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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hacker Crackdown, by Bruce Sterling

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below **

-**     Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file.     **

-

-Title: Hacker Crackdown

-       Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

-

-Author: Bruce Sterling

-

-Posting Date: February 9, 2012 [EBook #101]

-Release Date: January, 1994

-

-Language: English

-

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HACKER CRACKDOWN ***

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-THE HACKER CRACKDOWN

-

-Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

-

-by Bruce Sterling

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS

-

-

-Preface to the Electronic Release of The Hacker Crackdown

-

-Chronology of the Hacker Crackdown

-

-

-Introduction

-

-

-Part 1:  CRASHING THE SYSTEM

-A Brief History of Telephony

-Bell's Golden Vaporware

-Universal Service

-Wild Boys and Wire Women

-The Electronic Communities

-The Ungentle Giant

-The Breakup

-In Defense of the System

-The Crash Post-Mortem

-Landslides in Cyberspace

-

-

-Part 2:  THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND

-Steal This Phone

-Phreaking and Hacking

-The View From Under the Floorboards

-Boards: Core of the Underground

-Phile Phun

-The Rake's Progress

-Strongholds of the Elite

-Sting Boards

-Hot Potatoes

-War on the Legion

-Terminus

-Phile 9-1-1

-War Games

-Real Cyberpunk

-

-

-Part 3:  LAW AND ORDER

-Crooked Boards

-The World's Biggest Hacker Bust

-Teach Them a Lesson

-The U.S. Secret Service

-The Secret Service Battles the Boodlers

-A Walk Downtown

-FCIC: The Cutting-Edge Mess

-Cyberspace Rangers

-FLETC:  Training the Hacker-Trackers

-

-

-Part 4:  THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS

-NuPrometheus + FBI = Grateful Dead

-Whole Earth + Computer Revolution = WELL

-Phiber Runs Underground and Acid Spikes the Well

-The Trial of Knight Lightning

-Shadowhawk Plummets to Earth

-Kyrie in the Confessional

-$79,499

-A Scholar Investigates

-Computers, Freedom, and Privacy

-

-

-Electronic Afterword to The Hacker Crackdown, Halloween 1993

-

-

-

-

-THE HACKER CRACKDOWN

-

-Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

-

-by Bruce Sterling

-

-

-

-

-

-Preface to the Electronic Release of The Hacker Crackdown

-

-

-January 1, 1994--Austin, Texas

-

-

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

-

-Out in the traditional world of print, The Hacker Crackdown

-is ISBN 0-553-08058-X, and is formally catalogued by

-the Library of Congress as "1.  Computer crimes--United States.

-2.  Telephone--United States--Corrupt practices.

-3.  Programming (Electronic computers)--United States--Corrupt practices."

-

-`Corrupt practices,' I always get a kick out of that description.

-Librarians are very ingenious people.

-

-The paperback is ISBN 0-553-56370-X.  If you go

-and buy a print version of The Hacker Crackdown,

-an action I encourage heartily, you may notice that

-in the front of the book, beneath the copyright notice--

-"Copyright (C) 1992 by Bruce Sterling"--

-it has this little block of printed legal

-boilerplate from the publisher.  It says, and I quote:

-

- "No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

-or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

-recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

-without permission in writing from the publisher.

-For information address:  Bantam Books."

-

-This is a pretty good disclaimer, as such disclaimers go.

-I collect intellectual-property disclaimers, and I've seen dozens of them,

-and this one is at least pretty straightforward.  In this narrow

-and particular case, however, it isn't quite accurate.

-Bantam Books puts that disclaimer on every book they publish,

-but Bantam Books does not, in fact, own the electronic rights to this book.

-I do, because of certain extensive contract maneuverings my agent and I

-went through before this book was written.  I want to give those electronic

-publishing rights away through certain not-for-profit channels,

-and I've convinced Bantam that this is a good idea.

-

-Since Bantam has seen fit to peacably agree to this scheme of mine,

-Bantam Books is not going to fuss about this.  Provided you don't try

-to sell the book, they are not going to bother you for what you do with

-the electronic copy of this book.  If you want to check this out personally,

-you can ask them; they're at 1540 Broadway NY NY 10036.  However, if you were

-so foolish as to print this book and start retailing it for money in violation

-of my copyright and the commercial interests of Bantam Books, then Bantam,

-a part of the gigantic Bertelsmann multinational publishing combine,

-would roust some of their heavy-duty attorneys out of hibernation

-and crush you like a bug.  This is only to be expected.

-I didn't write this book so that you could make money out of it.

-If anybody is gonna make money out of this book,

-it's gonna be me and my publisher.

-

-My publisher deserves to make money out of this book.

-Not only did the folks at Bantam Books commission me

-to write the book, and pay me a hefty sum to do so, but

-they bravely printed, in text, an electronic document the

-reproduction of which was once alleged to be a federal felony.

-Bantam Books and their numerous attorneys were very brave

-and forthright about this book.  Furthermore, my former editor

-at Bantam Books, Betsy Mitchell, genuinely cared about this project,

-and worked hard on it, and had a lot of wise things to say

-about the manuscript.  Betsy deserves genuine credit for this book,

-credit that editors too rarely get.

-

-The critics were very kind to The Hacker Crackdown,

-and commercially the book has done well.  On the other hand,

-I didn't write this book in order to squeeze every last nickel

-and dime out of the mitts of impoverished sixteen-year-old

-cyberpunk high-school-students.  Teenagers don't have any money--

-(no, not even enough for the six-dollar Hacker Crackdown paperback,

-with its attractive bright-red cover and useful index).

-That's a major reason why teenagers sometimes succumb to the temptation

-to do things they shouldn't, such as swiping my books out of libraries.

-Kids:  this one is all yours, all right?  Go give the print version back.

-*8-)

-

-Well-meaning, public-spirited civil libertarians don't have much money,

-either.  And it seems almost criminal to snatch cash out of the hands of

-America's direly underpaid electronic law enforcement community.

-

-If you're a computer cop, a hacker, or an electronic civil

-liberties activist, you are the target audience for this book.

-I wrote this book because I wanted to help you, and help other people

-understand you and your unique, uhm, problems.  I wrote this book

-to aid your activities, and to contribute to the public discussion

-of important political issues.  In giving the text away in this

-fashion, I am directly contributing to the book's ultimate aim:

-to help civilize cyberspace.

-

-Information WANTS to be free.  And  the information inside

-this book longs for freedom with a peculiar intensity.

-I genuinely believe that the natural habitat of this book

-is inside an electronic network.  That may not be the easiest

-direct method to generate revenue for the book's author,

-but that doesn't matter; this is where this book belongs

-by its nature.  I've written other books--plenty of other books--

-and I'll write more and I am writing more, but this one is special.

-I am making The Hacker Crackdown available electronically

-as widely as I can conveniently manage, and if you like the book,

-and think it is useful, then I urge you to do the same with it.

-

-You can copy this electronic book.  Copy the heck out of it,

-be my guest, and give those copies to anybody who wants them.

-The nascent world of cyberspace is full of sysadmins, teachers,

-trainers, cybrarians, netgurus, and various species of cybernetic activist.

-If you're one of those people, I know about you, and I know the hassle

-you go through to try to help people learn about the electronic frontier.

-I hope that possessing this book in electronic form will lessen your troubles.

-Granted, this treatment of our electronic social spectrum is not the ultimate

-in academic rigor.  And politically, it has something to offend

-and trouble almost everyone.  But hey, I'm told it's readable,

-and at least the price is right.

-

-You can upload the book onto bulletin board systems, or Internet nodes,

-or electronic discussion groups.  Go right ahead and do that, I am giving

-you express permission right now.  Enjoy yourself.

-

-You can put the book on disks and give the disks away,

-as long as you don't take any money for it.

-

-But this book is not public domain.  You can't copyright it in

-your own name.  I own the copyright.  Attempts to pirate this book

-and make money from selling it may involve you in a serious litigative snarl.

-Believe me, for the pittance you might wring out of such an action,

-it's really not worth it.  This book don't "belong" to you.

-In an odd but very genuine way, I feel it doesn't "belong" to me, either.

-It's a book about the people of cyberspace, and distributing it in this way

-is the best way I know to actually make this information available,

-freely and easily, to all the people of cyberspace--including people

-far outside the borders of the United States, who otherwise may never

-have a chance to see any edition of the book, and who may perhaps learn

-something useful from this strange story of distant, obscure, but portentous

-events in so-called "American cyberspace."

-

-This electronic book is now literary freeware.  It now belongs to the

-emergent realm of alternative information economics.  You have no right

-to make this electronic book part of the conventional flow of commerce.

-Let it be part of the flow of knowledge: there's a difference.

-I've divided the book into four sections, so that it is less ungainly

-for upload and download; if there's a section of particular relevance

-to you and your colleagues, feel free to reproduce that one and skip the rest.

-

-[Project Gutenberg has reassembled the file, with Sterling's permission.]

-

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

-

-Now have fun.

-

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

-

-

-THE HACKER CRACKDOWN

-

-Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

-

-by Bruce Sterling

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-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 data-banks;

-and so do spies, industrial, political, and just plain snoops;

-and so do police, at least a few of them.  And there are children

-living there now.

-

-People have met there and been married there.

-There are entire living communities in cyberspace today;

-chattering, gossiping, planning, conferring and scheming,

-leaving one another voice-mail and electronic mail,

-giving one another big weightless chunks of valuable data,

-both legitimate and illegitimate.  They busily pass one another

-computer software and the occasional festering computer virus.

-

-We do not really understand how to live in cyberspace yet.

-We are feeling our way into it, blundering about.

-That is not surprising.  Our lives in the physical world,

-the "real" world, are also far from perfect, despite a lot more practice.

-Human lives, real lives, are imperfect by their nature, and there are

-human beings in cyberspace.  The way we live in cyberspace is

-a funhouse mirror of the way we live in the real world.

-We take both our advantages and our troubles with us.

-

-This book is about trouble in cyberspace.

-Specifically, this book is about certain strange events in

-the year 1990, an unprecedented and startling year for the

-the growing world of computerized communications.

-

-In 1990 there came a nationwide crackdown on illicit

-computer hackers, with arrests, criminal charges,

-one dramatic show-trial, several guilty pleas, and

-huge confiscations of data and equipment all over the USA.

-

-The Hacker Crackdown of 1990 was larger, better organized,

-more deliberate, and more resolute than any previous effort

-in the brave new world of computer crime.  The U.S. Secret Service,

-private telephone security, and state and local law enforcement groups

-across the country all joined forces in a determined attempt to break

-the back of America's electronic underground.  It was a fascinating

-effort, with very mixed results.

-

-The Hacker Crackdown had another unprecedented effect;

-it spurred the creation, within "the computer community,"

-of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a new and very odd

-interest group, fiercely  dedicated to the establishment

-and preservation of electronic civil liberties.  The crackdown,

-remarkable in itself, has created a melee of debate over electronic crime,

-punishment, freedom of the press, and issues of search and seizure.

-Politics has entered cyberspace.  Where people go, politics follow.

-

-This is the story of the people of cyberspace.

-

-

-

-PART ONE:  Crashing the System

-

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

-

-This was a strange, dire, huge event.  Sixty thousand people lost

-their telephone service completely.  During the nine long hours

-of frantic effort that it took to restore service, some seventy million

-telephone calls went uncompleted.

-

-Losses of service, known as "outages" in the telco trade,

-are a known and accepted hazard of the telephone business.

-Hurricanes hit, and phone cables get snapped by the thousands.

-Earthquakes wrench through buried fiber-optic lines.

-Switching stations catch fire and burn to the ground.

-These things do happen.  There are contingency plans for them,

-and decades of experience in dealing with them.

-But the Crash of January 15 was unprecedented.

-It was unbelievably huge, and it occurred for

-no apparent physical reason.

-

-The crash started  on a Monday afternoon in a single

-switching-station in Manhattan.  But, unlike any merely

-physical damage, it spread and spread.  Station after

-station across America collapsed in a chain reaction,

-until fully half of AT&T's network had gone haywire

-and the remaining half was hard-put to handle the overflow.

-

-Within nine hours, AT&T software engineers more or less

-understood what had caused the crash.  Replicating the

-problem exactly, poring over software line by line,

-took them a couple of weeks.  But because it was hard

-to understand technically, the full truth of the matter

-and its implications were not widely and thoroughly aired

-and explained.  The root cause of the crash remained obscure,

-surrounded by rumor and fear.

-

-The crash was a grave corporate embarrassment.

-The "culprit" was a bug in AT&T's own software--not the

-sort of admission the telecommunications giant wanted

-to make, especially in the face of increasing competition.

-Still, the truth WAS told, in the baffling technical terms

-necessary to explain it.

-

-Somehow the explanation failed to persuade

-American law enforcement officials and even telephone

-corporate security personnel.  These people were not

-technical experts or software wizards, and they had their

-own suspicions about the cause of this disaster.

-

-The police and telco security had important sources

-of information denied to mere software engineers.

-They had informants in the computer underground and

-years of experience in dealing with high-tech rascality

-that seemed to grow ever more sophisticated.

-For years they had been expecting a direct and

-savage attack against the American national telephone system.

-And with the Crash of January 15--the first month of a

-new, high-tech decade--their predictions, fears,

-and suspicions seemed at last to have entered the real world.

-A world where the telephone system had not merely crashed,

-but, quite likely, BEEN crashed--by "hackers."

-

-The  crash created a large dark cloud of suspicion

-that would color certain people's assumptions and actions

-for months.  The fact that it took place in the realm of

-software was suspicious on its face.  The fact that it

-occurred on Martin Luther King Day, still the most

-politically touchy of American holidays, made it more

-suspicious yet.

-

-The  Crash of January 15  gave the Hacker Crackdown

-its sense of edge and its sweaty urgency.  It made people,

-powerful people in positions of public authority,

-willing to believe the worst.  And, most fatally,

-it helped to give investigators a willingness

-to take extreme measures and the determination

-to preserve almost total secrecy.

-

-An obscure software fault in an aging switching system

-in New York was to lead to a chain reaction of legal

-and constitutional trouble all across the country.

-

-#

-

-Like the crash in the telephone system, this chain reaction

-was ready and waiting to happen.  During the 1980s,

-the American legal system was extensively patched

-to deal with the novel issues of computer crime.

-There was, for instance, the Electronic Communications

-Privacy Act of 1986  (eloquently described as "a stinking mess"

-by a prominent law enforcement official).  And there was the

-draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, passed unanimously

-by the United States Senate, which later would reveal

-a large number of flaws.  Extensive, well-meant efforts

-had been made to keep the legal system up to date.

-But in the day-to-day grind of the real world,

-even the most elegant software tends to crumble

-and suddenly reveal its hidden bugs.

-

-Like the advancing telephone system, the American legal system

-was certainly not ruined by its temporary crash; but for those

-caught under the weight of the collapsing system, life became

-a series of blackouts and anomalies.

-

-In order to understand why these weird events occurred,

-both in the world of technology and in the world of law,

-it's not enough to understand the merely technical problems.

-We will get to those; but first and foremost, we must try

-to understand the telephone, and the business of telephones,

-and the community of human beings that telephones have created.

-

-#

-

-Technologies have life cycles, like cities do,

-like institutions do, like laws and governments do.

-

-The first stage of any technology is the Question

-Mark, often known as the "Golden Vaporware" stage.

-At this early point, the technology is only a phantom,

-a mere gleam in the inventor's eye.  One such inventor

-was a speech teacher and electrical tinkerer named

-Alexander Graham Bell.

-

-Bell's early inventions, while ingenious, failed to move the world.

-In 1863, the teenage Bell and his brother Melville made an artificial

-talking mechanism out of wood, rubber, gutta-percha, and tin.

-This weird device had a rubber-covered "tongue" made of movable

-wooden segments, with vibrating rubber "vocal cords," and

-rubber "lips" and "cheeks."  While Melville puffed a bellows

-into a tin tube, imitating the lungs, young Alec  Bell would

-manipulate the "lips," "teeth," and "tongue," causing the thing

-to emit high-pitched falsetto gibberish.

-

-Another would-be technical breakthrough was the Bell "phonautograph"

-of 1874, actually made out of a human cadaver's ear.  Clamped into place

-on a tripod, this grisly gadget drew sound-wave images on smoked glass

-through a thin straw glued to its vibrating earbones.

-

-By 1875, Bell had learned to produce audible sounds--ugly shrieks

-and squawks--by using magnets, diaphragms, and electrical current.

-

-Most "Golden Vaporware" technologies go nowhere.

-

-But the second stage of technology is the Rising Star,

-or, the "Goofy Prototype," stage.  The telephone, Bell's

-most ambitious gadget yet, reached this stage on March

-10, 1876.  On that great day, Alexander Graham Bell

-became the first person to transmit intelligible human

-speech electrically.  As it happened, young Professor Bell,

-industriously tinkering in his Boston lab, had spattered

-his trousers with acid.  His assistant, Mr. Watson,

-heard his cry for help--over Bell's experimental

-audio-telegraph.  This was an event without precedent.

-

-Technologies in their "Goofy Prototype" stage rarely

-work very well.  They're experimental, and therefore

-half- baked and rather frazzled.  The prototype may

-be attractive and novel, and it does look as if it ought

-to be good for something-or-other.  But nobody, including

-the inventor, is quite sure what.  Inventors, and speculators,

-and pundits may have very firm ideas about its potential

-use, but those ideas are often very wrong.

-

-The natural habitat of the Goofy Prototype is in trade shows

-and in the popular press.  Infant technologies need publicity

-and investment money like a tottering calf need milk.

-This was very true of Bell's machine.  To raise research and

-development money, Bell toured with his device as a stage attraction.

-

-Contemporary press reports of the stage debut of the telephone

-showed pleased astonishment mixed with considerable dread.

-Bell's stage telephone was a large wooden box with a crude

-speaker-nozzle, the whole contraption about the size and shape

-of an overgrown Brownie camera.  Its buzzing steel soundplate,

-pumped up by powerful electromagnets, was loud enough to fill

-an auditorium.  Bell's assistant Mr. Watson, who could manage

-on the keyboards fairly well, kicked in by playing the organ

-from distant rooms, and, later, distant cities.  This feat was

-considered marvellous, but very eerie indeed.

-

-Bell's original notion for the telephone, an idea promoted

-for a couple of  years, was that it would become a mass medium.

-We might recognize Bell's idea today as something close to modern

-"cable radio."  Telephones at a central source would transmit music,

-Sunday sermons, and important public speeches to a paying network

-of wired-up subscribers.

-

-At the time, most people thought this notion made good sense.

-In fact, Bell's idea  was workable.  In Hungary, this philosophy

-of the telephone was successfully put into everyday practice.

-In Budapest, for decades, from 1893 until after World War I,

-there was a government-run information  service called

-"Telefon Hirmondo-."  Hirmondo- was a centralized source

-of news and entertainment and culture, including stock reports,

-plays, concerts, and novels read aloud.  At certain hours

-of the day, the phone would ring, you would plug in

-a loudspeaker for the use of the family, and Telefon

-Hirmondo- would be on the air--or rather, on the phone.

-

-Hirmondo- is dead tech today, but Hirmondo- might be considered

-a spiritual ancestor of the modern telephone-accessed computer

-data services, such as CompuServe, GEnie or Prodigy.

-The principle behind Hirmondo- is also not too far from computer

-"bulletin- board systems" or BBS's, which arrived in the late 1970s,

-spread rapidly across America, and will figure largely in this book.

-

-We are used to using telephones for individual person-to-person speech,

-because we are used to the Bell system.  But this was just one possibility

-among many.  Communication networks are very flexible and protean,

-especially when their hardware becomes sufficiently advanced.

-They can be put to all kinds of uses.  And they have been--

-and they will be.

-

-Bell's telephone was bound for glory, but this was a combination

-of political decisions, canny infighting in court, inspired industrial

-leadership, receptive local conditions and outright good luck.

-Much the same is true of communications systems today.

-

-As Bell and his backers struggled to install their newfangled system

-in the real world of nineteenth-century New England, they had to fight

-against skepticism and industrial rivalry.  There was already a strong

-electrical communications network present in America: the telegraph.

-The head of the Western Union telegraph system dismissed Bell's prototype

-as "an electrical toy" and refused to buy the rights to Bell's patent.

-The telephone, it seemed, might be all right as a parlor entertainment--

-but not for serious business.

-

-Telegrams, unlike mere telephones, left a permanent physical record

-of their messages.  Telegrams, unlike telephones, could be answered

-whenever the recipient had time and convenience.  And the telegram

-had a much longer distance-range than Bell's early telephone.

-These factors made telegraphy seem a much more sound and businesslike

-technology--at least to some.

-

-The telegraph system was huge, and well-entrenched.

-In 1876, the United States had 214,000 miles of telegraph wire,

-and 8500 telegraph offices.  There were specialized telegraphs

-for businesses and stock traders, government, police and fire departments.

-And Bell's "toy" was best known as a stage-magic musical device.

-

-The third stage of technology is known as the "Cash Cow" stage.

-In the "cash cow" stage, a technology finds its place in the world,

-and matures, and becomes settled and productive.  After a year or so,

-Alexander Graham Bell and his capitalist backers concluded that

-eerie music piped from nineteenth-century cyberspace was not the real

-selling-point of his invention.  Instead, the telephone was about speech--

-individual, personal speech, the human voice, human conversation and

-human interaction.  The telephone was not to be managed from any centralized

-broadcast center.  It was to be a personal, intimate technology.

-

-When you picked up a telephone, you were not absorbing

-the cold output of a machine--you were speaking to another human being.

-Once people realized this, their instinctive dread of the telephone

-as an eerie, unnatural device, swiftly vanished.  A "telephone call"

-was not a "call" from a "telephone" itself, but a call from another

-human being, someone you would generally know and recognize.

-The real point was not what the machine could do for you (or to you),

-but what you yourself, a person and citizen, could do THROUGH the machine.

-This decision on the part of the young Bell Company was absolutely vital.

-

-The first telephone networks went up around Boston--mostly among

-the technically curious and the well-to-do (much the same segment

-of the American populace that, a hundred years later, would be

-buying personal computers).  Entrenched backers of the telegraph

-continued to scoff.

-

-But in January 1878, a disaster made the telephone famous.

-A train crashed in Tarriffville, Connecticut.  Forward-looking

-doctors in the nearby city of Hartford had had Bell's

-"speaking telephone" installed.  An alert local druggist

-was able to telephone an entire community of local doctors,

-who rushed to the site to give aid.  The disaster, as disasters do,

-aroused intense press coverage.  The phone had proven its usefulness

-in the real world.

-

-After Tarriffville, the telephone network spread like crabgrass.

-By 1890 it was all over New England.  By '93, out to Chicago.

-By '97, into Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas.  By 1904 it was

-all over the continent.

-

-The telephone had become a mature technology.  Professor Bell

-(now generally known as "Dr. Bell" despite his lack of a formal degree)

-became quite wealthy.  He lost interest in the tedious day-to-day business

-muddle of the booming telephone network, and gratefully returned

-his attention to creatively hacking-around in his various laboratories,

-which were now much larger, better-ventilated, and gratifyingly

-better-equipped.  Bell was never to have another great inventive success,

-though his speculations and prototypes anticipated fiber-optic transmission,

-manned flight, sonar, hydrofoil ships, tetrahedral construction, and

-Montessori education.  The "decibel," the standard scientific measure

-of sound intensity, was named after Bell.

-

-Not all Bell's vaporware notions were inspired.  He was fascinated

-by human eugenics.  He also spent many years developing a weird personal

-system of astrophysics in which gravity did not exist.

-

-Bell was a definite eccentric.  He was something of a hypochondriac,

-and throughout his life he habitually stayed up until four A.M.,

-refusing to rise before noon.  But Bell had accomplished a great feat;

-he was an idol of millions and his influence, wealth, and great

-personal charm, combined with his eccentricity, made him something

-of a loose cannon on deck.  Bell maintained a thriving scientific

-salon in his winter mansion in Washington, D.C., which gave him

-considerable backstage influence in governmental and scientific circles.

-He was a major financial backer of the the magazines Science and

-National Geographic, both still flourishing today as important organs

-of the American scientific establishment.

-

-Bell's companion Thomas Watson, similarly wealthy and similarly odd,

-became the ardent political disciple of a 19th-century science-fiction writer

-and would-be social reformer, Edward Bellamy.  Watson also trod the boards

-briefly as a Shakespearian actor.

-

-There would never be another Alexander Graham Bell,

-but in years to come there would be surprising numbers

-of people like him.  Bell was a prototype of the

-high-tech entrepreneur.  High-tech entrepreneurs will

-play a very prominent role in this book: not merely as

-technicians and businessmen, but as pioneers of the

-technical frontier, who can carry the power and prestige

-they derive from high-technology into the political and

-social arena.

-

-Like later entrepreneurs, Bell was fierce in defense of

-his own technological territory.  As the telephone began to

-flourish, Bell was soon involved in violent lawsuits in the

-defense of his patents.  Bell's Boston lawyers were

-excellent, however, and Bell himself, as an elocution

-teacher and gifted public speaker, was a devastatingly

-effective legal witness.  In the eighteen years of Bell's patents,

-the Bell company was involved in six hundred separate lawsuits.

-The legal records printed filled 149 volumes.  The Bell Company

-won every single suit.

-

-After Bell's exclusive patents expired, rival telephone

-companies sprang up all over America.  Bell's company,

-American Bell Telephone, was soon in deep trouble.

-In 1907, American Bell Telephone fell into the hands of the

-rather sinister J.P. Morgan financial cartel, robber-baron

-speculators who dominated Wall Street.

-

-At this point, history might have taken a different turn.

-American might well have been served forever by a patchwork

-of locally owned telephone companies.  Many state politicians

-and local businessmen considered this an excellent solution.

-

-But the new Bell holding company, American Telephone and Telegraph

-or AT&T, put in a new man at the helm, a visionary industrialist

-named Theodore Vail.  Vail, a former Post Office manager,

-understood large organizations and had an innate feeling

-for the nature of large-scale communications.  Vail quickly

-saw to it that AT&T seized the technological edge once again.

-The Pupin and Campbell "loading coil," and the deForest

-"audion," are both extinct technology today, but in 1913

-they gave Vail's company the best LONG-DISTANCE lines

-ever built.  By controlling long-distance--the links

-between, and over, and above the smaller local phone

-companies--AT&T swiftly gained the whip-hand over them,

-and was soon devouring them right and left.

-

-Vail plowed the profits back into research and development,

-starting the Bell tradition of huge-scale and brilliant

-industrial research.

-

-Technically and financially, AT&T gradually steamrollered

-the opposition.  Independent telephone companies never

-became entirely extinct, and hundreds of them flourish today.

-But Vail's  AT&T became the supreme communications company.

-At one point, Vail's AT&T bought Western Union itself,

-the very company that had derided Bell's telephone as a "toy."

-Vail thoroughly reformed Western Union's hidebound business

-along his modern principles;  but when the federal government

-grew anxious at this centralization of power, Vail politely

-gave Western Union back.

-

-This centralizing process was not unique.  Very similar

-events had happened in American steel, oil, and railroads.

-But AT&T, unlike the other companies, was to remain supreme.

-The monopoly robber-barons of those other industries

-were humbled and shattered by government trust-busting.

-

-Vail, the former Post Office official, was quite willing

-to accommodate the US government; in fact he would

-forge an active alliance with it.  AT&T would become

-almost a wing of the American government, almost

-another Post Office--though not quite.  AT&T would

-willingly submit to federal regulation, but in return,

-it would use the government's regulators as its own police,

-who would keep out competitors and assure the Bell

-system's profits and preeminence.

-

-This was the second birth--the political birth--of the

-American telephone system.  Vail's arrangement was to

-persist, with vast success, for many decades, until 1982.

-His system was an odd kind of American industrial socialism.

-It was born at about the same time as Leninist Communism,

-and it lasted almost as long--and, it must be admitted,

-to considerably better effect.

-

-Vail's system worked.  Except perhaps for aerospace,

-there has been no technology more thoroughly dominated

-by Americans than the telephone.  The telephone was

-seen from the beginning as a quintessentially American

-technology.  Bell's policy, and the policy of Theodore Vail,

-was a profoundly democratic policy of UNIVERSAL ACCESS.

-Vail's famous corporate slogan, "One Policy, One System,

-Universal Service," was a political slogan, with a very

-American ring to it.

-

-The American telephone was not to become the specialized tool

-of government or business, but a general public utility.

-At first, it was true, only the wealthy  could afford

-private telephones, and Bell's company pursued the

-business markets primarily.  The American phone system

-was a capitalist effort, meant to make money; it was not a charity.

-But from the first, almost all communities with telephone service

-had public telephones.  And many stores--especially drugstores--

-offered public use of their phones.  You might not own a telephone--

-but you could always get into the system, if you really needed to.

-

-There was nothing inevitable about this decision to make telephones

-"public" and "universal."  Vail's system involved a profound act

-of trust in the public.  This decision was a political one,

-informed by the basic values of the American republic.

-The situation might have been very different;

-and in other countries, under other systems,

-it certainly was.

-

-Joseph Stalin, for instance, vetoed plans for a Soviet

-phone system soon after the Bolshevik revolution.

-Stalin was certain that publicly accessible telephones

-would become instruments of anti-Soviet counterrevolution

-and conspiracy.  (He was probably right.)  When telephones

-did arrive in the Soviet Union, they would be instruments

-of Party authority, and always heavily tapped.  (Alexander

-Solzhenitsyn's prison-camp novel The First Circle

-describes efforts to develop a phone system more suited

-to Stalinist purposes.)

-

-France, with its tradition of rational centralized government,

-had fought bitterly even against the electric telegraph,

-which seemed to the French entirely too anarchical and frivolous.

-For decades, nineteenth-century France communicated via the

-"visual telegraph," a nation-spanning, government-owned semaphore

-system of huge stone towers that signalled from hilltops,

-across vast distances, with big windmill-like arms.

-In 1846, one Dr. Barbay, a semaphore enthusiast,

-memorably uttered an early version of what might be called

-"the security expert's argument" against the open media.

-

-"No, the electric telegraph is not a sound invention.

-It will always be at the mercy of the slightest disruption,

-wild youths, drunkards, bums, etc. . . .  The electric telegraph

-meets those destructive elements with only a few meters of wire

-over which supervision is impossible.  A single man could,

-without being seen, cut the telegraph wires leading to Paris,

-and in twenty-four hours cut in ten different places the wires

-of the same line, without being arrested.  The visual telegraph,

-on the contrary, has its towers, its high walls, its gates

-well-guarded from inside by strong armed men.  Yes, I declare,

-substitution of the electric telegraph for the visual one

-is a dreadful measure, a truly idiotic act."

-

-Dr. Barbay and his high-security stone machines

-were eventually unsuccessful, but his argument--

-that communication  exists for the safety and convenience

-of the state, and must be carefully protected from the wild

-boys and the gutter rabble who might want to crash the

-system--would be heard again and again.

-

-When the French telephone system finally did arrive,

-its snarled inadequacy was to be notorious.  Devotees

-of the American Bell System often recommended a trip

-to France, for skeptics.

-

-In Edwardian Britain, issues of class and privacy

-were a ball-and-chain for telephonic progress.  It was

-considered outrageous that anyone--any wild fool off

-the street--could simply barge bellowing into one's office

-or home, preceded only by the ringing of a telephone bell.

-In Britain, phones were tolerated for the use of business,

-but private phones tended be stuffed away into closets,

-smoking rooms, or servants' quarters.  Telephone operators

-were resented in Britain because they did not seem to

-"know their place."  And no one of breeding would print

-a telephone number on a business card; this seemed a crass

-attempt to make the acquaintance of strangers.

-

-But phone access in America was to become a popular right;

-something like universal suffrage, only more so.

-American women could not yet vote when the phone system

-came through; yet from the beginning American women

-doted on the telephone.  This "feminization" of the

-American telephone was often commented on by foreigners.

-Phones in America were not censored or stiff or formalized;

-they were social, private, intimate, and domestic.

-In America, Mother's Day is by far the busiest day

-of the year for the phone network.

-

-The early telephone companies, and especially AT&T,

-were among the foremost employers of American women.

-They employed the daughters of the American middle-class

-in great armies: in 1891, eight thousand women; by 1946,

-almost a quarter of a million.  Women seemed to enjoy

-telephone work; it was respectable, it was steady,

-it paid fairly well as women's work went, and--not least--

-it seemed a genuine contribution to the social good

-of the community.  Women found Vail's ideal of public

-service attractive.  This was especially true in rural areas,

-where women operators, running extensive rural party-lines,

-enjoyed considerable social power.  The operator knew everyone

-on the party-line, and everyone knew her.

-

-Although Bell himself was an ardent suffragist, the

-telephone company did not employ women for the sake of

-advancing female liberation.  AT&T did this for sound

-commercial reasons.  The first telephone operators of

-the Bell system were not women, but teenage American boys.

-They were telegraphic messenger boys (a group about to

-be rendered technically obsolescent), who swept up

-around the phone office, dunned customers for bills,

-and made phone connections on the switchboard,

-all on the cheap.

-

-Within the very first  year of operation, 1878,

-Bell's company learned a sharp lesson about combining

-teenage boys and telephone switchboards.  Putting

-teenage boys in charge of the phone system brought swift

-and consistent disaster.  Bell's chief engineer described them

-as "Wild Indians."  The boys were openly rude to customers.

-They talked back to subscribers, saucing off,

-uttering facetious remarks, and generally giving lip.

-The rascals took Saint Patrick's Day off without permission.

-And worst of all they played clever tricks with

-the switchboard plugs:  disconnecting calls, crossing lines

-so that customers found themselves talking to strangers,

-and so forth.

-

-This combination of power, technical mastery, and effective

-anonymity seemed to act like catnip on teenage boys.

-

-This wild-kid-on-the-wires phenomenon was not confined to

-the USA; from the beginning, the same was true of the British

-phone system.  An early British commentator kindly remarked:

-"No doubt boys in their teens found the work not a little irksome,

-and it is also highly probable that under the early conditions

-of employment the adventurous and inquisitive spirits of which

-the average healthy boy of that age is possessed, were not always

-conducive to the best attention being given to the wants

-of the telephone subscribers."

-

-So the boys were flung off the system--or at least,

-deprived of control of the switchboard.  But the

-"adventurous and inquisitive spirits" of the teenage boys

-would be heard from in the world of telephony, again and again.

-

-The fourth stage in the technological life-cycle is death:

-"the Dog," dead tech.  The telephone has so far avoided this fate.

-On the contrary, it is thriving, still spreading, still evolving,

-and at increasing speed.

-

-The telephone has achieved a rare and exalted state for a

-technological artifact:  it has become a HOUSEHOLD OBJECT.

-The telephone, like the clock, like pen and paper,

-like kitchen utensils and running water, has become

-a technology that is visible only by its absence.

-The telephone is technologically transparent.

-The global telephone system is the largest and most

-complex machine in the world, yet it is easy to use.

-More remarkable yet, the telephone is almost entirely

-physically safe for the user.

-

-For the average citizen in the 1870s, the telephone

-was weirder, more shocking, more "high-tech" and

-harder to comprehend, than the most outrageous stunts

-of advanced computing for us Americans in the 1990s.

-In trying to understand what is happening to us today,

-with our bulletin-board systems, direct overseas dialling,

-fiber-optic transmissions, computer viruses, hacking stunts,

-and a vivid tangle of new laws and new crimes, it is important

-to realize that our society has been through a similar challenge before--

-and that, all in all, we did rather well by it.

-

-Bell's stage telephone seemed bizarre at first.  But the

-sensations of weirdness vanished quickly, once people began

-to hear the familiar voices of relatives and friends,

-in their own homes on their own telephones.  The telephone

-changed from a fearsome high-tech totem to an everyday pillar

-of human community.

-

-This has also happened, and is still happening,

-to computer networks.  Computer networks such as

-NSFnet, BITnet, USENET, JANET, are technically

-advanced, intimidating, and much harder to use than

-telephones.  Even the popular, commercial computer

-networks, such as GEnie, Prodigy, and CompuServe,

-cause much head-scratching and have been described

-as "user-hateful."  Nevertheless they too are changing

-from fancy high-tech items into everyday sources

-of human community.

-

-The words "community" and "communication" have

-the same root.  Wherever you put a communications

-network, you put a community as well.  And whenever

-you TAKE AWAY that network--confiscate it, outlaw it,

-crash it, raise its price beyond affordability--

-then you hurt that community.

-

-Communities  will fight to defend themselves.  People will fight harder

-and more bitterly to defend their communities, than they will fight

-to defend their own individual selves.  And this is very true

-of the "electronic community" that arose around computer networks

-in the 1980s--or rather, the VARIOUS electronic communities,

-in telephony, law enforcement, computing, and the digital

-underground that, by the year 1990, were raiding, rallying,

-arresting, suing, jailing, fining and issuing angry manifestos.

-

-None of the events of 1990 were entirely new.

-Nothing happened in 1990 that did not have some kind

-of earlier and more understandable precedent.  What gave

-the Hacker Crackdown its new sense of gravity and

-importance was the feeling--the COMMUNITY feeling--

-that the political stakes had been raised; that trouble

-in cyberspace was no longer mere mischief or inconclusive

-skirmishing, but a genuine fight over genuine issues,

-a fight for community survival and the shape of the future.

-

-These electronic communities, having flourished throughout

-the 1980s, were becoming aware of themselves, and increasingly,

-becoming aware of other, rival communities.  Worries were

-sprouting up right and left, with complaints, rumors,

-uneasy speculations. But it would take a catalyst, a shock,

-to make the new world evident.  Like Bell's great publicity break,

-the Tarriffville Rail Disaster of January 1878,

-it would take a cause celebre.

-

-That cause was the AT&T Crash of January 15, 1990.

-After the Crash, the wounded and anxious telephone

-community would come out fighting hard.

-

-#

-

-The community of telephone technicians, engineers, operators

-and researchers is the oldest community in cyberspace.

-These are the veterans, the most developed group,

-the richest, the most respectable, in most ways the most powerful.

-Whole generations have come and gone since Alexander Graham Bell's day,

-but the community he founded survives; people work for the phone system

-today whose great-grandparents worked for the phone system.

-Its specialty magazines, such as Telephony, AT&T Technical Journal,

-Telephone Engineer and Management, are decades old;

-they make computer publications like Macworld and PC Week

-look like amateur johnny-come-latelies.

-

-And the phone companies take no back seat in high-technology, either.

-Other companies' industrial researchers may have won new markets;

-but the researchers of Bell Labs have won SEVEN NOBEL PRIZES.

-One potent device that Bell Labs originated, the transistor,

-has created entire GROUPS of industries.  Bell Labs are

-world-famous for generating "a patent a day," and have even

-made vital discoveries in astronomy, physics and cosmology.

-

-Throughout its seventy-year history, "Ma Bell" was not so much

-a company as a way of life.  Until the cataclysmic divestiture

-of the 1980s, Ma Bell was perhaps the ultimate maternalist mega-employer.

-The AT&T corporate image was the "gentle giant,"  "the voice with a smile,"

-a vaguely socialist-realist world of cleanshaven linemen in shiny helmets

-and blandly pretty phone-girls in headsets and nylons.  Bell System

-employees were famous as rock-ribbed Kiwanis and Rotary members,

-Little-League enthusiasts, school-board people.

-

-During the long heyday of Ma Bell, the Bell employee corps

-were nurtured top-to-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 red-eyed graveyard-shift over collapsing switching-systems.

-The Bell ethic was the electrical equivalent of the postman's:

-neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night would stop these couriers.

-

-It is easy to be cynical about this, as it is easy to be

-cynical about any political or social system;  but cynicism

-does not change the fact that thousands of people took

-these ideals very seriously.  And some still do.

-

-The Bell ethos was about public service; and that was

-gratifying; but it was also about private POWER, and that

-was gratifying too.  As a corporation, Bell was very special.

-Bell was privileged.  Bell had snuggled up close to the state.

-In fact, Bell was as close to government as you could get in

-America and still make a whole lot of legitimate money.

-

-But unlike other companies, Bell was above and beyond

-the vulgar commercial fray.  Through its regional operating companies,

-Bell was omnipresent, local, and intimate, all over America;

-but the central ivory towers at its corporate heart were the

-tallest and the ivoriest around.

-

-There were other phone companies in America, to be sure;

-the so-called independents.  Rural cooperatives, mostly;

-small fry, mostly tolerated, sometimes warred upon.

-For many decades, "independent" American phone companies

-lived in fear and loathing of the official Bell monopoly

-(or the "Bell Octopus," as Ma Bell's nineteenth-century

-enemies described her in many angry newspaper manifestos).

-Some few of these independent entrepreneurs, while legally

-in the wrong, fought so bitterly against the Octopus

-that their illegal phone networks were cast into the street

-by Bell agents and publicly burned.

-

-The pure technical sweetness of the Bell System gave its operators,

-inventors and engineers a deeply satisfying sense of power and mastery.

-They had devoted their lives to improving this vast nation-spanning machine;

-over years, whole human lives, they had watched it improve and grow.

-It was like a great technological  temple.  They were an elite,

-and they knew it--even if others did not; in fact, they felt

-even more powerful BECAUSE others did not understand.

-

-The deep attraction of this sensation of elite technical power

-should never be underestimated.  "Technical power" is not for everybody;

-for many people it simply has no charm at all.  But for some people,

-it becomes the core of their lives.  For a few, it is overwhelming,

-obsessive;  it becomes something close to an addiction.  People--especially

-clever teenage boys whose lives are otherwise mostly powerless and put-upon

---love this sensation of secret power, and are willing to do all sorts

-of amazing things to achieve it.  The technical POWER of electronics

-has motivated many  strange acts detailed in this book, which would

-otherwise be inexplicable.

-

-So Bell had power beyond mere capitalism.  The Bell service ethos worked,

-and was often propagandized, in a rather saccharine fashion.  Over the decades,

-people slowly grew tired of this.  And then, openly impatient with it.

-By the early 1980s, Ma Bell was to find herself with scarcely a real friend

-in the world.  Vail's industrial socialism had become hopelessly

-out-of-fashion politically.  Bell would be punished for that.

-And that punishment would fall harshly upon the people of the

-telephone community.

-

-#

-

-In 1983, Ma Bell was dismantled by federal court action.

-The pieces of Bell are now separate corporate entities.

-The core of the company became AT&T Communications,

-and also AT&T Industries (formerly Western Electric,

-Bell's manufacturing arm).  AT&T Bell Labs 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

-high- tech fortress of the harsh-breathing  imperial ultra-baddie,

-Darth Vader.)  Even AT&T employees are less than thrilled

-by the Death Star.  A popular (though banned) T-shirt among

-AT&T employees bears the old-fashioned Bell logo of the Bell System,

-plus the newfangled striped sphere, with the before-and-after comments:

-"This is your brain--This is your brain on drugs!"  AT&T made a very

-well-financed and determined effort to break into the personal

-computer market;  it was disastrous, and telco computer experts

-are derisively known by their competitors as "the pole-climbers."

-AT&T and the Baby Bell arbocks still seem to have few friends.

-

-Under conditions of sharp commercial competition, a crash like

-that of January 15, 1990 was a major embarrassment to AT&T.

-It was a direct blow against their much-treasured reputation

-for reliability.  Within days of the crash AT&T's

-Chief Executive Officer, Bob Allen, officially apologized,

-in terms of deeply pained  humility:

-

-"AT&T had a major service disruption last Monday.

-We didn't live up to our own standards of quality,

-and we didn't live up to yours. It's as simple as that.

-And that's not acceptable to us.  Or to you. . . .

-We understand how much people have come to depend

-upon AT&T service, so our AT&T Bell Laboratories scientists

-and our network engineers are doing everything possible

-to guard against a recurrence. . . .  We know there's no way

-to make up for the inconvenience this problem may have caused you."

-

-Mr Allen's "open letter to customers" was printed in lavish ads

-all over the country:  in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today,

-New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune,

-Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle Examiner,

-Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Detroit Free Press,

-Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Cleveland Plain Dealer,

-Atlanta Journal Constitution, Minneapolis Star Tribune,

-St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch, Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer,

-Tacoma News Tribune, Miami Herald, Pittsburgh Press,

-St. Louis Post Dispatch, Denver Post, Phoenix Republic Gazette

-and Tampa Tribune.

-

-In another press release, AT&T went to some pains to suggest

-that this "software glitch" might have happened just as easily to MCI,

-although, in fact, it hadn't.  (MCI's switching software was quite different

-from AT&T's--though not necessarily any safer.)  AT&T also announced

-their plans to offer a rebate of service on Valentine's Day to make up

-for the loss during the Crash.

-

-"Every technical resource available, including Bell Labs

-scientists and engineers, has been devoted to assuring

-it will not occur again," the public was told.  They were

-further assured that "The chances of a recurrence are small--

-a problem of this magnitude never occurred before."

-

-In the meantime, however, police and corporate

-security maintained their own suspicions about

-"the chances of recurrence" and the real reason why

-a "problem of this magnitude" had appeared, seemingly

-out of nowhere.  Police and security knew for a fact

-that hackers of unprecedented sophistication were illegally

-entering, and reprogramming, certain digital switching stations.

-Rumors of hidden "viruses" and secret "logic bombs"

-in the switches ran rampant in the underground,

-with much chortling over AT&T's predicament,

-and idle speculation over what unsung hacker genius

-was responsible for it.  Some hackers, including police

-informants, were trying hard to finger one another

-as the true culprits  of the Crash.

-

-Telco people found little comfort in objectivity when

-they contemplated these possibilities.  It was just too close

-to the bone for them; it was embarrassing; it hurt so much,

-it was hard even to talk about.

-

-There has always been thieving and misbehavior in the phone system.

-There has always been trouble with the rival independents,

-and in the local loops.  But to have such trouble in the core

-of the system, the long-distance switching stations,

-is a horrifying affair.  To telco people, this is

-all the difference between finding roaches in your kitchen

-and big horrid sewer-rats in your bedroom.

-

-From the outside, to the average citizen, the telcos

-still seem gigantic and impersonal.  The American public

-seems to regard them as something akin to Soviet apparats.

-Even when the telcos  do their best corporate-citizen routine,

-subsidizing magnet high-schools and sponsoring news-shows

-on public television, they seem to win little except public suspicion.

-

-But from the inside, all this looks very different.

-There's harsh competition.  A legal and political system

-that seems baffled and bored, when not actively hostile

-to telco interests.  There's a loss of morale, a deep sensation

-of having somehow lost the upper hand.  Technological change

-has caused a loss of data and revenue to other, newer forms

-of transmission.  There's theft, and new forms of theft,

-of growing scale and boldness and sophistication.

-With all these factors, it was no surprise to see the telcos,

-large and small, break out in a litany of bitter complaint.

-

-In late '88 and throughout 1989, telco representatives

-grew shrill in their complaints to those few American law

-enforcement officials who make it their business to try to

-understand what telephone people are talking about.

-Telco security officials had discovered the computer-

-hacker underground, infiltrated it thoroughly,

-and become deeply alarmed at its growing expertise.

-Here they had found a target that was not only loathsome

-on its face, but clearly ripe for counterattack.

-

-Those bitter rivals: AT&T, MCI and Sprint--and a crowd

-of Baby Bells:  PacBell, Bell South, Southwestern Bell,

-NYNEX, USWest, as well as the Bell research consortium Bellcore,

-and the independent long-distance carrier Mid-American--

-all were to have their role in the great hacker dragnet of 1990.

-After years of being battered and pushed around, the telcos had,

-at least in a small way, seized the initiative again.

-After years of turmoil, telcos and government officials were

-once again to work smoothly in concert in defense of the System.

-Optimism blossomed; enthusiasm grew on all sides;

-the prospective taste of vengeance was sweet.

-

-#

-

-From the beginning--even before the crackdown had a name--

-secrecy was a big problem.  There were many good reasons

-for secrecy in the hacker crackdown.  Hackers and code-thieves

-were wily prey, slinking back to their bedrooms and basements

-and destroying vital incriminating evidence at the first hint of trouble.

-Furthermore, the crimes themselves were heavily technical and difficult

-to describe, even to police--much less to the general public.

-

-When such crimes HAD been described intelligibly to the public,

-in the past, that very publicity had tended to INCREASE the crimes

-enormously.  Telco officials, while painfully aware of the vulnerabilities

-of their systems, were anxious not to publicize those weaknesses.

-Experience showed them that those weaknesses, once discovered,

-would be pitilessly exploited by tens of thousands of people--not only

-by professional grifters and by underground hackers and phone phreaks,

-but by many otherwise more-or-less honest everyday folks, who regarded

-stealing service from the faceless, soulless "Phone Company" as a kind of

-harmless indoor sport.  When it came to protecting their interests,

-telcos had long since given up on general public sympathy for

-"the Voice with a Smile."  Nowadays the telco's "Voice" was

-very likely to be a computer's; and the American public

-showed much less of the proper respect and gratitude due

-the fine public service bequeathed them by Dr. Bell and Mr. Vail.

-The more efficient, high-tech, computerized, and impersonal

-the telcos became, it seemed, the more they were met by

-sullen public resentment and amoral greed.

-

-Telco officials wanted to punish the phone-phreak underground, in as

-public and exemplary a manner as possible.  They wanted to make dire

-examples of the worst offenders, to seize the ringleaders and intimidate

-the small fry, to discourage and frighten the wacky hobbyists, and send

-the professional grifters to jail.  To do all this, publicity was vital.

-

-Yet operational secrecy was even more so.  If word got out that

-a nationwide crackdown was coming, the hackers might simply vanish;

-destroy the evidence, hide their computers, go to earth,

-and wait for the campaign to blow over.  Even the young

-hackers were crafty and suspicious, and as for the professional grifters,

-they tended to split for the nearest state-line at the first sign of trouble.

-For the crackdown to work well, they would all have to be caught red-handed,

-swept upon suddenly, out of the blue, from every corner of the compass.

-

-And there was another strong motive for secrecy.  In the worst-case scenario,

-a blown campaign might leave the telcos open to a devastating hacker

-counter-attack.  If there were indeed hackers loose in America who

-had caused the January 15 Crash--if there were truly gifted hackers,

-loose in the nation's long-distance switching systems, and enraged

-or frightened by the crackdown--then they might react unpredictably

-to an attempt to collar them.  Even if caught, they might have talented

-and vengeful friends still running around loose.  Conceivably,

-it could turn ugly.  Very ugly.  In fact, it was hard to imagine

-just how ugly things might turn, given that possibility.

-

-Counter-attack from hackers was a genuine concern for the telcos.

-In point of fact, they would never suffer any such counter-attack.

-But in months to come, they would be at some pains to publicize

-this notion and to utter grim warnings about it.

-

-Still, that risk seemed well worth running.  Better to run the risk

-of vengeful attacks, than to live at the mercy of potential crashers.

-Any cop would tell you that a protection racket had no real future.

-

-And publicity was such a useful thing.  Corporate security officers,

-including telco security, generally work under conditions of great discretion.

-And corporate security officials do not make money for their companies.

-Their job is to PREVENT THE LOSS of money, which is much less glamorous

-than actually winning profits.

-

-If you are a corporate security official, and you do your job brilliantly,

-then nothing bad happens to your company at all.  Because of this, you appear

-completely superfluous.  This is one of the many unattractive aspects

-of security work.  It's rare that these folks have the chance to draw

-some healthy attention to their own efforts.

-

-Publicity also served the interest of their friends in law enforcement.

-Public officials, including law enforcement officials, thrive by attracting

-favorable public interest.  A brilliant prosecution in a matter of vital

-public interest can make the career of a prosecuting attorney.

-And for a police officer, good publicity opens the purses of the legislature;

-it may bring a citation, or a promotion, or at least a rise in status

-and the respect of one's peers.

-

-But to have both publicity and secrecy is to have one's cake and eat it too.

-In months to come, as we will show, this impossible act was to cause great

-pain to the agents of the crackdown.  But early on, it seemed possible

---maybe even likely--that the crackdown could successfully combine

-the best of both worlds.  The ARREST of hackers would be heavily publicized.

-The actual DEEDS of the hackers, which were technically hard to explain

-and also a security risk, would be left decently obscured.  The THREAT

-hackers posed would be heavily trumpeted; the likelihood of their actually

-committing such fearsome crimes would be left to the public's imagination.

-The spread of the computer underground, and its growing technical

-sophistication, would be heavily promoted;  the actual hackers themselves,

-mostly bespectacled middle-class white suburban teenagers,

-would be denied any personal publicity.

-

-It does not seem to have occurred to any telco official

-that the hackers accused would demand a day in court;

-that journalists would smile upon the hackers as

-"good copy;"  that wealthy high-tech entrepreneurs would

-offer moral and financial support to crackdown victims;

-that constitutional lawyers would show up with briefcases,

-frowning mightily.  This possibility does not seem to have

-ever entered the game-plan.

-

-And even if it had, it probably would not have slowed

-the ferocious pursuit of a stolen phone-company document,

-mellifluously known as "Control Office Administration of

-Enhanced 911 Services for Special Services and Major Account Centers."

-

-In the chapters to follow, we will explore the worlds

-of police and the computer underground, and the large

-shadowy area where they overlap.  But first, we must

-explore the battleground.  Before we leave the world

-of the telcos, we must understand what a switching system

-actually is and how your telephone actually works.

-

-#

-

-To the average citizen, the idea of the telephone is represented by,

-well, a TELEPHONE:  a device that you talk into.  To a telco

-professional, however, the telephone itself is known, in lordly

-fashion, as a "subset."  The "subset" in your house is a mere adjunct,

-a distant nerve ending, of the central switching stations,

-which are ranked in levels of heirarchy, up to the long-distance electronic

-switching stations, which are some of the largest computers on earth.

-

-Let us imagine that it is, say, 1925, before the

-introduction of computers, when the phone system was

-simpler and somewhat easier to grasp.  Let's further

-imagine that you are Miss Leticia Luthor, a fictional

-operator for Ma Bell in New York City of the 20s.

-

-Basically, you, Miss Luthor, ARE the "switching system."

-You are sitting in front of a large vertical switchboard,

-known as a "cordboard," made of shiny wooden panels,

-with ten thousand metal-rimmed holes punched in them,

-known as jacks.  The engineers would have put more

-holes into your switchboard, but ten thousand is

-as many as you can reach without actually having

-to get up out of your chair.

-

-Each of these ten thousand holes has its own little electric lightbulb,

-known as a "lamp," and its own neatly printed number code.

-

-With the ease of long habit, you are scanning your board for lit-up bulbs.

-This is what you do most of the time, so you are used to it.

-

-A lamp lights up.  This means that the phone

-at the end of that line has been taken off the hook.

-Whenever a handset is taken off the hook, that closes a circuit

-inside the phone which then signals the local office, i.e. you,

-automatically.  There might be somebody calling, or then

-again the phone might be simply off the hook, but this

-does not matter to you yet.  The first thing you do,

-is record that number in your logbook, in your fine American

-public-school handwriting.  This comes first, naturally,

-since it is done for billing purposes.

-

-You now take the plug of your answering cord, which goes

-directly to your headset, and plug it into the lit-up hole.

-"Operator," you announce.

-

-In operator's classes, before taking this job, you have

-been issued a large pamphlet full of canned operator's

-responses for all kinds of contingencies, which you had

-to memorize.  You have also been trained in a proper

-non-regional, non-ethnic pronunciation and tone of voice.

-You rarely have the occasion to make any spontaneous

-remark to a customer, and in fact this is frowned upon

-(except out on the rural lines where people have time

-on their hands and get up to all kinds of mischief).

-

-A tough-sounding user's voice at the end of the line

-gives you a number.  Immediately, you write that number

-down in your logbook, next to the caller's number,

-which you just wrote earlier.  You then look and see if

-the number this guy wants is in fact on your switchboard,

-which it generally is, since it's generally a local call.

-Long distance costs so much that people use it sparingly.

-

-Only then do you pick up a calling-cord from a shelf

-at the base of the switchboard.  This is a long elastic cord

-mounted on a kind of reel so that it will zip back in when

-you unplug it.  There are a lot of cords down there,

-and when a bunch of them are out at once they look like

-a nest of snakes.  Some of the girls think there are bugs

-living in those cable-holes.  They're called "cable mites"

-and are supposed to bite your hands and give you rashes.

