlow and 
Kapor loathed bureaucracies and had deliberately chosen 
to work almost entirely through the electronic spiderweb 
of "valuable personal contacts."

	After a year of EFF, both Barlow and Kapor had every 
reason to look back with satisfaction.   EFF had established 
its own Internet node, "eff.org,"  with a well-stocked 
electronic archive of documents on electronic civil rights, 
privacy issues, and academic freedom.   EFF was also 
publishing  *EFFector,*  a quarterly printed journal, as well 
as *EFFector Online,*  an electronic  newsletter with over 
1,200 subscribers.  And EFF was thriving on the Well.

	  EFF had a national headquarters in Cambridge and 
a full-time staff.  It had become a membership 
organization and was attracting grass-roots support.   It 
had also attracted the support of some thirty civil-rights 
lawyers, ready and eager to do pro bono work in defense of 
the Constitution in Cyberspace.

	EFF had lobbied successfully in Washington and in 
Massachusetts to change state and federal legislation on 
computer networking.   Kapor in particular had become a 
veteran expert witness, and had joined the Computer 
Science and Telecommunications Board of the National 
Academy of Science and Engineering.

	EFF had sponsored meetings such as "Computers, 
Freedom and Privacy" and the CPSR Roundtable.   It had 
carried out a press offensive that, in the words of 
*EFFector,*  "has affected the climate of opinion about 
computer networking and begun to reverse the slide into 
'hacker hysteria' that was beginning to grip the nation."

	It had helped Craig Neidorf avoid prison.

	And, last but certainly not least, the Electronic 
Frontier Foundation had filed a federal lawsuit in the 
name of Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson Games Inc., and 
three users of the Illuminati bulletin board system.  The 
defendants were, and are, the United States Secret 
Service, William Cook, Tim Foley, Barbara Golden and 
Henry Kleupfel.

	The case, which is in pre-trial procedures in an Austin 
federal court as of this writing, is a civil action for damages 
to redress alleged violations of the First and Fourth 
Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as 
the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 (42 USC 2000aa et seq.),  
and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (18 USC 
2510 et seq and 2701 et seq).

	EFF had established that it had credibility.  It had 
also established that it had teeth.

	In the fall of 1991 I travelled to Massachusetts to 
speak personally with Mitch Kapor.  It was my final 
interview for this book.	

					#

	The city of Boston has always been one of the major 
intellectual centers of the American republic.  It is a very 
old city by American standards, a place of skyscrapers 
overshadowing seventeenth-century graveyards, where 
the high-tech start-up companies of Route 128 co-exist 
with the hand-wrought pre-industrial grace of "Old 
Ironsides," the USS *Constitution.*

	The Battle of Bunker Hill, one of the first and 
bitterest armed clashes of the American Revolution, was 
fought in Boston's environs.   Today there is a 
monumental spire on Bunker Hill, visible throughout 
much of the city.    The willingness of the republican 
revolutionaries to take up arms and fire on their 
oppressors has left a  cultural legacy that two full centuries 
have not effaced.   Bunker Hill is still a potent center of 
American political symbolism, and the Spirit of '76  is still a 
potent image for those who seek to mold public opinion.

	Of course, not everyone who wraps himself in the flag 
is necessarily a patriot.  When I visited the spire in 
September 1991, it bore a huge, badly-erased, spray-can 
grafitto around its bottom reading "BRITS OUT -- IRA 
PROVOS."   Inside this hallowed edifice was a glass-cased 
diorama of thousands of tiny toy soldiers, rebels and 
redcoats, fighting and dying over the green hill, the 
riverside marshes, the rebel trenchworks.   Plaques 
indicated the movement of troops, the shiftings of 
strategy.  The Bunker Hill Monument is occupied at its 
very center by the toy soldiers of a military war-game 
simulation.

	The Boston metroplex is a place of great universities, 
prominent among the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, where the term "computer hacker" was first 
coined.  The Hacker Crackdown of 1990 might be 
interpreted as a political struggle among American cities:  
traditional strongholds of longhair intellectual liberalism, 
such as Boston, San Francisco, and Austin, versus the 
bare-knuckle industrial pragmatism of Chicago and 
Phoenix  (with Atlanta and New York wrapped in internal 
struggle).

	The headquarters of the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation is on 155 Second Street in Cambridge, a 
Bostonian suburb north of the River Charles.  Second 
Street has weedy sidewalks of dented, sagging brick and 
elderly cracked asphalt; large street-signs warn "NO 
PARKING DURING DECLARED SNOW 
EMERGENCY."   This is an old area of modest 
manufacturing industries; the EFF is catecorner from the 
Greene Rubber Company.   EFF's building is two stories of 
red brick; its large wooden windows feature gracefully 
arched tops and stone sills.

	The glass window beside the Second Street entrance 
bears three sheets of neatly laser-printed paper, taped 
against the glass.  They read:  ON Technology.  EFF.  KEI.

	"ON Technology" is Kapor's software company, which 
currently specializes in "groupware" for the Apple 
Macintosh computer.  "Groupware" is intended to 
promote efficient social interaction among office-workers 
linked by computers.  ON Technology's most successful 
software products to date are "Meeting Maker" and 
"Instant Update."

	"KEI" is Kapor Enterprises Inc., Kapor's personal 
holding company, the commercial entity that formally 
controls his extensive investments in other hardware and 
software corporations.

	"EFF" is a political action group -- of a special sort.

	Inside, someone's bike has been chained to the 
handrails of a modest flight of stairs.  A wall of modish 
glass brick separates this anteroom from the offices.   
Beyond the brick, there's an alarm system mounted on 
the wall, a sleek, complex little number that resembles a 
cross between a thermostat and a CD player.  Piled 
against the wall are box after box of a recent special issue 
of *Scientific American,* "How to Work, Play, and Thrive 
in Cyberspace," with extensive coverage of electronic 
networking techniques and political issues, including an 
article by Kapor himself.   These boxes are addressed to 
Gerard Van der Leun, EFF's Director of Communications, 
who will shortly mail those magazines to every member of 
the EFF.

	The joint headquarters of EFF, KEI, and ON 
Technology, which Kapor currently rents, is a modestly 
bustling place.   It's very much the same physical size as 
Steve Jackson's gaming company.  It's certainly a far cry 
from the gigantic gray steel-sided railway shipping barn, 
on the Monsignor O'Brien Highway, that is owned by 
Lotus Development Corporation.

	Lotus is, of course, the software giant that Mitchell 
Kapor founded in the late 70s.  The software program 
Kapor co-authored, "Lotus 1-2-3," is still that company's 
most profitable product.  "Lotus 1-2-3" also bears a 
singular distinction in the digital underground: it's 
probably the most pirated piece of application software in 
world history.

	Kapor greets me cordially in his own office, down a 
hall.   Kapor, whose name is pronounced KAY-por, is in his 
early forties, married and the father of two.   He has a 
round face, high forehead, straight nose, a slightly tousled 
mop of black hair peppered with gray.  His large brown 
eyes are wideset,  reflective, one might almost say soulful.  
He disdains ties, and commonly wears Hawaiian shirts 
and tropical prints, not so much garish as simply  cheerful 
and just that little bit anomalous.

	There is just the whiff of hacker brimstone about 
Mitch Kapor.  He may not have the hard-riding, hell-for-
leather, guitar-strumming charisma of his Wyoming 
colleague John Perry Barlow, but there's something about 
the guy that still stops one short.   He has the air of the 
Eastern city dude in the bowler hat, the dreamy, 
Longfellow-quoting poker shark who only *happens*  to 
know the exact mathematical odds against drawing to an 
inside straight.  Even among his computer-community 
colleagues, who are hardly known for mental sluggishness, 
Kapor strikes one forcefully as a very intelligent man.  He 
speaks rapidly, with vigorous gestures, his Boston accent 
sometimes slipping to the sharp nasal tang of his youth in 
Long Island.

	Kapor, whose Kapor Family Foundation does much 
of his philanthropic work, is a strong supporter of Boston's 
Computer Museum.   Kapor's interest in the history of his 
industry has brought him some remarkable curios, such 
as the "byte" just outside his office door.  This "byte"  -- 
eight digital bits -- has been salvaged from the wreck of an 
electronic computer of the pre-transistor age.  It's a 
standing gunmetal rack about the size of a small toaster-
oven:  with eight slots of hand-soldered breadboarding 
featuring thumb-sized vacuum tubes.  If it fell off a table it 
could easily break your foot, but it was state-of-the-art 
computation in the 1940s.   (It would take exactly 157,184 of 
these primordial toasters to hold the first part of this 
book.)

