Hacker Crackdown

LITERA RY FREEW A RE — N ot for Com m ercialUse
by B ruce S terling
<bruces@ w ell.sf.ca.us>
Sidew ays PD F version 0.1 by E-Scribe <info@ e-scribe.com >

C O N T EN T S
P reface to the Electronic Release ofThe H acker Crackdow n
C hronology of the H acker Crackdow n
Introduction
P art 1 : CRA SH IN G TH E SYSTEM A Brief H istory of Telephony

/ Bell's G olden V aporw are / UniversalService / W ild Boys
and W ire W om en / The Electronic Com m unities / The Ungentle
Giant / The Breakup / In D efense of the System / The Crash
Post- M ortem / Landslides in Cyberspace
P art 2 : TH E D IGITA L UN D ERGRO UN D StealThis Phone /

Phreaking and H acking / The V iew From Under the
Floorboards / Boards: Core of the Underground / Phile Phun /
The Rake's Progress / Strongholds of the Elite / Sting Boards
/ H ot Potatoes / W ar on the Legion / Term inus / Phile 9-1-1
/ W ar Gam es / RealCyberpunk
P art 3 : LA W A N D O RD ER Crooked Boards / The W orld's

Biggest Hacker Bust / Teach Them a Lesson / The U.S.Secret
Service / The Secret Service Battles the Boodlers / A W alk
D ow ntow n / FCIC: The Cutting-Edge M ess / Cyberspace
Rangers / FLETC: Training the H acker-Trackers
P art 4 : TH E CIV IL LIBERTA RIA N S N uProm etheus + FBI=

GratefulD ead / W hole Earth + Com puter Revolution = W ELL /
Phiber Runs Underground and A cid Spikes the W ell/ The Trial
of Knight Lightning / Shadow haw k Plum m ets to Earth / Kyrie
in the Confessional/ $79,499 / A Scholar Investigates /
Com puters, Freedom , and Privacy
Electronic A fterw ordto *The H acker Crackdow n,* N ew

Years' D ay 1994
BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER C RAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 2

P reface to the Electronic R elease
of T he H acker C rackdow n
January 1, 1994 — A ustin, Texas
H i, I'm Bruce Sterling, the author of this electronic book.
O ut in the traditionalw orld of print, *The H acker Crackdow n* is ISBN

0 -5 5 3 -0 8 0 5 8 -X, and is form ally catalogued by the Library of
Congress as "1.Com puter crim es — United States. 2.Telephone —
United States — Corrupt practices. 3. Program m ing (Electronic com -
puters) — United States — Corrupt practices." 'Corrupt practices,' I
alw ays 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 H acker Crackdow n,* an action Iencourage heartily, you
m ay 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 legalboilerplate from the publisher. It says, and Iquote:
"N o part of this book m ay be reproduced or transm itted in any form or

by any m eans, electronic or m echanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any inform ation storage and retrievalsystem , w ithout
perm ission in w riting from the publisher. For inform ation address:
Bantam Books."
This is a pretty good disclaim er, as such disclaim ers go. Icollect intel-
lectual-property disclaim ers, and I've seen dozens of them , and this one
is at least pretty straightforw ard. In this narrow and particular case,
how ever, it isn't quite accurate. Bantam Books puts that disclaim er on
every book they publish,but Bantam Books does not,in fact,ow n the
electronic rights to this book. Ido, because of certain extensive con-
tract m aneuverings m y agent and Iw ent through before this book w as
BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER CRAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 3

w ritten. Iw ant to give those electronic publishing rights aw ay 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 schem e of m ine,
Bantam Books is not going to fuss about this. Provided you don't try to
sellthe book,they are not going to bother you for w hat you do w ith the
electronic copy of this book. If you w ant to check this out personally,
you can ask them ; they're at 1540 Broadw ay N Y N Y 10036. H ow ever,
if you w ere so foolish as to print this book and start retailing it for
m oney in violation of m y copyright and the com m ercialinterests of
Bantam Books, then Bantam , a part of the gigantic Bertelsm ann m ulti-
nationalpublishing com bine, w ould roust som e of their heavy-duty
attorneys out of hibernation and crush you like a bug. This is only to be
expected. Ididn't w rite this book so that you could m ake m oney out of it.
If anybody is gonna m ake m oney out of this book,it's gonna be m e and m y
publisher.
M y publisher deserves to m ake m oney out of this book. N ot only did the
folks at Bantam Books com m ission m e to w rite the book,and pay m e a
hefty sum to do so, but they bravely printed, in text, an electronic doc-
um ent the reproduction of w hich w as once alleged to be a federalfelony.
Bantam Books and their num erous attorneys w ere very brave and forth-
right about this book. Furtherm ore, m y form er editor at Bantam Books,
Betsy M itchell, genuinely cared about this project, and w orked hard on
it,and had a lot of w ise things to say about the m anuscript. Betsy
deserves genuine credit for this book, credit that editors too rarely get.
The critics w ere very kind to *The H acker Crackdow n,* and com m er-
cially the book has done w ell. O n the other hand, Ididn't w rite this book
in order to squeeze every last nickeland dim e out of the m itts of im pov-
erished sixteen-year-old cyberpunk high-school-students. Teenagers
don't have any m oney — (no, not even enough for the six- dollar
*H acker Crackdow n* paperback, w ith its attractive bright-red cover
and usefulindex). That's a m ajor reason w hy teenagers som etim es
succum b to the tem ptation to do things they shouldn't,such as sw iping
m y books out of libraries. Kids: this one is allyours, allright? Go
give the print version back. *8 -)
B RU C E S T E RL I N G — T H E H AC KER CR AC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 4

W ell-m eaning, public-spirited civil libertarians don't have m uch
m oney,either. A nd it seem s alm ost crim inalto snatch cash out of the
hands of A m erica's direly underpaid electronic law enforcem ent com -
m unity.
If you're a com puter cop, a hacker, or an electronic civilliberties

activist, you are the target audience for this book. Iw rote this book
because Iw anted to help you,and help other people understand you and
your unique, uhm , problem s. Iw rote this book to aid your activities,
and to contribute to the public discussion of im portant politicalissues.
In giving the text aw ay in this fashion, Iam directly contributing to the
book's ultim ate aim : to help civilize cyberspace.
Inform ation *w ants* to be free. A nd the inform ation inside this book
longs for freedom w ith a peculiar intensity. Igenuinely believe that the
naturalhabitat of this book is inside an electronic netw ork. That m ay
not be the easiest direct m ethod to generate revenue for the book's
author, but that doesn't m atter; this is w here this book belongs by its
nature. I've w ritten other books — plenty of other books — and I'll
w rite m ore and Iam w riting m ore, but this one is special. Iam m aking
*The H acker Crackdow n* available electronically as w idely as Ican
conveniently m anage, and if you like the book, and think it is useful,
then Iurge you to do the sam e w ith it.
You can copy this electronic book. Copy the heck out of it,be m y guest,
and give those copies to anybody w ho w ants them . The nascent w orld of
cyberspace is fullof sysadm ins, teachers, trainers, cybrarians, netgu-
rus, and various species of cybernetic activist. If you're one of those
people, Iknow about you,and Iknow the hassle you go through to try to
help people learn about the electronic frontier. Ihope that possessing
this book in electronic form w illlessen your troubles. Granted, this
treatm ent of our electronic socialspectrum is not the ultim ate in acade-
m ic rigor. A nd politically, it has som ething to offend and trouble alm ost
everyone. But hey, I'm told it's readable, and at least the price is right.
You can upload the book onto bulletin board system s,or Internet nodes,
or electronic discussion groups. Go right ahead and do that, Iam giving
BRU C E ST ERLI N G — T H E H AC KER CRACKD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 5

you express perm ission right now . Enjoy yourself.
You can put the book on disks and give the disks aw ay,as long as you
don't take any m oney for it.
But this book is not public dom ain. You can't copyright it in your ow n
nam e. Iow n the copyright.A ttem pts to pirate this book and m ake
m oney from selling it m ay involve you in a serious litigative snarl.
Believe m e, for the pittance you m ight w ring out of such an action, it's
really not w orth it. This book don't "belong" to you. In an odd but very
genuine w ay,Ifeelit doesn't "belong" to m e,either. It's a book about
the people of cyberspace, and distributing it in this w ay is the best w ay
Iknow to actually m ake this inform ation available, freely and easily, to
allthe people of cyberspace — including people far outside the borders
of the United States,w ho otherw ise m ay never have a chance to see any
edition of the book, and w ho m ay perhaps learn som ething usefulfrom
this strange story of distant, obscure, but portentous events in so-
called "A m erican cyberspace."
This electronic book is now literary freew are. It now belongs to the
em ergent realm of alternative inform ation econom ics. You have no right
to m ake this electronic book part of the conventionalflow of com m erce.
Let it be part of the flow of know ledge:there's a difference. I've divided
the book into four sections, so that it is less ungainly for upload and
dow nload; if there's a section of particular relevance to you and your
colleagues,feelfree to reproduce that one and skip the rest.
Just m ake m ore w hen you need them ,and give them to w hoever m ight
w ant them .
N ow have fun.
Bruce Sterling — bruces@ w ell.sf.ca.us
BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KE R C R AC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 6

C H R O N O LO G Y O F T H E
H A C K ER C R A C K D O W N
1 8 6 5 U.S. Secret Service (USSS) founded.
1876 A lexander Graham Bellinvents telephone.
1878 First teenage m ales flung off phone system by enraged authori-
ties.
1939 "Futurian" science-fiction group raided by Secret Service.
1971 Yippie phone phreaks start YIPL/TA P m agazine.
1972 *Ram parts* m agazine seized in blue-box rip-off scandal.
1 9 7 8 W ard Christenson and Randy Suess create first personalcom -

puter bulletin board system .
1982 W illiam Gibson coins term "cyberspace."
1982 "414 Gang" raided.
1 9 8 3 -1 9 8 3 A T& T dism antled in divestiture.
1 9 8 4 Congress passes Com prehensive Crim e ControlA ct giving USSS

jurisdiction over credit card fraud and com puter fraud.
1984 "Legion of Doom " form ed.
1984 *2600: The H acker Q uarterly* founded.
1984 *W hole Earth Softw are Catalog* published.
1985 First police "sting" bulletin board system s established.

1 9 8 5 W hole Earth 'Lectronic Link com puter conference (W ELL) goes
on-line.
1986 Com puter Fraud and A buse A ct passed.
1986 Electronic Com m unications Privacy A ct passed.
1 9 8 7 Chicago prosecutors form Com puter Fraud and A buse Task

Force.
1988
July. Secret Service covertly videotapes "Sum m erCon" hacker conven-

tion.
Septem ber. "Prophet" cracks BellSouth A IM SX com puter netw ork and
dow nloads E911 Docum ent to his ow n com puter and to Jolnet.
Septem ber. A T& T Corporate Inform ation Security inform ed of

Prophet's action.
O ctober. Bellcore Security inform ed of Prophet's action.
1989
January. Prophet uploads E911 D ocum ent to Knight Lightning.
February 2 5 . Knight Lightning publishes E9 1 1 D ocum ent in *Phrack*

electronic new sletter.
M ay. Chicago Task Force raids and arrests "Kyrie."
June. "N uProm etheus League" distributes A pple Com puter proprietary
softw are.
June 13. Florida probation office crossed w ith phone-sex line in

sw itching-station stunt.

July. "Fry Guy" raided by USSS and Chicago Com puter Fraud and A buse
Task Force.
July. Secret Service raids "Prophet," "Leftist," and "Urvile" in

Georgia.
1990
January 15. M artin Luther King D ay Crash strikes A T& T long-distance

netw ork nationw ide.
January 18-19 Chicago Task Force raids Knight Lightning in St. Louis.
January 24. USSS and N ew York State Police raid "Phiber O ptik,"
"A cid Phreak," and "Scorpion" in N ew York City.
February 1 . U SSS raids "Term inus" in M aryland.
February 3. Chicago Task Force raids Richard A ndrew s' hom e.
February 6. Chicago Task Force raids Richard A ndrew s' business.
February 6 . U SSS arrests Term inus, Prophet, Leftist, and U rvile.
February 9. Chicago Task Force arrests Knight Lightning.
February 20. A T& T Security shuts dow n public-access "attctc" com -

puter in D allas.
February 21. Chicago Task Force raids Robert Izenberg in A ustin.
M arch 1. Chicago Task Force raids Steve Jackson Gam es, Inc.,
"M entor," and "Erik Bloodaxe" in A ustin.
M ay 7,8,9. USSS and A rizona O rganized Crim e and Racketeering Bureau

conduct "O peration Sundevil" raids in Cincinnatti, D etroit, Los A ngeles,
M iam i, N ew ark, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Richm ond, Tucson, San D iego, San
Jose, and San Francisco.

M ay. FBIinterview s John Perry Barlow re N uProm etheus case.
June. M itch Kapor and Barlow found Electronic Frontier Foundation;

Barlow publishes *Crim e and Puzzlem ent* m anifesto.
July 2 4 -2 7 . Trial of K night Lightning.
1991
February. CPSR Roundtable in W ashington, D .C.
M arch 25-28. Com puters, Freedom and Privacy conference in San

Francisco.
M ay 1. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Steve Jackson, and others file

suit against m em bers of Chicago Task Force.
July 1-2. Sw itching station phone softw are crash affects W ashington,
Los A ngeles, Pittsburgh, San Francisco.
Septem ber 17. A T& T phone crash affects N ew York City and three air-
ports.

IN T R O D U C T IO N
This is a book about cops, and w ild teenage w hiz- kids, and law yers, and
hairy-eyed anarchists, and industrialtechnicians, and hippies, and
high-tech m illionaires, and gam e hobbyists, and com puter 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 com puters and over telephone lines.
A science fiction w riter coined the usefulterm "cyberspace" in 1982.

But the territory in question, the electronic frontier, is about a hundred
and thirty years old. Cyberspace is the "place" w here a telephone con-
versation appears to occur. N ot inside your actualphone, the plastic
device on your desk. N ot inside the other person's phone,in som e other
city. *The place betw een* the phones. The indefinite place *out there,*
w here the tw o of you, tw o hum an beings, actually m eet and com m uni-
cate.
A lthough 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 com m u-
nication by w ire and electronics.
People have w orked on this "frontier" for generations now . Som e people
becam e rich and fam ous from their efforts there. Som e just played in
it, as hobbyists. O thers soberly pondered it, and w rote about it, and
regulated it, and negotiated over it in internationalforum s, and sued one
another about it, in gigantic, epic court battles that lasted for years.
A nd alm ost since the beginning,som e people have com m itted crim es in
this place.
But in the past tw enty years, this electrical"space," w hich w as once

thin and dark and one-dim ensional— little m ore than a narrow speak-
ing-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 glow ing com puter screen. This dark electric netherw orld has

becom e a vast flow ering electronic landscape. Since the 1960s, the
w orld of the telephone has cross-bred itself w ith com puters and televi-
sion, and though there is stillno substance to cyberspace, nothing you
can handle,it has a strange kind of physicality now . It m akes good sense
today to talk of cyberspace as a place allits ow n.
Because people live in it now . N ot just a few people, not just a few
technicians and eccentrics, but thousands of people, quite norm alpeople.
A nd not just for a little w hile, either, but for hours straight, over
w eeks,and m onths,and years. Cyberspace today is a "N et," a
"M atrix," internationalin scope and grow ing sw iftly and steadily. It's
grow ing in size, and w ealth, and politicalim portance.
People are m aking entire careers in m odern cyberspace. Scientists and

technicians, of course; they've been there for tw enty years now . But
increasingly, cyberspace is filling w ith journalists and doctors and
law yers and artists and clerks. Civilservants m ake their careers
there now , "on-line" in vast governm ent databanks; and so do spies,
industrial, political, and just plain snoops; and so do police, at least a
few of them . A nd there are children living there now .
People have m et there and been m arried there. There are entire living
com m unities in cyberspace today; chattering, gossipping, planning,
conferring and schem ing, leaving one another voice-m ailand electronic
m ail, giving one another big w eightless chunks of valuable data, both
legitim ate and illegitim ate. They busily pass one another com puter
softw are and the occasionalfestering com puter virus.
W e do not really understand how to live in cyberspace yet. W e are feel-

ing our w ay into it, blundering about. That is not surprising. O ur lives
in the physicalw orld, the "real" w orld, are also far from perfect,
despite a lot m ore practice. H um an lives, reallives, are im perfect by
their nature, and there are hum an beings in cyberspace. The w ay w e
live in cyberspace is a funhouse m irror of the w ay w e live in the real
w orld. W e take both our advantages and our troubles w ith 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 grow ing w orld of com puterized com m unications.
In 1990 there cam e a nationw ide crackdow n on illicit com puter hack-
ers, w ith arrests, crim inal charges, one dram atic show -trial, several
guilty pleas, and huge confiscations of data and equipm ent allover the
USA .
The H acker Crackdow n of 1990 w as larger, better organized, m ore

deliberate, and m ore resolute than any previous effort in the brave new
w orld of com puter crim e. The U.S. Secret Service, private telephone
security, and state and locallaw enforcem ent groups across the country
alljoined forces in a determ ined attem pt to break the back of A m erica's
electronic underground. It w as a fascinating effort, w ith very m ixed
results.
The Hacker Crackdow n had another unprecedented effect;it spurred the

creation, w ithin "the com puter com m unity," of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation,a new and very odd interest group,fiercely dedicated to the
establishm ent and preservation of electronic civilliberties. The crack-
dow n, rem arkable in itself, has created a m elee of debate over electronic
crim e, punishm ent, freedom of the press, and issues of search and
seizure. Politics has entered cyberspace. W here people go, politics
follow .
This is the story of the people of cyberspace.