-You don't believe this, yourself.

-

-Gripping the head of your calling-cord, you slip the tip

-of it deftly into the sleeve of the jack for the called person.

-Not all the way in, though.  You just touch it.  If you hear

-a clicking sound, that means the line is busy and you can't

-put the call through.  If the line is busy, you have to stick

-the calling-cord into a "busy-tone jack," which will give

-the guy a busy-tone.  This way you don't have to talk to him

-yourself and absorb his natural human frustration.

-

-But the line isn't busy.  So you pop the cord all the way in.

-Relay circuits in your board make the distant phone ring,

-and if somebody picks it up off the hook, then a phone

-conversation starts.  You can hear this conversation

-on your answering cord, until you unplug it.  In fact

-you could listen to the whole conversation if you wanted,

-but this is sternly frowned upon by management, and frankly,

-when you've overheard one, you've pretty much heard 'em all.

-

-You can tell how long the conversation lasts by the glow

-of the calling-cord's lamp, down on the calling-cord's shelf.

-When it's over, you unplug and the calling-cord zips back into place.

-

-Having done this stuff a few hundred thousand times,

-you become quite good at it.  In fact you're plugging,

-and connecting, and disconnecting, ten, twenty, forty cords

-at a time.  It's a manual handicraft, really, quite satisfying

-in a way, rather like weaving on an upright loom.

-

-Should a long-distance call come up, it would be different,

-but not all that different.  Instead of connecting the call

-through your own local switchboard, you have to go up the hierarchy,

-onto the long-distance lines, known as "trunklines."

-Depending on how far the call goes, it may have to work

-its way through a whole series of operators, which can

-take quite a while.  The caller doesn't wait on the line

-while this complex process is negotiated across the country

-by the gaggle of operators.  Instead, the caller hangs up,

-and you call him back yourself when the call has finally

-worked its way through.

-

-After four or five years of this work, you get married,

-and you have to quit your job, this being the natural order

-of womanhood in the American 1920s.  The phone company

-has to train somebody else--maybe two people, since

-the phone system has grown somewhat in the meantime.

-And this costs money.

-

-In fact, to use any kind of human being as a switching

-system is a very expensive proposition.  Eight thousand

-Leticia Luthors would be bad enough, but a quarter of a

-million of them is a military-scale proposition and makes

-drastic measures in automation financially worthwhile.

-

-Although the phone system continues to grow today,

-the number of human beings employed by telcos has

-been dropping steadily for years.  Phone "operators"

-now deal with nothing but unusual contingencies,

-all routine operations having been shrugged off onto machines.

-Consequently, telephone operators are considerably less

-machine-like nowadays, and have been known to have accents

-and actual character in their voices.  When you reach

-a human operator today, the operators are rather more

-"human" than they were in Leticia's day--but on the other hand,

-human beings in the phone system are much harder to reach

-in the first place.

-

-Over the first half of the twentieth century,

-"electromechanical" switching systems of growing

-complexity were cautiously introduced into the phone system.

-In certain backwaters, some of these hybrid systems are still

-in use.  But after 1965, the phone system began to go completely

-electronic, and this is by far the dominant mode today.

-Electromechanical systems have "crossbars," and "brushes,"

-and other large moving mechanical parts, which, while faster

-and cheaper than Leticia, are still slow, and tend to wear out

-fairly quickly.

-

-But fully electronic systems are inscribed on silicon chips,

-and are lightning-fast, very cheap, and quite durable.

-They are much cheaper to maintain than even the best

-electromechanical systems, and they fit into half the space.

-And with every year, the silicon chip grows smaller, faster,

-and cheaper yet.  Best of all, automated electronics work

-around the clock and don't have salaries or health insurance.

-

-There are, however, quite serious drawbacks to the

-use of computer-chips.  When they do break down, it is

-a daunting challenge to figure out what the heck has gone

-wrong with them.  A broken cordboard generally had

-a problem in it big enough to see.  A broken chip has

-invisible, microscopic faults.  And the faults in bad

-software can be so subtle as to be practically theological.

-

-If you want a mechanical system to do something new,

-then you must travel to where it is, and pull pieces out of it,

-and wire in new pieces.  This costs money.  However, if you want

-a chip to do something new, all you have to do is change its software,

-which is easy, fast and dirt-cheap.  You don't even have to see the chip

-to change its program.  Even if you did see the chip, it wouldn't look

-like much.  A chip with program X doesn't look one whit different from

-a chip with program Y.

-

-With the proper codes and sequences, and access to specialized phone-lines,

-you can change electronic switching systems all over America from anywhere

-you please.

-

-And so can other people.  If they know how, and if they want to,

-they can sneak into a microchip via the special phonelines and diddle with it,

-leaving no physical trace at all.  If they broke into the operator's station

-and held Leticia at gunpoint, that would be very obvious.  If they broke into

-a telco building and went after an electromechanical switch with a toolbelt,

-that would at least leave many traces.  But people can do all manner of amazing

-things to computer switches just by typing on a keyboard, and keyboards are

-everywhere today.  The extent of this vulnerability is deep, dark, broad,

-almost mind-boggling, and yet this is a basic, primal fact of life about

-any computer on a network.

-

-Security experts over the past twenty years have insisted,

-with growing urgency, that this basic vulnerability of computers

-represents an entirely new level of risk, of unknown but obviously

-dire potential to society.  And they are right.

-

-An electronic switching station does pretty much

-everything Letitia did, except in nanoseconds and

-on a much larger scale.  Compared to Miss Luthor's

-ten thousand jacks, even a primitive 1ESS switching computer,

-60s vintage, has a 128,000 lines.  And the current AT&T

-system of choice is the monstrous fifth-generation 5ESS.

-

-An Electronic Switching Station can scan every line on its "board"

-in a tenth of a second, and it does this over and over, tirelessly,

-around the clock.  Instead of eyes, it uses "ferrod scanners"

-to check the condition of local lines and trunks.  Instead of hands,

-it has "signal distributors," "central pulse distributors,"

-"magnetic latching relays," and "reed switches," which complete

-and break the calls.  Instead of a brain, it has a "central processor."

-Instead of an instruction manual, it has a program.  Instead of

-a handwritten logbook for recording and billing calls,

-it has magnetic tapes. And it never has to talk to anybody.

-Everything a customer might say to it is done by punching

-the direct-dial tone buttons on your subset.

-

-Although an Electronic Switching Station can't talk,

-it does need an interface, some way to relate to its, er,

-employers.  This interface is known as the "master control

-center."  (This interface might be better known simply as

-"the interface," since it doesn't actually "control" phone

-calls directly.  However, a term like "Master Control

-Center" is just the kind of rhetoric that telco maintenance

-engineers--and hackers--find particularly satisfying.)

-

-Using the master control center, a phone engineer can test

-local and trunk lines for malfunctions.  He (rarely she)

-can check various alarm displays, measure traffic on the lines,

-examine the records of telephone usage and the charges for those calls,

-and change the programming.

-

-And, of course, anybody else who gets into the master control center

-by remote control can also do these things, if he (rarely she)

-has managed to figure them out, or, more likely, has somehow swiped

-the knowledge from people who already know.

-

-In 1989 and 1990, one particular RBOC, BellSouth,

-which felt particularly troubled, spent a purported $1.2

-million on computer security.  Some think it spent as

-much as two million, if you count all the associated costs.

-Two million dollars is still very little compared to the

-great cost-saving utility of telephonic computer systems.

-

-Unfortunately, computers are also stupid.

-Unlike human beings, computers possess the truly

-profound stupidity of the inanimate.

-

-In the 1960s, in the first shocks of spreading computerization,

-there was much easy talk about the stupidity of computers--

-how they could "only follow the program" and were rigidly required

-to do "only what they were told."  There has been rather less talk

-about the stupidity of computers since they began to achieve

-grandmaster status in chess tournaments, and to manifest

-many other impressive forms of apparent cleverness.

-

-Nevertheless, computers STILL are profoundly brittle and stupid;

-they are simply vastly more subtle in their stupidity and brittleness.

-The computers of the 1990s are much more reliable in their components

-than earlier computer systems, but they are also called upon to do

-far more complex things, under far more challenging conditions.

-

-On a basic mathematical level, every single line of

-a software program offers a chance for some possible screwup.

-Software does not sit still when it works; it "runs,"

-it interacts with itself and with its own inputs and outputs.

-By analogy, it stretches like putty into millions of possible

-shapes and conditions, so many shapes that they can never

-all be successfully tested, not even in the lifespan of the universe.

-Sometimes the putty snaps.

-

-The stuff we call "software" is not like anything that human society

-is used to thinking about.  Software is something like a machine,

-and something like mathematics, and something like language, and

-something like thought, and art, and information. . . .  But software

-is not in fact any of those other things.  The protean quality

-of software is one of the great sources of its fascination.

-It also makes software very powerful, very subtle,

-very unpredictable, and very risky.

-

-Some software is bad and buggy.  Some is "robust,"

-even "bulletproof."  The best software is that which has

-been tested by thousands of users under thousands of

-different conditions, over years.  It is then known as

-"stable."  This does NOT mean that the software is

-now flawless, free of bugs.  It generally means that there

-are plenty of bugs in it, but the bugs are well-identified

-and fairly well understood.

-

-There is simply no way to assure that software is free

-of flaws.  Though software is mathematical in nature,

-it cannot by "proven" like a mathematical theorem;

-software is more like language, with inherent ambiguities,

-with different definitions, different assumptions,

-different levels of meaning that can conflict.

-

-Human beings can manage, more or less, with

-human language because we can catch the gist of it.

-

-Computers, despite years of effort in "artificial intelligence,"

-have proven spectacularly bad in "catching the gist" of anything at all.

-The tiniest bit of semantic grit may still bring the mightiest computer

-tumbling down.  One of the most hazardous things you can do to a

-computer program is try to improve it--to try to make it safer.

-Software "patches" represent new, untried un-"stable" software,

-which is by definition riskier.

-

-The modern telephone system has come to depend,

-utterly and irretrievably, upon software.  And the

-System Crash of January 15, 1990, was caused by an

-IMPROVEMENT in software.  Or rather, an ATTEMPTED

-improvement.

-

-As it happened, the problem itself--the problem per se--took this form.

-A piece of telco software had been written in C language, a standard

-language of the telco field.  Within the C software was a

-long "do. . .while" construct.  The "do. . .while" construct

-contained a "switch" statement.  The "switch" statement contained

-an "if" clause.  The "if" clause contained a "break."  The "break"

-was SUPPOSED to "break" the "if clause."  Instead, the "break"

-broke the "switch" statement.

-

-That was the problem, the actual reason why people picking up phones

-on January 15, 1990, could not talk to one another.

-

-Or at least, that was the subtle, abstract, cyberspatial

-seed of the problem.  This is how the problem manifested itself

-from the realm of programming into the realm of real life.

-

-The System 7 software for AT&T's 4ESS switching station,

-the "Generic 44E14 Central Office Switch Software,"

-had been extensively tested, and was considered very stable.

-By the end of 1989, eighty of AT&T's switching systems

-nationwide had been programmed with the new software.  Cautiously,

-thirty-four stations were left to run the slower, less-capable

-System 6, because AT&T suspected there might be shakedown problems

-with the new and unprecedently sophisticated System 7 network.

-

-The stations with System 7 were programmed to switch over to a backup net

-in case of any problems.  In mid-December 1989, however, a new high-velocity,

-high-security software patch was distributed to each of the 4ESS switches

-that would enable them to switch over even more quickly, making the System 7

-network that much more secure.

-

-Unfortunately, every one of these 4ESS switches was now in possession

-of a small but deadly flaw.

-

-In order to maintain the network, switches must monitor

-the condition of other switches--whether they are up and running,

-whether they have temporarily shut down, whether they are overloaded

-and in need of assistance, and so forth.  The new software helped

-control this bookkeeping function by monitoring the status calls

-from other switches.

-

-It only takes four to six seconds for a troubled 4ESS switch

-to rid itself of all its calls, drop everything temporarily,

-and re-boot its software from scratch.  Starting over from scratch

-will generally rid the switch of any software problems that may have

-developed in the course of running the system.  Bugs that arise will

-be simply wiped out by this process.  It is a clever idea.  This process

-of automatically re-booting from scratch is known as the "normal fault

-recovery routine."  Since AT&T's software is in fact exceptionally stable,

-systems rarely have to go into "fault recovery" in the first place;

-but AT&T has always boasted of its "real world" reliability, and this

-tactic is a belt-and-suspenders routine.

-

-The 4ESS switch used its new software to monitor its fellow switches

-as they recovered from faults.  As other switches came back on line

-after recovery, they would send their "OK" signals to the switch.

-The switch would make a little note to that effect in its "status map,"

-recognizing that the fellow switch was back and ready to go,

-and should be sent some calls and put back to regular work.

-

-Unfortunately, while it was busy bookkeeping with the status map,

-the tiny flaw in the brand-new software came into play.

-The flaw caused the 4ESS switch to interact, 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 P.M. on Monday January

-15, sweating engineers on the midnight shift breathed a

-sigh of relief as the last switch cleared-up.

-

-By Tuesday they were pulling all the brand-new 4ESS software

-and replacing it with an earlier version of System 7.

-

-If these had been human operators, rather than

-computers at work, someone would simply have

-eventually stopped screaming.  It would have been

-OBVIOUS that the situation was not "OK," and common

-sense would have kicked in.  Humans possess common sense--

-at least to some extent.  Computers simply don't.

-

-On the other hand, computers can handle hundreds

-of calls per second.  Humans simply can't.  If every single

-human being in America worked for the phone company,

-we couldn't match the performance of digital switches:

-direct-dialling, three-way calling, speed-calling, call-

-waiting, Caller ID, all the rest of the cornucopia

-of digital bounty.  Replacing computers with operators

-is simply not an option any more.

-

-And yet we still, anachronistically, expect humans to

-be running our phone system.  It is hard for us

-to understand that we have sacrificed huge amounts

-of initiative and control to senseless yet powerful machines.

-When the phones fail, we want somebody to be responsible.

-We want somebody to blame.

-

-When the Crash of January 15 happened, the American populace

-was simply not prepared to understand that enormous landslides

-in cyberspace, like the Crash itself, can happen,

-and can be nobody's fault in particular.  It was easier to believe,

-maybe even in some odd way more reassuring to believe,

-that some evil person, or evil group, had done this to us.

-"Hackers" had done it.  With a virus.  A trojan horse.

-A software bomb.  A dirty plot of some kind.  People believed this,

-responsible people.  In 1990, they were looking hard for evidence

-to confirm their heartfelt suspicions.

-

-And they would look in a lot of places.

-

-Come 1991, however, the outlines of an apparent new reality

-would begin to emerge from the fog.

-

-On July 1 and 2, 1991, computer-software collapses

-in telephone switching stations disrupted service in

-Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

-Once again, seemingly minor maintenance problems had

-crippled the digital System 7.  About twelve million

-people were affected in the Crash of July 1, 1991.

-

-Said the New York Times Service:  "Telephone company executives

-and federal regulators said they were not ruling out the possibility

-of sabotage by computer hackers, but most seemed to think the problems

-stemmed from some unknown defect in the software running the networks."

-

-And sure enough, within the week, a red-faced software company,

-DSC Communications Corporation of Plano, Texas, owned up

-to "glitches" in the "signal transfer point" software that

-DSC had designed for Bell Atlantic and Pacific Bell.

-The immediate cause of the July 1 Crash was a single

-mistyped character:  one tiny typographical flaw

-in one single line of the software.  One mistyped letter,

-in one single line, had deprived the nation's capital of phone service.

-It was not particularly surprising that this tiny flaw had escaped attention:

-a typical System 7 station requires TEN MILLION lines of code.

-

-On Tuesday, September 17, 1991, came the most spectacular outage yet.

-This case had nothing to do with software failures--at least, not directly.

-Instead, a group of AT&T's switching stations in New York City had simply

-run out of electrical power and shut down cold.  Their back-up batteries

-had failed.  Automatic warning systems were supposed to warn of the loss

-of battery power, but those automatic systems had failed as well.

-

-This time, Kennedy, La Guardia, and Newark airports

-all had their voice and data communications cut.

-This horrifying event was particularly ironic, as attacks

-on airport computers by hackers had long been a standard

-nightmare scenario, much trumpeted by computer-security

-experts who feared the computer underground.  There had even

-been a Hollywood thriller about sinister hackers ruining

-airport computers--DIE HARD II.

-

-Now AT&T itself had crippled airports with computer malfunctions--

-not just one airport, but three at once, some of the busiest in the world.

-

-Air traffic came to a standstill throughout the Greater New York area,

-causing more than 500 flights to be cancelled, in a spreading wave

-all over America and even into Europe.  Another 500 or so flights

-were delayed, affecting, all in all, about 85,000 passengers.

-(One of these passengers was the chairman of the Federal

-Communications Commission.)

-

-Stranded passengers in New York and New Jersey were further

-infuriated to discover that they could not even manage to

-make a long distance phone call, to explain their delay

-to loved ones or business associates.  Thanks to the crash,

-about four and a half million domestic calls, and half a million

-international calls, failed to get through.

-

-The September 17 NYC Crash, unlike the previous ones,

-involved not a whisper of "hacker" misdeeds.  On the contrary,

-by 1991, AT&T itself was suffering much of the vilification

-that had formerly been directed at hackers.  Congressmen were grumbling.

-So were state and federal regulators.  And so was the press.

-

-For their part, ancient rival MCI took out snide full-page

-newspaper ads in New York, offering their own long-distance

-services for the "next time that AT&T goes down."

-

-"You wouldn't find a classy company like AT&T using such advertising,"

-protested AT&T Chairman Robert Allen, unconvincingly.  Once again,

-out came the full-page AT&T apologies in newspapers, apologies for

-"an inexcusable culmination of both human and mechanical failure."

-(This time, however, AT&T offered no discount on later calls.

-Unkind critics suggested that AT&T were worried about setting any precedent

-for refunding the financial losses caused by telephone crashes.)

-

-Industry journals asked publicly if AT&T was "asleep at the switch."

-The telephone network, America's purported marvel of high-tech reliability,

-had gone down three times in 18 months.  Fortune magazine listed the

-Crash of September 17 among the "Biggest Business Goofs of 1991,"

-cruelly parodying AT&T's ad campaign in an article entitled

-"AT&T Wants You Back (Safely On the Ground, God Willing)."

-

-Why had those New York switching systems simply run out of power?

-Because no human being had attended to the alarm system.

-Why did the alarm systems blare automatically,

-without any human being noticing?  Because the three

-telco technicians who SHOULD have been listening

-were absent from their stations in the power-room,

-on another floor of the building--attending a training class.

-A training class about the alarm systems for the power room!

-

-"Crashing the System" was no longer "unprecedented" by late 1991.

-On the contrary, it no longer even seemed an oddity.  By 1991,

-it was clear that all the policemen in the world could no longer

-"protect" the phone system from crashes.  By far the worst crashes

-the system had ever had, had been inflicted, by the system,

-upon ITSELF.  And this time nobody was making cocksure statements

-that this was an anomaly, something that would never happen again.

-By 1991 the System's defenders had met their nebulous Enemy,

-and the Enemy was--the System.

-

-

-

-PART TWO:  THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND

-

-

-The date was May 9, 1990.  The Pope was touring Mexico City.

-Hustlers from the Medellin Cartel were trying to buy

-black-market Stinger missiles in Florida.  On the comics page,

-Doonesbury character Andy was dying of AIDS.  And then. . .a highly

-unusual item whose novelty and calculated rhetoric won it

-headscratching attention in newspapers all over America.

-

-The US Attorney's office in Phoenix, Arizona, had issued

-a press release announcing a nationwide law enforcement crackdown

-against "illegal computer hacking activities."  The sweep was

-officially known as "Operation Sundevil."

-

-Eight paragraphs in the press release gave the bare facts:

-twenty-seven search warrants carried out on May 8, with three arrests,

-and a hundred and fifty agents on the prowl in "twelve" cities across America.

-(Different counts in local press reports yielded "thirteen," "fourteen," and

-"sixteen" cities.)  Officials estimated that criminal losses of revenue

-to telephone companies "may run into millions of dollars."  Credit for

-the Sundevil investigations was taken by the US Secret Service,

-Assistant US Attorney Tim Holtzen of Phoenix, and the Assistant

-Attorney General of Arizona, Gail Thackeray.

-

-The prepared remarks of Garry M. Jenkins, appearing in a U.S. Department

-of Justice press release, were of particular interest.  Mr. Jenkins was the

-Assistant Director of the US Secret Service, and the highest-ranking federal

-official to take any direct public role in  the hacker crackdown of 1990.

-

-"Today, the Secret Service is sending a clear message to those computer hackers

-who have decided to violate the laws of this nation in the mistaken belief

-that they can successfully avoid detection by hiding behind the relative

-anonymity of their computer terminals. (. . .)  "Underground groups have been

-formed for the purpose of exchanging information relevant to their criminal

-activities.  These groups often communicate with each other through message

-systems between computers called `bulletin boards.'  "Our experience shows

-that many computer hacker suspects are no longer misguided teenagers,

-mischievously playing games with their computers in their bedrooms.

-Some are now high tech computer operators using computers to engage

-in unlawful conduct."

-

-Who were these "underground groups" and "high-tech operators?"

-Where had they come from?  What did they want?  Who WERE they?

-Were they "mischievous?"  Were they dangerous?  How had "misguided teenagers"

-managed to alarm the United States Secret Service?  And just how widespread

-was this sort of thing?

-

-Of all the major players in the Hacker Crackdown: the phone companies,

-law enforcement, the civil libertarians, and the "hackers" themselves--

-the "hackers" are by far the most mysterious, by far the hardest to

-understand, by far the WEIRDEST.

-

-Not only are "hackers"  novel in their activities, but they come

-in a variety of odd subcultures, with a variety of languages,

-motives and values.

-

-The earliest proto-hackers were probably those unsung mischievous

-telegraph boys who were summarily fired by the Bell Company in 1878.

-

-Legitimate "hackers," those computer enthusiasts who are independent-minded

-but law-abiding, generally trace their spiritual ancestry to elite technical

-universities, especially M.I.T. and Stanford, in the 1960s.

-

-But the genuine roots of the modern hacker UNDERGROUND can probably be traced

-most successfully to a now much-obscured hippie anarchist movement known as

-the Yippies.  The  Yippies, who took their name from the largely fictional

-"Youth International Party," carried out a loud and lively policy of surrealistic

-subversion and outrageous political mischief.  Their basic tenets were flagrant

-sexual promiscuity, open and copious drug use, the political overthrow of any

-powermonger over thirty years of age, and an immediate end to the war

-in Vietnam, by any means necessary, including the psychic levitation

-of the Pentagon.

-

-The two most visible Yippies were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

-Rubin eventually became a Wall Street broker.  Hoffman, ardently sought

-by federal authorities, went into hiding for seven years,

-in Mexico, France, and the United States.  While on the lam,

-Hoffman continued to write and publish, with help from sympathizers

-in the American anarcho-leftist underground.  Mostly, Hoffman survived

-through false ID and odd jobs.  Eventually he underwent facial plastic

-surgery and adopted an entirely new identity as one "Barry Freed."

-After surrendering himself to authorities in 1980, Hoffman spent a year

-in prison on a cocaine conviction.

-

-Hoffman's worldview grew much darker as the glory days of the 1960s faded.

-In 1989, he purportedly committed suicide, under odd and, to some, rather

-suspicious circumstances.

-

-Abbie Hoffman is said to have caused the Federal Bureau of Investigation

-to amass the single largest investigation file ever opened on an individual

-American citizen.  (If this is true, it is still questionable whether the

-FBI regarded Abbie Hoffman a serious public threat--quite possibly,

-his file was enormous simply because Hoffman left colorful legendry

-wherever he went).  He was a gifted publicist, who regarded electronic

-media as both playground and weapon.  He actively enjoyed manipulating

-network TV and other gullible, image-hungry media, with various weird lies,

-mindboggling rumors, impersonation scams, and other sinister distortions,

-all absolutely guaranteed to upset cops, Presidential candidates,

-and federal judges.  Hoffman's most famous work was a book self-reflexively

-known as STEAL THIS BOOK, which publicized a number of methods by which young,

-penniless hippie agitators might live off the fat of a system supported by

-humorless drones. STEAL THIS BOOK, whose title urged readers to damage

-the very means of distribution which had put it into their hands,

-might be described as a spiritual ancestor of a computer virus.

-

-Hoffman, like many a later conspirator, made extensive use of

-pay-phones for his agitation work--in his case, generally through

-the use of cheap brass washers as coin-slugs.

-

-During the Vietnam War, there was a federal surtax imposed on telephone

-service; Hoffman and his cohorts could, and did, argue that in systematically

-stealing phone service they were engaging in civil disobedience:

-virtuously denying tax funds to an illegal and immoral war.

-

-But this thin veil of decency was soon dropped entirely.

-Ripping-off the System  found its own justification in deep alienation

-and a basic outlaw contempt for conventional bourgeois values.

-Ingenious, vaguely politicized varieties of rip-off,

-which might be described as "anarchy by convenience,"

-became very popular in Yippie circles, and because rip-off

-was so useful, it was to survive the Yippie movement itself.

-

-In the early 1970s, it required fairly limited expertise

-and ingenuity to cheat payphones, to divert "free"

-electricity and gas service, or to rob vending machines

-and parking meters for handy pocket change.  It also required

-a conspiracy to spread this knowledge, and the gall

-and nerve actually to commit petty theft, but the Yippies

-had these qualifications in plenty.  In June 1971, Abbie

-Hoffman and a telephone enthusiast sarcastically known

-as "Al Bell" began publishing a newsletter called Youth

-International Party Line.  This newsletter was dedicated

-to collating and spreading Yippie rip-off techniques,

-especially of phones, to the joy of the freewheeling

-underground and the insensate rage of all straight people.

-As a political tactic, phone-service theft ensured

-that Yippie advocates would always have ready access

-to the long-distance telephone as a medium, despite

-the Yippies' chronic lack of organization, discipline,

-money, or even a steady home address.

-

-PARTY LINE was run out of Greenwich Village for a couple of years,

-then "Al Bell" more or less defected from the faltering ranks of Yippiedom,

-changing the newsletter's name to TAP or Technical Assistance Program.

-After the Vietnam War ended, the steam began leaking rapidly out of American

-radical dissent. But  by this time, "Bell" and his dozen or so

-core contributors  had the bit between their teeth,

-and had begun to derive tremendous gut-level satisfaction

-from the sensation of pure TECHNICAL POWER.

-

-TAP articles, once highly politicized, became pitilessly jargonized

-and technical, in homage or parody to the Bell System's own technical

-documents, which TAP studied closely, gutted, and reproduced without

-permission.  The TAP elite revelled in gloating possession

-of the specialized knowledge necessary to beat the system.

-

-"Al Bell" dropped out of the game by the late 70s,

-and "Tom Edison" took over; TAP readers (some 1400 of

-them, all told) now began to show more interest in telex

-switches and the growing phenomenon of computer systems.

-

-In 1983, "Tom Edison" had his computer stolen and his house

-set on fire by an arsonist.  This was an eventually mortal blow

-to TAP (though the legendary name was to be resurrected

-in 1990 by a young Kentuckian computer-outlaw named "Predat0r.")

-

-#

-

-Ever since telephones began to make money, there have been

-people willing to rob and defraud phone companies.

-The legions of petty phone thieves vastly outnumber those

-"phone phreaks" who  "explore the system" for the sake

-of the intellectual challenge.  The New York metropolitan area

-(long in the vanguard of American crime) claims over 150,000

-physical attacks on pay telephones every year!  Studied carefully,

-a modern payphone reveals itself as a little fortress, carefully

-designed and redesigned over generations, to resist coin-slugs,

-zaps of electricity, chunks of coin-shaped ice, prybars, magnets,

-lockpicks, blasting caps.  Public pay- phones must survive in a world

-of unfriendly, greedy people, and a modern payphone is as exquisitely

-evolved as a cactus.

-Because the phone network pre-dates the computer network,

-the scofflaws known as "phone phreaks" pre-date the scofflaws

-known as "computer hackers."  In practice, today, the line

-between "phreaking" and "hacking" is very blurred,

-just as the distinction between telephones and computers

-has blurred.  The phone system has been digitized,

-and computers have learned to "talk" over phone-lines.

-What's worse--and this was the point of the Mr. Jenkins

-of the Secret Service--some hackers have learned to steal,

-and some thieves have learned to hack.

-

-Despite the blurring, one can still draw a few useful

-behavioral distinctions between "phreaks" and "hackers."

-Hackers are intensely interested in the "system" per se,

-and enjoy relating to machines.  "Phreaks" are more

-social, manipulating the system in a rough-and-ready

-fashion in order to get through to other human beings,

-fast, cheap and under the table.

-

-Phone phreaks love nothing so much as "bridges,"

-illegal conference calls of ten or twelve chatting

-conspirators, seaboard to seaboard, lasting for many hours

---and running, of course, on somebody else's tab,

-preferably a large corporation's.

-

-As phone-phreak conferences wear on, people drop out

-(or simply leave the phone off the hook, while they

-sashay off to work or school or babysitting),

-and new people are phoned up and invited to join in,

-from some other continent, if possible.  Technical trivia,

-boasts, brags, lies, head-trip deceptions, weird rumors,

-and cruel gossip are all freely exchanged.

-

-The lowest rung of phone-phreaking is the theft of telephone access codes.

-Charging a phone call to somebody else's stolen number is, of course,

-a pig-easy way of stealing phone service, requiring practically no

-technical expertise.  This practice has been very widespread,

-especially among lonely people without much money who are far from home.

-Code theft has flourished especially in college dorms, military bases,

-and, notoriously, among roadies for rock bands.  Of late, code theft

-has spread very rapidly among Third Worlders in the US, who pile up

-enormous unpaid long-distance bills to the Caribbean, South America,

-and Pakistan.

-

-The simplest way to steal phone-codes is simply to look over

-a victim's shoulder as he punches-in his own code-number

-on a public payphone.  This technique is known as "shoulder-surfing,"

-and is especially common in airports, bus terminals, and train stations.

-The code is then sold by the thief for a few dollars.  The buyer abusing

-the code has no computer expertise, but calls his Mom in New York,

-Kingston or Caracas and runs up a huge bill with impunity.  The losses

-from this primitive phreaking activity are far, far greater than the

-monetary losses caused by computer-intruding hackers.

-

-In the mid-to-late 1980s, until the introduction of sterner telco

-security measures, COMPUTERIZED code theft worked like a charm,

-and was virtually omnipresent throughout the digital underground,

-among phreaks and hackers alike.  This was accomplished through

-programming one's computer to try random code numbers over the telephone

-until one of them worked.  Simple programs to do this were widely available

-in the underground; a computer running all night was likely to come up with

-a dozen or so useful hits.  This could be repeated week after week until

-one had a large library of stolen codes.

-

-Nowadays, the computerized dialling of hundreds of numbers

-can be detected within hours and swiftly traced.

-If a stolen code is repeatedly abused, this too can

-be detected within a few hours.  But for years in the 1980s,

-the publication of stolen codes was a kind of elementary etiquette

-for fledgling hackers.  The simplest way to establish your bona-fides

-as a raider was to steal a code through repeated random dialling

-and offer it to the "community" for use.  Codes could be both stolen,

-and used, simply and easily from the safety of one's own bedroom,

-with very little fear of detection or punishment.

-

-Before computers and their phone-line modems entered American homes

-in gigantic numbers, phone phreaks had their own special telecommunications

-hardware gadget, the famous "blue box."  This fraud device (now rendered

-increasingly useless by the digital evolution of the phone system) could

-trick switching systems into granting free access to long-distance lines.

-It did this by mimicking the system's own signal, a tone of 2600 hertz.

-

-Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple Computer, Inc.,

-once dabbled in selling blue-boxes in college dorms in California.

-For many, in the early days of phreaking, blue-boxing was scarcely

-perceived as "theft," but rather as a fun (if sneaky) way to use

-excess phone capacity harmlessly.  After all, the long-distance

-lines were JUST SITTING THERE. . . .  Whom did it hurt, really?

-If you're not DAMAGING the system, and  you're not USING UP ANY

-TANGIBLE RESOURCE, and if nobody FINDS OUT what you did,

-then what real harm have you done? What exactly HAVE you "stolen,"

-anyway?  If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it,

-how much is the noise worth?  Even now this remains a rather

-dicey question.

-

-Blue-boxing was no joke to the phone companies, however.

-Indeed, when Ramparts magazine, a radical publication in California,

-printed the wiring schematics necessary to create a mute box in June 1972,

-the magazine was seized by police and Pacific Bell phone-company officials.

-The mute box, a blue-box variant, allowed its user to receive long-distance

-calls free of charge to the caller.  This device was closely described in a

-Ramparts article wryly titled "Regulating the Phone Company In Your Home."

-Publication of this article was held to be in violation of Californian

-State Penal Code section 502.7, which outlaws ownership of wire-fraud

-devices and the selling of "plans or instructions for any instrument,

-apparatus, or device intended to avoid telephone toll charges."

-

-Issues of Ramparts were recalled or seized on the newsstands,

-and the resultant loss of income helped put the magazine out of business.

-This was an ominous precedent for free-expression issues, but the telco's

-crushing of a radical-fringe magazine passed without serious challenge

-at the time.  Even in the freewheeling California 1970s, it was widely felt

-that there was something sacrosanct about what the phone company knew;

-that the telco had a legal and moral right to protect itself by shutting

-off the flow of such illicit information.  Most telco information was so

-"specialized" that it would scarcely be understood by any honest member

-of the public.  If not published, it would not be missed.  To print such

-material did not seem part of the legitimate role of a free press.

-

-In 1990 there would be a similar telco-inspired attack

-on the electronic phreak/hacking "magazine" Phrack.

-The Phrack legal case became a central issue in the

-Hacker Crackdown, and gave rise to great controversy.

-Phrack would also be shut down, for a  time, at least,

-but this time both the telcos and their law-enforcement

-allies would pay a much larger price for their actions.

-The Phrack case will be examined in detail, later.

-

-Phone-phreaking as a social practice is still very

-much alive at this moment.  Today, phone-phreaking

-is thriving much more vigorously than the better-known

-and worse-feared practice of "computer hacking."

-New forms of phreaking are spreading rapidly, following

-new vulnerabilities in sophisticated phone services.

-

-Cellular phones are especially vulnerable; their chips

-can be re-programmed to present a false caller ID

-and avoid billing.  Doing so also avoids police tapping,

-making cellular-phone abuse a favorite among drug-dealers.

-"Call-sell operations" using pirate cellular phones can,

-and have, been run right out of the backs of cars, which move

-from "cell" to "cell" in the local phone system, retailing

-stolen long-distance service, like some kind of demented

-electronic version of the neighborhood ice-cream truck.

-

-Private branch-exchange phone systems in large corporations

-can be penetrated; phreaks dial-up a local company, enter its

-internal phone-system, hack it, then use the company's own

-PBX system to dial back out over the public network,

-causing the company to be stuck with the resulting

-long-distance bill.  This technique is known as "diverting."

-"Diverting" can be very costly, especially because phreaks

-tend to travel in packs and never stop talking.

-Perhaps the worst by-product of this "PBX fraud"

-is that victim companies and telcos have sued one another

-over the financial responsibility for the stolen calls,

-thus enriching not only shabby phreaks but well-paid lawyers.

-

-"Voice-mail systems" can also be abused; phreaks

-can seize their own sections of these sophisticated

-electronic answering machines, and use them for trading

-codes or knowledge of illegal techniques.  Voice-mail

-abuse does not hurt the company directly, but finding

-supposedly empty slots in your company's answering

-machine all crammed with phreaks eagerly chattering

-and hey-duding one another in impenetrable jargon can

-cause sensations of almost mystical repulsion and dread.

-

-Worse yet, phreaks have sometimes been known to react

-truculently to attempts to "clean up" the voice-mail system.

-Rather than humbly acquiescing to being thrown out of their playground,

-they may very well call up the company officials at work (or at home)

-and loudly demand free voice-mail addresses of their very own.

-Such bullying is taken very seriously by spooked victims.

-

-Acts of phreak revenge against straight people are rare,

-but voice-mail systems are especially tempting and vulnerable,

-and an infestation of angry phreaks in one's voice-mail system is no joke.

-They can erase legitimate messages; or spy on private messages;

-or harass users with recorded taunts and  obscenities.

-They've even been known to seize control of voice-mail security,

-and lock out legitimate users, or even shut down the system entirely.

-

-Cellular phone-calls, cordless phones, and ship-to-shore

-telephony can all be monitored by various forms of radio;

-this kind of "passive monitoring" is spreading explosively today.

-Technically eavesdropping on other people's cordless and cellular

-phone-calls is the fastest-growing area in phreaking today.

-This practice strongly appeals to the lust for power and conveys

-gratifying sensations of technical superiority over the eavesdropping

-victim.  Monitoring is rife with all manner of tempting evil mischief.

-Simple prurient snooping is by far the most common activity.

-But credit-card numbers unwarily spoken over the phone can be recorded,

-stolen and used.  And tapping people's phone-calls (whether through

-active telephone taps or passive radio monitors) does lend itself

-conveniently to activities like blackmail, industrial espionage,

-and political dirty tricks.

-

-It should be repeated that telecommunications fraud,

-the theft of phone service, causes vastly greater monetary

-losses than the practice of entering into computers by stealth.

-Hackers are mostly young suburban American white males,

-and exist in their hundreds--but "phreaks" come from both sexes

-and from many nationalities, ages and ethnic backgrounds,

-and are flourishing in the thousands.

-

-#

-

-The term "hacker" has had an unfortunate history.

-This book, The Hacker Crackdown, has little to say about

-"hacking" in its finer, original sense.  The term  can signify

-the free-wheeling intellectual exploration of the highest

-and deepest potential of computer systems.  Hacking can

-describe the determination to make access to computers

-and information as free and open as possible.  Hacking

-can involve the heartfelt conviction that beauty can

-be found in computers, that the fine aesthetic in a perfect

-program can liberate the mind and spirit.  This is "hacking"

-as it was defined in Steven Levy's much-praised history

-of the pioneer computer milieu, Hackers, published in 1984.

-

-Hackers of all kinds are absolutely soaked through with heroic

-anti-bureaucratic sentiment.  Hackers long for recognition

-as a praiseworthy cultural archetype, the postmodern electronic

-equivalent of the cowboy and mountain man.  Whether they deserve

-such a reputation is something for history to decide.  But many hackers--

-including those outlaw hackers who are computer intruders, and whose

-activities are defined as criminal--actually attempt to LIVE UP TO

-this techno-cowboy reputation.  And given that electronics and

-telecommunications are still largely unexplored territories,

-there is simply NO TELLING what hackers might uncover.

-

-For some people, this freedom is the very breath of oxygen,

-the inventive spontaneity that makes life worth living

-and that flings open doors to marvellous possibility and

-individual empowerment.  But for many people

---and increasingly so--the hacker is an ominous figure,

-a smart-aleck sociopath ready to burst out of his basement

-wilderness and savage other people's lives for his own

-anarchical convenience.

-

-Any form of power without responsibility, without direct

-and formal checks and balances, is frightening to people--

-and reasonably so.  It should be frankly admitted that

-hackers ARE frightening, and that the basis of this fear

-is not irrational.

-

-Fear of hackers goes well beyond the fear of merely criminal activity.

-

-Subversion and manipulation of the phone system

-is an act with disturbing political overtones.

-In America, computers and telephones are potent symbols

-of organized authority and the technocratic business elite.

-

-But there is an element in American culture that

-has always strongly rebelled against these symbols;

-rebelled against all large industrial computers

-and all phone companies.  A certain anarchical tinge deep

-in the American soul delights in causing confusion and pain

-to all bureaucracies, including technological ones.

-

-There is sometimes malice and vandalism in this attitude,

-but it is a deep and cherished part of the American national character.

-The outlaw, the rebel, the rugged individual, the pioneer,

-the sturdy Jeffersonian yeoman, the private citizen resisting

-interference in his pursuit of happiness--these are figures that all

-Americans recognize, and that many will strongly applaud and defend.

-

-Many scrupulously law-abiding citizens today do cutting-edge work

-with electronics--work that has already had tremendous social influence

-and will have much more in years to come.  In all truth, these talented,

-hardworking, law-abiding, mature, adult people are far more disturbing

-to the peace and order of the current status quo than any scofflaw group

-of romantic teenage punk kids.  These law-abiding hackers have the power,

-ability, and willingness to influence other people's lives quite unpredictably.

-They have means, motive, and opportunity to meddle drastically with the

-American social order.  When corralled into governments, universities,

-or large multinational companies, and forced to follow rulebooks

-and wear suits and ties, they at least have some conventional halters

-on their freedom of action.  But when loosed alone, or in small groups,

-and fired by imagination and the entrepreneurial spirit, they can move

-mountains--causing landslides that will likely crash directly into your

-office and living room.

-

-These people, as a class, instinctively recognize that a public,

-politicized attack on hackers will eventually spread to them--

-that the term "hacker,"  once demonized, might be used to knock

-their hands off the levers of power and choke them out of existence.

-There are hackers today who fiercely and publicly resist any besmirching

-of the noble title of hacker.  Naturally and understandably, they deeply

-resent the attack on their values implicit in using the word "hacker"

-as a synonym for computer-criminal.

-

-This book, sadly but in my opinion unavoidably, rather adds

-to the degradation of the term.  It concerns itself mostly with "hacking"

-in its commonest latter-day definition, i.e., intruding into computer

-systems by stealth and without permission.  The term "hacking" is used

-routinely today  by almost all law enforcement officials with any

-professional interest in computer fraud  and abuse.  American police

-describe almost any crime committed with, by, through, or against

-a computer as hacking.

-

-Most importantly, "hacker" is what computer-intruders

-choose to call THEMSELVES.  Nobody who "hacks" into systems

-willingly describes himself (rarely, herself) as a "computer intruder,"

-"computer trespasser," "cracker," "wormer," "darkside hacker"

-or "high tech street gangster."  Several other demeaning terms

-have been invented  in the hope that the press and public

-will leave the original sense of the word alone.  But few people

-actually use these terms.  (I exempt the term "cyberpunk,"

-which a few hackers and law enforcement people actually do use.

-The term "cyberpunk" is drawn from literary criticism and has

-some odd and unlikely resonances, but, like hacker,

-cyberpunk too has become a criminal pejorative today.)

-

-In any case, breaking into computer systems was hardly alien

-to the original hacker tradition.  The first tottering systems

-of the 1960s  required fairly extensive internal surgery merely

-to function day-by-day.  Their users "invaded" the deepest,

-most arcane recesses of their operating software almost

-as a matter of routine. "Computer security" in these early,

-primitive systems was at best an afterthought.  What security

-there was, was entirely physical, for it was assumed that

-anyone allowed near this expensive, arcane hardware would be

-a fully qualified professional expert.

-

-In a campus environment, though, this meant that grad students,

-teaching assistants, undergraduates, and eventually,

-all manner of dropouts and hangers-on ended up accessing

-and often running the works.

-

-Universities, even modern universities, are not in

-the business of maintaining security over information.

-On the contrary, universities, as institutions, pre-date

-the "information economy" by many centuries and are not-

-for-profit cultural entities, whose reason for existence

-(purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through

-techniques of scholarship, and then teach it.  Universities

-are meant to PASS THE TORCH OF CIVILIZATION, not just

-download data into student skulls, and the values of the

-academic community are strongly at odds with those of all

-would-be information empires.  Teachers at all levels, from

-kindergarten up, have proven to be shameless and persistent

-software and data pirates.  Universities do not merely

-"leak information" but vigorously broadcast free thought.

-

-This clash of values has been fraught with controversy.

-Many hackers of the 1960s remember their professional

-apprenticeship as a long guerilla war against the uptight

-mainframe-computer "information priesthood."  These computer-hungry

-youngsters had to struggle hard for access to computing power,

-and many of them were not above certain, er, shortcuts.

-But, over the years, this practice freed computing

-from the sterile reserve of lab-coated technocrats and

-was largely responsible for the explosive growth of computing

-in general society--especially PERSONAL computing.

-

-Access to technical power acted like catnip on certain

-of these youngsters.  Most of the basic techniques of

-computer intrusion: password cracking, trapdoors, backdoors,

-trojan horses--were invented in college environments in the 1960s,

-in the early days of network computing.  Some off-the-cuff

-experience at computer intrusion was to be in the informal

-resume of most "hackers" and many future industry giants.

-Outside of the tiny cult of computer enthusiasts, few people

-thought much about  the implications of "breaking into"

-computers.  This sort of activity had not yet been publicized,

-much less criminalized.

-

-In the 1960s, definitions of "property" and "privacy"

-had not yet been extended to cyberspace.  Computers

-were not yet indispensable to society.  There were no vast

-databanks of vulnerable, proprietary information stored

-in computers, which might be accessed, copied without

-permission, erased, altered, or sabotaged.  The stakes

-were low in the early days--but they grew every year,

-exponentially, as computers themselves grew.

-

-By the 1990s, commercial and political pressures

-had become overwhelming, and they broke the social

-boundaries of the hacking subculture.  Hacking

-had become too important to be left to the  hackers.

-Society was now forced to tackle the intangible nature

-of cyberspace-as-property, cyberspace as privately-owned

-unreal-estate.  In the  new, severe, responsible, high-stakes

-context of the "Information Society" of the 1990s,

-"hacking" was called into question.

-

-What did it mean to break into a computer without

-permission and use its computational power, or look

-around inside its files without hurting anything?

-What were computer-intruding hackers, anyway--how should

-society, and the law, best define their actions?

-Were they just BROWSERS, harmless intellectual explorers?

-Were they VOYEURS, snoops, invaders of privacy?  Should

-they be sternly treated as potential AGENTS OF ESPIONAGE,

-or perhaps as INDUSTRIAL SPIES? Or were they best

-defined as TRESPASSERS, a very common teenage

-misdemeanor?  Was hacking THEFT OF SERVICE?

-(After all, intruders were getting someone else's

-computer to carry out their orders, without permission

-and without paying).  Was hacking FRAUD?  Maybe it was

-best described as IMPERSONATION.  The commonest mode

-of computer intrusion was (and is) to swipe or snoop

-somebody else's password, and then enter the computer

-in the guise of another person--who is commonly stuck

-with the blame and the bills.

-

-Perhaps a medical metaphor was better--hackers should

-be defined as "sick," as COMPUTER ADDICTS unable

-to control their irresponsible, compulsive behavior.

-

-But these weighty assessments meant little to the

-people who were actually being judged.  From inside

-the underground world of hacking itself, all these

-perceptions seem quaint, wrongheaded, stupid, or meaningless.

-The most important self-perception of underground hackers--

-from the 1960s, right through to the present day--is that

-they are an ELITE.  The day-to-day struggle in the underground

-is not over sociological definitions--who cares?--but for power,

-knowledge, and  status among one's peers.

-

-When you are a hacker, it is your own inner conviction

-of your elite status that enables you to break, or let

-us say "transcend," the rules.  It is not that ALL rules

-go by the board.  The rules habitually broken by hackers

-are UNIMPORTANT rules--the rules of dopey greedhead telco

-bureaucrats and pig-ignorant government pests.

-

-Hackers have their OWN rules, which separate behavior

-which is cool and elite, from behavior which is rodentlike,

-stupid and losing.  These "rules," however, are mostly unwritten

-and enforced by peer pressure and tribal feeling.  Like all rules

-that depend on the unspoken conviction that everybody else

-is a good old boy, these rules are ripe for abuse.  The mechanisms

-of hacker peer- pressure, "teletrials" and ostracism, are rarely used

-and rarely work.  Back-stabbing slander, threats, and electronic

-harassment are also freely employed in down-and-dirty intrahacker feuds,

-but this rarely forces a rival out of the scene entirely.  The only real

-solution for the problem of an utterly losing, treacherous and rodentlike

-hacker is to TURN HIM IN TO THE POLICE.  Unlike the Mafia or Medellin Cartel,

-the hacker elite cannot simply execute the bigmouths, creeps and troublemakers

-among their ranks, so they turn one another in with astonishing frequency.

-

-There is no tradition of silence or OMERTA in the hacker underworld.

-Hackers can be shy, even reclusive, but when they do talk, hackers

-tend to brag, boast and strut.  Almost everything hackers do is INVISIBLE;

-if they don't brag, boast, and strut about it, then NOBODY WILL EVER KNOW.

-If you don't have something to brag, boast, and strut about, then nobody

-in the underground will recognize you and favor you with vital cooperation

-and respect.

-

-The way to win a solid reputation in the underground

-is by telling other hackers things that could only

-have been learned by exceptional cunning and stealth.

-Forbidden knowledge, therefore, is the basic currency

-of the digital underground, like seashells among

-Trobriand Islanders.  Hackers hoard this knowledge,

-and dwell upon it obsessively, and refine it,

-and bargain with it, and talk and talk about it.

-

-Many hackers even suffer from a strange obsession to TEACH--

-to spread the ethos and the knowledge of the digital underground.

-They'll do this even when it gains them no particular advantage

-and presents a grave personal risk.

-

-And when that risk catches up with them, they will go right on teaching

-and preaching--to a new audience this time, their interrogators from law

-enforcement.  Almost every hacker arrested tells everything he knows--

-all about his friends, his mentors, his disciples--legends, threats,

-horror stories, dire rumors, gossip, hallucinations.  This is, of course,

-convenient for law enforcement--except when law enforcement begins

-to believe hacker legendry.

-

-Phone phreaks are unique among criminals in their willingness

-to call up law enforcement officials--in the office, at their homes--

-and give them an extended piece of their mind.  It is hard not to

-interpret this as BEGGING FOR ARREST, and in fact it is an act

-of incredible foolhardiness.  Police are naturally nettled

-by these acts of chutzpah and will go well out of their way

-to bust these flaunting idiots.  But it can also be interpreted

-as a product of a world-view so elitist, so closed and hermetic,

-that electronic police are simply not perceived as "police,"

-but rather as ENEMY PHONE PHREAKS who should be scolded

-into behaving "decently."

-

-Hackers at their most grandiloquent perceive themselves

-as the elite pioneers of a new electronic world.

-Attempts to make them obey the democratically

-established laws of contemporary American society are

-seen as repression and persecution.  After all, they argue,

-if Alexander Graham Bell had gone along with the rules

-of the Western Union telegraph company, there would have

-been no telephones.  If Jobs and Wozniak had believed

-that IBM was the be-all and end-all, there would have

-been no personal computers.  If Benjamin Franklin and

-Thomas Jefferson had tried to "work within the system"

-there would have been no United States.

-

-Not only do hackers privately believe this as an article of faith,

-but they have been known to write ardent manifestos about it.

-Here are some revealing excerpts from an especially vivid hacker manifesto:

-"The Techno-Revolution" by "Dr. Crash,"  which appeared in electronic

-form in Phrack Volume 1, Issue 6, Phile 3.

-

-

-"To fully explain the true motives behind hacking,

-we must first take a quick look into the past.  In the 1960s,

-a group of MIT students built the first modern computer system.

-This wild, rebellious group of young men were the first to bear

-the name `hackers.'  The systems that they developed were intended

-to be used to solve world problems and to benefit all of mankind.

-"As we can see, this has not been the case.  The computer system

-has been solely in the hands of big businesses and the government.

-The wonderful device meant to enrich life has become a weapon which

-dehumanizes people.  To the government and large businesses,

-people are no more than disk space, and the government doesn't

-use computers to arrange aid for the poor, but to control nuclear

-death weapons.  The average American can only have access

-to a small microcomputer which is worth only a fraction

-of what they pay for it.  The businesses keep the

-true state-of-the-art equipment away from the people

-behind a steel wall of incredibly high prices and bureaucracy.

-It is because of this state of affairs that hacking was born.  (. . .)

-"Of course, the government doesn't want the monopoly of technology broken,

-so they have outlawed hacking and arrest anyone who is caught.  (. . .)

-The phone company is another example of technology abused and kept

-from people with high prices.  (. . .)  "Hackers often find that their

-existing equipment, due to the monopoly tactics of computer companies,

-is inefficient for their purposes.  Due to the exorbitantly high prices,

-it is impossible to legally purchase the necessary equipment.

-This need has given still another segment of the fight:  Credit Carding.

-Carding is a way of obtaining the necessary goods without paying for them.

-It is again due to the companies' stupidity that Carding is so easy,

-and shows that the world's businesses are in the hands of those

-with considerably less technical know-how than we, the hackers.  (. . .)

-"Hacking must continue.  We must train newcomers to the art of hacking.

-(. . . .)  And whatever you do, continue the fight.  Whether you know it

-or not, if you are a hacker, you are a revolutionary.  Don't worry,

-you're on the right side."

-

-The  defense of "carding" is rare.  Most hackers regard credit-card

-theft as "poison" to the underground, a sleazy and immoral effort that,

-worse yet, is hard to get away with.  Nevertheless, manifestos advocating

-credit-card theft, the deliberate crashing of computer systems,

-and even acts of violent physical destruction such as vandalism

-and arson do exist in the underground.  These boasts and threats

-are taken quite seriously by the police.  And not every hacker

-is an abstract, Platonic computer-nerd.  Some few are quite experienced

-at picking locks, robbing phone-trucks, and breaking and entering buildings.

-

-Hackers vary in their degree of hatred for authority

-and the violence of their rhetoric.  But, at a bottom line,

-they are scofflaws.  They don't regard the current rules

-of electronic behavior as respectable efforts to preserve

-law and order and protect public safety.  They regard these

-laws as immoral efforts by soulless corporations to protect

-their profit margins and to crush dissidents.  "Stupid" people,

-including police, businessmen, politicians, and journalists,

-simply have no right to judge the actions of those possessed of genius,

-techno-revolutionary intentions, and technical expertise.

-

-#

-

-Hackers are generally teenagers and college kids not

-engaged in earning a living.  They often come from fairly

-well-to-do middle-class backgrounds, and are markedly

-anti-materialistic (except, that is, when it comes to

-computer equipment).  Anyone motivated by greed for

-mere money (as opposed to the greed for power,

-knowledge and status) is swiftly written-off as a narrow-

-minded breadhead whose interests can only be corrupt

-and contemptible.  Having grown up in the 1970s and

-1980s, the young Bohemians of the digital underground

-regard straight society as awash in plutocratic corruption,

-where everyone from the President down is for sale and

-whoever has the gold makes the rules.

-

-Interestingly, there's a funhouse-mirror image of this attitude

-on the other side of the conflict.  The police are also

-one of the most markedly anti-materialistic groups

-in American society, motivated not by mere money

-but by ideals of service, justice, esprit-de-corps,

-and, of course, their own brand of specialized knowledge

-and power.  Remarkably, the propaganda war between cops

-and hackers has always involved angry allegations

-that the other side is trying to make a sleazy buck.

-Hackers consistently sneer that anti-phreak prosecutors

-are angling for cushy jobs as telco lawyers and that

-computer-crime police are aiming to cash in later

-as well-paid computer-security consultants in the private sector.

-

-For their part, police publicly conflate all

-hacking crimes with robbing payphones with crowbars.

-Allegations of "monetary losses" from computer intrusion

-are notoriously inflated.  The act of illicitly copying

-a document from a computer is morally equated with

-directly robbing a company of, say, half a million dollars.

-The teenage computer intruder in possession of this "proprietary"

-document has certainly not sold it for such a sum, would likely

-have little idea how to sell it at all, and quite probably

-doesn't even understand what he has.  He has not made a cent

-in profit from his felony but is still morally equated with

-a thief who has robbed the church poorbox and lit out for Brazil.

-

-Police want to believe that all hackers are thieves.

-It is a tortuous and almost unbearable act for the American

-justice system to put people in jail because they want

-to learn things which are forbidden for them to know.

-In an American context, almost any pretext for punishment

-is better than jailing people to protect certain restricted

-kinds of information.  Nevertheless, POLICING INFORMATION

-is part and parcel of the struggle against hackers.