	There's also a coiling, multicolored, scaly dragon that 
some inspired techno-punk artist has cobbled up entirely 
out of transistors, capacitors, and brightly plastic-coated 
wiring.

	Inside the office, Kapor excuses himself briefly to do 
a little mouse-whizzing housekeeping on his personal 
Macintosh IIfx.  If its giant  screen were an open window, 
an agile person could climb through it without much 
trouble at all.  There's a coffee-cup at Kapor's elbow, a 
memento of his recent trip to Eastern Europe, which has a 
black-and-white stencilled photo and the legend 
CAPITALIST FOOLS TOUR.   It's Kapor, Barlow, and two 
California venture-capitalist luminaries of their 
acquaintance, four windblown, grinning Baby Boomer 
dudes in leather jackets, boots, denim, travel bags, 
standing on airport tarmac somewhere behind the 
formerly Iron Curtain.  They look as if they're having the 
absolute time of their lives.

	Kapor is in a reminiscent mood.  We talk a bit about 
his youth -- high school days as a "math nerd,"  Saturdays 
attending Columbia University's high-school science 
honors program, where he had his first experience 
programming computers.  IBM 1620s, in 1965 and '66.   "I 
was very interested," says Kapor, "and then I went off to 
college and got distracted by drugs sex and rock and roll, 
like anybody with half a brain would have then!"  After 
college he was a progressive-rock DJ in Hartford, 
Connecticut, for a couple of years.

	I ask him if he ever misses his rock and roll days -- if 
he ever wished he could go back to radio work.

	He shakes his head flatly.  "I stopped thinking about 
going back to be a DJ the day after Altamont."

	Kapor moved to Boston in 1974 and got a job 
programming mainframes in COBOL.  He hated it.  He 
quit and became a teacher of transcendental meditation.  
(It was Kapor's long flirtation with Eastern mysticism that 
gave the world "Lotus.")

	In 1976 Kapor went to Switzerland, where the 
Transcendental Meditation movement had rented a 
gigantic Victorian hotel in St-Moritz.  It was an all-male 
group -- a hundred and twenty of them -- determined 
upon Enlightenment or Bust.   Kapor had given the 
transcendant his best shot.  He was becoming 
disenchanted by "the nuttiness in the organization."  "They 
were teaching people to levitate," he says, staring at the 
floor.  His voice drops an octave, becomes flat.  "*They 
don't levitate.*"

	 Kapor chose Bust.  He went back to the States and 
acquired a degree in counselling psychology.  He worked a 
while in a hospital, couldn't stand that either.  "My rep 
was," he says  "a very bright kid with a lot of potential who 
hasn't found himself.  Almost thirty.  Sort of lost."

	Kapor was unemployed when he bought his first 
personal computer -- an Apple II.  He sold his stereo to 
raise cash and drove to New Hampshire to avoid the sales 
tax.

	"The day after I purchased it," Kapor tells me,  "I was 
hanging out in a computer store and I saw another guy, a 
man in his forties, well-dressed guy, and eavesdropped on 
his conversation with the salesman.  He didn't know 
anything  about computers.  I'd had a year programming.  
And I could program in BASIC.  I'd taught myself.  So I 
went up to him, and I actually sold myself to him as a 
consultant."  He pauses.  "I don't know where I got the 
nerve to do this.  It was uncharacteristic.  I just said, 'I think 
I can help you, I've been listening, this is what you need to 
do and I think I can do it for you.'  And he took me on!  He 
was my first client!  I became a computer consultant the 
first day after I bought the Apple II."

	Kapor had found his true vocation.  He attracted 
more clients for his consultant service, and started an 
Apple users' group.

	A friend of Kapor's, Eric Rosenfeld, a graduate 
student at MIT, had a problem.  He was doing a thesis on 
an arcane form of financial statistics, but could not wedge 
himself into the crowded queue for time on MIT's 
mainframes.  (One might note at this point that if Mr. 
Rosenfeld had dishonestly broken into the MIT 
mainframes, Kapor himself might have never invented 
Lotus 1-2-3 and the PC business might have been set back 
for years!)   Eric Rosenfeld did have an Apple II, however, 
and he thought it might be possible to scale the problem 
down.  Kapor, as favor, wrote a program for him in BASIC 
that did the job.

	It then occurred to the two of them, out of the blue, 
that it might be possible to *sell*  this program.  They 
marketed it themselves, in plastic baggies, for about a 
hundred bucks a pop, mail order.    "This was a total 
cottage industry by a marginal consultant," Kapor says 
proudly.  "That's how I got started, honest to God."

	Rosenfeld, who later became a very prominent figure 
on Wall Street, urged Kapor to go to MIT's business 
school for an MBA.   Kapor  did seven months there, but 
never got his MBA.  He picked up some useful tools -- 
mainly a firm grasp of the principles of accounting -- and, 
in his own words, "learned to talk MBA."   Then he 
dropped out and went to Silicon Valley.

	The inventors of VisiCalc, the Apple computer's 
premier business program, had shown an interest in 
Mitch Kapor.   Kapor worked diligently for them for six 
months, got tired of California, and went back to Boston 
where they had better bookstores.   The VisiCalc group 
had made the critical error of bringing in "professional 
management."  "That drove them into the ground," Kapor 
says.

	"Yeah, you don't hear a lot about VisiCalc these days," 
I muse.

	Kapor looks surprised.  "Well, Lotus.... we *bought*  
it."

	"Oh.  You *bought*  it?"

	"Yeah."

	"Sort of like the Bell System buying Western Union?"

	Kapor grins.  "Yep!  Yep!  Yeah, exactly!"

	Mitch Kapor was not in full command of the destiny 
of himself or his industry.  The hottest software 
commodities of the early 1980s were *computer games*  --  
the Atari seemed destined to enter every teenage home in 
America.  Kapor got into business software simply 
because he didn't have any particular feeling for 
computer games.  But he was supremely fast on his feet, 
open to new ideas and inclined to trust his instincts.   And 
his instincts were good.  He chose good people to deal with 
-- gifted programmer Jonathan Sachs (the co-author of 
Lotus 1-2-3).   Financial wizard Eric Rosenfeld, canny Wall 
Street analyst and venture capitalist Ben Rosen.  Kapor 
was the founder and CEO of Lotus, one of the most 
spectacularly successful business ventures of the later 
twentieth century.

	He is now an extremely wealthy man.  I ask him if he 
actually knows how much money he has.

	"Yeah," he says.  "Within a percent or two."

	How much does he actually have, then?

	He shakes his head.  "A lot.  A lot.  Not something I 
talk about.  Issues of money and class are  things that cut 
pretty close to the bone."

	I don't pry.  It's beside the point.  One might 
presume, impolitely, that Kapor has at least forty million -- 
that's what he got the year he left Lotus.  People who ought 
to know claim Kapor has about a hundred and fifty 
million, give or take a market swing in his stock holdings.  
If Kapor had stuck with Lotus, as his colleague friend and 
rival Bill Gates has stuck with his own software start-up, 
Microsoft, then Kapor would likely have much the same 
fortune Gates has -- somewhere in the neighborhood of 
three billion, give or take a few hundred million.   Mitch 
Kapor has all the money he wants.  Money has lost 
whatever charm it ever held for him -- probably not much 
in the first place.    When Lotus became too uptight, too 
bureaucratic, too far from the true sources of his own 
satisfaction, Kapor walked.   He simply severed all 
connections with the company and went out the door.  It 
stunned everyone -- except those who knew him best.

	Kapor has not had to strain his resources to wreak a 
thorough transformation in cyberspace politics.  In its first 
year, EFF's budget was about a quarter of a million dollars.  
Kapor is running EFF out of his pocket change.

	Kapor takes pains to tell me that he does not 
consider himself a civil libertarian per se.  He has spent 
quite some time with true-blue civil libertarians lately, and 
there's a political-correctness to them that bugs him.  They 
seem to him to spend entirely too much time in legal 
nitpicking and not enough vigorously exercising civil 
rights in the everyday real world.

	 Kapor is an entrepreneur.  Like all hackers, he 
prefers his involvements  direct, personal, and hands-on.  
"The fact that EFF has a node on the Internet is a great 
thing.  We're a publisher.  We're a distributor of 
information."  Among the items the eff.org Internet node 
carries is back issues of *Phrack.*  They had an internal 
debate about that in EFF, and finally decided to take the 
plunge.  They might carry other digital underground 
publications -- but if they do, he says, "we'll certainly carry 
Donn Parker, and anything Gail Thackeray wants to put 
up.  We'll turn it into a public library, that has the whole 
spectrum of use.  Evolve in the direction of people making 
up their own minds."  He grins.  "We'll try to label all the 
editorials."