P A R T O N E
C rashing the S ystem

O n January 15, 1990, A T& T's long-distance telephone sw itching sys-
tem crashed.
This w as a strange, dire, huge event. Sixty thousand people lost their
telephone service com pletely. D uring the nine long hours of frantic
effort that it took to restore service, som e seventy m illion telephone
calls w ent uncom pleted.
Losses of service,know n as "outages" in the telco trade,are a know n and

accepted hazard of the telephone business. Hurricanes hit,and phone
cables get snapped by the thousands. Earthquakes w rench through
buried fiber-optic lines. Sw itching stations catch fire and burn to the
ground. These things do happen. There are contingency plans for them ,
and decades of experience in dealing w ith them . But the Crash of
January 15 w as unprecedented. It w as unbelievably huge, and it
occurred for no apparent physicalreason.
The crash started on a M onday afternoon in a single sw itching-station

in M anhattan. But, unlike any m erely physicaldam age, it spread and
spread. Station after station across A m erica collapsed in a chain reac-
tion, untilfully half of A T& T's netw ork had gone hayw ire and the
rem aining half w as hard-put to handle the overflow .
W ithin nine hours, A T& T softw are engineers m ore or less understood
w hat had caused the crash. Replicating the problem exactly, poring over
softw are line by line,took them a couple of w eeks. But because it w as
hard to understand technically, the fulltruth of the m atter and its
im plications w ere not w idely and thoroughly aired and explained. The
root cause of the crash rem ained obscure, surrounded by rum or and
fear.
The crash w as a grave corporate em barrassm ent. The "culprit" w as a

bug in A T& T's ow n softw are — not the sort of adm ission the telecom m u-

nications giant w anted to m ake, especially in the face of increasing com -
petition. Still, the truth *w as* told, in the baffling technicalterm s
necessary to explain it.
Som ehow the explanation failed to persuade A m erican law enforcem ent
officials and even telephone corporate security personnel. These people
w ere not technicalexperts or softw are w izards, and they had their ow n
suspicions about the cause of this disaster.
The police and telco security had im portant sources of inform ation
denied to m ere softw are engineers. They had inform ants in the com put-
er underground and years of experience in dealing w ith high-tech ras-
cality that seem ed to grow ever m ore sophisticated. For years they had
been expecting a direct and savage attack against the A m erican national
telephone system . A nd w ith the Crash of January 15 — the first m onth
of a new , high-tech decade — their predictions, fears, and suspicions
seem ed at last to have entered the realw orld. A w orld w here the tele-
phone system had not m erely crashed, but, quite likely, *been* crashed
— by "hackers."
The crash created a large dark cloud of suspicion that w ould color cer-
tain people's assum ptions and actions for m onths. The fact that it took
place in the realm of softw are w as suspicious on its face. The fact that
it occurred on M artin Luther King D ay, stillthe m ost politically touchy
of A m erican holidays, m ade it m ore suspicious yet.
The Crash of January 15 gave the Hacker Crackdow n its sense of edge
and its sw eaty urgency. It m ade people, pow erfulpeople in positions of
public authority, w illing to believe the w orst. A nd, m ost fatally, it
helped to give investigators a w illingness to take extrem e m easures and
the determ ination to preserve alm ost totalsecrecy.
A n obscure softw are fault in an aging sw itching system in N ew York w as

to lead to a chain reaction of legaland constitutionaltrouble allacross
the country.
_____
Like the crash in the telephone system , this chain reaction w as ready

and w aiting to happen. D uring the 1980s, the A m erican legalsystem
w as extensively patched to dealw ith the novelissues of com puter crim e.
There w as, for instance, the Electronic Com m unications Privacy A ct of
1986 (eloquently described as "a stinking m ess" by a prom inent law
enforcem ent official). A nd there w as the draconian Com puter Fraud and
A buse A ct of 1986,passed unanim ously by the United States Senate,
w hich later w ould reveala large num ber of flaw s. Extensive, w ell-
m eant efforts had been m ade to keep the legalsystem up to date. But in
the day-to-day grind of the realw orld, even the m ost elegant softw are
tends to crum ble and suddenly revealits hidden bugs.
Like the advancing telephone system ,the A m erican legalsystem w as

certainly not ruined by its tem porary crash; but for those caught under
the w eight of the collapsing system ,life becam e a series of blackouts and
anom alies.
In order to understand w hy these w eird events occurred, both in the

w orld of technology and in the w orld of law ,it's not enough to understand
the m erely technicalproblem s. W e w illget to those; but first and fore-
m ost,w e m ust try to understand the telephone,and the business of tele-
phones,and the com m unity of hum an beings that telephones have creat-
ed.
_____
Technologies have life cycles, like cities do, like institutions do, like
law s and governm ents do.
The first stage of any technology is the Q uestion M ark,often know n as

the "Golden V aporw are" stage. A t this early point,the technology is
only a phantom , a m ere gleam in the inventor's eye. O ne such inventor
w as a speech teacher and electricaltinkerer nam ed A lexander Graham
Bell.
Bell's early inventions, w hile ingenious, failed to m ove the w orld. In

1863, the teenage Belland his brother M elville m ade an artificialtalk-
ing m echanism out of w ood, rubber, gutta-percha, and tin. This w eird
device had a rubber-covered "tongue" m ade of m ovable w ooden seg-
m ents, w ith vibrating rubber "vocalcords," and rubber "lips" and

"cheeks." W hile M elville puffed a bellow s into a tin tube, im itating the
lungs, young A lec Bellw ould m anipulate the "lips," "teeth," and
"tongue," causing the thing to em it high-pitched falsetto gibberish.
A nother w ould-be technicalbreakthrough w as the Bell"phonautograph"

of 1874,actually m ade out of a hum an cadaver's ear. Clam ped into place
on a tripod, this grisly gadget drew sound-w ave im ages on sm oked glass
through a thin straw glued to its vibrating earbones.
By 1875, Bellhad learned to produce audible sounds — ugly shrieks and

squaw ks — by using m agnets, diaphragm s, and electricalcurrent.
M ost "Golden V aporw are" technologies go now here.
But the second stage of technology is the Rising Star,or,the "Goofy

Prototype," stage. The telephone,Bell's m ost am bitious gadget yet,
reached this stage on M arch 10, 1876. O n that great day, A lexander
Graham Bellbecam e the first person to transm it intelligible hum an
speech electrically. A s it happened, young Professor Bell, industrious-
ly tinkering in his Boston lab, had spattered his trousers w ith acid.
H is assistant, M r. W atson, heard his cry for help — over Bell's experi-
m entalaudio- telegraph. This w as an event w ithout precedent.
Technologies in their "Goofy Prototype" stage rarely w ork very w ell.

They're experim ental, and therefore half- baked and rather frazzled.
The prototype m ay be attractive and novel,and it does look as if it ought
to be good for som ething-or-other. But nobody, including the inventor,
is quite sure w hat. Inventors, and speculators, and pundits m ay have
very firm ideas about its potentialuse, but those ideas are often very
w rong.
The naturalhabitat of the Goofy Prototype is in trade show s and in the

popular press. Infant technologies need publicity and investm ent
m oney like a tottering calf need m ilk. This w as very true of Bell's
m achine. To raise research and developm ent m oney, Belltoured w ith
his device as a stage attraction.
Contem porary press reports of the stage debut of the telephone show ed

pleased astonishm ent m ixed w ith considerable dread. Bell's stage tele-
phone w as a large w ooden box w ith a crude speaker-nozzle, the w hole
contraption about the size and shape of an overgrow n Brow nie cam era.
Its buzzing steelsoundplate, pum ped up by pow erfulelectrom agnets,
w as loud enough to fillan auditorium . Bell's assistant M r. W atson, w ho
could m anage on the keyboards fairly w ell, kicked in by playing the
organ from distant room s, and, later, distant cities. This feat w as con-
sidered m arvellous, but very eerie indeed.
Bell's originalnotion for the telephone, an idea prom oted for a couple of
years,w as that it w ould becom e a m ass m edium . W e m ight recognize
Bell's idea today as som ething close to m odern "cable radio."
Telephones at a centralsource w ould transm it m usic, Sunday serm ons,
and im portant public speeches to a paying netw ork of w ired-up sub-
scribers.
A t the tim e,m ost people thought this notion m ade good sense. In fact,
Bell's idea w as w orkable. In H ungary, this philosophy of the telephone
w as successfully put into everyday practice. In Budapest, for decades,
from 1 8 9 3 untilafter W orld W ar I, there w as a governm ent-run
inform ation service called "Telefon H irm ondo=." H irm ondo= w as a
centralized source of new s and entertainm ent and culture, including
stock reports, plays, concerts, and novels read aloud. A t certain hours
of the day, the phone w ould ring, you w ould plug in a loudspeaker for the
use of the fam ily, and Telefon H irm ondo= w ould be on the air — or
rather, on the phone.
Hirm ondo= is dead tech today,but Hirm ondo= m ight be considered a

spiritualancestor of the m odern telephone-accessed com puter data ser-
vices, such as Com puServe, GEnie or Prodigy. The principle behind
H irm ondo= is also not too far from com puter "bulletin- board system s"
or BBS's, w hich arrived in the late 1970s, spread rapidly across
A m erica, and w illfigure largely in this book.
W e are used to using telephones for individualperson-to-person

speech,because w e are used to the Bellsystem . But this w as just one
possibility am ong m any. Com m unication netw orks are very flexible and
protean, especially w hen their hardw are becom es sufficiently advanced.

They can be put to allkinds of uses. A nd they have been — and they w ill
be.
Bell's telephone w as bound for glory, but this w as a com bination of

political decisions, canny infighting in court, inspired industrial lead-
ership, receptive localconditions and outright good luck. M uch the sam e
is true of com m unications system s today.
A s Belland his backers struggled to installtheir new fangled system in

the realw orld of nineteenth-century N ew England, they had to fight
against skepticism and industrialrivalry. There w as already a strong
electricalcom m unications netw ork present in A m erica: the telegraph.
The head of the W estern Union telegraph system dism issed Bell's proto-
type as "an electricaltoy" and refused to buy the rights to Bell's patent.
The telephone, it seem ed, m ight be allright as a parlor entertainm ent
— but not for serious business.
Telegram s, unlike m ere telephones, left a perm anent physicalrecord of

their m essages. Telegram s, unlike telephones, could be answ ered
w henever the recipient had tim e and convenience. A nd the telegram had
a m uch longer distance-range than Bell's early telephone. These factors
m ade telegraphy seem a m uch m ore sound and businesslike technology —
at least to som e.
The telegraph system w as huge, and w ell-entrenched. In 1876, the

United States had 214,000 m iles of telegraph w ire, and 8500 telegraph
offices. There w ere specialized telegraphs for businesses and stock
traders, governm ent, police and fire departm ents. A nd Bell's "toy" w as
best know n as a stage-m agic m usicaldevice.
The third stage of technology is know n as the "Cash Cow " stage. In the
"cash cow " stage, a technology finds its place in the w orld, and m atures,
and becom es settled and productive. A fter a year or so, A lexander
Graham Belland his capitalist backers concluded that eerie m usic piped
from nineteenth-century cyberspace w as not the realselling-point of
his invention. Instead, the telephone w as about speech — individual,
personalspeech, the hum an voice, hum an conversation and hum an
interaction. The telephone w as not to be m anaged from any centralized

broadcast center. It w as to be a personal,intim ate technology.
W hen you picked up a telephone,you w ere not absorbing the cold output
of a m achine — you w ere speaking to another hum an being. O nce people
realized this, their instinctive dread of the telephone as an eerie,
unnaturaldevice, sw iftly vanished. A "telephone call" w as not a "call"
from a "telephone" itself, but a callfrom another hum an being, som e-
one you w ould generally know and recognize. The realpoint w as not
w hat the m achine could do for you (or to you), but w hat you yourself, a
person and citizen, could do *through* the m achine. This decision on
the part of the young BellCom pany w as absolutely vital.
The first telephone netw orks w ent up around Boston — m ostly am ong the
technically curious and the w ell-to-do (m uch the sam e segm ent of the
A m erican populace that, a hundred years later, w ould be buying person-
alcom puters). Entrenched backers of the telegraph continued to scoff.
But in January 1878, a disaster m ade the telephone fam ous. A train
crashed in Tarriffville, Connecticut. Forw ard-looking doctors in the
nearby city of H artford had had Bell's "speaking telephone" installed.
A n alert localdruggist w as able to telephone an entire com m unity of
localdoctors, w ho rushed to the site to give aid. The disaster, as disas-
ters do, aroused intense press coverage. The phone had proven its use-
fulness in the realw orld.
A fter Tarriffville, the telephone netw ork spread like crabgrass. By

1890 it w as allover N ew England. By '93, out to Chicago. By '97, into
M innesota, N ebraska and Texas. By 1904 it w as allover the continent.
The telephone had becom e a m ature technology.Professor Bell (now

generally know n as "D r. Bell" despite his lack of a form aldegree)
becam e quite w ealthy. H e lost interest in the tedious day-to-day busi-
ness m uddle of the boom ing telephone netw ork, and gratefully returned
his attention to creatively hacking-around in his various laboratories,
w hich w ere now m uch larger, better- ventilated, and gratifyingly bet-
ter-equipped. Bellw as never to have another great inventive success,
though his speculations and prototypes anticipated fiber-optic trans-
m ission, m anned flight, sonar, hydrofoilships, tetrahedralconstruc-

tion, and M ontessorieducation. The "decibel," the standard scientific
m easure of sound intensity, w as nam ed after Bell.
N ot allBell's vaporw are notions w ere inspired. H e w as fascinated by

hum an eugenics. H e also spent m any years developing a w eird personal
system of astrophysics in w hich gravity did not exist.
Bellw as a definite eccentric. He w as som ething of a hypochondriac, and

throughout his life he habitually stayed up untilfour A .M ., refusing to
rise before noon. But Bellhad accom plished a great feat; he w as an idol
of m illions and his influence, w ealth, and great personalcharm , com -
bined w ith his eccentricity, m ade him som ething of a loose cannon on
deck. Bellm aintained a thriving scientific salon in his w inter m ansion
in W ashington, D .C., w hich gave him considerable backstage influence in
governm entaland scientific circles. H e w as a m ajor financialbacker of
the the m agazines *Science* and *N ationalGeographic,* both still
flourishing today as im portant organs of the A m erican scientific estab-
lishm ent.
Bell's com panion Thom as W atson, sim ilarly w ealthy and sim ilarly odd,
becam e the ardent politicaldisciple of a 19th-century science-fiction
w riter and w ould-be socialreform er, Edw ard Bellam y. W atson also
trod the boards briefly as a Shakespearian actor.
There w ould never be another A lexander Graham Bell, but in years to

com e there w ould be surprising num bers of people like him . Bellw as a
prototype of the high-tech entrepreneur. H igh-tech entrepreneurs
w illplay a very prom inent role in this book: not m erely as technicians
and businessm en, but as pioneers of the technicalfrontier, w ho can
carry the pow er and prestige they derive from high-technology into the
politicaland socialarena.
Like later entrepreneurs, Bellw as fierce in defense of his ow n techno-

logicalterritory. A s the telephone began to flourish, Bellw as soon
involved in violent law suits in the defense of his patents. Bell's Boston
law yers w ere excellent, how ever, and Bellhim self, as an elecution
teacher and gifted public speaker, w as a devastatingly effective legal
w itness. In the eighteen years of Bell's patents, the Bellcom pany w as

involved in six hundred separate law suits. The legalrecords printed
filled 149 volum es. The BellCom pany w on every single suit.
A fter Bell's exclusive patents expired, rivaltelephone com panies

sprang up allover A m erica. Bell's com pany, A m erican BellTelephone,
w as soon in deep trouble. In 1907, A m erican BellTelephone fellinto
the hands of the rather sinister J.P. M organ financialcartel, robber-
baron speculators w ho dom inated W allStreet.
A t this point, history m ight have taken a different turn. A m erican

m ight w ellhave been served forever by a patchw ork of locally ow ned
telephone com panies. M any state politicians and localbusinessm en
considered this an excellent solution.
But the new Bellholding com pany, A m erican Telephone and Telegraph or
A T& T, put in a new m an at the helm , a visionary industrialist nam ed
Theodore V ail. V ail, a form er Post O ffice m anager, understood large
organizations and had an innate feeling for the nature of large-scale
com m unications. V ailquickly saw to it that A T& T seized the technologi-
caledge once again. The Pupin and Cam pbell"loading coil," and the
deForest "audion," are both extinct technology today,but in 1913 they
gave V ail's com pany the best *long-distance* lines ever built. By con-
trolling long-distance — the links betw een, and over, and above the
sm aller localphone com panies — A T& T sw iftly gained the w hip-hand
over them ,and w as soon devouring them right and left.
V ailplow ed the profits back into research and developm ent, starting the
Bell tradition of huge-scale and brilliant industrial research.
Technically and financially, A T& T gradually steam rollered the opposi-

tion. Independent telephone com panies never becam e entirely extinct,
and hundreds of them flourish today. But V ail's A T& T becam e the
suprem e com m unications com pany. A t one point,V ail's A T& T bought
W estern Union itself, the very com pany that had derided Bell's tele-
phone as a "toy." V ailthoroughly reform ed W estern Union's hidebound
business along his m odern principles; but w hen the federalgovernm ent
grew anxious at this centralization of pow er, V ailpolitely gave W estern
Union back.