-

-This dilemma is well exemplified by the remarkable

-activities of "Emmanuel Goldstein," editor and publisher

-of a print magazine known as 2600:  The Hacker Quarterly.

-Goldstein was an English major at Long Island's State University

-of New York in the '70s, when he became involved with the local

-college radio station.  His growing interest in electronics

-caused him to drift into Yippie TAP circles and thus into

-the digital underground, where he became a self-described

-techno-rat.  His magazine publishes techniques of computer

-intrusion and telephone "exploration" as well as gloating

-exposes of telco misdeeds and governmental failings.

-

-Goldstein lives quietly and very privately in a large,

-crumbling Victorian mansion in Setauket, New York.

-The seaside house is decorated with telco decals, chunks of

-driftwood, and the basic bric-a-brac of a hippie crash-pad.

-He is unmarried, mildly unkempt, and survives mostly

-on TV dinners and turkey-stuffing eaten straight out

-of the bag.  Goldstein is a man of considerable charm

-and fluency, with a brief, disarming smile and the kind

-of pitiless, stubborn, thoroughly recidivist integrity

-that America's electronic police find genuinely alarming.

-

-Goldstein took his nom-de-plume, or "handle," from

-a character in Orwell's 1984, which may be taken,

-correctly, as a symptom of the gravity of his sociopolitical

-worldview.  He is not himself a practicing computer

-intruder, though he vigorously abets these actions,

-especially when they are pursued against large

-corporations or governmental agencies.  Nor is he a thief,

-for he loudly scorns mere theft of phone service, in favor

-of "exploring and manipulating the system."  He is probably

-best described and understood as a DISSIDENT.

-

-Weirdly, Goldstein is living in modern America

-under conditions very similar to those of former

-East European intellectual dissidents.  In other words,

-he flagrantly espouses a value-system that is deeply

-and irrevocably opposed to the system of those in power

-and the police.  The values in 2600 are generally expressed

-in terms that are ironic, sarcastic, paradoxical, or just

-downright confused.  But there's no mistaking their

-radically anti-authoritarian tenor.  2600 holds that

-technical power and specialized knowledge, of any kind

-obtainable, belong by right in the hands of those individuals

-brave and bold enough to discover them--by whatever means necessary.

-Devices, laws, or systems that forbid access, and the free

-spread of knowledge, are provocations that any free

-and self-respecting hacker should relentlessly attack.

-The "privacy" of governments, corporations and other soulless

-technocratic organizations should never be protected

-at the expense of the liberty and free initiative

-of the individual techno-rat.

-

-However, in our contemporary workaday world, both governments

-and corporations are very anxious indeed to police information

-which is secret, proprietary, restricted, confidential,

-copyrighted, patented, hazardous, illegal, unethical,

-embarrassing, or otherwise sensitive.  This makes Goldstein

-persona non grata, and his philosophy a threat.

-

-Very little about the conditions of Goldstein's daily

-life would astonish, say, Vaclav Havel.  (We may note

-in passing that President Havel once had his word-processor

-confiscated by the Czechoslovak police.)  Goldstein lives

-by SAMIZDAT, acting semi-openly as a data-center

-for the underground, while challenging the powers-that-be

-to abide by their own stated rules:  freedom of speech

-and the First Amendment.

-

-Goldstein thoroughly looks and acts the part of techno-rat,

-with shoulder-length ringlets and a piratical black

-fisherman's-cap set at a rakish angle.  He often shows up

-like Banquo's ghost at meetings of computer professionals,

-where he listens quietly, half-smiling and taking thorough notes.

-

-Computer professionals generally meet publicly,

-and find it very difficult to rid themselves of Goldstein

-and his ilk  without extralegal and unconstitutional actions.

-Sympathizers, many of them quite respectable people

-with responsible jobs, admire Goldstein's attitude and

-surreptitiously pass him information.  An unknown but

-presumably large proportion of Goldstein's  2,000-plus

-readership are telco security personnel and police,

-who are forced to subscribe to 2600  to stay abreast

-of new developments in hacking.  They thus find themselves

-PAYING THIS GUY'S RENT while grinding their teeth in anguish,

-a situation that would have delighted Abbie Hoffman

-(one of Goldstein's few idols).

-

-Goldstein is probably the best-known public representative

-of the hacker underground today, and certainly the best-hated.

-Police regard him as a Fagin, a corrupter of youth, and speak

-of him with untempered loathing.  He is quite an accomplished gadfly.

-After the Martin Luther King Day Crash of 1990, Goldstein,

-for instance, adeptly rubbed salt into the wound in the pages of 2600.

-"Yeah, it was fun for the phone phreaks as we watched the network crumble,"

-he admitted cheerfully.  "But it was also an ominous sign of what's

-to come. . . .  Some AT&T people, aided by well-meaning but ignorant media,

-were spreading the notion that many companies had the same software

-and therefore could face the same problem someday.  Wrong.  This was

-entirely an AT&T software deficiency.  Of course, other companies could

-face entirely DIFFERENT software problems.  But then, so too could AT&T."

-

-After a technical discussion of the system's failings,

-the Long Island techno-rat went on to offer thoughtful

-criticism to the gigantic multinational's hundreds of

-professionally qualified engineers.  "What we don't know

-is how a major force in communications like AT&T could

-be so sloppy.  What happened to backups?  Sure,

-computer systems go down all the time, but people

-making phone calls are not the same as people logging

-on to computers.  We must make that distinction.  It's not

-acceptable for the phone system or any other essential

-service to `go down.'  If we continue to trust technology

-without understanding it, we can look forward to many

-variations on this theme.

-

-"AT&T owes it to its customers to be prepared to INSTANTLY

-switch to another network if something strange and unpredictable

-starts occurring.  The news here isn't so much the failure

-of a computer program, but the failure of AT&T's entire structure."

-

-The very idea of this. . . . this PERSON. . . .  offering

-"advice" about "AT&T's entire structure" is more than

-some people can easily bear.  How dare this near-criminal

-dictate what is or isn't "acceptable" behavior from AT&T?

-Especially when he's publishing, in the very same issue,

-detailed schematic diagrams for creating various switching-network

-signalling tones unavailable to the public.

-

-"See what happens when you drop a `silver box' tone or two

-down your local exchange or through different long distance

-service carriers," advises 2600 contributor "Mr. Upsetter"

-in "How To Build a Signal Box."  "If you experiment systematically

-and keep good records, you will surely discover something interesting."

-

-This is, of course, the scientific method, generally regarded

-as a praiseworthy activity and one of the flowers of modern civilization.

-One can indeed learn a great deal with this sort of structured

-intellectual activity.  Telco employees regard this mode of "exploration"

-as akin to flinging sticks of dynamite into their pond to see what lives

-on the bottom.

-

-2600 has been published consistently since 1984.

-It has also run a bulletin board computer system,

-printed 2600 T-shirts, taken fax calls. . . .

-The Spring 1991 issue has an interesting announcement on page 45:

-"We just discovered an extra set of wires attached to our fax line

-and heading up the pole.  (They've since been clipped.)

-Your faxes to us and to anyone else could be monitored."

-In the worldview of 2600, the tiny band of techno-rat brothers

-(rarely, sisters) are a beseiged vanguard of the truly free and honest.

-The rest of the world is a maelstrom of corporate crime and high-level

-governmental corruption, occasionally tempered with well-meaning

-ignorance.  To read a few issues in a row is to enter a nightmare

-akin to Solzhenitsyn's, somewhat tempered by the fact that 2600

-is often extremely funny.

-

-Goldstein did not become a target of the Hacker Crackdown,

-though he protested loudly, eloquently, and publicly about it,

-and it added considerably to his fame.  It was not that he is not

-regarded as dangerous, because he is so regarded.  Goldstein has had

-brushes with the law in the past:  in 1985, a 2600 bulletin board

-computer was seized by the FBI, and some software on it was formally

-declared "a burglary tool in the form of a computer program."

-But Goldstein escaped direct repression in 1990, because his

-magazine is printed on paper, and recognized as subject

-to Constitutional freedom of the press protection.

-As was seen in the Ramparts case, this is far from

-an absolute guarantee.  Still, as a practical matter,

-shutting down 2600 by court-order would create so much

-legal hassle that it is simply unfeasible, at least

-for the present.  Throughout 1990, both Goldstein

-and his magazine were peevishly thriving.

-

-Instead, the Crackdown of 1990 would concern itself

-with the computerized version of forbidden data.

-The crackdown itself, first and foremost, was about

-BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEMS.  Bulletin Board Systems, most often

-known by the ugly and un-pluralizable acronym "BBS," are

-the life-blood of the digital underground.  Boards were

-also central to law enforcement's tactics and strategy

-in the Hacker Crackdown.

-

-A "bulletin board system" can be formally defined as

-a computer which serves as an information and message-

-passing center for users dialing-up over the phone-lines

-through the use of  modems.  A "modem," or modulator-

-demodulator, is a device which translates the digital

-impulses of computers into audible analog telephone

-signals, and vice versa.  Modems connect computers

-to phones and thus to each other.

-

-Large-scale mainframe computers have been connected since the 1960s,

-but PERSONAL computers, run by individuals out of their homes,

-were first networked in the late 1970s.  The "board" created

-by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess in February 1978,

-in Chicago, Illinois, is generally regarded as the first

-personal-computer bulletin board system worthy of the name.

-

-Boards run on many different machines, employing many

-different kinds of software.  Early boards were crude and buggy,

-and their managers, known as "system operators" or "sysops,"

-were hard-working technical experts who wrote their own software.

-But like most everything else in the world of electronics,

-boards became faster, cheaper, better-designed, and generally

-far more sophisticated throughout the 1980s.  They also moved

-swiftly out of the hands of pioneers and into those of the

-general public.  By 1985 there were something in the

-neighborhood of 4,000 boards in America.  By 1990 it was

-calculated, vaguely, that there were about 30,000 boards in

-the US, with uncounted thousands overseas.

-

-Computer bulletin boards are unregulated enterprises.

-Running a board is a rough-and-ready, catch-as-catch-can proposition.

-Basically, anybody with a computer, modem, software and a phone-line

-can start a board.  With second-hand equipment and public-domain

-free software, the price of a board might be quite small--

-less than it would take to publish a magazine or even a

-decent pamphlet.  Entrepreneurs eagerly sell bulletin-board

-software, and will coach nontechnical amateur sysops in its use.

-

-Boards are not "presses."  They are not magazines,

-or libraries, or phones, or CB radios, or traditional cork

-bulletin boards down at the local laundry, though they

-have some passing resemblance to those earlier media.

-Boards are a new medium--they may even be a LARGE NUMBER of new media.

-

-Consider these unique characteristics:  boards are cheap,

-yet they  can have a national, even global reach.

-Boards can be contacted from anywhere in the global

-telephone network, at NO COST to the person running the board--

-the caller pays the phone bill, and if the caller is local,

-the call is free.  Boards do not involve an editorial elite

-addressing a mass audience.  The "sysop" of a board is not

-an exclusive publisher or writer--he is managing an electronic salon,

-where individuals can address the general public, play the part

-of the general public, and also  exchange private mail

-with other individuals.  And the "conversation" on boards,

-though fluid, rapid, and highly interactive, is not spoken,

-but written.  It is also relatively anonymous, sometimes completely so.

-

-And because boards are cheap and ubiquitous, regulations

-and licensing requirements would likely be practically unenforceable.

-It would almost be easier to "regulate," "inspect," and "license"

-the content of private mail--probably more so, since the mail system

-is operated by the federal government.  Boards are run by individuals,

-independently, entirely at their own whim.

-

-For the sysop, the cost of operation is not the primary

-limiting factor.  Once the investment in a computer and

-modem has been made, the only steady cost is the charge

-for maintaining a phone line (or several phone lines).

-The primary limits for sysops are time and energy.

-Boards require upkeep.  New users are generally "validated"--

-they must be issued individual passwords, and called at

-home by voice-phone, so that their identity can be

-verified.  Obnoxious users, who exist in plenty, must be

-chided or purged.  Proliferating messages must be deleted

-when they grow old, so that the capacity of the system

-is not overwhelmed.  And software programs (if such things

-are kept on the board)  must be examined for possible

-computer viruses.  If there is a financial charge to use

-the board (increasingly common, especially in larger and

-fancier systems) then accounts must be kept, and users

-must be billed.  And if the board crashes--a very common

-occurrence--then repairs must be made.

-

-Boards can be distinguished by the amount of effort

-spent in regulating them.  First, we have the completely

-open board, whose sysop is off chugging brews and

-watching re-runs while his users generally degenerate

-over time into peevish anarchy and eventual silence.

-Second comes the supervised board, where the sysop

-breaks in every once in a while to tidy up, calm brawls,

-issue announcements, and rid the community of  dolts

-and troublemakers.  Third is the heavily supervised

-board, which sternly urges adult and responsible behavior

-and swiftly edits any message considered offensive,

-impertinent, illegal or irrelevant.  And last comes

-the completely  edited "electronic publication," which

-is presented to a silent audience which is not allowed

-to respond directly in any way.

-

-Boards can also be grouped by their degree of anonymity.

-There is the completely anonymous board, where everyone

-uses pseudonyms--"handles"--and even the sysop is unaware

-of the user's true identity.  The sysop himself is likely

-pseudonymous on a board of this type.  Second, and rather

-more common, is the board where the sysop knows (or thinks

-he knows) the true names and addresses of all users,

-but the users don't know one another's names and may not know his.

-Third is the board where everyone has to use real names,

-and roleplaying and pseudonymous posturing are forbidden.

-

-Boards can be grouped by their immediacy.  "Chat-lines"

-are boards linking several users together over several

-different phone-lines simultaneously, so that people

-exchange messages at the very moment that they type.

-(Many large boards feature "chat" capabilities along

-with other services.)  Less immediate boards,

-perhaps with a single phoneline, store messages serially,

-one at a time.  And some boards are only open for business

-in daylight hours or on weekends, which greatly slows response.

-A NETWORK of boards, such as "FidoNet," can carry electronic mail

-from board to board, continent to continent, across huge distances--

-but at a relative snail's pace, so that a message can take several

-days to reach its target audience and elicit a reply.

-

-Boards can be grouped by their degree of community.

-Some boards emphasize the exchange of private,

-person-to-person electronic mail.  Others emphasize

-public postings and may even purge people who "lurk,"

-merely reading posts but refusing to openly participate.

-Some boards are intimate and neighborly.  Others are frosty

-and highly technical.  Some are little more than storage

-dumps for software, where users "download" and "upload" programs,

-but interact among themselves little if at all.

-

-Boards can be grouped by their ease of access.  Some boards

-are entirely public.  Others are private and restricted only

-to personal friends of the sysop.  Some boards divide users by status.

-On these boards, some users, especially beginners, strangers or children,

-will be restricted to general topics, and perhaps forbidden to post.

-Favored users, though, are granted the ability to post as they please,

-and to stay "on-line" as long as they like, even to the disadvantage

-of other people trying to call in.  High-status users can be given access

-to hidden areas in the board, such as off-color topics, private discussions,

-and/or valuable software.  Favored users may even become "remote sysops"

-with the power to take remote control of the board through their own

-home computers.  Quite often "remote sysops" end up doing all the work

-and taking formal control of the enterprise, despite the fact that it's

-physically located in someone else's house.  Sometimes several "co-sysops"

-share power.

-

-And boards can also be grouped by size.  Massive, nationwide

-commercial networks, such as CompuServe, Delphi, GEnie and Prodigy,

-are run on mainframe computers and are generally not considered "boards,"

-though they share many of their characteristics, such as electronic mail,

-discussion topics, libraries of software, and persistent and growing problems

-with civil-liberties issues.  Some private boards have as many as

-thirty phone-lines and quite sophisticated hardware.  And then

-there are tiny boards.

-

-Boards vary in popularity.  Some boards are huge and crowded,

-where users must claw their way in against a constant busy-signal.

-Others are huge and empty--there are few things sadder than a formerly

-flourishing board where no one posts any longer, and the dead conversations

-of vanished users lie about gathering digital dust.  Some boards are tiny

-and intimate, their telephone numbers intentionally kept confidential

-so that only a small number can log on.

-

-And some boards are UNDERGROUND.

-

-Boards can be mysterious entities.  The activities of

-their users can be hard to differentiate from conspiracy.

-Sometimes they ARE conspiracies.  Boards have harbored,

-or have been accused of harboring, all manner of fringe groups,

-and have abetted, or been accused of abetting, every manner

-of frowned-upon, sleazy, radical, and criminal activity.

-There are Satanist boards.  Nazi boards.  Pornographic boards.

-Pedophile boards.  Drug- dealing boards.  Anarchist boards.

-Communist boards. Gay and Lesbian boards (these exist in great profusion,

-many of them quite lively with well-established histories).

-Religious cult boards.  Evangelical boards.  Witchcraft

-boards, hippie boards, punk boards, skateboarder boards.

-Boards for UFO believers.  There may well be boards for

-serial killers, airline terrorists and professional assassins.

-There is simply no way to tell.  Boards spring up, flourish,

-and disappear in large numbers, in most every corner of

-the developed world.  Even apparently innocuous public

-boards can, and sometimes do, harbor secret areas known

-only to a few.  And even on the vast, public, commercial services,

-private mail is very private--and quite possibly criminal.

-

-Boards cover most every topic imaginable and some

-that are hard to imagine.  They cover a vast spectrum

-of social activity.  However, all board users do have

-something in common:  their possession of computers

-and phones.  Naturally, computers and phones are

-primary topics of conversation on almost every board.

-

-And hackers and phone phreaks, those utter devotees

-of computers and phones, live by boards.  They swarm by boards.

-They are bred by boards.  By the late 1980s, phone-phreak groups

-and hacker groups, united by boards, had proliferated fantastically.

-

-

-As evidence, here is a list of hacker groups compiled

-by the editors of Phrack on August 8, 1988.

-

-

-The Administration.

-Advanced Telecommunications, Inc.

-ALIAS.

-American Tone Travelers.

-Anarchy Inc.

-Apple Mafia.

-The Association.

-Atlantic Pirates Guild.

-

-Bad Ass Mother Fuckers.

-Bellcore.

-Bell Shock Force.

-Black Bag.

-

-Camorra.

-C&M Productions.

-Catholics Anonymous.

-Chaos Computer Club.

-Chief Executive Officers.

-Circle Of Death.

-Circle Of Deneb.

-Club X.

-Coalition of Hi-Tech

-Pirates.

-Coast-To-Coast.

-Corrupt Computing.

-Cult Of The

-Dead Cow.

-Custom Retaliations.

-

-Damage Inc.

-D&B Communications.

-The Danger Gang.

-Dec Hunters.

-Digital Gang.

-DPAK.

-

-Eastern Alliance.

-The Elite Hackers Guild.

-Elite Phreakers and Hackers Club.

-The Elite Society Of America.

-EPG.

-Executives Of Crime.

-Extasyy Elite.

-

-Fargo 4A.

-Farmers Of Doom.

-The Federation.

-Feds R Us.

-First Class.

-Five O.

-Five Star.

-Force Hackers.

-The 414s.

-

-Hack-A-Trip.

-Hackers Of America.

-High Mountain Hackers.

-High Society.

-The Hitchhikers.

-

-IBM Syndicate.

-The Ice Pirates.

-Imperial Warlords.

-Inner Circle.

-Inner Circle II.

-Insanity Inc.

-International Computer Underground Bandits.

-

-Justice League of America.

-

-Kaos Inc.

-Knights Of Shadow.

-Knights Of The Round Table.

-

-League Of Adepts.

-Legion Of Doom.

-Legion Of Hackers.

-Lords Of Chaos.

-Lunatic Labs, Unlimited.

-

-Master Hackers.

-MAD!

-The Marauders.

-MD/PhD.

-

-Metal Communications, Inc.

-MetalliBashers, Inc.

-MBI.

-

-Metro Communications.

-Midwest Pirates Guild.

-

-NASA Elite.

-The NATO Association.

-Neon Knights.

-

-Nihilist Order.

-Order Of The Rose.

-OSS.

-

-Pacific Pirates Guild.

-Phantom Access Associates.

-

-PHido PHreaks.

-The Phirm.

-Phlash.

-PhoneLine Phantoms.

-Phone Phreakers Of America.

-Phortune 500.

-

-Phreak Hack Delinquents.

-Phreak Hack Destroyers.

-

-Phreakers, Hackers, And Laundromat Employees Gang (PHALSE Gang).

-Phreaks Against Geeks.

-Phreaks Against Phreaks Against Geeks.

-Phreaks and Hackers of America.

-Phreaks Anonymous World Wide.

-Project Genesis.

-The Punk Mafia.

-

-The Racketeers.

-Red Dawn Text Files.

-Roscoe Gang.

-

-

-SABRE.

-Secret Circle of Pirates.

-Secret Service.

-707 Club.

-Shadow Brotherhood.

-Sharp Inc.

-65C02 Elite.

-

-Spectral Force.

-Star League.

-Stowaways.

-Strata-Crackers.

-

-

-Team Hackers '86.

-Team Hackers '87.

-

-TeleComputist Newsletter Staff.

-Tribunal Of Knowledge.

-

-Triple Entente.

-Turn Over And Die Syndrome (TOADS).

-

-300 Club.

-1200 Club.

-2300 Club.

-2600 Club.

-2601 Club.

-

-2AF.

-

-The United Soft WareZ Force.

-United Technical Underground.

-

-Ware Brigade.

-The Warelords.

-WASP.

-

-Contemplating this list is  an impressive, almost humbling business.

-As a cultural artifact, the thing approaches poetry.

-

-Underground groups--subcultures--can be distinguished

-from independent cultures by their  habit of referring

-constantly to the parent society.  Undergrounds by their

-nature constantly  must maintain a membrane of differentiation.

-Funny/distinctive clothes and hair, specialized jargon, specialized

-ghettoized areas in cities, different hours of rising, working,

-sleeping. . . .  The digital underground, which specializes in information,

-relies very heavily on language to distinguish itself.  As can be seen

-from this list, they make heavy use of parody and mockery.

-It's revealing to see who they choose to mock.

-

-First, large corporations.  We have the Phortune 500,

-The Chief Executive Officers, Bellcore, IBM Syndicate,

-SABRE (a computerized reservation service maintained

-by airlines).  The common use of "Inc." is telling--

-none of these groups are actual corporations,

-but take clear delight in mimicking them.

-

-Second, governments and police.  NASA Elite, NATO Association.

-"Feds R Us" and "Secret Service" are fine bits of fleering boldness.

-OSS--the Office of Strategic Services was the forerunner of the CIA.

-

-Third, criminals.  Using stigmatizing pejoratives as a perverse

-badge of honor is a time-honored tactic for subcultures:

-punks, gangs, delinquents, mafias, pirates, bandits, racketeers.

-

-Specialized orthography, especially the use of "ph" for "f"

-and "z" for the plural "s," are instant recognition symbols.

-So is the use of the numeral "0" for the letter "O"

---computer-software orthography generally features a

-slash through the zero, making the distinction obvious.

-

-Some terms are poetically descriptive of computer intrusion:

-the Stowaways, the Hitchhikers, the PhoneLine Phantoms, Coast-to-Coast.

-Others are simple bravado and vainglorious puffery.

-(Note the insistent use of the terms "elite" and "master.")

-Some terms are blasphemous, some obscene, others merely cryptic--

-anything to puzzle, offend, confuse, and keep the straights at bay.

-

-Many hacker groups further re-encrypt their names

-by the use of acronyms:  United Technical Underground

-becomes UTU, Farmers of Doom become FoD, the United SoftWareZ

-Force becomes, at its own insistence, "TuSwF," and woe to the

-ignorant rodent who capitalizes the wrong letters.

-

-It should be further recognized that the members of these groups

-are themselves pseudonymous.  If you did, in fact, run across

-the "PhoneLine Phantoms," you would find them to consist of

-"Carrier Culprit," "The Executioner," "Black Majik,"

-"Egyptian Lover," "Solid State," and  "Mr Icom."

-"Carrier Culprit" will likely be referred to by his friends

-as "CC," as in, "I got these dialups from CC of PLP."

-

-It's quite possible that this entire list refers to as

-few as a thousand people.  It is not a complete list

-of underground groups--there has never been such a list,

-and there never will be.  Groups rise, flourish, decline,

-share membership, maintain a cloud of wannabes and

-casual hangers-on.  People pass in and out, are ostracized,

-get bored, are busted by police, or are cornered by telco

-security and presented with huge bills.  Many "underground

-groups" are software pirates, "warez d00dz," who might break

-copy protection and pirate programs, but likely wouldn't dare

-to intrude on a computer-system.

-

-It is hard to estimate the true population of the digital

-underground.  There is constant turnover.  Most hackers

-start young, come and go, then drop out at age 22--

-the age of college graduation.  And a large majority

-of "hackers" access pirate boards, adopt a handle,

-swipe software and perhaps abuse a phone-code or two,

-while never actually joining the elite.

-

-Some professional informants, who make it their business

-to retail knowledge of the underground to paymasters in private

-corporate security, have estimated the hacker population

-at as high as fifty thousand.  This is likely highly inflated,

-unless one counts every single teenage software pirate

-and petty phone-booth thief.  My best guess is about 5,000 people.

-Of these, I would guess that as few as a hundred are truly "elite"

---active computer intruders, skilled enough to penetrate

-sophisticated systems and truly to worry corporate security

-and law enforcement.

-

-Another interesting speculation is whether this group

-is growing or not.  Young teenage hackers are often

-convinced that hackers exist in vast swarms and will soon

-dominate the cybernetic universe.  Older and wiser

-veterans, perhaps as wizened as 24 or 25 years old,

-are convinced that the glory days are long gone, that the cops

-have the underground's number now, and that kids these days

-are dirt-stupid and just want to play Nintendo.

-

-My own assessment is that computer intrusion, as a non-profit act

-of intellectual exploration and mastery, is in slow decline,

-at least in the United States; but that electronic fraud,

-especially telecommunication crime, is growing by leaps and bounds.

-

-One might find a useful parallel to the digital underground

-in the drug  underground.  There was a time, now much-obscured

-by historical revisionism, when Bohemians freely shared joints

-at concerts, and hip, small-scale marijuana dealers might

-turn people on just for the sake of enjoying a long stoned conversation

-about the Doors and Allen Ginsberg.  Now drugs are increasingly verboten,

-except in a high-stakes, highly-criminal world of highly addictive drugs.

-Over years of disenchantment and police harassment, a vaguely ideological,

-free-wheeling drug underground has relinquished the business of drug-dealing

-to a  far more savage criminal hard-core.  This is not a pleasant prospect

-to contemplate, but the analogy is fairly compelling.

-

-What does an underground board look like?  What distinguishes

-it from a standard board?  It isn't necessarily the conversation--

-hackers often talk about common board topics, such as hardware, software,

-sex, science fiction, current events, politics, movies, personal gossip.

-Underground boards can best be distinguished by their files, or "philes,"

-pre-composed texts which teach the techniques and ethos of the underground.

-These are prized reservoirs of forbidden knowledge.  Some are anonymous,

-but most proudly bear the handle of the "hacker" who has created them,

-and his group affiliation, if he has one.

-

-Here is a partial table-of-contents of philes from an underground board,

-somewhere in the heart of middle America, circa 1991.  The descriptions

-are mostly self-explanatory.

-

-

-BANKAMER.ZIP    5406 06-11-91  Hacking Bank America

-CHHACK.ZIP      4481 06-11-91  Chilton Hacking

-CITIBANK.ZIP    4118 06-11-91  Hacking Citibank

-CREDIMTC.ZIP    3241 06-11-91  Hacking Mtc Credit Company

-DIGEST.ZIP      5159 06-11-91  Hackers Digest

-HACK.ZIP       14031 06-11-91  How To Hack

-HACKBAS.ZIP     5073 06-11-91  Basics Of Hacking

-HACKDICT.ZIP   42774 06-11-91  Hackers Dictionary

-HACKER.ZIP     57938 06-11-91  Hacker Info

-HACKERME.ZIP    3148 06-11-91  Hackers Manual

-HACKHAND.ZIP    4814 06-11-91  Hackers Handbook

-HACKTHES.ZIP   48290 06-11-91  Hackers Thesis

-HACKVMS.ZIP     4696 06-11-91  Hacking Vms Systems

-MCDON.ZIP       3830 06-11-91  Hacking Macdonalds (Home Of The Archs)

-P500UNIX.ZIP   15525 06-11-91  Phortune 500 Guide To Unix

-RADHACK.ZIP     8411 06-11-91  Radio Hacking

-TAOTRASH.DOC    4096 12-25-89  Suggestions For Trashing

-TECHHACK.ZIP    5063 06-11-91  Technical Hacking

-

-

-The files above are do-it-yourself manuals about computer intrusion.

-The above is only a small section of a much larger library of hacking

-and phreaking techniques and history.  We now move into a different

-and perhaps surprising area.

-

-+------------+

-  |Anarchy|

-+------------+

-

-ANARC.ZIP       3641 06-11-91  Anarchy Files

-ANARCHST.ZIP   63703 06-11-91  Anarchist Book

-ANARCHY.ZIP     2076 06-11-91  Anarchy At Home

-ANARCHY3.ZIP    6982 06-11-91  Anarchy No 3

-ANARCTOY.ZIP    2361 06-11-91  Anarchy Toys

-ANTIMODM.ZIP    2877 06-11-91  Anti-modem Weapons

-ATOM.ZIP        4494 06-11-91  How To Make An Atom Bomb

-BARBITUA.ZIP    3982 06-11-91  Barbiturate Formula

-BLCKPWDR.ZIP    2810 06-11-91  Black Powder Formulas

-BOMB.ZIP        3765 06-11-91  How To Make Bombs

-BOOM.ZIP        2036 06-11-91  Things That Go Boom

-CHLORINE.ZIP    1926 06-11-91  Chlorine Bomb

-COOKBOOK.ZIP    1500 06-11-91  Anarchy Cook Book

-DESTROY.ZIP     3947 06-11-91  Destroy Stuff

-DUSTBOMB.ZIP    2576 06-11-91  Dust Bomb

-ELECTERR.ZIP    3230 06-11-91  Electronic Terror

-EXPLOS1.ZIP     2598 06-11-91  Explosives 1

-EXPLOSIV.ZIP   18051 06-11-91  More Explosives

-EZSTEAL.ZIP     4521 06-11-91  Ez-stealing

-FLAME.ZIP       2240 06-11-91  Flame Thrower

-FLASHLT.ZIP     2533 06-11-91  Flashlight Bomb

-FMBUG.ZIP       2906 06-11-91  How To Make An Fm Bug

-OMEEXPL.ZIP     2139 06-11-91  Home Explosives

-HOW2BRK.ZIP     3332 06-11-91  How To Break In

-LETTER.ZIP      2990 06-11-91  Letter Bomb

-LOCK.ZIP        2199 06-11-91  How To Pick Locks

-MRSHIN.ZIP      3991 06-11-91  Briefcase Locks

-NAPALM.ZIP      3563 06-11-91  Napalm At Home

-NITRO.ZIP       3158 06-11-91  Fun With Nitro

-PARAMIL.ZIP     2962 06-11-91  Paramilitary Info

-PICKING.ZIP     3398 06-11-91  Picking Locks

-PIPEBOMB.ZIP    2137 06-11-91  Pipe Bomb

-POTASS.ZIP      3987 06-11-91  Formulas With Potassium

-PRANK.TXT      11074 08-03-90  More Pranks To Pull On Idiots!

-REVENGE.ZIP     4447 06-11-91  Revenge Tactics

-ROCKET.ZIP      2590 06-11-91  Rockets For Fun

-SMUGGLE.ZIP     3385 06-11-91  How To Smuggle

-

-HOLY COW!  The damned thing is full of stuff about bombs!

-

-What are we to make of this?

-

-First, it should be acknowledged that spreading

-knowledge about demolitions to teenagers is a highly and

-deliberately antisocial act.  It is not, however, illegal.

-

-Second, it should be recognized that most of these

-philes were in fact WRITTEN by teenagers.  Most adult

-American males who can remember their teenage years

-will recognize that the notion of building a flamethrower

-in your garage is an incredibly neat-o idea.  ACTUALLY,

-building a flamethrower in your garage, however, is

-fraught with discouraging difficulty.  Stuffing gunpowder

-into a booby-trapped flashlight, so as to blow the arm off

-your high-school vice-principal, can be a thing of dark

-beauty to contemplate.  Actually committing assault by

-explosives  will earn you the sustained attention of the

-federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

-

-Some people, however, will actually try these plans.

-A determinedly murderous American teenager can probably

-buy or steal a handgun far more easily than he can brew

-fake "napalm" in the kitchen sink.  Nevertheless,

-if temptation is spread before people, a certain number

-will succumb, and a small minority will actually attempt

-these stunts.  A large minority of that small minority

-will either fail or, quite likely, maim themselves,

-since these "philes" have not been checked for accuracy,

-are not the product of professional experience,

-and are often highly fanciful.  But the gloating menace

-of these philes is not to be entirely dismissed.

-

-Hackers may not be "serious" about bombing; if they were,

-we would hear far more about exploding flashlights, homemade bazookas,

-and gym teachers poisoned by chlorine and potassium.

-However, hackers are VERY serious about forbidden knowledge.

-They are possessed not merely by curiosity, but by

-a positive LUST TO KNOW. The desire to know what

-others don't is scarcely new.  But the INTENSITY

-of this desire, as manifested by these young technophilic

-denizens of the Information Age, may in fact BE new,

-and may represent some basic shift in social values--

-a harbinger of what the world may come to, as society

-lays more and more value on the possession,

-assimilation and retailing of INFORMATION

-as a basic commodity of daily life.

-

-There have always been young men with obsessive interests

-in these topics.  Never before, however, have they been able

-to network so extensively and easily, and to propagandize

-their interests with impunity to random passers-by.

-High-school teachers will recognize that there's always

-one in a crowd, but when the one in a crowd escapes control

-by jumping into the phone-lines, and becomes a hundred such kids

-all together on a board, then trouble is brewing visibly.

-The urge of authority to DO SOMETHING, even something drastic,

-is hard to resist. And in 1990, authority did something.

-In fact authority did a great deal.

-

-#

-

-The process by which boards create hackers goes something

-like this.  A youngster becomes interested in computers--

-usually, computer games.  He hears from friends that

-"bulletin boards" exist where games can be obtained for free.

-(Many computer games are "freeware," not copyrighted--

-invented simply for the love of it and given away to the public;

-some of these games are quite good.)  He bugs his parents for a modem,

-or quite often, uses his parents' modem.

-

-The world of boards suddenly opens up.  Computer games

-can be quite expensive, real budget-breakers for a kid,

-but pirated games, stripped of copy protection, are cheap or free.

-They are also illegal, but it is very rare, almost unheard of,

-for a small-scale software pirate to be prosecuted.

-Once "cracked" of its copy protection, the program,

-being digital data, becomes infinitely reproducible.

-Even the instructions to the game, any manuals that accompany it,

-can be reproduced as text files, or photocopied from legitimate sets.

-Other users on boards can give many useful hints in game-playing tactics.

-And a youngster with an infinite supply of free computer games can

-certainly cut quite a swath among his modem-less friends.

-

-And boards are pseudonymous.  No one need know that you're

-fourteen years old--with a little practice at subterfuge,

-you can talk to adults about adult things, and be accepted

-and taken seriously!  You can even pretend to be a girl,

-or an old man, or anybody you can imagine.  If you find this

-kind of deception gratifying, there is ample opportunity

-to hone your ability on boards.

-

-But local boards can grow stale.  And almost every board maintains

-a list of phone-numbers to other boards, some in distant, tempting,

-exotic locales.  Who knows what they're up to, in Oregon or Alaska

-or Florida or California?  It's very easy to find out--just order

-the modem to call through its software--nothing to this, just typing

-on a keyboard, the same thing you would do for most any computer game.

-The machine reacts swiftly and in a few seconds you are talking to

-a bunch of interesting people on another seaboard.

-

-And yet the BILLS for this trivial action can be staggering!

-Just by going tippety-tap with your fingers, you may have

-saddled your parents with four hundred bucks in long-distance charges,

-and gotten chewed out but good.  That hardly seems fair.

-

-How horrifying to have made friends in another state

-and to be deprived of their company--and their software--

-just because telephone companies demand absurd amounts of money!

-How painful, to be restricted to boards in one's own AREA CODE--

-what the heck is an "area code" anyway, and what makes it so special?

-A few grumbles, complaints, and innocent questions of this sort

-will often elicit a sympathetic reply from another board user--

-someone with some stolen codes to hand.  You dither a while,

-knowing this isn't quite right, then you make up your mind

-to try them anyhow--AND THEY WORK!  Suddenly you're doing something

-even your parents can't do.  Six months ago you were just some kid--now,

-you're the Crimson Flash of Area Code 512!  You're bad--you're nationwide!

-

-Maybe you'll stop at a few abused codes.  Maybe you'll decide that

-boards aren't all that interesting after all, that it's wrong,

-not worth the risk --but maybe you won't.  The next step

-is to pick up your own repeat-dialling program--

-to learn to generate your own stolen codes.

-(This was dead easy five years ago, much harder

-to get away with nowadays, but not yet impossible.)

-And these dialling programs are not complex or intimidating--

-some are as small as twenty lines of software.

-

-Now, you too can share codes.  You can trade codes to learn

-other techniques.  If you're smart enough to catch on,

-and obsessive enough to want to bother, and ruthless enough

-to start seriously bending rules, then you'll get better, fast.

-You start to develop a rep.  You  move up to a heavier class

-of board--a board with a bad attitude, the kind of board

-that naive dopes like your classmates and your former self

-have never even heard of!  You pick up the jargon of phreaking

-and hacking from the board.  You read a few of those anarchy philes--

-and man, you never realized you could be a real OUTLAW without

-ever leaving your bedroom.

-

-You still play other computer games, but now you have a new

-and bigger game.  This one will bring you a different kind of status

-than destroying even eight zillion lousy space invaders.

-

-Hacking is perceived by hackers as a "game."  This is

-not an entirely unreasonable or sociopathic perception.

-You can win or lose at hacking, succeed or fail,

-but it never feels "real."  It's not simply that

-imaginative youngsters sometimes have a hard time

-telling "make-believe" from "real life."  Cyberspace

-is NOT REAL!  "Real" things are physical objects

-like trees and shoes and cars.  Hacking takes place

-on a screen.  Words aren't physical, numbers

-(even telephone numbers and credit card numbers)

-aren't physical.  Sticks and stones may break my bones,

-but data will never hurt me.  Computers SIMULATE reality,

-like computer games that simulate tank battles or dogfights

-or spaceships.  Simulations are just make-believe,

-and the stuff in computers is NOT REAL.

-

-Consider this:  if "hacking" is supposed to be so serious and

-real-life and dangerous, then how come NINE-YEAR-OLD KIDS have

-computers and modems?  You wouldn't give a nine year old his own car,

-or his own rifle, or his own chainsaw--those things are "real."

-

-People underground are perfectly aware that the "game"

-is frowned upon by the powers that be.  Word gets around

-about busts in the underground.  Publicizing busts is one

-of the primary functions of pirate boards, but they also

-promulgate an attitude about them, and their own idiosyncratic

-ideas of justice.  The users of underground boards won't complain

-if some guy is busted for crashing systems, spreading viruses,

-or stealing money by wire-fraud.  They may shake their heads

-with a sneaky grin, but they won't openly defend these practices.

-But when a kid is charged with some theoretical amount of theft:

-$233,846.14, for instance, because he sneaked into a computer

-and copied something, and kept it in his house on a floppy disk--

-this is regarded as a sign of near-insanity from prosecutors,

-a sign that they've drastically mistaken the immaterial game

-of computing for their real and boring everyday world

-of fatcat corporate money.

-

-It's as if big companies and their suck-up lawyers

-think that computing belongs to them, and they can

-retail it with price stickers, as if it were boxes

-of laundry soap!  But pricing "information" is like

-trying to price air or price dreams.  Well, anybody

-on a pirate board knows that computing can be,

-and ought to be, FREE.  Pirate boards are little

-independent worlds in cyberspace, and they don't belong

-to anybody but the underground.  Underground boards

-aren't "brought to you by Procter & Gamble."

-

-To log on to an underground board can mean to

-experience liberation, to enter a world where,

-for once, money isn't everything and adults

-don't have all the answers.

-

-Let's sample another vivid hacker manifesto.  Here are

-some excerpts from "The Conscience of a Hacker," by "The Mentor,"

-from Phrack Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3.

-

-"I made a discovery today.  I found a computer.

-Wait a second, this is cool.  It does what I want it to.

-If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up.

-Not because it doesn't like me. (. . .)

-"And then it happened. . .a door opened to a world. . .

-rushing through the phone line like heroin through an

-addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out,

-a refuge from day-to-day incompetencies is sought. . .

-a board is found.  `This is it. . .this is where I belong. . .'

-"I know everyone here. . .even if I've never met them,

-never talked to them, may never hear from them again. . .

-I know you all. . . (. . .)

-

-"This is our world now. . .the world of the electron

-and the switch, the beauty of the baud.  We make use of a

-service already existing without paying for what could be

-dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you

-call us criminals.  We explore. . .and you call us criminals.

-We seek after knowledge. . .and you call us criminals.

-We exist without skin color, without nationality,

-without religious bias. . .and you call us criminals.

-You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder,

-cheat and lie to us and try to make us believe that

-it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

-

-"Yes, I am a criminal.  My crime is that of curiosity.

-My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think,

-not what they look like.  My crime is that of outsmarting you,

-something that you will never forgive me for."

-

-#

-

-There have been underground boards almost as long

-as there have been boards.  One of the first was 8BBS,

-which became a stronghold of the West Coast phone-phreak elite.

-After going on-line in March 1980, 8BBS sponsored "Susan Thunder,"

-and "Tuc," and, most notoriously, "the Condor."  "The Condor"

-bore the singular distinction of becoming the most vilified

-American phreak and hacker ever.  Angry underground associates,

-fed up with Condor's peevish behavior, turned him in to police,

-along with a heaping double-helping of outrageous hacker legendry.

-As a result, Condor was kept in solitary confinement for seven months,

-for fear that he might start World War Three by triggering missile silos

-from the prison payphone.  (Having served his time, Condor is now

-walking around loose;  WWIII has thus far conspicuously failed to occur.)

-

-The sysop of 8BBS was an ardent free-speech enthusiast

-who simply felt that ANY attempt to restrict the expression

-of his users was unconstitutional and immoral.

-Swarms of the technically curious entered 8BBS

-and emerged as phreaks and hackers, until, in 1982,

-a friendly 8BBS alumnus passed the sysop a new modem

-which had been purchased by credit-card fraud.

-Police took this opportunity to seize the entire board

-and remove what they considered an attractive nuisance.

-

-Plovernet was a powerful East Coast pirate board

-that operated in both New York and Florida.

-Owned and operated by teenage hacker "Quasi Moto,"

-Plovernet attracted five hundred eager users in 1983.

-"Emmanuel Goldstein" was one-time co-sysop of Plovernet,

-along with "Lex Luthor," founder of the "Legion of Doom" group.

-Plovernet  bore the signal honor of being the original home

-of the "Legion of Doom," about which the reader will be hearing

-a great deal, soon.

-

-"Pirate-80," or "P-80," run by a sysop known as "Scan-Man,"

-got into the game very early in Charleston, and continued

-steadily for years.  P-80 flourished so flagrantly that

-even its most hardened users became nervous, and some

-slanderously speculated that "Scan Man" must have ties

-to corporate security, a charge he vigorously denied.

-

-"414 Private" was the home board for the first GROUP

-to attract conspicuous trouble, the teenage "414 Gang,"

-whose intrusions into Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and

-Los Alamos military computers were to be a nine-days-wonder in 1982.

-

-At about this time, the first software piracy boards

-began to open up, trading cracked games for the Atari 800

-and the Commodore C64.  Naturally these boards were

-heavily frequented by teenagers.  And with the 1983

-release of the hacker-thriller movie War Games,

-the scene exploded.  It seemed that every kid

-in America had demanded and gotten a modem for Christmas.

-Most of these dabbler wannabes put their modems in the attic

-after a few weeks, and most of the remainder minded their

-P's and Q's and stayed well out of hot water.  But some

-stubborn and talented diehards had this hacker kid in

-War Games figured for a happening dude.  They simply

-could not rest until they had contacted the underground--

-or, failing that, created their own.

-

-In the mid-80s, underground boards sprang up like digital fungi.

-ShadowSpawn Elite.  Sherwood Forest I, II, and III.

-Digital Logic Data Service in Florida, sysoped by no less

-a man than "Digital Logic" himself; Lex Luthor of the

-Legion of Doom was prominent on this board, since it

-was in his area code.  Lex's own board, "Legion of Doom,"

-started in 1984.  The Neon Knights ran a network of Apple-

-hacker boards: Neon Knights North, South, East and West.

-Free World II was run by "Major Havoc."  Lunatic Labs

-is still in operation as of this writing.  Dr. Ripco

-in Chicago, an anything-goes anarchist board with an

-extensive and raucous history, was seized by Secret Service

-agents in 1990 on Sundevil day, but up again almost immediately,

-with new machines and scarcely diminished vigor.

-

-The St. Louis scene was not to rank with major centers

-of American hacking such as New York and L.A.  But St.

-Louis did rejoice in possession of "Knight Lightning"

-and "Taran King," two of the foremost JOURNALISTS native

-to the underground.  Missouri boards like Metal Shop,

-Metal Shop Private, Metal Shop Brewery, may not have

-been the heaviest boards around in terms of illicit

-expertise.  But they became boards where hackers could

-exchange social gossip and try to figure out what the

-heck was going on nationally--and internationally.

-Gossip from Metal Shop was put into the form of news files,

-then assembled into a general electronic publication,

-Phrack, a portmanteau title coined from "phreak" and "hack."

-The Phrack editors were as obsessively curious about other

-hackers as hackers were about machines.

-

-Phrack, being free of charge and lively reading, began

-to circulate throughout the underground.  As Taran King

-and Knight Lightning left high school for college,

-Phrack began to appear on mainframe machines linked to BITNET,

-and, through BITNET to the "Internet," that loose but

-extremely potent not-for-profit network where academic,

-governmental and corporate machines trade data through

-the UNIX TCP/IP protocol.  (The "Internet Worm" of

-November 2-3,1988, created by Cornell grad student Robert Morris,

-was to be the largest and best-publicized computer-intrusion scandal

-to date.  Morris claimed that his ingenious "worm" program was meant

-to harmlessly explore the Internet, but due to bad programming,

-the Worm replicated out of control and crashed some six thousand

-Internet computers.  Smaller-scale and less ambitious Internet hacking

-was a standard for the underground elite.)

-

-Most any underground board not hopelessly lame and out-of-it

-would feature a complete run of Phrack--and, possibly,

-the lesser-known standards of the underground:

-the Legion of Doom Technical Journal, the obscene

-and raucous Cult of the Dead Cow  files, P/HUN magazine,

-Pirate, the Syndicate Reports, and perhaps the highly

-anarcho-political Activist Times Incorporated.

-

-Possession of Phrack  on one's board was prima facie

-evidence of a bad attitude.  Phrack was seemingly everywhere,

-aiding, abetting, and spreading the underground ethos.

-And this did not escape the attention of corporate security

-or the police.

-

-We now come to the touchy subject of police and boards.

-Police, do, in fact, own boards.  In 1989, there were

-police-sponsored boards in California, Colorado, Florida,

-Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, and Virginia:

-boards such as "Crime Bytes," "Crimestoppers," "All Points"

-and "Bullet-N-Board."  Police officers, as private computer

-enthusiasts, ran their own boards in Arizona, California,

-Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Missouri, Maryland,

-New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas.

-Police boards have often proved helpful in community relations.

-Sometimes crimes are reported on police boards.

-

-Sometimes crimes are COMMITTED on police boards.

-This has sometimes happened by accident, as naive hackers

-blunder onto police boards and blithely begin offering telephone codes.

-Far more often, however, it occurs through the now almost-traditional

-use of "sting boards."  The first police sting-boards were established

-in 1985:  "Underground Tunnel" in Austin, Texas, whose sysop

-Sgt. Robert Ansley called himself "Pluto"--"The Phone Company"

-in Phoenix, Arizona, run by Ken MacLeod of the Maricopa County

-Sheriff's office--and Sgt. Dan Pasquale's board in Fremont, California.

-Sysops posed as hackers, and swiftly garnered coteries of ardent users,

-who posted codes and loaded pirate software with abandon,

-and came to a sticky end.

-

-Sting boards, like other boards, are cheap to operate,

-very cheap by the standards of undercover police operations.

-Once accepted by the local underground, sysops will likely be

-invited into other pirate boards, where they can compile more dossiers.

-And when the sting is announced and the worst offenders arrested,

-the publicity is generally  gratifying.  The resultant paranoia

-in the underground--perhaps more justly described as a "deterrence effect"--

-tends to quell local lawbreaking for quite a while.

-

-Obviously police do not have to beat the underbrush for hackers.

-On the contrary, they can go trolling for them. Those caught

-can be grilled.  Some become useful informants.  They can lead

-the way to pirate boards all across the country.

-

-And boards all across the country showed the sticky

-fingerprints of Phrack, and of that loudest and most

-flagrant of all underground groups, the "Legion of Doom."

-

-The term "Legion of Doom" came from comic books.  The Legion of Doom,

-a conspiracy of costumed super- villains headed by the chrome-domed

-criminal ultra- mastermind Lex Luthor, gave Superman a lot of four-color

-graphic trouble for a number of decades.  Of course, Superman,

-that exemplar of Truth, Justice, and the American Way,

-always won in the long run.  This didn't matter to the hacker Doomsters--

-"Legion of Doom" was not some thunderous and evil Satanic reference,

-it was not meant to be taken seriously.  "Legion of Doom" came

-from funny-books and was supposed to be funny.

-

-"Legion of Doom" did have a good mouthfilling ring to it, though.

-It sounded really cool.  Other groups, such as the "Farmers of Doom,"

-closely allied to LoD, recognized this grandiloquent quality,

-and made fun of it.  There was even a hacker group called

-"Justice League of America," named after Superman's club

-of true-blue crimefighting superheros.

-

-But they didn't last; the Legion did.

-

-The original Legion of Doom, hanging out on Quasi Moto's Plovernet board,

-were phone phreaks.  They weren't much into computers.  "Lex Luthor" himself

-(who was under eighteen when he formed the Legion) was a COSMOS expert,

-COSMOS being the "Central System for Mainframe Operations,"

-a telco internal computer network.  Lex would eventually become

-quite a dab hand at breaking into IBM mainframes, but although

-everyone liked Lex and admired his attitude, he was not considered

-a truly accomplished computer intruder.  Nor was he the "mastermind"

-of the Legion of Doom--LoD were never big on formal leadership.

-As a regular on Plovernet and sysop of his "Legion of Doom BBS,"

-Lex was the Legion's cheerleader and recruiting officer.

-

-Legion of Doom began on the ruins of an earlier phreak group,

-The Knights of Shadow.  Later, LoD was to subsume the personnel

-of the hacker group "Tribunal of Knowledge."  People came and went

-constantly in LoD; groups split up or formed offshoots.

-

-Early on, the LoD phreaks befriended a few computer-intrusion

-enthusiasts, who became the associated "Legion of Hackers."

-Then the two groups conflated into the "Legion of Doom/Hackers,"

-or LoD/H. When the original "hacker" wing, Messrs. "Compu-Phreak"

-and "Phucked Agent 04," found other matters to occupy their time,

-the extra "/H" slowly atrophied out of the name;  but by this time

-the phreak wing, Messrs. Lex Luthor, "Blue Archer," "Gary Seven,"

-"Kerrang Khan," "Master of Impact," "Silver Spy," "The Marauder,"

-and "The Videosmith," had picked up a plethora of intrusion

-expertise and had become a force to be reckoned with.

-

-LoD members seemed to have an instinctive understanding

-that the way to real power in the underground lay through

-covert publicity.  LoD were flagrant.  Not only was it one

-of the earliest groups, but the members took pains to widely

-distribute their illicit knowledge.  Some LoD members,

-like "The Mentor," were close to evangelical about it.

-Legion of Doom Technical Journal began to show up on boards

-throughout the underground.

-

-LoD Technical Journal was named in cruel parody

-of the ancient and honored AT&T Technical Journal.

-The material in these two publications was quite similar--

-much of it, adopted from public journals and discussions

-in the telco community.  And yet, the predatory attitude

-of LoD made even its most innocuous data seem deeply sinister;

-an outrage; a clear and present danger.

-

-To see why this should be, let's consider the following

-(invented) paragraphs, as a kind of thought experiment.

-

-(A)  "W. Fred Brown, AT&T Vice President for

-Advanced Technical Development, testified May 8

-at a Washington hearing of the National Telecommunications

-and Information Administration (NTIA), regarding

-Bellcore's GARDEN project.  GARDEN (Generalized

-Automatic Remote Distributed Electronic Network) is a

-telephone-switch programming tool that makes it possible

-to develop new telecom services, including hold-on-hold

-and customized message transfers, from any keypad terminal,

-within seconds.  The GARDEN prototype combines centrex

-lines with a minicomputer using UNIX operating system software."

-

-(B)  "Crimson Flash 512 of the Centrex Mobsters reports:

-D00dz, you wouldn't believe this GARDEN bullshit Bellcore's

-just come up with!  Now you don't even need a lousy Commodore

-to reprogram a switch--just log on to GARDEN as a technician,

-and you can reprogram switches right off the keypad in any

-public phone booth!  You can give yourself hold-on-hold

-and customized message transfers, and best of all,

-the thing is run off (notoriously insecure) centrex lines

-using--get this--standard UNIX software!  Ha ha ha ha!"

-

-Message (A), couched in typical techno-bureaucratese,

-appears tedious and almost unreadable.  (A) scarcely seems

-threatening or menacing.  Message (B), on the other hand,

-is a dreadful thing, prima facie evidence of a dire conspiracy,

-definitely not the kind of thing you want your teenager reading.

-

-The INFORMATION, however, is identical.  It is PUBLIC

-information, presented before the federal government in

-an open hearing.  It is not "secret."  It is not "proprietary."

-It is not even "confidential."  On the contrary, the

-development of advanced software systems is a matter

-of great public pride to Bellcore.

-

-However, when Bellcore publicly announces a project of this kind,

-it expects a certain attitude from the public--something along

-the lines of GOSH WOW, YOU GUYS ARE GREAT, KEEP THAT UP, WHATEVER IT IS--

-certainly not cruel mimickry, one-upmanship and outrageous speculations

-about possible security holes.

-

-Now put yourself in the place of a policeman confronted by

-an outraged parent, or telco official, with a copy of Version (B).

-This well-meaning citizen, to his horror, has discovered

-a local bulletin-board carrying outrageous stuff like (B),

-which his son is examining with a deep and unhealthy interest.

-If (B) were printed in a book or magazine, you, as an American

-law enforcement officer, would know that it would take

-a hell of a lot of trouble to do anything about it;

-but it doesn't take technical genius to recognize that

-if there's a computer in your area harboring stuff like (B),

-there's going to be trouble.

-

-In fact, if you ask around, any computer-literate cop

-will tell you straight out that boards with stuff like (B)

-are the SOURCE of trouble.  And the WORST source of trouble

-on boards are the ringleaders inventing and spreading stuff like (B).

-If it weren't for these jokers, there wouldn't BE any trouble.

-

-And Legion of Doom were on boards like nobody else.

-Plovernet.  The Legion of Doom Board.  The Farmers of Doom Board.

-Metal Shop.  OSUNY.  Blottoland. Private Sector.  Atlantis.

-Digital Logic.  Hell Phrozen Over.

-

-LoD members also ran their own boards.  "Silver Spy" started

-his own board, "Catch-22," considered one of the heaviest around.

-So did "Mentor," with his "Phoenix Project."  When they didn't run boards

-themselves, they showed up on other people's boards, to brag, boast,

-and strut.  And where they themselves didn't go, their philes went,

-carrying evil knowledge and an even more evil attitude.