	Kapor is determined to tackle the technicalities of 
the Internet in the service of the public interest.   "The 
problem with being a node on the Net today is that you've 
got to have a captive technical specialist.  We have Chris 
Davis around, for the care and feeding of the balky beast!  
We couldn't do it ourselves!"

	He pauses.  "So one direction in which technology has 
to evolve is much more standardized units, that a non-
technical person can feel comfortable with.  It's the same 
shift as from minicomputers to PCs.  I can see a future in 
which any person can have a Node on the Net.  Any 
person can be a publisher.  It's better than the media we 
now have.  It's possible.  We're working actively."

	Kapor is in his element now, fluent, thoroughly in 
command in his material.   "You go tell a hardware 
Internet hacker that everyone should have a node on the 
Net," he says, "and the first thing they're going to say is, 'IP 
doesn't scale!'"  ("IP" is the interface protocol for the 
Internet.  As it currently exists, the IP software is simply 
not capable of indefinite expansion; it will run out of 
usable addresses, it will saturate.)   "The answer," Kapor 
says,  "is:  evolve the protocol!  Get the smart people 
together and figure out what to do.  Do we add ID?  Do we 
add new protocol?  Don't just say, *we can't do it.*"

	Getting smart people together to figure out what to 
do is a skill at which Kapor clearly excels.   I counter that 
people on the Internet rather enjoy their elite technical 
status, and don't seem particularly anxious to democratize 
the Net.

	Kapor agrees, with a show of scorn.  "I tell them that 
this is the snobbery of the people on the *Mayflower* 
looking down their noses at the people who came over *on 
the second boat!*   Just because they got here a year, or 
five years, or ten years before everybody else, that doesn't 
give them ownership of cyberspace!  By what right?"

	I remark that the telcos are an electronic network, 
too, and they seem to guard their specialized knowledge 
pretty closely.

	Kapor ripostes that the telcos and the Internet are 
entirely different animals.  "The Internet is an open 
system, everything is published, everything gets argued 
about, basically by anybody who can get in.  Mostly, it's 
exclusive and elitist just because it's so difficult.  Let's 
make it easier to use."

	On the other hand, he allows with a swift change of 
emphasis, the so-called elitists do have a point as well.   
"Before people start coming in, who are new, who want to 
make suggestions, and criticize the Net as 'all screwed 
up'....  They should at least take the time to understand the 
culture on its own terms.  It has its own history -- show 
some respect for it.  I'm a conservative, to that extent."

	The Internet is Kapor's paradigm for the future of 
telecommunications.  The Internet is decentralized, non-
heirarchical, almost anarchic.  There are no bosses, no 
chain of command, no secret data.  If each node obeys the 
general interface standards, there's simply no need for 
any central network authority.

	Wouldn't that spell the doom of AT&T as an 
institution?  I ask.

	That prospect doesn't faze Kapor for a moment.  
"Their  big advantage, that they have now, is that they have 
all of the wiring.  But two things are happening.  Anyone 
with right-of-way is putting down fiber -- Southern Pacific 
Railroad, people like that -- there's enormous 'dark fiber' 
laid in."  ("Dark Fiber" is fiber-optic cable, whose 
enormous capacity so exceeds the demands of current 
usage that much of the fiber still has no light-signals on it -
- it's still 'dark,' awaiting future use.)

	"The other thing that's happening is the local-loop 
stuff is going to go wireless.  Everyone from Bellcore to the 
cable TV companies to AT&T wants to put in these things 
called 'personal communication systems.'  So you could 
have local competition -- you could have multiplicity of 
people, a bunch of neighborhoods, sticking stuff up on 
poles.  And a bunch of other people laying in dark fiber.  
So what happens to the telephone companies?  There's 
enormous pressure on them from both sides.

	"The more I look at this, the more I believe that in a 
post-industrial, digital world, the idea of regulated 
monopolies is bad.  People will look back on it and say that 
in the 19th and 20th centuries the idea of public utilities 
was an okay compromise.  You needed one set of wires in 
the ground.  It was too economically inefficient, otherwise.  
And that meant one entity running it.  But now, with pieces 
being wireless -- the connections are going to be via high-
level interfaces, not via wires.  I mean, *ultimately*  there 
are going to be wires -- but the wires are just a commodity.  
Fiber, wireless.  You no longer *need*  a utility."

	Water utilities?  Gas utilities?

	Of course we still need those, he agrees.   "But when 
what you're moving is information, instead of physical 
substances, then you can play by a different set of rules.  
We're evolving those rules now!   Hopefully you can have 
a much more decentralized system, and one in which 
there's more competition in the marketplace.

	"The role of government will be to make sure that 
nobody cheats.  The proverbial 'level playing field.'   A 
policy that prevents monopolization.  It should result in 
better service, lower prices, more choices, and local 
empowerment."  He smiles.  "I'm very big on local 
empowerment."

	Kapor is a man with a vision.  It's a very novel vision 
which he and his allies are working out in considerable 
detail and with great energy.  Dark, cynical, morbid 
cyberpunk that I am, I cannot avoid considering some of 
the darker implications of "decentralized, nonhierarchical, 
locally empowered" networking.

	I remark that some pundits have suggested that 
electronic networking -- faxes, phones, small-scale 
photocopiers -- played a strong role in dissolving the 
power of centralized communism and causing the 
collapse of the Warsaw Pact.

	Socialism is totally discredited, says Kapor, fresh 
back from the Eastern Bloc.  The idea that faxes did it, all 
by themselves, is rather wishful thinking.

	Has it occurred to him that electronic networking 
might corrode America's industrial and political 
infrastructure to the point where the whole thing becomes 
untenable, unworkable -- and the old order just collapses 
headlong, like in Eastern Europe?

	"No," Kapor says flatly.  "I think that's extraordinarily 
unlikely.  In part, because ten or fifteen years ago, I had 
similar hopes about personal computers -- which utterly 
failed to materialize." He grins wryly, then his eyes narrow.  
"I'm *very* opposed to techno-utopias.  Every time I see 
one, I either run away, or try to kill it."

	It dawns on me then that Mitch Kapor is not trying to 
make the world safe for democracy.  He certainly is not 
trying to make it safe for anarchists or utopians -- least of 
all for computer intruders or electronic rip-off artists.  
What he really hopes to do is make the world safe for 
future Mitch Kapors.  This world of decentralized, small-
scale nodes, with instant global access for the best and 
brightest, would be a perfect milieu for the shoestring attic 
capitalism that made Mitch Kapor what he is today.

	Kapor is a very bright man.  He has a rare 
combination of visionary intensity with a strong practical 
streak.  The Board of the EFF:  John Barlow, Jerry Berman 
of the ACLU, Stewart Brand, John Gilmore, Steve 
Wozniak, and Esther Dyson, the doyenne of East-West 
computer entrepreneurism -- share his gift, his vision, and 
his formidable networking talents.   They are people of the 
1960s,  winnowed-out by its turbulence and rewarded with 
wealth and influence.   They are some of the best and the 
brightest that the electronic community has to offer.  But 
can they do it, in the real world?  Or are they only 
dreaming?   They are so few.  And there is so much against 
them.

	I leave Kapor and his networking employees 
struggling cheerfully with the promising intricacies of their 
newly installed Macintosh System 7 software.  The next 
day is Saturday.  EFF is closed.  I pay a few visits to points 
of interest downtown.

	One of them is the birthplace of the telephone.

	It's marked by a bronze plaque in a plinth of black-
and-white speckled granite.  It sits in the plaza of the John 
F. Kennedy Federal Building, the very place where Kapor 
was once fingerprinted by the FBI.

	The plaque has a bas-relief picture of Bell's original 
telephone.  "BIRTHPLACE OF THE TELEPHONE," it 
reads.  "Here, on June 2, 1875, Alexander Graham Bell and 
Thomas A. Watson first transmitted sound over wires.

	"This successful experiment was completed in a fifth 
floor garret at what was then 109 Court Street and marked 
the beginning of world-wide telephone service."

	109 Court Street is long gone.  Within sight of Bell's 
plaque, across a street, is one of the central offices of 
NYNEX, the local  Bell RBOC, on 6 Bowdoin Square.

	I cross the street and circle the telco building, slowly, 
hands in my jacket pockets.  It's a bright, windy, New 
England autumn day.   The central office is a handsome 
1940s-era megalith in late Art Deco, eight stories high.