This centralizing process w as not unique. V ery sim ilar events had hap-
pened in A m erican steel, oil, and railroads. But A T& T, unlike the other
com panies, w as to rem ain suprem e. The m onopoly robber-barons of
those other industries w ere hum bled and shattered by governm ent
trust-busting.
V ail, the form er Post O ffice official, w as quite w illing to accom m odate
the US governm ent; in fact he w ould forge an active alliance w ith it.
A T& T w ould becom e alm ost a w ing of the A m erican governm ent,alm ost
another Post O ffice — though not quite. A T& T w ould w illingly subm it to
federalregulation, but in return, it w ould use the governm ent's regula-
tors as its ow n police,w ho w ould keep out com petitors and assure the
Bellsystem 's profits and preem inence.
This w as the second birth — the politicalbirth — of the A m erican tele-

phone system . V ail's arrangem ent w as to persist, w ith vast success, for
m any decades, until1982. His system w as an odd kind of A m erican
industrialsocialism . It w as born at about the sam e tim e as Leninist
Com m unism ,and it lasted alm ost as long — and,it m ust be adm itted,to
considerably better effect.
V ail's system w orked. Except perhaps for aerospace, there has been no
technology m ore thoroughly dom inated by A m ericans than the telephone.
The telephone w as seen from the beginning as a quintessentially
A m erican technology. Bell's policy, and the policy of Theodore V ail, w as
a profoundly dem ocratic policy of *universalaccess.* V ail's fam ous
corporate slogan, "O ne Policy, O ne System , UniversalService," w as a
politicalslogan, w ith a very A m erican ring to it.
The A m erican telephone w as not to becom e the specialized toolof gov-

ernm ent or business, but a generalpublic utility. A t first, it w as true,
only the w ealthy could afford private telephones, and Bell's com pany
pursued the business m arkets prim arily. The A m erican phone system
w as a capitalist effort, m eant to m ake m oney; it w as not a charity. But
from the first, alm ost allcom m unities w ith telephone service had pub-
lic telephones. A nd m any stores — especially drugstores — offered pub-
lic use of their phones. You m ight not ow n a telephone — but you could

alw ays get into the system ,if you really needed to.
There w as nothing inevitable about this decision to m ake telephones

"public" and "universal." V ail's system involved a profound act of trust
in the public. This decision w as a politicalone, inform ed by the basic
values of the A m erican republic. The situation m ight have been very
different; and in other countries, under other system s, it certainly
w as.
Joseph Stalin, for instance, vetoed plans for a Soviet phone system soon
after the Bolshevik revolution. Stalin w as certain that publicly acces-
sible telephones w ould becom e instrum ents of anti-Soviet counterrevo-
lution and conspiracy. (H e w as probably right.) W hen telephones did
arrive in the Soviet Union, they w ould be instrum ents of Party authori-
ty, and alw ays heavily tapped. (A lexander Solzhenitsyn's prison-cam p
novel*The First Circle* describes efforts to develop a phone system
m ore suited to Stalinist purposes.)
France, w ith its tradition of rationalcentralized governm ent, had fought

bitterly even against the electric telegraph, w hich seem ed to the French
entirely too anarchicaland frivolous. For decades, nineteenth- century
France com m unicated via the "visualtelegraph," a nation-spanning,
governm ent-ow ned sem aphore system of huge stone tow ers that sig-
nalled from hilltops, across vast distances, w ith big w indm ill-like
arm s. In 1846, one D r. Barbay, a sem aphore enthusiast, m em orably
uttered an early version of w hat m ight be called "the security expert's
argum ent" against the open m edia.
"N o, the electric telegraph is not a sound invention. It w illalw ays be at

the m ercy of the slightest disruption, w ild youths, drunkards, bum s,
etc.... The electric telegraph m eets those destructive elem ents w ith only
a few m eters of w ire over w hich supervision is im possible. A single
m an could, w ithout being seen, cut the telegraph w ires leading to Paris,
and in tw enty-four hours cut in ten different places the w ires of the
sam e line, w ithout being arrested. The visualtelegraph, on the con-
trary, has its tow ers, its high w alls, its gates w ell-guarded from inside
by strong arm ed m en. Yes, Ideclare, substitution of the electric tele-
graph for the visualone is a dreadfulm easure, a truly idiotic act."
BR U C E ST ERLI N G — T H E H AC KER CRAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 24

D r. Barbay and his high-security stone m achines w ere eventually
unsuccessful, but his argum ent — that com m unication exists for the
safety and convenience of the state,and m ust be carefully protected from
the w ild boys and the gutter rabble w ho m ight w ant to crash the system
— w ould be heard again and again.
W hen the French telephone system finally did arrive, its snarled inade-
quacy w as to be notorious. Devotees of the A m erican BellSystem often
recom m ended a trip to France, for skeptics.
In Edw ardian Britain, issues of class and privacy w ere a ball-and-chain

for telephonic progress. It w as considered outrageous that anyone —
any w ild fooloff the street — could sim ply barge bellow ing into one's
office or hom e, preceded only by the ringing of a telephone bell. In
Britain, phones w ere tolerated for the use of business, but private
phones tended be stuffed aw ay into closets,sm oking room s,or servants'
quarters. Telephone operators w ere resented in Britain because they
did not seem to "know their place." A nd no one of breeding w ould print a
telephone num ber on a business card;this seem ed a crass attem pt to
m ake the acquaintance of strangers.
But phone access in A m erica w as to becom e a popular right;som ething

like universalsuffrage, only m ore so. A m erican w om en could not yet
vote w hen the phone system cam e through;yet from the beginning
A m erican w om en doted on the telephone. This "fem inization" of the
A m erican telephone w as often com m ented on by foreigners. Phones in
A m erica w ere not censored or stiff or form alized; they w ere social,
private, intim ate, and dom estic. In A m erica, M other's D ay is by far the
busiest day of the year for the phone netw ork.
The early telephone com panies, and especially A T& T, w ere am ong the
forem ost em ployers of A m erican w om en. They em ployed the daughters
of the A m erican m iddle-class in great arm ies: in 1891, eight thousand
w om en; by 1946, alm ost a quarter of a m illion. W om en seem ed to
enjoy telephone w ork; it w as respectable, it w as steady, it paid fairly
w ellas w om en's w ork w ent,and — not least — it seem ed a genuine con-
tribution to the socialgood of the com m unity. W om en found V ail's ideal

of public service attractive. This w as especially true in ruralareas,
w here w om en operators, running extensive ruralparty- lines, enjoyed
considerable socialpow er. The operator knew everyone on the party-
line, and everyone knew her.
A lthough Bellhim self w as an ardent suffragist, the telephone com pany

did not em ploy w om en for the sake of advancing fem ale liberation. A T& T
did this for sound com m ercialreasons. The first telephone operators of
the Bellsystem w ere not w om en,but teenage A m erican boys.They w ere
telegraphic m essenger boys (a group about to be rendered technically
obsolescent),w ho sw ept up around the phone office,dunned custom ers
for bills, and m ade phone connections on the sw itchboard, allon the
cheap.
W ithin the very first year of operation, 1878, Bell's com pany learned
a sharp lesson about com bining teenage boys and telephone sw itchboards.
Putting teenage boys in charge of the phone system brought sw ift and
consistent disaster. Bell's chief engineer described them as "W ild
Indians." The boys w ere openly rude to custom ers. They talked back to
subscribers, saucing off, uttering facetious rem arks, and generally
giving lip. The rascals took Saint Patrick's D ay off w ithout perm ission.
A nd w orst of allthey played clever tricks w ith the sw itchboard plugs:
disconnecting calls, crossing lines so that custom ers found them selves
talking to strangers, and so forth.
This com bination of pow er, technicalm astery, and effective anonym ity
seem ed to act like catnip on teenage boys.
This w ild-kid-on-the-w ires phenom enon w as not confined to the USA ;

from the beginning, the sam e w as true of the British phone system . A n
early British com m entator kindly rem arked: "N o doubt boys in their
teens found the w ork not a little irksom e, and it is also highly probable
that under the early conditions of em ploym ent the adventurous and
inquisitive spirits of w hich the average healthy boy of that age is pos-
sessed,w ere not alw ays conducive to the best attention being given to the
w ants of the telephone subscribers."
So the boys w ere flung off the system — or at least,deprived of control

of the sw itchboard. But the "adventurous and inquisitive spirits" of the
teenage boys w ould be heard from in the w orld of telephony,again and
again.
The fourth stage in the technologicallife-cycle is death: "the D og," dead

tech. The telephone has so far avoided this fate. O n the contrary,it is
thriving, stillspreading, stillevolving, and at increasing speed.
The telephone has achieved a rare and exalted state for a technological
artifact: it has becom e a *household object.* The telephone, like the
clock, like pen and paper, like kitchen utensils and running w ater, has
becom e a technology that is visible only by its absence.The telephone is
technologically transparent. The globaltelephone system is the largest
and m ost com plex m achine in the w orld, yet it is easy to use. M ore
rem arkable yet, the telephone is alm ost entirely physically safe for the
user.
For the average citizen in the 1870s, the telephone w as w eirder, m ore
shocking, m ore "high-tech" and harder to com prehend, than the m ost
outrageous stunts of advanced com puting for us A m ericans in the 1990s.
In trying to understand w hat is happening to us today, w ith our bul-
letin-board system s, direct overseas dialling, fiber- optic transm is-
sions, com puter viruses, hacking stunts, and a vivid tangle of new law s
and new crim es, it is im portant to realize that our society has been
through a sim ilar challenge before — and that, allin all, w e did rather
w ellby it.
Bell's stage telephone seem ed bizarre at first. But the sensations of

w eirdness vanished quickly, once people began to hear the fam iliar
voices of relatives and friends, in their ow n hom es on their ow n tele-
phones. The telephone changed from a fearsom e high-tech totem to an
everyday pillar of hum an com m unity.
This has also happened, and is stillhappening, to com puter netw orks.
Com puter netw orks such as N SFnet, BITnet, USEN ET, JA N ET, are
technically advanced, intim idating, and m uch harder to use than tele-
phones. Even the popular, com m ercialcom puter netw orks, such as
GEnie, Prodigy, and Com puServe, cause m uch head-scratching and have

been described as "user-hateful." N evertheless they too are changing
from fancy high-tech item s into everyday sources of hum an com m unity.
The w ords "com m unity" and "com m unication" have the sam e root.
W herever you put a com m unications netw ork, you put a com m unity as
w ell. A nd w henever you *take aw ay* that netw ork — confiscate it, out-
law it, crash it, raise its price beyond affordability — then you hurt
that com m unity.
Com m unities w illfight to defend them selves. People w illfight harder

and m ore bitterly to defend their com m unities, than they w illfight to
defend their ow n individualselves. A nd this is very true of the "elec-
tronic com m unity" that arose around com puter netw orks in the 1980s
— or rather, the *various* electronic com m unities, in telephony, law
enforcem ent, com puting, and the digitalunderground that, by the year
1 9 9 0 , w ere raiding, rallying, arresting, suing, jailing, fining and
issuing angry m anifestos.
N one of the events of 1990 w ere entirely new .N othing happened in

1990 that did not have som e kind of earlier and m ore understandable
precedent. W hat gave the Hacker Crackdow n its new sense of gravity
and im portance w as the feeling — the *com m unity* feeling — that the
politicalstakes had been raised; that trouble in cyberspace w as no
longer m ere m ischief or inconclusive skirm ishing, but a genuine fight
over genuine issues, a fight for com m unity survivaland the shape of the
future.
These electronic com m unities, having flourished throughout the 1980s,

w ere becom ing aw are of them selves, and increasingly, becom ing aw are
of other, rivalcom m unities. W orries w ere sprouting up right and left,
w ith com plaints, rum ors, uneasy speculations. But it w ould take a cat-
alyst, a shock, to m ake the new w orld evident. Like Bell's great public-
ity break, the Tarriffville Rail D isaster of January 1 8 7 8 , it w ould take
a cause celebre.
That cause w as the A T& T Crash of January 15, 1990. A fter the Crash,
the w ounded and anxious telephone com m unity w ould com e out fighting
hard.

_____
The com m unity of telephone technicians, engineers, operators and

researchers is the oldest com m unity in cyberspace. These are the vet-
erans, the m ost developed group, the richest, the m ost respectable, in
m ost w ays the m ost pow erful. W hole generations have com e and gone
since A lexander Graham Bell's day, but the com m unity he founded sur-
vives; people w ork for the phone system today w hose great-grandpar-
ents w orked for the phone system .Its specialty m agazines,such as
*Telephony,* *A T& T TechnicalJournal,* *Telephone Engineer and
M anagem ent,* are decades old; they m ake com puter publications like
*M acw orld* and *PC W eek* look like am ateur johnny-com e-latelies.
A nd the phone com panies take no back seat in high- technology,either.

O ther com panies' industrialresearchers m ay have w on new m arkets;
but the researchers of BellLabs have w on *seven N obelPrizes.* O ne
potent device that BellLabs originated, the transistor, has created
entire *groups* of industries. BellLabs are w orld-fam ous for gener-
ating "a patent a day," and have even m ade vitaldiscoveries in astrono-
m y, physics and cosm ology.
Throughout its seventy-year history, "M a Bell" w as not so m uch a com -

pany as a w ay of life. Untilthe cataclysm ic divestiture of the 1980s,
M a Bellw as perhaps the ultim ate m aternalist m ega-em ployer. The
A T& T corporate im age w as the "gentle giant," "the voice w ith a sm ile,"
a vaguely socialist-realist w orld of cleanshaven linem en in shiny hel-
m ets and blandly pretty phone-girls in headsets and nylons. Bell
System em ployees w ere fam ous as rock-ribbed Kiw anis and Rotary
m em bers, Little-League enthusiasts, school-board people.
D uring the long heyday of M a Bell, the Bellem ployee corps w ere nur-
tured top-to-botton on a corporate ethos of public service. There w as
good m oney in Bell, but Bellw as not *about* m oney; Bellused public
relations, but never m ere m arketeering. People w ent into the Bell
System for a good life,and they had a good life.But it w as not m ere
m oney that led Bellpeople out in the m idst of storm s and earthquakes to
fight w ith toppled phone-poles, to w ade in flooded m anholes, to pullthe
red- eyed graveyard-shift over collapsing sw itching-system s. The Bell

ethic w as the electricalequivalent of the postm an's: neither rain, nor
snow , nor gloom of night w ould stop these couriers.
It is easy to be cynicalabout this, as it is easy to be cynicalabout any

politicalor socialsystem ; but cynicism does not change the fact that
thousands of people took these ideals very seriously. A nd som e stilldo.
The Bellethos w as about public service; and that w as gratifying; but it

w as also about private *pow er,* and that w as gratifying too. A s a cor-
poration, Bellw as very special. Bellw as privileged. Bellhad snuggled
up close to the state. In fact,Bellw as as close to governm ent as you
could get in A m erica and stillm ake a w hole lot of legitim ate m oney.
But unlike other com panies, Bellw as above and beyond the vulgar com -
m ercialfray. Through its regionaloperating com panies, Bellw as
om nipresent, local, and intim ate, allover A m erica; but the central
ivory tow ers at its corporate heart w ere the tallest and the ivoriest
around.
There w ere other phone com panies in A m erica, to be sure; the so-called
independents. Ruralcooperatives, m ostly; sm allfry, m ostly tolerated,
som etim es w arred upon. For m any decades,"independent" A m erican
phone com panies lived in fear and loathing of the officialBellm onopoly
(or the "BellO ctopus," as M a Bell's nineteenth- century enem ies
described her in m any angry new spaper m anifestos). Som e few of these
independent entrepreneurs, w hile legally in the w rong, fought so bit-
terly against the O ctopus that their illegalphone netw orks w ere cast
into the street by Bellagents and publicly burned.
The pure technicalsw eetness of the BellSystem gave its operators,

inventors and engineers a deeply satisfying sense of pow er and m astery.
They had devoted their lives to im proving this vast nation-spanning
m achine; over years, w hole hum an lives, they had w atched it im prove
and grow . It w as like a great technological tem ple. They w ere an elite,
and they knew it — even if others did not;in fact,they felt even m ore
pow erful*because* others did not understand.
The deep attraction of this sensation of elite technicalpow er should

never be underestim ated. "Technicalpow er" is not for everybody; for
m any people it sim ply has no charm at all. But for som e people, it
becom es the core of their lives. For a few , it is overw helm ing, obses-
sive; it becom es som ething close to an addiction. People — especially
clever teenage boys w hose lives are otherw ise m ostly pow erless and
put-upon — love this sensation of secret pow er, and are w illing to do
allsorts of am azing things to achieve it. The technical*pow er* of elec-
tronics has m otivated m any strange acts detailed in this book, w hich
w ould otherw ise be inexplicable.
So Bellhad pow er beyond m ere capitalism . The Bellservice ethos

w orked, and w as often propagandized, in a rather saccharine fashion.
O ver the decades, people slow ly grew tired of this. A nd then,openly
im patient w ith it. By the early 1980s, M a Bellw as to find herself w ith
scarcely a realfriend in the w orld. V ail's industrialsocialism had
becom e hopelessly out-of-fashion politically. Bellw ould be punished
for that. A nd that punishm ent w ould fallharshly upon the people of the
telephone com m unity.
_____
In 1983, M a Bellw as dism antled by federalcourt action. The pieces of

Bellare now separate corporate entities. The core of the com pany
becam e A T& T Com m unications, and also A T& T Industries (form erly
W estern Electric, Bell's m anufacturing arm ). A T& T BellLabs becom e
BellCom m unications Research, Bellcore. Then there are the Regional
BellO perating Com panies, or RBO Cs, pronounced "arbocks."
Bellw as a titan and even these regionalchunks are gigantic enterprises:

Fortune 50 com panies w ith plenty of w ealth and pow er behind them .
But the clean lines of "O ne Policy, O ne System , UniversalService" have
been shattered, apparently forever.
The "O ne Policy" of the early Reagan A dm inistration w as to shatter a

system that sm acked of noncom petitive socialism . Since that tim e, there
has been no realtelephone "policy" on the federallevel. D espite the
breakup, the rem nants of Bellhave never been set free to com pete in the
open m arketplace.

