BMUG Roadside Resources 2/BMUG_Roadside_Resources_2_CD-ROM.dmg/Complete Books/The Hacker Crackdown

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THE HACKER CRACKDOWN
Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
by Bruce Sterling

Literary Freeware:  Not for Commercial Use

Copyright (c) 1992, 1994  Bruce Sterling - [e-mail]

This is Texinfo edition 1.2, as of January 23, 1994
created by Joerg Heitkoetter - [e-mail]

The original plain ASCII files are available electronically by
Gopher from `tic.com'.

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
this publication provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
are preserved on all copies.


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 PostMortem / 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 RunsUnderground
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

THE HACKER CRACKDOWN
********************

by Bruce Sterling

Literary Freeware:  Not for Commercial Use

Copyright (c) 1992, 1994 Bruce Sterling - [e-mail]

This is Texinfo edition 1.2, as of January 23, 1994
created by Joerg Heitkoetter - [e-mail]

The original plain ASCII files are available electronically by
Gopher from `tic.com'.

Preface to the Electronic Release
*********************************

   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  sixdollar *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 activists.  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 - [e-mail]

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 E911 Document 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 databanks; 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.

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
     PostMortem / Landslides in Cyberspace

   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, wellmeant 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 audiotelegraph.
This was an event without precedent.

   Technologies in their "Goofy Prototype" stage rarely work very well.
They're experimental, and therefore halfbaked 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(C)."  Hirmondo(C) 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(C) would be on the air - or rather, on the phone.

   Hirmondo(C) is dead tech today, but  Hirmondo(C) might be considered a
spiritual ancestor of the modern telephone-accessed computer data services,
such as CompuServe, GEnie or Prodigy.  The principle behind Hirmondo(C) 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 partylines, 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, fiberoptic 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 hightechnology, 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-bottom 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 redeyed 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 became 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  hightech
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 corporatecitizen
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 computerhacker 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 hierarchy, 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 nonregional, 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 be "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, callwaiting, 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 fullpage newspaper ads in
New York, offering their own longdistance 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.

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

   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 "hightech 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,
imagehungry 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 coinslugs, 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 phonecompany 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, highstakes
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
TechnoRevolution" 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
narrowminded 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 technorat 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 messagepassing center for users dialing-up over
the phone-lines through the use of  modems.   A "modem," or
modulatordemodulator, 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.  "Chatlines" 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.  Drugdealing
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, smallscale
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 drugdealing 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.

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

   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   |
     +------------+
     3641 06-11-91  Anarchy Files ANARC.ZIP
     63703 06-11-91 Anarchist Book ANARCHST.ZIP

     2076 06-11-91  Anarchy At Home ANARCHY.ZIP
     6982 06-11-91  Anarchy No 3 ANARCHY3.ZIP
     2361 06-11-91  Anarchy Toys ANARCTOY.ZIP
     2877 06-11-91  Anti-modem Weapons ANTIMODM.ZIP
     4494 06-11-91  How To Make An Atom Bomb ATOM.ZIP
     3982 06-11-91  Barbiturate Formula BARBITUA.ZIP
     2810 06-11-91  Black Powder Formulas BLCKPWDR.ZIP
     3765 06-11-91  How To Make Bombs BOMB.ZIP
     2036 06-11-91  Things That Go Boom BOOM.ZIP
     1926 06-11-91  Chlorine Bomb CHLORINE.ZIP
     1500 06-11-91  Anarchy Cook Book COOKBOOK.ZIP
     3947 06-11-91  Destroy Stuff DESTROY.ZIP
     2576 06-11-91  Dust Bomb DUSTBOMB.ZIP
     3230 06-11-91  Electronic Terror ELECTERR.ZIP
     2598 06-11-91  Explosives 1 EXPLOS1.ZIP