	Parked outside the back is a power-generation truck.   
The generator strikes me as rather anomalous.  Don't they 
already have their own generators in this eight-story 
monster?  Then the suspicion strikes me that NYNEX 
must have heard of the September 17 AT&T power-outage 
which crashed New York City.  Belt-and-suspenders, this 
generator.  Very telco.

	Over the glass doors of the front entrance is a 
handsome bronze bas-relief of Art Deco vines, sunflowers, 
and birds, entwining the Bell logo and the legend NEW 
ENGLAND TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY 
-- an entity which no longer officially exists.

	The doors are locked securely.  I peer through the 
shadowed glass.  Inside is an official poster reading:

	"New England Telephone a NYNEX Company

			ATTENTION

	"All persons while on New England Telephone 
Company premises are required to visibly wear their 
identification cards (C.C.P. Section 2, Page 1).

	"Visitors, vendors, contractors, and all others are 
required to visibly wear a daily pass.
				"Thank you.
				Kevin C. Stanton.
				Building Security Coordinator."

	Outside, around the corner, is a pull-down ribbed 
metal security door, a locked delivery entrance.  Some 
passing stranger has grafitti-tagged this door, with a single 
word in red spray-painted cursive:

			*Fury*	
	 
	  			#

	My book on the Hacker Crackdown is almost over 
now.  I have deliberately saved the best for last.

	In February 1991, I attended the CPSR Public Policy 
Roundtable, in Washington, DC.   CPSR, Computer 
Professionals for Social Responsibility, was a sister 
organization of EFF, or perhaps its aunt, being older and 
perhaps somewhat wiser in the ways of the world of 
politics.

	Computer Professionals for  Social Responsibility 
began in 1981 in Palo Alto, as an informal discussion group 
of Californian computer scientists and technicians, united 
by nothing more than an electronic mailing list.   This  
typical high-tech ad-hocracy received the dignity of its 
own acronym in 1982, and was formally incorporated in 
1983.

	CPSR lobbied government and public alike with an 
educational outreach effort, sternly warning against any 
foolish and unthinking trust in complex computer 
systems.  CPSR insisted that mere computers should 
never be considered a magic panacea for humanity's 
social, ethical or political problems.  CPSR members were 
especially troubled about the stability, safety, and 
dependability of military computer systems, and very 
especially troubled by those systems controlling nuclear 
arsenals.  CPSR was best-known for its persistent and well-
publicized attacks on the scientific credibility of the 
Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars").

	In 1990, CPSR was the nation's veteran cyber-political 
activist group, with over two thousand members in twenty-
one local chapters across the US.  It was especially active 
in Boston, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC, where its 
Washington office sponsored the Public Policy 
Roundtable.

	The Roundtable, however, had been funded by EFF, 
which had passed CPSR an extensive grant for operations.   
This was the first large-scale, official meeting of what was 
to become the electronic civil libertarian community.

	Sixty people attended, myself included -- in this 
instance, not so much as a journalist as a cyberpunk 
author.   Many of the luminaries of the field took part:  
Kapor and Godwin as a matter of course.  Richard Civille 
and Marc Rotenberg of CPSR.  Jerry Berman of the ACLU.  
John Quarterman, author of *The Matrix.*  Steven Levy, 
author of *Hackers.*   George Perry and Sandy Weiss of 
Prodigy Services, there to network about the civil-liberties 
troubles their young commercial network was 
experiencing.  Dr. Dorothy Denning.  Cliff Figallo, 
manager of the Well.  Steve Jackson was there, having 
finally found his ideal target audience, and so was Craig 
Neidorf, "Knight Lightning" himself, with his attorney, 
Sheldon Zenner.  Katie Hafner, science journalist, and co-
author of *Cyberpunk:  Outlaws and Hackers on the   
Computer Frontier.*  Dave Farber, ARPAnet pioneer and 
fabled Internet guru.  Janlori Goldman of the ACLU's 
Project on Privacy and Technology.  John Nagle of 
Autodesk and the Well.  Don Goldberg of the House 
Judiciary Committee.  Tom Guidoboni, the defense 
attorney in the Internet Worm case.  Lance Hoffman, 
computer-science professor at The George Washington 
University.  Eli Noam of Columbia.  And a host of others 
no less distinguished.

	Senator Patrick Leahy delivered the keynote address, 
expressing his determination to keep ahead of the curve 
on the issue of electronic free speech.  The address was 
well-received, and the sense of excitement was palpable.   
Every panel discussion was interesting -- some were 
entirely compelling.  People networked with an almost 
frantic interest.

	I myself had a most interesting and cordial lunch 
discussion with Noel and Jeanne Gayler, Admiral Gayler 
being a former director of the National Security Agency.   
As this was the first known encounter between an actual 
no-kidding cyberpunk and a chief executive of America's 
largest and best-financed electronic espionage apparat, 
there was naturally a bit of eyebrow-raising on both sides.

	Unfortunately, our discussion was off-the-record.  In 
fact all  the discussions at the CPSR were officially off-the-
record, the idea being to do some serious networking in an 
atmosphere of complete frankness, rather than to stage a 
media circus.

	In any case, CPSR Roundtable, though interesting 
and intensely valuable, was as nothing compared to the 
truly mind-boggling event that transpired a mere month 
later.

					#

	"Computers, Freedom and Privacy."  Four hundred 
people from every conceivable corner of America's 
electronic community.  As a science fiction writer, I have 
been to some weird gigs in my day, but this thing is truly 
*beyond the pale.*   Even "Cyberthon," Point Foundation's 
"Woodstock of Cyberspace" where Bay Area psychedelia 
collided headlong with the emergent world of 
computerized virtual reality, was like a Kiwanis Club gig 
compared to this astonishing do.

	The "electronic community" had reached an apogee.  
Almost every principal in this book is in attendance.  Civil 
Libertarians.  Computer Cops.  The Digital Underground.   
Even a few discreet telco people.   Colorcoded dots for 
lapel tags are distributed.  Free Expression issues.  Law 
Enforcement.  Computer Security.  Privacy.  Journalists.  
Lawyers.  Educators.  Librarians.  Programmers.  Stylish 
punk-black dots for the hackers and phone phreaks.  
Almost everyone here seems to wear eight or nine dots, to 
have six or seven professional hats.

	It is a community.  Something like Lebanon perhaps, 
but a digital nation. People who had feuded all year in the 
national press, people who entertained the deepest 
suspicions of one another's motives and ethics, are now in 
each others' laps.   "Computers, Freedom and Privacy" 
had every reason in the world to turn ugly, and yet except 
for small irruptions of puzzling nonsense from the 
convention's token lunatic, a surprising bonhomie 
reigned.  CFP was like a wedding-party in which two lovers, 
unstable bride and charlatan groom, tie the knot in a 
clearly disastrous matrimony.

	It is clear to both families -- even to neighbors and 
random guests -- that this is not a workable relationship, 
and yet the young couple's desperate attraction can brook 
no further delay.   They simply cannot help themselves.  
Crockery will fly, shrieks from their newlywed home will 
wake the city block, divorce waits in the wings like a 
vulture over the Kalahari, and yet this is a wedding, and 
there is going to be a child from it.  Tragedies end in death; 
comedies in marriage.  The Hacker Crackdown is ending 
in marriage.  And there will be a child.

	From the beginning, anomalies reign.  John Perry 
Barlow, cyberspace ranger, is here.  His color photo in 
*The New York Times Magazine,* Barlow scowling in a 
grim Wyoming snowscape, with long black coat, dark hat, 
a Macintosh SE30 propped on a fencepost and an 
awesome frontier rifle tucked under one arm,  will be the 
single most striking visual image of the Hacker 
Crackdown.   And he is CFP's guest of honor -- along with 
Gail Thackeray of the FCIC!   What on earth do they 
expect these dual guests to do with each other?  Waltz?

	Barlow delivers the first address.  
Uncharacteristically, he is hoarse -- the sheer volume of 
roadwork has worn him down.  He speaks briefly, 
congenially, in a plea for conciliation, and takes his leave 
to a storm of applause.

	Then Gail Thackeray takes the stage.  She's visibly 
nervous.  She's been on the Well a lot lately.  Reading 
those Barlow posts.   Following Barlow is a challenge to 
anyone.  In honor of the famous lyricist for the Grateful 
Dead, she announces reedily, she is going to read -- *a 
poem.*  A poem she has composed herself.