The RBO Cs are stillvery heavily regulated, but not from the top.
Instead, they struggle politically, econom ically and legally, in w hat
seem s an endless turm oil, in a patchw ork of overlapping federaland
state jurisdictions. Increasingly, like other m ajor A m erican corpora-
tions, the RBO Cs are becom ing m ultinational, acquiring im portant
com m ercialinterests in Europe, Latin A m erica, and the Pacific Rim .
But this, too, adds to their legaland politicalpredicam ent.
The people of w hat used to be M a Bellare not happy about their fate.
They feelill-used. They m ight have been grudgingly w illing to m ake a
fulltransition to the free m arket; to becom e just com panies am id other
com panies.But this never happened. Instead, A T& T and the RBO CS
("the Baby Bells") feelthem selves w renched from side to side by state
regulators, by Congress, by the FCC, and especially by the federalcourt
of Judge Harold Greene, the m agistrate w ho ordered the Bellbreakup and
w ho has been the de facto czar of A m erican telecom m unications ever
since 1983.
Bellpeople feelthat they exist in a kind of paralegallim bo today. They

don't understand w hat's dem anded of them . If it's "service," w hy aren't
they treated like a public service? A nd if it's m oney, then w hy aren't
they free to com pete for it? N o one seem s to know ,really. Those w ho
claim to know keep changing their m inds. N obody in authority seem s
w illing to grasp the nettle for once and all.
Telephone people from other countries are am azed by the A m erican

telephone system today. N ot that it w orks so w ell;for now adays even the
French telephone system w orks, m ore or less. They are am azed that the
A m erican telephone system *still* w orks *at all,* under these strange
conditions.
Bell's "O ne System " of long-distance service is now only about eighty
percent of a system , w ith the rem ainder held by Sprint, M CI, and the
m idget long-distance com panies. Ugly w ars over dubious corporate
practices such as "slam m ing" (an underhanded m ethod of snitching
clients from rivals) break out w ith som e regularity in the realm of
long-distance service. The battle to break Bell's long-distance m onop-
oly w as long and ugly, and since the breakup the battlefield has not

becom e m uch prettier. A T& T's fam ous sham e-and-blam e advertise-
m ents, w hich em phasized the shoddy w ork and purported ethicalshadi-
ness of their com petitors, w ere m uch rem arked on for their studied
psychologicalcruelty.
There is m uch bad blood in this industry, and m uch long-treasured

resentm ent. A T& T's post-breakup corporate logo, a striped sphere, is
know n in the industry as the "D eath Star" (a reference from the m ovie
*Star W ars,* in w hich the "D eath Star" w as the spherical high- tech
fortress of the harsh-breathing im perialultra-baddie, D arth V ader.)
Even A T& T em ployees are less than thrilled by the D eath Star. A popu-
lar (though banned) T- shirt am ong A T& T em ployees bears the old-
fashioned Belllogo of the BellSystem , plus the new fangled striped
sphere, w ith the before-and-after com m ents: "This is your brain —
This is your brain on drugs!" A T& T m ade a very w ell-financed and
determ ined effort to break into the personalcom puter m arket; it w as
disastrous, and telco com puter experts are derisively know n by their
com petitors as "the pole-clim bers." A T& T and the Baby Bellarbocks
stillseem to have few friends.
Under conditions of sharp com m ercialcom petition, a crash like that of

January 15, 1990 w as a m ajor em barrassm ent to A T& T. It w as a direct
blow against their m uch-treasured reputation for reliability. W ithin
days of the crash A T& T's Chief Executive O fficer, Bob A llen, officially
apologized, in term s of deeply pained hum ility:
"A T& T had a m ajor service disruption last M onday. W e didn't live up to
our ow n standards of quality, and w e didn't live up to yours. It's as sim -
ple as that. A nd that's not acceptable to us. O r to you....W e understand
how m uch people have com e to depend upon A T& T service,so our A T& T
BellLaboratories scientists and our netw ork engineers are doing every-
thing possible to guard against a recurrence.... W e know there's no w ay
to m ake up for the inconvenience this problem m ay have caused you."
M r A llen's "open letter to custom ers" w as printed in lavish ads allover

the country: in the *W allStreet Journal,* *USA Today,* *N ew York
Tim es,* *Los A ngeles Tim es,* *Chicago Tribune,* *Philadelphia
Inquirer,* *San Francisco Chronicle Exam iner,* *Boston G lobe,*

*D allas M orning N ew s,* *D etroit Free Press,* *W ashington Post,*
*H ouston Chronicle,* *Cleveland Plain D ealer,* *A tlanta Journal
Constitution,* *M inneapolis Star Tribune,* *St. Paul Pioneer Press
D ispatch,* *Seattle Tim es/Post Intelligencer,* *Tacom a N ew s
Tribune,* *M iam i H erald,* *Pittsburgh Press,* *St. Louis Post
D ispatch,* *D enver Post,* *Phoenix Republic G azette* and *Tam pa
T ribune.*
In another press release,A T& T w ent to som e pains to suggest that this
"softw are glitch" *m ight* have happened just as easily to M CI,
although, in fact, it hadn't. (M CI's sw itching softw are w as quite differ-
ent from A T& T's — though not necessarily any safer.) A T& T also
announced their plans to offer a rebate of service on V alentine's D ay to
m ake up for the loss during the Crash.
"Every technicalresource available, including BellLabs scientists and

engineers, has been devoted to assuring it w illnot occur again," the
public w as told. They w ere further assured that "The chances of a
recurrence are sm all— a problem of this m agnitude never occurred
before."
In the m eantim e, how ever, police and corporate security m aintained

their ow n suspicions about "the chances of recurrence" and the real
reason w hy a "problem of this m agnitude" had appeared, seem ingly out
of now here. Police and security knew for a fact that hackers of
unprecedented sophistication w ere illegally entering, and reprogram -
m ing, certain digitalsw itching stations. Rum ors of hidden "viruses"
and secret "logic bom bs" in the sw itches ran ram pant in the under-
ground, w ith m uch chortling over A T& T's predicam ent, and idle specu-
lation over w hat unsung hacker genius w as responsible for it. Som e
hackers, including police inform ants, w ere trying hard to finger one
another as the true culprits of the Crash.
Telco people found little com fort in objectivity w hen they contem plated
these possibilities. It w as just too close to the bone for them ; it w as
em barrassing; it hurt so m uch, it w as hard even to talk about.
There has alw ays been thieving and m isbehavior in the phone system .

There has alw ays been trouble w ith the rivalindependents, and in the
localloops. But to have such trouble in the core of the system , the long-
distance sw itching stations, is a horrifying affair. To telco people, this
is allthe difference betw een finding roaches in your kitchen and big
horrid sew er-rats in your bedroom .
From the outside, to the average citizen, the telcos stillseem gigantic
and im personal. The A m erican public seem s to regard them as som e-
thing akin to Soviet apparats. Even w hen the telcos do their best corpo-
rate- citizen routine, subsidizing m agnet high-schools and sponsoring
new s-show s on public television, they seem to w in little except public
suspicion.
But from the inside, allthis looks very different. There's harsh com pe-
tition. A legaland politicalsystem that seem s baffled and bored,w hen
not actively hostile to telco interests. There's a loss of m orale, a deep
sensation of having som ehow lost the upper hand. Technologicalchange
has caused a loss of data and revenue to other, new er form s of transm is-
sion. There's theft, and new form s of theft, of grow ing scale and bold-
ness and sophistication. W ith allthese factors, it w as no surprise to see
the telcos, large and sm all, break out in a litany of bitter com plaint.
In late '88 and throughout 1989, telco representatives grew shrillin

their com plaints to those few A m erican law enforcem ent officials w ho
m ake it their business to try to understand w hat telephone people are
talking about. Telco security officials had discovered the com puter-
hacker underground, infiltrated it thoroughly, and becom e deeply
alarm ed at its grow ing expertise. Here they had found a target that w as
not only loathsom e on its face, but clearly ripe for counterattack.
Those bitter rivals: A T& T, M CIand Sprint — and a crow d of Baby Bells:
PacBell, BellSouth, Southw estern Bell, N YN EX, USW est, as w ellas the
Bellresearch consortium Bellcore, and the independent long-distance
carrier M id-A m erican — allw ere to have their role in the great hack-
er dragnet of 1990. A fter years of being battered and pushed around,
the telcos had, at least in a sm allw ay, seized the initiative again. A fter
years of turm oil, telcos and governm ent officials w ere once again to
w ork sm oothly in concert in defense of the System . O ptim ism blossom ed;

enthusiasm grew on allsides;the prospective taste of vengeance w as
sw eet.
_____
From the beginning — even before the crackdow n had a nam e — secrecy
w as a big problem . There w ere m any good reasons for secrecy in the
hacker crackdow n. H ackers and code-thieves w ere w ily prey, slinking
back to their bedroom s and basem ents and destroying vitalincrim inat-
ing evidence at the first hint of trouble. Furtherm ore, the crim es them -
selves w ere heavily technicaland difficult to describe, even to police —
m uch less to the generalpublic.
W hen such crim es *had* been described intelligibly to the public, in

the past, that very publicity had tended to *increase* the crim es enor-
m ously. Telco officials, w hile painfully aw are of the vulnerabilities of
their system s, w ere anxious not to publicize those w eaknesses.
Experience show ed them that those w eaknesses,once discovered,w ould
be pitilessly exploited by tens of thousands of people — not only by pro-
fessionalgrifters and by underground hackers and phone phreaks, but
by m any otherw ise m ore-or-less honest everyday folks, w ho regarded
stealing service from the faceless, soulless "Phone Com pany" as a kind
of harm less indoor sport. W hen it cam e to protecting their interests,
telcos had long since given up on generalpublic sym pathy for "the V oice
w ith a Sm ile." N ow adays the telco's "V oice" w as very likely to be a
com puter's; and the A m erican public show ed m uch less of the proper
respect and gratitude due the fine public service bequeathed them by D r.
Belland M r. V ail. The m ore efficient, high-tech, com puterized, and
im personalthe telcos becam e,it seem ed,the m ore they w ere m et by
sullen public resentm ent and am oralgreed.
Telco officials w anted to punish the phone-phreak underground, in as

public and exem plary a m anner as possible. They w anted to m ake dire
exam ples of the w orst offenders, to seize the ringleaders and intim idate
the sm allfry, to discourage and frighten the w acky hobbyists, and send
the professionalgrifters to jail. To do allthis, publicity w as vital.
Yet operationalsecrecy w as even m ore so. If w ord got out that a nation-
w ide crackdow n w as com ing, the hackers m ight sim ply vanish; destroy

the evidence, hide their com puters, go to earth, and w ait for the cam -
paign to blow over. Even the young hackers w ere crafty and suspicious,
and as for the professionalgrifters, they tended to split for the nearest
state-line at the first sign of trouble. For the crackdow n to w ork w ell,
they w ould allhave to be caught red-handed,sw ept upon suddenly,out of
the blue, from every corner of the com pass.
A nd there w as another strong m otive for secrecy. In the w orst-case

scenario,a blow n cam paign m ight leave the telcos open to a devastating
hacker counter-attack. If there w ere indeed hackers loose in A m erica
w ho had caused the January 15 Crash — if there w ere truly gifted hack-
ers, loose in the nation's long-distance sw itching system s, and enraged
or frightened by the crackdow n — then they m ight react unpredictably
to an attem pt to collar them . Even if caught,they m ight have talented
and vengefulfriends stillrunning around loose. Conceivably, it could
turn ugly. V ery ugly. In fact, it w as hard to im agine just how ugly
things m ight turn, given that possibility.
Counter-attack from hackers w as a genuine concern for the telcos. In

point of fact, they w ould never suffer any such counter-attack. But in
m onths to com e,they w ould be at som e pains to publicize this notion and
to utter grim w arnings about it.
Still, that risk seem ed w ellw orth running. Better to run the risk of
vengefulattacks, than to live at the m ercy of potentialcrashers. A ny
cop w ould tellyou that a protection racket had no realfuture.
A nd publicity w as such a usefulthing. Corporate security officers,

including telco security, generally w ork under conditions of great dis-
cretion. A nd corporate security officials do not m ake m oney for their
com panies. Their job is to *prevent the loss* of m oney, w hich is m uch
less glam orous than actually w inning profits.
If you are a corporate security official, and you do your job brilliantly,
then nothing bad happens to your com pany at all. Because of this,you
appear com pletely superfluous. This is one of the m any unattractive
aspects of security w ork. It's rare that these folks have the chance to
draw som e healthy attention to their ow n efforts.

Publicity also served the interest of their friends in law enforcem ent.
Public officials, including law enforcem ent officials, thrive by attract-
ing favorable public interest. A brilliant prosecution in a m atter of
vitalpublic interest can m ake the career of a prosecuting attorney. A nd
for a police officer, good publicity opens the purses of the legislature; it
m ay bring a citation, or a prom otion, 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 m onths to com e, as w e w illshow , this im possible act w as to cause
great pain to the agents of the crackdow n. But early on,it seem ed possi-
ble — m aybe even likely — that the crackdow n could successfully com -
bine the best of both w orlds. The *arrest* of hackers w ould be heavily
publicized. The actual*deeds* of the hackers, w hich w ere technically
hard to explain and also a security risk, w ould be left decently obscured.
The *threat* hackers posed w ould be heavily trum peted; the likelihood
of their actually com m itting such fearsom e crim es w ould be left to the
public's im agination. The spread of the com puter underground, and its
grow ing technicalsophistication, w ould be heavily prom oted; the actual
hackers them selves, m ostly bespectacled m iddle-class w hite suburban
teenagers, w ould be denied any personalpublicity.
It does not seem to have occurred to any telco officialthat the hackers
accused w ould dem and a day in court; that journalists w ould sm ile upon
the hackers as "good copy;" that w ealthy high-tech entrepreneurs
w ould offer m oraland financialsupport to crackdow n victim s; that con-
stitutionallaw yers w ould show up w ith briefcases, frow ning m ightily.
This possibility does not seem to have ever entered the gam e-plan.
A nd even if it had, it probably w ould not have slow ed the ferocious pur-
suit of a stolen phone-com pany docum ent, m ellifluously know n as
"ControlO ffice A dm inistration of Enhanced 911 Services for Special
Services and M ajor A ccount Centers."
In the chapters to follow , w e w illexplore the w orlds of police and the

com puter underground, and the large shadow y area w here they overlap.
But first, w e m ust explore the battleground. Before w e leave the w orld

of the telcos, w e m ust understand w hat a sw itching system actually is
and how your telephone actually w orks.
_____
To the average citizen, the idea of the telephone is represented by, w ell,
a *telephone:* a device that you talk into. To a telco professional, how -
ever, the telephone itself is know n, in lordly fashion, as a "subset."
The "subset" in your house is a m ere adjunct, a distant nerve ending, of
the centralsw itching stations, w hich are ranked in levels of heirarchy,
up to the long-distance electronic sw itching stations, w hich are som e of
the largest com puters on earth.
Let us im agine that it is, say, 1925, before the introduction of com put-
ers, w hen the phone system w as sim pler and som ew hat easier to grasp.
Let's further im agine that you are M iss Leticia Luthor, a fictionaloper-
ator for M a Bellin N ew York City of the 20s.
Basically, you, M iss Luthor, *are* the "sw itching system ." You are
sitting in front of a large verticalsw itchboard, know n as a "cordboard,"
m ade of shiny w ooden panels, w ith ten thousand m etal-rim m ed holes
punched in them , know n as jacks. The engineers w ould have put m ore
holes into your sw itchboard,but ten thousand is as m any as you can
reach w ithout actually having to get up out of your chair.
Each of these ten thousand holes has its ow n little electric lightbulb,
know n as a "lam p," and its ow n neatly printed num ber code.
W ith the ease of long habit, you are scanning your board for lit-up
bulbs. This is w hat you do m ost of the tim e,so you are used to it.
A lam p lights up. This m eans that the phone at the end of that line has
been taken off the hook. W henever a handset is taken off the hook,that
closes a circuit inside the phone w hich then signals the localoffice, i.e.
you, autom atically. There m ight be som ebody calling, or then again the
phone m ight be sim ply off the hook,but this does not m atter to you yet.
The first thing you do, is record that num ber in your logbook, in your
fine A m erican public-schoolhandw riting. This com es first, naturally,
since it is done for billing purposes.