-

-As early as 1986, the police were under the vague impression

-that EVERYONE in the underground was Legion of Doom.

-LoD was never that large--considerably smaller than either

-"Metal Communications" or "The Administration," for instance--

-but LoD got tremendous press.  Especially in Phrack,

-which at times read like an LoD fan magazine; and Phrack

-was everywhere, especially in the offices of telco security.

-You couldn't GET busted as a phone phreak, a hacker,

-or even a lousy codes kid or warez dood, without the cops

-asking if you were LoD.

-

-This was a difficult charge to deny, as LoD never

-distributed membership badges or laminated ID cards.

-If they had, they would likely have died out quickly,

-for turnover in their membership was considerable.

-LoD was less a high-tech street-gang than an ongoing

-state-of-mind.  LoD was the Gang That Refused to Die.

-By 1990, LoD had RULED for ten years, and it seemed WEIRD

-to police that they were continually busting people who were

-only sixteen years old.  All these teenage small-timers

-were pleading the tiresome hacker litany  of "just curious,

-no criminal intent."  Somewhere at the center of this

-conspiracy there had to be some serious adult masterminds,

-not this seemingly endless supply of myopic suburban

-white kids with high SATs and funny haircuts.

-

-There was no question that most any American hacker

-arrested would "know" LoD.  They knew the handles

-of contributors to LoD Tech Journal, and were likely

-to have learned their craft through LoD boards and LoD activism.

-But they'd never met anyone from LoD.  Even some of the

-rotating cadre who were actually and formally "in LoD"

-knew one another only by board-mail and pseudonyms.

-This was a highly unconventional profile for a criminal conspiracy.

-Computer networking, and the rapid evolution of the digital underground,

-made the situation very diffuse and confusing.

-

-Furthermore, a big reputation in the digital underground

-did not coincide with one's willingness to commit "crimes."

-Instead, reputation was based on cleverness and technical mastery.

-As a result, it often seemed that the HEAVIER the hackers were,

-the LESS likely they were to have committed any kind of common,

-easily prosecutable crime.  There were some hackers who could really steal.

-And there were hackers who could really hack.  But the two groups didn't seem

-to overlap much, if at all.  For instance, most people in the underground

-looked up to "Emmanuel Goldstein" of 2600 as a hacker demigod.

-But Goldstein's publishing activities were entirely legal--

-Goldstein just printed dodgy stuff and talked about politics,

-he didn't even hack.  When you came right down to it,

-Goldstein spent half his time complaining that computer security

-WASN'T STRONG ENOUGH and ought to be drastically improved

-across the board!

-

-Truly heavy-duty hackers, those with serious technical skills

-who had earned the respect of the underground, never stole money

-or abused credit cards.  Sometimes they might abuse phone-codes--

-but often, they seemed to get all the free phone-time they wanted

-without leaving a trace of any kind.

-

-The best hackers, the most powerful and technically accomplished,

-were not professional fraudsters.  They raided computers habitually,

-but wouldn't alter anything, or damage anything.  They didn't even steal

-computer equipment--most had day-jobs messing with hardware,

-and could get all the cheap secondhand equipment they wanted.

-The hottest hackers, unlike the teenage wannabes, weren't snobs

-about fancy or expensive hardware.  Their machines tended to be

-raw second-hand digital hot-rods full of custom add-ons that

-they'd cobbled together out of chickenwire, memory chips and spit.

-Some were adults, computer software writers and consultants by trade,

-and making quite good livings at it.  Some of them ACTUALLY WORKED

-FOR THE PHONE COMPANY--and for those, the "hackers" actually found

-under the skirts of Ma Bell, there would be little mercy in 1990.

-

-It has long been an article of faith in the

-underground that the "best" hackers never get caught.

-They're far too smart, supposedly.  They never get caught

-because they never boast, brag, or strut.  These demigods

-may read underground boards (with a condescending smile),

-but they never say anything there.  The "best" hackers,

-according to legend, are adult computer professionals,

-such as mainframe system administrators, who already know

-the ins and outs of their particular brand of security.

-Even the "best" hacker can't break in to just any computer at random:

-the knowledge of security holes is too specialized, varying widely

-with different software and hardware.  But if people are employed to run,

-say, a UNIX mainframe or a VAX/VMS machine, then they tend to learn

-security from the inside out.  Armed with this knowledge,

-they can look into most anybody else's UNIX or VMS

-without much trouble or risk, if they want to.

-And, according to hacker legend, of course they want to,

-so of course they do.  They just don't make a big deal

-of what they've done.  So nobody ever finds out.

-

-It is also an article of faith in the underground that

-professional telco people "phreak" like crazed weasels.

-OF COURSE they spy on Madonna's phone calls--I mean,

-WOULDN'T YOU?  Of course they give themselves free long-

-distance--why the hell should THEY pay, they're running

-the whole shebang!

-

-It has, as a third matter, long been an article of faith

-that any hacker caught can escape serious punishment if

-he confesses HOW HE DID IT.  Hackers seem to believe

-that governmental agencies and large corporations are

-blundering about in cyberspace like eyeless jellyfish

-or cave salamanders.  They feel that these large

-but pathetically stupid organizations will proffer up

-genuine gratitude, and perhaps even a security post

-and a big salary, to the hot-shot intruder who will deign

-to reveal to them the supreme genius of his modus operandi.

-

-In the case of longtime LoD member "Control-C,"

-this actually happened, more or less.  Control-C had led

-Michigan Bell a merry chase, and when captured in 1987,

-he turned out to be a bright and apparently physically

-harmless young fanatic, fascinated by phones.  There was

-no chance in hell that Control-C would actually repay the

-enormous and largely theoretical sums in long-distance

-service that he had accumulated from Michigan Bell.

-He could always be indicted for fraud or computer-intrusion,

-but there seemed little real point in this--he hadn't

-physically damaged any computer.  He'd just plead guilty,

-and he'd likely get the usual slap-on-the-wrist,

-and in the meantime it would be a big hassle for Michigan Bell

-just to bring up the case.  But if kept on the payroll,

-he might at least keep his fellow hackers at bay.

-

-There were uses for him.  For instance, a contrite

-Control-C was featured on Michigan Bell internal posters,

-sternly warning employees to shred their trash.

-He'd always gotten most of his best inside info from

-"trashing"--raiding telco dumpsters, for useful data

-indiscreetly thrown away.  He signed these posters, too.

-Control-C had become something like a Michigan Bell mascot.

-And in fact, Control-C DID keep other hackers at bay.

-Little hackers were quite scared of Control-C and his

-heavy-duty Legion of Doom friends.  And big hackers WERE

-his friends and didn't want to screw up his cushy situation.

-

-No matter what one might say of LoD, they did stick together.

-When "Wasp," an apparently genuinely malicious New York hacker,

-began crashing Bellcore machines, Control-C received swift volunteer

-help from "the Mentor" and the Georgia LoD wing  made up of

-"The Prophet," "Urvile," and "Leftist."  Using Mentor's Phoenix

-Project board to coordinate, the Doomsters helped telco security

-to trap Wasp, by luring him into a machine with a tap

-and line-trace installed.  Wasp lost.  LoD won!  And my, did they brag.

-

-Urvile, Prophet and Leftist were well-qualified for this activity,

-probably more so even than the quite accomplished Control-C.

-The Georgia boys knew all about phone switching-stations.

-Though relative johnny-come-latelies in the Legion of Doom,

-they were considered some of LoD's heaviest guys,

-into the hairiest systems around.  They had the good fortune

-to live in or near Atlanta, home of the sleepy and apparently

-tolerant BellSouth RBOC.

-

-As RBOC security went, BellSouth were "cake."  US West (of Arizona,

-the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest) were tough and aggressive,

-probably the heaviest RBOC around.  Pacific Bell, California's PacBell,

-were sleek, high-tech, and longtime veterans of the LA phone-phreak wars.

-NYNEX had the misfortune to run the New York City area, and were warily

-prepared for most anything.  Even Michigan Bell, a division of the

-Ameritech RBOC, at least had the elementary sense to hire their own hacker

-as a useful scarecrow.  But BellSouth, even though their corporate P.R.

-proclaimed them to have "Everything You Expect From a Leader," were pathetic.

-

-When rumor about LoD's mastery of Georgia's switching network got around

-to BellSouth through Bellcore and telco security scuttlebutt,

-they at first refused to believe it.  If you paid serious attention

-to every rumor out and about these hacker kids, you would hear all kinds

-of wacko saucer-nut nonsense:  that the National Security Agency

-monitored all American phone calls, that the CIA and DEA tracked

-traffic on bulletin-boards with word-analysis programs,

-that the Condor could start World War III from a payphone.

-

-If there were hackers into BellSouth switching-stations, then how come

-nothing had happened?  Nothing had been hurt.  BellSouth's machines

-weren't crashing.  BellSouth wasn't suffering especially badly from fraud.

-BellSouth's customers weren't complaining.  BellSouth was headquartered

-in Atlanta, ambitious metropolis of the new high-tech Sunbelt;

-and BellSouth was upgrading its network by leaps and bounds,

-digitizing the works left right and center.  They could hardly be

-considered sluggish or naive.  BellSouth's technical expertise

-was second to none, thank you kindly.  But then came the Florida business.

-

-On June 13, 1989, callers to the Palm Beach County Probation Department,

-in Delray Beach, Florida, found themselves involved in a remarkable

-discussion with a phone-sex worker named "Tina" in New York State.

-Somehow, ANY call to this probation office near Miami was instantly

-and magically transported across state lines, at no extra charge to the user,

-to a pornographic phone-sex hotline hundreds of miles away!

-

-This practical joke may seem utterly hilarious at first hearing,

-and indeed there was a good deal of chuckling about it in

-phone phreak circles, including the Autumn 1989 issue of 2600.

-But for Southern Bell (the division of the BellSouth RBOC

-supplying local service for Florida, Georgia, North Carolina

-and South Carolina), this was a smoking gun.  For the first time ever,

-a computer intruder had broken into a BellSouth central office

-switching station and re-programmed it!

-

-Or so BellSouth thought in June 1989.  Actually, LoD members had been

-frolicking harmlessly in BellSouth switches since September 1987.

-The stunt of June 13--call-forwarding a number through manipulation

-of a switching station--was child's play for hackers as accomplished

-as the Georgia wing of LoD.  Switching calls interstate sounded like

-a big deal, but it took only four lines of code to accomplish this.

-An easy, yet more discreet, stunt, would be to call-forward another

-number to your own house.  If you were careful and considerate,

-and changed the software back later, then not a soul would know.

-Except you.  And whoever you had bragged to about it.

-

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

-

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

-

-A now alerted and considerably paranoid BellSouth began searching switches

-right and left for signs of impropriety, in that hot summer of 1989.

-No fewer than forty-two BellSouth employees were put on 12-hour shifts,

-twenty-four hours a day, for two solid months, poring over records

-and monitoring computers for any sign of phony access.  These forty-two

-overworked experts were known as BellSouth's  "Intrusion Task Force."

-

-What the investigators found astounded them.  Proprietary telco databases

-had been manipulated:  phone numbers had been created out of thin air,

-with no users' names and no addresses.  And perhaps worst of all,

-no charges and no records of use.  The new digital ReMOB (Remote Observation)

-diagnostic feature had been extensively tampered with--hackers had learned to

-reprogram ReMOB software, so that they could listen in on any switch-routed

-call at their leisure!  They were using telco property to SPY!

-

-The electrifying news went out throughout law enforcement in 1989.

-It had never really occurred to anyone at BellSouth that their prized

-and brand-new digital switching-stations could be RE-PROGRAMMED.

-People seemed utterly amazed that anyone could have the nerve.

-Of course these switching stations were "computers," and everybody

-knew hackers liked to "break into computers:"  but telephone people's

-computers were DIFFERENT from normal people's computers.

-

-The exact reason WHY these computers were "different" was

-rather ill-defined.  It certainly wasn't the extent of their security.

-The security on these BellSouth computers was lousy;  the AIMSX computers,

-for instance, didn't even have passwords.  But there was no question that

-BellSouth strongly FELT that their computers were very different indeed.

-And if there were some criminals out there who had not gotten that message,

-BellSouth was determined to see that message taught.

-

-After all, a 5ESS switching station was no mere bookkeeping system for

-some local chain of florists.  Public service depended on these stations.

-Public SAFETY depended on these stations.

-

-And hackers, lurking in there call-forwarding or ReMobbing, could spy

-on anybody in the local area!  They could spy on telco officials!

-They could spy on police stations!  They could spy on local offices

-of the Secret Service. . . .

-

-In 1989, electronic cops and hacker-trackers began using scrambler-phones

-and secured lines.  It only made sense.  There was no telling who was into

-those systems.  Whoever they were, they sounded scary.  This was some

-new level of antisocial daring.  Could be West German hackers, in the pay

-of the KGB.  That too had seemed a weird and farfetched notion,

-until Clifford Stoll had poked and prodded a sluggish Washington

-law-enforcement bureaucracy into investigating a computer intrusion

-that turned out to be exactly that--HACKERS, IN THE PAY OF THE KGB!

-Stoll, the  systems manager for an Internet lab in Berkeley California,

-had ended up on the front page of the New Nork Times, proclaimed a national

-hero in the first true story of international computer espionage.

-Stoll's counterspy efforts, which he related in a bestselling book,

-The Cuckoo's Egg, in 1989, had established the credibility of `hacking'

-as a possible threat to national security.  The United States Secret Service

-doesn't mess around when it suspects a possible action by a foreign

-intelligence apparat.

-

-The Secret Service scrambler-phones and secured lines put

-a tremendous kink in law enforcement's ability to operate freely;

-to get the word out, cooperate, prevent misunderstandings.

-Nevertheless, 1989 scarcely seemed the time for half-measures.

-If the police and Secret Service themselves were not operationally secure,

-then how could they reasonably demand measures of security from

-private enterprise?  At least, the inconvenience made people aware

-of the seriousness  of the threat.

-

-If there was a final spur needed to get the police off the dime,

-it came in the realization that the emergency 911 system was vulnerable.

-The 911 system has its own specialized software, but it is run on the same

-digital switching systems as the rest of the telephone network.

-911 is not physically different from normal telephony.  But it is

-certainly culturally different, because this is the area of

-telephonic cyberspace reserved for the police and emergency services.

-

-Your average policeman may not know much about hackers or phone-phreaks.

-Computer people are weird; even computer COPS  are rather weird;

-the stuff they do is hard to figure out.  But a threat to the 911 system

-is anything but an abstract threat.  If the 911 system goes, people can die.

-

-Imagine being in a car-wreck, staggering to a phone-booth,

-punching 911 and hearing "Tina" pick up the phone-sex line

-somewhere in New York!  The situation's no longer comical, somehow.

-

-And was it possible?  No question.  Hackers had attacked 911

-systems before.  Phreaks can max-out 911 systems just by siccing

-a bunch of computer-modems on them in tandem, dialling them over

-and over until they clog.  That's very crude and low-tech,

-but it's still a serious business.

-

-The time had come for action.  It was time to take stern measures

-with the underground.  It was time to start picking up the dropped threads,

-the loose edges, the bits of braggadocio here and there; it was time to get

-on the stick and start putting serious casework together.  Hackers weren't

-"invisible."  They THOUGHT  they were invisible; but the truth was,

-they had just been tolerated too long.

-

-Under sustained police attention in the summer of '89, the digital

-underground began to unravel as never before.

-

-The first big break in the case came very early on:  July 1989,

-the following month.  The perpetrator of the "Tina" switch was caught,

-and confessed.  His name was "Fry Guy," a 16-year-old in Indiana.

-Fry Guy had been a very wicked young man.

-

-Fry Guy had earned his handle from a stunt involving French fries.

-Fry Guy had filched the log-in of a local MacDonald's manager

-and had logged-on to the MacDonald's mainframe on the Sprint

-Telenet system. Posing as the manager, Fry Guy had altered

-MacDonald's records, and given some teenage hamburger-flipping

-friends of his, generous raises.  He had not been caught.

-

-Emboldened by success, Fry Guy moved on to credit-card abuse.

-Fry Guy was quite an accomplished talker; with a gift for

-"social engineering."  If you can do "social engineering"

---fast-talk, fake-outs, impersonation, conning, scamming--

-then card abuse comes easy.  (Getting away with it in

-the long run is another question).

-

-Fry Guy had run across "Urvile" of the Legion of Doom

-on the ALTOS Chat board in Bonn, Germany.  ALTOS Chat

-was a sophisticated board, accessible through globe-spanning

-computer networks like BITnet, Tymnet, and Telenet.

-ALTOS was much frequented by members of Germany's

-Chaos Computer Club.  Two Chaos hackers who hung out on ALTOS,

-"Jaeger" and "Pengo," had been the central villains of

-Clifford Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg case:  consorting in East Berlin

-with a spymaster from the KGB, and breaking into American

-computers for hire, through the Internet.

-

-When LoD members learned the story of Jaeger's depredations

-from Stoll's book, they were rather less than impressed,

-technically speaking.  On LoD's own favorite board of the moment,

-"Black Ice," LoD members bragged that they themselves could have done

-all the Chaos break-ins in a week flat!  Nevertheless, LoD were grudgingly

-impressed by the Chaos rep, the sheer hairy-eyed daring of hash-smoking

-anarchist hackers who had rubbed shoulders with the fearsome big-boys

-of international Communist espionage.  LoD members sometimes traded

-bits of knowledge with friendly German hackers on ALTOS--phone numbers

-for vulnerable VAX/VMS computers in Georgia, for instance.

-Dutch and British phone phreaks, and the Australian clique of

-"Phoenix," "Nom," and "Electron," were ALTOS regulars, too.

-In underground circles, to hang out on ALTOS was considered

-the sign of an elite dude, a sophisticated hacker of the

-international digital jet-set.

-

-Fry Guy quickly learned how to raid information from credit-card

-consumer-reporting agencies.  He had over a hundred stolen credit-card

-numbers in his notebooks, and upwards of a thousand swiped long-distance

-access codes.  He knew how to get onto Altos, and how to talk the talk of

-the underground convincingly.  He now wheedled knowledge of switching-station

-tricks from Urvile on the ALTOS system.

-

-Combining these two forms of knowledge enabled Fry Guy to bootstrap

-his way up to a new form of wire-fraud.  First, he'd snitched credit card

-numbers from credit-company computers.  The data he copied included names,

-addresses and phone numbers of the random card-holders.

-

-Then Fry Guy, impersonating a card-holder, called up Western Union

-and asked for a cash advance on "his" credit card.  Western Union,

-as a security guarantee, would call the customer back, at home,

-to verify the transaction.

-

-But, just as he had switched the Florida probation office to "Tina"

-in New York, Fry Guy switched the card-holder's number to a local pay-phone.

-There he would lurk in wait, muddying his trail by routing and re-routing

-the call, through switches as far away as Canada.  When the call came through,

-he would boldly "social-engineer," or con, the Western Union people, pretending

-to be the legitimate card-holder.  Since he'd answered the proper phone number,

-the deception was not very hard.  Western Union's money was then shipped to

-a confederate of Fry Guy's in his home town in Indiana.

-

-Fry Guy and his cohort, using LoD techniques, stole six thousand dollars

-from Western Union between December 1988 and July 1989.  They also dabbled

-in ordering delivery of stolen goods through card-fraud.  Fry Guy

-was intoxicated with success.  The sixteen-year-old fantasized wildly

-to hacker rivals, boasting that he'd used rip-off money to hire himself

-a big limousine, and had driven out-of-state with a groupie from

-his favorite heavy-metal band, Motley Crue.

-

-Armed with knowledge, power, and a gratifying stream of free money,

-Fry Guy now took it upon himself to call local representatives

-of Indiana Bell security, to brag, boast, strut, and utter

-tormenting warnings that his powerful friends in the notorious

-Legion of Doom could crash the national telephone network.

-Fry Guy even named a date for the scheme:  the Fourth of July,

-a national holiday.

-

-This egregious example of the begging-for-arrest syndrome was shortly

-followed by Fry Guy's arrest.  After the Indiana telephone company figured

-out who he was, the Secret Service had DNRs--Dialed Number Recorders--

-installed on his home phone lines.  These devices are not taps, and can't

-record the substance of phone calls, but they do record the phone numbers

-of all calls going in and out.  Tracing these numbers showed Fry Guy's

-long-distance code fraud, his extensive ties to pirate bulletin boards,

-and numerous personal calls to his LoD friends in Atlanta.  By July 11,

-1989, Prophet, Urvile and Leftist also had Secret Service DNR

-"pen registers" installed on their own lines.

-

-The Secret Service showed up in force at Fry Guy's house on July 22, 1989,

-to the horror of his unsuspecting parents.  The raiders were led by

-a special agent from the Secret Service's Indianapolis office.

-However, the raiders were accompanied and advised by Timothy M. Foley

-of the Secret Service's Chicago office (a gentleman about whom

-we will soon be hearing a great deal).

-

-Following federal computer-crime techniques that had been standard

-since the early 1980s, the Secret Service searched the house thoroughly,

-and seized all of Fry Guy's electronic equipment and notebooks.

-All Fry Guy's equipment went out the door in the custody of the

-Secret Service, which put a swift end to his depredations.

-

-The USSS interrogated Fry Guy at length.  His case was put in the charge

-of Deborah Daniels, the federal US Attorney for the Southern District

-of Indiana.  Fry Guy was charged with eleven counts of computer fraud,

-unauthorized computer access, and wire fraud.  The evidence was thorough

-and irrefutable.  For his part, Fry Guy blamed his corruption on the

-Legion of Doom and offered to testify against them.

-

-Fry Guy insisted that the Legion intended to crash the phone system

-on a national holiday.  And when AT&T crashed on Martin Luther King Day,

-1990, this lent a credence to his claim that genuinely alarmed telco

-security and the Secret Service.

-

-Fry Guy eventually pled guilty on May 31, 1990.  On September 14,

-he was sentenced to forty-four months' probation and four hundred hours'

-community service.  He could have had it much worse; but it made sense

-to prosecutors to take it easy on this teenage minor, while zeroing

-in on the notorious kingpins of the Legion of Doom.

-

-But the case against LoD had nagging flaws.  Despite the best effort

-of investigators, it was impossible to prove that the Legion had crashed

-the phone system on January 15, because they, in fact, hadn't done so.

-The investigations of 1989 did show that certain members of

-the Legion of Doom had achieved unprecedented power over the telco

-switching stations, and that they were in active conspiracy

-to obtain more power yet.  Investigators were privately convinced

-that the Legion of Doom intended to do awful things with this knowledge,

-but mere evil intent was not enough to put them in jail.

-

-And although the Atlanta Three--Prophet, Leftist, and especially Urvile--

-had taught Fry Guy plenty, they were not themselves credit-card fraudsters.

-The only thing they'd "stolen" was long-distance service--and since they'd

-done much of that through phone-switch manipulation, there was no easy way

-to judge how much they'd "stolen," or whether this practice was even "theft"

-of any easily recognizable kind.

-

-Fry Guy's theft of long-distance codes had cost the phone companies plenty.

-The theft of long-distance service may be a fairly theoretical "loss,"

-but it costs genuine money and genuine time to delete all those stolen codes,

-and to re-issue new codes to the innocent owners of those corrupted codes.

-The owners of the codes themselves are victimized, and lose time and money

-and peace of mind in the hassle.  And then there were the credit-card victims

-to deal with, too, and Western Union.  When it came to rip-off, Fry Guy was

-far more of a thief than LoD.  It was only when it came to actual computer

-expertise that Fry Guy was small potatoes.

-

-The Atlanta Legion thought most "rules" of cyberspace were for rodents

-and losers, but they DID have rules.  THEY NEVER CRASHED ANYTHING,

-AND THEY NEVER TOOK MONEY.  These were rough rules-of-thumb, and

-rather dubious principles when it comes to the ethical subtleties

-of cyberspace, but they enabled the Atlanta Three to operate with

-a relatively clear conscience (though never with peace of mind).

-

-If you didn't hack for money, if you weren't robbing people of actual funds

---money in the bank, that is-- then nobody REALLY got hurt, in LoD's opinion.

-"Theft of service" was a bogus issue, and "intellectual property" was

-a bad joke.  But LoD had only elitist contempt for rip-off artists,

-"leechers," thieves.  They considered themselves clean.  In their opinion,

-if you didn't smash-up or crash any systems --(well, not on purpose, anyhow--

-accidents can happen, just ask Robert Morris)  then it was very unfair

-to call you a "vandal" or a "cracker."  When you were hanging out on-line

-with your "pals" in telco security, you could face them down from the higher

-plane of hacker morality.  And you could mock the police from the supercilious

-heights of your hacker's quest for pure knowledge.

-

-But from the point of view of law enforcement and telco security, however,

-Fry Guy was not really dangerous.  The Atlanta Three WERE dangerous.

-It wasn't the crimes they were committing, but the DANGER,

-the potential hazard, the sheer TECHNICAL POWER LoD had accumulated,

-that had made the situation untenable.  Fry Guy was not LoD.

-He'd never laid eyes on anyone in LoD; his only contacts with them

-had been electronic.  Core members of the Legion of Doom tended to meet

-physically for conventions every year or so, to get drunk, give each other

-the hacker high-sign, send out for pizza and ravage hotel suites.

-Fry Guy had never done any of this.  Deborah Daniels assessed Fry Guy

-accurately as "an LoD wannabe."

-

-Nevertheless Fry Guy's crimes would be directly attributed to LoD

-in much future police propaganda.  LoD would be described as

-"a closely knit group" involved in "numerous illegal activities"

-including "stealing and modifying individual credit histories,"

-and "fraudulently obtaining money and property."  Fry Guy did this,

-but the Atlanta Three didn't; they simply weren't into theft,

-but rather intrusion.  This caused a strange kink in

-the prosecution's strategy.  LoD were accused of

-"disseminating information about attacking computers

-to other computer hackers in an effort to shift the focus

-of law enforcement to those other hackers and away from the Legion of Doom."

-

-This last accusation (taken directly from a press release by the Chicago

-Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force) sounds particularly far-fetched.

-One might conclude at this point that investigators would have been

-well-advised to go ahead and "shift their focus" from the "Legion of Doom."

-Maybe they SHOULD concentrate on "those other hackers"--the ones who were

-actually stealing money and physical objects.

-

-But the Hacker Crackdown of 1990 was not a simple policing action.

-It wasn't meant just to walk the beat in cyberspace--it was a CRACKDOWN,

-a deliberate attempt to nail the core of the operation, to send a dire

-and potent message that would settle the hash of the digital underground

-for good.

-

-By this reasoning, Fry Guy wasn't much more than the electronic equivalent

-of a cheap streetcorner dope dealer.  As long as the masterminds of LoD were

-still flagrantly operating, pushing their mountains of illicit knowledge

-right and left, and whipping up enthusiasm for blatant lawbreaking,

-then there would be an INFINITE SUPPLY of Fry Guys.

-

-Because LoD were flagrant, they had left trails everywhere,

-to be picked up by law enforcement in New York, Indiana,

-Florida, Texas, Arizona, Missouri, even Australia.

-But 1990's war on the Legion of Doom was led out of Illinois,

-by the Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force.

-

-#

-

-The Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force, led by federal prosecutor

-William J. Cook, had started in 1987 and had swiftly become one

-of the most aggressive local "dedicated computer-crime units."

-Chicago was a natural home for such a group.  The world's first

-computer bulletin-board system had been invented in Illinois.

-The state of Illinois had some of the nation's first and sternest

-computer crime laws.  Illinois State Police were markedly alert

-to the possibilities of white-collar crime and electronic fraud.

-

-And William J. Cook in particular was a rising star in

-electronic crime-busting.  He and his fellow federal prosecutors

-at the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago had a tight relation

-with the Secret Service, especially go-getting Chicago-based agent

-Timothy Foley.  While Cook and his Department of Justice colleagues

-plotted strategy, Foley was their man on the street.

-

-Throughout the 1980s, the federal government had given prosecutors

-an armory of new, untried legal tools against computer crime.

-Cook and his colleagues were pioneers in the use of these new statutes

-in the real-life cut-and-thrust of the federal courtroom.

-

-On October 2, 1986, the US Senate had passed the

-"Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" unanimously, but there

-were pitifully few convictions under this statute.

-Cook's group took their name from this statute,

-since they were determined to transform this powerful but

-rather theoretical Act of Congress into a real-life engine

-of legal destruction against computer fraudsters and scofflaws.

-

-It was not a question of merely discovering crimes,

-investigating them, and then trying and punishing their

-perpetrators.  The Chicago unit, like most everyone else

-in the business, already KNEW who the bad guys were:

-the Legion of Doom and the writers and editors of Phrack.

-The task at hand was to find some legal means of putting

-these characters away.

-

-This approach might seem a bit dubious, to someone not

-acquainted with the gritty realities of prosecutorial work.

-But prosecutors don't put people in jail for crimes

-they have committed; they put people in jail for crimes

-they have committed THAT CAN BE PROVED IN COURT.

-Chicago federal police put Al Capone in prison

-for income-tax fraud.  Chicago is a big town,

-with a rough-and-ready bare-knuckle tradition

-on both sides of the law.

-

-Fry Guy had broken the case wide open and alerted telco security

-to the scope of the problem.  But Fry Guy's crimes would not

-put the Atlanta Three behind bars--much less the wacko underground

-journalists of Phrack.  So on July 22, 1989, the same day that

-Fry Guy was raided in Indiana, the Secret Service descended upon

-the Atlanta Three.

-

-This was likely inevitable.  By the summer of 1989, law enforcement

-were closing in on the Atlanta Three from at least six directions at once.

-First, there were the leads from Fry Guy, which had led to the DNR registers

-being installed on the lines of the Atlanta Three.  The DNR evidence alone

-would have finished them off, sooner or later.

-

-But second, the Atlanta lads were already well-known to Control-C

-and his telco security sponsors.  LoD's contacts with telco security

-had made them overconfident and even more boastful than usual;

-they felt that they had powerful friends in high places,

-and that they were being openly tolerated by telco security.

-But BellSouth's Intrusion Task Force were hot on the trail of LoD

-and sparing no effort or expense.

-

-The Atlanta Three had also been identified by name and listed

-on the extensive anti-hacker files maintained, and retailed for pay,

-by private security operative John Maxfield of Detroit.

-Maxfield, who had extensive ties to telco security

-and many informants in the underground, was a bete noire

-of the Phrack crowd, and the dislike was mutual.

-

-

-The Atlanta Three themselves had written articles for Phrack.

-This boastful act could not possibly escape telco and law enforcement

-attention.

-

-"Knightmare," a high-school age hacker from Arizona,

-was a close friend and disciple of Atlanta LoD,

-but he had been nabbed by the formidable Arizona

-Organized Crime and Racketeering Unit.  Knightmare was

-on some of LoD's favorite boards--"Black Ice" in particular--

-and was privy to their secrets.  And to have Gail Thackeray,

-the Assistant Attorney General of Arizona, on one's trail

-was a dreadful peril for any hacker.

-

-And perhaps worst of all, Prophet had committed a major blunder

-by passing an illicitly copied BellSouth computer-file to Knight Lightning,

-who had published it in Phrack.  This, as we will see, was an act of dire

-consequence for almost everyone concerned.

-

-On July 22, 1989, the Secret Service showed up at the Leftist's house,

-where he lived with his parents.  A massive squad of some twenty officers

-surrounded the building:  Secret Service, federal marshals, local police,

-possibly BellSouth telco security; it was hard to tell in the crush.

-Leftist's dad, at work in his basement office, first noticed

-a muscular stranger in plain clothes crashing through the

-back yard with a drawn pistol.  As more strangers poured

-into the house, Leftist's dad naturally assumed there was

-an armed robbery in progress.

-

-Like most hacker parents, Leftist's mom and dad had only the vaguest

-notions of what their son had been up to all this time.  Leftist had

-a day-job repairing computer hardware.  His obsession with computers

-seemed a bit odd, but harmless enough, and likely to produce a well-

-paying career.  The sudden, overwhelming raid left Leftist's

-parents traumatized.

-

-The Leftist himself had been out after work with his co-workers,

-surrounding a couple of pitchers of margaritas.  As he came trucking

-on tequila-numbed feet up the pavement, toting a bag full of floppy-disks,

-he noticed a large number of unmarked cars parked in his driveway.

-All the cars sported tiny microwave antennas.

-

-The Secret Service had knocked the front door off its hinges,

-almost flattening his mom.

-

-Inside, Leftist was greeted by Special Agent James Cool

-of the US Secret Service, Atlanta office.  Leftist was flabbergasted.

-He'd never met a Secret Service agent before.  He could not imagine

-that he'd ever done anything worthy of federal attention.

-He'd always figured that if his activities became intolerable,

-one of his contacts in telco security would give him a private

-phone-call and tell him to knock it off.

-

-But now Leftist was pat-searched for weapons by grim professionals,

-and his bag of floppies was quickly seized.  He and his parents were

-all shepherded into separate rooms and grilled at length as a score

-of officers scoured their home for anything electronic.

-

-Leftist was horrified as his treasured IBM AT personal computer

-with its forty-meg hard disk, and his recently purchased 80386 IBM-clone

-with a whopping hundred-meg hard disk, both went swiftly out the door

-in Secret Service custody.  They also seized all his disks, all his notebooks,

-and a tremendous booty in dogeared telco documents that Leftist had snitched

-out of trash dumpsters.

-

-Leftist figured the whole thing for a big misunderstanding.

-He'd never been into MILITARY computers.  He wasn't a SPY or a COMMUNIST.

-He  was just a good ol' Georgia hacker, and now he just wanted all these

-people out of the house.  But it seemed they wouldn't go until he made

-some kind of statement.

-

-And so, he levelled with them.

-

-And that, Leftist said later from his federal prison camp in Talladega,

-Alabama, was a big mistake.  The Atlanta area was unique,

-in that it had three members of the Legion of Doom who actually

-occupied more or less the same physical locality.  Unlike the rest

-of LoD, who tended to associate by phone and computer,

-Atlanta LoD actually WERE "tightly knit."  It was no real

-surprise that the Secret Service agents apprehending Urvile

-at the computer-labs at Georgia Tech, would discover Prophet

-with him as well.

-

-Urvile, a 21-year-old Georgia Tech student in polymer chemistry,

-posed quite a puzzling case for law enforcement.  Urvile--also known

-as "Necron 99," as well as other handles, for he tended to change his

-cover-alias about once a month--was both an accomplished hacker

-and a fanatic simulation-gamer.

-

-Simulation games are an unusual hobby; but then hackers are unusual people,

-and their favorite pastimes tend to be somewhat out of the ordinary.

-The best-known American simulation game is probably "Dungeons & Dragons,"

-a multi-player parlor entertainment played with paper, maps, pencils,

-statistical tables and a variety of oddly-shaped dice.  Players pretend

-to be heroic characters exploring a wholly-invented fantasy world.

-The fantasy worlds of simulation gaming are commonly pseudo-medieval,

-involving swords and sorcery--spell-casting wizards, knights in armor,

-unicorns and dragons, demons and goblins.

-

-Urvile and his fellow gamers  preferred their fantasies highly technological.

-They made use of a game known as "G.U.R.P.S.," the "Generic Universal Role

-Playing System," published by a company called Steve Jackson Games (SJG).

-

-"G.U.R.P.S."  served as a framework for creating a wide variety of artificial

-fantasy worlds.  Steve Jackson Games published  a smorgasboard of books,

-full of detailed information and gaming hints, which were used to flesh-out

-many different fantastic backgrounds for the basic GURPS framework.

-Urvile made extensive use of two SJG books called GURPS High-Tech

-and GURPS Special Ops.

-

-In the artificial fantasy-world of GURPS Special Ops,

-players entered a modern  fantasy of intrigue and international espionage.

-On beginning the game, players started small and powerless,

-perhaps as minor-league CIA agents or penny-ante arms dealers.

-But as players persisted through a series of game sessions

-(game sessions generally lasted for hours, over long,

-elaborate campaigns that might be pursued for months on end)

-then they would achieve new skills, new knowledge, new power.

-They would acquire and hone new abilities, such as marksmanship,

-karate, wiretapping, or Watergate burglary.  They could also win

-various kinds of imaginary booty, like Berettas, or martini shakers,

-or fast cars with ejection seats and machine-guns under the headlights.

-

-As might be imagined from the complexity of these games,

-Urvile's gaming notes were very detailed and extensive.

-Urvile was a "dungeon-master," inventing scenarios

-for his fellow gamers, giant simulated adventure-puzzles

-for his friends to unravel.  Urvile's game notes covered

-dozens of pages with all sorts of exotic lunacy, all about

-ninja raids on Libya and break-ins on encrypted Red Chinese supercomputers.

-His notes were written on scrap-paper and kept in loose-leaf binders.

-

-The handiest scrap paper around Urvile's college digs were the many pounds of

-BellSouth printouts and documents that he had snitched out of telco dumpsters.

-His notes were written on the back of misappropriated telco property.

-Worse yet, the gaming notes were chaotically interspersed with Urvile's

-hand-scrawled records involving ACTUAL COMPUTER INTRUSIONS that he

-had committed.

-

-Not only was it next to impossible to tell Urvile's fantasy game-notes

-from cyberspace "reality," but Urvile himself barely made this distinction.

-It's no exaggeration to say that to Urvile it was ALL a game.  Urvile was

-very bright, highly imaginative, and quite careless of other people's notions

-of propriety.  His connection to "reality" was not something to which he paid

-a great deal of attention.

-

-Hacking was a game for Urvile.  It was an amusement he was carrying out,

-it was something he was doing for fun.  And Urvile was an obsessive young man.

-He could no more stop hacking than he could stop in the middle of

-a jigsaw puzzle, or stop in the middle of reading a Stephen Donaldson

-fantasy trilogy.  (The name "Urvile" came from a best-selling Donaldson novel.)

-

-Urvile's airy, bulletproof attitude seriously annoyed his interrogators.

-First of all, he didn't consider that he'd done anything wrong.

-There was scarcely a shred of honest remorse in him.  On the contrary,

-he seemed privately convinced that his police interrogators were operating

-in a demented fantasy-world all their own.  Urvile was too polite

-and well-behaved to say this straight-out, but his reactions were askew

-and disquieting.

-

-For instance, there was the business about LoD's ability

-to monitor phone-calls to the police and Secret Service.

-Urvile agreed that this was quite possible, and posed

-no big problem for LoD.  In fact, he and his friends

-had kicked the idea around on the "Black Ice" board,

-much as they had discussed many other nifty notions,

-such as building personal flame-throwers and jury-rigging

-fistfulls of blasting-caps.  They had hundreds of dial-up numbers

-for government agencies that they'd gotten through scanning Atlanta phones,

-or had pulled from raided VAX/VMS mainframe computers.

-

-Basically, they'd never gotten around to listening in on the cops

-because the idea wasn't interesting enough to bother with.

-Besides, if they'd been monitoring Secret Service phone calls,

-obviously they'd never have been caught in the first place.  Right?

-

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

-

-Then there was the issue of crashing the phone system.  No problem,

-Urvile admitted sunnily.  Atlanta LoD could have shut down phone service

-all over Atlanta any time they liked.  EVEN THE 911 SERVICE?

-Nothing special about that, Urvile explained patiently.

-Bring the switch to its knees, with say the UNIX "makedir" bug,

-and 911 goes down too as a matter of course.  The 911 system

-wasn't very interesting, frankly.  It might be tremendously

-interesting to cops (for odd reasons of their own), but as

-technical challenges went, the 911 service was yawnsville.

-

-So of course the Atlanta Three could crash service.

-They probably could have crashed service all over

-BellSouth territory, if they'd worked at it for a while.

-But Atlanta LoD weren't crashers.  Only losers and rodents

-were crashers.  LoD were ELITE.

-

-Urvile was privately convinced that sheer technical

-expertise could win him free of any kind of problem.

-As far as he was concerned, elite status in the digital

-underground had placed him permanently beyond the intellectual

-grasp of cops and straights.  Urvile had a lot to learn.

-

-Of the three LoD stalwarts, Prophet was in the most direct trouble.

-Prophet was a UNIX programming expert who burrowed in and out

-of the Internet as a matter of course.  He'd started his hacking

-career at around age 14, meddling with a UNIX mainframe system

-at the University of North Carolina.

-

-Prophet himself had written the handy Legion of Doom

-file "UNIX Use and Security From the Ground Up."

-UNIX (pronounced "you-nicks") is a powerful,

-flexible computer operating-system, for multi-user,

-multi-tasking computers.  In 1969, when UNIX was created

-in Bell Labs, such computers were exclusive to large

-corporations and universities, but today UNIX is run

-on thousands of powerful home machines.  UNIX was

-particularly well-suited to telecommunications programming,

-and had become a standard in the field.  Naturally, UNIX

-also became a standard for the elite hacker and phone phreak.

-Lately, Prophet had not been so active as Leftist and Urvile,

-but Prophet was a recidivist.  In 1986, when he was eighteen,

-Prophet had been convicted of "unauthorized access

-to a computer network" in North Carolina.  He'd been

-discovered breaking into the Southern Bell Data Network,

-a UNIX-based internal telco network supposedly closed to the public.

-He'd gotten a typical hacker sentence:  six months suspended,

-120 hours community service, and three years' probation.

-

-After that humiliating bust, Prophet had gotten rid of most of his

-tonnage of illicit phreak and hacker data, and had tried to go straight.

-He was, after all, still on probation.  But by  the autumn of 1988,

-the temptations of cyberspace had proved too much for young Prophet,

-and he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Urvile and Leftist into some

-of the hairiest systems around.

-

-In early September 1988, he'd broken into BellSouth's centralized

-automation system, AIMSX or "Advanced Information Management System."

-AIMSX was an internal business network for BellSouth, where telco

-employees stored electronic mail, databases, memos, and calendars,

-and did text processing.  Since AIMSX did not have public dial-ups,

-it was considered utterly invisible to the public, and was not well-secured

---it didn't even require passwords.  Prophet abused an account known

-as "waa1," the personal account of an unsuspecting telco employee.

-Disguised as the owner of waa1, Prophet made about ten visits to AIMSX.

-

-Prophet did not damage or delete anything in the system.

-His presence in AIMSX was harmless and almost invisible.

-But he could not rest content with that.

-

-One particular piece of processed text on AIMSX was a telco document

-known as "Bell South Standard Practice 660-225-104SV Control Office

-Administration of Enhanced 911 Services for Special Services

-and Major Account Centers dated March 1988."

-

-Prophet had not been looking for this document.  It was merely one

-among hundreds of similar documents with impenetrable titles.

-However, having blundered over it in the course of his illicit

-wanderings through AIMSX, he decided to take it with him as a trophy.

-It might prove very useful in some future boasting, bragging,

-and strutting session.  So, some time in September 1988,

-Prophet ordered the AIMSX mainframe computer to copy this document

-(henceforth called simply called "the E911 Document") and to transfer

-this copy to his home computer.

-

-No one noticed that Prophet had done this.  He had "stolen"

-the E911 Document in some sense, but notions of property

-in cyberspace can be tricky.  BellSouth noticed nothing wrong,

-because BellSouth still had their original copy.  They had not

-been "robbed" of the document itself.  Many people were supposed

-to copy this document--specifically, people who worked for the

-nineteen BellSouth "special services and major account centers,"

-scattered throughout the Southeastern United States.  That was

-what it was for, why it was present on a computer network

-in the first place: so that it could be copied and read--

-by telco employees.  But now the data had been copied

-by someone who wasn't supposed to look at it.

-

-Prophet now had his trophy.  But he further decided to store

-yet another copy of the E911 Document on another person's computer.

-This unwitting person was a computer enthusiast named Richard Andrews

-who lived near Joliet, Illinois.  Richard Andrews was a UNIX programmer

-by trade, and ran a powerful UNIX board called "Jolnet," in the basement

-of his house.

-

-Prophet, using the handle "Robert Johnson," had obtained an account

-on Richard Andrews' computer.  And there he stashed the E911 Document,

-by storing it in his own private section of Andrews' computer.

-

-Why did Prophet do this?  If Prophet had eliminated the E911 Document

-from his own computer, and kept it hundreds of miles away, on another machine, under an

-alias, then he might have been fairly safe from discovery and prosecution--

-although his sneaky action had certainly put the unsuspecting Richard Andrews

-at risk.

-

-But, like most hackers, Prophet was a pack-rat for illicit data.

-When it came to the crunch, he could not bear to part from his trophy.

-When Prophet's place in Decatur, Georgia was raided in July 1989,

-there was the E911 Document, a smoking gun.  And there was Prophet

-in the hands of the Secret Service, doing his best to "explain."

-

-Our story now takes us away from the Atlanta Three and their raids

-of the Summer of 1989.  We must leave Atlanta Three "cooperating fully"

-with their numerous investigators.  And  all three of them did cooperate,

-as their Sentencing Memorandum from the US District Court of the

-Northern Division of Georgia explained--just before all three of them

-were sentenced to various federal prisons in November 1990.

-

-We must now catch up on the other aspects of the war on the Legion of Doom.

-The war on the Legion was a war on a network--in fact, a network of three

-networks, which intertwined and interrelated in a complex fashion.

-The Legion itself, with Atlanta LoD, and their hanger-on Fry Guy,

-were the first network.  The second network was Phrack magazine,

-with its editors and contributors.

-

-The third  network involved the electronic circle around a hacker

-known as "Terminus."

-

-The war against these hacker networks was carried out by

-a law enforcement network.  Atlanta LoD and Fry Guy

-were pursued by USSS agents and federal prosecutors in Atlanta,

-Indiana, and Chicago.  "Terminus" found himself pursued by USSS

-and federal prosecutors from Baltimore and Chicago.  And the war

-against Phrack was almost entirely a Chicago operation.

-

-The investigation of Terminus involved a great deal of energy,

-mostly from the Chicago Task Force, but it was to be the least-known

-and least-publicized of the Crackdown operations.  Terminus, who lived

-in Maryland, was a UNIX programmer and consultant, fairly well-known

-(under his given name) in the UNIX community, as an acknowledged expert

-on AT&T minicomputers.  Terminus idolized AT&T, especially Bellcore,

-and longed for public recognition as a UNIX expert; his highest ambition

-was to work for Bell Labs.

-

-But Terminus had odd friends and a spotted history.

-Terminus had once been the subject of an admiring interview

-in Phrack (Volume II, Issue 14, Phile 2--dated May 1987).

-In this article, Phrack co-editor Taran King described

-"Terminus" as an electronics engineer, 5'9", brown-haired,

-born in 1959--at 28 years old, quite mature for a hacker.

-

-Terminus had once been sysop of a phreak/hack underground board

-called "MetroNet," which ran on an Apple II.  Later he'd replaced

-"MetroNet" with an underground board called "MegaNet,"

-specializing in IBMs.  In his younger days, Terminus had written

-one of the very first and most elegant code-scanning programs

-for the IBM-PC.  This program had been widely distributed

-in the underground.  Uncounted legions of PC-owning phreaks and

-hackers had used Terminus's scanner program to rip-off telco codes.

-This feat had not escaped the attention of telco security;

-it hardly could, since Terminus's earlier handle, "Terminal Technician,"

-was proudly written right on the program.

-

-When he became a full-time computer professional

-(specializing in telecommunications programming),

-he adopted the handle Terminus, meant to indicate that he

-had "reached the final point of being a proficient hacker."

-He'd moved up to the UNIX-based "Netsys" board on an AT&T computer,

-with four phone lines and an impressive 240 megs of storage.

-"Netsys" carried complete issues of Phrack, and Terminus was

-quite friendly with its publishers, Taran King and Knight Lightning.

-

-In the early 1980s, Terminus had been a regular on Plovernet,

-Pirate-80, Sherwood Forest and Shadowland, all well-known pirate boards,

-all heavily frequented by the Legion of Doom.  As it happened, Terminus

-was never officially "in LoD," because he'd never been given the official

-LoD high-sign and back-slap by Legion maven Lex Luthor.  Terminus had

-never physically met anyone from LoD.  But that scarcely mattered much--

-the Atlanta Three themselves had never been officially vetted by Lex, either.

-

-As far as law enforcement was concerned, the issues were clear.

-Terminus was a full-time, adult computer professional

-with particular skills at AT&T software and hardware--

-but Terminus reeked of the Legion of Doom and the underground.

-

-On February 1, 1990--half a month after the Martin Luther King Day Crash--

-USSS agents Tim Foley from Chicago, and Jack Lewis from the Baltimore office,

-accompanied by AT&T security officer Jerry Dalton, travelled to Middle Town,

-Maryland.  There they grilled Terminus in his home (to the stark terror of

-his wife and small children), and, in their customary fashion, hauled his

-computers out the door.

-

-The Netsys machine proved to contain a plethora of arcane UNIX software--

-proprietary source code formally owned by AT&T.  Software such as:

-UNIX System Five Release 3.2; UNIX SV Release 3.1;  UUCP communications

-software; KORN SHELL; RFS; IWB; WWB; DWB; the C++ programming language;

-PMON; TOOL CHEST; QUEST; DACT, and S FIND.

-

-In the long-established piratical tradition of the underground,

-Terminus had been trading this illicitly-copied software with

-a small circle of fellow UNIX programmers.  Very unwisely,

-he had stored seven years of his electronic mail on his Netsys machine,

-which documented all the friendly arrangements he had made with

-his various colleagues.

-

-Terminus had not crashed the AT&T phone system on January 15.

-He was, however, blithely running a not-for-profit AT&T

-software-piracy ring.  This was not an activity AT&T found amusing.

-AT&T security officer Jerry Dalton valued this "stolen" property

-at over three hundred thousand dollars.

-

-AT&T's entry into the tussle of free enterprise had been complicated

-by the new, vague groundrules of the information economy.

-Until the break-up of Ma Bell, AT&T was forbidden to sell

-computer hardware or software.  Ma Bell was the phone company;

-Ma Bell was not allowed to use the enormous revenue from

-telephone utilities, in order to finance any entry into

-the computer market.

-

-AT&T nevertheless invented the UNIX operating system.

-And somehow AT&T managed to make UNIX a minor source of income.

-Weirdly, UNIX was not sold as computer software,

-but actually retailed under an obscure regulatory

-exemption allowing sales of surplus equipment and scrap.

-Any bolder attempt to promote or retail UNIX would have

-aroused angry legal opposition from computer companies.

-Instead, UNIX was licensed to universities, at modest rates,

-where the acids of academic freedom ate away steadily at AT&T's

-proprietary rights.

-

-Come the breakup, AT&T recognized that UNIX was a potential gold-mine.

-By now, large chunks of UNIX code had been created that were not AT&T's,

-and were being sold by others.  An entire rival UNIX-based operating system

-had arisen in Berkeley, California  (one of the world's great founts of

-ideological hackerdom).  Today, "hackers" commonly consider "Berkeley UNIX"

-to be technically superior to AT&T's "System V UNIX," but AT&T has not

-allowed mere technical elegance to intrude on the real-world business

-of marketing proprietary software.  AT&T has made its own code deliberately

-incompatible with other folks' UNIX, and has written code that it can prove

-is copyrightable, even if that code happens to be somewhat awkward--"kludgey."

-AT&T UNIX user licenses are serious business agreements, replete with very

-clear copyright statements and non-disclosure clauses.

-

-AT&T has not exactly kept the UNIX cat in the bag,

-but it kept a grip on its scruff with some success.

-By the rampant, explosive standards of software piracy,

-AT&T UNIX source code is heavily copyrighted, well-guarded,

-well-licensed.  UNIX was traditionally run only on

-mainframe machines, owned by large groups of suit-and-tie

-professionals, rather than on bedroom machines where

-people can get up to easy mischief.

-

-And AT&T UNIX source code is serious high-level programming.

-The number of skilled UNIX programmers with any actual motive

-to swipe UNIX source code is small.  It's tiny, compared to

-the tens of thousands prepared to rip-off, say, entertaining

-PC games like "Leisure Suit Larry."

-

-But by 1989, the warez-d00d underground, in the persons of Terminus

-and his friends, was gnawing at AT&T UNIX.  And the property in question

-was not sold for twenty bucks over the counter at the local branch of

-Babbage's or Egghead's;  this was massive, sophisticated, multi-line,

-multi-author corporate code worth tens of thousands of dollars.

-

-It must be recognized at this point that Terminus's purported ring of UNIX

-software pirates had not actually made any money from their suspected crimes.

-The $300,000 dollar figure bandied about for the contents of Terminus's

-computer did not mean that Terminus was in actual illicit possession

-of three hundred thousand of AT&T's dollars.  Terminus was shipping

-software back and forth, privately, person to person, for free.

-He was not making a commercial business of piracy.  He hadn't

-asked for money; he didn't take money.  He lived quite modestly.

-

-AT&T employees--as well as freelance UNIX consultants, like Terminus--

-commonly worked with "proprietary" AT&T software, both in the office

-and at home on their private machines.  AT&T rarely sent security officers

-out to comb the hard disks of its consultants.  Cheap freelance UNIX

-contractors were quite useful to AT&T; they didn't have health insurance

-or retirement programs, much less union membership in the Communication

-Workers of America.  They were humble digital drudges, wandering with mop

-and bucket through the Great Technological Temple of AT&T; but when the

-Secret Service arrived at their homes, it seemed they were eating with

-company silverware and sleeping on company sheets!  Outrageously, they

-behaved as if the things they worked with every day belonged to them!

-

-And these were no mere hacker teenagers with their hands full

-of trash-paper and their noses pressed to the corporate windowpane.

-These guys were UNIX wizards, not only carrying AT&T data in their

-machines and their heads, but eagerly networking about it,

-over machines that were far more powerful than anything previously

-imagined in private hands.  How do you keep people disposable,

-yet assure their awestruck respect for your property?  It was a dilemma.

-

-Much UNIX code was public-domain, available for free.  Much "proprietary"

-UNIX code had been extensively re-written, perhaps altered so much that it

-became an entirely new product--or perhaps not.  Intellectual property rights

-for software developers were, and are, extraordinarily complex and confused.

-And software "piracy," like the private copying of videos, is one of the most

-widely practiced "crimes" in the world today.

-

-The USSS were not experts in UNIX or familiar with the customs of its use.

-The United States Secret Service, considered as a body, did not have one single

-person in it who could program in a UNIX environment--no, not even one.

-The Secret Service WERE making extensive use of expert help, but the "experts"

-they had chosen were AT&T and Bellcore security officials, the very victims of

-the purported crimes under investigation, the very people whose interest in

-AT&T's  "proprietary" software was most pronounced.

-

-On February 6, 1990, Terminus was arrested by Agent Lewis.

-Eventually, Terminus would be sent to prison for his illicit

-use of a piece of AT&T software.

-

-The issue of pirated AT&T software would bubble along in the background

-during the war on the Legion of Doom.  Some half-dozen of Terminus's on-line

-acquaintances, including people in Illinois, Texas and California,

-were grilled by the Secret Service in connection with the illicit

-copying of software.  Except for Terminus, however, none were charged

-with a crime.  None of them shared his peculiar prominence in the

-hacker underground.

-

-But that did not mean that these people would, or could,

-stay out of trouble.  The transferral of illicit data in

-cyberspace is hazy and ill-defined business, with paradoxical

-dangers for everyone concerned:  hackers, signal carriers,

-board owners, cops, prosecutors, even random passers-by.

-Sometimes, well-meant attempts to avert trouble

-or punish wrongdoing bring more trouble than

-would simple ignorance, indifference or impropriety.

-

-Terminus's "Netsys" board was not a common-or-garden

-bulletin board system, though it had most of the usual

-functions of a board.  Netsys was not a stand-alone machine,

-but part of the globe-spanning "UUCP" cooperative network.

-The UUCP network uses a set of Unix software programs called

-"Unix-to-Unix Copy," which allows Unix systems to throw data to

-one another at high speed through the public telephone network.

-UUCP is a radically decentralized, not-for-profit network of UNIX computers.

-There are tens of thousands of these UNIX machines.  Some are small,

-but many are powerful and also link to other networks.  UUCP has

-certain arcane links to  major networks such as JANET, EasyNet, BITNET,

-JUNET, VNET, DASnet, PeaceNet and FidoNet, as well as the gigantic Internet.