	It's an awful poem, doggerel in the rollicking meter of 
Robert W. Service's *The Cremation of Sam McGee,*  but 
it is in fact, a poem.  It's the *Ballad of the Electronic 
Frontier!*  A poem about the Hacker Crackdown and the 
sheer unlikelihood of CFP.   It's full of in-jokes.  The score 
or so cops in the audience, who are sitting together in a 
nervous claque, are absolutely cracking-up.  Gail's poem is 
the funniest goddamn thing they've ever heard.  The 
hackers and civil-libs, who had this woman figured for Ilsa 
She-Wolf of the SS, are staring with their jaws hanging 
loosely.  Never in the wildest reaches of their imagination 
had they figured Gail Thackeray was capable of such a 
totally off-the-wall move.  You can see them punching 
their mental CONTROL-RESET buttons.   Jesus!  This 
woman's a hacker weirdo!  She's  *just like us!*    God, this 
changes everything!

	  Al Bayse, computer technician for the FBI, had been 
the only cop at the CPSR Roundtable, dragged there with 
his arm bent by Dorothy Denning.  He was guarded and 
tightlipped at CPSR Roundtable; a "lion thrown to the 
Christians."

	At CFP, backed by a claque of cops, Bayse suddenly 
waxes eloquent and even droll, describing the FBI's 
"NCIC 2000", a gigantic digital catalog of criminal records, 
as if he has suddenly become some weird hybrid of 
George Orwell and George Gobel.   Tentatively, he makes 
an arcane joke about statistical analysis.  At least a third of 
the crowd laughs aloud.

	"They didn't laugh at that at my last speech,"  Bayse 
observes.  He had been addressing cops -- *straight*  cops, 
not computer people.  It had been a worthy meeting, 
useful one supposes, but nothing like *this.*  There has 
never been *anything*  like this.  Without any prodding, 
without any preparation, people in the audience simply 
begin to ask questions.  Longhairs, freaky people, 
mathematicians.  Bayse is answering, politely, frankly, 
fully, like a man walking on air.  The ballroom's 
atmosphere crackles with surreality.   A female lawyer 
behind me breaks into a sweat and a hot waft of 
surprisingly potent and musky perfume flows off her 
pulse-points.

	People are giddy with laughter.  People are 
interested, fascinated, their eyes so wide and dark that 
they seem eroticized.  Unlikely daisy-chains form in the 
halls, around the bar, on the escalators:  cops with hackers, 
civil rights with FBI, Secret Service with phone phreaks.

	Gail Thackeray is at her crispest in a white wool 
sweater with a tiny Secret Service logo.  "I found Phiber 
Optik at the payphones, and when he saw my sweater, he 
turned into a *pillar of salt!*" she chortles.

	Phiber discusses his case at much length with his 
arresting officer, Don Delaney of the New York State 
Police.  After an hour's chat, the two of them look ready to 
begin singing "Auld Lang Syne."  Phiber finally finds the 
courage to get his worst complaint off his chest.  It isn't so 
much the arrest.  It was the *charge.*  Pirating service off 
900 numbers.  I'm a *programmer,* Phiber insists.  This 
lame charge is going to hurt my reputation.  It would have 
been cool to be busted for something happening, like 
Section 1030 computer intrusion.  Maybe some kind of 
crime that's scarcely been invented yet.  Not lousy phone 
fraud.  Phooey.

	Delaney seems regretful.  He had a mountain of 
possible criminal charges against Phiber Optik.  The kid's 
gonna plead guilty anyway.  He's a first timer, they always 
plead.  Coulda charged the kid with most anything, and 
gotten the same result in the end.  Delaney seems 
genuinely sorry not to have gratified Phiber in this 
harmless fashion.  Too late now.  Phiber's pled already.  All 
water under the bridge.  Whaddya gonna do?

	Delaney's got a good grasp on the hacker mentality.  
He held a press conference after he busted a bunch of 
Masters of Deception kids.  Some journo had asked him:  
"Would you describe these people as *geniuses?*"   
Delaney's deadpan answer, perfect:  "No, I would describe 
these people as *defendants.*"   Delaney busts a kid for 
hacking codes with repeated random dialling.  Tells the 
press that NYNEX can track this stuff in no time flat 
nowadays, and a kid has to be *stupid*  to do something so 
easy to catch.   Dead on again:  hackers don't mind being 
thought of as Genghis Khan by the straights,  but if there's 
anything that really gets 'em where they live, it's being 
called *dumb.*

	Won't be as much fun for Phiber next time around.  
As a second offender he's gonna see prison.   Hackers 
break the law.  They're not geniuses, either.  They're gonna 
be defendants.  And yet, Delaney muses over a drink in 
the hotel bar, he has found it impossible to treat them as 
common criminals.   Delaney knows criminals.  These 
kids, by comparison, are clueless -- there is just no crook 
vibe off of them, they don't smell right, they're just not 
*bad.*

	Delaney has seen a lot of action.  He did Vietnam.  
He's been shot at, he has shot people.  He's a homicide 
cop from New York.  He has the appearance of a man who 
has not only seen the shit hit the fan but has seen it 
splattered across whole city blocks and left to ferment for 
years.  This guy has been around.

	He listens to Steve Jackson tell his story.  The dreamy 
game strategist has been dealt a bad hand.  He has played 
it for all he is worth.  Under his nerdish SF-fan exterior is a 
core of iron.   Friends of his say Steve Jackson believes in 
the rules, believes in fair play.  He will never compromise 
his principles, never give up.  "Steve," Delaney says to 
Steve Jackson, "they had some balls, whoever busted you.  
You're all right!"   Jackson, stunned, falls silent and actually 
blushes with pleasure.

	Neidorf has grown up a lot in the past year.  The kid is 
a quick study, you gotta give him that.   Dressed by his 
mom, the fashion manager for a national clothing chain, 
Missouri college techie-frat Craig Neidorf out-dappers 
everyone at this gig but the toniest East Coast lawyers.  
The iron jaws of prison clanged shut without him and now 
law school beckons for Neidorf.  He looks like a larval 
Congressman.

	Not a "hacker," our Mr. Neidorf.  He's not interested 
in computer science.  Why should he be?  He's not 
interested in writing C code the rest of his life, and besides, 
he's seen where the chips fall.  To the world of computer 
science he and *Phrack*  were just a curiosity.  But to the 
world of law....  The kid has learned where the bodies are 
buried.  He carries his notebook of press clippings 
wherever he goes.

	Phiber Optik makes fun of Neidorf for a Midwestern 
geek, for believing that "Acid Phreak" does acid and 
listens to acid rock.  Hell no.  Acid's never done *acid!*  
Acid's into *acid house music.*  Jesus.  The very idea of 
doing LSD.  Our *parents*  did LSD, ya clown.

	  Thackeray suddenly turns upon Craig Neidorf the 
full lighthouse glare of her attention and begins a 
determined half-hour attempt to *win the boy over.*  The 
Joan of Arc of Computer Crime is *giving career advice to 
Knight Lightning!*   "Your experience would be very 
valuable -- a real asset," she tells him with unmistakeable 
sixty-thousand-watt sincerity.  Neidorf is fascinated.  He 
listens with unfeigned attention.  He's nodding and saying 
yes ma'am.  Yes, Craig, you too can forget all about money 
and enter the glamorous and horribly underpaid world of 
PROSECUTING COMPUTER CRIME!  You can put your 
former friends in prison -- ooops....

	You cannot go on dueling at modem's length 
indefinitely.   You cannot beat one another senseless with 
rolled-up press-clippings.  Sooner or later you have to 
come directly to grips.  And yet the very act of assembling 
here has changed the entire situation drastically.   John 
Quarterman, author of *The Matrix,* explains the Internet 
at his symposium.  It is the largest news network in the 
world, it is growing by leaps and bounds, and yet you 
cannot measure Internet because you cannot stop it in 
place.  It cannot stop, because there is no one anywhere in 
the world with the authority to stop Internet.  It changes, 
yes, it grows, it embeds itself across the post-industrial, 
postmodern world and it generates community wherever 
it touches, and it is doing this all by itself.