You now take the plug of your answ ering cord, w hich goes directly to
your headset, and plug it into the lit-up hole. "O perator," you announce.
In operator's classes, before taking this job, you have been issued a
large pam phlet fullof canned operator's responses for allkinds of con-
tingencies, w hich you had to m em orize. You have also been trained in a
proper non- regional, non-ethnic pronunciation and tone of voice. You
rarely have the occasion to m ake any spontaneous rem ark to a cus-
tom er, and in fact this is frow ned upon (except out on the rurallines
w here people have tim e on their hands and get up to allkinds of m is-
chief).
A tough-sounding user's voice at the end of the line gives you a num ber.
Im m ediately, you w rite that num ber dow n in your logbook, next to the
caller's num ber, w hich you just w rote earlier. You then look and see if
the num ber this guy w ants is in fact on your sw itchboard, w hich it gen-
erally is, since it's generally a localcall. Long distance costs so m uch
that people use it sparingly.
O nly then do you pick up a calling-cord from a shelf at the base of the
sw itchboard. This is a long elastic cord m ounted on a kind of reelso that
it w illzip back in w hen you unplug it. There are a lot of cords dow n
there,and w hen a bunch of them are out at once they look like a nest of
snakes. Som e of the girls think there are bugs living in those cable-
holes. They're called "cable m ites" 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. N ot allthe w ay in, though.
You just touch it. If you hear a clicking sound, that m eans the line is
busy and you can't put the callthrough. If the line is busy, you have to
stick the calling-cord into a "busy-tone jack," w hich w illgive the guy a
busy-tone. This w ay you don't have to talk to him yourself and absorb
his naturalhum an frustration.
But the line isn't busy. So you pop the cord allthe w ay in. Relay cir-
cuits in your board m ake the distant phone ring, and if som ebody picks

it up off the hook,then a phone conversation starts. You can hear this
conversation on your answ ering cord, untilyou unplug it. In fact you
could listen to the w hole conversation if you w anted, but this is sternly
frow ned upon by m anagem ent, and frankly, w hen you've overheard one,
you've pretty m uch heard 'em all.
You can tellhow long the conversation lasts by the glow of the calling-
cord's lam p, dow n on the calling-cord's shelf. W hen it's over, you
unplug and the calling-cord zips back into place.
Having done this stuff a few hundred thousand tim es,you becom e quite
good at it. In fact you're plugging,and connecting,and disconnecting,
ten, tw enty, forty cords at a tim e. It's a m anualhandicraft, really,
quite satisfying in a w ay, rather like w eaving on an upright loom .
Should a long-distance callcom e up, it w ould be different, but not all

that different. Instead of connecting the callthrough your ow n local
sw itchboard, you have to go up the hierarchy, onto the long-distance
lines, know n as "trunklines." D epending on how far the callgoes, it m ay
have to w ork its w ay through a w hole series of operators, w hich can
take quite a w hile. The caller doesn't w ait on the line w hile this com -
plex process is negotiated across the country by the gaggle of operators.
Instead, the caller hangs up, and you callhim back yourself w hen the
callhas finally w orked its w ay through.
A fter four or five years of this w ork, you get m arried, and you have to
quit your job, this being the naturalorder of w om anhood in the
A m erican 1920s. The phone com pany has to train som ebody else —
m aybe tw o people,since the phone system has grow n som ew hat in the
m eantim e. A nd this costs m oney.
In fact, to use any kind of hum an being as a sw itching system is a very

expensive proposition. Eight thousand Leticia Luthors w ould be bad
enough, but a quarter of a m illion of them is a m ilitary-scale proposi-
tion and m akes drastic m easures in autom ation financially w orthw hile.
A lthough the phone system continues to grow today,the num ber of

hum an beings em ployed by telcos has been dropping steadily for years.
BRU C E ST ERLI N G — T H E H AC KER CRAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 41

Phone "operators" now dealw ith nothing but unusualcontingencies, all
routine operations having been shrugged off onto m achines.
Consequently, telephone operators are considerably less m achine-like
now adays, and have been know n to have accents and actualcharacter in
their voices. W hen you reach a hum an operator today, the operators are
rather m ore "hum an" than they w ere in Leticia's day — but on the other
hand, hum an beings in the phone system are m uch harder to reach in the
first place.
O ver the first half of the tw entieth century, "electrom echanical"

sw itching system s of grow ing com plexity w ere cautiously introduced
into the phone system . In certain backw aters, som e of these hybrid
system s are stillin use. But after 1965, the phone system began to go
com pletely electronic, and this is by far the dom inant m ode today.
Electrom echanicalsystem s have "crossbars," and "brushes," and other
large m oving m echanicalparts, w hich, w hile faster and cheaper than
Leticia, are stillslow , and tend to w ear out fairly quickly.
But fully electronic system s are inscribed on silicon chips, and are
lightning-fast, very cheap, and quite durable. They are m uch cheaper
to m aintain than even the best electrom echanicalsystem s,and they fit
into half the space. A nd w ith every year, the silicon chip grow s sm all-
er, faster, and cheaper yet. Best of all, autom ated electronics w ork
around the clock and don't have salaries or health insurance.
There are, how ever, quite serious draw backs to the use of com puter-
chips. W hen they do break dow n, it is a daunting challenge to figure out
w hat the heck has gone w rong w ith them . A broken cordboard generally
had a problem in it big enough to see. A broken chip has invisible,
m icroscopic faults. A nd the faults in bad softw are can be so subtle as to
be practically theological.
If you w ant a m echanicalsystem to do som ething new ,then you m ust

travelto w here it is, and pullpieces out of it, and w ire in new pieces.
This costs m oney. How ever,if you w ant a chip to do som ething new ,all
you have to do is change its softw are, w hich 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 w ouldn't look like m uch. A chip w ith program X doesn't

look one w hit different from a chip w ith program Y.
W ith the proper codes and sequences,and access to specialized phone-

lines, you can change electronic sw itching system s allover A m erica
from anyw here you please.
A nd so can other people. If they know how ,and if they w ant to,they can
sneak into a m icrochip via the specialphonelines and diddle w ith it,
leaving no physicaltrace at all. If they broke into the operator's station
and held Leticia at gunpoint, that w ould be very obvious. If they broke
into a telco building and w ent after an electrom echanicalsw itch w ith a
toolbelt,that w ould at least leave m any traces. But people can do all
m anner of am azing things to com puter sw itches just by typing on a key-
board, and keyboards are everyw here today. The extent of this vulnera-
bility is deep, dark, broad, alm ost m ind-boggling, and yet this is a
basic, prim alfact of life about any com puter on a netw ork.
Security experts over the past tw enty years have insisted, w ith grow ing
urgency, that this basic vulnerability of com puters represents an
entirely new levelof risk, of unknow n but obviously dire potentialto
society. A nd they are right.
A n electronic sw itching station does pretty m uch everything Letitia did,

except in nanoseconds and on a m uch larger scale. Com pared to M iss
Luthor's ten thousand jacks, even a prim itive 1ESS sw itching com puter,
60s vintage, has a 128,000 lines. A nd the current A T& T system of
choice is the m onstrous fifth-generation 5ESS.
A n Electronic Sw itching 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
locallines and trunks. Instead of hands, it has "signaldistributors,"
"centralpulse distributors," "m agnetic latching relays," and "reed
sw itches," w hich com plete and break the calls. Instead of a brain, it has
a "centralprocessor." Instead of an instruction m anual, it has a pro-
gram . Instead of a handw ritten logbook for recording and billing calls,
it has m agnetic tapes.A nd it never has to talk to anybody.Everything a
custom er m ight say to it is done by punching the direct-dialtone but-

tons on your subset.
A lthough an Electronic Sw itching Station can't talk, it does need an

interface, som e w ay to relate to its, er, em ployers. This interface is
know n as the "m aster controlcenter." (This interface m ight be better
know n sim ply as "the interface," since it doesn't actually "control"
phone calls directly. H ow ever, a term like "M aster ControlCenter" is
just the kind of rhetoric that telco m aintenance engineers — and hack-
ers — find particularly satisfying.)
Using the m aster controlcenter, a phone engineer can test localand

trunk lines for m alfunctions. H e (rarely she) can check various alarm
displays, m easure traffic on the lines, exam ine the records of telephone
usage and the charges for those calls,and change the program m ing.
A nd,of course,anybody else w ho gets into the m aster controlcenter by

rem ote controlcan also do these things, if he (rarely she) has m anaged
to figure them out, or, m ore likely, has som ehow sw iped the know ledge
from people w ho already know .
In 1 9 8 9 and 1 9 9 0 , one particular RBO C, BellSouth, w hich felt partic-

ularly troubled, spent a purported $1.2 m illion on com puter security.
Som e think it spent as m uch as tw o m illion, if you count allthe associ-
ated costs. Tw o m illion dollars is stillvery little com pared to the great
cost-saving utility of telephonic com puter system s.
Unfortunately, com puters are also stupid. Unlike hum an beings, com -
puters possess the truly profound stupidity of the inanim ate.
In the 1960s, in the first shocks of spreading com puterization, there

w as m uch easy talk about the stupidity of com puters — how they could
"only follow the program " and w ere rigidly required to do "only w hat
they w ere told." There has been rather less talk about the stupidity of
com puters since they began to achieve grandm aster status in chess
tournam ents, and to m anifest m any other im pressive form s of apparent
cleverness.
N evertheless, com puters *still* are profoundly brittle and stupid; they

are sim ply vastly m ore subtle in their stupidity and brittleness. The
com puters of the 1990s are m uch m ore reliable in their com ponents
than earlier com puter system s, but they are also called upon to do far
m ore com plex things, under far m ore challenging conditions.
O n a basic m athem aticallevel, every single line of a softw are program

offers a chance for som e possible screw up. Softw are does not sit still
w hen it w orks; it "runs," it interacts w ith itself and w ith its ow n inputs
and outputs. By analogy, it stretches like putty into m illions of possible
shapes and conditions,so m any shapes that they can never allbe suc-
cessfully tested, not even in the lifespan of the universe. Som etim es the
putty snaps.
The stuff w e call"softw are" is not like anything that hum an society is
used to thinking about. Softw are is som ething like a m achine, and som e-
thing like m athem atics, and som ething like language, and som ething like
thought, and art, and inform ation.... but softw are is not in fact any of
those other things. The protean quality of softw are is one of the great
sources of its fascination. It also m akes softw are very pow erful, very
subtle, very unpredictable, and very risky.
Som e softw are is bad and buggy. Som e is "robust," even "bulletproof."
The best softw are is that w hich has been tested by thousands of users
under thousands of different conditions, over years. It is then know n as
"stable." This does *not* m ean that the softw are is now flaw less, free
of bugs. It generally m eans that there are plenty of bugs in it, but the
bugs are w ell-identified and fairly w ellunderstood.
There is sim ply no w ay to assure that softw are is free of flaw s. Though
softw are is m athem aticalin nature, it cannot by "proven" like a m athe-
m aticaltheorem ; softw are is m ore like language, w ith inherent am bi-
guities, w ith different definitions, different assum ptions, different lev-
els of m eaning that can conflict.
Hum an beings can m anage,m ore or less,w ith hum an language because
w e can catch the gist of it.
Com puters, despite years of effort in "artificialintelligence," have

proven spectacularly bad in "catching the gist" of anything at all. The
tiniest bit of sem antic grit m ay stillbring the m ightiest com puter tum -
bling dow n.O ne of the m ost hazardous things you can do to a com puter
program is try to im prove it — to try to m ake it safer. Softw are
"patches" represent new , untried un- "stable" softw are, w hich is by
definition riskier.
The m odern telephone system has com e to depend, utterly and irretriev-
ably, upon softw are. A nd the System Crash of January 15, 1990, w as
caused by an *im provem ent* in softw are. O r rather, an *attem pted*
im provem ent.
A s it happened,the problem itself — the problem per se — took this

form . A piece of telco softw are had been w ritten in C language,a stan-
dard language of the telco field. W ithin the C softw are w as a long "do...
w hile" construct. The "do... w hile" construct contained a "sw itch" state-
m ent. The "sw itch" statem ent contained an "if" clause. The "if" clause
contained a "break." The "break" w as *supposed* to "break" the "if
clause." Instead, the "break" broke the "sw itch" statem ent.
That w as the problem , the actualreason w hy people picking up phones

on January 15, 1990, could not talk to one another.
O r at least, that w as the subtle, abstract, cyberspatialseed of the prob-

lem . This is how the problem m anifested itself from the realm of pro-
gram m ing into the realm of reallife.
The System 7 softw are for A T& T's 4ESS sw itching station, the "Generic
44E14 CentralO ffice Sw itch Softw are," had been extensively tested, and
w as considered very stable. By the end of 1989,eighty of A T& T's
sw itching system s nationw ide had been program m ed w ith the new soft-
w are. Cautiously, thirty- four stations w ere left to run the slow er,
less-capable System 6, because A T& T suspected there m ight be shake-
dow n problem s w ith the new and unprecedently sophisticated System 7
netw ork.
The stations w ith System 7 w ere program m ed to sw itch over to a backup

net in case of any problem s. In m id-D ecem ber 1989, how ever, a new

high-velocity, high- security softw are patch w as distributed to each of
the 4ESS sw itches that w ould enable them to sw itch over even m ore
quickly, m aking the System 7 netw ork that m uch m ore secure.
Unfortunately, every one of these 4ESS sw itches w as now in possession

of a sm allbut deadly flaw .
In order to m aintain the netw ork, sw itches m ust m onitor the condition
of other sw itches — w hether they are up and running, w hether they
have tem porarily shut dow n, w hether they are overloaded and in need of
assistance, and so forth. The new softw are helped controlthis book-
keeping function by m onitoring the status calls from other sw itches.
It only takes four to six seconds for a troubled 4ESS sw itch to rid itself
of allits calls, drop everything tem porarily, and re-boot its softw are
from scratch. Starting over from scratch w illgenerally rid the sw itch
of any softw are problem s that m ay have developed in the course of run-
ning the system . Bugs that arise w illbe sim ply w iped out by this
process. It is a clever idea. This process of autom atically re-booting
from scratch is know n as the "norm alfault recovery routine." Since
A T& T's softw are is in fact exceptionally stable, system s rarely have to
go into "fault recovery" in the first place; but A T& T has alw ays boasted
of its "realw orld" reliability, and this tactic is a belt-and-suspenders
routine.
The 4ESS sw itch used its new softw are to m onitor its fellow sw itches as
they recovered from faults. A s other sw itches cam e back on line after
recovery, they w ould send their "O K" signals to the sw itch. The sw itch
w ould m ake a little note to that effect in its "status m ap," recognizing
that the fellow sw itch w as back and ready to go,and should be sent som e
calls and put back to regular w ork.
Unfortunately, w hile it w as busy bookkeeping w ith the status m ap, the

tiny flaw in the brand-new softw are cam e into play. The flaw caused the
4ESS sw itch to interacted, subtly but drastically, w ith incom ing tele-
phone calls from hum an users. If — and only if — tw o incom ing phone-
calls happened to hit the sw itch w ithin a hundredth of a second, then a
sm allpatch of data w ould be garbled by the flaw .

But the sw itch had been program m ed to m onitor itself constantly for any
possible dam age to its data.W hen the sw itch perceived that its data had
been som ehow garbled,then it too w ould go dow n,for sw ift repairs to
its softw are. It w ould signalits fellow sw itches not to send any m ore
w ork. It w ould go into the fault- recovery m ode for four to six seconds.
A nd then the sw itch w ould be fine again,and w ould send out its "O K,
ready for w ork" signal.
H ow ever, the "O K, ready for w ork" signalw as the *very thing that had
caused the sw itch to go dow n in the first place.* A nd *all* the System
7 sw itches had the sam e flaw in their status-m ap softw are. A s soon as
they stopped to m ake the bookkeeping note that their fellow sw itch w as
"O K," then they too w ould becom e vulnerable to the slight chance that
tw o phone-calls w ould hit them w ithin a hundredth of a second.
A t approxim ately 2:25 p.m . EST on M onday, January 15, one of A T& T's
4ESS tollsw itching system s in N ew York City had an actual, legitim ate,
m inor problem . It w ent into fault recovery routines, announced "I'm
going dow n," then announced, "I'm back, I'm O K." A nd this cheery m es-
sage then blasted throughout the netw ork to m any of its fellow 4ESS
sw itches.
M any of the sw itches, at first, com pletely escaped trouble. These lucky
sw itches w ere not hit by the coincidence of tw o phone calls w ithin a
hundredth of a second. Their softw are did not fail— at first. But three
sw itches — in A tlanta, St. Louis, and D etroit — w ere unlucky, and w ere
caught w ith their hands full. A nd they w ent dow n. A nd they cam e back
up,alm ost im m ediately.A nd they too began to broadcast the lethalm es-
sage that they, too, w ere "O K" again, activating the lurking softw are bug
in yet other sw itches.
A s m ore and m ore sw itches did have that bit of bad luck and collapsed,
the call-traffic becam e m ore and m ore densely packed in the rem aining
sw itches, w hich w ere groaning to keep up w ith the load. A nd of course,
as the calls becam e m ore densely packed, the sw itches w ere *m uch m ore
likely* to be hit tw ice w ithin a hundredth of a second.