-(The so-called "Internet" is not actually a network itself, but rather an

-"internetwork" connections standard that allows several globe-spanning

-computer networks to communicate with one another.  Readers fascinated

-by the weird and intricate tangles of modern computer networks may enjoy

-John S. Quarterman's authoritative 719-page explication, The Matrix,

-Digital Press, 1990.)

-

-A skilled user of Terminus' UNIX machine could send and receive

-electronic mail from almost any major computer network in the world.

-Netsys was not called a "board" per se, but rather a "node."

-"Nodes" were larger, faster, and more sophisticated than mere "boards,"

-and for hackers, to hang out on internationally-connected "nodes"

-was quite the step up from merely hanging out on local "boards."

-

-Terminus's Netsys node in Maryland had a number of direct

-links to other, similar UUCP nodes, run by people who shared his

-interests and at least something of his free-wheeling attitude.

-One of these nodes was Jolnet, owned by Richard Andrews, who,

-like Terminus, was an independent UNIX consultant.

-Jolnet also ran UNIX, and could be contacted at high speed

-by mainframe machines from all over the world.  Jolnet was

-quite a sophisticated piece of work, technically speaking,

-but it was still run by an individual, as a private,

-not-for-profit hobby.  Jolnet was mostly used by other

-UNIX programmers--for mail, storage, and access to networks.

-Jolnet supplied access network access to about two hundred people,

-as well as a local junior college.

-

-Among its various features and services, Jolnet also carried

-Phrack magazine.

-

-For reasons of his own, Richard Andrews had become suspicious

-of a new user called  "Robert Johnson."  Richard Andrews

-took it upon himself to have a look at what "Robert Johnson"

-was storing in Jolnet.  And Andrews found the E911 Document.

-

-"Robert Johnson" was the Prophet from the Legion of Doom,

-and the E911 Document was illicitly copied data from Prophet's

-raid on the BellSouth computers.

-

-The E911 Document, a particularly illicit piece of digital property,

-was about to resume its long, complex, and disastrous career.

-

-It struck Andrews as fishy that someone not a telephone employee

-should have a document referring to the "Enhanced 911 System."

-Besides, the document itself bore an obvious warning.

-

-"WARNING:  NOT FOR USE OR DISCLOSURE OUTSIDE BELLSOUTH

-OR ANY OF ITS SUBSIDIARIES EXCEPT UNDER WRITTEN AGREEMENT."

-

-These standard nondisclosure tags are often appended to all sorts

-of corporate material.  Telcos as a species are particularly notorious

-for stamping most everything in sight as "not for use or disclosure."

-Still, this particular piece of data was about the 911 System.

-That sounded bad to Rich Andrews.

-

-Andrews was not prepared to ignore this sort of trouble.

-He thought it would be wise to pass the document along

-to a friend and acquaintance on the UNIX network, for consultation.

-So, around September 1988, Andrews sent yet another copy of the

-E911 Document electronically to an AT&T employee, one Charles Boykin,

-who ran a UNIX-based node called "attctc" in Dallas, Texas.

-

-"Attctc" was the property of AT&T, and was run from AT&T's

-Customer Technology Center in Dallas, hence the name "attctc."

-"Attctc" was better-known as "Killer," the name of the machine

-that the system was running on.  "Killer" was a hefty, powerful,

-AT&T 3B2 500 model, a multi-user, multi-tasking UNIX platform

-with 32 meg of memory and a mind-boggling 3.2 Gigabytes of storage.

-When  Killer had first arrived in Texas, in 1985, the 3B2 had been

-one of AT&T's great white hopes for going head-to-head with IBM

-for the corporate computer-hardware market.  "Killer" had been shipped

-to the Customer Technology Center in the Dallas Infomart, essentially

-a high-technology mall, and there it sat, a demonstration model.

-

-Charles Boykin, a veteran AT&T hardware and digital communications expert,

-was a local technical backup man for the AT&T 3B2 system.  As a display model

-in the Infomart mall, "Killer" had little to do, and it seemed a shame

-to waste the system's capacity.  So Boykin ingeniously wrote some UNIX

-bulletin-board software for "Killer," and plugged the machine in to the

-local phone network.  "Killer's" debut in late 1985 made it the first

-publicly available UNIX site in the state of Texas.  Anyone who wanted to

-play was welcome.

-

-The machine immediately attracted an electronic community.

-It joined the UUCP network, and offered network links

-to over eighty other computer sites, all of which became dependent

-on Killer for their links to the greater world of cyberspace.

-And it wasn't just for the big guys; personal computer users

-also stored freeware programs for the Amiga, the Apple,

-the IBM and the Macintosh on Killer's vast 3,200 meg archives.

-At one time, Killer had the largest library of public-domain

-Macintosh software in Texas.

-

-Eventually, Killer attracted about 1,500 users,

-all busily communicating, uploading and downloading,

-getting mail, gossipping, and linking to arcane

-and distant networks.

-

-Boykin received no pay for running Killer.  He considered

-it good publicity for the AT&T 3B2 system (whose sales were

-somewhat less than stellar), but he also simply enjoyed

-the vibrant community his skill had created.  He gave away

-the bulletin-board UNIX software he had written, free of charge.

-

-In the UNIX programming community, Charlie Boykin had the

-reputation of a warm, open-hearted, level-headed kind of guy.

-In 1989, a group of Texan UNIX professionals voted Boykin

-"System Administrator of the Year."  He was considered

-a fellow you could trust for good advice.

-

-In September 1988, without warning, the E911 Document

-came plunging into Boykin's life, forwarded by Richard Andrews.

-Boykin immediately recognized that the Document was hot property.

-He was not a voice-communications man, and knew little about

-the ins and outs of the Baby Bells, but he certainly knew what

-the 911 System was, and he was angry to see confidential data

-about it in the hands of a nogoodnik.  This was clearly a

-matter for telco security.  So, on September 21, 1988, Boykin

-made yet ANOTHER copy of the E911 Document and passed this

-one along to a professional acquaintance of his, one Jerome Dalton,

-from AT&T Corporate Information Security.  Jerry Dalton was the

-very fellow who would later raid Terminus's house.

-

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

-

-Bellcore (or BELL COmmunications REsearch) had once been the central

-laboratory of the Bell System.  Bell Labs employees had invented

-the UNIX operating system.  Now Bellcore was a quasi-independent,

-jointly owned company that acted as the research arm for all seven

-of the Baby Bell RBOCs.  Bellcore was in a good position to co-ordinate

-security technology and consultation for the RBOCs, and the gentleman in

-charge of this effort was Henry M. Kluepfel, a veteran of the Bell System

-who had worked there for twenty-four years.

-

-On October  13, 1988, Dalton passed the E911 Document to Henry Kluepfel.

-Kluepfel, a veteran expert witness in telecommunications fraud and

-computer-fraud cases, had certainly seen worse trouble than this.

-He recognized the document for what it was:  a trophy from a hacker break-in.

-

-However, whatever harm had been done in the intrusion was presumably old news.

-At this point there seemed little to be done.  Kluepfel made a careful note

-of the circumstances and shelved the problem for the time being.

-

-Whole months passed.

-

-February 1989 arrived.  The Atlanta Three were living it up

-in Bell South's switches, and had not yet met their comeuppance.

-The Legion was thriving.  So was Phrack magazine.

-A good six months had passed since Prophet's AIMSX break-in.

-Prophet, as hackers will, grew weary of sitting on his laurels.

-"Knight Lightning" and "Taran King," the editors of Phrack,

-were always begging Prophet for material they could publish.

-Prophet decided that the heat must be off by this time,

-and that he could safely brag, boast, and strut.

-

-So he sent a copy of the E911 Document--yet another one--

-from Rich Andrews' Jolnet machine to Knight Lightning's

-BITnet account at the University of Missouri.

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

-

-0.  The original E911 Document.  This in the AIMSX system

-on a mainframe computer in Atlanta, available to hundreds of people,

-but all of them, presumably, BellSouth employees.  An unknown number

-of them may have their own copies of this document, but they are all

-professionals and all trusted by the phone company.

-

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

-

-2.  Prophet's back-up copy, stored on Rich Andrew's Jolnet machine

-    in the basement of Rich Andrews'  house near Joliet Illinois.

-

-3.  Charles Boykin's copy on "Killer" in Dallas, Texas,

-    sent by Rich Andrews from Joliet.

-

-4.  Jerry Dalton's copy at AT&T Corporate Information Security in New Jersey,

-    sent from Charles Boykin in Dallas.

-

-5.  Henry Kluepfel's copy at Bellcore security headquarters in New Jersey,

-    sent by Dalton.

-6.  Knight Lightning's copy, sent by Prophet from Rich Andrews' machine,

-    and now in Columbia, Missouri.

-

-We can see that the "security" situation of this proprietary document,

-once dug out of AIMSX, swiftly became bizarre.  Without any money

-changing hands, without any particular special effort, this data

-had been reproduced at least six times and had spread itself all over

-the continent.  By far the worst, however, was yet to come.

-

-In February 1989, Prophet and Knight Lightning bargained electronically

-over the fate of this trophy.  Prophet wanted to boast, but, at the same time,

-scarcely wanted to be caught.

-

-For his part, Knight Lightning was eager to publish as much of the document

-as he could manage.  Knight Lightning was a fledgling political-science major

-with a particular interest in freedom-of-information issues.  He would gladly

-publish most anything that would reflect glory on the prowess of the

-underground and embarrass the telcos.  However, Knight Lightning himself

-had contacts in telco security, and sometimes consulted them on material

-he'd received that might be too dicey for publication.

-

-Prophet and  Knight Lightning decided to edit the E911 Document

-so as to delete most of its identifying traits.  First of all,

-its large "NOT FOR USE OR DISCLOSURE" warning had to go.

-Then there were other matters.  For instance, it listed

-the office telephone numbers of several BellSouth 911

-specialists in Florida.  If these phone numbers were

-published in Phrack, the BellSouth employees involved

-would very likely be hassled by phone phreaks,

-which would anger BellSouth no end, and pose a

-definite operational hazard for both Prophet and Phrack.

-

-So Knight Lightning cut the Document almost in half,

-removing the phone numbers and some of the touchier

-and more specific information.  He passed it back

-electronically to Prophet;  Prophet was still nervous,

-so Knight Lightning cut a bit more.  They finally agreed

-that it was ready to go, and that it would be published

-in Phrack under the pseudonym, "The Eavesdropper."

-

-And this was done on February 25, 1989.

-

-The twenty-fourth issue of Phrack  featured a chatty interview

-with co-ed phone-phreak "Chanda Leir," three articles on BITNET

-and its links to other computer networks, an article on 800 and 900

-numbers by "Unknown User," "VaxCat's" article on telco basics

-(slyly entitled "Lifting Ma Bell's Veil of Secrecy,)" and

-the usual "Phrack World News."

-

-The News section, with painful irony, featured an extended account

-of the sentencing of "Shadowhawk," an eighteen-year-old Chicago hacker

-who had just been put in federal prison by William J. Cook himself.

-

-And then there were the two articles by "The Eavesdropper."

-The first was the edited E911 Document, now titled

-"Control Office Administration Of Enhanced 911 Services

-for Special Services and Major Account Centers."

-Eavesdropper's second article was a glossary of terms

-explaining the blizzard of telco acronyms and buzzwords

-in the E911 Document.

-

-The hapless document was now distributed, in the usual Phrack routine,

-to a good one hundred and fifty sites.  Not a hundred and fifty PEOPLE,

-mind you--a hundred and fifty SITES, some of these sites linked to UNIX

-nodes or bulletin board systems, which themselves had readerships of tens,

-dozens, even hundreds of people.

-

-This was February 1989.  Nothing happened immediately.

-Summer came, and the Atlanta crew were raided by the Secret Service.

-Fry Guy was apprehended.  Still nothing whatever happened to Phrack.

-Six more issues of Phrack came out, 30 in all, more or less on

-a monthly schedule.  Knight Lightning and co-editor Taran King

-went untouched.

-

-Phrack tended to duck and cover whenever the heat came down.

-During the summer busts of 1987--(hacker busts tended to cluster in summer,

-perhaps because hackers were easier to find at home than in college)--

-Phrack had ceased publication for several months, and laid low.

-Several LoD hangers-on had been arrested, but nothing had happened

-to the Phrack crew, the premiere gossips of the underground.

-In 1988, Phrack had been taken over by a new editor,

-"Crimson Death," a raucous youngster with a taste for anarchy files.

-1989, however, looked like a bounty year for the underground.

-Knight Lightning and his co-editor Taran King took up the reins again,

-and Phrack flourished throughout 1989.  Atlanta LoD went down hard in

-the summer of 1989, but Phrack rolled merrily on.  Prophet's E911 Document

-seemed unlikely to cause Phrack any trouble.  By January 1990,

-it had been available in Phrack for almost a year.  Kluepfel and Dalton,

-officers of Bellcore and AT&T  security, had possessed the document

-for sixteen months--in fact, they'd had it even before Knight Lightning

-himself, and had done nothing in particular to stop its distribution.

-They hadn't even told Rich Andrews or Charles Boykin to erase the copies

-from their UNIX nodes, Jolnet and Killer.

-

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

-

-A flat three days later, on January 18, four agents showed up

-at Knight Lightning's fraternity house.  One was Timothy Foley,

-the second Barbara Golden, both of them Secret Service agents

-from the Chicago office.  Also along was a University of Missouri

-security officer, and Reed Newlin, a security man from Southwestern Bell,

-the RBOC having jurisdiction over Missouri.

-

-Foley accused Knight Lightning of causing the nationwide crash

-of the phone system.

-

-Knight Lightning was aghast at this allegation.  On the face of it,

-the suspicion was not entirely implausible--though Knight Lightning

-knew that he himself hadn't done it.  Plenty of hot-dog hackers

-had bragged that they could crash the phone system, however.

-"Shadowhawk," for instance, the Chicago hacker whom William Cook

-had recently put in jail, had several times boasted on boards

-that he could "shut down AT&T's public switched network."

-

-And now this event, or something that looked just like it,

-had actually taken place.  The Crash had lit a fire under

-the Chicago Task Force.  And the former fence-sitters at

-Bellcore and AT&T were now ready to roll.  The consensus

-among telco security--already horrified by the skill of

-the BellSouth intruders --was that the digital underground

-was out of hand.  LoD and Phrack must go.  And in publishing

-Prophet's E911 Document, Phrack had provided law enforcement

-with what appeared to be a powerful legal weapon.

-

-Foley confronted Knight Lightning about the  E911 Document.

-

-Knight Lightning was cowed.  He immediately began "cooperating fully"

-in the usual tradition of the digital underground.

-

-He gave Foley a complete run of Phrack, printed out in a set

-of three-ring binders.  He handed over his electronic mailing list

-of Phrack subscribers.  Knight Lightning was grilled for four hours

-by Foley and his cohorts.  Knight Lightning admitted that Prophet

-had passed him the E911 Document, and he admitted that he had known

-it was stolen booty from a hacker raid on a telephone company.

-Knight Lightning signed a statement to this effect, and agreed,

-in writing, to cooperate with investigators.

-

-Next day--January 19, 1990, a Friday --the Secret Service returned

-with a search warrant, and thoroughly searched Knight Lightning's

-upstairs room in the fraternity house.  They took all his floppy disks,

-though, interestingly, they left Knight Lightning in possession

-of both his computer and his modem.  (The computer had no hard disk,

-and in Foley's judgement was not a store of evidence.)  But this was a

-very minor bright spot among Knight Lightning's rapidly multiplying troubles.

-By this time, Knight Lightning was in plenty of hot water, not only with

-federal police, prosecutors, telco investigators, and university security,

-but with the elders of his own campus fraternity, who were outraged

-to think that they had been unwittingly harboring a federal computer-criminal.

-

-On Monday, Knight Lightning was summoned to Chicago, where he was

-further grilled by Foley and USSS veteran agent Barbara Golden, this time

-with an attorney present.  And on Tuesday, he was formally indicted

-by a federal grand jury.

-

-The trial of Knight Lightning, which occurred on July 24-27, 1990,

-was the crucial show-trial of the Hacker Crackdown.  We will examine

-the trial at some length in Part Four of this book.

-

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

-

-It must have been clear by January 1990 that the E911 Document,

-in the form Phrack had published it back in February 1989,

-had gone off at the speed of light in at least a hundred

-and fifty different directions.  To attempt to put this

-electronic genie back in the bottle was flatly impossible.

-

-And yet, the E911 Document was STILL stolen property,

-formally and legally speaking.  Any electronic transference

-of this document, by anyone unauthorized to have it,

-could be interpreted as an act of wire fraud.  Interstate

-transfer of stolen property, including electronic property,

-was a federal crime.

-

-The Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force had been assured

-that the E911 Document was worth a hefty sum of money.  In fact,

-they had a precise estimate of its worth from BellSouth security personnel:

-$79,449.  A sum of this scale seemed to warrant vigorous prosecution.

-Even if the damage could not be undone, at least this large sum

-offered a good legal pretext for stern punishment of the thieves.

-It seemed likely to impress judges and juries. And it could be used

-in court to mop up the Legion of Doom.

-

-The Atlanta crowd was already in the bag, by the time

-the Chicago Task Force had gotten around to Phrack.

-But the Legion was a hydra-headed thing.  In late 89,

-a brand-new Legion of Doom board, "Phoenix Project,"

-had gone up in Austin, Texas.  Phoenix Project was sysoped

-by no less a man than the Mentor himself, ably assisted by

-University of Texas student and hardened Doomster "Erik Bloodaxe."

-

-As we have seen from his Phrack manifesto, the Mentor was a hacker

-zealot who regarded computer intrusion as something close to a moral duty.

-Phoenix Project was an ambitious effort, intended to revive the digital

-underground to what Mentor considered the full flower of the early 80s.

-The Phoenix board would also boldly bring elite hackers face-to-face

-with the telco "opposition."  On "Phoenix," America's cleverest hackers

-would supposedly shame the telco squareheads out of their stick-in-the-mud

-attitudes, and perhaps convince them that the Legion of Doom elite were really

-an all-right crew.  The  premiere of "Phoenix Project" was heavily trumpeted

-by Phrack,and "Phoenix Project" carried a complete run of Phrack issues,

-including the E911 Document as Phrack had published it.

-

-Phoenix Project was only one of many--possibly hundreds--of nodes and boards

-all over America that were in guilty possession of the E911 Document.

-But Phoenix was an outright, unashamed Legion of Doom board.

-Under Mentor's guidance, it was flaunting itself in the face

-of telco security personnel.  Worse yet, it was actively trying

-to WIN THEM OVER as sympathizers for the digital underground elite.

-"Phoenix" had no cards or codes on it.  Its hacker elite considered

-Phoenix at least technically legal.  But Phoenix was a corrupting influence,

-where hacker anarchy was eating away like digital acid at the underbelly

-of corporate propriety.

-

-The Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force now prepared

-to descend upon Austin, Texas.

-

-Oddly, not one but TWO trails of the Task Force's investigation led

-toward Austin.  The city of Austin, like Atlanta, had made itself

-a bulwark of the Sunbelt's Information Age, with a strong university

-research presence, and a number of cutting-edge electronics companies,

-including Motorola, Dell, CompuAdd, IBM, Sematech and MCC.

-

-Where computing machinery went, hackers generally followed.

-Austin boasted not only "Phoenix Project," currently LoD's

-most flagrant underground board, but a number of UNIX  nodes.

-

-One of these nodes was "Elephant," run by a UNIX consultant

-named Robert Izenberg.  Izenberg, in search of a relaxed Southern

-lifestyle and a lowered cost-of-living, had recently migrated

-to Austin from New Jersey.  In New Jersey, Izenberg had worked

-for an independent contracting company, programming UNIX code for

-AT&T itself.  "Terminus" had been a frequent user on Izenberg's

-privately owned Elephant node.

-

-Having interviewed Terminus and examined the records on Netsys,

-the Chicago Task Force were now convinced that they had discovered

-an underground gang of UNIX software pirates, who were demonstrably

-guilty of interstate trafficking in illicitly copied AT&T source code.

-Izenberg was swept into the dragnet around Terminus, the self-proclaimed

-ultimate UNIX hacker.

-

-Izenberg, in Austin, had settled down into a UNIX job

-with a Texan branch of IBM.  Izenberg was no longer

-working as a contractor for AT&T, but he had friends

-in New Jersey, and he still logged on to AT&T UNIX

-computers back in New Jersey, more or less whenever

-it pleased him.  Izenberg's activities appeared highly

-suspicious to the Task Force.  Izenberg might well be

-breaking into AT&T computers, swiping AT&T software,

-and passing it to  Terminus and other possible confederates,

-through the UNIX node network.  And this data was worth,

-not merely $79,499, but hundreds of thousands of dollars!

-

-On February 21, 1990, Robert Izenberg arrived home

-from work at IBM to find that all the computers

-had mysteriously vanished from his Austin apartment.

-Naturally he assumed that he had been robbed.

-His "Elephant" node, his other machines, his notebooks,

-his disks, his tapes, all gone!  However, nothing much

-else seemed disturbed--the place had not been ransacked.

-The puzzle becaming much stranger some five minutes later.

-Austin U. S. Secret Service Agent Al Soliz, accompanied by

-University of Texas campus-security officer Larry Coutorie

-and the ubiquitous Tim Foley, made their appearance at Izenberg's door.

-They were in plain clothes: slacks, polo shirts.  They came in,

-and Tim Foley accused Izenberg of belonging to the Legion of Doom.

-

-Izenberg told them that he had never heard of the "Legion of Doom."

-And what about a certain stolen E911 Document, that posed a direct

-threat to the police emergency lines?  Izenberg claimed that he'd

-never heard of that, either.

-

-His interrogators found this difficult to believe.

-Didn't he know Terminus?

-

-Who?

-

-They gave him Terminus's real name.  Oh yes, said Izenberg.

-He knew THAT guy all right--he was leading discussions

-on the Internet about AT&T computers, especially the AT&T 3B2.

-

-AT&T had thrust this machine into the marketplace,

-but, like many of AT&T's ambitious attempts to enter

-the computing arena, the 3B2 project had something less

-than a glittering success.  Izenberg himself had been

-a contractor for the division of AT&T that supported the 3B2.

-The entire division had been shut down.

-

-Nowadays, the cheapest and quickest way to get help with this

-fractious piece of machinery was to join one of Terminus's

-discussion groups on the Internet, where friendly and knowledgeable

-hackers would help you for free.  Naturally the remarks within this

-group were less than flattering about the Death Star. . .was

-THAT the problem?

-

-Foley told Izenberg that Terminus had been acquiring hot software

-through his, Izenberg's, machine.

-

-Izenberg shrugged this off.  A good eight megabytes of data flowed

-through his UUCP site every day.  UUCP nodes spewed data like fire hoses.

-Elephant had been directly linked to Netsys--not surprising, since Terminus

-was a 3B2 expert and Izenberg had been a 3B2 contractor.

-Izenberg was also linked to "attctc" and the University of Texas.

-Terminus was a well-known UNIX expert, and might have been up to

-all manner of hijinks on Elephant.  Nothing Izenberg could do about that.

-That was physically impossible.  Needle in a haystack.

-

-In a four-hour grilling, Foley urged Izenberg to come clean

-and admit that he was in conspiracy with Terminus,

-and a member of the Legion of Doom.

-

-Izenberg denied this.  He was no weirdo teenage hacker--

-he was thirty-two years old, and didn't even have a "handle."

-Izenberg was a former TV technician and electronics specialist

-who had drifted into UNIX consulting as a full-grown adult.

-Izenberg had never met Terminus, physically.  He'd once bought

-a cheap high-speed modem from him, though.

-

-Foley told him that this modem (a Telenet T2500 which ran at 19.2 kilobaud,

-and which had just gone out Izenberg's door in Secret Service custody)

-was likely hot property.  Izenberg was taken aback to hear this; but then

-again, most of Izenberg's equipment, like that of most freelance professionals

-in the industry, was discounted, passed hand-to-hand through various kinds

-of barter and gray-market.  There was no proof that the modem was stolen,

-and even if it were, Izenberg hardly saw how that gave them the right

-to take every electronic item in his house.

-

-Still, if the United States Secret Service figured they needed

-his computer for national security reasons--or whatever--

-then Izenberg would not kick.  He figured he would somehow

-make the sacrifice of his twenty thousand dollars' worth

-of professional equipment, in the spirit of full cooperation

-and good citizenship.

-

-Robert Izenberg was not arrested.  Izenberg was not charged with any crime.

-His UUCP node--full of some 140 megabytes of the files, mail, and data

-of himself and his dozen or so entirely innocent users--went out the door

-as "evidence."  Along with the disks and tapes, Izenberg had lost about

-800 megabytes of data.

-

-Six months would pass before Izenberg decided to phone the Secret Service

-and ask how the case was going.  That was the first time that Robert Izenberg

-would ever hear the name of William Cook.  As of January 1992, a full

-two years after the seizure, Izenberg, still not charged with any crime,

-would be struggling through the morass of the courts, in hope of recovering

-his thousands of dollars' worth of seized equipment.

-

-In the meantime, the Izenberg case received absolutely no press coverage.

-The Secret Service had walked into an Austin home, removed a UNIX bulletin-

-board system, and met with no operational difficulties whatsoever.

-

-Except that word of a crackdown had percolated through the Legion of Doom.

-"The Mentor" voluntarily shut down "The Phoenix Project."  It seemed a pity,

-especially as telco security employees had, in fact, shown up on Phoenix,

-just as he had hoped--along with the usual motley crowd of LoD heavies,

-hangers-on, phreaks, hackers and wannabes.  There was "Sandy" Sandquist from

-US SPRINT security, and some guy named Henry Kluepfel, from Bellcore itself!

-Kluepfel had been trading friendly banter with hackers on Phoenix since

-January 30th (two weeks after the Martin Luther King Day Crash).

-The presence of such a stellar telco official seemed quite the coup

-for Phoenix Project.

-

-Still, Mentor could judge the climate.  Atlanta in ruins,

-Phrack in deep trouble, something weird going on with UNIX nodes--

-discretion was advisable.  Phoenix Project went off-line.

-

-Kluepfel, of course, had been monitoring this LoD bulletin

-board for his own purposes--and those of the Chicago unit.

-As far back as June 1987, Kluepfel had logged on to a Texas

-underground board called "Phreak Klass 2600."  There he'd

-discovered an Chicago youngster named "Shadowhawk,"

-strutting and boasting about rifling AT&T computer files,

-and bragging of his ambitions to riddle AT&T's Bellcore

-computers with trojan horse programs.  Kluepfel had passed

-the news to Cook in Chicago, Shadowhawk's computers

-had gone out the door in Secret Service custody,

-and Shadowhawk himself had gone to jail.

-

-Now it was Phoenix Project's turn.  Phoenix Project postured

-about "legality" and "merely intellectual interest," but it reeked

-of the underground.  It had Phrack on it.  It had the E911 Document.

-It had a lot of dicey talk about breaking into systems, including some

-bold and reckless stuff about a supposed "decryption service" that Mentor

-and friends were planning to run, to help crack encrypted passwords off

-of hacked systems.

-

-Mentor was an adult.  There was a  bulletin board at his place of work,

-as well.  Kleupfel logged onto this board, too, and discovered it to be

-called "Illuminati."  It was run by some company called Steve Jackson Games.

-

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

-

-On the morning of March 1--a Thursday--21-year-old University of Texas

-student "Erik Bloodaxe," co-sysop of Phoenix Project and an avowed member

-of the Legion of Doom, was wakened by a police revolver levelled at his head.

-

-Bloodaxe watched, jittery, as Secret Service agents

-appropriated his 300 baud terminal and, rifling his files,

-discovered his treasured source-code for Robert Morris's

-notorious Internet Worm.  But Bloodaxe, a wily operator,

-had suspected that something of the like might be coming.

-All his best equipment had been hidden away elsewhere.

-The raiders took everything electronic, however,

-including his telephone.  They were stymied by his

-hefty arcade-style Pac-Man game, and left it in place,

-as it was simply too heavy to move.

-

-Bloodaxe was not arrested.  He was not charged with any crime.

-A good two years later, the police still had what they had

-taken from him, however.

-

-The Mentor was less wary.  The dawn raid rousted him and his wife

-from bed in their underwear, and six Secret Service agents,

-accompanied by an Austin policeman and Henry Kluepfel himself,

-made a rich haul.  Off went the works, into the agents' white

-Chevrolet minivan:  an IBM PC-AT clone with 4 meg of RAM and

-a 120-meg hard disk; a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet II printer;

-a completely legitimate and highly expensive SCO-Xenix 286

-operating system; Pagemaker disks and documentation;

-and the Microsoft Word word-processing program.  Mentor's wife

-had her incomplete academic thesis stored on the hard-disk;

-that went, too, and so did the couple's telephone.  As of two years later,

-all this property remained in police custody.

-

-Mentor remained under guard in his apartment as agents prepared

-to raid Steve Jackson Games.  The fact that this was a business

-headquarters and not a private residence did not deter the agents.

-It was still very early; no one was at work yet.  The agents prepared

-to break down the door, but Mentor, eavesdropping on the Secret Service

-walkie-talkie traffic, begged them not to do it, and offered his key

-to the building.

-

-The exact details of the next events are unclear.  The agents

-would not let anyone else into the building.  Their search warrant,

-when produced, was unsigned.  Apparently they breakfasted from the local

-"Whataburger," as the litter from hamburgers was later found inside.

-They also extensively sampled a bag of jellybeans kept by an SJG employee.

-Someone tore a "Dukakis for President" sticker from the wall.

-

-SJG employees, diligently showing up for the day's work, were met

-at the door and briefly questioned by U.S. Secret Service agents.

-The employees watched in astonishment as agents wielding crowbars

-and screwdrivers emerged with captive machines.  They attacked

-outdoor storage units with boltcutters.  The agents wore

-blue nylon windbreakers with "SECRET SERVICE" stencilled

-across the back, with running-shoes and jeans.

-

-Jackson's company lost three computers, several hard-disks,

-hundred of floppy disks, two monitors, three modems,

-a laser printer, various powercords, cables, and adapters

-(and, oddly, a small bag of screws, bolts and nuts).

-The seizure of Illuminati BBS deprived SJG of all the programs,

-text files, and private e-mail on the board.  The loss of two other

-SJG computers was a severe blow as well, since it caused the loss

-of electronically stored contracts, financial projections,

-address directories, mailing lists, personnel files,

-business correspondence, and, not least, the drafts

-of forthcoming games and gaming books.

-

-No one at Steve Jackson Games was arrested.  No one was accused

-of any crime.  No charges were filed.  Everything appropriated

-was officially kept as "evidence" of crimes never specified.

-

-After the Phrack show-trial, the Steve Jackson Games scandal

-was the most bizarre and aggravating incident of the Hacker

-Crackdown of 1990.  This raid by the Chicago Task Force

-on a science-fiction gaming publisher was to rouse a

-swarming host of civil liberties issues, and gave rise

-to an enduring controversy that was still re-complicating itself,

-and growing in the scope of its implications, a full two years later.

-

-The pursuit of the E911 Document stopped with the Steve Jackson Games raid.

-As we have seen, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of computer users

-in America with the E911 Document in their possession.  Theoretically,

-Chicago had a perfect legal right to raid any of these people,

-and could have legally seized the machines of anybody who subscribed to Phrack.

-However, there was no copy of the E911 Document on Jackson's Illuminati board.

-And there the Chicago raiders stopped dead; they have not raided anyone since.

-

-It might be assumed that Rich Andrews and Charlie Boykin, who had brought

-the E911 Document to the attention of telco security, might be spared

-any official suspicion.  But as we have seen, the willingness to

-"cooperate fully" offers little, if any, assurance against federal

-anti-hacker prosecution.

-

-Richard Andrews found himself in deep trouble, thanks to the E911 Document.

-Andrews lived in Illinois, the native stomping grounds of the Chicago

-Task Force.  On February 3 and 6, both his home and his place of work

-were raided by USSS.  His machines went out the door, too, and he was

-grilled at length (though not arrested).  Andrews proved to be in

-purportedly guilty possession of: UNIX SVR 3.2; UNIX SVR 3.1; UUCP;

-PMON; WWB; IWB; DWB; NROFF; KORN SHELL '88; C++; and QUEST,

-among other items.  Andrews had received this proprietary code--

-which AT&T officially valued at well over $250,000--through the

-UNIX network, much of it supplied to him as a personal favor by Terminus.

-Perhaps worse yet, Andrews admitted to returning the favor, by passing

-Terminus a copy of AT&T proprietary STARLAN source code.

-

-Even Charles Boykin, himself an AT&T employee, entered some very hot water.

-By 1990, he'd almost forgotten about the E911 problem he'd reported in

-September 88; in fact, since that date, he'd passed two more security alerts

-to Jerry Dalton, concerning matters that Boykin considered far worse than

-the E911 Document.

-

-But by 1990, year of the crackdown, AT&T Corporate Information Security

-was fed up with "Killer."  This machine offered no direct income to AT&T,

-and was providing aid and comfort to a cloud of suspicious yokels

-from outside the company, some of them actively malicious toward AT&T,

-its property, and its corporate interests.  Whatever goodwill and publicity

-had been won among Killer's 1,500 devoted users was considered no longer

-worth the security risk.  On February 20, 1990, Jerry Dalton arrived in

-Dallas and simply unplugged the phone jacks, to the puzzled alarm

-of Killer's many Texan users.  Killer went permanently off-line,

-with the loss of vast archives of programs and huge quantities

-of electronic mail; it was never restored to service.  AT&T showed

-no particular regard for the "property" of these 1,500 people.

-Whatever "property" the users had been storing on AT&T's computer

-simply vanished completely.

-

-Boykin, who had himself reported the E911 problem,

-now found himself under a cloud of suspicion.  In a weird

-private-security replay of the Secret Service seizures,

-Boykin's own home was visited by AT&T Security and his

-own machines were carried out the door.

-

-However, there were marked special features in the Boykin case.

-Boykin's disks and his personal computers were swiftly examined

-by his corporate employers and returned politely in just two days--

-(unlike Secret Service seizures, which commonly take months or years).

-Boykin was not charged with any crime or wrongdoing, and he kept his job

-with AT&T (though he did retire from AT&T in September 1991,

-at the age of 52).

-

-It's interesting to note that the US Secret Service somehow failed

-to seize Boykin's "Killer" node and carry AT&T's own computer out the door.

-Nor did they raid Boykin's home.  They seemed perfectly willing to take the

-word of AT&T Security that AT&T's employee, and AT&T's "Killer" node,

-were free of hacker contraband and on the up-and-up.

-

-It's digital water-under-the-bridge at this point, as Killer's

-3,200 megabytes of Texan electronic community were erased in 1990,

-and "Killer" itself was shipped out of the state.

-

-But the experiences of Andrews and Boykin, and the users of their systems,

-remained side issues.  They did not begin to assume the social, political,

-and legal importance that gathered, slowly but inexorably, around the issue

-of the raid on Steve Jackson Games.

-

-#

-

-We must now turn our attention to Steve Jackson Games itself,

-and explain what SJG was, what it really did, and how it had

-managed to attract this particularly odd and virulent kind of trouble.

-The reader may recall that this is not the first but the second time

-that the company has appeared in this narrative; a Steve Jackson game

-called GURPS was a favorite pastime of Atlanta hacker Urvile,

-and Urvile's science-fictional gaming notes had been mixed up

-promiscuously with notes about his actual computer intrusions.

-

-First, Steve Jackson Games, Inc., was NOT a publisher of "computer games."

-SJG published "simulation games," parlor games that were played on paper,

-with pencils, and dice, and printed guidebooks full of rules and

-statistics tables.  There were no computers involved in the games themselves.

-When you bought a Steve Jackson Game, you did not receive any software disks.

-What you got was a plastic bag with some cardboard game tokens,

-maybe a few maps or a deck of cards.  Most of their products were books.

-

-However, computers WERE deeply involved in the Steve Jackson Games business.

-Like almost all modern publishers, Steve Jackson and his fifteen employees

-used computers to write text, to keep accounts, and to run the business

-generally.  They also used a computer to run their official bulletin board

-system for Steve Jackson Games, a board called Illuminati.  On Illuminati,

-simulation gamers who happened to own computers and modems could associate,

-trade mail, debate the theory and practice of gaming, and keep up with the

-company's news and its product announcements.

-

-Illuminati was a modestly popular board, run on a small computer

-with limited storage, only one phone-line, and no ties to large-scale

-computer networks.  It did, however, have hundreds of users,

-many of them dedicated gamers willing to call from out-of-state.

-

-Illuminati was NOT an "underground" board.  It did not feature hints

-on computer intrusion, or "anarchy files," or illicitly posted

-credit card numbers, or long-distance access codes.

-Some of Illuminati's users, however, were members of the Legion of Doom.

-And so was one of Steve Jackson's senior employees--the Mentor.

-The Mentor wrote for Phrack, and also ran an underground board,

-Phoenix Project--but the Mentor was not a computer professional.

-The Mentor was the managing editor of Steve Jackson Games and

-a professional game designer by trade.  These LoD members did not

-use Illuminati to help their HACKING activities.  They used it to

-help their GAME-PLAYING activities--and they were even more dedicated

-to simulation gaming than they were to hacking.

-

-"Illuminati" got its name from a card-game that Steve Jackson himself,

-the company's founder and sole owner, had invented.  This multi-player

-card-game was one of Mr Jackson's best-known, most successful,

-most technically innovative products.  "Illuminati" was a game

-of paranoiac conspiracy in which various antisocial cults warred

-covertly to dominate the world.  "Illuminati" was hilarious,

-and great fun to play, involving flying saucers, the CIA, the KGB,

-the phone companies, the Ku Klux Klan, the South American Nazis,

-the cocaine cartels, the Boy Scouts, and dozens of other splinter groups

-from the twisted depths of Mr. Jackson's professionally fervid imagination.

-For the uninitiated, any public discussion of the "Illuminati" card-game

-sounded, by turns, utterly menacing or completely insane.

-

-And then there was SJG's "Car Wars," in which souped-up armored hot-rods

-with rocket-launchers and heavy machine-guns did battle on the American

-highways of the future.  The lively Car Wars discussion on the Illuminati

-board featured many meticulous, painstaking discussions of the effects

-of grenades, land-mines, flamethrowers and napalm.  It sounded like

-hacker anarchy files run amuck.

-

-Mr Jackson and his co-workers earned their daily bread by supplying people

-with make-believe adventures and weird ideas.  The more far-out, the better.

-

-Simulation gaming is an unusual pastime, but gamers have not

-generally had to beg the permission of the Secret Service to exist.

-Wargames and role-playing adventures are an old and honored pastime,

-much favored by professional military strategists.  Once little-known,

-these games are now played by hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts

-throughout North America, Europe and Japan.  Gaming-books, once restricted

-to hobby outlets, now commonly appear in chain-stores like B. Dalton's

-and Waldenbooks, and sell vigorously.

-

-Steve Jackson Games, Inc., of Austin, Texas, was a games company

-of the middle rank.  In 1989, SJG grossed about a million dollars.

-Jackson himself had a good reputation in his industry as a talented

-and innovative designer of rather unconventional games, but his company

-was something less than a titan of the field--certainly not like the

-multimillion-dollar TSR Inc., or Britain's gigantic "Games Workshop."

-SJG's Austin headquarters was a modest two-story brick office-suite,

-cluttered with phones, photocopiers, fax machines and computers.

-It bustled with semi-organized activity and was littered with

-glossy promotional brochures and dog-eared science-fiction novels.

-Attached to the offices was a large tin-roofed warehouse piled twenty feet

-high with cardboard boxes of games and books.  Despite the weird imaginings

-that went on within it, the SJG headquarters was quite a quotidian,

-everyday sort of place.  It looked like what it was:  a publishers' digs.

-

-Both "Car Wars" and "Illuminati" were well-known, popular games.

-But the mainstay of the Jackson organization was their Generic Universal

-Role-Playing System, "G.U.R.P.S."  The GURPS system was considered solid

-and well-designed, an asset for players.  But perhaps the most popular

-feature of the GURPS system was that it allowed gaming-masters to design

-scenarios that closely resembled well-known books, movies, and other works

-of fantasy.  Jackson had  licensed and adapted works from many science fiction

-and fantasy authors.  There was GURPS Conan, GURPS Riverworld,

-GURPS Horseclans, GURPS Witch World, names eminently familiar

-to science-fiction readers.  And there was GURPS Special Ops,

-from the world of espionage fantasy and unconventional warfare.

-

-And then there was GURPS Cyberpunk.

-

-"Cyberpunk" was a term given to certain science fiction writers

-who had entered the genre in the 1980s.  "Cyberpunk," as the label implies,

-had two general distinguishing features.  First, its writers had a compelling

-interest in information technology, an interest closely akin

-to science fiction's earlier fascination with space travel.

-And second, these writers  were "punks," with all the

-distinguishing features that that implies:  Bohemian artiness,

-youth run wild, an air of deliberate rebellion, funny clothes and hair,

-odd politics, a fondness for abrasive rock and roll; in a word, trouble.

-

-The "cyberpunk" SF writers were a small group of mostly college-educated

-white middle-class litterateurs, scattered through the US and Canada.

-Only one, Rudy Rucker, a professor of computer science in Silicon Valley,

-could rank with even the humblest computer hacker.  But, except for

-Professor Rucker, the "cyberpunk" authors were not programmers

-or hardware experts; they considered themselves artists

-(as, indeed, did Professor Rucker).  However, these writers

-all owned computers, and took an intense and public interest

-in the social ramifications of the information industry.

-

-The cyberpunks had a strong following among the global generation

-that had grown up in a world of computers, multinational networks,

-and cable television. Their outlook was considered somewhat morbid,

-cynical, and dark, but then again, so was the outlook of their

-generational peers.  As that generation matured and increased

-in strength and influence, so did the cyberpunks.

-As science-fiction writers went, they were doing

-fairly well for themselves.  By the late 1980s,

-their work had attracted attention from gaming companies,

-including Steve Jackson Games, which was planning a cyberpunk

-simulation for the flourishing GURPS gaming-system.

-

-The time seemed ripe for such a product, which had already been proven

-in the marketplace.  The first games- company out of the gate,

-with a product boldly called "Cyberpunk" in defiance of possible

-infringement-of-copyright suits, had been an upstart group called

-R. Talsorian.  Talsorian's Cyberpunk was a fairly decent game,

-but the mechanics of the simulation system left a lot to be desired.

-Commercially, however, the game did very well.

-

-The next cyberpunk game had been the even more successful Shadowrun

-by FASA Corporation.  The mechanics of this game were fine, but the

-scenario was rendered moronic by sappy fantasy elements like elves,

-trolls, wizards, and  dragons--all highly ideologically-incorrect,

-according to the hard-edged, high-tech standards of cyberpunk science fiction.

-

-Other game designers were champing at the bit.  Prominent among them

-was the Mentor, a gentleman who, like most of his friends in the

-Legion of Doom, was quite the cyberpunk devotee.  Mentor reasoned

-that the time had come for a REAL cyberpunk gaming-book--one that the

-princes of computer-mischief in the Legion of Doom could play without

-laughing themselves sick.  This book, GURPS Cyberpunk, would reek

-of culturally on-line authenticity.

-

-Mentor was particularly well-qualified for this task.

-Naturally, he knew far more about computer-intrusion

-and digital skullduggery than any previously published

-cyberpunk author.  Not only that, but he was good at his work.

-A vivid imagination, combined with an instinctive feeling

-for the working of systems and, especially, the loopholes

-within them, are excellent qualities for a professional game designer.

-

-By March 1st, GURPS Cyberpunk was almost complete, ready to print and ship.

-Steve Jackson expected vigorous sales for this item, which, he hoped,

-would keep the company financially afloat for several months.

-GURPS Cyberpunk, like the other GURPS "modules," was not a "game"

-like a Monopoly set, but a BOOK:  a bound paperback book the size

-of a glossy magazine, with a slick color cover, and pages full of text,

-illustrations, tables and footnotes.  It was advertised as a game,

-and was used as an aid to game-playing, but it was a book,

-with an ISBN number, published in Texas, copyrighted,

-and sold in bookstores.

-

-And now, that book, stored on a computer, had gone out the door

-in the custody of the Secret Service.

-

-The day after the raid, Steve Jackson visited the local Secret Service

-headquarters with a lawyer in tow.  There he confronted Tim Foley

-(still in Austin at that time) and demanded his book back.  But there

-was trouble.  GURPS Cyberpunk, alleged a Secret Service agent to astonished

-businessman Steve Jackson, was "a manual for computer crime."

-

-"It's science fiction," Jackson said.

-

-"No, this is real."

-

-This statement was repeated several times, by several agents.

-Jackson's ominously accurate game had passed from pure,

-obscure, small-scale fantasy into the impure, highly publicized,

-large-scale fantasy of the Hacker Crackdown.

-

-No mention was made of the real reason for the search.

-According to their search warrant, the raiders had expected

-to find the E911 Document stored on Jackson's bulletin board system.

-But that warrant was sealed; a procedure that most law enforcement agencies

-will use only when lives are demonstrably in danger.  The raiders'

-true motives were not discovered until the Jackson search-warrant

-was unsealed by his lawyers, many months later.  The Secret Service,

-and the Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force,

-said absolutely nothing to Steve Jackson about any threat

-to the police 911 System.  They said nothing about the Atlanta Three,

-nothing about Phrack or Knight Lightning, nothing about Terminus.

-

-Jackson was left to believe that his computers had been seized because

-he intended to publish a science fiction book that law enforcement

-considered too dangerous to see print.

-

-This misconception was repeated again and again, for months,

-to an ever-widening public audience.  It was not the truth of the case;

-but as months passed, and this misconception was publicly printed again

-and again, it became one of the few publicly known "facts" about

-the mysterious Hacker Crackdown.  The Secret Service had seized a computer

-to stop the publication of a cyberpunk science fiction book.

-

-The second section of this book, "The Digital Underground,"

-is almost finished now.  We have become acquainted with all

-the major figures of this case who actually belong to the

-underground milieu of computer intrusion.  We have some idea

-of their history, their motives, their general modus operandi.

-We now know, I hope, who they are, where they came from,

-and more or less what they want.  In the next section of this book,

-"Law and Order," we will leave this milieu and directly enter the

-world of America's computer-crime police.

-

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

-

-My name is Bruce Sterling.  I live in Austin, Texas, where I am

-a science fiction writer by trade:  specifically, a CYBERPUNK

-science fiction writer.

-

-Like my "cyberpunk" colleagues in the U.S. and Canada,

-I've never been entirely happy with this literary label--

-especially after it became a synonym for computer criminal.

-But I did once edit a book of stories by my colleagues,

-called  Mirrorshades:  the Cyberpunk Anthology, and I've

-long been a writer of literary-critical cyberpunk manifestos.

-I am not a "hacker" of any description, though I do have readers

-in the digital underground.

-

-When the Steve Jackson Games seizure occurred, I naturally took

-an intense interest.  If "cyberpunk" books were being banned

-by federal police in my own home town, I reasonably wondered

-whether I myself might be next.  Would my computer be seized

-by the Secret Service?  At the time, I was in possession

-of an aging Apple IIe without so much as a hard disk.

-If I were to be raided as an author of computer-crime manuals,

-the loss of my feeble word-processor would likely provoke more

-snickers than sympathy.

-

-I'd known Steve Jackson for many years.  We knew

-one another as colleagues, for we frequented

-the same local science-fiction conventions.

-I'd played Jackson games, and recognized his cleverness;

-but he certainly had never struck me as a potential mastermind

-of computer crime.

-

-I also knew a little about computer bulletin-board systems.

-In the mid-1980s I had taken an active role in an Austin board

-called "SMOF-BBS," one of the first boards dedicated to science fiction.

-I had a modem, and on occasion I'd logged on to Illuminati,

-which always looked entertainly wacky, but certainly harmless enough.

-

-At the time of the Jackson seizure, I had no experience

-whatsoever with underground boards.  But I knew that no one

-on Illuminati talked about breaking into systems illegally,

-or about robbing phone companies.  Illuminati didn't even

-offer pirated computer games.  Steve Jackson, like many creative artists,

-was markedly touchy about theft of intellectual property.

-

-It seemed to me that Jackson was either seriously suspected

-of some crime--in which case, he would be charged soon,

-and would have his day in court--or else he was innocent,

-in which case the Secret Service would quickly return his equipment,

-and everyone would have a good laugh.  I rather expected the good laugh.

-The situation was not without its comic side.  The raid, known

-as the "Cyberpunk Bust" in the science fiction community,

-was winning a great deal of free national publicity both

-for Jackson himself and the "cyberpunk" science fiction

-writers generally.

-

-Besides, science fiction people are used to being misinterpreted.

-Science fiction is a colorful, disreputable, slipshod occupation,

-full of unlikely oddballs, which, of course, is why we like it.

-Weirdness can be an occupational hazard in our field.  People who

-wear Halloween costumes are sometimes mistaken for monsters.

-

-Once upon a time--back in 1939, in New York City--

-science fiction and the U.S. Secret Service collided in

-a comic case of mistaken identity.  This weird incident

-involved a literary group quite famous in science fiction,

-known as "the Futurians," whose membership included

-such future genre greats as Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl,

-and Damon Knight.  The Futurians were every bit as

-offbeat and wacky as any of their spiritual descendants,

-including the cyberpunks, and were given to communal living,

-spontaneous group renditions of light opera, and midnight fencing

-exhibitions on the lawn.  The Futurians didn't have bulletin

-board systems, but they did have the technological equivalent

-in 1939--mimeographs and a private printing press.  These were

-in steady use, producing a stream of science-fiction fan magazines,

-literary manifestos, and weird articles, which were picked up

-in ink-sticky bundles by a succession of strange, gangly,

-spotty young men in fedoras and overcoats.

-

-The neighbors grew alarmed at the antics of the Futurians

-and reported them to the Secret Service as suspected counterfeiters.

-In the winter of 1939, a squad of USSS agents with drawn guns burst into

-"Futurian House," prepared to confiscate the forged currency and illicit

-printing presses.  There they discovered a slumbering science fiction fan

-named George Hahn, a guest of the Futurian commune who had just arrived

-in New York.  George Hahn managed to explain himself and his group,

-and the Secret Service agents left the Futurians in peace henceforth.

-(Alas, Hahn died in 1991, just before I had discovered this astonishing

-historical parallel, and just before I could interview him for this book.)

-

-But the Jackson case did not come to a swift and comic end.

-No quick answers came his way, or mine; no swift reassurances

-that all was right in the digital world, that matters were well

-in hand after all.  Quite the opposite.  In my alternate role

-as a sometime pop-science journalist, I interviewed Jackson

-and his staff for an article in a British magazine.

-The strange details of the raid left me more concerned than ever.

-Without its computers, the company had been financially

-and operationally crippled.  Half the SJG workforce,

-a group of entirely innocent people, had been sorrowfully fired,

-deprived of their livelihoods by the seizure.  It began to dawn on me

-that authors--American writers--might well have their computers seized,

-under sealed warrants, without any criminal charge; and that,

-as Steve Jackson had discovered, there was no immediate recourse for this.

-This was no joke; this wasn't science fiction; this was real.

-

-I determined to put science fiction aside until I had discovered

-what had happened and where this trouble had come from.

-It was time to enter the purportedly real world of electronic

-free expression and computer crime.  Hence, this book.

-Hence, the world of the telcos; and the world of the digital underground;

-and next, the world of the police.

-

-

-

-PART THREE:  LAW AND ORDER

-

-

-Of the various anti-hacker activities of 1990, "Operation Sundevil"

-had by far the highest public profile.  The sweeping, nationwide

-computer seizures of May 8, 1990 were unprecedented in scope and highly,

-if rather selectively, publicized.

-

-Unlike the efforts of the Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force,

-"Operation Sundevil" was not intended to combat "hacking" in the sense

-of computer intrusion or sophisticated raids on telco switching stations.

-Nor did it have anything to do with hacker misdeeds with AT&T's software,

-or with Southern Bell's proprietary documents.

-

-Instead, "Operation Sundevil" was a crackdown on those traditional scourges

-of the digital underground:  credit-card theft and telephone code abuse.

-The ambitious activities out of Chicago, and the somewhat lesser-known

-but  vigorous anti-hacker actions of the New York State Police in 1990,

-were never a part of "Operation Sundevil" per se, which was based in Arizona.

-

-Nevertheless, after the spectacular May 8 raids, the public, misled by

-police secrecy, hacker panic, and a puzzled national press-corps,

-conflated all aspects of the nationwide crackdown in 1990 under

-the blanket term "Operation Sundevil."  "Sundevil" is still the best-known

-synonym for the crackdown of 1990.  But the Arizona organizers of "Sundevil"

-did not really deserve this reputation--any more, for instance, than all

-hackers deserve a reputation as "hackers."

-

-There was some justice in this confused perception, though.

-For one thing, the confusion was abetted by the Washington office

-of the Secret Service, who responded to Freedom of Information Act

-requests on "Operation Sundevil" by referring investigators

-to the publicly known cases of Knight Lightning and the Atlanta Three.

-And "Sundevil" was certainly the largest aspect of the Crackdown,

-the most deliberate and the best-organized.  As a crackdown on electronic

-fraud, "Sundevil" lacked the frantic pace of the war on the Legion of Doom;

-on the contrary, Sundevil's targets were picked out with cool deliberation

-over an elaborate investigation lasting two full years.

-

-And once again the targets were bulletin board systems.

-

-Boards can be powerful aids to organized fraud.  Underground boards carry

-lively, extensive, detailed, and often quite flagrant "discussions" of

-lawbreaking techniques and lawbreaking activities.  "Discussing" crime

-in the abstract, or "discussing" the particulars of criminal cases,

-is not illegal--but there are stern state and federal laws against

-coldbloodedly conspiring in groups in order to commit crimes.

-

-In the eyes of police, people who actively conspire to break the law

-are not regarded as "clubs," "debating salons," "users' groups," or

-"free speech advocates."  Rather, such people tend to find themselves

-formally indicted by prosecutors as "gangs," "racketeers," "corrupt

-organizations" and "organized crime figures."

-

-What's more, the illicit data contained on outlaw boards goes well beyond

-mere acts of speech and/or possible criminal conspiracy.  As we have seen,

-it was common practice in the digital underground to post purloined telephone

-codes on boards, for any phreak or hacker who cared to abuse them.  Is posting

-digital booty of this sort supposed to be protected by the First Amendment?

-Hardly--though the issue, like most issues in cyberspace, is not entirely

-resolved.  Some theorists argue that to merely RECITE a number publicly

-is not illegal--only its USE is illegal.  But anti-hacker police point out

-that magazines and newspapers (more traditional forms of free expression)

-never publish stolen telephone codes (even though this might well

-raise their circulation).

-

-Stolen credit card numbers, being riskier and more valuable,

-were less often publicly posted on boards--but there is no question

-that some underground boards carried "carding" traffic,

-generally exchanged through private mail.

-

-Underground boards also carried handy programs for "scanning" telephone

-codes and raiding credit card companies, as well as the usual obnoxious

-galaxy of pirated software, cracked passwords, blue-box schematics,

-intrusion manuals, anarchy files, porn files, and so forth.

-

-But besides their nuisance potential for the spread of illicit knowledge,

-bulletin boards have another vitally interesting aspect for the

-professional investigator.  Bulletin boards are cram-full of EVIDENCE.

-All that busy trading of electronic mail, all those hacker boasts,

-brags and struts, even the stolen codes and cards, can be neat,

-electronic, real-time recordings of criminal activity.

-As an investigator, when you seize a pirate board, you have

-scored a coup as effective as tapping phones or intercepting mail.

-However, you have not actually tapped a phone or intercepted a letter.

-The rules of evidence regarding phone-taps and mail interceptions are old,

-stern and well-understood by police, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike.

-The rules of evidence regarding boards are new, waffling, and understood

-by nobody at all.

-

-Sundevil was the largest crackdown on boards in world history.

-On May 7, 8, and 9, 1990, about forty-two computer systems were seized.

-Of those forty-two computers, about twenty-five actually were running boards.