	Phiber is different.  A very fin de siecle kid, Phiber 
Optik.  Barlow says he looks like an Edwardian dandy.   He 
does rather.  Shaven neck, the sides of his skull cropped 
hip-hop close, unruly tangle of black hair on top that looks 
pomaded, he stays up till four a.m.  and misses all the 
sessions, then hangs out in payphone booths with his 
acoustic coupler gutsily CRACKING SYSTEMS RIGHT IN 
THE MIDST OF THE HEAVIEST LAW ENFORCEMENT 
DUDES IN THE U.S., or at least *pretending* to....  Unlike 
"Frank Drake."  Drake, who wrote Dorothy Denning out of 
nowhere, and asked for an interview for his cheapo 
cyberpunk fanzine, and then started grilling her on her 
ethics.   She was squirmin', too....   Drake, scarecrow-tall 
with his floppy blond mohawk, rotting tennis shoes and 
black leather jacket lettered ILLUMINATI in red, gives off 
an unmistakeable air of the bohemian literatus.  Drake is 
the kind of guy who reads British industrial design 
magazines and appreciates William Gibson because the 
quality of the prose is so tasty.  Drake could never touch a 
phone or a keyboard again, and he'd still have the nose-
ring and the blurry photocopied fanzines and the sampled 
industrial music.  He's a radical punk with a desktop-
publishing rig and an Internet address.  Standing next to 
Drake, the diminutive Phiber looks like he's been 
physically coagulated out of phone-lines.  Born to phreak.

	Dorothy Denning approaches Phiber suddenly.  The 
two of them are about the same height and body-build.  
Denning's blue eyes flash behind the round window-
frames of her glasses.  "Why did you say I was 'quaint?'"  
she asks Phiber, quaintly.

	It's a perfect description but Phiber is nonplussed... 
"Well, I uh, you know...."

	"I also think you're quaint, Dorothy," I say, novelist to 
the rescue, the journo gift of gab...  She is neat and dapper 
and yet there's an arcane quality to her, something like a 
Pilgrim Maiden behind leaded glass; if she were six inches 
high Dorothy Denning would look great inside a china 
cabinet...  The Cryptographeress....  The Cryptographrix...  
whatever...   Weirdly, Peter Denning looks just like his 
wife, you could pick this gentleman out of a thousand guys 
as the soulmate of Dorothy Denning.  Wearing tailored 
slacks, a spotless fuzzy varsity sweater, and a neatly 
knotted academician's tie.... This fineboned, exquisitely 
polite, utterly civilized and hyperintelligent couple seem 
to have emerged from some cleaner and finer parallel 
universe, where humanity exists to do the Brain Teasers 
column in Scientific American.   Why does this Nice Lady 
hang out with these unsavory characters?

	Because the time has come for it, that's why.  
Because she's the best there is at what she does.

	Donn Parker is here, the Great Bald Eagle of 
Computer Crime....  With his bald dome, great height, and 
enormous Lincoln-like hands, the great visionary pioneer 
of the field plows through the lesser mortals like an 
icebreaker....  His eyes are fixed on the future with the 
rigidity of a bronze statue....  Eventually, he tells his 
audience, all business crime will be computer crime, 
because businesses will do everything through computers.  
"Computer crime" as a category will vanish.

	In the meantime,  passing fads will flourish and fail 
and evaporate....  Parker's commanding, resonant voice is 
sphinxlike, everything is viewed from some eldritch valley 
of deep historical abstraction...  Yes, they've come and 
they've gone, these passing flaps in the world of digital 
computation....  The radio-frequency emanation scandal... 
KGB and MI5 and CIA do it every day, it's easy, but 
nobody else ever has....  The salami-slice fraud, mostly 
mythical...  "Crimoids," he calls them....  Computer viruses 
are the current crimoid champ, a lot less dangerous than 
most people let on, but the novelty is fading and there's a 
crimoid vacuum at the moment, the press is visibly 
hungering for something more outrageous....  The Great 
Man shares with us a few speculations on the coming 
crimoids....  Desktop Forgery!  Wow....  Computers stolen 
just for the sake of the information within them -- data-
napping!  Happened in Britain a while ago, could be the 
coming thing....  Phantom nodes in the Internet!

	Parker handles his overhead projector sheets with an 
ecclesiastical air...  He wears a grey double-breasted suit, a 
light blue shirt, and a very quiet tie of understated maroon 
and blue paisley...  Aphorisms emerge from him with slow, 
leaden emphasis...  There is no such thing as an 
adequately secure computer when one faces a sufficiently 
powerful adversary.... Deterrence is the most socially 
useful aspect of security...  People are the primary 
weakness in all information systems...  The entire baseline 
of computer security must be shifted upward....  Don't ever 
violate your security by publicly describing your security 
measures...

	People in the audience are beginning to squirm, and 
yet there is something about the elemental purity of this 
guy's philosophy that compels uneasy respect....  Parker 
sounds like the only sane guy left in the lifeboat, 
sometimes.  The guy who can prove rigorously, from deep 
moral principles, that Harvey there, the one with the 
broken leg and the checkered past, is the one who has to 
be, err.... that is, Mr. Harvey is best placed to make the 
necessary sacrifice for the security and indeed the very 
survival of the rest of this lifeboat's crew....   Computer 
security, Parker informs us mournfully, is a nasty topic, 
and we wish we didn't have to have  it...  The security 
expert, armed with method and logic, must think -- 
imagine -- everything that the adversary might do before 
the adversary might actually do it.   It is as if the criminal's 
dark brain were an extensive subprogram within the 
shining cranium of Donn Parker.   He is a Holmes whose 
Moriarty does not quite yet exist and so must be perfectly 
simulated.

	CFP is a stellar gathering, with the giddiness of a 
wedding.  It is a happy time, a happy ending, they know 
their world is changing forever tonight, and they're proud 
to have been there to see it happen, to talk, to think, to 
help.

	And yet as night falls, a certain elegiac quality 
manifests itself, as the crowd gathers beneath the 
chandeliers with their wineglasses and dessert plates.  
Something is ending here, gone forever, and it takes a 
while to pinpoint it.

  	It is the End of the Amateurs.

***********

Afterword:  The Hacker Crackdown Three Years Later

	Three years in cyberspace is like thirty years anyplace 
real.  It feels as if a generation has passed since I wrote this 
book.  In terms of the generations of computing machinery 
involved, that's pretty much the case.

	The basic shape of cyberspace has changed drastically 
since 1990.  A new U.S. Administration is in power whose 
personnel are, if anything, only too aware of the nature and 
potential of electronic networks.  It's now clear to all players 
concerned that the status quo is dead-and-gone in American 
media and telecommunications, and almost any territory on 
the electronic frontier is up for grabs.  Interactive multimedia, 
cable-phone alliances, the Information Superhighway, fiber-
to-the-curb, laptops and palmtops, the explosive growth of 
cellular and the Internet -- the earth trembles visibly.

	The year 1990 was not a pleasant one for AT&T.  By 1993, 
however, AT&T had successfully devoured the computer 
company NCR in an unfriendly takeover, finally giving the 
pole-climbers a major piece of the digital action.  AT&T 
managed to rid itself of ownership of the troublesome UNIX 
operating system, selling it to Novell, a netware company, 
which was itself preparing for a savage market dust-up with 
operating-system titan Microsoft.  Furthermore, AT&T 
acquired McCaw Cellular in a gigantic merger, giving AT&T a 
potential wireless whip-hand over its former progeny, the 
RBOCs.  The RBOCs themselves were now AT&T's clearest 
potential rivals, as the Chinese firewalls between regulated 
monopoly and frenzied digital entrepreneurism began to melt 
and collapse headlong.
  
	AT&T, mocked by industry analysts in 1990, was reaping 
awestruck praise by commentators in 1993.   AT&T had 
managed to avoid any more major software crashes in its 
switching stations.  AT&T's newfound reputation as "the 
nimble giant" was all the sweeter, since AT&T's traditional 
rival giant in the world of multinational computing, IBM, was 
almost prostrate by 1993.  IBM's vision of the commercial 
computer-network of the future, "Prodigy," had managed to 
spend $900 million without a whole heck of a lot to show for it, 
while AT&T, by contrast, was boldly speculating on the 
possibilities of personal communicators and hedging its bets 
with investments in handwritten interfaces.  In 1990 AT&T had 
looked bad; but in 1993 AT&T looked like the future.

	At least, AT&T's *advertising* looked like the future.  
Similar public attention was riveted on the massive $22 billion 
megamerger between RBOC Bell Atlantic and cable-TV giant 
Tele-Communications Inc.   Nynex was buying into cable 
company Viacom International.  BellSouth was buying stock in 
Prime Management, Southwestern Bell acquiring a cable 
company in Washington DC, and so forth.   By stark contrast, 
the Internet, a noncommercial entity which officially did not 
even exist, had no advertising budget at all.  And yet, almost 
below the level of governmental and corporate awareness,  the 
Internet was stealthily devouring everything in its path, 
growing at a rate that defied comprehension.  Kids who might 
have been eager computer-intruders a mere five years earlier 
were now surfing the Internet, where their natural urge to 
explore led them into cyberspace landscapes of such 
mindboggling vastness that the very idea of hacking passwords 
seemed rather a waste of time.  