It only took four seconds for a sw itch to get w ell. There w as no *physi-
cal* dam age of any kind to the sw itches, after all. Physically, they
w ere w orking perfectly. This situation w as "only" a softw are problem .
But the 4ESS sw itches w ere leaping up and dow n every four to six sec-
onds, in a virulent spreading w ave allover A m erica, in utter, m anic,
m echanicalstupidity. They kept *knocking* one another dow n w ith
their contagious "O K" m essages.
It took about ten m inutes for the chain reaction to cripple the netw ork.
Even then, sw itches w ould periodically luck-out and m anage to resum e
their norm alw ork. M any calls — m illions of them — w ere m anaging to
get through. But m illions w eren't.
The sw itching stations that used System 6 w ere not directly affected.
Thanks to these old-fashioned sw itches,A T& T's nationalsystem avoided
com plete collapse. This fact also m ade it clear to engineers that System
7 w as at fault.
Bell Labs engineers, w orking feverishly in N ew Jersey, Illinois, and

O hio, first tried their entire repertoire of standard netw ork rem edies
on the m alfunctioning System 7. N one of the rem edies w orked,of
course,because nothing like this had ever happened to any phone system
before.
By cutting out the backup safety netw ork entirely, they w ere able to
reduce the frenzy of "O K" m essages by about half. The system then
began to recover,as the chain reaction slow ed. By 11:30 pm on M onday
January 15, sw eating engineers on the m idnight shift breathed a sigh of
relief as the last sw itch cleared-up.
By Tuesday they w ere pulling allthe brand-new 4ESS softw are and
replacing it w ith an earlier version of System 7.
If these had been hum an operators, rather than com puters at w ork,
som eone w ould sim ply have eventually stopped scream ing. It w ould have
been *obvious* that the situation w as not "O K," and com m on sense w ould
have kicked in. Hum ans possess com m on sense — at least to som e

extent. Com puters sim ply don't.
O n the other hand,com puters can handle hundreds of calls per second.
H um ans sim ply can't. If every single hum an being in A m erica w orked
for the phone com pany,w e couldn't m atch the perform ance of digital
sw itches: direct-dialling, three-w ay calling, speed-calling, call- w ait-
ing, Caller ID , allthe rest of the cornucopia of digitalbounty.
Replacing com puters w ith operators is sim ply not an option any m ore.
A nd yet w e still, anachronistically, expect hum ans to be running our

phone system . It is hard for us to understand that w e have sacrificed
huge am ounts of initiative and controlto senseless yet pow erful
m achines.W hen the phones fail,w e w ant som ebody to be responsible.
W e w ant som ebody to blam e.
W hen the Crash of January 15 happened, the A m erican populace w as

sim ply not prepared to understand that enorm ous landslides in cyber-
space, like the Crash itself, can happen, and can be nobody's fault in
particular. It w as easier to believe, m aybe even in som e odd w ay m ore
reassuring to believe, that som e evilperson, or evilgroup, had done
this to us. "H ackers" had done it. W ith a virus. A trojan horse. A soft-
w are bom b. A dirty plot of som e kind. People believed this, responsi-
ble people. In 1990, they w ere looking hard for evidence to confirm
their heartfelt suspicions.
A nd they w ould look in a lot of places.
Com e 1991, how ever, the outlines of an apparent new reality w ould
begin to em erge from the fog.
O n July 1 and 2, 1991, com puter-softw are collapses in telephone

sw itching stations disrupted service in W ashington D C, Pittsburgh, Los
A ngeles and San Francisco. O nce again, seem ingly m inor m aintenance
problem s had crippled the digitalSystem 7. A bout tw elve m illion peo-
ple w ere affected in the Crash of July 1, 1991.
Said the N ew York Tim es Service: "Telephone com pany executives and
federalregulators said they w ere not ruling out the possibility of sabo-

tage by com puter hackers,but m ost seem ed to think the problem s
stem m ed from som e unknow n defect in the softw are running the net-
w orks."
A nd sure enough, w ithin the w eek, a red-faced softw are com pany, D SC
Com m unications Corporation of Plano, Texas, ow ned up to "glitches" in
the "signaltransfer point" softw are that D SC had designed for Bell
A tlantic and Pacific Bell. The im m ediate cause of the July 1 Crash w as a
single m istyped character: one tiny typographicalflaw in one single
line of the softw are. O ne m istyped letter, in one single line, had
deprived the nation's capitalof phone service. It w as not particularly
surprising that this tiny flaw had escaped attention: a typicalSystem 7
station requires *ten m illion* lines of code.
O n Tuesday,Septem ber 17,1991,cam e the m ost spectacular outage yet.

This case had nothing to do w ith softw are failures — at least, not direct-
ly. Instead, a group of A T& T's sw itching stations in N ew York City had
sim ply run out of electricalpow er and shut dow n cold. Their back-up
batteries had failed. A utom atic w arning system s w ere supposed to w arn
of the loss of battery pow er,but those autom atic system s had failed as
w ell.
This tim e, Kennedy, La Guardia, and N ew ark airports allhad their voice
and data com m unications cut. This horrifying event w as particularly
ironic, as attacks on airport com puters by hackers had long been a stan-
dard nightm are scenario, m uch trum peted by com puter- security
experts w ho feared the com puter underground.There had even been a
H ollyw ood thriller about sinister hackers ruining airport com puters —
*D ie H ard II.*
N ow A T& T itself had crippled airports w ith com puter m alfunctions —

not just one airport, but three at once, som e of the busiest in the w orld.
A ir traffic cam e to a standstillthroughout the Greater N ew York area,

causing m ore than 500 flights to be cancelled, in a spreading w ave all
over A m erica and even into Europe. A nother 500 or so flights w ere
delayed, affecting, allin all, about 85,000 passengers. (O ne of these
passengers w as the chairm an of the FederalCom m unications

Com m ission.)
Stranded passengers in N ew York and N ew Jersey w ere further infuri-

ated to discover that they could not even m anage to m ake a long distance
phone call, to explain their delay to loved ones or business associates.
Thanks to the crash, about four and a half m illion dom estic calls, and
half a m illion internationalcalls, failed to get through.
The Septem ber 17 N YC Crash, unlike the previous ones, involved not a
w hisper of "hacker" m isdeeds. O n the contrary, by 1991, A T& T itself
w as suffering m uch of the vilification that had form erly been directed at
hackers. Congressm en w ere grum bling. So w ere state and federalregu-
lators. A nd so w as the press.
For their part, ancient rivalM CItook out snide full- page new spaper
ads in N ew York, offering their ow n long- distance services for the
"next tim e that A T& T goes dow n."
"You w ouldn't find a classy com pany like A T& T using such advertising,"
protested A T& T Chairm an Robert A llen, unconvincingly. O nce again, out
cam e the full-page A T& T apologies in new spapers, apologies for "an
inexcusable culm ination of both hum an and m echanicalfailure." (This
tim e, how ever, A T& T offered no discount on later calls. Unkind critics
suggested that A T& T w ere w orried about setting any precedent for
refunding the financiallosses caused by telephone crashes.)
Industry journals asked publicly if A T& T w as "asleep at the sw itch."

The telephone netw ork, A m erica's purported m arvelof high-tech relia-
bility, had gone dow n three tim es in 18 m onths. *Fortune* m agazine
listed the Crash of Septem ber 17 am ong the "Biggest Business Goofs of
1991," cruelly parodying A T& T's ad cam paign in an article entitled
"A T& T W ants You Back (Safely O n the Ground, God W illing)."
W hy had those N ew York sw itching system s sim ply run out of pow er?
Because no hum an being had attended to the alarm system . W hy did the
alarm system s blare autom atically, w ithout any hum an being noticing?
Because the three telco technicians w ho *should* have been listening
w ere absent from their stations in the pow er-room , on another floor of

the building — attending a training class. A training class about the
alarm system s for the pow er room !
"Crashing the System " w as no longer "unprecedented" by late 1991. O n

the contrary, it no longer even seem ed an oddity. By 1991, it w as clear
that allthe policem en in the w orld could no longer "protect" the phone
system from crashes. By far the w orst crashes the system had ever
had, had been inflicted, by the system , upon *itself.* A nd this tim e
nobody w as m aking cocksure statem ents that this w as an anom aly,
som ething that w ould never happen again. By 1991 the System 's
defenders had m et their nebulous Enem y,and the Enem y w as — the
System .

P A R T T W O
T H E D IG IT A L U N D ER G R O U N D
The date w as M ay 9, 1990. The Pope w as touring M exico City.
H ustlers from the M edellin Cartelw ere trying to buy black-m arket
Stinger m issiles in Florida. O n the com ics page, D oonesbury character
A ndy w as dying of A ID S. A nd then.... a highly unusualitem w hose novel-
ty and calculated rhetoric w on it headscratching attention in new spapers
allover A m erica.
The US A ttorney's office in Phoenix, A rizona, had issued a press release

announcing a nationw ide law enforcem ent crackdow n against "illegal
com puter hacking activities." The sw eep w as officially know n as
"O peration Sundevil."
Eight paragraphs in the press release gave the bare facts: tw enty-seven
search w arrants carried out on M ay 8, w ith three arrests, and a hun-
dred and fifty agents on the prow lin "tw elve" cities across A m erica.
(D ifferent counts in localpress reports yielded "thirteen," "fourteen,"
and "sixteen" cities.) O fficials estim ated that crim inallosses of rev-
enue to telephone com panies "m ay run into m illions of dollars." Credit
for the Sundevilinvestigations w as taken by the US Secret Service,
A ssistant US A ttorney Tim Holtzen of Phoenix,and the A ssistant
A ttorney Generalof A rizona, GailThackeray.
The prepared rem arks of G arry M . Jenkins, appearing in a U.S.

D epartm ent of Justice press release, w ere of particular interest. M r.
Jenkins w as the A ssistant D irector of the US Secret Service, and the
highest-ranking federalofficialto take any direct public role in the
hacker crackdow n of 1990.
"Today,the Secret Service is sending a clear m essage to those com puter

hackers w ho have decided to violate the law s of this nation in the m is-
taken belief that they can successfully avoid detection by hiding behind
the relative anonym ity of their com puter term inals.(...) "Underground
groups have been form ed for the purpose of exchanging inform ation rel-
evant to their crim inalactivities. These groups often com m unicate w ith

each other through m essage system s betw een com puters called 'bulletin
boards.' "O ur experience show s that m any com puter hacker suspects are
no longer m isguided teenagers, m ischievously playing gam es w ith their
com puters in their bedroom s. Som e are now high tech com puter opera-
tors using com puters to engage in unlaw fulconduct."
W ho w ere these "underground groups" and "high- tech operators?"

W here had they com e from ? W hat did they w ant? W ho *w ere* they?
W ere they "m ischievous?" W ere they dangerous? H ow had "m isguided
teenagers" m anaged to alarm the United States Secret Service? A nd just
how w idespread w as this sort of thing?
O f allthe m ajor players in the H acker Crackdow n: the phone com panies,
law enforcem ent, the civillibertarians, and the "hackers" them selves —
the "hackers" are by far the m ost m ysterious, by far the hardest to
understand, by far the *w eirdest.*
N ot only are "hackers" novelin their activities, but they com e in a

variety of odd subcultures, w ith a variety of languages, m otives and
values.
The earliest proto-hackers w ere probably those unsung m ischievous

telegraph boys w ho w ere sum m arily fired by the BellCom pany in
1878.
Legitim ate "hackers," those com puter enthusiasts w ho are independent-

m inded but law -abiding, generally trace their spiritualancestry to
elite technicaluniversities, especially M .I.T. and Stanford, in the
1960s.
But the genuine roots of the m odern hacker *underground* can probably
be traced m ost successfully to a now m uch-obscured hippie anarchist
m ovem ent know n as the Yippies. The Yippies, w ho took their nam e
from the largely fictional"Youth InternationalParty," carried out a
loud and lively policy of surrealistic subversion and outrageous politi-
calm ischief. Their basic tenets w ere flagrant sexualprom iscuity, open
and copious drug use, the politicaloverthrow of any pow erm onger over
thirty years of age, and an im m ediate end to the w ar in V ietnam , by any

m eans necessary, including the psychic levitation of the Pentagon.
The tw o m ost visible Yippies w ere A bbie H offm an and Jerry Rubin.
Rubin eventually becam e a W allStreet broker. H offm an, ardently
sought by federalauthorities, w ent into hiding for seven years, in
M exico, France, and the United States. W hile on the lam , H offm an con-
tinued to w rite and publish, w ith help from sym pathizers in the
A m erican anarcho-leftist underground. M ostly, H offm an survived
through false ID and odd jobs. Eventually he underw ent facialplastic
surgery and adopted an entirely new identity as one "Barry Freed."
A fter surrendering him self to authorities in 1980, H offm an spent a
year in prison on a cocaine conviction.
H offm an's w orldview grew m uch darker as the glory days of the 1960s
faded. In 1989, he purportedly com m itted suicide, under odd and, to
som e, rather suspicious circum stances.
A bbie Hoffm an is said to have caused the FederalBureau of Investigation

to am ass the single largest investigation file ever opened on an individ-
ualA m erican citizen. (If this is true, it is stillquestionable w hether
the FBIregarded A bbie H offm an a serious public threat — quite possi-
bly, his file w as enorm ous sim ply because H offm an left colorfulleg-
endry w herever he w ent). H e w as a gifted publicist, w ho regarded
electronic m edia as both playground and w eapon. He actively enjoyed
m anipulating netw ork TV and other gullible, im age- hungry m edia,
w ith various w eird lies, m indboggling rum ors, im personation scam s,
and other sinister distortions, allabsolutely guaranteed to upset cops,
Presidentialcandidates,and federaljudges. Hoffm an's m ost fam ous
w ork w as a book self-reflexively know n as *StealThis Book,* w hich
publicized a num ber of m ethods by w hich young, penniless hippie agita-
tors m ight live off the fat of a system supported by hum orless drones.
*StealThis Book,* w hose title urged readers to dam age the very m eans
of distribution w hich had put it into their hands, m ight be described as a
spiritualancestor of a com puter virus.
H offm an, like m any a later conspirator, m ade extensive use of pay-
phones for his agitation w ork — in his case, generally through the use of
cheap brass w ashers as coin-slugs.

D uring the V ietnam W ar, there w as a federalsurtax im posed on tele-
phone service; Hoffm an and his cohorts could, and did, argue that in
system atically stealing phone service they w ere engaging in civildis-
obedience: virtuously denying tax funds to an illegaland im m oralw ar.
But this thin veilof decency w as soon dropped entirely. Ripping-off the
System found its ow n justification in deep alienation and a basic outlaw
contem pt for conventionalbourgeois values. Ingenious, vaguely politi-
cized varieties of rip-off, w hich m ight be described as "anarchy by
convenience," becam e very popular in Yippie circles, and because rip-
off w as so useful, it w as to survive the Yippie m ovem ent itself.
In the early 1970s, it required fairly lim ited expertise and ingenuity to
cheat payphones, to divert "free" electricity and gas service, or to rob
vending m achines and parking m eters for handy pocket change. It also
required a conspiracy to spread this know ledge, and the galland nerve
actually to com m it petty theft, but the Yippies had these qualifications
in plenty. In June 1971, A bbie H offm an and a telephone enthusiast sar-
castically know n as "A lBell" began publishing a new sletter called
*Youth InternationalParty Line.* This new sletter w as dedicated to col-
lating and spreading Yippie rip-off techniques, especially of phones, to
the joy of the freew heeling underground and the insensate rage of all
straight people.
A s a politicaltactic, phone-service theft ensured that Yippie advocates

w ould alw ays have ready access to the long-distance telephone as a
m edium , despite the Yippies' chronic lack of organization, discipline,
m oney,or even a steady hom e address.
*Party Line* w as run out of Greenw ich V illage for a couple of years,
then "A lBell" m ore or less defected from the faltering ranks of
Yippiedom , changing the new sletter's nam e to *TA P* or *Technical
A ssistance Program .* A fter the V ietnam W ar ended,the steam began
leaking rapidly out of A m erican radicaldissent. But by this tim e, "Bell"
and his dozen or so core contributors had the bit betw een their teeth,
and had begun to derive trem endous gut-levelsatisfaction from the sen-
sation of pure *technicalpow er.*