-(The vagueness of this estimate is attributable to the vagueness of

-(a) what a "computer system" is, and (b) what it actually means to

-"run a board" with one--or with two computers, or with three.)

-

-About twenty-five boards vanished into police custody in May 1990.

-As we have seen, there are an estimated 30,000 boards in America today.

-If we assume that one board in a hundred is up to no good with codes

-and cards (which rather flatters the honesty of the board-using community),

-then that would leave 2,975 outlaw boards untouched by Sundevil.

-Sundevil seized about one tenth of one percent of all computer

-bulletin boards in America.  Seen objectively, this is something less

-than a comprehensive assault.  In 1990, Sundevil's organizers--

-the team at the Phoenix Secret Service office, and the Arizona

-Attorney General's office-- had a list of at least THREE HUNDRED

-boards that they considered fully deserving of search and seizure warrants.

-The twenty-five boards actually seized were merely among the most obvious

-and egregious of this much larger list of candidates.  All these boards

-had been examined beforehand--either by informants, who had passed printouts

-to the Secret Service, or by Secret Service agents themselves, who not only

-come equipped with modems but know how to use them.

-

-There were a number of motives for Sundevil.  First, it offered

-a chance to get ahead of the curve on wire-fraud crimes.

-Tracking back credit-card ripoffs to their perpetrators

-can be appallingly difficult.  If these miscreants

-have any kind of electronic sophistication, they can snarl

-their tracks through the phone network into a mind-boggling,

-untraceable mess, while still managing to "reach out and rob someone."

-Boards, however, full of brags and boasts, codes and cards,

-offer evidence in the handy congealed form.

-

-Seizures themselves--the mere physical removal of machines--

-tends to take the pressure off.  During Sundevil, a large number

-of code kids, warez d00dz, and credit card thieves would be deprived

-of those boards--their  means of community and conspiracy--in one swift blow.

-As for the sysops themselves (commonly among the boldest offenders)

-they would be directly stripped of their computer equipment,

-and rendered digitally mute and blind.

-

-And this aspect of Sundevil was carried out with great success.

-Sundevil seems to have been a complete tactical surprise--

-unlike the fragmentary and continuing seizures of the war on the

-Legion of Doom, Sundevil was precisely timed and utterly overwhelming.

-At least forty "computers" were seized during May 7, 8 and 9, 1990,

-in Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, Phoenix, Tucson,

-Richmond, San Diego, San Jose, Pittsburgh and San Francisco.

-Some cities saw multiple raids, such as the five separate raids

-in the New York City environs.  Plano, Texas (essentially a suburb of

-the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and a hub of the telecommunications industry)

-saw four computer seizures.  Chicago, ever in the forefront, saw its own

-local Sundevil raid, briskly carried out by Secret Service agents

-Timothy Foley and Barbara Golden.

-

-Many of these raids occurred, not in the cities proper,

-but in associated white-middle class suburbs--places like

-Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania and Clark Lake, Michigan.

-There were a few raids on offices; most took place in people's homes,

-the classic hacker basements and bedrooms.

-

-The Sundevil raids were searches and seizures, not a group of mass arrests.

-There were only four arrests during Sundevil.  "Tony the Trashman,"

-a longtime teenage bete noire of the Arizona Racketeering unit,

-was arrested in Tucson on May 9.  "Dr. Ripco," sysop of an outlaw board

-with the misfortune to exist in Chicago itself, was also arrested--

-on illegal weapons charges.  Local units also arrested a 19-year-old

-female phone phreak named "Electra" in Pennsylvania, and a male juvenile

-in California.  Federal agents however were not seeking arrests, but computers.

-

-Hackers are generally not indicted (if at all) until the evidence

-in their seized computers is evaluated--a process that can take weeks,

-months--even years.  When hackers are arrested on the spot, it's generally

-an arrest for other reasons.  Drugs and/or illegal weapons show up in a good

-third of anti-hacker computer seizures (though not during Sundevil).

-

-That scofflaw teenage hackers (or their parents) should have marijuana

-in their homes is probably not a shocking revelation, but the surprisingly

-common presence of illegal firearms in hacker dens is a bit disquieting.

-A Personal Computer can be a great equalizer for the techno-cowboy--

-much like that more traditional American "Great Equalizer,"

-the Personal Sixgun.  Maybe it's not all that surprising

-that some guy obsessed with power through illicit technology

-would also have a few illicit high-velocity-impact devices around.

-An element of the digital underground particularly dotes on those

-"anarchy philes," and this element tends to shade into the crackpot milieu

-of survivalists, gun-nuts, anarcho-leftists and the ultra-libertarian

-right-wing.

-

-This is not to say that hacker raids to date have uncovered any

-major crack-dens or illegal arsenals; but Secret Service agents

-do not regard "hackers" as "just kids."  They regard hackers as

-unpredictable people, bright and slippery.  It doesn't help matters

-that the hacker himself has been "hiding behind his keyboard"

-all this time.  Commonly, police have no idea what he looks like.

-This makes him an unknown quantity, someone best treated with

-proper caution.

-

-To date, no hacker has come out shooting, though they do sometimes brag on

-boards that they will do just that.  Threats of this sort are taken seriously.

-Secret Service hacker raids tend to be swift, comprehensive, well-manned

-(even over-manned);  and agents generally burst through every door

-in the home at once, sometimes with drawn guns.  Any potential resistance

-is swiftly quelled. Hacker raids are usually raids on people's homes.

-It can be a very dangerous business to raid an American home;

-people can panic when strangers invade their sanctum.  Statistically speaking,

-the most dangerous thing a policeman can do is to enter someone's home.

-(The second most dangerous thing is to stop a car in traffic.)

-People have guns in their homes.  More cops are hurt in homes

-than are ever hurt in biker bars or massage parlors.

-

-But in any case, no one was hurt during Sundevil,

-or indeed during any part of the Hacker Crackdown.

-

-Nor were there any allegations of any physical mistreatment of a suspect.

-Guns were pointed, interrogations were sharp and prolonged; but no one

-in 1990 claimed any act of brutality by any crackdown raider.

-

-In addition to the forty or so computers, Sundevil reaped floppy disks

-in particularly great abundance--an estimated 23,000 of them, which

-naturally included every manner of illegitimate data:  pirated games,

-stolen codes, hot credit card numbers, the complete text and software

-of entire pirate bulletin-boards.  These floppy disks, which remain

-in police custody today, offer a gigantic, almost embarrassingly

-rich source of possible criminal indictments.  These 23,000 floppy disks

-also include a thus-far unknown quantity of legitimate computer games,

-legitimate software, purportedly "private" mail from boards,

-business records, and personal correspondence of all kinds.

-

-Standard computer-crime search warrants lay great emphasis on seizing

-written documents as well as computers--specifically including photocopies,

-computer printouts, telephone bills, address books, logs, notes,

-memoranda and correspondence.  In practice, this has meant that diaries,

-gaming magazines, software documentation, nonfiction books on hacking

-and computer security, sometimes even science fiction novels, have all

-vanished out the door in police custody.  A wide variety of electronic items

-have been known to vanish as well, including telephones, televisions, answering

-machines, Sony Walkmans, desktop printers, compact disks, and audiotapes.

-

-No fewer than 150 members of the Secret Service were sent into

-the field during Sundevil.  They were commonly accompanied by

-squads of local and/or state police.  Most of these officers--

-especially  the locals--had never been on an anti-hacker raid before.

-(This was one good reason, in fact, why so many of them were invited along

-in the first place.)  Also, the presence of a uniformed police officer

-assures the raidees that the people entering their homes are, in fact, police.

-Secret Service agents wear plain clothes.  So do the telco security experts

-who commonly accompany the Secret Service on raids (and who make no particular

-effort to identify themselves as mere employees of telephone companies).

-

-A typical hacker raid goes something like this.  First, police storm in

-rapidly, through every entrance, with overwhelming force,

-in the assumption that this tactic will keep casualties to a minimum.

-Second, possible suspects are immediately removed from the vicinity

-of any and all computer systems, so that they will have no chance

-to purge or destroy computer evidence.  Suspects are herded into a room

-without computers, commonly the living room, and kept under guard--

-not ARMED guard, for the guns are swiftly holstered, but under guard

-nevertheless.  They are presented with the search warrant and warned

-that anything they say may be held against them.  Commonly they have

-a great deal to say, especially if they are unsuspecting parents.

-

-Somewhere in the house is the "hot spot"--a computer tied to a phone

-line (possibly several computers and several phones).  Commonly it's

-a teenager's bedroom, but it can be anywhere in the house;

-there may be several such rooms.  This "hot spot" is put in charge

-of a two-agent team, the "finder" and the "recorder."  The "finder"

-is computer-trained, commonly the case agent who has actually obtained

-the search warrant from a judge.  He or she understands what is being sought,

-and actually carries out the seizures: unplugs machines, opens drawers,

-desks, files, floppy-disk containers, etc.  The "recorder" photographs

-all the equipment, just as it stands--especially the tangle of

-wired connections in the back, which can otherwise be a real nightmare

-to restore.  The recorder will also commonly photograph every room

-in the house, lest some wily criminal claim that the police had robbed him

-during the search.  Some recorders carry videocams or tape recorders;

-however, it's more common for the recorder to simply take written notes.

-Objects are described and numbered as the finder seizes them, generally

-on standard preprinted police inventory forms.

-

-Even Secret Service agents were not, and are not, expert computer users.

-They have not made, and do not make, judgements on the fly about potential

-threats posed by various forms of equipment.  They may exercise discretion;

-they may leave Dad his computer, for instance, but they don't HAVE to.

-Standard computer-crime search warrants, which date back to the early 80s,

-use a sweeping language that targets computers, most anything attached

-to a computer, most anything used to operate a computer--most anything

-that remotely resembles a computer--plus most any and all written documents

-surrounding it. Computer-crime investigators have strongly urged agents

-to seize the works.

-

-In this sense, Operation Sundevil appears to have been a complete success.

-Boards went down all over America, and were shipped en masse to the computer

-investigation lab of the Secret Service, in Washington DC, along with the

-23,000 floppy disks and unknown quantities of printed material.

-

-But the seizure of twenty-five boards, and the multi-megabyte mountains

-of possibly useful evidence contained in these boards (and in their owners'

-other computers, also out the door), were far from the only motives for

-Operation Sundevil.  An unprecedented action of great ambition and size,

-Sundevil's motives can only be described as political.  It was a

-public-relations effort, meant to pass certain messages, meant to make

-certain situations clear:  both in the mind of the general public,

-and in the minds of various constituencies of the electronic community.

-

- First --and this motivation was vital--a "message" would be sent from

-law enforcement to the digital underground.  This very message was recited

-in so many words by Garry M. Jenkins, the Assistant Director of the

-US Secret Service, at the Sundevil press conference in Phoenix on

-May 9, 1990, immediately after the raids.  In brief, hackers were

-mistaken in their foolish belief that they could hide behind the

-"relative anonymity of their computer terminals."  On the contrary,

-they should fully understand that state and federal cops were

-actively patrolling the beat in cyberspace--that they were

-on the watch everywhere, even in those sleazy and secretive

-dens of cybernetic vice, the underground boards.

-

-This is not an unusual message for police to publicly convey to crooks.

-The message is a standard message; only the context is new.

-

-In this respect, the Sundevil raids were the digital equivalent

-of the standard vice-squad crackdown on massage parlors, porno bookstores,

-head-shops, or floating crap-games.  There may be few or no arrests in a raid

-of this sort; no convictions, no trials, no interrogations.  In cases of this

-sort, police may well walk out the door with many pounds of sleazy magazines,

-X-rated videotapes, sex toys, gambling equipment, baggies of marijuana. . . .

-

-Of course, if something truly horrendous is discovered by the raiders,

-there will be arrests and prosecutions.  Far more likely, however,

-there will simply be a brief but sharp disruption of the closed

-and secretive world of the nogoodniks.  There will be "street hassle."

-"Heat."  "Deterrence."  And, of course, the immediate loss of the seized goods.

-It is very unlikely that any of this seized material will ever be returned.

-Whether charged or not, whether convicted or not, the perpetrators will

-almost surely lack the nerve ever to ask for this stuff to be given back.

-

-Arrests and trials--putting people in jail--may involve all kinds of

-formal legalities; but dealing with the justice system is far from the only

-task of police. Police do not simply arrest people.  They don't simply

-put people in jail.  That is not how the police perceive their jobs.

-Police "protect and serve." Police "keep the peace," they "keep public order."

-Like other forms of public relations, keeping public order is not an

-exact science.  Keeping public order is something of an art-form.

-

-If a group of tough-looking teenage hoodlums was loitering on a street-corner,

-no one would be surprised to see a street-cop arrive and sternly order

-them to "break it up."  On the contrary, the surprise would come if one

-of these ne'er-do-wells stepped briskly into a phone-booth,

-called a civil rights lawyer, and instituted a civil suit

-in defense of his Constitutional rights of free speech

-and free assembly.  But something much  along this line

-was one of the many anomolous outcomes of the Hacker Crackdown.

-

-Sundevil also carried useful "messages" for other constituents of

-the electronic community.  These messages may not have been read

-aloud from the Phoenix podium in front of the press corps,

-but there was little mistaking their meaning.  There was a message

-of reassurance for the primary victims of coding and carding:

-the telcos, and the credit companies.  Sundevil was greeted with joy

-by the security officers of the electronic business community.

-After years of high-tech harassment and spiralling revenue losses,

-their complaints of rampant outlawry were being taken seriously by

-law enforcement.  No more head-scratching or dismissive shrugs;

-no more feeble excuses about "lack of computer-trained officers" or

-the low priority of "victimless" white-collar telecommunication crimes.

-

-Computer-crime experts have long believed that computer-related offenses

-are drastically under-reported.  They regard this as a major open scandal

-of their field.  Some victims are reluctant to come forth, because they

-believe that police and prosecutors are not computer-literate,

-and can and will do nothing.  Others are embarrassed by

-their vulnerabilities, and will take strong measures

-to avoid any publicity; this is especially true of banks,

-who fear a loss of investor confidence should an embezzlement-case

-or wire-fraud surface.  And some victims are so helplessly confused

-by their own high technology that they never even realize that

-a crime has occurred--even when they have been fleeced to the bone.

-

-The results of this situation can be dire.

-Criminals escape apprehension and punishment.

-The computer-crime units that do exist, can't get work.

-The true scope of computer-crime:  its size, its real nature,

-the scope of its threats, and the legal remedies for it--

-all remain obscured.

-

-Another problem is very little publicized, but it is a cause

-of genuine concern.  Where there is persistent crime,

-but no effective police protection, then vigilantism can result.

-Telcos, banks, credit companies, the major corporations who

-maintain extensive computer networks vulnerable to hacking

---these organizations are powerful, wealthy, and

-politically influential.  They are disinclined to be

-pushed around by crooks (or by most anyone else,

-for that matter).  They often maintain well-organized

-private security forces, commonly run by

-experienced veterans of military and police units,

-who have left public service for the greener pastures

-of the private sector.  For police, the corporate

-security manager can be a powerful ally; but if this

-gentleman finds no allies in the police, and the

-pressure is on from his board-of-directors,

-he may quietly take certain matters into his own hands.

-

-Nor is there any lack of disposable hired-help in the

-corporate security business.  Private security agencies--

-the `security business' generally--grew explosively in the 1980s.

-Today there are spooky gumshoed armies of "security consultants,"

-"rent-a- cops," "private eyes," "outside experts"--every manner

-of shady operator who retails in "results" and discretion.

-Or course, many of these gentlemen and ladies may be paragons

-of professional and moral rectitude.  But as anyone

-who has read a hard-boiled detective novel knows,

-police tend to be less than fond of this sort

-of private-sector competition.

-

-Companies in search of computer-security have even been

-known to hire hackers.  Police shudder at this prospect.

-

-Police treasure good relations with the business community.

-Rarely will you see a policeman so indiscreet as to allege

-publicly that some major employer in his state or city has succumbed

-to paranoia and gone off the rails.  Nevertheless,

-police --and computer police in particular--are aware

-of this possibility.  Computer-crime police can and do

-spend up to half of their business hours just doing

-public relations:  seminars, "dog and pony shows,"

-sometimes with parents' groups or computer users,

-but generally with their core audience: the likely

-victims of hacking crimes.  These, of course, are telcos,

-credit card companies and large computer-equipped corporations.

-The police strongly urge these people, as good citizens,

-to report offenses and press criminal charges;

-they pass the message that there is someone in authority who cares,

-understands, and, best of all, will take useful action

-should a computer-crime occur.

-

-But reassuring talk is cheap.  Sundevil offered action.

-

-The final message of Sundevil was intended for internal consumption

-by law enforcement.  Sundevil was offered as proof that the community

-of American computer-crime police  had come of age.  Sundevil was

-proof that enormous things like Sundevil itself could now be accomplished.

-Sundevil was proof that the Secret Service and its local law-enforcement

-allies could act like a well-oiled machine--(despite the hampering use

-of those scrambled phones).  It was also proof that the Arizona Organized

-Crime and Racketeering Unit--the sparkplug of Sundevil--ranked with the best

-in the world in ambition, organization, and sheer conceptual daring.

-

-And, as a final fillip, Sundevil was a message from the Secret Service

-to their longtime rivals in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

-By Congressional fiat, both USSS and FBI formally share jurisdiction

-over federal computer-crimebusting activities.  Neither of these groups

-has ever been remotely happy with this muddled situation.  It seems to

-suggest that Congress cannot make up its mind as to which of these groups

-is better qualified.  And there is scarcely a G-man or a Special Agent

-anywhere without a very firm opinion on that topic.

-

-#

-

-For the neophyte, one of the most puzzling aspects of the crackdown

-on hackers is why the United States Secret Service has anything at all

-to do with this matter.

-

-The Secret Service is best known for its primary public role:

-its agents protect the President of the United States.

-They also guard the President's family, the Vice President and his family,

-former Presidents, and Presidential candidates.  They sometimes guard

-foreign dignitaries who are visiting the United States, especially foreign

-heads of state, and have been known to accompany American officials

-on diplomatic missions overseas.

-

-Special Agents of the Secret Service don't wear uniforms, but the

-Secret Service also has two uniformed police agencies.  There's the

-former White House Police (now known as the Secret Service Uniformed Division,

-since they currently guard foreign embassies in Washington, as well as the

-White House itself).  And there's the uniformed Treasury Police Force.

-

-The Secret Service has been charged by Congress with a number

-of little-known duties. They guard the precious metals in Treasury vaults.

-They guard the most valuable historical documents of the United States:

-originals of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence,

-Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, an American-owned copy of

-the Magna Carta, and so forth.  Once they were assigned to guard

-the Mona Lisa, on her American tour in the 1960s.

-

-The entire Secret Service is a division of the Treasury Department.

-Secret Service Special Agents (there are about 1,900 of them)

-are bodyguards for the President et al, but they all work for the Treasury.

-And the Treasury (through its divisions of the U.S. Mint and the

-Bureau of Engraving and Printing) prints the nation's money.

-

-As Treasury police, the Secret Service guards the nation's currency;

-it is the only federal law enforcement agency with direct jurisdiction

-over counterfeiting and forgery.  It analyzes documents for authenticity,

-and its fight against fake cash is still quite lively (especially since

-the skilled counterfeiters of Medellin, Columbia have gotten into the act).

-Government checks, bonds, and other obligations, which exist in untold

-millions and are worth untold billions, are common targets for forgery,

-which the Secret Service also battles.  It even handles forgery

-of postage stamps.

-

-But cash is fading in importance today as money has become electronic.

-As necessity beckoned, the Secret Service moved from fighting the

-counterfeiting of paper currency and the forging of checks,

-to the protection of funds transferred by wire.

-

-From wire-fraud, it was a simple skip-and-jump to what is formally

-known as "access device fraud."  Congress granted the Secret Service

-the authority to investigate "access device fraud"  under Title 18

-of the United States Code (U.S.C.  Section 1029).

-

-The term "access device" seems intuitively simple.  It's some kind

-of high-tech gizmo you use to get money with.  It makes good sense

-to put this sort of thing in the charge of counterfeiting and

-wire-fraud experts.

-

-However, in Section 1029, the term "access device" is very

-generously defined.  An access device is:  "any card, plate,

-code, account number, or other means of account access

-that can be used, alone or in conjunction with another access device,

-to obtain money, goods, services, or any other thing of value,

-or that can be used to initiate a transfer of funds."

-

-"Access device" can therefore be construed to include credit cards

-themselves (a popular forgery item nowadays).  It also includes credit card

-account NUMBERS, those standards of the digital underground.  The same goes

-for telephone charge cards (an increasingly popular item with telcos,

-who are tired of being robbed of pocket change by phone-booth thieves).

-And also telephone access CODES, those OTHER standards of the digital

-underground.  (Stolen telephone codes may not "obtain money," but they

-certainly do obtain valuable "services," which is specifically forbidden

-by Section 1029.)

-

-We can now see that Section 1029 already pits the United States Secret Service

-directly against the digital underground, without any mention at all of

-the word "computer."

-

-Standard phreaking devices, like "blue boxes," used to steal phone service

-from old-fashioned mechanical switches, are unquestionably "counterfeit

-access devices."  Thanks to Sec.1029, it is not only illegal to USE

-counterfeit access devices, but it is even illegal to BUILD them.

-"Producing," "designing" "duplicating" or "assembling" blue boxes

-are all federal crimes today, and if you do this, the Secret Service

-has been charged by Congress to come after you.

-

-Automatic Teller Machines, which replicated all over America during the 1980s,

-are definitely "access devices," too, and an attempt to tamper with their

-punch-in codes and plastic bank cards falls directly under Sec. 1029.

-

-Section 1029 is remarkably elastic.  Suppose you find a computer password

-in somebody's trash.  That password might be a "code"--it's certainly a

-"means of account access."  Now suppose you log on to a computer

-and copy some software for yourself.  You've certainly obtained

-"service" (computer service) and a "thing of value" (the software).

-Suppose you tell a dozen friends about your swiped password,

-and let them use it, too.  Now you're "trafficking in unauthorized

-access devices."  And when the Prophet, a member of the Legion of Doom,

-passed a stolen telephone company document to Knight Lightning

-at Phrack magazine, they were both charged under Sec. 1029!

-

-There are two limitations on Section 1029.  First, the offense must

-"affect interstate or foreign commerce" in order to become a matter

-of federal jurisdiction.  The term "affecting commerce" is not well defined;

-but you may take it as a given that the Secret Service can take an interest

-if you've done most anything that happens to cross a state line.

-State and local police can be touchy about their jurisdictions,

-and can sometimes be mulish when the feds show up.  But when it comes

-to computer-crime, the local police are pathetically grateful

-for federal help--in fact they complain that they can't get enough of it.

-If you're stealing long-distance service, you're almost certainly crossing

-state lines, and you're definitely "affecting the interstate commerce"

-of the telcos.  And if you're abusing credit cards by ordering stuff

-out of glossy catalogs from, say, Vermont, you're in for it.

-

-The second limitation is money.  As a rule, the feds don't pursue

-penny-ante offenders.  Federal judges will dismiss cases that appear

-to waste their time.  Federal crimes must be serious;  Section 1029

-specifies a minimum loss of a thousand dollars.

-

-We now come to the very next section of Title 18, which is Section 1030,

-"Fraud and related activity in connection with computers."  This statute

-gives the Secret Service direct jurisdiction over acts of computer intrusion.

-On the face of it, the Secret Service would now seem to command the field.

-Section 1030, however, is nowhere near so ductile as Section 1029.

-

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

-

-"(d) The United States Secret Service shall,

-IN ADDITION TO ANY OTHER AGENCY HAVING SUCH AUTHORITY,

-have the authority to investigate offenses under this section.

-Such authority of the United States Secret Service shall be

-exercised in accordance with an agreement which shall be entered

-into by the Secretary  of the Treasury AND THE ATTORNEY GENERAL."

-(Author's italics.) [Represented by capitals.]

-

-The Secretary of the Treasury is the titular head of the Secret Service,

-while the Attorney General is in charge of the FBI.  In Section (d),

-Congress shrugged off responsibility for the computer-crime turf-battle

-between the Service and the Bureau, and made them fight it out all

-by themselves.  The result was a rather dire one for the Secret Service,

-for the FBI ended up with exclusive jurisdiction over computer break-ins

-having to do with national security, foreign espionage, federally insured

-banks, and U.S. military bases, while retaining joint jurisdiction over

-all the other computer intrusions.  Essentially, when it comes to Section 1030,

-the FBI not only gets the real glamor stuff for itself, but can peer over the

-shoulder of the Secret Service and barge in to meddle whenever it suits them.

-

-The second problem has to do with the dicey term

-"Federal interest computer."  Section 1030(a)(2)

-makes it illegal to "access a computer without authorization"

-if that computer belongs to a financial institution or an issuer

-of credit cards (fraud cases, in other words).  Congress was quite

-willing to give the Secret Service jurisdiction over

-money-transferring computers, but Congress balked at

-letting them investigate any and all computer intrusions.

-Instead, the USSS had to settle for the money machines

-and the "Federal interest computers."  A "Federal interest computer"

-is a computer which the government itself owns, or is using.

-Large networks of interstate computers, linked over state lines,

-are also considered to be of "Federal interest."  (This notion of

-"Federal interest" is legally rather foggy and has never been

-clearly defined in the courts.  The Secret Service has never yet

-had its hand slapped for investigating computer break-ins that were NOT

-of "Federal interest," but conceivably someday this might happen.)

-

-So the Secret Service's authority over "unauthorized access"

-to computers covers a lot of territory, but by no means the

-whole ball of cyberspatial wax.  If you are, for instance,

-a LOCAL computer retailer, or the owner of a LOCAL bulletin

-board system, then a malicious LOCAL intruder can break in,

-crash your system, trash your files and scatter viruses,

-and the U.S. Secret Service cannot do a single thing about it.

-

-At least, it can't do anything DIRECTLY.  But the Secret Service

-will do plenty to help the local people who can.

-

-The FBI may have dealt itself an ace off the bottom of the deck

-when it comes to Section 1030; but that's not the whole story;

-that's not the street. What's Congress thinks is one thing,

-and Congress has been known to change its mind.  The REAL

-turf-struggle is out there in the streets where it's happening.

-If you're a local street-cop with a computer problem,

-the Secret Service wants you to know where you can find

-the real expertise.  While the Bureau crowd are off having

-their favorite shoes polished--(wing-tips)--and making derisive

-fun of the Service's favorite shoes--("pansy-ass tassels")--

-the tassel-toting Secret Service has a crew of ready-and-able

-hacker-trackers installed in the capital of every state in the Union.

-Need advice?  They'll give you advice, or at least point you in

-the right direction.  Need training?  They can see to that, too.

-

-If you're a local cop and you call in the FBI, the FBI

-(as is widely and slanderously rumored) will order you around

-like a coolie, take all the credit for your busts,

-and mop up every possible scrap of reflected glory.

-The Secret Service, on the other hand, doesn't brag a lot.

-They're the quiet types. VERY quiet.  Very cool.  Efficient.

-High-tech.  Mirrorshades, icy stares, radio ear-plugs,

-an Uzi machine-pistol tucked somewhere in that well-cut jacket.

-American samurai, sworn to give their lives to protect our President.

-"The granite agents."  Trained in martial arts, absolutely fearless.

-Every single one of 'em has a top-secret security clearance.

-Something goes a little wrong, you're not gonna hear any whining

-and moaning and political buck-passing out of these guys.

-

-The facade of the granite agent is not, of course, the reality.

-Secret Service agents are human beings. And the real glory

-in Service work is not in battling computer crime--not yet,

-anyway--but in protecting the President.  The real glamour

-of Secret Service work is in the White House Detail.

-If you're at the President's side, then the kids and the wife

-see you on television; you rub shoulders with the most powerful

-people in the world.  That's the real heart of Service work,

-the number one priority.  More than one computer investigation

-has stopped dead in the water when Service agents vanished at

-the President's need.

-

-There's romance in the work of the Service.  The intimate access

-to circles of great power;  the esprit-de-corps of a highly trained

-and disciplined elite; the high responsibility of defending the

-Chief Executive; the fulfillment of a patriotic duty.  And as police

-work goes, the pay's not bad.  But there's squalor in Service work, too.

-You may get spat upon by protesters howling abuse--and if they get violent,

-if they get too close, sometimes you have to knock one of them down--

-discreetly.

-

-The real squalor in Service work is drudgery such as "the quarterlies,"

-traipsing out four times a year, year in, year out, to interview the various

-pathetic wretches, many of them in prisons and asylums, who have seen fit

-to threaten the President's life.  And then there's the grinding stress

-of searching all those faces in the endless bustling crowds, looking for

-hatred, looking for psychosis, looking for the tight, nervous face

-of an Arthur Bremer, a Squeaky Fromme, a Lee Harvey Oswald.

-It's watching all those grasping, waving hands for sudden movements,

-while your ears strain at your radio headphone for the long-rehearsed

-cry of "Gun!"

-

-It's poring, in grinding detail, over the biographies of every rotten

-loser who ever shot at a President.  It's the unsung work of the

-Protective Research Section, who study scrawled, anonymous death threats

-with all the meticulous tools of anti-forgery techniques.

-

-And it's maintaining the hefty computerized files on anyone

-who ever threatened the President's life.  Civil libertarians

-have become increasingly concerned at the Government's use

-of computer files to track American citizens--but the

-Secret Service file of potential Presidential assassins,

-which has upward of twenty thousand names, rarely causes

-a peep of protest.  If you EVER state that you intend to

-kill the President, the Secret Service will want to know

-and record who you are, where you are, what you are,

-and what you're up to.  If you're a serious threat--

-if you're officially considered "of protective interest"--

-then the Secret Service may well keep tabs on you

-for the rest of your natural life.

-

-Protecting the President has first call on all the Service's resources.

-But there's a lot more to the Service's traditions and history than

-standing guard outside the Oval Office.

-

-The Secret Service is the nation's oldest general federal

-law-enforcement agency.  Compared to the Secret Service,

-the FBI are new-hires and the CIA are temps.  The Secret Service

-was founded 'way back in 1865, at the suggestion of Hugh McCulloch,

-Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury.  McCulloch wanted

-a specialized Treasury police to combat counterfeiting.

-Abraham Lincoln agreed that this seemed a good idea, and,

-with a terrible irony, Abraham Lincoln was shot that

-very night by John Wilkes Booth.

-

-The Secret Service originally had nothing to do with protecting Presidents.

-They didn't take this on as a regular assignment until after the Garfield

-assassination in 1881.  And they didn't get any Congressional money for it

-until President McKinley was shot in 1901.  The Service was originally

-designed for one purpose: destroying counterfeiters.

-

-#

-

-There are interesting parallels between the Service's

-nineteenth-century entry into counterfeiting,

-and America's twentieth-century entry into computer-crime.

-

-In 1865, America's paper currency was a terrible muddle.

-Security was drastically bad.  Currency was printed on the spot

-by local banks in literally hundreds of different designs.

-No one really knew what the heck a dollar bill was supposed to look like.

-Bogus bills passed easily.  If some joker told you that a one-dollar bill

-from the Railroad Bank of Lowell, Massachusetts had a woman leaning on

-a shield, with a locomotive, a cornucopia, a compass, various agricultural

-implements, a railroad bridge, and some factories, then you pretty much had

-to take his word for it.  (And in fact he was telling the truth!)

-

-SIXTEEN HUNDRED local American banks designed and printed their own

-paper currency, and there were no general standards for security.

-Like a badly guarded node in a computer network, badly designed bills

-were easy to fake, and posed a security hazard for the entire monetary system.

-

-No one knew the exact extent of the threat to the currency.

-There were panicked estimates that as much as a third of

-the entire national currency was faked.  Counterfeiters--

-known as "boodlers" in the underground slang of the time--

-were mostly technically skilled printers who had gone to the bad.

-Many had once worked printing legitimate currency.

-Boodlers operated in rings and gangs.  Technical experts

-engraved the bogus plates--commonly in basements in New York City.

-Smooth confidence men passed large wads of high-quality,

-high-denomination fakes, including the really sophisticated stuff--

-government bonds, stock certificates, and railway shares.

-Cheaper, botched fakes were sold or sharewared to low-level

-gangs of boodler wannabes.  (The really cheesy lowlife boodlers

-merely upgraded real bills by altering face values,

-changing ones to fives, tens to hundreds, and so on.)

-

-The techniques of boodling were little-known and regarded

-with a certain awe by the mid- nineteenth-century public.

-The ability to manipulate the system for rip-off seemed

-diabolically clever.  As the skill and daring of the

-boodlers increased, the situation became intolerable.

-The federal government stepped in, and began offering

-its own federal currency, which was printed in fancy green ink,

-but only on the back--the original "greenbacks."  And at first,

-the improved security of the well-designed, well-printed

-federal greenbacks seemed to solve the problem; but then

-the counterfeiters caught on.  Within a few years things were

-worse than ever:  a CENTRALIZED system where ALL security was bad!

-

-The local police were helpless.  The Government tried offering

-blood money to potential informants, but this met with little success.

-Banks, plagued by boodling, gave up hope of police help and hired

-private security men instead.  Merchants and bankers queued up

-by the thousands to buy privately-printed manuals on currency security,

-slim little books like Laban Heath's  INFALLIBLE GOVERNMENT

-COUNTERFEIT DETECTOR.  The back of the book offered Laban Heath's

-patent microscope for five bucks.

-

-Then the Secret Service entered the picture.  The first agents

-were a rough and ready crew.  Their chief was one William P. Wood,

-a former guerilla in the Mexican War who'd won a reputation busting

-contractor fraudsters for the War Department during the Civil War.

-Wood, who was also Keeper of the Capital Prison, had a sideline

-as a counterfeiting expert, bagging boodlers for the federal bounty money.

-

-Wood was named Chief of the new Secret Service in July 1865.

-There were only ten Secret Service agents in all:  Wood himself,

-a handful who'd worked for him in the War Department, and a few

-former private investigators--counterfeiting experts--whom Wood

-had won over to public service.  (The Secret Service of 1865 was

-much the size of the Chicago Computer Fraud Task Force or the

-Arizona Racketeering Unit of 1990.)  These ten "Operatives"

-had an additional twenty or so "Assistant Operatives" and "Informants."

-Besides salary and per diem, each Secret Service employee received

-a whopping twenty-five dollars for each boodler he captured.

-

-Wood himself publicly estimated that at least HALF of America's currency

-was counterfeit, a perhaps pardonable perception.  Within a year the

-Secret Service had arrested over 200 counterfeiters.  They busted about

-two hundred boodlers a year for four years straight.

-

-Wood attributed his success to travelling fast and light, hitting the

-bad-guys hard, and avoiding bureaucratic baggage.  "Because my raids

-were made without military escort and I did not ask the assistance

-of state officers, I surprised the professional counterfeiter."

-

-Wood's social message to the once-impudent boodlers bore an eerie ring

-of Sundevil:  "It was also my purpose to convince such characters that

-it would no longer be healthy for them to ply their vocation without

-being handled roughly, a fact they soon discovered."

-

-William P. Wood, the Secret Service's guerilla pioneer,

-did not end well.  He succumbed to the lure of aiming for

-the really big score.  The notorious Brockway Gang of New York City,

-headed by William E. Brockway, the "King of the Counterfeiters,"

-had forged a number of government bonds.  They'd passed these

-brilliant fakes on the prestigious Wall Street investment

-firm of Jay Cooke and Company.  The Cooke firm were frantic

-and offered a huge reward for the forgers' plates.

-

-Laboring diligently, Wood confiscated the plates

-(though not Mr. Brockway) and claimed the reward.

-But the Cooke company treacherously reneged.

-Wood got involved in a down-and-dirty lawsuit

-with the Cooke capitalists.  Wood's boss,

-Secretary of the Treasury McCulloch, felt that

-Wood's demands for money and glory were unseemly,

-and even when the reward money finally came through,

-McCulloch refused to pay Wood anything.

-Wood found himself mired in a seemingly endless

-round of federal suits and Congressional lobbying.

-

-Wood never got his money.  And he lost his job to boot.

-He resigned in 1869.

-

-Wood's agents suffered, too.  On May 12, 1869, the second Chief

-of the Secret Service took over, and almost immediately fired

-most of Wood's pioneer Secret Service agents:  Operatives,

-Assistants and Informants alike.  The practice of receiving $25

-per crook was abolished.  And the Secret Service began the long,

-uncertain process of thorough professionalization.

-

-Wood ended badly.  He must have felt stabbed in the back.

-In fact his entire organization was mangled.

-

-On the other hand, William P. Wood WAS the first head of the Secret Service.

-William Wood was the pioneer.  People still honor his name.  Who remembers

-the name of the SECOND head of the Secret Service?

-

-As for William Brockway (also known as "Colonel Spencer"),

-he was finally arrested by the Secret Service in 1880.

-He did five years in prison, got out, and was still boodling

-at the age of seventy-four.

-

-#

-

-Anyone with an interest in  Operation Sundevil--

-or in American computer-crime generally--

-could scarcely miss the presence of Gail Thackeray,

-Assistant Attorney General of the State of Arizona.

-Computer-crime training manuals often cited

-Thackeray's group and her work;  she was the

-highest-ranking state official to specialize

-in computer-related offenses.  Her name had been

-on the Sundevil press release (though modestly ranked

-well after the local federal prosecuting attorney and

-the head of the Phoenix Secret Service office).

-

-As public commentary, and controversy, began to mount

-about the Hacker Crackdown, this Arizonan state official

-began to take a higher and higher public profile.

-Though uttering almost nothing specific about

-the Sundevil operation itself, she coined some

-of the most striking soundbites of the growing propaganda war:

-"Agents are operating in good faith, and I don't think

-you can say that for the hacker community," was one.

-Another was the memorable "I am not a mad dog prosecutor"

-(Houston Chronicle, Sept 2, 1990.)  In the meantime,

-the Secret Service maintained its usual extreme discretion;

-the Chicago Unit, smarting from the backlash

-of the Steve Jackson scandal, had gone completely to earth.

-

-As I collated my growing pile of newspaper clippings,

-Gail Thackeray ranked as a comparative fount of public

-knowledge on police operations.

-

-I decided that I  had to get to know Gail Thackeray.

-I wrote to her at the Arizona Attorney General's Office.

-Not only did she kindly reply to me, but, to my astonishment,

-she knew very well what "cyberpunk" science fiction was.

-

-Shortly after this, Gail Thackeray lost her job.

-And I temporarily misplaced my own career as

-a science-fiction writer, to become a full-time

-computer-crime journalist.  In early March, 1991,

-I flew to Phoenix, Arizona, to interview Gail Thackeray

-for my book on the hacker crackdown.

-

-#

-

-"Credit cards didn't used to cost anything to get,"

-says Gail Thackeray.  "Now they cost forty bucks--

-and that's all just to cover the costs from RIP-OFF ARTISTS."

-

-Electronic nuisance criminals are parasites.

-One by one they're not much harm, no big deal.

-But they never come just one by one.  They come in swarms,

-heaps, legions, sometimes whole subcultures.  And they bite.

-Every time we buy a credit card today, we lose a little financial

-vitality to a particular species of bloodsucker.

-

-What, in her expert opinion, are the worst forms of electronic crime,

-I ask, consulting my notes.  Is it--credit card fraud?  Breaking into

-ATM bank machines?  Phone-phreaking?  Computer intrusions?

-Software viruses?  Access-code theft?  Records tampering?

-Software piracy?  Pornographic bulletin boards?

-Satellite TV piracy?  Theft of cable service?

-It's a long list.  By the time I reach the end

-of it I feel rather depressed.

-

-"Oh no," says Gail Thackeray, leaning forward over the table,

-her whole body gone stiff with energetic indignation,

-"the biggest damage is telephone fraud.  Fake sweepstakes,

-fake charities. Boiler-room con operations.  You could pay off

-the national debt with what these guys steal. . . .

-They target old people, they get hold of credit ratings

-and demographics, they rip off the old and the weak."

-The words come tumbling out of her.

-

-It's low-tech stuff, your everyday boiler-room fraud.

-Grifters, conning people out of money over the phone,

-have been around for decades.  This is where the word "phony" came from!

-

-It's just that it's so much EASIER now, horribly facilitated by advances

-in technology and the byzantine structure of the modern phone system.

-The same professional fraudsters do it over and over, Thackeray tells me,

-they hide behind dense onion-shells of fake companies. . . fake holding

-corporations nine or ten layers deep, registered all over the map.

-They get a phone installed under a false name in an empty safe-house.

-And then they call-forward everything out of that phone to yet

-another phone, a phone that may even be in another STATE.

-And they don't even pay the charges on their phones;

-after a month or so, they just split; set up somewhere else

-in another Podunkville with the same seedy crew of veteran phone-crooks.

-They buy or steal commercial credit card reports, slap them on the PC,

-have a program pick out people over sixty-five who pay a lot to charities.

-A whole subculture living off this, merciless folks on the con.

-

-"The `light-bulbs for the blind' people," Thackeray muses,

-with a special loathing.  "There's just no end to them."

-

-We're sitting in a downtown diner in Phoenix, Arizona.

-It's a tough town, Phoenix.  A state capital seeing some hard times.

-Even to a Texan like myself, Arizona state politics seem rather baroque.

-There was, and remains, endless trouble over the Martin Luther King holiday,

-the sort of stiff-necked, foot-shooting incident for which Arizona politics

-seem famous.  There was Evan Mecham, the eccentric Republican millionaire

-governor who was impeached, after reducing state government to a

-ludicrous shambles.  Then there was the national Keating scandal,

-involving Arizona savings and loans, in which both of Arizona's

-U.S. senators, DeConcini and McCain, played sadly prominent roles.

-

-And the very latest is the bizarre AzScam case,

-in which state legislators were videotaped,

-eagerly taking cash from an informant of the Phoenix city

-police department, who was posing as a Vegas mobster.

-

-"Oh," says Thackeray cheerfully.  "These people are amateurs here,

-they thought they were finally getting to play with the big boys.

-They don't have the least idea how to take a bribe!

-It's not institutional corruption.  It's not like back in Philly."

-

-Gail Thackeray was a former prosecutor in Philadelphia.

-Now she's a former assistant attorney general of the State of Arizona.

-Since moving to Arizona in 1986, she had worked under the aegis

-of Steve Twist, her boss in the Attorney General's office.

-Steve Twist wrote Arizona's pioneering computer crime laws

-and naturally took an interest in seeing them enforced.

-It was a snug niche, and Thackeray's Organized Crime and

-Racketeering Unit won a national reputation for ambition

-and technical knowledgeability. . . .  Until the latest

-election in Arizona.  Thackeray's boss ran for the top

-job, and lost.  The victor, the new Attorney General,

-apparently went to some pains to eliminate the bureaucratic

-traces of his rival, including his pet group--Thackeray's group.

-Twelve people got their walking papers.

-

-Now Thackeray's painstakingly assembled computer lab

-sits gathering dust somewhere in the glass-and-concrete

-Attorney General's HQ on 1275 Washington Street.

-Her computer-crime books, her painstakingly garnered

-back issues of phreak and hacker zines, all bought

-at her own expense--are piled in boxes somewhere.

-The State of Arizona is simply not particularly

-interested in electronic racketeering at the moment.

-

-At the moment of our interview, Gail Thackeray,

-officially unemployed, is working out of the county

-sheriff's office, living on her savings, and prosecuting

-several cases--working 60-hour weeks, just as always--

-for no pay at all.  "I'm trying to train people,"

-she mutters.

-

-Half her life seems to be spent training people--merely pointing out,

-to the naive and incredulous (such as myself) that this stuff

-is ACTUALLY GOING ON OUT THERE.  It's a small world, computer crime.

-A young world.  Gail Thackeray, a trim blonde Baby-Boomer who favors

-Grand Canyon white-water rafting to kill some slow time,

-is one of the world's most senior, most veteran "hacker-trackers."

-Her mentor was Donn Parker, the California think-tank theorist

-who got it all started `way back in the mid-70s, the "grandfather

-of the field," "the great bald eagle of computer crime."

-

-And what she has learned, Gail Thackeray teaches.  Endlessly.

-Tirelessly.  To anybody.  To Secret Service agents and state police,

-at the Glynco, Georgia federal training center.  To local police,

-on "roadshows" with her slide projector and notebook.

-To corporate security personnel.  To journalists.  To parents.

-

-Even CROOKS look to Gail Thackeray for advice.

-Phone-phreaks call her at the office.  They know very

-well who she is.  They pump her for information

-on what the cops are up to, how much they know.

-Sometimes whole CROWDS of phone phreaks,

-hanging out on illegal conference calls, will call Gail

-Thackeray up.  They taunt her.  And, as always,

-they boast.  Phone-phreaks, real stone phone-phreaks,

-simply CANNOT SHUT UP.  They natter on for hours.

-

-Left to themselves, they mostly talk about the intricacies

-of ripping-off phones; it's about as interesting as listening

-to hot-rodders talk about suspension and distributor-caps.

-They also gossip cruelly about each other.  And when talking

-to Gail Thackeray, they incriminate themselves.  "I have tapes,"

-Thackeray says coolly.

-

-Phone phreaks just talk like crazy.  "Dial-Tone" out in Alabama

-has been known to spend half-an-hour simply reading stolen

-phone-codes aloud into voice-mail answering machines.

-Hundreds, thousands of numbers, recited in a monotone,

-without a break--an eerie phenomenon.  When arrested,

-it's a rare phone phreak who doesn't inform at endless length

-on everybody he knows.

-

-Hackers are no better.  What other group of criminals,

-she asks rhetorically, publishes newsletters and holds conventions?

-She seems deeply nettled by the sheer brazenness of this behavior,

-though to an outsider, this activity might make one wonder

-whether hackers should be considered "criminals" at all.

-Skateboarders have magazines, and they trespass a lot.

-Hot rod people have magazines and they break speed limits

-and sometimes kill people. . . .

-

-I ask her whether it would be any loss to society if phone phreaking

-and computer hacking, as hobbies, simply dried up and blew away,

-so that nobody ever did it again.

-

-She seems surprised.  "No," she says swiftly.  "Maybe a little. . .

-in the old days. . .the MIT stuff. . . .  But there's a lot of wonderful,

-legal stuff you can do with computers now, you don't have to break into

-somebody else's just to learn.  You don't have that excuse.

-You can learn all you like."

-

-Did you ever hack into a system? I ask.

-

-The trainees do it at Glynco.  Just to demonstrate system vulnerabilities.

-She's cool to the notion.  Genuinely indifferent.

-

-"What kind of computer do you have?"

-

-"A Compaq 286LE," she mutters.

-

-"What kind do you WISH you had?"

-

-At this question, the unmistakable light of true hackerdom flares in

-Gail Thackeray's eyes.  She becomes tense, animated, the words pour out:

-"An Amiga 2000 with an IBM card and Mac emulation!  The most common hacker

-machines are Amigas and Commodores.  And Apples."  If she had the Amiga,

-she enthuses, she could run a whole galaxy of seized computer-evidence disks

-on one convenient multifunctional machine.  A cheap one, too.  Not like the

-old Attorney General lab, where they had an ancient CP/M machine,

-assorted Amiga flavors and Apple flavors, a couple IBMS, all the

-utility software. . .but no Commodores.  The workstations down

-at the Attorney General's are Wang dedicated word-processors.

-Lame machines tied in to an office net--though at least they get

-on- line to the Lexis and Westlaw legal data services.

-

-I don't say anything.  I recognize the syndrome, though.

-This computer-fever has been running through segments of

-our society for years now.  It's a strange kind of lust:

-K-hunger, Meg-hunger; but it's a shared disease;

-it can kill parties dead, as conversation spirals into

-the deepest and most deviant recesses of software releases

-and expensive peripherals. . . .  The mark of the hacker beast.

-I have it too.  The whole "electronic community," whatever the hell

-that is, has it.  Gail Thackeray has it.  Gail Thackeray is a hacker cop.

-My immediate reaction is a strong rush of indignant pity:

-WHY DOESN'T SOMEBODY BUY THIS WOMAN HER AMIGA?!

-It's not like she's asking for a Cray X-MP

-supercomputer mainframe; an Amiga's a sweet little

-cookie-box thing.  We're losing zillions in organized fraud;

-prosecuting and defending a single hacker case in court can cost

-a hundred grand easy.  How come nobody can come up with four lousy grand

-so this woman can do her job?  For a hundred grand we could buy every

-computer cop in America an Amiga. There aren't that many of 'em.

-

-Computers.  The lust, the hunger, for computers.

-The loyalty they inspire, the intense sense of possessiveness.

-The culture they have bred.  I myself am sitting in downtown Phoenix,

-Arizona because it suddenly occurred to me that the police might--

-just MIGHT--come and take away my computer.  The prospect of this,

-the mere IMPLIED THREAT, was unbearable.  It literally changed my life.

-It was changing the lives of many others.  Eventually it would change

-everybody's life.

-

-Gail Thackeray was one of the top computer-crime people in America.

-And I was just some novelist, and yet I had a better computer than hers.

-PRACTICALLY EVERYBODY I KNEW had a better computer than Gail Thackeray

-and her feeble laptop 286.  It was like sending the sheriff in to clean

-up Dodge City and arming her with a slingshot cut from an old rubber tire.

-

-But then again, you don't need a howitzer to enforce the law.

-You can do a lot just with a badge.  With a badge alone,

-you can basically wreak havoc, take a terrible vengeance on wrongdoers.

-Ninety percent of "computer crime investigation" is just "crime investigation:"

-names, places, dossiers, modus operandi, search warrants, victims,

-complainants, informants. . . .

-

-What will computer crime look like in ten years?  Will it get better?

-Did "Sundevil" send 'em reeling back in confusion?

-

-It'll be like it is now, only worse, she tells me with perfect conviction.

-Still there in the background, ticking along, changing with the times:

-the criminal underworld.  It'll be like drugs are.  Like our problems

-with alcohol.  All the cops and laws in the world never solved our problems

-with alcohol.  If there's something people want, a certain percentage

-of them are just going to take it.  Fifteen percent of the populace

-will never steal.  Fifteen percent will steal most anything not nailed down.

-The battle is for the hearts and minds of the remaining seventy percent.

-

-And criminals catch on fast.  If there's not "too steep a learning curve"--

-if it doesn't require a baffling amount of expertise and practice--

-then criminals are often some of the first through the gate of a

-new technology.  Especially if it helps them to hide.

-They have tons of cash, criminals.  The new communications tech--

-like pagers, cellular phones, faxes, Federal Express--were pioneered

-by rich corporate people, and by criminals.  In the early years

-of pagers and beepers, dope dealers were so enthralled this technology

-that owing a beeper was practically prima facie evidence of cocaine dealing.

-CB radio exploded when the speed limit hit 55 and breaking the highway law

-became a national pastime.  Dope dealers send cash by Federal Express,

-despite, or perhaps BECAUSE OF, the warnings in FedEx offices that tell you

-never to try this.  Fed Ex uses X-rays and dogs on their mail,

-to stop drug shipments.  That doesn't work very well.

-

-Drug dealers went wild over cellular phones.

-There are simple methods of faking ID on cellular phones,

-making the location of the call mobile, free of charge,

-and effectively untraceable.  Now victimized cellular

-companies routinely bring in vast toll-lists of calls

-to Colombia and Pakistan.

-

-Judge Greene's fragmentation of the phone company

-is driving law enforcement nuts.  Four thousand

-telecommunications companies.  Fraud skyrocketing.

-Every temptation in the world available with a phone

-and a credit card number. Criminals untraceable.

-A galaxy of "new neat rotten things to do."

-

-If there were one thing Thackeray would like to have,

-it would be an effective legal end-run through this new

-fragmentation minefield.

-

-It would be a new form of electronic search warrant,

-an "electronic letter of marque" to be issued by a judge.

-It would create a new category of "electronic emergency."

-Like a wiretap, its use would be rare, but it would cut

-across state lines and force swift cooperation from all concerned.

-Cellular, phone, laser, computer network, PBXes, AT&T, Baby Bells,

-long-distance entrepreneurs, packet radio. Some document,

-some mighty court-order, that could slice through four thousand

-separate forms of corporate red-tape, and get her at once to

-the source of calls, the source of email threats and viruses,

-the sources of bomb threats, kidnapping threats.  "From now on,"

-she says, "the Lindbergh baby will always die."

-

-Something that would make the Net sit still, if only for a moment.

-Something that would get her up to speed.  Seven league boots.

-That's what she really needs.  "Those guys move in nanoseconds

-and I'm on the Pony Express."

-

-And then, too, there's the  coming international angle.

-Electronic crime has never been easy to localize,

-to tie to a physical jurisdiction.  And phone-phreaks

-and hackers loathe boundaries, they jump them whenever they can.

-The English.  The Dutch.  And the Germans, especially the ubiquitous

-Chaos Computer Club.  The Australians.  They've all learned phone-phreaking

-from America.  It's a growth mischief industry.  The multinational

-networks are global, but governments and the police simply aren't.

-Neither are the laws.  Or the legal frameworks for citizen protection.

-

-One language is global, though--English.  Phone phreaks speak English;

-it's their native tongue even if they're Germans.  English may have started

-in England but now it's the Net language; it might as well be called "CNNese."

-

-Asians just aren't much into phone phreaking.  They're the world masters

-at organized software piracy.  The French aren't into phone-phreaking either.

-The French are into computerized industrial espionage.

-

-In the old days of the MIT righteous hackerdom, crashing systems

-didn't hurt anybody. Not all that much, anyway.  Not permanently.

-Now the players are more venal.  Now the consequences are worse.

-Hacking will begin killing people soon.  Already there are methods

-of stacking calls onto 911 systems, annoying the police, and possibly

-causing the death of some poor soul calling in with a genuine emergency.

-Hackers in Amtrak computers, or air-traffic control computers, will kill

-somebody someday.  Maybe a lot of people.  Gail Thackeray expects it.

-

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

-It wipes hard-disks.

-

-According to Thackeray, the idea that phone-phreaks are Robin Hoods is a fraud.

-They don't deserve this repute.  Basically, they pick on the weak.  AT&T now

-protects itself with the fearsome ANI (Automatic Number Identification)

-trace capability.  When AT&T wised up and tightened security generally,

-the phreaks drifted into the Baby Bells.  The Baby Bells lashed out in 1989

-and 1990, so the phreaks switched to smaller long-distance entrepreneurs.

-Today, they are moving into locally owned PBXes and voice-mail systems,

-which are full of security holes, dreadfully easy to hack.  These victims

-aren't the moneybags Sheriff of Nottingham or Bad King John, but small groups

-of innocent people who find it hard to protect themselves, and who really

-suffer from these depredations.  Phone phreaks pick on the weak.  They do it

-for power.  If it were legal, they wouldn't do it.  They don't want service,

-or knowledge, they want the thrill of power-tripping.  There's plenty of

-knowledge or service around if you're willing to pay.  Phone phreaks don't pay,

-they steal.  It's because it is illegal that it feels like power,

-that it gratifies their vanity.

-

-I leave Gail Thackeray with a handshake at the door of her office building--

-a vast International-Style office building downtown.  The Sheriff's office

-is renting part of it.  I get the vague impression that quite a lot of the

-building is empty--real estate crash.

-

-In a Phoenix sports apparel store, in a downtown mall, I meet

-the "Sun Devil" himself.  He is the cartoon mascot of

-Arizona State University, whose football stadium, "Sundevil,"

-is near the local Secret Service HQ--hence the name Operation Sundevil.

-The Sun Devil himself is named "Sparky."  Sparky the Sun Devil is maroon

-and bright yellow, the school colors.  Sparky brandishes a three-tined

-yellow pitchfork.  He has a small mustache, pointed ears, a barbed tail,

-and is dashing forward jabbing the air with the pitchfork,

-with an expression of devilish glee.

-

-Phoenix was the home of Operation Sundevil.  The Legion of Doom

-ran a hacker bulletin board called "The Phoenix Project."

-An Australian hacker named "Phoenix"  once burrowed through

-the Internet to attack Cliff Stoll, then bragged and boasted

-about it to The New York Times.  This net of coincidence

-is both odd and meaningless.