	By 1993, there had not been a solid, knock 'em down, 
panic-striking, teenage-hacker  computer-intrusion scandal in 
many long months.  There had, of course, been some striking 
and well-publicized acts of illicit computer access, but they had 
been committed by adult white-collar industry insiders in clear 
pursuit of personal or commercial advantage.  The kids, by 
contrast, all seemed to be on IRC, Internet Relay Chat.

	Or, perhaps, frolicking out in the endless glass-roots 
network of personal bulletin board systems.  In 1993, there 
were an estimated 60,000 boards in America; the population of 
boards had fully doubled since Operation Sundevil in 1990.  The 
hobby was transmuting fitfully into a genuine industry.  The 
board community were no longer obscure hobbyists; many 
were still hobbyists and proud of it, but board sysops and 
advanced board users had become a far more cohesive and 
politically aware community, no longer allowing themselves to 
be obscure.

	The specter of cyberspace in the late 1980s, of outwitted 
authorities trembling in fear before teenage hacker whiz-kids, 
seemed downright antiquated by 1993.  Law enforcement 
emphasis had changed, and the favorite electronic villain of 
1993 was not the vandal child, but  the victimizer of children, 
the digital child pornographer.  "Operation Longarm,"  a child-
pornography computer raid carried out by the previously little-
known cyberspace rangers of the U.S. Customs Service, was 
almost the size of Operation Sundevil, but received very little 
notice by comparison.  

	The huge and well-organized "Operation Disconnect," 
an FBI strike against telephone rip-off con-artists, was 
actually larger than Sundevil.  "Operation Disconnect" had its 
brief moment in the sun of publicity, and then vanished utterly.  
It was unfortunate that a law-enforcement affair as 
apparently well-conducted as Operation Disconnect, which 
pursued telecom adult career criminals a hundred times more 
morally repugnant than teenage hackers, should have received 
so little attention and fanfare, especially compared to the 
abortive Sundevil and the basically disastrous efforts of the 
Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force.  But the life of 
an electronic policeman is seldom easy.

	If any law enforcement event truly deserved full-scale 
press coverage (while somehow managing to escape it), it was 
the amazing saga of New York State Police Senior 
Investigator Don Delaney Versus the Orchard Street Finger-
Hackers.  This story  probably represents the real future of 
professional telecommunications crime in America.  The finger-
hackers sold, and still sell, stolen long-distance phone service 
to a captive clientele of illegal aliens in New York City.  This  
clientele is desperate to call home, yet as a group, illegal aliens 
have few legal means of obtaining standard phone service, 
since their very presence in the United States is against the 
law.  The finger-hackers of Orchard Street were very unusual 
"hackers," with an astonishing lack of any kind of genuine 
technological knowledge.  And yet these New York call-sell 
thieves showed a street-level ingenuity appalling in its single-
minded sense of larceny.

	There was no dissident-hacker rhetoric about  freedom-
of-information among the finger-hackers.  Most of them came 
out of the cocaine-dealing fraternity, and they retailed stolen 
calls with the same street-crime techniques of lookouts and 
bagholders that a crack gang would employ.  This was down-
and-dirty, urban, ethnic, organized crime, carried out by crime 
families every day, for cash on the barrelhead, in the harsh 
world of the streets.  The finger-hackers dominated certain 
payphones in certain strikingly unsavory neighborhoods.  They 
provided a service no one else would give to a clientele with 
little to lose. 

	With such a vast supply of electronic crime  at hand, Don 
Delaney rocketed from a background in homicide to teaching 
telecom crime at FLETC in less than three years.  Few can rival 
Delaney's hands-on, street-level experience in phone fraud.  
Anyone in 1993 who still believes telecommunications crime to 
be something rare and arcane should have a few words with 
Mr Delaney.  Don Delaney has also written two fine essays, on 
telecom fraud and computer crime, in Joseph Grau's *Criminal 
and Civil Investigations Handbook* (McGraw Hill 1993).

	*Phrack* was still publishing in 1993, now under the able 
editorship of Erik Bloodaxe.  Bloodaxe made a determined 
attempt to get law enforcement and corporate security to pay 
real money for their electronic copies of *Phrack,* but, as 
usual, these stalwart defenders of intellectual property 
preferred to pirate the magazine.  Bloodaxe has still not gotten 
back any of his property from the seizure raids of March 1, 
1990.  Neither has the Mentor, who is still the managing editor 
of Steve Jackson Games.  

	Nor has Robert Izenberg, who has suspended his court 
struggle to get his machinery back.  Mr Izenberg has calculated 
that his $20,000 of equipment seized in 1990 is, in 1993, worth 
$4,000 at most.  The missing software, also gone out his door, 
was long ago replaced.   He might, he says, sue for the sake of 
principle, but he feels that the people who seized his machinery 
have already been discredited, and won't be doing any more 
seizures.  And even if his machinery were returned -- and in 
good repair, which is doubtful -- it will  be essentially worthless 
by 1995.  Robert Izenberg no longer works for IBM, but has a 
job programming for a major telecommunications company in 
Austin.    

	Steve Jackson won his case against the Secret Service on 
March 12, 1993, just over three years after the federal raid on 
his enterprise.   Thanks to the delaying tactics available 
through the legal doctrine of "qualified immunity," Jackson was 
tactically forced to drop his suit against the individuals William 
Cook, Tim Foley, Barbara Golden and Henry Kluepfel.   (Cook, 
Foley, Golden and Kluepfel did, however, testify during the 
trial.) 

	The Secret Service fought vigorously in the case, battling 
Jackson's lawyers right down the line, on the (mostly 
previously untried) legal turf of the Electronic Communications 
Privacy Act and the Privacy Protection Act of 1980.  The Secret 
Service denied they were legally or morally responsible for 
seizing the work of a publisher.   They claimed that (1)  
Jackson's gaming "books" weren't real books anyhow, and (2) 
the Secret Service didn't realize SJG Inc was a "publisher" 
when they raided his offices, and (3) the books only vanished by 
accident because they merely happened to be inside the 
computers the agents were appropriating. 

	The Secret Service also denied any wrongdoing in 
reading and erasing all the supposedly "private" e-mail inside 
Jackson's seized board, Illuminati.  The USSS attorneys 
claimed the seizure did not violate the Electronic 
Communications Privacy Act, because they weren't actually 
"intercepting" electronic mail that was moving on a wire, but 
only electronic mail that was quietly sitting on a disk inside 
Jackson's computer.  They also claimed that USSS agents 
hadn't read any of the private mail on Illuminati; and anyway, 
even supposing that they had, they were allowed to do that by 
the subpoena.  

	The Jackson case became even more peculiar when the 
Secret Service attorneys went so far as to allege that the 
federal raid against the gaming company had actually 
*improved Jackson's business*  thanks to the ensuing 
nationwide publicity. 

	It was a long and rather involved trial.  The judge 
seemed most perturbed, not by the arcane matters of electronic 
law, but by the fact that the Secret Service could have avoided 
almost all the consequent trouble simply by giving Jackson his 
computers back in short order.   The Secret Service easily could 
have looked at everything in Jackson's computers, recorded 
everything, and given the machinery back, and there would 
have been no major scandal or federal court suit.  On the 
contrary, everybody simply would have had a good laugh.  
Unfortunately, it appeared that this idea had never entered the 
heads of the Chicago-based investigators.  They seemed to 
have concluded unilaterally, and without due course of law, 
that the world would be better off if Steve Jackson didn't have 
computers.  Golden and Foley claimed that they had both never 
even heard of the Privacy Protection Act.  Cook had heard of 
the Act, but he'd decided on his own that the Privacy Protection 
Act had nothing to do with Steve Jackson.

	The Jackson case was also a very politicized trial, both 
sides deliberately angling for a long-term legal precedent that 
would stake-out big claims for their interests in cyberspace.   
Jackson and his EFF advisors tried hard to establish that the 
least e-mail remark of the lonely electronic pamphleteer 
deserves the same somber civil-rights protection as that 
afforded *The New York Times.*  By stark contrast, the Secret 
Service's attorneys argued boldly that the contents of an 
electronic bulletin board have no more expectation of privacy 
than a heap of postcards.  In the final analysis, very little was 
firmly nailed down.  Formally, the legal rulings in the Jackson 
case apply only in the federal Western District of Texas.   It 
was, however, established that these were real civil-liberties 
issues that powerful people were prepared to go to the 
courthouse over; the seizure of bulletin board systems, though 
it still goes on, can be a perilous act for the seizer.   The Secret 
Service owes Steve Jackson $50,000 in damages, and a 
thousand dollars each to three of Jackson's angry and offended 
board users.  And Steve Jackson, rather than owning the 
single-line bulletin board system "Illuminati" seized in 1990,  
now rejoices in possession of a huge privately-owned Internet 
node, "io.com," with dozens of phone-lines on its  own T-1 
trunk.  