*TA P* articles, once highly politicized, becam e pitilessly jargonized
and technical, in hom age or parody to the BellSystem 's ow n technical
docum ents, w hich *TA P* studied closely, gutted, and reproduced w ithout
perm ission. The *TA P* elite revelled in gloating possession of the spe-
cialized know ledge necessary to beat the system .
"A lBell" dropped out of the gam e by the late 70s,and "Tom Edison" took
over; TA P readers (som e 1400 of them , alltold) now began to show
m ore interest in telex sw itches and the grow ing phenom enon of com put-
er system s.
In 1983, "Tom Edison" had his com puter stolen and his house set on fire
by an arsonist. This w as an eventually m ortalblow to *TA P* (though
the legendary nam e w as to be resurrected in 1990 by a young
Kentuckian com puter- outlaw nam ed "Predat0r.")
_____
Ever since telephones began to m ake m oney,there have been people

w illing to rob and defraud phone com panies. The legions of petty phone
thieves vastly outnum ber those "phone phreaks" w ho "explore the sys-
tem " for the sake of the intellectualchallenge. The N ew York m etropol-
itan area (long in the vanguard of A m erican crim e) claim s over
150,000 physicalattacks on pay telephones every year! Studied care-
fully, a m odern 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, m agnets, lockpicks,
blasting caps. Public payphones m ust survive in a w orld of unfriend-
ly, greedy people, and a m odern payphone is as exquisitely evolved as a
cactus.
Because the phone netw ork pre-dates the com puter netw ork, the
scofflaw s know n as "phone phreaks" pre-date the scofflaw s know n as
"com puter hackers." In practice, today, the line betw een "phreaking"
and "hacking" is very blurred, just as the distinction betw een tele-
phones and com puters has blurred. The phone system has been digitized,
and com puters have learned to "talk" over phone-lines. W hat's w orse
— and this w as the point of the M r.Jenkins of the Secret Service — som e

hackers have learned to steal,and som e thieves have learned to hack.
D espite the blurring, one can stilldraw a few usefulbehavioraldistinc-

tions betw een "phreaks" and "hackers." H ackers are intensely interested
in the "system " per se, and enjoy relating to m achines. "Phreaks" are
m ore social, m anipulating the system in a rough-and-ready fashion in
order to get through to other hum an beings,fast,cheap and under the
table.
Phone phreaks love nothing so m uch as "bridges," illegalconference

calls of ten or tw elve chatting conspirators, seaboard to seaboard, last-
ing for m any hours — and running, of course, on som ebody else's tab,
preferably a large corporation's.
A s phone-phreak conferences w ear on, people drop out (or sim ply leave
the phone off the hook,w hile they sashay off to w ork or schoolor
babysitting), and new people are phoned up and invited to join in, from
som e other continent, if possible. Technicaltrivia, boasts, brags, lies,
head-trip deceptions, w eird rum ors, and cruelgossip are allfreely
exchanged.
The low est rung of phone-phreaking is the theft of telephone access

codes. Charging a phone callto som ebody else's stolen num ber is,of
course, a pig-easy w ay of stealing phone service, requiring practically
no technicalexpertise. This practice has been very w idespread, espe-
cially am ong lonely people w ithout m uch m oney w ho are far from hom e.
Code theft has flourished especially in college dorm s, m ilitary bases,
and,notoriously,am ong roadies for rock bands. O f late,code theft has
spread very rapidly am ong Third W orlders in the US, w ho pile up enor-
m ous unpaid long-distance bills to the Caribbean, South A m erica, and
Pakistan.
The sim plest w ay to stealphone-codes is sim ply to look over a victim 's
shoulder as he punches-in his ow n code-num ber on a public payphone.
This technique is know n as "shoulder-surfing," and is especially com -
m on in airports, bus term inals, and train stations. The code is then sold
by the thief for a few dollars. The buyer abusing the code has no com -
puter expertise, but calls his M om in N ew York, Kingston or Caracas

and runs up a huge billw ith im punity. The losses from this prim itive
phreaking activity are far, far greater than the m onetary losses caused
by com puter-intruding hackers.
In the m id-to-late 1980s, untilthe introduction of sterner telco secu-

rity m easures, *com puterized* code theft w orked like a charm , and w as
virtually om nipresent throughout the digitalunderground, am ong
phreaks and hackers alike. This w as accom plished through program -
m ing one's com puter to try random code num bers over the telephone
untilone of them w orked. Sim ple program s to do this w ere w idely
available in the underground; a com puter running allnight w as likely to
com e up w ith a dozen or so usefulhits. This could be repeated w eek
after w eek untilone had a large library of stolen codes.
N ow adays, the com puterized dialling of hundreds of num bers can be

detected w ithin hours and sw iftly traced. If a stolen code is repeatedly
abused,this too can be detected w ithin a few hours. But for years in the
1980s, the publication of stolen codes w as a kind of elem entary eti-
quette for fledgling hackers. The sim plest w ay to establish your bona-
fides as a raider w as to steala code through repeated random dialling and
offer it to the "com m unity" for use. Codes could be both stolen,and
used, sim ply and easily from the safety of one's ow n bedroom , w ith very
little fear of detection or punishm ent.
Before com puters and their phone-line m odem s entered A m erican hom es
in gigantic num bers, phone phreaks had their ow n specialtelecom m uni-
cations hardw are gadget,the fam ous "blue box." This fraud device (now
rendered increasingly useless by the digitalevolution of the phone sys-
tem ) could trick sw itching system s into granting free access to long-
distance lines. It did this by m im icking the system 's ow n signal, a tone
of 2600 hertz.
Steven Jobs and Steve W ozniak,the founders of A pple Com puter,Inc.,

once dabbled in selling blue-boxes in college dorm s in California. For
m any, in the early days of phreaking, blue-boxing w as scarcely per-
ceived as "theft," but rather as a fun (if sneaky) w ay to use excess
phone capacity harm lessly. A fter all, the long-distance lines w ere
*just sitting there*.... W hom did it hurt, really? If you're not *dam -

aging* the system , and you're not *using up any tangible resource,*
and if nobody *finds out* w hat you did, then w hat realharm have you
done? W hat exactly *have* you "stolen," anyw ay? If a tree falls in the
forest and nobody hears it, how m uch is the noise w orth? Even now this
rem ains a rather dicey question.
Blue-boxing w as no joke to the phone com panies, how ever. Indeed,

w hen *Ram parts* m agazine, a radicalpublication in California, printed
the w iring schem atics necessary to create a m ute box in June 1972,
the m agazine w as seized by police and Pacific Bellphone- com pany offi-
cials. The m ute box, a blue-box variant, allow ed its user to receive
long-distance calls free of charge to the caller. This device w as closely
described in a *Ram parts* article w ryly titled "Regulating the Phone
Com pany In Your H om e." Publication of this article w as held to be in
violation of Californian State PenalCode section 502.7, w hich outlaw s
ow nership of w ire-fraud devices and the selling of "plans or instruc-
tions for any instrum ent, apparatus, or device intended to avoid tele-
phone tollcharges."
Issues of *Ram parts* w ere recalled or seized on the new sstands, and the
resultant loss of incom e helped put the m agazine out of business. This
w as an om inous precedent for free-expression issues, but the telco's
crushing of a radical-fringe m agazine passed w ithout serious challenge
at the tim e. Even in the freew heeling California 1970s, it w as w idely
felt that there w as som ething sacrosanct about w hat the phone com pany
knew ; that the telco had a legaland m oralright to protect itself by shut-
ting off the flow of such illicit inform ation. M ost telco inform ation w as
so "specialized" that it w ould scarcely be understood by any honest
m em ber of the public. If not published, it w ould not be m issed. To
print such m aterialdid not seem part of the legitim ate role of a free
press.
In 1990 there w ould be a sim ilar telco-inspired attack on the electron-

ic phreak/hacking "m agazine" *Phrack.* The *Phrack* legalcase
becam e a centralissue in the Hacker Crackdow n, and gave rise to great
controversy. *Phrack* w ould also be shut dow n, for a tim e, at least,
but this tim e both the telcos and their law -enforcem ent allies w ould pay
a m uch larger price for their actions. The *Phrack* case w illbe

exam ined in detail, later.
Phone-phreaking as a socialpractice is stillvery m uch alive at this

m om ent. Today, phone-phreaking is thriving m uch m ore vigorously
than the better-know n and w orse-feared practice of "com puter hack-
ing." N ew form s of phreaking are spreading rapidly, follow ing new
vulnerabilities in sophisticated phone services.
Cellular phones are especially vulnerable; their chips can be re-pro-

gram m ed to present a false caller ID and avoid billing. D oing so also
avoids police tapping, m aking cellular-phone abuse a favorite am ong
drug-dealers. "Call-selloperations" using pirate cellular phones can,
and have, been run right out of the backs of cars, w hich m ove from
"cell" to "cell" in the localphone system , retailing stolen long-distance
service, like som e kind of dem ented electronic version of the neighbor-
hood ice-cream truck.
Private branch-exchange phone system s in large corporations can be

penetrated; phreaks dial-up a localcom pany, enter its internalphone-
system ,hack it,then use the com pany's ow n PBX system to dialback out
over the public netw ork, causing the com pany to be stuck w ith the
resulting long-distance bill. This technique is know n as "diverting."
"D iverting" can be very costly, especially because phreaks tend to
travelin packs and never stop talking. Perhaps the w orst by-product
of this "PBX fraud" is that victim com panies and telcos have sued one
another over the financialresponsibility for the stolen calls, thus
enriching not only shabby phreaks but w ell-paid law yers.
"V oice-m ailsystem s" can also be abused; phreaks can seize their ow n
sections of these sophisticated electronic answ ering m achines, and use
them for trading codes or know ledge of illegaltechniques. V oice-m ail
abuse does not hurt the com pany directly,but finding supposedly em pty
slots in your com pany's answ ering m achine allcram m ed w ith phreaks
eagerly chattering and hey-duding one another in im penetrable jargon
can cause sensations of alm ost m ysticalrepulsion and dread.
W orse yet, phreaks have som etim es been know n to react truculently to
attem pts to "clean up" the voice-m ailsystem . Rather than hum bly

acquiescing to being throw n out of their playground, they m ay very w ell
callup the com pany officials at w ork (or at hom e) and loudly dem and
free voice-m ailaddresses of their very ow n. Such bullying is taken
very seriously by spooked victim s.
A cts of phreak revenge against straight people are rare, but voice-m ail
system s are especially tem pting and vulnerable, and an infestation of
angry phreaks in one's voice-m ailsystem is no joke. They can erase
legitim ate m essages; or spy on private m essages; or harass users w ith
recorded taunts and obscenities. They've even been know n to seize con-
trolof voice-m ailsecurity, and lock out legitim ate users, or even shut
dow n the system entirely.
Cellular phone-calls, cordless phones, and ship-to- shore telephony

can allbe m onitored by various form s of radio; this kind of "passive
m onitoring" is spreading explosively today. Technically eavesdropping
on other people's cordless and cellular phone-calls is the fastest-
grow ing area in phreaking today. This practice strongly appeals to the
lust for pow er and conveys gratifying sensations of technicalsuperiori-
ty over the eavesdropping victim . M onitoring is rife w ith allm anner of
tem pting evilm ischief. Sim ple prurient snooping is by far the m ost
com m on activity. But credit-card num bers unw arily spoken over the
phone can be recorded,stolen and used.A nd tapping people's phone-calls
(w hether through active telephone taps or passive radio m onitors) does
lend itself conveniently to activities like blackm ail, industrial espi-
onage, and politicaldirty tricks.
It should be repeated that telecom m unications fraud, the theft of phone

service, causes vastly greater m onetary losses than the practice of
entering into com puters by stealth. H ackers are m ostly young subur-
ban A m erican w hite m ales, and exist in their hundreds — but "phreaks"
com e from both sexes and from m any nationalities,ages and ethnic
backgrounds, and are flourishing in the thousands.
_____
The term "hacker" has had an unfortunate history. This book, *The
H acker Crackdow n,* has little to say about "hacking" in its finer, origi-
nalsense. The term can signify the free-w heeling intellectualexplo-

ration of the highest and deepest potentialof com puter system s.
Hacking can describe the determ ination to m ake access to com puters and
inform ation as free and open as possible. H acking can involve the
heartfelt conviction that beauty can be found in com puters,that the fine
aesthetic in a perfect program can liberate the m ind and spirit. This is
"hacking" as it w as defined in Steven Levy's m uch-praised history of the
pioneer com puter m ilieu, *H ackers,* published in 1 9 8 4 .
H ackers of allkinds are absolutely soaked through w ith heroic anti-

bureaucratic sentim ent. H ackers long for recognition as a praisew orthy
culturalarchetype, the postm odern electronic equivalent of the cow boy
and m ountain m an. W hether they deserve such a reputation is som e-
thing for history to decide. But m any hackers — including those outlaw
hackers w ho are com puter intruders, and w hose activities are defined as
crim inal— actually attem pt to *live up to* this techno-cow boy reputa-
tion. A nd given that electronics and telecom m unications are stilllarge-
ly unexplored territories, there is sim ply *no telling* w hat hackers
m ight uncover.
For som e people, this freedom is the very breath of oxygen, the inven-
tive spontaneity that m akes life w orth living and that flings open doors
to m arvellous possibility and individualem pow erm ent. But for m any
people — and increasingly so — the hacker is an om inous figure, a
sm art- aleck sociopath ready to burst out of his basem ent w ilderness
and savage other people's lives for his ow n anarchicalconvenience.
A ny form of pow er w ithout responsibility, w ithout direct and form al

checks and balances,is frightening to people — and reasonably so. It
should be frankly adm itted that hackers *are* frightening, and that the
basis of this fear is not irrational.
Fear of hackers goes w ellbeyond the fear of m erely crim inalactivity.
Subversion and m anipulation of the phone system is an act w ith dis-

turbing politicalovertones. In A m erica, com puters and telephones are
potent sym bols of organized authority and the technocratic business
elite.

But there is an elem ent in A m erican culture that has alw ays strongly
rebelled against these sym bols; rebelled against alllarge industrial
com puters and allphone com panies. A certain anarchicaltinge deep in
the A m erican souldelights in causing confusion and pain to allbureau-
cracies, including technologicalones.
There is som etim es m alice and vandalism in this attitude, but it is a

deep and cherished part of the A m erican nationalcharacter. The outlaw ,
the rebel, the rugged individual, the pioneer, the sturdy Jeffersonian
yeom an, the private citizen resisting interference in his pursuit of
happiness — these are figures that allA m ericans recognize, and that
m any w illstrongly applaud and defend.
M any scrupulously law -abiding citizens today do cutting-edge w ork

w ith electronics — w ork that has already had trem endous socialinflu-
ence and w illhave m uch m ore in years to com e. In alltruth, these tal-
ented, hardw orking, law -abiding, m ature, adult people are far m ore
disturbing to the peace and order of the current status quo than any
scofflaw group of rom antic teenage punk kids. These law -abiding hack-
ers have the pow er, ability, and w illingness to influence other people's
lives quite unpredictably. They have m eans, m otive, and opportunity to
m eddle drastically w ith the A m erican socialorder. W hen corralled
into governm ents, universities, or large m ultinationalcom panies, and
forced to follow rulebooks and w ear suits and ties, they at least have
som e conventionalhalters on their freedom of action. But w hen loosed
alone, or in sm allgroups, and fired by im agination and the entrepre-
neurialspirit, they can m ove m ountains — causing landslides that w ill
likely crash directly into your office and living room .
These people, as a class, instinctively recognize that a public, politi-

cized attack on hackers w illeventually spread to them — that the term
"hacker," once dem onized,m ight be used to knock their hands off the
levers of pow er and choke them out of existence. There are hackers
today w ho fiercely and publicly resist any besm irching of the noble title
of hacker. N aturally and understandably, they deeply resent the attack
on their values im plicit in using the w ord "hacker" as a synonym for
com puter-crim inal.

This book, sadly but in m y opinion unavoidably, rather adds to the
degradation of the term . It concerns itself m ostly w ith "hacking" in its
com m onest latter-day definition, i.e., intruding into com puter system s
by stealth and w ithout perm ission.
The term "hacking" is used routinely today by alm ost alllaw enforce-
m ent officials w ith any professionalinterest in com puter fraud and
abuse. A m erican police describe alm ost any crim e com m itted w ith, by,
through, or against a com puter as hacking.
M ost im portantly, "hacker" is w hat com puter- intruders choose to call

*them selves.* N obody w ho "hacks" into system s w illingly describes
him self (rarely, herself) as a "com puter intruder," "com puter tres-
passer," "cracker," "w orm er," "darkside hacker" or "high tech street
gangster." Severalother dem eaning term s have been invented in the
hope that the press and public w illleave the originalsense of the w ord
alone. But few people actually use these term s. (Iexem pt the term
"cyberpunk," w hich a few hackers and law enforcem ent people actually
do use. The term "cyberpunk" is draw n from literary criticism and has
som e odd and unlikely resonances, but, like hacker, cyberpunk too has
becom e a crim inalpejorative today.)
In any case, breaking into com puter system s w as hardly alien to the
originalhacker tradition. The first tottering system s of the 1960s
required fairly extensive internal surgery m erely to function day-by-
day. Their users "invaded" the deepest,m ost arcane recesses of their
operating softw are alm ost as a m atter of routine. "Com puter security"
in these early, prim itive system s w as at best an afterthought. W hat
security there w as, w as entirely physical, for it w as assum ed that any-
one allow ed near this expensive, arcane hardw are w ould be a fully qual-
ified professionalexpert.
In a cam pus environm ent, though, this m eant that grad students, teach-
ing assistants, undergraduates, and eventually, allm anner of dropouts
and hangers-on ended up accessing and often running the w orks.
Universities, even m odern universities, are not in the business of

m aintaining security over inform ation. O n the contrary, universities,

as institutions, pre-date the "inform ation econom y" by m any centuries
and are not- for-profit culturalentities, w hose reason for existence
(purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through techniques of
scholarship, and then teach it. Universities are m eant to *pass the
torch of civilization,* not just dow nload data into student skulls, and the
values of the academ ic com m unity are strongly at odds w ith those of all
w ould-be inform ation em pires. Teachers at alllevels, from kinder-
garten up,have proven to be sham eless and persistent softw are and data
pirates. Universities do not m erely "leak inform ation" but vigorously
broadcast free thought.
This clash of values has been fraught w ith controversy. M any hackers
of the 1960s rem em ber their professionalapprenticeship as a long
guerilla w ar against the uptight m ainfram e-com puter "inform ation
priesthood." These com puter-hungry youngsters had to struggle hard
for access to com puting pow er,and m any of them w ere not above cer-
tain, er, shortcuts. But, over the years, this practice freed com puting
from the sterile reserve of lab-coated technocrats and w as largely
responsible for the explosive grow th of com puting in generalsociety —
especially *personal* com puting.
A ccess to technicalpow er acted like catnip on certain of these young-

sters. M ost of the basic techniques of com puter intrusion: passw ord
cracking, trapdoors, backdoors, trojan horses — w ere invented in col-
lege environm ents in the 1960s, in the early days of netw ork com put-
ing. Som e off-the-cuff experience at com puter intrusion w as to be in
the inform alresum e of m ost "hackers" and m any future industry giants.
O utside of the tiny cult of com puter enthusiasts,few people thought
m uch about the im plications of "breaking into" com puters. This sort of
activity had not yet been publicized, m uch less crim inalized.
In the 1960s, definitions of "property" and "privacy" had not yet been
extended to cyberspace. Com puters w ere not yet indispensable to soci-
ety. There w ere no vast databanks of vulnerable, proprietary inform a-
tion stored in com puters, w hich m ight be accessed, copied w ithout per-
m ission, erased, altered, or sabotaged. The stakes w ere low in the early
days — but they grew every year, exponentially, as com puters them -
selves grew .