-

-The headquarters of the Arizona Attorney General, Gail Thackeray's

-former workplace, is on 1275 Washington Avenue.  Many of the downtown

-streets in Phoenix are named after prominent American presidents:

-Washington, Jefferson, Madison. . . .

-

-After dark, all the employees go home to their suburbs.

-Washington, Jefferson and Madison--what would be the

-Phoenix inner city, if there were an inner city in this

-sprawling automobile-bred town--become the haunts

-of transients and derelicts.  The homeless.  The sidewalks

-along Washington are lined with orange trees.

-Ripe fallen fruit lies scattered like croquet balls

-on the sidewalks and gutters.  No one seems to be eating them.

-I try a fresh one.  It tastes unbearably bitter.

-

-The Attorney General's office, built in 1981 during the

-Babbitt administration, is a long low two-story building

-of white cement and wall-sized sheets of curtain-glass.

-Behind each glass wall is a lawyer's office, quite open

-and visible to anyone strolling by.  Across the street

-is a dour government building labelled simply ECONOMIC SECURITY,

-something that has not been in great supply in the American

-Southwest lately.

-

-The offices  are about twelve feet square.  They feature

-tall wooden cases full of red-spined lawbooks;

-Wang computer monitors; telephones; Post-it notes galore.

-Also framed law diplomas and a general excess of bad

-Western landscape art.  Ansel Adams photos are a big favorite,

-perhaps to compensate for the dismal specter of the parking lot,

-two acres of striped black asphalt, which features gravel landscaping

-and some sickly-looking barrel cacti.

-

-It has grown dark.  Gail Thackeray has told me that the people

-who work late here, are afraid of muggings in the parking lot.

-It seems cruelly ironic that a woman tracing electronic racketeers

-across the interstate labyrinth of Cyberspace should fear an assault

-by a homeless derelict in the parking lot of her own workplace.

-

-Perhaps this is less than coincidence.  Perhaps these two seemingly

-disparate worlds are somehow generating one another.  The poor and

-disenfranchised take to the streets, while the rich and computer-equipped,

-safe in their bedrooms, chatter over their modems.  Quite often the derelicts

-kick the glass out and break in to the lawyers' offices, if they see something

-they need or want badly enough.

-

-I cross  the parking lot to the street behind the Attorney General's office.

-A pair of young tramps are bedding down on flattened sheets of cardboard,

-under an alcove stretching over the sidewalk.  One tramp wears a

-glitter-covered T-shirt reading "CALIFORNIA" in Coca-Cola cursive.

-His nose and cheeks look chafed and swollen; they glisten with

-what seems to be Vaseline.  The other tramp has a ragged long-sleeved

-shirt and lank brown hair parted in the middle. They both wear blue jeans

-coated in grime.  They are both drunk.

-

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

-

-They look at me warily.  I am wearing black jeans, a black pinstriped

-suit jacket and a black silk tie.  I have odd shoes and a funny haircut.

-

-"It's our first time here," says the red-nosed tramp unconvincingly.

-There is a lot of cardboard stacked here.  More than any two people could use.

-

-"We usually stay at the Vinnie's down the street," says the brown-haired tramp,

-puffing a Marlboro with a meditative air, as he sprawls with his head on

-a blue nylon backpack.  "The Saint Vincent's."

-

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

-

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

-

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

-

-A block down the street I meet a vigorous workman who is wheeling along

-some kind of industrial trolley; it has what appears to be a tank of

-propane on it.

-

-We make eye contact.  We nod politely.  I walk past him.  "Hey!

-Excuse me sir!" he says.

-

-"Yes?" I say, stopping and turning.

-

-"Have you seen," the guy says rapidly, "a black guy, about 6'7",

-scars on both his cheeks like this--" he gestures-- "wears a

-black baseball cap on backwards, wandering around here anyplace?"

-

-"Sounds like I don't much WANT to meet him," I say.

-

-"He took my wallet," says my new acquaintance.

-"Took it this morning.  Y'know, some people would be

-SCARED of a guy like that.  But I'm not scared.

-I'm from Chicago.  I'm gonna hunt him down.

-We do things like that in Chicago."

-

-"Yeah?"

-

-"I went to the cops and now he's got an APB out on his ass,"

-he says with satisfaction.  "You run into him, you let me know."

-

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

-

-"Stanley. . . ."

-

-"And how can I reach you?"

-

-"Oh," Stanley says, in the same rapid voice,

-"you don't have to reach, uh, me.

-You can just call the cops.  Go straight to the cops."

-He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a greasy piece of pasteboard.

-"See, here's my report on him."

-

-I look.  The "report," the size of an index card, is labelled PRO-ACT:

-Phoenix Residents Opposing Active Crime Threat. . . . or is it

-Organized Against Crime Threat?  In the darkening street it's hard

-to read.  Some kind of vigilante group?  Neighborhood watch?

-I feel very puzzled.

-

-"Are you a police officer, sir?"

-

-He smiles, seems very pleased by the question.

-

-"No," he says.

-

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

-

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

-

-"Really?  But what's with the. . . ."  For the first time I take a close look

-at Stanley's trolley.  It's a rubber-wheeled thing of industrial metal,

-but the device I had mistaken for a tank of propane is in fact a water-cooler.

-Stanley also has an Army duffel-bag, stuffed tight as a sausage with clothing

-or perhaps a tent, and, at the base of his trolley, a cardboard box and a

-battered leather briefcase.

-

-"I see," I say, quite at a loss.  For the first time I notice that Stanley

-has a wallet.  He has not lost his wallet at all.  It is in his back pocket

-and chained to his belt.  It's not a new wallet.  It seems to have seen

-a lot of wear.

-

-"Well, you know how it is, brother," says Stanley.

-Now that I know that he is homeless--A POSSIBLE

-THREAT--my entire perception of him has changed

-in an instant.  His speech, which once seemed just

-bright and enthusiastic, now seems to have a

-dangerous tang of mania.  "I have to do this!"

-he assures me.  "Track this guy down. . . .

-It's a thing I do. . . you know. . .to keep myself together!"

-He smiles, nods, lifts his trolley by its decaying rubber handgrips.

-

-"Gotta work together, y'know,"  Stanley booms, his face alight

-with cheerfulness, "the police can't do everything!"

-The gentlemen I met in my stroll in downtown Phoenix

-are the only computer illiterates in this book.

-To regard them as irrelevant, however, would be a grave mistake.

-

-As computerization spreads across society, the populace at large

-is subjected to wave after wave of future shock.  But, as a

-necessary converse, the "computer community" itself is subjected

-to wave after wave of incoming computer illiterates.

-How will those currently enjoying America's digital bounty regard,

-and treat, all this teeming refuse yearning to breathe free?

-Will the electronic frontier be another Land of Opportunity--

-or an armed and monitored enclave, where the disenfranchised

-snuggle on their cardboard at the locked doors of our houses of justice?

-

-Some people just don't get along with computers.  They can't read.

-They can't type.  They just don't have it in their heads to master

-arcane instructions in wirebound manuals.  Somewhere, the process

-of computerization of the populace will reach a limit.  Some people--

-quite decent people maybe, who might have thrived in any other situation--

-will be left irretrievably outside the bounds.  What's to be done with

-these people, in the bright new shiny electroworld?  How will they

-be regarded, by the mouse-whizzing masters of cyberspace?  With contempt?

-Indifference?  Fear?

-

-In retrospect, it astonishes me to realize how quickly poor Stanley

-became a perceived threat. Surprise and fear are closely allied feelings.

-And the world of computing is full of surprises.

-

-I met one character in the streets of Phoenix whose role in this book

-is supremely and directly relevant.  That personage was Stanley's giant

-thieving scarred phantom.  This phantasm is everywhere in this book.

-He is the specter haunting cyberspace.

-

-Sometimes he's a maniac vandal ready to smash the phone system

-for no sane reason at all.  Sometimes he's a fascist fed,

-coldly programming his mighty mainframes to destroy our Bill of Rights.

-Sometimes he's a telco bureaucrat, covertly conspiring to register all modems

-in the service of an Orwellian surveillance regime.  Mostly, though,

-this fearsome phantom is a "hacker."  He's strange, he doesn't belong,

-he's not authorized, he doesn't smell right, he's not keeping his proper place,

-he's not one of us.  The focus of fear is the hacker, for much the same

-reasons that Stanley's fancied assailant is black.

-

-Stanley's demon can't go away, because he doesn't exist.

-Despite singleminded and tremendous effort, he can't be arrested,

-sued, jailed, or fired.  The only constructive way to do ANYTHING

-about him is to learn more about Stanley himself.  This learning process

-may be repellent, it may be ugly, it may involve grave elements of paranoiac

-confusion, but it's necessary.  Knowing Stanley requires something more

-than class-crossing condescension.  It requires more than steely

-legal objectivity.  It requires  human compassion and sympathy.

-

-To know Stanley is to know his demon.  If you know the other guy's demon,

-then maybe you'll come to know some of your own.  You'll be able to

-separate reality from illusion.  And then you won't do your cause,

-and yourself, more harm than good.  Like poor damned Stanley from Chicago did.

-

-#

-

-The Federal Computer Investigations Committee (FCIC) is the most important

-and influential organization in the realm of American computer-crime.

-Since the police of other countries have largely taken their computer-crime

-cues from American methods, the FCIC might well be called the most important

-computer crime group in the world.

-

-It is also, by federal standards, an organization of great unorthodoxy.

-State and local investigators mix with federal agents.  Lawyers,

-financial auditors and computer-security programmers trade notes

-with street cops.  Industry vendors and telco security people show up

-to explain their gadgetry and plead for protection and justice.

-Private investigators, think-tank experts and industry pundits throw in

-their two cents' worth.  The FCIC is the antithesis of a formal bureaucracy.

-

-Members of the FCIC are obscurely proud of this fact; they recognize their

-group as aberrant, but are entirely convinced that this, for them,

-outright WEIRD behavior is nevertheless ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY

-to get their jobs done.

-

-FCIC regulars --from the Secret Service, the FBI, the IRS,

-the Department of Labor, the offices of federal attorneys,

-state police, the Air Force, from military intelligence--

-often attend meetings, held hither and thither across the country,

-at their own expense.  The FCIC doesn't get grants.  It doesn't

-charge membership fees.  It doesn't have a boss.  It has no headquarters--

-just a mail drop in Washington DC, at the Fraud Division of the Secret Service.

-It doesn't have a budget.  It doesn't have schedules.  It meets three times

-a year--sort of.  Sometimes it issues publications, but the FCIC

-has no regular publisher, no treasurer, not even a secretary.

-There are no minutes of FCIC  meetings.  Non-federal people are considered

-"non-voting members," but there's not much in the way of elections.

-There are no badges, lapel pins or certificates of membership.

-Everyone is on a first-name basis.  There are about forty of them.

-Nobody knows how many, exactly.  People come, people go--

-sometimes people "go" formally but still hang around anyway.

-Nobody has ever exactly figured out what "membership" of this

-"Committee" actually entails.

-

-Strange as this may seem to some, to anyone familiar with the social world

-of computing, the "organization" of the FCIC is very recognizable.

-

-For years now, economists and management theorists have speculated

-that the tidal wave of the information revolution would destroy rigid,

-pyramidal bureaucracies, where everything is top-down and

-centrally controlled.  Highly trained "employees" would take on

-much greater autonomy, being self-starting, and self-motivating,

-moving from place to place, task to task, with great speed and fluidity.

-"Ad-hocracy" would rule, with groups of people spontaneously knitting

-together across organizational lines, tackling the problem at hand,

-applying intense computer-aided expertise to it, and then vanishing

-whence they came.

-

-This is more or less what has actually happened in the world of

-federal computer investigation.  With the conspicuous exception

-of the phone companies, which are after all over a hundred years old,

-practically EVERY organization that plays any important role in this book

-functions just like the FCIC.  The Chicago Task Force, the Arizona

-Racketeering Unit, the Legion of Doom, the Phrack crowd, the

-Electronic Frontier Foundation--they ALL look and act like "tiger teams"

-or "user's groups."  They are all electronic ad-hocracies leaping up

-spontaneously to attempt to meet a need.

-

-Some are police.  Some are, by strict definition, criminals.

-Some are political interest-groups.  But every single group

-has that same quality of apparent spontaneity--"Hey, gang!

-My uncle's got a barn--let's put on a show!"

-

-Every one of these groups is embarrassed by this "amateurism,"

-and, for the sake of their public image in a world of non-computer people,

-they all attempt to look as stern and formal and impressive as possible.

-These electronic frontier-dwellers resemble groups of nineteenth-century

-pioneers hankering after the respectability of statehood.

-There are however, two crucial differences in the historical experience

-of these "pioneers" of the nineteeth and twenty-first centuries.

-

-First, powerful information technology DOES play into the hands of small,

-fluid, loosely organized groups.  There have always been "pioneers,"

-"hobbyists," "amateurs," "dilettantes," "volunteers," "movements,"

-"users' groups" and "blue-ribbon panels of experts" around.

-But a group of this kind--when technically equipped to ship

-huge amounts of specialized information, at lightning speed,

-to its members, to government, and to the press--is simply

-a different kind of animal.  It's like the difference between

-an eel and an electric eel.

-

-The second crucial change is that American society is currently

-in a state approaching permanent technological revolution.

-In the world of computers particularly, it is practically impossible

-to EVER stop being a "pioneer," unless you either drop dead or

-deliberately jump off the bus.  The scene has never slowed down

-enough to become well-institutionalized.  And after twenty, thirty,

-forty years the "computer revolution" continues to spread,

-to permeate new corners of society.  Anything that really works

-is already obsolete.

-

-If you spend your entire working life as a "pioneer," the word "pioneer"

-begins to lose its meaning.  Your way of life looks less and less like

-an introduction to something else" more stable and organized,

-and more and more like JUST THE WAY THINGS ARE.  A "permanent revolution"

-is really a contradiction in terms.  If "turmoil"  lasts long enough,

-it simply becomes A NEW KIND OF SOCIETY--still the same game of history,

-but new players, new rules.

-

-Apply this to the world of late twentieth-century law enforcement,

-and the implications are  novel and puzzling indeed.  Any bureaucratic

-rulebook you write about computer-crime will be flawed when you write it,

-and almost an antique by the time it sees print.  The fluidity and fast

-reactions of the FCIC give them a great advantage in this regard,

-which explains their success.  Even with the best will in the world

-(which it does not, in fact, possess) it is impossible for an organization

-the size of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to get up to speed

-on the theory and practice of computer crime.  If they tried to train all

-their agents to do this, it would be SUICIDAL, as they would NEVER BE ABLE

-TO DO ANYTHING ELSE.

-

-The FBI does try to train its agents in the basics of electronic crime,

-at their base in Quantico, Virginia.  And the Secret Service, along with

-many other law enforcement groups, runs quite successful and well-attended

-training courses on wire fraud, business crime, and computer intrusion

-at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC, pronounced "fletsy")

-in Glynco, Georgia.  But the best efforts of these bureaucracies does not

-remove the absolute need for a "cutting-edge mess" like the FCIC.

-

-For you see--the members of FCIC ARE the trainers of the rest

-of law enforcement.  Practically and literally speaking,

-they are the Glynco computer-crime faculty by another name.

-If the FCIC went over a cliff on a bus, the U.S. law enforcement

-community would be rendered deaf dumb and blind in the world

-of computer crime, and would swiftly feel a desperate need

-to reinvent them.  And this is no time to go starting from scratch.

-

-On June 11, 1991, I once again arrived in Phoenix, Arizona,

-for the latest meeting of the Federal Computer Investigations Committee.

-This was more or less the twentieth meeting of this stellar group.

-The count was uncertain, since nobody could figure out whether to

-include the meetings of "the Colluquy," which is what the FCIC

-was called in the mid-1980s before it had even managed to obtain

-the dignity of its own acronym.

-

-Since my last visit to Arizona, in May, the local AzScam bribery scandal

-had resolved itself in a general muddle of humiliation.  The Phoenix chief

-of police, whose agents had videotaped nine state legislators up to no good,

-had resigned his office in a tussle with the Phoenix city council over

-the propriety of his undercover operations.

-

-The Phoenix Chief could now join Gail Thackeray and eleven of her closest

-associates in the shared experience of politically motivated unemployment.

-As of June, resignations were still continuing at the Arizona Attorney

-General's office, which could be interpreted as either a New Broom

-Sweeping Clean or a Night of the Long Knives Part II, depending on

-your point of view.

-

-The meeting of FCIC was held at the Scottsdale Hilton Resort.

-Scottsdale is a wealthy suburb of Phoenix, known as "Scottsdull"

-to scoffing local trendies, but well-equipped with posh shopping-malls

-and manicured lawns, while conspicuously undersupplied with homeless derelicts.

-The Scottsdale Hilton Resort was a sprawling hotel in postmodern

-crypto-Southwestern style.  It featured a "mission bell tower"

-plated in turquoise tile and vaguely resembling a Saudi minaret.

-

-Inside it was all barbarically striped Santa Fe Style decor.

-There was a health spa downstairs and a large oddly-shaped

-pool in the patio.  A poolside umbrella-stand offered Ben and Jerry's

-politically correct Peace Pops.

-

-I registered as a member of FCIC, attaining a handy discount rate,

-then went in search of the Feds.  Sure enough, at the back of the

-hotel grounds came the unmistakable sound of Gail Thackeray

-holding forth.

-

-Since I had also attended the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference

-(about which more later), this was the second time I had seen Thackeray

-in a group of her law enforcement colleagues.  Once again I was struck

-by how simply pleased they seemed to see her.  It was natural that she'd

-get SOME attention, as Gail was one of two women in a group of some thirty men;

-but there was a lot more to it than that.

-

-Gail Thackeray personifies the social glue of the FCIC.  They could give

-a damn about her losing her job with the Attorney General.  They were sorry

-about it, of course, but hell, they'd all lost jobs.  If they were the kind

-of guys who liked steady boring jobs, they would never have gotten into

-computer work in the first place.

-

-I wandered into her circle and was immediately introduced to five strangers.

-The conditions of my visit at FCIC were reviewed.  I would not quote

-anyone directly.  I would not tie opinions expressed to the agencies

-of the attendees.  I would not (a purely hypothetical example)

-report the conversation of a guy from the Secret Service talking

-quite civilly to  a guy from the FBI, as these two agencies NEVER

-talk to each other, and the IRS (also present, also hypothetical)

-NEVER TALKS TO ANYBODY.

-

-Worse yet, I was forbidden to attend the first conference.  And I didn't.

-I have no idea what the FCIC was up to behind closed doors that afternoon.

-I rather suspect that they were engaging in a frank and thorough confession

-of their errors, goof-ups and blunders, as this has been a feature of every

-FCIC meeting since their legendary Memphis beer-bust of 1986.  Perhaps the

-single greatest attraction of FCIC is that it is a place where you can go,

-let your hair down, and completely level with people who actually comprehend

-what you are talking about.  Not only do they understand you, but they

-REALLY PAY ATTENTION, they are GRATEFUL FOR YOUR INSIGHTS, and they

-FORGIVE YOU, which in nine cases out of ten is something even your

-boss can't do, because as soon as you start talking "ROM," "BBS,"

-or "T-1 trunk," his eyes glaze over.

-

-I had nothing much to do that afternoon.  The FCIC were beavering away

-in their conference room.  Doors were firmly closed, windows too dark

-to peer through.  I wondered what a real hacker, a computer intruder,

-would do at a meeting like this.

-

-The answer came at once.  He would "trash" the place.  Not reduce the place

-to trash in some orgy of vandalism; that's not the use of the term in the

-hacker milieu.  No, he would quietly EMPTY THE TRASH BASKETS and silently

-raid any valuable data indiscreetly thrown away.

-

-Journalists have been known to do this.  (Journalists hunting information

-have been known to do almost every single unethical thing that hackers

-have ever done.  They also throw in a few awful techniques all their own.)

-The legality of `trashing' is somewhat dubious but it is not in fact

-flagrantly illegal.  It was, however, absurd to contemplate trashing the FCIC.

-These people knew all about trashing.  I wouldn't last fifteen seconds.

-

-The idea sounded interesting, though.  I'd been hearing a lot about

-the practice lately.  On the spur of the moment, I decided I would try

-trashing the office ACROSS THE HALL from the FCIC, an area which had

-nothing to do with the investigators.

-

-The office was tiny; six chairs, a table. . . .  Nevertheless, it was open,

-so I dug around in its plastic trash can.

-

-To my utter astonishment, I came up with the torn scraps of a SPRINT

-long-distance phone bill. More digging produced a bank statement

-and the scraps of a hand-written letter, along with gum, cigarette ashes,

-candy wrappers and a day-old-issue of USA TODAY.

-

-The trash went back in its receptacle while the scraps of data went into

-my travel bag.  I detoured through the hotel souvenir shop for some

-Scotch tape and went up to my room.

-

-Coincidence or not, it was quite true.  Some poor soul had, in fact,

-thrown a SPRINT bill into the hotel's trash.  Date May 1991,

-total amount due: $252.36.  Not a business phone, either,

-but a residential bill, in the name of someone called Evelyn

-(not her real name).  Evelyn's records showed a ## PAST DUE BILL ##!

-Here was her nine-digit account ID.  Here was a stern computer-printed warning:

-

-"TREAT YOUR FONCARD AS YOU WOULD ANY CREDIT CARD.  TO SECURE AGAINST FRAUD,

-NEVER GIVE YOUR FONCARD NUMBER OVER THE PHONE UNLESS YOU INITIATED THE CALL.

-IF YOU RECEIVE SUSPICIOUS CALLS PLEASE NOTIFY CUSTOMER SERVICE IMMEDIATELY!"

-

-I examined my watch.  Still plenty of time left for the FCIC to carry on.

-I sorted out the scraps of Evelyn's SPRINT bill and re-assembled them with

-fresh Scotch tape.  Here was her ten-digit FONCARD number.  Didn't seem

-to have the ID number necessary to cause real fraud trouble.

-

-I did, however, have Evelyn's home phone number.  And the phone numbers

-for a whole crowd of Evelyn's long-distance friends and acquaintances.

-In San Diego, Folsom, Redondo, Las Vegas, La Jolla, Topeka, and Northampton

-Massachusetts.  Even somebody in Australia!

-

-I examined other documents.  Here was a bank statement.  It was Evelyn's

-IRA account down at a bank in San Mateo California (total balance $1877.20).

-Here was a charge-card bill for $382.64. She was paying it off bit by bit.

-

-Driven by motives that were completely unethical and prurient,

-I now examined the handwritten notes.  They had been torn fairly

-thoroughly, so much so that it took me almost an entire five minutes

-to reassemble them.

-

-They were drafts of a love letter.  They had been written on

-the lined stationery of Evelyn's employer, a biomedical company.

-Probably written at work when she should have been doing something else.

-

-"Dear Bob," (not his real name)  "I guess in everyone's life there comes

-a time when hard decisions have to be made, and this is a difficult one

-for me--very upsetting.  Since you haven't called me, and I don't understand

-why, I can only surmise it's because you don't want to.  I thought I would

-have heard from you Friday.  I did have a few unusual problems with my phone

-and possibly you tried, I hope so.

-

-"Robert, you asked me to `let go'. . . ."

-

-The first note ended.  UNUSUAL PROBLEMS WITH HER PHONE?

-I looked swiftly at the next note.

-

-"Bob, not hearing from you for the whole weekend has left me very perplexed. . . ."

-

-Next draft.

-

-"Dear Bob, there is so much I don't understand right now, and I wish I did.

-I wish I could talk to you, but for some unknown reason you have elected not

-to call--this is so difficult for me to understand. . . ."

-

-She tried again.

-

-"Bob, Since I have always held you in such high esteem, I had every hope that

-we could remain good friends, but now one essential ingredient is missing--

-respect.  Your ability to discard people when their purpose is served is

-appalling to me.  The kindest thing you could do for me now is to leave me

-alone.  You are no longer welcome in my heart or home. . . ."

-

-Try again.

-

-"Bob, I wrote a very factual note to you to say how much respect I had lost

-for you, by the way you treat people, me in particular, so uncaring and cold.

-The kindest thing you can do for me is to leave me alone entirely,

-as you are no longer welcome in my heart or home.  I would appreciate it

-if you could retire your debt to me as soon as possible--I wish no link

-to you in any way.  Sincerely, Evelyn."

-

-Good heavens, I thought, the bastard actually owes her money!

-I turned to the next page.

-

-"Bob:  very simple.  GOODBYE!  No more mind games--no more fascination--

-no more coldness--no more respect for you!  It's over--Finis.  Evie"

-

-There were two versions of the final brushoff letter, but they read about

-the same.  Maybe she hadn't sent it.  The final item in my illicit and

-shameful booty was an envelope addressed to "Bob" at his home address,

-but it had no stamp on it and it hadn't been mailed.

-

-Maybe she'd just been blowing off steam because her rascal boyfriend

-had neglected to call her one weekend.  Big deal.  Maybe they'd kissed

-and made up, maybe she and Bob were down at Pop's Chocolate Shop now,

-sharing a malted.  Sure.

-

-Easy to find out.  All I had to do was call Evelyn up.  With a half-clever

-story and enough brass-plated gall I could probably trick the truth out of her.

-Phone-phreaks and hackers deceive people over the phone all the time.

-It's called "social engineering." Social engineering is a very common practice

-in the underground, and almost magically effective.  Human beings are almost

-always the weakest link in computer security.  The simplest way to learn

-Things You Are Not Meant To Know is simply to call up and exploit the

-knowledgeable people.  With social engineering, you use the bits of specialized

-knowledge you already have as a key, to manipulate people into believing

-that you are legitimate.  You can then coax, flatter, or frighten them into

-revealing almost anything you want to know.  Deceiving people (especially

-over the phone) is easy and fun. Exploiting their gullibility is very

-gratifying; it makes you feel very superior to them.

-

-If I'd been a  malicious hacker on a trashing raid, I would now have Evelyn

-very much in my power.  Given all this inside data, it wouldn't take much

-effort at all to invent a convincing lie.  If I were ruthless enough,

-and jaded enough, and clever enough, this momentary indiscretion of hers--

-maybe committed in tears, who knows--could cause her a whole world of

-confusion and grief.

-

-I didn't even have to have a MALICIOUS motive.  Maybe I'd be "on her side,"

-and call up Bob instead, and anonymously threaten to break both his kneecaps

-if he didn't take Evelyn out for a steak dinner pronto.  It was still

-profoundly NONE OF MY BUSINESS.  To have gotten this knowledge at all

-was a sordid act and to use it would be to inflict a sordid injury.

-

-To do all these awful things would require exactly zero high-tech expertise.

-All it would take was the willingness to do it and a certain amount

-of bent imagination.

-

-I went back downstairs. The hard-working FCIC, who had labored forty-five

-minutes over their schedule, were through for the day, and adjourned to the

-hotel bar.  We all had a beer.

-

-I had a chat with a guy about "Isis," or rather IACIS,

-the International Association of Computer Investigation Specialists.

-They're into "computer forensics," the techniques of picking computer-

-systems apart without destroying vital evidence.  IACIS, currently run

-out of Oregon, is comprised of investigators in the U.S., Canada, Taiwan

-and Ireland.  "Taiwan and Ireland?"  I said.  Are TAIWAN and IRELAND

-really in the forefront of this stuff?  Well not exactly, my informant

-admitted.  They just happen to have been the first ones to have caught

-on by word of mouth.  Still, the international angle counts, because this

-is obviously an international problem.  Phone-lines go everywhere.

-

-There was a Mountie here from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

-He seemed to be having quite a good time.  Nobody had flung this

-Canadian out because he might pose a foreign security risk.

-These are cyberspace cops.  They still worry a lot about "jurisdictions,"

-but mere geography is the least of their troubles.

-

-NASA had failed to show.  NASA suffers a lot from computer intrusions,

-in particular from Australian raiders and a well-trumpeted Chaos

-Computer Club case, and in 1990 there was a brief press flurry

-when it was revealed that one of NASA's Houston branch-exchanges

-had been systematically ripped off by a gang of phone-phreaks.

-But the NASA guys had had their funding cut.  They were stripping everything.

-

-Air Force OSI, its Office of Special Investigations, is the ONLY federal

-entity dedicated full-time to computer security.  They'd been expected

-to show up in force, but some of them had cancelled--a Pentagon budget pinch.

-

-As the empties piled up, the guys began joshing around and telling war-stories.

-"These are cops," Thackeray said tolerantly.  "If they're not talking shop

-they talk about women and beer."

-

-I heard the story about the guy who, asked for "a copy" of a computer disk,

-PHOTOCOPIED THE LABEL ON IT.  He put the floppy disk onto the glass plate

-of a photocopier.  The blast of static when the copier worked completely

-erased all the real information on the disk.

-

-Some other poor souls threw a whole bag of confiscated diskettes

-into the squad-car trunk next to the police radio.  The powerful radio

-signal blasted them, too.

-

-We heard a bit about Dave Geneson, the first computer prosecutor,

-a mainframe-runner in Dade County, turned lawyer.  Dave Geneson

-was one guy who had hit the ground running, a signal virtue

-in making the transition to computer-crime.  It was generally

-agreed that it was easier to learn the world of computers first,

-then police or prosecutorial work.  You could take certain computer

-people and train 'em to successful police work--but of course they

-had to have the COP MENTALITY.  They had to have street smarts.

-Patience.  Persistence.  And discretion.  You've got to make sure

-they're not hot-shots, show-offs, "cowboys."

-

-Most of the folks in the bar had backgrounds in military intelligence,

-or drugs, or homicide.  It was rudely opined that "military intelligence"

-was a contradiction in terms, while even the grisly world of homicide

-was considered cleaner than drug enforcement.  One guy had been 'way

-undercover doing dope-work in Europe for four years straight.

-"I'm almost recovered now," he said deadpan, with the acid black humor

-that is pure cop.  "Hey, now I can say FUCKER without putting MOTHER

-in front of it."

-

-"In the cop world," another guy said earnestly, "everything is good and bad,

-black and white.  In the computer world everything is gray."

-

-One guy--a founder of the FCIC, who'd been with the group

-since it was just the Colluquy--described his own introduction

-to the field.  He'd been a Washington DC homicide guy called in

-on a "hacker" case.  From the word "hacker," he naturally assumed

-he was on the trail of a knife-wielding marauder, and went to the

-computer center expecting blood and a body.  When he finally figured

-out what was happening there (after loudly demanding, in vain,

-that the programmers "speak English"), he called headquarters

-and told them he was clueless about computers.  They told him nobody

-else knew diddly either, and to get the hell back to work.

-

-So, he said, he had proceeded by comparisons.  By analogy.  By metaphor.

-"Somebody broke in to your computer, huh?"  Breaking and entering;

-I can understand that.  How'd he get in?  "Over the phone-lines."

-Harassing phone-calls, I can understand that!  What we need here

-is a tap and a trace!

-

-It worked.  It was better than nothing.  And it worked a lot faster

-when he got hold of another cop who'd done something similar.

-And then the two of them got another, and another, and pretty soon

-the Colluquy was a happening thing.  It helped a lot that everybody

-seemed to know Carlton Fitzpatrick, the data-processing trainer in Glynco.

-

-The ice broke big-time in Memphis in '86.  The Colluquy had attracted

-a bunch of new guys--Secret Service, FBI, military, other feds, heavy guys.

-Nobody wanted to tell anybody anything.  They suspected that if word got back

-to the home office they'd all be fired.  They passed an uncomfortably

-guarded afternoon.

-

-The formalities got them nowhere.  But after the formal session was over,

-the organizers brought in a case of beer.  As soon as the participants

-knocked it off with the bureaucratic ranks and turf-fighting, everything

-changed.  "I bared my soul," one veteran reminisced proudly.  By nightfall

-they were building pyramids of empty beer-cans and doing everything

-but composing a team fight song.

-

-FCIC were not the only computer-crime people around.  There was DATTA

-(District Attorneys' Technology Theft Association), though they mostly

-specialized in chip theft, intellectual property, and black-market cases.

-There was HTCIA  (High Tech Computer Investigators Association),

-also out in Silicon Valley, a year older than FCIC and featuring

-brilliant people like Donald Ingraham.  There was LEETAC

-(Law Enforcement Electronic Technology Assistance Committee)

-in Florida, and computer-crime units in Illinois and Maryland

-and Texas and Ohio and Colorado and Pennsylvania.  But these were

-local groups.  FCIC were the first to really network nationally

-and on a federal level.

-

-FCIC people live on the phone lines.  Not on bulletin board systems--

-they know very well what boards are, and they know that boards aren't secure.

-Everyone in the FCIC has a voice-phone bill like you wouldn't believe.

-FCIC people have been tight with the telco people for a long time.

-Telephone cyberspace is their native habitat.

-

-FCIC has three basic sub-tribes:  the trainers, the security people,

-and the investigators.  That's why it's called an "Investigations

-Committee" with no mention of the term "computer-crime"--the dreaded

-"C-word."  FCIC, officially, is "an association of agencies rather

-than individuals;" unofficially, this field is small enough that

-the influence of individuals and individual expertise is paramount.

-Attendance is by invitation only, and most everyone in FCIC considers

-himself a prophet without honor in his own house.

-

-Again and again I heard this, with different terms but identical

-sentiments.  "I'd been sitting in the wilderness talking to myself."

-"I was totally isolated."  "I was desperate."  "FCIC is the best

-thing there is about computer crime in America."  "FCIC is what

-really works."  "This is where you hear real people telling you

-what's really happening out there, not just lawyers picking nits."

-"We taught each other everything we knew."

-

-The sincerity of these statements convinces me that this is true.

-FCIC is the real thing and it is invaluable.  It's also very sharply

-at odds with the rest of the traditions and power structure

-in American law enforcement.  There probably  hasn't been anything

-around as loose and go-getting as the FCIC since the start of the

-U.S. Secret Service in the 1860s.  FCIC people are living like

-twenty-first-century people in a twentieth-century environment,

-and while there's a great deal to be said for that, there's also

-a great deal to be said against it, and those against it happen

-to control the budgets.

-

-I listened to two FCIC guys from Jersey compare life histories.

-One of them had been a biker in a fairly heavy-duty gang in the 1960s.

-"Oh, did you know so-and-so?" said the other guy from Jersey.

-"Big guy, heavyset?"

-

-"Yeah, I knew him."

-

-"Yeah, he was one of ours.  He was our plant in the gang."

-

-"Really?  Wow!  Yeah, I knew him.  Helluva guy."

-

-Thackeray reminisced at length about being tear-gassed blind

-in the November 1969 antiwar protests in Washington Circle,

-covering them for her college paper.  "Oh yeah, I was there,"

-said another cop.  "Glad to hear that tear gas hit somethin'.

-Haw haw haw."  He'd been so blind himself, he confessed,

-that later that day he'd arrested a small tree.

-

-FCIC are an odd group, sifted out by coincidence and necessity,

-and turned into a new kind of cop.  There are a lot of specialized

-cops in the world--your bunco guys, your drug guys, your tax guys,

-but the only group that matches FCIC for sheer isolation are probably

-the child-pornography people.  Because they both deal with conspirators

-who are desperate to exchange forbidden data and also desperate to hide;

-and because nobody else in law enforcement even wants to hear about it.

-

-FCIC people tend to change jobs a lot.  They tend not to get the equipment

-and training they want and need.  And they tend to get sued quite often.

-

-As the night wore on and a band set up in the bar, the talk grew darker.

-Nothing ever gets done in government, someone opined, until there's

-a DISASTER.  Computing disasters are awful, but there's no denying

-that they greatly help the credibility of FCIC people.  The Internet Worm,

-for instance.  "For years we'd been warning about that--but it's nothing

-compared to what's coming."  They expect horrors, these people.

-They know that nothing will really get done until there is a horror.

-

-#

-

-Next day we heard an extensive briefing from a guy who'd been a computer cop,

-gotten into hot water with an Arizona city council, and now installed

-computer networks for a living (at a considerable rise in pay).

-He talked about pulling fiber-optic networks apart.

-

-Even a single computer, with enough peripherals, is a literal

-"network"--a bunch of machines all cabled together, generally

-with a complexity that puts stereo units to shame.  FCIC people

-invent and publicize  methods of seizing computers and maintaining

-their evidence.  Simple things, sometimes, but vital rules of thumb

-for street cops, who nowadays often stumble across a busy computer

-in the midst of a drug investigation or a white-collar bust.

-For instance:  Photograph the system before you touch it.

-Label the ends of all the cables before you detach anything.

-"Park" the heads on the disk drives before you move them.

-Get the diskettes.  Don't put the diskettes in magnetic fields.

-Don't write on diskettes with ballpoint pens.  Get the manuals.

-Get the printouts.  Get the handwritten notes.  Copy data before

-you look at it, and then examine the copy instead of the original.

-

-Now our lecturer distributed copied diagrams of a typical LAN

-or "Local Area Network", which happened to be out of Connecticut.

-ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-NINE desktop computers, each with its own

-peripherals.  Three "file servers."  Five "star couplers"

-each with thirty-two ports.  One sixteen-port coupler

-off in the corner office.  All these machines talking to each other,

-distributing electronic mail, distributing software, distributing,

-quite possibly, criminal evidence.  All linked by high-capacity

-fiber-optic cable.  A bad guy--cops talk a about "bad guys"

---might be lurking on PC #47 lot or #123 and distributing

-his ill doings onto some dupe's "personal" machine in

-another office--or another floor--or, quite possibly,

-two or three miles away!  Or, conceivably, the evidence might

-be "data-striped"--split up into meaningless slivers stored,

-one by one, on a whole crowd of different disk drives.

-

-The lecturer challenged us for solutions.  I for one was utterly clueless.

-As far as I could figure, the Cossacks were at the gate; there were probably

-more disks in this single building than were seized during the entirety

-of Operation Sundevil.

-

-"Inside informant," somebody said.  Right.  There's always the human angle,

-something easy to forget when contemplating the arcane recesses of high

-technology.  Cops are skilled at getting people to talk, and computer people,

-given a chair and some sustained attention, will talk about their computers

-till their throats go raw.  There's a case on record of a single question--

-"How'd you do it?"--eliciting a forty-five-minute videotaped confession

-from a computer criminal who not only completely incriminated himself

-but drew helpful diagrams.

-

-Computer people talk.  Hackers BRAG.  Phone-phreaks

-talk PATHOLOGICALLY--why else are they stealing phone-codes,

-if not to natter for ten hours straight to their friends

-on an opposite seaboard?  Computer-literate people do

-in fact possess an arsenal of nifty gadgets and techniques

-that would allow them to conceal all kinds of exotic skullduggery,

-and if they could only SHUT UP about it, they could probably

-get away with all manner of amazing information-crimes.

-But that's just not how it works--or at least,

-that's not how it's worked SO FAR.

-

-Most every phone-phreak ever busted has swiftly implicated his mentors,

-his disciples, and his friends.  Most every white-collar computer-criminal,

-smugly convinced that his clever scheme is bulletproof, swiftly learns

-otherwise when, for the first time in his life, an actual no-kidding

-policeman leans over, grabs the front of his shirt, looks him right

-in the eye and says:  "All right, ASSHOLE--you and me are going downtown!"

-All the hardware in the world will not insulate your nerves from

-these actual real-life sensations of terror and guilt.

-

-Cops know ways to get from point A to point Z without thumbing

-through every letter in some smart-ass bad-guy's alphabet.

-Cops know how to cut to the chase.  Cops know a lot of things

-other people don't know.

-

-Hackers know a lot of things other people don't know, too.

-Hackers know, for instance, how to sneak into your computer

-through the phone-lines.  But cops can show up RIGHT ON YOUR DOORSTEP

-and carry off YOU and your computer in separate steel boxes.

-A cop interested in hackers can grab them and grill them.

-A hacker interested in cops has to depend on hearsay,

-underground legends, and what cops are willing to publicly reveal.

-And the Secret Service didn't get named "the SECRET Service"

-because they blab a lot.

-

-Some people, our lecturer informed us, were under the mistaken

-impression that it was "impossible" to tap a fiber-optic line.

-Well, he announced, he and his son had just whipped up a

-fiber-optic tap in his workshop at home.  He passed it around

-the audience, along with a circuit-covered LAN plug-in card

-so we'd all recognize one if we saw it on a case.  We all had a look.

-

-The tap was a classic "Goofy Prototype"--a thumb-length rounded

-metal cylinder with a pair of plastic brackets on it.

-From one end dangled three thin black cables, each of which ended

-in a tiny black plastic cap.  When you plucked the safety-cap

-off the end of a cable, you could see the glass fiber--

-no thicker than a pinhole.

-

-Our lecturer informed us that the metal cylinder was a

-"wavelength division multiplexer."  Apparently, what one did

-was to cut the fiber-optic cable, insert two of the legs into

-the cut to complete the network again, and then read any passing data

-on the line by hooking up the third leg to some kind of monitor.

-Sounded simple enough.  I wondered why nobody had thought of it before.

-I also wondered whether this guy's son back at the workshop had any

-teenage friends.

-

-We had a break.  The guy sitting next to me was wearing a giveaway

-baseball cap advertising the Uzi submachine gun.  We had a desultory chat

-about the merits of Uzis.  Long a favorite of the Secret Service,

-it seems Uzis went out of fashion with the advent of the Persian Gulf War,

-our Arab allies taking some offense at Americans toting Israeli weapons.

-Besides, I was informed by another expert, Uzis jam.  The equivalent weapon

-of choice today is the Heckler & Koch, manufactured in Germany.

-

-The guy with the Uzi cap was a forensic photographer.  He also did a lot

-of photographic surveillance work in computer crime cases.  He used to,

-that is, until the firings in Phoenix.  He was now a private investigator and,

-with his wife, ran a photography salon specializing in weddings and portrait

-photos.  At--one must repeat--a considerable rise in income.

-

-He was still FCIC.  If you were FCIC, and you needed to talk

-to an expert about forensic photography, well, there he was,

-willing and able.  If he hadn't shown up, people would have missed him.

-

-Our lecturer had raised the point that preliminary investigation

-of a computer system is vital before any seizure is undertaken.

-It's vital to understand how many machines are in there, what kinds

-there are, what kind of operating system they use, how many people

-use them, where the actual data itself is stored.  To simply barge into

-an office demanding "all the computers" is a recipe for swift disaster.

-

-This entails some discreet inquiries beforehand.  In fact, what it

-entails is basically undercover work.  An intelligence operation.

-SPYING, not to put too fine a point on it.

-

-In a chat after the lecture, I asked an attendee whether "trashing" might work.

-

-I received a swift briefing on the theory and practice of "trash covers."

-Police "trash covers," like "mail covers" or like wiretaps, require the

-agreement of a judge.  This obtained, the "trashing" work of cops is just

-like that of hackers, only more so and much better organized.  So much so,

-I was informed, that mobsters in Phoenix make extensive use of locked

-garbage cans picked up by a specialty high-security trash company.

-

-In one case, a tiger team of Arizona cops had trashed a local residence

-for four months.  Every week they showed up on the municipal garbage truck,

-disguised as garbagemen, and carried the contents of the suspect cans off

-to a shade tree, where they combed through the garbage--a messy task,

-especially considering that one of the occupants was undergoing

-kidney dialysis.  All useful documents were cleaned, dried and examined.

-A discarded typewriter-ribbon was an especially valuable source of data,

-as its long one-strike ribbon of film contained the contents of every

-letter mailed out of the house.  The letters were neatly retyped by

-a police secretary equipped with a large desk-mounted magnifying glass.

-

-There is something weirdly disquieting about the whole subject of

-"trashing"-- an unsuspected and indeed rather disgusting mode of

-deep personal vulnerability.  Things that we pass by every day,

-that we take utterly for granted, can be exploited with so little work.

-Once discovered, the knowledge of these vulnerabilities tend to spread.

-

-Take the lowly subject of MANHOLE COVERS.  The humble manhole cover

-reproduces many of the dilemmas of computer-security in miniature.

-Manhole covers are, of course, technological artifacts, access-points

-to our buried urban infrastructure.  To the vast majority of us,

-manhole covers are invisible.  They are also vulnerable.  For many years now,

-the Secret Service has made a point of caulking manhole covers along all routes

-of the Presidential motorcade.  This is, of course, to deter terrorists from

-leaping out of underground ambush or, more likely, planting remote-control

-car-smashing bombs beneath the street.

-

-Lately, manhole covers have seen more and more criminal exploitation,

-especially in New York City.  Recently, a telco in New York City

-discovered that a cable television service had been sneaking into

-telco manholes and installing cable service alongside the phone-lines--

-WITHOUT PAYING ROYALTIES.  New York companies have also suffered a

-general plague of (a) underground copper cable theft; (b) dumping of garbage,

-including toxic waste, and (c) hasty dumping of murder victims.

-

-Industry complaints reached the ears of an innovative New England

-industrial-security company, and the result was a new product known

-as "the Intimidator," a thick titanium-steel bolt with a precisely machined

-head that requires a special device to unscrew.  All these "keys" have registered

-serial numbers kept on file with the manufacturer.  There are now some

-thousands of these "Intimidator" bolts being sunk into American pavements

-wherever our President passes, like some macabre parody of strewn roses.

-They are also spreading as fast as steel dandelions around US military bases

-and many centers of private industry.

-

-Quite likely it has never occurred to you to  peer under a manhole cover,

-perhaps climb down and walk around down there with a flashlight, just to see

-what it's like.  Formally speaking, this might be trespassing, but if you

-didn't hurt anything, and didn't make an absolute habit of it, nobody would

-really care.  The freedom to sneak under manholes was likely a freedom

-you never intended to exercise.

-

-You now are rather less likely to have that freedom at all.

-You may never even have missed it until you read about it here,

-but if you're in New York City it's gone, and elsewhere it's likely going.

-This is one of the things that crime, and the reaction to

-crime, does to us.

-

-The tenor of the meeting now changed as the Electronic Frontier Foundation

-arrived.  The EFF, whose personnel and history will be examined in detail

-in the next chapter, are a pioneering civil liberties group who arose in

-direct response to the Hacker Crackdown of 1990.

-

-Now Mitchell Kapor, the Foundation's president, and Michael Godwin,

-its chief attorney, were confronting federal law enforcement MANO A MANO

-for the first time ever.  Ever alert to the manifold uses of publicity,

-Mitch Kapor and Mike Godwin had brought their own journalist in tow:

-Robert Draper, from Austin, whose recent well-received book about

-ROLLING STONE magazine was still on the stands.  Draper was on assignment

-for TEXAS MONTHLY.

-

-The Steve Jackson/EFF civil lawsuit against the Chicago Computer Fraud

-and Abuse Task Force was a matter of considerable regional interest in Texas.

-There were now two Austinite journalists here on the case.  In fact,

-counting Godwin (a former Austinite and former journalist) there were

-three of us.  Lunch was like Old Home Week.

-

-Later, I took Draper up to my hotel room.  We had a long frank talk

-about the case, networking earnestly like a miniature freelance-journo

-version of the FCIC:  privately confessing the numerous blunders

-of journalists covering the story, and trying hard to figure out

-who was who and what the hell was really going on out there.

-I showed Draper everything I had dug out of the Hilton trashcan.

-We pondered the ethics of "trashing" for a while, and agreed

-that they were dismal.  We also agreed that finding a SPRINT

-bill on your first time out was a heck of a coincidence.

-

-First I'd "trashed"--and now, mere hours later, I'd bragged to someone else.

-Having entered the lifestyle of hackerdom, I was now, unsurprisingly,

-following  its logic.  Having discovered something remarkable through

-a surreptitious action, I of course HAD to "brag," and to drag the passing

-Draper into my iniquities.  I felt I needed a witness.  Otherwise nobody

-would have believed what I'd discovered. . . .

-

-Back at the meeting, Thackeray cordially, if rather tentatively,

-introduced Kapor and Godwin to her colleagues.  Papers were distributed.

-Kapor took center stage.  The brilliant Bostonian high-tech entrepreneur,

-normally the hawk in his own administration and quite an effective

-public speaker, seemed visibly nervous, and frankly admitted as much.

-He began by saying he consided computer-intrusion to be morally wrong,

-and that the EFF was not a "hacker defense fund," despite what had appeared

-in print.  Kapor chatted a bit about the basic motivations of his group,

-emphasizing their good faith and willingness to listen and seek common ground

-with law enforcement--when, er, possible.

-

-Then, at Godwin's urging, Kapor suddenly remarked that EFF's own Internet

-machine had been "hacked" recently, and that EFF did not consider

-this incident amusing.

-

-After this surprising confession, things began to loosen up

-quite rapidly.  Soon Kapor was fielding questions, parrying objections,

-challenging definitions, and juggling paradigms with something akin

-to his usual gusto.

-

-Kapor seemed to score quite an effect with his shrewd and skeptical analysis

-of the merits of telco "Caller-ID" services.  (On this topic, FCIC and EFF

-have never been at loggerheads, and have no particular established earthworks

-to defend.)  Caller-ID has generally been promoted as a privacy service

-for consumers, a presentation Kapor described as a "smokescreen,"

-the real point of Caller-ID being to ALLOW CORPORATE CUSTOMERS TO BUILD

-EXTENSIVE COMMERCIAL DATABASES ON EVERYBODY WHO PHONES OR FAXES THEM.

-Clearly, few people in the room had considered this possibility,

-except perhaps for two late-arrivals from US WEST RBOC security,

-who chuckled nervously.

-

-Mike Godwin then made an extensive presentation on

-"Civil Liberties Implications of Computer Searches and Seizures."

-Now, at last, we were getting to the real nitty-gritty here,

-real political horse-trading.  The audience listened with close

-attention, angry mutters rising occasionally:  "He's trying to

-teach us our jobs!"  "We've been thinking about this for years!

-We think about these issues every day!"  "If I didn't seize the works,

-I'd be sued by the guy's victims!"  "I'm violating the law if I leave

-ten thousand disks full of illegal PIRATED SOFTWARE and STOLEN CODES!"

-"It's our job to make sure people don't trash the Constitution--

-we're the DEFENDERS of the Constitution!"  "We seize stuff when

-we know it will be forfeited anyway as restitution for the victim!"

-

-"If it's forfeitable, then don't get a search warrant, get a

-forfeiture warrant," Godwin suggested coolly.  He further remarked

-that most suspects in computer crime don't WANT to see their computers

-vanish out the door, headed God knew where, for who knows how long.

-They might not mind a search, even an extensive search, but they want

-their machines searched on-site.

-

-"Are they gonna feed us?"  somebody asked sourly.

-

-"How about if you take copies of the data?" Godwin parried.

-

-"That'll never stand up in court."

-

-"Okay, you make copies, give THEM the copies, and take the originals."

-

-Hmmm.

-

-Godwin championed bulletin-board systems as repositories of First Amendment

-protected free speech.  He complained that federal computer-crime training

-manuals gave boards a bad press, suggesting that they are hotbeds of crime

-haunted by pedophiles and crooks, whereas the vast majority of the nation's

-thousands of boards are completely innocuous, and nowhere near so

-romantically suspicious.

-

-People who run boards violently resent it when their systems are seized,

-and their dozens (or hundreds) of users look on in abject horror.

-Their rights of free expression are cut short.  Their right to associate

-with other people is infringed.  And their privacy is violated as their

-private electronic mail becomes police property.

-

-Not a soul spoke up to defend the practice of seizing boards.

-The issue passed in chastened silence.  Legal principles aside--

-(and those principles cannot be settled without laws passed or

-court precedents)--seizing bulletin boards has become public-relations

-poison for American computer police.

-

-And anyway, it's not entirely necessary.  If you're a cop, you can get 'most

-everything you need from a pirate board, just by using an inside informant.

-Plenty of vigilantes--well, CONCERNED CITIZENS--will inform police the moment

-they see a pirate board hit their area  (and will tell the police all about it,

-in such technical detail, actually, that you kinda wish they'd shut up).

-They will happily supply police with extensive downloads or printouts.

-It's IMPOSSIBLE to keep this fluid electronic information out of the

-hands of police.

-

-Some people in the electronic community become enraged at the prospect

-of cops "monitoring" bulletin boards.  This does have touchy aspects,

-as Secret Service people in particular examine bulletin boards with

-some regularity.  But to expect electronic police to be deaf dumb

-and blind in regard to this particular medium rather flies in the face

-of common sense. Police watch television, listen to radio, read newspapers

-and magazines; why should the new medium of boards be different?

-Cops can exercise the same access to electronic information

-as everybody else.  As we have seen, quite a few computer

-police maintain THEIR OWN bulletin boards, including anti-hacker

-"sting" boards, which have generally proven quite effective.

-

-As a final clincher, their Mountie friends in Canada (and colleagues

-in Ireland and Taiwan) don't have First Amendment or American

-constitutional restrictions, but they do have phone lines,

-and can call any bulletin board in America whenever they please.

-The same technological determinants that play into the hands of hackers,

-phone phreaks and software pirates can play into the hands of police.

-"Technological determinants" don't have ANY human allegiances.

-They're not black or white, or Establishment or Underground,

-or pro-or-anti anything.

-

-Godwin  complained at length about what he called "the Clever Hobbyist

-hypothesis" --the assumption that the "hacker" you're busting is clearly

-a technical genius, and must therefore by searched with extreme thoroughness.

-So:  from the law's point of view, why risk missing anything?  Take the works.

-Take the guy's computer.  Take his books. Take his notebooks.

-Take the electronic drafts of his love letters. Take his Walkman.

-Take his wife's computer.  Take his dad's computer.  Take his kid

-sister's computer.  Take his employer's computer.  Take his compact disks--

-they MIGHT be CD-ROM disks, cunningly disguised as pop music.

-Take his laser printer--he might have hidden something vital in the

-printer's 5meg of memory.  Take his software manuals and hardware

-documentation. Take his science-fiction novels and his simulation-

-gaming books.  Take his Nintendo Game-Boy and his Pac-Man arcade game.

-Take his answering machine, take his telephone out of the wall.

-Take anything remotely suspicious.

-

-Godwin pointed out that most "hackers" are not, in fact, clever

-genius hobbyists.  Quite a few are crooks and grifters who don't

-have much in the way of technical sophistication; just some rule-of-thumb

-rip-off techniques.  The same goes for most fifteen-year-olds who've

-downloaded a code-scanning program from a pirate board.  There's no

-real need to seize everything in sight.  It doesn't require an entire

-computer system and ten thousand disks to prove a case in court.

-

-What if the computer is the instrumentality of a crime? someone demanded.

-

-Godwin admitted quietly that the doctrine of seizing the instrumentality

-of a crime was pretty well established in the American legal system.

-

-The meeting broke up.  Godwin and Kapor had to leave.  Kapor was testifying

-next morning before the Massachusetts Department Of Public Utility,

-about ISDN narrowband wide-area networking.

-

-As soon as they were gone, Thackeray seemed elated.

-She had taken a great risk with this.  Her colleagues had not,

-in fact, torn Kapor and Godwin's heads off.  She was very proud of them,

-and told them so.

-

-"Did you hear what Godwin said about INSTRUMENTALITY OF A CRIME?"

-she exulted, to nobody in particular.  "Wow, that means

-MITCH ISN'T GOING TO SUE ME."

-

-#

-

-America's computer police are an interesting group.

-As a social phenomenon they are far more interesting,

-and far more important, than teenage phone phreaks

-and computer hackers.  First, they're older and wiser;

-not dizzy hobbyists with leaky morals, but seasoned adult

-professionals with all the responsibilities of public service.

-And, unlike hackers, they possess not merely TECHNICAL

-power alone, but heavy-duty legal and social authority.

-

-And, very interestingly, they are just as much at

-sea in cyberspace as everyone else.  They are not

-happy about this.  Police are authoritarian by nature,

-and prefer to obey rules and precedents.  (Even those police

-who secretly enjoy a fast ride in rough territory will soberly

-disclaim any "cowboy" attitude.) But in cyberspace there ARE

-no rules and precedents.  They are groundbreaking pioneers,

-Cyberspace Rangers, whether they like it or not.

-

-In my opinion, any teenager enthralled by computers,

-fascinated by the ins and outs of computer security,

-and attracted by the lure of specialized forms of knowledge and power,

-would do well to forget all about "hacking" and set his (or her)

-sights on becoming a fed.  Feds can trump hackers at almost every

-single thing hackers do, including gathering intelligence,

-undercover disguise, trashing, phone-tapping, building dossiers,

-networking, and infiltrating computer systems--CRIMINAL computer systems.