	Jackson has made the entire blow-by-blow narrative of 
his case available electronically, for interested parties.  And yet, the
Jackson case may still not be over; a Secret Service appeal seems 
likely and the EFF is also gravely dissatisfied with the ruling on 
electronic interception.

	The WELL, home of the American electronic civil 
libertarian movement, added two thousand more users and 
dropped its aging Sequent computer in favor of a snappy new 
Sun Sparcstation.  Search-and-seizure dicussions on the WELL 
are now taking a decided back-seat to the current hot topic in 
digital civil liberties, unbreakable public-key encryption for 
private citizens.

	The Electronic Frontier Foundation left its modest home 
in Boston to move inside the Washington Beltway of the 
Clinton Administration.  Its new executive director, ECPA 
pioneer and longtime ACLU activist Jerry Berman, gained a 
reputation of a man adept as dining with tigers, as the EFF 
devoted its attention to networking at the highest levels of the 
computer and telecommunications industry.  EFF's pro-
encryption lobby and anti-wiretapping initiative were 
especially impressive, successfully assembling a herd of highly 
variegated industry camels under the same EFF tent, in open 
and powerful opposition to the electronic ambitions of the FBI 
and the NSA.

	EFF had transmuted at light-speed from an insurrection 
to an institution.  EFF Co-Founder Mitch Kapor once again 
sidestepped the bureaucratic consequences of his own success, 
by remaining in Boston and adapting the role of EFF guru and 
gray eminence.   John Perry Barlow, for his part, left Wyoming, 
quit the Republican Party, and moved to New York City, 
accompanied by his swarm of cellular phones.   Mike Godwin 
left Boston for Washington as EFF's official legal adviser to the 
electronically afflicted.

	After the Neidorf trial, Dorothy Denning further proved 
her firm scholastic independence-of-mind by speaking up 
boldly on the usefulness and social value of federal 
wiretapping.  Many civil libertarians, who regarded the 
practice of wiretapping with deep occult horror,  were 
crestfallen to the point of comedy when nationally known 
"hacker sympathizer" Dorothy Denning sternly defended 
police and public interests in official eavesdropping.  However, 
no amount of public uproar seemed to swerve the "quaint" Dr. 
Denning in the slightest.  She not only made up her own mind, 
she made it up in public and then stuck to her guns.

	In 1993, the stalwarts of the Masters of Deception, Phiber 
Optik, Acid Phreak and Scorpion, finally fell afoul of the 
machineries of legal prosecution.  Acid Phreak and Scorpion 
were sent to prison for six months, six months of home 
detention, 750 hours of community service, and, oddly, a $50 
fine for conspiracy to commit computer crime.  Phiber Optik, 
the computer intruder with perhaps the highest public profile in 
the entire world, took the longest to plead guilty, but, facing 
the possibility of ten years in jail, he finally did so.  He was 
sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

	As for the Atlanta wing of the Legion of Doom, Prophet, 
Leftist and Urvile...   Urvile now works for a software 
company in Atlanta.  He is still on probation and still repaying 
his enormous fine.  In fifteen months, he will once again be 
allowed to own a personal computer.  He is still a convicted 
federal felon, but has not had any legal difficulties since leaving 
prison.  He has lost contact with Prophet and Leftist.   
Unfortunately, so have I, though not through lack of honest 
effort.

	Knight Lightning, now 24,  is a technical writer for 
the federal government in Washington DC.  He has still not 
been accepted into law school, but having spent more than his 
share of time in the company of attorneys, he's come to think 
that maybe an MBA would be more to the point.   He still owes 
his attorneys $30,000, but the sum is dwindling steadily since he 
is manfully working two jobs.  Knight Lightning customarily 
wears a suit and tie and carries a valise.  He has a federal 
security clearance.

	Unindicted *Phrack* co-editor Taran King is also a 
technical writer in Washington DC,  and recently got married.

	Terminus did his time, got out of prison, and currently 
lives in Silicon Valley where he is running a full-scale Internet 
node, "netsys.com."   He programs professionally for a 
company specializing in satellite links for the Internet.

	Carlton Fitzpatrick still teaches at the Federal Law 
Enforcement Training Center, but FLETC found that the issues 
involved in sponsoring and running a bulletin board system are 
rather more complex than they at first appear to be.

	Gail Thackeray  briefly considered going into private 
security, but then changed tack, and joined the Maricopa 
County District Attorney's Office (with a salary).  She is still 
vigorously prosecuting electronic racketeering in Phoenix, 
Arizona.

	The fourth consecutive Computers, Freedom and Privacy 
Conference will take place in March 1994 in Chicago.

	As for Bruce Sterling... well *8-).  I thankfully abandoned 
my brief career as  a true-crime journalist and wrote a new 
science fiction novel, *Heavy Weather,* and assembled a new 
collection of short stories, *Globalhead.*  I also write 
nonfiction regularly,  for the popular-science column in *The 
Magazine of  Fantasy and Science Fiction.*  

	I like life better on the far side of the boundary between 
fantasy and reality;  but I've come to recognize that reality has 
an unfortunate  way of annexing fantasy for its own purposes.  
That's why I'm on the Police Liaison Committee for  EFF-
Austin, a local electronic civil liberties group (eff-
austin@tic.com).  I don't think I will ever get over my 
experience of the Hacker Crackdown, and I expect to be 
involved in electronic civil liberties activism for the rest of my 
life.

	It wouldn't be hard to find material for another book on 
computer crime and civil liberties issues.   I truly believe that I 
could write another book much like this one, every year.  
Cyberspace is very big.  There's a lot going on out there, far 
more than can be adequately covered by the tiny, though 
growing, cadre of network-literate reporters.  I do wish I could 
do more work on this topic, because the various people of 
cyberspace are an element of our society that definitely requires 
sustained study and attention.  

	But there's only one of me, and I have a lot on my mind, 
and, like most science fiction writers, I have a lot more 
imagination than discipline.  Having done my stint as an 
electronic-frontier reporter, my hat is off to those stalwart few 
who do it every day.  I may return to this topic some day, but I 
have no real plans to do so.  However, I didn't have any real 
plans to write "Hacker Crackdown," either.  Things happen, 
nowadays.  There are landslides in cyberspace.  I'll just have to 
try and stay alert and on my feet.

	The electronic landscape changes with astounding speed.  
We are living through the fastest technological transformation 
in human history.  I was glad to have a chance to document 
cyberspace during one moment in its long mutation; a kind of 
strobe-flash of the maelstrom.  This book is already out-of-
date, though, and it will be quite obsolete in another five years.  
It seems a pity.

	However, in about fifty years, I think this book might 
seem quite interesting.  And in a hundred years, this book 
should seem mind-bogglingly archaic and bizarre, and will 
probably seem far weirder to an audience in 2092 than it ever 
seemed to the contemporary readership.

	Keeping up in cyberspace requires a great deal of 
sustained attention.   Personally, I keep tabs with the milieu by 
reading the invaluable electronic magazine  Computer 
underground Digest  (tk0jut2@mvs.cso.niu.edu with the subject 
header: SUB CuD and a message that says:  SUB CuD your 
name     your.full.internet@address).  I also read Jack Rickard's 
bracingly iconoclastic *Boardwatch  Magazine* for print news 
of the BBS and online community.  And, needless to say, I read 
*Wired,* the first magazine of the 1990s that actually looks and 
acts like it really belongs in this decade.  There are other ways 
to learn, of course, but these three outlets will guide your 
efforts very well.

	When I myself want to publish something electronically, 
which I'm doing with increasing frequency, I generally put it on 
the gopher at Texas Internet Consulting, who are my, well, 
Texan Internet consultants  (tic.com).  This book can be found 
there.  I think it is a worthwhile act to let this work go free.  

	From thence, one's bread floats out onto the dark waters 
of cyberspace, only to return someday, tenfold.  And of course, 
thoroughly soggy, and riddled with an entire amazing 
ecosystem of bizarre and gnawingly hungry cybermarine life-
forms.  For this author at least, that's all that really counts.

	Thanks for your attention  *8-)

	Bruce Sterling  bruces@well.sf.ca.us  -- New Years' Day 
1994, Austin Texas
.