     18051 06-11-91 More Explosives EXPLOSIV.ZIP
     4521 06-11-91  Ez-stealing EZSTEAL.ZIP
     2240 06-11-91  Flame Thrower FLAME.ZIP
     2533 06-11-91  Flashlight Bomb FLASHLT.ZIP
     2906 06-11-91  How To Make An Fm Bug FMBUG.ZIP
     2139 06-11-91  Home Explosives OMEEXPL.ZIP
     3332 06-11-91  How To Break In HOW2BRK.ZIP
     2990 06-11-91  Letter Bomb LETTER.ZIP
     2199 06-11-91  How To Pick Locks LOCK.ZIP
     3991 06-11-91  Briefcase Locks MRSHIN.ZIP
     3563 06-11-91  Napalm At Home NAPALM.ZIP
     3158 06-11-91  Fun With Nitro NITRO.ZIP
     2962 06-11-91  Paramilitary Info PARAMIL.ZIP
     3398 06-11-91  Picking Locks PICKING.ZIP
     2137 06-11-91  Pipe Bomb PIPEBOMB.ZIP
     3987 06-11-91  Formulas With Potassium POTASS.ZIP
     11074 08-03-90  More Pranks To Pull On Idiots! PRANK.TXT
     4447 06-11-91  Revenge Tactics REVENGE.ZIP
     2590 06-11-91  Rockets For Fun ROCKET.ZIP
     3385 06-11-91  How To Smuggle SMUGGLE.ZIP

   *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 modemless 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 makebelieve, 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
wirefraud.   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 phonephreak 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 Applehacker 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 bestpublicized 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 supervillains headed by the chrome-domed criminal
ultramastermind 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. "CompuPhreak" 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 technobureaucratese, 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
wordanalysis 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 phonebooth, 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 breakins 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 wirefraud.  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 cardholder'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
heavymetal 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
roughand-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 wellpaying 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 - spellcasting 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 straightout, 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 wellsuited 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 nondisclosure 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, levelheaded 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 fencesitters 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 highspeed 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 online 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,
smallscale fantasy into the impure, highly publicized, largescale 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 searchwarrant 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 literarycritical 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.

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

   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 antihacker 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, realtime 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
rip-offs 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
overmanned);  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 anomalous 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.   Of
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 computerequipped 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 wirefraud 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 Congress thinks is one thing, and Congress has been known to change its
mind.  The *real* turfstruggle 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 antiforgery 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
midnineteenth-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 use 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 mid70s, 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 online 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 Fed Ex
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 airtraffic
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 phonephreaks 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
powertripping.   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
firstname 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 topdown 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 shoppingmalls 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 hotshots, 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 phonelines."  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.*   Phonephreaks 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
carsmashing 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 wellreceived 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 simulationgaming 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 onsite 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 phoneservice 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 nerveshredded 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."

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

   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 hierarchy.

   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.

                        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
                             -----------
     AI/Forth/Realtime      (g realtime)  Amiga             (g amiga)
     Apple                  (g app)       Computer Books    (g cbook)
     Art & Graphics         (g gra)       Hacking           (g hack)
     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)
     NeXt                   (g next)      OS/2              (g os2)
     Printers               (g print)     Programmer's Net  (g net)
     Siggraph               (g siggraph)  Software Design   (g sdc)
     Software/Programming   (g software)
     Software Support       (g ssc)
     Unix                   (g unix)      Windows           (g windows)
     Word Processing        (g word)


                         Technical - Communications
                        ----------------------------
     Bioinfo                (g bioinfo)   Info              (g boing)
     Media                  (g media)     NAPLPS            (g naplps)
     Netweaver              (g netweaver) Networld          (g networld)
     Packet Radio           (g packet)    Photography       (g pho)
     Radio                  (g rad)       Science           (g science)
     Technical Writers      (g tec)       Telecommunications(g tele)
     Usenet                 (g usenet)    Video             (g vid)
     Virtual Reality        (g vr)


                              The WELL Itself
                              ---------------
     Deeper                 (g deeper)    Entry             (g ent)
     General                (g gentech)   Help              (g help)
     Hosts                  (g hosts)     Policy            (g policy)
     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-hierarchical, 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 newly wed 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
([e-mail]).  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  ([e-mail] 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  [e-mail] - New Years' Day 1994, Austin Texas