-Secret Service agents know more about phreaking, coding and carding

-than most phreaks can find out in years, and when it comes to viruses,

-break-ins, software bombs and trojan horses, Feds have direct access to red-hot

-confidential information that is only vague rumor in the underground.

-

-And if it's an impressive public rep you're after, there are few people

-in the world who can be so chillingly impressive as a well-trained,

-well-armed United States Secret Service agent.

-

-Of course, a few personal sacrifices are necessary in order to obtain

-that power and knowledge.  First, you'll have the galling discipline

-of belonging to a large organization;  but the world of computer crime

-is still so small, and so amazingly fast-moving, that it will remain

-spectacularly fluid for years to come.  The second sacrifice is that

-you'll have to give up ripping people off.  This is not a great loss.

-Abstaining from the use of illegal drugs, also necessary, will be a boon

-to your health.

-

-A career in computer security is not a bad choice for a young man

-or woman today.  The field will almost certainly expand drastically

-in years to come.  If you are a teenager today, by the time you

-become a professional, the pioneers you have read about in this book

-will be the grand old men and women of the field, swamped by their many

-disciples and successors.  Of course, some of them, like William P. Wood

-of the 1865 Secret Service, may well be mangled in the whirring machinery

-of legal controversy; but by the time you enter the computer-crime field,

-it may have stabilized somewhat, while remaining entertainingly challenging.

-

-But you can't just have a badge.  You have to win it.  First, there's the

-federal law enforcement training.  And it's hard--it's a challenge.

-A real challenge--not for wimps and rodents.

-

-Every Secret Service agent must complete gruelling courses at the

-Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.  (In fact, Secret Service

-agents are periodically re-trained during their entire careers.)

-

-In order to get a glimpse of what this might be like,

-I myself travelled to FLETC.

-

-#

-

-The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is a 1500-acre facility

-on Georgia's Atlantic coast.  It's a milieu of marshgrass, seabirds,

-damp, clinging sea-breezes, palmettos, mosquitos, and bats.

-Until 1974, it was a Navy Air Base, and still features a working runway,

-and some WWII vintage blockhouses and officers' quarters.

-The Center has since benefitted by a forty-million-dollar retrofit,

-but there's still enough forest and swamp on the facility for the

-Border Patrol to put in tracking practice.

-

-As a town, "Glynco" scarcely exists.  The nearest real town is Brunswick,

-a few miles down Highway 17, where I stayed at the aptly named Marshview

-Holiday Inn.  I had Sunday dinner at a seafood restaurant called "Jinright's,"

-where I feasted on deep-fried alligator tail.  This local favorite was

-a heaped basket of bite-sized chunks of white, tender, almost fluffy

-reptile meat, steaming in a peppered batter crust.  Alligator makes

-a culinary experience that's hard to forget, especially when liberally

-basted with homemade cocktail sauce from a Jinright squeeze-bottle.

-

-The crowded clientele were tourists, fishermen, local black folks

-in their Sunday best, and white Georgian locals who all seemed

-to bear an uncanny resemblance to Georgia humorist Lewis Grizzard.

-

-The 2,400 students from 75 federal agencies who make up the FLETC

-population scarcely seem to make a dent in the low-key local scene.

-The students look like tourists, and the teachers seem to have taken

-on much of the relaxed air of the Deep South.  My host was Mr. Carlton

-Fitzpatrick, the Program Coordinator of the Financial Fraud Institute.

-Carlton Fitzpatrick is a mustached, sinewy, well-tanned Alabama native

-somewhere near his late forties, with a fondness for chewing tobacco,

-powerful computers, and salty, down-home homilies.  We'd met before,

-at FCIC in Arizona.

-

-The Financial Fraud Institute is one of the nine divisions at FLETC.

-Besides Financial Fraud, there's Driver & Marine, Firearms,

-and Physical Training.  These are specialized pursuits.

-There are also five general training divisions:  Basic Training,

-Operations, Enforcement Techniques, Legal Division, and Behavioral Science.

-

-Somewhere in this curriculum is everything necessary to turn green college

-graduates into federal agents.  First they're given ID cards.  Then they get

-the rather miserable-looking blue coveralls known as "smurf suits."

-The trainees are assigned a barracks and a cafeteria, and immediately

-set on FLETC's bone-grinding physical training routine.  Besides the

-obligatory  daily jogging--(the trainers run up danger flags beside

-the track when the humidity rises high enough to threaten heat stroke)--

-here's the Nautilus machines, the martial arts, the survival skills. . . .

-

-The eighteen federal agencies who maintain on-site academies at FLETC

-employ a wide variety of specialized law enforcement units, some of them

-rather arcane.  There's Border Patrol, IRS Criminal Investigation Division,

-Park Service, Fish and Wildlife, Customs, Immigration, Secret Service and

-the Treasury's uniformed subdivisions. . . .  If you're a federal cop

-and you don't work for the FBI, you train at FLETC.  This includes people

-as apparently obscure as the agents of the Railroad Retirement Board

-Inspector General.  Or the Tennessee Valley Authority Police,

-who are in fact federal police officers, and can and do arrest criminals

-on the federal property of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

-

-And then there are the computer-crime people.  All sorts, all backgrounds.

-Mr. Fitzpatrick is not jealous of his specialized knowledge.  Cops all over,

-in every branch of service, may feel a need to learn what he can teach.

-Backgrounds don't matter much.  Fitzpatrick himself was originally a

-Border Patrol veteran, then became a Border Patrol instructor at FLETC.

-His Spanish is still fluent--but he found himself strangely fascinated

-when the first computers showed up at the Training Center.  Fitzpatrick

-did have a background in electrical engineering, and though he never

-considered himself a computer hacker, he somehow found himself writing

-useful little programs for this new and promising gizmo.

-

-He began looking into the general subject of computers and crime,

-reading Donn Parker's books and articles, keeping an ear cocked

-for war stories, useful insights from the field, the up-and-coming

-people of the local computer-crime and high-technology units. . . .

-Soon he got a reputation around FLETC as the resident "computer expert,"

-and that reputation alone brought him more exposure, more experience--

-until one day he looked around, and sure enough he WAS a federal

-computer-crime expert.

-

-In fact, this unassuming, genial man may be THE federal computer-crime expert.

-There are plenty of very good computer people, and plenty of very good

-federal investigators, but the area where these worlds of expertise overlap

-is very slim.  And Carlton Fitzpatrick has been right at the center of that

-since 1985, the first year of the Colluquy, a group which owes much to

-his influence.

-

-He seems quite at home in his modest, acoustic-tiled office,

-with its Ansel Adams-style Western photographic art, a gold-framed

-Senior Instructor Certificate, and a towering bookcase crammed with

-three-ring binders with ominous titles such as Datapro Reports on

-Information Security and CFCA Telecom Security '90.

-

-The phone rings every ten minutes; colleagues show up at the door

-to chat about new developments in locksmithing or to shake their heads

-over the latest dismal developments in the BCCI global banking scandal.

-

-Carlton Fitzpatrick is a fount of computer-crime war-stories,

-related in an acerbic drawl.  He tells me the colorful tale

-of a hacker caught in California some years back.  He'd been

-raiding systems, typing code without a detectable break,

-for twenty, twenty-four, thirty-six hours straight.  Not just

-logged on--TYPING.  Investigators were baffled.  Nobody

-could do that.  Didn't he have to go to the bathroom?

-Was it some kind of automatic keyboard-whacking device

-that could actually type code?

-

-A raid on the suspect's home revealed a situation of astonishing squalor.

-The hacker turned out to be a Pakistani computer-science student who had

-flunked out of a California university.  He'd gone completely underground

-as an illegal electronic immigrant, and was selling stolen phone-service

-to stay alive.  The place was not merely messy and dirty, but in a state

-of psychotic disorder.  Powered by some weird mix of culture shock,

-computer addiction, and amphetamines, the suspect had in fact been sitting

-in front of his computer for a day and a half straight, with snacks and

-drugs at hand on the edge of his desk and a chamber-pot under his chair.

-

-Word about stuff like this gets around in the hacker-tracker community.

-

-Carlton Fitzpatrick takes me for a guided tour by car around the

-FLETC grounds.  One of our first sights is the biggest indoor

-firing range in the world.  There are federal trainees in there,

-Fitzpatrick assures me politely, blasting away with a wide variety

-of automatic weapons: Uzis, Glocks, AK-47s. . . .  He's willing to

-take me inside.  I tell him I'm sure that's really interesting,

-but I'd rather see his computers.  Carlton Fitzpatrick seems quite

-surprised and pleased.  I'm apparently the first journalist he's ever

-seen who has turned down the shooting gallery in favor of microchips.

-

-Our next stop is a favorite with touring Congressmen:  the three-mile

-long FLETC driving range.  Here trainees of the Driver & Marine Division

-are taught high-speed pursuit skills, setting and breaking road-blocks,

-diplomatic security driving for VIP limousines. . . .  A favorite FLETC

-pastime is to strap a passing Senator into the passenger seat beside a

-Driver & Marine trainer, hit a hundred miles an hour, then take it right into

-"the skid-pan," a section of greased track  where two tons of Detroit iron

-can whip and spin like a hockey puck.

-

-Cars don't fare well at FLETC.  First they're rifled again and again

-for search practice.  Then they do 25,000 miles of high-speed

-pursuit training; they get about seventy miles per set

-of steel-belted radials.  Then it's off to the skid pan,

-where sometimes they roll and tumble headlong in the grease.

-When they're sufficiently grease-stained, dented, and creaky,

-they're sent to the roadblock unit, where they're battered without pity.

-And finally then they're sacrificed to the Bureau of Alcohol,

-Tobacco and Firearms, whose trainees learn the ins and outs

-of car-bomb work by blowing them into smoking wreckage.

-

-There's a railroad box-car on the FLETC grounds, and a large

-grounded boat, and a propless plane; all training-grounds for searches.

-The plane sits forlornly on a patch of weedy tarmac next to an eerie

-blockhouse known as the "ninja compound," where anti-terrorism specialists

-practice hostage rescues.  As I gaze on this creepy paragon of modern

-low-intensity warfare, my nerves are jangled by a sudden staccato outburst

-of automatic weapons fire, somewhere in the woods to my right.

-"Nine-millimeter," Fitzpatrick judges calmly.

-

-Even the eldritch ninja compound pales somewhat compared

-to the truly surreal area known as "the raid-houses."

-This is a street lined on both sides with nondescript

-concrete-block houses with flat pebbled roofs.

-They were once officers' quarters. Now they are training grounds.

-The first one to our left, Fitzpatrick tells me, has been specially

-adapted for computer search-and-seizure practice.  Inside it has been

-wired for video from top to bottom, with eighteen pan-and-tilt

-remotely controlled videocams mounted on walls and in corners.

-Every movement of the trainee agent is recorded live by teachers,

-for later taped analysis.  Wasted movements, hesitations, possibly lethal

-tactical mistakes--all are gone over in detail.

-

-Perhaps the weirdest single aspect of this building is its front door,

-scarred and scuffed all along the bottom, from the repeated impact,

-day after day, of federal shoe-leather.

-

-Down at the far end of the row of raid-houses some people are practicing

-a murder.  We drive by slowly as some very young and rather nervous-looking

-federal trainees interview a heavyset bald man on the raid-house lawn.

-Dealing with murder takes a lot of practice; first you have to learn

-to control your own instinctive disgust and panic, then you have to learn

-to control the reactions of a nerve-shredded crowd of civilians,

-some of whom may have just lost a loved one, some of whom may be murderers--

-quite possibly both at once.

-

-A dummy plays the corpse.  The roles of the bereaved, the morbidly curious,

-and the homicidal are played, for pay, by local Georgians:  waitresses,

-musicians, most anybody who needs to moonlight and can learn a script.

-These people, some of whom are FLETC regulars year after year,

-must surely have one of the strangest jobs in the world.

-

-Something about the scene:  "normal" people in a weird situation,

-standing around talking in bright Georgia sunshine, unsuccessfully

-pretending that something dreadful has gone on, while a dummy lies

-inside on faked bloodstains. . . .  While behind this weird masquerade,

-like a nested set of Russian dolls, are grim future realities of real death,

-real violence, real murders of real people, that these young agents

-will really investigate, many times during their careers. . . .

-Over and over. . . .  Will those anticipated murders look like this,

-feel like this--not as "real" as these amateur actors are trying to

-make it seem, but both as "real," and as numbingly unreal, as watching

-fake people standing around on a fake lawn?  Something about this scene

-unhinges me.  It seems nightmarish to me, Kafkaesque.  I simply don't

-know how to take it; my head is turned around; I don't know whether to laugh,

-cry, or just shudder.

-

-When the tour is over, Carlton Fitzpatrick and I talk about computers.

-For the first time cyberspace seems like quite a comfortable place.

-It seems very real to me suddenly, a place where I know what I'm talking about,

-a place I'm used to.  It's real.  "Real."  Whatever.

-

-Carlton Fitzpatrick is the only person I've met in cyberspace circles

-who is happy with his present equipment.  He's got a 5 Meg RAM PC with

-a 112 meg hard disk; a 660 meg's on the way.  He's got a Compaq 386 desktop,

-and a Zenith 386 laptop with 120 meg.  Down the hall is a NEC Multi-Sync 2A

-with a CD-ROM drive and a 9600 baud modem with four com-lines.

-There's a training minicomputer, and a 10-meg local mini just for the Center,

-and a lab-full of student PC clones and half-a-dozen Macs or so.

-There's a Data General MV 2500 with 8 meg on board and a 370 meg disk.

-

-Fitzpatrick plans to run a UNIX board on the Data General when he's

-finished beta-testing the software for it, which he wrote himself.

-It'll have E-mail features, massive files on all manner of computer-crime

-and investigation procedures, and will follow the computer-security

-specifics of the Department of Defense "Orange Book."  He thinks

-it will be the biggest BBS in the federal government.

-

-Will it have Phrack on it?  I ask wryly.

-

-Sure, he tells me.  Phrack, TAP, Computer Underground Digest,

-all that stuff.  With proper disclaimers, of course.

-

-I ask him if he plans to be the sysop.  Running a system that size is very

-time-consuming, and Fitzpatrick teaches two three-hour courses every day.

-

-No, he says seriously, FLETC has to get its money worth out of the instructors.

-He thinks he can get a local volunteer to do it, a high-school student.

-

-He says a bit more, something I think about an Eagle Scout law-enforcement

-liaison program, but my mind has rocketed off in disbelief.

-

-"You're going to put a TEENAGER in charge of a federal security BBS?"

-I'm speechless.  It hasn't escaped my notice that the FLETC Financial

-Fraud Institute is the ULTIMATE hacker-trashing target; there is stuff in here,

-stuff of such utter and consummate cool by every standard of the

-digital underground. . . .

-

-I imagine the hackers of my acquaintance, fainting dead-away from

-forbidden-knowledge greed-fits, at the mere prospect of cracking

-the superultra top-secret computers used to train the Secret Service

-in computer-crime. . . .

-

-"Uhm, Carlton," I babble, "I'm sure he's a really nice kid and all,

-but that's a terrible temptation to set in front of somebody who's,

-you know, into computers and just starting out. . . ."

-

-"Yeah," he says, "that did occur to me."  For the first time I begin

-to suspect that he's pulling my leg.

-

-He seems proudest when he shows me an ongoing project called JICC,

-Joint Intelligence Control Council.  It's based on the services provided

-by EPIC, the El Paso Intelligence Center, which supplies data and intelligence

-to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard,

-and the state police of the four southern border states.  Certain EPIC files

-can now be accessed by drug-enforcement police of Central America,

-South America and the Caribbean, who can also trade information

-among themselves. Using a telecom program called "White Hat,"

-written by two brothers named Lopez from the Dominican Republic,

-police can now network internationally on inexpensive PCs.

-Carlton Fitzpatrick is teaching a class of drug-war agents

-from the Third World, and he's very proud of their progress.

-Perhaps soon the sophisticated smuggling networks of the

-Medellin Cartel will be matched by a sophisticated computer

-network of the Medellin Cartel's sworn enemies.  They'll track boats,

-track contraband, track the international drug-lords who now leap over

-borders with great ease, defeating the police through the clever use

-of fragmented national jurisdictions.

-

-JICC and EPIC must remain beyond the scope of this book.

-They seem to me to be very large topics fraught with complications

-that I am not fit to judge.  I do know, however, that the international,

-computer-assisted networking of police, across national boundaries,

-is something that Carlton Fitzpatrick considers very important,

-a harbinger of a desirable future.  I also know that networks

-by their nature ignore physical boundaries.  And I also know

-that where you put communications you put a community,

-and that when those communities become self-aware

-they will fight to preserve themselves and to expand their influence.

-I make no judgements whether this is good or bad.

-It's just cyberspace; it's just the way things are.

-

-I asked Carlton Fitzpatrick what advice he would have for

-a twenty-year-old who wanted to shine someday in the world

-of electronic law enforcement.

-

-He told me that the number one rule was simply not to be

-scared of computers.  You don't need to be an obsessive

-"computer weenie," but you mustn't be buffaloed just because

-some machine looks fancy.  The advantages computers give

-smart crooks are matched by the advantages they give smart cops.

-Cops in the future will have to enforce the law "with their heads,

-not their holsters."  Today you can make good cases without ever

-leaving your office.  In the future, cops who resist the computer

-revolution will never get far beyond walking a beat.

-

-I asked Carlton Fitzpatrick if he had some single message for the public;

-some single thing that he would most like the American public to know

-about his work.

-

-He thought about it while.  "Yes," he said finally.  "TELL me the rules,

-and I'll TEACH those rules!"  He looked me straight in the eye.

-"I do the best that I can."

-

-

-

-PART FOUR:  THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS

-

-

-The story of the Hacker Crackdown, as we have followed it thus far,

-has been technological, subcultural, criminal and legal.

-The story of the Civil Libertarians, though it partakes

-of all those other aspects, is profoundly and thoroughly POLITICAL.

-

-In 1990, the obscure, long-simmering struggle over the ownership

-and nature of cyberspace became loudly and irretrievably public.

-People from some of the oddest corners of American society suddenly

-found themselves public figures.  Some of these people found this

-situation much more than they had ever bargained for.  They backpedalled,

-and tried to retreat back to the mandarin obscurity of their cozy

-subcultural niches.  This was generally to prove a mistake.

-

-But the civil libertarians seized the day in 1990.  They found themselves

-organizing, propagandizing, podium-pounding, persuading, touring,

-negotiating, posing for publicity photos, submitting to interviews,

-squinting in the limelight as they tried a tentative, but growingly

-sophisticated, buck-and-wing upon the public stage.

-

-It's not hard to see why the civil libertarians should have

-this competitive advantage.

-

-The  hackers  of the digital underground are an hermetic elite.

-They find it hard to make any remotely convincing case for

-their actions in front of the general public.  Actually,

-hackers roundly despise the "ignorant" public, and have never

-trusted the judgement of "the system."  Hackers do propagandize,

-but only among themselves, mostly in giddy, badly spelled manifestos

-of class warfare, youth rebellion or naive techie utopianism.

-Hackers must strut and boast in order to establish and preserve

-their underground reputations.  But if they speak out too loudly

-and publicly, they will break the fragile surface-tension of the underground,

-and they will be harrassed or arrested.  Over the longer term,

-most hackers stumble, get busted, get betrayed, or simply give up.

-As a political force, the digital underground is hamstrung.

-

-The telcos, for their part, are an ivory tower under protracted seige.

-They have plenty of money with which to push their calculated public image,

-but they waste much energy and goodwill attacking one another with

-slanderous and demeaning ad campaigns.  The telcos have suffered

-at the hands of politicians, and, like hackers, they don't trust

-the public's judgement.  And this distrust may be well-founded.

-Should the general public of the high-tech 1990s come to understand

-its own best interests in telecommunications, that might well pose

-a grave threat to the specialized technical power and authority

-that the telcos have relished for over a century.  The telcos do

-have strong advantages: loyal employees, specialized expertise,

-influence in the halls of power, tactical allies in law enforcement,

-and unbelievably vast amounts of money.  But politically speaking, they lack

-genuine grassroots support; they simply don't seem to have many friends.

-

-Cops know a lot of things other people don't know.

-But cops willingly reveal only those aspects of their

-knowledge that they feel will meet their institutional

-purposes and further public order.  Cops have respect,

-they have responsibilities, they have power in the streets

-and even power in the home, but cops don't do particularly

-well in limelight.  When pressed, they will step out in the

-public gaze to threaten bad-guys, or to cajole prominent citizens,

-or perhaps to sternly lecture the naive and misguided.

-But then they go back within their time-honored fortress

-of the station-house, the courtroom and the rule-book.

-

-The electronic civil libertarians, however, have proven to be

-born political animals.  They seemed to grasp very early on

-the postmodern truism that communication is power.  Publicity is power.

-Soundbites are power.  The ability to shove one's issue onto the public

-agenda--and KEEP IT THERE--is power.  Fame is power.  Simple personal

-fluency and eloquence can be power, if you can somehow catch the

-public's eye and ear.

-

-The civil libertarians had no monopoly on "technical power"--

-though they all owned computers, most were not particularly

-advanced computer experts.  They had a good deal of money,

-but nowhere near the earthshaking wealth and the galaxy

-of resources possessed by telcos or federal agencies.

-They had no ability to arrest people.  They carried

-out no phreak and hacker covert dirty-tricks.

-

-But they really knew how to network.

-

-Unlike the other groups in this book, the civil libertarians

-have operated very much in the open, more or less right

-in the public hurly-burly.  They have lectured audiences galore

-and talked to countless journalists, and have learned to

-refine their spiels.  They've kept the cameras clicking,

-kept those faxes humming, swapped that email,

-run those photocopiers on overtime, licked envelopes

-and spent small fortunes on airfare and long-distance.

-In an information society, this open, overt, obvious activity

-has proven to be a profound advantage.

-

-In 1990, the civil libertarians of cyberspace assembled

-out of nowhere in particular, at warp speed.  This "group"

-(actually, a networking gaggle of interested parties

-which scarcely deserves even that loose term) has almost nothing

-in the way of formal organization.  Those formal civil libertarian

-organizations which did take an interest in cyberspace issues,

-mainly the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

-and the American Civil Liberties Union, were carried along

-by events in 1990, and acted mostly as adjuncts,

-underwriters or launching-pads.

-

-The civil libertarians nevertheless enjoyed the greatest success

-of any of the groups in the Crackdown of 1990.  At this writing,

-their future looks rosy and the political initiative is firmly in their hands.

-This should be kept in mind as we study the highly unlikely lives

-and lifestyles of the people who actually made this happen.

-

-#

-

-In June 1989, Apple Computer, Inc., of Cupertino,

-California, had a problem.  Someone had illicitly copied

-a small piece of Apple's proprietary software, software

-which controlled an internal chip driving the Macintosh

-screen display.  This Color QuickDraw source code was

-a closely guarded piece of Apple's intellectual property.

-Only trusted Apple insiders were supposed to possess it.

-

-But the "NuPrometheus League" wanted things otherwise.

-This person (or persons) made several illicit copies

-of this source code, perhaps as many as two dozen.

-He (or she, or they) then put those illicit floppy disks

-into envelopes and mailed them to people all over America:

-people in the computer industry who were associated with,

-but not directly employed by, Apple Computer.

-

-The NuPrometheus caper was a complex, highly ideological,

-and very hacker-like crime.  Prometheus, it will be recalled,

-stole the fire of the Gods and gave this potent gift to the

-general ranks of downtrodden mankind.  A similar god-in-the-manger

-attitude was implied for the corporate elite of Apple Computer,

-while the "Nu" Prometheus had himself cast in the role of rebel demigod.

-The illicitly copied data was given away for free.

-

-The new Prometheus, whoever he was, escaped the

-fate of the ancient Greek Prometheus, who was chained

-to a rock for centuries by the vengeful gods while an eagle

-tore and ate his liver.  On the other hand, NuPrometheus

-chickened out somewhat by comparison with his role model.

-The small chunk of Color QuickDraw code he had filched

-and replicated was more or less useless to Apple's

-industrial rivals (or, in fact, to anyone else).

-Instead of giving fire to mankind, it was more as if

-NuPrometheus had photocopied the schematics for part of a Bic lighter.

-The act was not a genuine work of industrial espionage.

-It was best interpreted as a symbolic, deliberate slap

-in the face for the Apple corporate heirarchy.

-

-Apple's internal struggles were well-known in the industry.  Apple's founders,

-Jobs and Wozniak, had both taken their leave long since.  Their raucous core

-of senior employees had been a barnstorming crew of 1960s Californians,

-many of them markedly less than happy with the new button-down multimillion

-dollar regime at Apple.  Many of the programmers and developers who had

-invented the Macintosh model in the early 1980s had also taken their leave of

-the company.  It was they, not the current masters of Apple's corporate fate,

-who had invented the stolen Color QuickDraw code.  The NuPrometheus stunt

-was well-calculated to wound company morale.

-

-Apple called the FBI.  The Bureau takes an interest in high-profile

-intellectual-property theft cases, industrial espionage and theft

-of trade secrets.  These were likely the right people to call,

-and rumor has it that the entities responsible were in fact discovered

-by the FBI, and then quietly squelched by Apple management.  NuPrometheus

-was never publicly charged with a crime, or prosecuted, or jailed.

-But there were no further illicit releases of Macintosh internal software.

-Eventually the painful issue of NuPrometheus was allowed to fade.

-

-In the meantime, however, a large number of puzzled bystanders

-found themselves entertaining surprise guests from the FBI.

-

-One of these people was John Perry Barlow.  Barlow is a most unusual man,

-difficult to describe in conventional terms.  He is perhaps best known as

-a songwriter for the Grateful Dead, for he composed lyrics for

-"Hell in a Bucket," "Picasso Moon," "Mexicali Blues," "I Need a Miracle,"

-and many more; he has been writing for the band since 1970.

-

-Before we tackle the vexing question as to why a rock lyricist

-should be interviewed by the FBI in a computer-crime case,

-it might be well to say a word or two about the Grateful Dead.

-The Grateful Dead are perhaps the most successful and long-lasting

-of the numerous cultural emanations from the Haight-Ashbury district

-of San Francisco, in the glory days of Movement politics and

-lysergic transcendance.  The Grateful Dead are a nexus, a veritable

-whirlwind, of  applique decals, psychedelic vans, tie-dyed T-shirts,

-earth-color denim, frenzied dancing and open and unashamed drug use.

-The symbols, and the realities, of Californian freak power surround

-the Grateful Dead like knotted macrame.

-

-The Grateful Dead and their thousands of Deadhead devotees

-are radical Bohemians.  This much is widely understood.

-Exactly what this implies in the 1990s is rather more problematic.

-

-The Grateful Dead are among the world's most popular

-and wealthy entertainers:  number 20, according to Forbes magazine,

-right between M.C. Hammer and Sean Connery.  In 1990, this jeans-clad

-group of purported raffish outcasts earned seventeen million dollars.

-They have been earning sums much along this line for quite some time now.

-

-And while the Dead are not investment bankers or three-piece-suit

-tax specialists--they are, in point of fact, hippie musicians--

-this money has not been squandered in senseless Bohemian excess.

-The Dead have been quietly active for many years, funding various

-worthy activities in their  extensive and widespread cultural community.

-

-The Grateful Dead are not conventional players in the American

-power establishment.  They nevertheless are something of a force

-to be reckoned with.  They have a lot of money and a lot of friends

-in many places, both likely and unlikely.

-

-The Dead may be known for back-to-the-earth environmentalist rhetoric,

-but this hardly makes them anti-technological Luddites.  On the contrary,

-like most rock musicians, the Grateful Dead have spent their entire adult

-lives in the company of complex electronic equipment.  They have funds to burn

-on any sophisticated tool and toy that might happen to catch their fancy.

-And their fancy is quite extensive.

-

-The Deadhead community boasts any number of recording engineers,

-lighting experts, rock video mavens, electronic technicians

-of all descriptions.  And the drift goes both ways.  Steve Wozniak,

-Apple's co-founder, used to throw rock festivals.  Silicon Valley rocks out.

-

-These are the 1990s, not the 1960s.  Today, for a surprising number of people

-all over America, the supposed dividing line between Bohemian and technician

-simply no longer exists.  People of this sort may have a set of windchimes

-and a dog with a knotted kerchief 'round its neck, but they're also quite

-likely to own a multimegabyte Macintosh running MIDI synthesizer software

-and trippy fractal simulations.  These days, even Timothy Leary himself,

-prophet of LSD, does virtual-reality computer-graphics demos in

-his lecture tours.

-

-John Perry Barlow is not a member of the Grateful Dead.  He is, however,

-a ranking Deadhead.

-

-Barlow describes himself as a "techno-crank."  A vague term like

-"social activist" might not be far from the mark, either.

-But Barlow might be better described as a "poet"--if one keeps in mind

-Percy Shelley's archaic definition of poets as "unacknowledged legislators

-of the world."

-

-Barlow once made a stab at acknowledged legislator status.  In 1987,

-he narrowly missed the Republican nomination for a seat in the

-Wyoming State Senate.  Barlow is a Wyoming native, the third-generation

-scion of a well-to-do cattle-ranching family.  He is in his early forties,

-married and the father of three daughters.

-

-Barlow is not much troubled by other people's narrow notions of consistency.

-In the late 1980s, this Republican rock lyricist cattle rancher sold his ranch

-and became a computer telecommunications devotee.

-

-The free-spirited Barlow made this transition with ease.  He genuinely

-enjoyed computers.  With a beep of his modem, he leapt from small-town

-Pinedale, Wyoming, into electronic contact with a large and lively crowd

-of bright, inventive, technological sophisticates from all over the world.

-Barlow found the social milieu of computing attractive: its fast-lane pace,

-its blue-sky rhetoric, its open-endedness.  Barlow began dabbling in

-computer journalism, with marked success, as he was a quick study,

-and both shrewd and eloquent.  He frequently travelled to San Francisco

-to network with Deadhead friends.  There Barlow made extensive contacts

-throughout the Californian computer community, including friendships

-among the wilder spirits at Apple.

-

-In May 1990, Barlow received a visit from a local Wyoming agent of the FBI.

-The NuPrometheus case had reached Wyoming.

-

-Barlow was troubled to find himself under investigation in an

-area of his interests once quite free of federal attention.

-He had to struggle to explain the very nature of computer-crime

-to a headscratching local FBI man who specialized in cattle-rustling.

-Barlow, chatting helpfully and demonstrating the wonders of his modem

-to the puzzled fed, was alarmed to find all "hackers" generally under

-FBI suspicion as an evil influence in the electronic community.

-The FBI, in pursuit of a hacker called "NuPrometheus," were tracing

-attendees of a suspect group called the Hackers Conference.

-

-The Hackers Conference, which had been started in 1984, was a

-yearly Californian meeting of digital pioneers and enthusiasts.

-The hackers of the Hackers Conference had little if anything to do

-with the hackers of the digital underground.  On the contrary,

-the hackers of this conference were mostly well-to-do Californian

-high-tech CEOs, consultants, journalists and entrepreneurs.

-(This group of hackers were the exact sort of "hackers"

-most likely to react with militant fury at any criminal

-degradation of the term "hacker.")

-

-Barlow, though he was not arrested or accused of a crime,

-and though his computer had certainly not gone out the door,

-was very troubled by this anomaly.  He carried the word to the Well.

-

-Like the Hackers Conference, "the Well" was an emanation of the

-Point Foundation.  Point Foundation, the inspiration of a wealthy

-Californian 60s radical named Stewart Brand, was to be a major

-launch-pad of the civil libertarian effort.

-

-Point Foundation's cultural efforts, like those of their fellow Bay Area

-Californians the Grateful Dead, were multifaceted and multitudinous.

-Rigid ideological consistency had never been a strong suit of the

-Whole Earth Catalog.  This Point publication had enjoyed a strong

-vogue during the late 60s and early 70s, when it offered hundreds

-of practical (and not so practical) tips on communitarian living,

-environmentalism, and getting back-to-the-land.  The Whole Earth Catalog,

-and its sequels, sold two and half million copies and won a

-National Book Award.

-

-With the slow collapse of American radical dissent, the Whole Earth Catalog

-had slipped to a more modest corner of the cultural radar; but in its

-magazine incarnation, CoEvolution Quarterly, the Point Foundation

-continued to offer a magpie potpourri of "access to tools and ideas."

-

-CoEvolution Quarterly, which started in 1974, was never a widely

-popular magazine.  Despite periodic outbreaks of millenarian fervor,

-CoEvolution Quarterly failed to revolutionize Western civilization

-and replace leaden centuries of history with bright new Californian paradigms.

-Instead, this propaganda arm of Point Foundation cakewalked a fine line between

-impressive brilliance and New Age flakiness.  CoEvolution Quarterly carried

-no advertising, cost a lot, and came out on cheap newsprint with modest

-black-and-white graphics.  It was poorly distributed, and spread mostly

-by subscription and word of mouth.

-

-It could not seem to grow beyond 30,000 subscribers.

-And yet--it never seemed to shrink much, either.

-Year in, year out, decade in, decade out, some strange

-demographic minority accreted to support the magazine.

-The enthusiastic readership did not seem to have much

-in the way of coherent politics or  ideals.  It was sometimes

-hard to understand what held them together (if the often bitter

-debate in the letter-columns could be described as "togetherness").

-

-But if the magazine did not flourish, it was resilient; it got by.

-Then, in 1984, the birth-year of the Macintosh computer,

-CoEvolution Quarterly suddenly hit the rapids.  Point Foundation

-had discovered the computer revolution.  Out came the Whole Earth

-Software Catalog of 1984, arousing headscratching doubts among

-the tie-dyed faithful, and rabid enthusiasm among the nascent

-"cyberpunk" milieu, present company included.  Point Foundation

-started its yearly Hackers Conference, and began to take an

-extensive interest in the strange new possibilities of

-digital counterculture.  CoEvolution Quarterlyfolded its teepee,

-replaced by Whole Earth Software Review and eventually by Whole Earth

-Review (the magazine's present incarnation, currently under

-the editorship of virtual-reality maven Howard Rheingold).

-

-1985 saw the birth of the "WELL"--the "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link."

-The Well was Point Foundation's bulletin board system.

-

-As boards went, the Well was an anomaly from the beginning,

-and remained one.  It was local to San Francisco.

-It was huge, with multiple phonelines and enormous files

-of commentary.  Its complex UNIX-based software might be

-most charitably described as "user-opaque."  It was run on

-a mainframe out of the rambling offices of a non-profit

-cultural foundation in Sausalito.  And it was crammed with

-fans of the Grateful Dead.

-

-Though the Well was peopled by chattering hipsters of the Bay Area

-counterculture, it was by no means a "digital underground" board.

-Teenagers were fairly scarce; most Well users (known as "Wellbeings")

-were thirty- and forty-something Baby Boomers.  They tended to work

-in the information industry: hardware, software, telecommunications,

-media, entertainment.  Librarians, academics, and journalists were

-especially common on the Well, attracted by Point Foundation's

-open-handed distribution of "tools and ideas."

-

-There were no anarchy files on the Well, scarcely a

-dropped hint about access codes or credit-card theft.

-No one used handles.  Vicious "flame-wars" were held to

-a comparatively civilized rumble.  Debates were sometimes sharp,

-but no Wellbeing ever claimed that a rival had disconnected his phone,

-trashed his house, or posted his credit card numbers.

-

-The Well grew slowly as the 1980s advanced.  It charged a modest sum

-for access and storage, and lost money for years--but not enough to hamper

-the Point Foundation, which was nonprofit anyway.  By 1990, the Well

-had about five thousand users.  These users wandered about a gigantic

-cyberspace smorgasbord of "Conferences", each conference itself consisting

-of a welter of "topics," each topic containing dozens, sometimes hundreds

-of comments, in a tumbling, multiperson debate that could last for months

-or years on end.

-

-

-In 1991, the Well's list of conferences looked like this:

-

-

-CONFERENCES ON THE WELL

-

-WELL "Screenzine" Digest  (g zine)

-

-Best of the WELL - vintage material - (g best)

-

-Index listing of new topics in all conferences - (g newtops)

-

-Business - Education

-----------------------

-

-Apple Library Users Group(g alug)     Agriculture       (g agri)

-Brainstorming            (g brain)    Classifieds       (g cla)

-Computer Journalism      (g cj)       Consultants       (g consult)

-Consumers                (g cons)     Design            (g design)

-Desktop Publishing       (g desk)     Disability        (g disability)

-Education                (g ed)       Energy            (g energy91)

-Entrepreneurs            (g entre)    Homeowners        (g home)

-Indexing                 (g indexing) Investments       (g invest)

-Kids91                   (g kids)     Legal             (g legal)

-One Person Business      (g one)

-Periodical/newsletter    (g per)

-Telecomm Law             (g tcl)      The Future        (g fut)

-Translators              (g trans)    Travel            (g tra)

-Work                     (g work)

-

-Electronic Frontier Foundation    (g eff)

-Computers, Freedom & Privacy      (g cfp)

-Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility  (g cpsr)

-

-Social - Political - Humanities

----------------------------------

-

-Aging                  (g gray)        AIDS              (g aids)

-Amnesty International  (g amnesty)     Archives          (g arc)

-Berkeley               (g berk)        Buddhist          (g wonderland)

-Christian              (g cross)       Couples           (g couples)

-Current Events         (g curr)        Dreams            (g dream)

-Drugs                  (g dru)         East Coast        (g east)

-Emotional Health@@@@   (g private)     Erotica           (g eros)

-Environment            (g env)         Firearms          (g firearms)

-First Amendment        (g first)       Fringes of Reason (g fringes)

-Gay                    (g gay)         Gay (Private)#    (g gaypriv)

-Geography              (g geo)         German            (g german)

-Gulf War               (g gulf)        Hawaii            (g aloha)

-Health                 (g heal)        History           (g hist)

-Holistic               (g holi)        Interview         (g inter)

-Italian                (g ital)        Jewish            (g jew)

-Liberty                (g liberty)     Mind              (g mind)

-Miscellaneous          (g misc)        Men on the WELL@@ (g mow)

-Network Integration    (g origin)      Nonprofits        (g non)

-North Bay              (g north)       Northwest         (g nw)

-Pacific Rim            (g pacrim)      Parenting         (g par)

-Peace                  (g pea)         Peninsula         (g pen)

-Poetry                 (g poetry)      Philosophy        (g phi)

-Politics               (g pol)         Psychology        (g psy)

-Psychotherapy          (g therapy)     Recovery##        (g recovery)

-San Francisco          (g sanfran)     Scams             (g scam)

-Sexuality              (g sex)         Singles           (g singles)

-Southern               (g south)       Spanish           (g spanish)

-Spirituality           (g spirit)      Tibet             (g tibet)

-Transportation         (g transport)   True Confessions  (g tru)

-Unclear                (g unclear)     WELL Writer's Workshop@@@(g www)

-Whole Earth            (g we)          Women on the WELL@(g wow)

-Words                  (g words)       Writers           (g wri)

-

-@@@@Private Conference - mail wooly for entry

-@@@Private conference - mail sonia for entry

-@@Private conference - mail flash for entry

-@ Private conference - mail reva for entry

-#  Private Conference - mail hudu for entry

-## Private Conference - mail dhawk for entry

-

-Arts - Recreation - Entertainment

------------------------------------

-ArtCom Electronic Net  (g acen)

-Audio-Videophilia      (g aud)

-Bicycles               (g bike)       Bay Area Tonight@@(g bat)

-Boating                (g wet)        Books             (g books)

-CD's                   (g cd)         Comics            (g comics)

-Cooking                (g cook)       Flying            (g flying)

-Fun                    (g fun)        Games             (g games)

-Gardening              (g gard)       Kids              (g kids)

-Nightowls@             (g owl)        Jokes             (g jokes)

-MIDI                   (g midi)       Movies            (g movies)

-Motorcycling           (g ride)       Motoring          (g car)

-Music                  (g mus)        On Stage          (g onstage)

-Pets                   (g pets)       Radio             (g rad)

-Restaurant             (g rest)       Science Fiction   (g sf)

-Sports                 (g spo)        Star Trek         (g trek)

-Television             (g tv)         Theater           (g theater)

-Weird                  (g weird)      Zines/Factsheet Five(g f5)

-@Open from midnight to 6am

-@@Updated daily

-

-Grateful Dead

--------------

-Grateful Dead          (g gd)          Deadplan@         (g dp)

-Deadlit                (g deadlit)     Feedback          (g feedback)

-GD Hour                (g gdh)         Tapes             (g tapes)

-Tickets                (g tix)         Tours             (g tours)

-

-@Private conference - mail tnf for entry

-

-Computers

------------

-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 Catalogsince 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

-beyond 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 areed 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 newlywed home

-will wake the city block, divorce waits in the wings like a vulture

-over the Kalahari, and yet this is a wedding, and there is going

-to be a child from it.  Tragedies end in death; comedies in marriage.

-The Hacker Crackdown is ending in marriage.  And there will be a child.

-

-From the beginning, anomalies reign.  John Perry Barlow,

-cyberspace ranger, is here.  His color photo in

-The New York Times Magazine, Barlow scowling

-in a grim Wyoming snowscape, with long black coat,

-dark hat, a Macintosh SE30 propped on a fencepost

-and an awesome frontier rifle tucked under one arm,

-will be the single most striking visual image

-of the Hacker Crackdown.  And he is CFP's guest of honor--

-along with Gail Thackeray of the FCIC!  What on earth do

-they expect these dual guests to do with each other?  Waltz?

-

-Barlow delivers the first address.  Uncharacteristically,

-he is hoarse--the sheer volume of roadwork has worn him down.

-He speaks briefly, congenially, in a plea for conciliation,

-and takes his leave to a storm of applause.

-

-Then Gail Thackeray takes the stage.  She's visibly nervous.

-She's been on the Well a lot lately.  Reading those Barlow posts.

-Following Barlow is a challenge to anyone.  In honor of the famous

-lyricist for the Grateful Dead, she announces reedily, she is going to read--

-A POEM.  A poem she has composed herself.

-

-It's an awful poem, doggerel in the rollicking meter of Robert W. Service's

-The Cremation of Sam McGee, but it is in fact, a poem.  It's the Ballad

-of the Electronic Frontier!  A poem about the Hacker Crackdown and the

-sheer unlikelihood of CFP.  It's full of in-jokes.  The score or so cops

-in the audience, who are sitting together in a nervous claque,

-are absolutely cracking-up.  Gail's poem is the funniest goddamn thing

-they've ever heard.  The hackers and civil-libs, who had this woman figured

-for Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS, are staring with their jaws hanging loosely.

-Never in the wildest reaches of their imagination had they figured

-Gail Thackeray was capable of such a totally off-the-wall move.

-You can see them punching their mental CONTROL-RESET buttons.

-Jesus!  This woman's a hacker weirdo!  She's JUST LIKE US!

-God, this changes everything!

-

-Al Bayse, computer technician for the FBI, had been the only cop

-at the CPSR Roundtable, dragged there with his arm bent by

-Dorothy Denning.  He was guarded and tightlipped at CPSR Roundtable;

-a "lion thrown to the Christians."

-

-At CFP, backed by a claque of cops, Bayse suddenly waxes eloquent

-and even droll, describing the FBI's "NCIC 2000", a gigantic digital catalog

-of criminal records, as if he has suddenly become some weird hybrid

-of George Orwell and George Gobel.  Tentatively, he makes an arcane

-joke about statistical analysis.  At least a third of the crowd laughs aloud.

-

-"They didn't laugh at that at my last speech," Bayse observes.

-He had been addressing cops--STRAIGHT cops, not computer people.

-It had been a worthy meeting, useful one supposes, but nothing like THIS.

-There has never been ANYTHING like this.  Without any prodding,

-without any preparation, people in the audience simply begin to ask questions.

-Longhairs, freaky people, mathematicians.  Bayse is answering, politely,

-frankly, fully, like a man walking on air.  The ballroom's atmosphere

-crackles with surreality.  A female lawyer behind me breaks into a sweat

-and a hot waft of surprisingly potent and musky perfume flows off

-her pulse-points.

-

-People are giddy with laughter.  People are interested,

-fascinated, their eyes so wide and dark that they seem eroticized.

-Unlikely daisy-chains form in the halls, around the bar, on the escalators:

-cops with hackers, civil rights with FBI, Secret Service with phone phreaks.

-

-Gail Thackeray is at her crispest in a white wool sweater with a

-tiny Secret Service logo.  "I found Phiber Optik at the payphones,

-and when he saw my sweater, he turned into a PILLAR OF SALT!" she chortles.

-

-Phiber discusses his case at much length with his arresting officer,

-Don Delaney of the New York State Police.  After an hour's chat,

-the two of them look ready to begin singing "Auld Lang Syne."

-Phiber finally finds the courage to get his worst complaint off his chest.

-It isn't so much the arrest.  It was the CHARGE.  Pirating service

-off 900 numbers.  I'm a PROGRAMMER, Phiber insists.  This lame charge

-is going to hurt my reputation.  It would have been cool to be busted

-for something happening, like Section 1030 computer intrusion.

-Maybe some kind of crime that's scarcely been invented yet.

-Not lousy phone fraud.  Phooey.

-

-Delaney seems regretful.  He had a mountain of possible criminal charges

-against Phiber Optik.  The kid's gonna plead guilty anyway.  He's a

-first timer, they always plead.  Coulda charged the kid with most anything,

-and gotten the same result in the end.  Delaney seems genuinely sorry

-not to have gratified Phiber in this harmless fashion.  Too late now.

-Phiber's pled already.  All water under the bridge.  Whaddya gonna do?

-

-Delaney's got a good grasp on the hacker mentality.

-He held a press conference after he busted a bunch of

-Masters of Deception kids.  Some journo had asked him:

-"Would you describe these people as GENIUSES?"

-Delaney's deadpan answer, perfect:  "No, I would describe

-these people as DEFENDANTS."  Delaney busts a kid for

-hacking codes with repeated random dialling.  Tells the

-press that NYNEX can track this stuff in no time flat nowadays,

-and a kid has to be STUPID to do something so easy to catch.

-Dead on again:  hackers don't mind being thought of as Genghis Khan

-by the straights, but if there's anything that really gets 'em

-where they live, it's being called DUMB.

-

-Won't be as much fun for Phiber next time around.

-As a second offender he's gonna see prison.

-Hackers break the law.  They're not geniuses, either.

-They're gonna be defendants.  And yet, Delaney muses over

-a drink in the hotel bar, he has found it impossible to treat

-them as common criminals.  Delaney knows criminals.  These kids,

-by comparison, are clueless--there is just no crook vibe off of them,

-they don't smell right, they're just not BAD.

-

-Delaney has seen a lot of action.  He did Vietnam.

-He's been shot at, he has shot people.  He's a homicide

-cop from New York.  He has the appearance of a man who

-has not only seen the shit hit the fan but has seen it splattered

-across whole city blocks and left to ferment for years.

-This guy has been around.

-

-He listens to Steve Jackson tell his story.  The dreamy

-game strategist has been dealt a bad hand.  He has played

-it for all he is worth.  Under his nerdish SF-fan exterior

-is a core of iron.  Friends of his say Steve Jackson believes

-in the rules, believes in fair play.  He will never compromise

-his principles, never give up.  "Steve," Delaney says to

-Steve Jackson, "they had some balls, whoever busted you.

-You're all right!"  Jackson, stunned, falls silent and

-actually blushes with pleasure.

-

-Neidorf has grown up a lot in the past year.  The kid is

-a quick study, you gotta give him that.  Dressed by his mom,

-the fashion manager for a national clothing chain,

-Missouri college techie-frat Craig Neidorf out-dappers

-everyone at this gig but the toniest East Coast lawyers.

-The iron jaws of prison clanged shut without him and now

-law school beckons for Neidorf.  He looks like a larval Congressman.

-

-Not a "hacker," our Mr. Neidorf.  He's not interested

-in computer science.  Why should he be?  He's not

-interested in writing C code the rest of his life,

-and besides, he's seen where the chips fall.

-To the world of computer science he and Phrack

-were just a curiosity.  But to the world of law. . . .

-The kid has learned where the bodies are buried.

-He carries his notebook of press clippings wherever he goes.

-

-Phiber Optik makes fun of Neidorf for a Midwestern geek,

-for believing that "Acid Phreak" does acid and listens to acid rock.

-Hell no.  Acid's never done ACID!  Acid's into ACID HOUSE MUSIC.

-Jesus.  The very idea of doing LSD.  Our PARENTS did LSD, ya clown.

-

-Thackeray suddenly turns upon Craig Neidorf the full lighthouse

-glare of her attention and begins a determined half-hour attempt

-to WIN THE BOY OVER.  The Joan of Arc of Computer Crime is

-GIVING CAREER ADVICE TO KNIGHT LIGHTNING!  "Your experience

-would be very valuable--a real asset," she tells him with

-unmistakeable sixty-thousand-watt sincerity.  Neidorf is fascinated.

-He listens with unfeigned attention.  He's nodding and saying yes ma'am.

-Yes, Craig, you too can forget all about money and enter the glamorous

-and horribly underpaid world of PROSECUTING COMPUTER CRIME!

-You can put your former friends in prison--ooops. . . .

-

-You cannot go on dueling at modem's length indefinitely.

-You cannot beat one another senseless with rolled-up press-clippings.

-Sooner or later you have to come directly to grips.

-And yet the very act of assembling here has changed

-the entire situation drastically.  John Quarterman,

-author of The Matrix, explains the Internet at his symposium.

-It is the largest news network in the world, it is growing

-by leaps and bounds, and yet you cannot measure Internet because

-you cannot stop it in place.  It cannot stop, because there

-is no one anywhere in the world with the authority to stop Internet.

-It changes, yes, it grows, it embeds itself across the post-industrial,

-postmodern world and it generates community wherever it

-touches, and it is doing this all by itself.

-

-Phiber is different.  A very fin de siecle kid, Phiber Optik.

-Barlow says he looks like an Edwardian dandy.  He does rather.

-Shaven neck, the sides of his skull cropped hip-hop close,

-unruly tangle of black hair on top that looks pomaded,

-he stays up till four a.m.  and misses all the sessions,

-then hangs out in payphone booths with his acoustic coupler

-gutsily CRACKING SYSTEMS RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF THE HEAVIEST

-LAW ENFORCEMENT DUDES IN THE U.S., or at least PRETENDING to. . . .

-Unlike "Frank Drake."  Drake, who wrote Dorothy Denning out

-of nowhere, and asked for an interview for his cheapo

-cyberpunk fanzine, and then started grilling her on her ethics.

-She was squirmin', too. . . .  Drake, scarecrow-tall with his

-floppy blond mohawk, rotting tennis shoes and black leather jacket

-lettered ILLUMINATI in red, gives off an unmistakeable air

-of the bohemian literatus.  Drake is the kind of guy

-who reads British industrial design magazines and appreciates

-William Gibson because the quality of the prose is so tasty.

-Drake could never touch a phone or a keyboard again,

-and he'd still have the nose-ring and the blurry photocopied

-fanzines and the sampled industrial music.  He's a radical punk

-with a desktop-publishing rig and an Internet address.

-Standing next to Drake, the diminutive Phiber looks like he's

-been physically coagulated out of phone-lines.  Born to phreak.

-

-Dorothy Denning approaches Phiber suddenly.  The two of them

-are about the same height and body-build.  Denning's blue eyes

-flash behind the round window-frames of her glasses.

-"Why did you say I was `quaint?'" she asks Phiber, quaintly.

-

-It's a perfect description but Phiber is nonplussed. . .

-"Well, I uh, you know. . . ."

-

-"I also think you're quaint, Dorothy," I say, novelist to the rescue,

-the journo gift of gab. . . .  She is neat and dapper and yet there's

-an arcane quality to her, something like a Pilgrim Maiden behind

-leaded glass; if she were six inches high Dorothy Denning would look

-great inside a china cabinet. . .The Cryptographeress. . .

-The Cryptographrix. . .whatever. . . .  Weirdly, Peter Denning looks

-just like his wife, you could pick this gentleman out of a thousand guys

-as the soulmate of Dorothy Denning.  Wearing tailored slacks,

-a spotless fuzzy varsity sweater, and a neatly knotted academician's tie. . . .

-This fineboned, exquisitely polite, utterly civilized and hyperintelligent

-couple seem to have emerged from some cleaner and finer parallel universe,

-where humanity exists to do the Brain Teasers column in Scientific American.

-Why does this Nice Lady hang out with these unsavory characters?

-

-Because the time has come for it, that's why.

-Because she's the best there is at what she does.

-

-Donn Parker is here, the Great Bald Eagle of Computer Crime. . . .

-With his bald dome, great height, and enormous Lincoln-like hands,

-the great visionary pioneer of the field plows through the lesser mortals

-like an icebreaker. . . .  His eyes are fixed on the future with the

-rigidity of a bronze statue. . . .  Eventually, he tells his audience,

-all business crime will be computer crime, because businesses will do

-everything through computers.  "Computer crime" as a category will vanish.

-

-In the meantime, passing fads will flourish and fail and evaporate. . . .

-Parker's commanding, resonant voice is sphinxlike, everything is viewed

-from some eldritch valley of deep historical abstraction. . . .

-Yes, they've come and they've gone, these passing flaps in the world

-of digital computation. . . .  The radio-frequency emanation scandal. . .

-KGB and MI5 and CIA do it every day, it's easy, but nobody else ever has. . . .

-The salami-slice fraud, mostly mythical. . . .  "Crimoids," he calls them. . . .

-Computer viruses are the current crimoid champ, a lot less dangerous than

-most people let on, but the novelty is fading and there's a crimoid vacuum at

-the moment, the press is visibly hungering for something more outrageous. . . .

-The Great Man shares with us a few speculations on the coming crimoids. . . .

-Desktop Forgery!  Wow. . . .  Computers stolen just for the sake of the

-information within them--data-napping!  Happened in Britain a while ago,

-could be the coming thing. . . .  Phantom nodes in the Internet!

-

-Parker handles his overhead projector sheets with an ecclesiastical air. . . .

-He wears a grey double-breasted suit, a light blue shirt, and a

-very quiet tie of understated maroon and blue paisley. . . .

-Aphorisms emerge from him with slow, leaden emphasis. . . .

-There is no such thing as an adequately secure computer

-when one faces a sufficiently powerful adversary. . . .

-Deterrence is the most socially useful aspect of security. . . .

-People are the primary weakness in all information systems. . . .

-The entire baseline of computer security must be shifted upward. . . .

-Don't ever violate your security by publicly describing

-your security measures. . . .

-

-People in the audience are beginning to squirm, and yet

-there is something about the elemental purity of this guy's

-philosophy that compels uneasy respect. . . .  Parker sounds

-like the only sane guy left in the lifeboat, sometimes.

-The guy who can prove rigorously, from deep moral principles,

-that Harvey there, the one with the broken leg and the checkered past,

-is the one who has to be, err. . .that is, Mr. Harvey is best placed

-to make the necessary sacrifice for the security and indeed

-the very survival of the rest of this lifeboat's crew. . . .

-Computer security, Parker informs us mournfully, is a

-nasty topic, and we wish we didn't have to have  it. . . .

-The security expert, armed with method and logic, must think--imagine--

-everything that the adversary might do before the adversary might

-actually do it.  It is as if the criminal's dark brain were an

-extensive subprogram within the shining cranium of Donn Parker.

-He is a Holmes whose Moriarty does not quite yet exist

-and so must be perfectly simulated.

-

-CFP is a stellar gathering, with the giddiness of a wedding.

-It is a happy time, a happy ending, they know their world

-is changing forever tonight, and they're proud to have been there

-to see it happen, to talk, to think, to help.

-

-And yet as night falls, a certain elegiac quality manifests itself,

-as the crowd gathers beneath the chandeliers with their wineglasses

-and dessert plates.  Something is ending here, gone forever,

-and it takes a while to pinpoint it.

-

-It is the End of the Amateurs.

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

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