By the 1990s, com m ercialand politicalpressures had becom e over-
w helm ing, and they broke the socialboundaries of the hacking subcul-
ture. Hacking had becom e too im portant to be left to the hackers.
Society w as now forced to tackle the intangible nature of cyberspace-
as-property, cyberspace as privately-ow ned unreal-estate. In the
new , severe, responsible, high- stakes context of the "Inform ation
Society" of the 1990s, "hacking" w as called into question.
W hat did it m ean to break into a com puter w ithout perm ission and use
its com putationalpow er, or look around inside its files w ithout hurting
anything? W hat w ere com puter-intruding hackers, anyw ay — how
should society, and the law , best define their actions? W ere they just
*brow sers,* harm less intellectual explorers? W ere they *voyeurs,*
snoops, invaders of privacy? Should they be sternly treated as potential
*agents of espionage,* or perhaps as *industrialspies?* O r w ere they
best defined as *trespassers,* a very com m on teenage m isdem eanor?
W as hacking *theft of service?* (A fter all, intruders w ere getting
som eone else's com puter to carry out their orders, w ithout perm ission
and w ithout paying). W as hacking *fraud?* M aybe it w as best
described as *im personation.* The com m onest m ode of com puter intru-
sion w as (and is) to sw ipe or snoop som ebody else's passw ord,and then
enter the com puter in the guise of another person — w ho is com m only
stuck w ith the blam e and the bills.
Perhaps a m edicalm etaphor w as better — hackers should be defined as

"sick," as *com puter addicts* unable to controltheir irresponsible,
com pulsive behavior.
But these w eighty assessm ents m eant little to the people w ho w ere actu-
ally being judged. From inside the underground w orld of hacking itself,
allthese perceptions seem quaint, w rongheaded, stupid, or m eaningless.
The m ost im portant 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 sociologicaldef-
initions — w ho cares? — but for pow er,know ledge,and status am ong
one's peers.

W hen you are a hacker, it is your ow n 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 *unim portant* rules — the rules of dopey greedhead telco
bureaucrats and pig-ignorant governm ent pests.
H ackers have their *ow n* rules, w hich separate behavior w hich is cool
and elite, from behavior w hich is rodentlike, stupid and losing. These
"rules," how ever, are m ostly unw ritten and enforced by peer pressure
and tribalfeeling. Like allrules that depend on the unspoken conviction
that everybody else is a good old boy,these rules are ripe for abuse. The
m echanism s of hacker peer- pressure, "teletrials" and ostracism , are
rarely used and rarely w ork. Back-stabbing slander, threats, and elec-
tronic harassm ent are also freely em ployed in dow n- and-dirty intra-
hacker feuds, but this rarely forces a rivalout of the scene entirely.
The only realsolution for the problem of an utterly losing, treacherous
and rodentlike hacker is to *turn him in to the police.* Unlike the
M afia or M edellin Cartel, the hacker elite cannot sim ply execute the
bigm ouths, creeps and troublem akers am ong their ranks, so they turn
one another in w ith astonishing frequency.
There is no tradition of silence or *om erta* in the hacker underw orld.

H ackers can be shy, even reclusive, but w hen they do talk, hackers tend
to brag, boast and strut. A lm ost everything hackers do is *invisible;*
if they don't brag, boast, and strut about it, then *nobody w illever
know .* If you don't have som ething to brag,boast,and strut about,then
nobody in the underground w illrecognize you and favor you w ith vital
cooperation and respect.
The w ay to w in a solid reputation in the underground is by telling other

hackers things that could only have been learned by exceptionalcunning
and stealth. Forbidden know ledge, therefore, is the basic currency of the
digitalunderground, like seashells am ong Trobriand Islanders. H ackers
hoard this know ledge, and dw ellupon it obsessively, and refine it, and
bargain w ith it, and talk and talk about it.
M any hackers even suffer from a strange obsession to *teach* — to

spread the ethos and the know ledge of the digitalunderground. They'lldo

this even w hen it gains them no particular advantage and presents a
grave personal risk.
A nd w hen that risk catches up w ith them , they w illgo right on teaching
and preaching — to a new audience this tim e, their interrogators from
law enforcem ent. A lm ost every hacker arrested tells everything he
know s — allabout his friends, his m entors, his disciples — legends,
threats, horror stories, dire rum ors, gossip, hallucinations. This is, of
course,convenient for law enforcem ent — except w hen law enforcem ent
begins to believe hacker legendry.
Phone phreaks are unique am ong crim inals in their w illingness to call
up law enforcem ent officials — in the office, at their hom es — and give
them an extended piece of their m ind. 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 w illgo w ell
out of their w ay to bust these flaunting idiots. But it can also be inter-
preted as a product of a w orld-view so elitist, so closed and herm etic,
that electronic police are sim ply not perceived as "police," but rather
as *enem y phone phreaks* w ho should be scolded into behaving "decent-
ly."
H ackers at their m ost grandiloquent perceive them selves as the elite

pioneers of a new electronic w orld.A ttem pts to m ake them obey the
dem ocratically established law s of contem porary A m erican society are
seen as repression and persecution. A fter all, they argue, if A lexander
Graham Bellhad gone along w ith the rules of the W estern Union tele-
graph com pany,there w ould have been no telephones. If Jobs and
W ozniak had believed that IBM w as the be-alland end-all, there w ould
have been no personalcom puters. If Benjam in Franklin and Thom as
Jefferson had tried to "w ork w ithin the system " there w ould have been
no United States.
N ot only do hackers privately believe this as an article of faith, but they

have been know n to w rite ardent m anifestos about it. Here are som e
revealing excerpts from an especially vivid hacker m anifesto: "The
Techno- Revolution" by "D r. Crash," w hich appeared in electronic
form in *Phrack* V olum e 1 , Issue 6 , Phile 3 .

"To fully explain the true m otives behind hacking, w e m ust first take a
quick look into the past. In the 1960s, a group of M IT students built the
first m odern com puter system . This w ild, rebellious group of young
m en w ere the first to bear the nam e 'hackers.' The system s that they
developed w ere intended to be used to solve w orld problem s and to bene-
fit allof m ankind."A s w e can see,this has not been the case. The com -
puter system has been solely in the hands of big businesses and the gov-
ernm ent. The w onderfuldevice m eant to enrich life has becom e a
w eapon w hich dehum anizes people. To the governm ent and large busi-
nesses,people are no m ore than disk space,and the governm ent doesn't
use com puters to arrange aid for the poor, but to controlnuclear death
w eapons. The average A m erican can only have access to a sm allm icro-
com puter w hich is w orth only a fraction of w hat they pay for it. The
businesses keep the true state-of-the-art equipm ent aw ay from the
people behind a steelw allof incredibly high prices and bureaucracy. It
is because of this state of affairs that hacking w as born.(...) "O f course,
the governm ent doesn't w ant the m onopoly of technology broken,so they
have outlaw ed hacking and arrest anyone w ho is caught.(...) The phone
com pany is another exam ple of technology abused and kept from people
w ith high prices.(...) "H ackers often find that their existing equipm ent,
due to the m onopoly tactics of com puter com panies, is inefficient for
their purposes. D ue to the exorbitantly high prices, it is im possible to
legally purchase the necessary equipm ent. This need has given still
another segm ent of the fight: Credit Carding. Carding is a w ay of
obtaining the necessary goods w ithout paying for them . It is again due to
the com panies'stupidity that Carding is so easy,and show s that the
w orld's businesses are in the hands of those w ith considerably less
technicalknow -how than w e, the hackers. (...) "H acking m ust continue.
W e m ust train new com ers to the art of hacking.(....) A nd w hatever you
do, continue the fight. W hether you know it or not, if you are a hacker,
you are a revolutionary. D on't w orry, you're on the right side."
The defense of "carding" is rare. M ost hackers regard credit-card theft

as "poison" to the underground, a sleazy and im m oraleffort that, w orse
yet,is hard to get aw ay w ith. N evertheless,m anifestos advocating
credit- card theft, the deliberate crashing of com puter system s, and
even acts of violent physicaldestruction such as vandalism and arson do
BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER CRACKD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 71

exist in the underground. These boasts and threats are taken quite seri-
ously by the police. A nd not every hacker is an abstract, Platonic com -
puter- nerd. Som e few are quite experienced at picking locks, robbing
phone-trucks, and breaking and entering buildings.
H ackers vary in their degree of hatred for authority and the violence of
their rhetoric. But, at a bottom line, they are scofflaw s. 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
law s as im m oralefforts by soulless corporations to protect their profit
m argins and to crush dissidents. "Stupid" people, including police,
businessm en, politicians, and journalists, sim ply have no right to judge
the actions of those possessed of genius, techno-revolutionary inten-
tions, and technicalexpertise.
_____
Hackers are generally teenagers and college kids not engaged in earning a
living. They often com e from fairly w ell-to-do m iddle-class back-
grounds, and are m arkedly anti-m aterialistic (except, that is, w hen it
com es to com puter equipm ent). A nyone m otivated by greed for m ere
m oney (as opposed to the greed for pow er,know ledge and status) is
sw iftly w ritten-off as a narrow - m inded breadhead w hose interests can
only be corrupt and contem ptible. H aving grow n up in the 1970s and
1980s, the young Bohem ians of the digitalunderground regard straight
society as aw ash in plutocratic corruption, w here everyone from the
President dow n is for sale and w hoever has the gold m akes the rules.
Interestingly, there's a funhouse-m irror im age of this attitude on the

other side of the conflict. The police are also one of the m ost m arkedly
anti-m aterialistic groups in A m erican society, m otivated not by m ere
m oney but by ideals of service, justice, esprit-de-corps, and, of
course, their ow n brand of specialized know ledge and pow er.
Rem arkably, the propaganda w ar betw een cops and hackers has alw ays
involved angry allegations that the other side is trying to m ake a sleazy
buck. H ackers consistently sneer that anti-phreak prosecutors are
angling for cushy jobs as telco law yers and that com puter- crim e police
are aim ing to cash in later as w ell-paid com puter-security consultants
in the private sector.

For their part, police publicly conflate allhacking crim es w ith robbing
payphones w ith crow bars. A llegations of "m onetary losses" from com -
puter intrusion are notoriously inflated. The act of illicitly copying a
docum ent from a com puter is m orally equated w ith directly robbing a
com pany of, say, half a m illion dollars. The teenage com puter intruder
in possession of this "proprietary" docum ent has certainly not sold it
for such a sum , w ould likely have little idea how to sellit at all, and
quite probably doesn't even understand w hat he has. He has not m ade a
cent in profit from his felony but is stillm orally equated w ith a thief
w ho has robbed the church poorbox and lit out for Brazil.
Police w ant to believe that allhackers are thieves. It is a tortuous and

alm ost unbearable act for the A m erican justice system to put people in
jailbecause they w ant to learn things w hich are forbidden for them to
know . In an A m erican context, alm ost any pretext for punishm ent is
better than jailing people to protect certain restricted kinds of infor-
m ation. N evertheless, *policing inform ation* is part and parcelof the
struggle against hackers.
This dilem m a is w ellexem plified by the rem arkable activities of

"Em m anuelGoldstein," editor and publisher of a print m agazine know n
as *2600: The H acker Q uarterly.* Goldstein w as an English m ajor at
Long Island's State University of N ew York in the '70s, w hen he becam e
involved w ith the localcollege radio station. H is grow ing interest in
electronics caused him to drift into Yippie *TA P* circles and thus into
the digitalunderground, w here he becam e a self-described techno- rat.
H is m agazine publishes techniques of com puter intrusion and telephone
"exploration" as w ellas gloating exposes of telco m isdeeds and govern-
m entalfailings.
G oldstein lives quietly and very privately in a large, crum bling

V ictorian m ansion in Setauket, N ew York. The seaside house is decorat-
ed w ith telco decals, chunks of driftw ood, and the basic bric-a-brac of a
hippie crash-pad. H e is unm arried, m ildly unkem pt, and survives
m ostly on TV dinners and turkey-stuffing eaten straight out of the bag.
Goldstein is a m an of considerable charm and fluency, w ith a brief, dis-
arm ing sm ile and the kind of pitiless, stubborn, thoroughly recidivist

integrity that A m erica's electronic police find genuinely alarm ing.
Goldstein took his nom -de-plum e, or "handle," from a character in

O rw ell's *1984,* w hich m ay be taken, correctly, as a sym ptom of the
gravity of his sociopoliticalw orldview . H e is not him self a practicing
com puter intruder, though he vigorously abets these actions, especially
w hen they are pursued against large corporations or governm ental
agencies. N or is he a thief, for he loudly scorns m ere theft of phone
service, in favor of 'exploring and m anipulating the system .' H e is
probably best described and understood as a *dissident.*
W eirdly, G oldstein is living in m odern A m erica under conditions very

sim ilar to those of form er East European intellectualdissidents. In
other w ords, he flagrantly espouses a value-system that is deeply and
irrevocably opposed to the system of those in pow er and the police. The
values in *2 6 0 0 * are generally expressed in term s that are ironic,
sarcastic, paradoxical, or just dow nright confused. But there's no m is-
taking their radically anti-authoritarian tenor. *2 6 0 0 * holds that
technicalpow er and specialized know ledge, of any kind obtainable,
belong by right in the hands of those individuals brave and bold enough
to discover them — by w hatever m eans necessary. D evices, law s, or
system s that forbid access, and the free spread of know ledge, are provo-
cations that any free and self-respecting hacker should relentlessly
attack. The "privacy" of governm ents, corporations and other soulless
technocratic organizations should never be protected at the expense of
the liberty and free initiative of the individualtechno-rat.
H ow ever, in our contem porary w orkaday w orld, both governm ents and
corporations are very anxious indeed to police inform ation w hich is
secret, proprietary, restricted, confidential, copyrighted, patented,
hazardous, illegal, unethical, em barrassing, or otherw ise sensitive.
This m akes Goldstein persona non grata, and his philosophy a threat.
V ery little about the conditions of Goldstein's daily life w ould astonish,
say, V aclav H avel. (W e m ay note in passing that President H avelonce
had his w ord-processor confiscated by the Czechoslovak police.)
Goldstein lives by *sam izdat,* acting sem i-openly as a data-center for
the underground, w hile challenging the pow ers-that-be to abide by

their ow n stated rules: freedom of speech and the First A m endm ent.
Goldstein thoroughly looks and acts the part of techno-rat, w ith shoul-
der-length ringlets and a piraticalblack fisherm an's-cap set at a rak-
ish angle. He often show s up like Banquo's ghost at m eetings of com puter
professionals, w here he listens quietly, half-sm iling and taking thor-
ough notes.
Com puter professionals generally m eet publicly, and find it very diffi-
cult to rid them selves of Goldstein and his ilk w ithout extralegaland
unconstitutionalactions. Sym pathizers, m any of them quite respectable
people w ith responsible jobs, adm ire Goldstein's attitude and surrepti-
tiously pass him inform ation. A n unknow n but presum ably large pro-
portion of G oldstein's 2,000-plus readership are telco security per-
sonneland police, w ho are forced to subscribe to *2600* to stay
abreast of new developm ents in hacking. They thus find them selves
*paying this guy's rent* w hile grinding their teeth in anguish, a situa-
tion that w ould have delighted A bbie Hoffm an (one of Goldstein's few
idols).
Goldstein is probably the best-know n 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 w ith untem pered
loathing. H e is quite an accom plished gadfly.
A fter the M artin Luther King D ay Crash of 1990, Goldstein, for

instance, adeptly rubbed salt into the w ound in the pages of *2600.*
"Yeah,it w as fun for the phone phreaks as w e w atched the netw ork
crum ble," he adm itted cheerfully. "But it w as also an om inous sign of
w hat's to com e... Som e A T& T people, aided by w ell-m eaning but igno-
rant m edia,w ere spreading the notion that m any com panies had the sam e
softw are and therefore could face the sam e problem som eday. W rong.
This w as entirely an A T& T softw are deficiency. O f course, other com pa-
nies could face entirely *different* softw are problem s. But then, so too
could A T& T."
A fter a technicaldiscussion of the system 's failings, the Long Island

techno-rat w ent on to offer thoughtfulcriticism to the gigantic m ulti-

national's hundreds of professionally qualified engineers. "W hat w e
don't know is how a m ajor force in com m unications like A T& T could be
so sloppy. W hat happened to backups? Sure,com puter system s go dow n
allthe tim e, but people m aking phone calls are not the sam e as people
logging on to com puters. W e m ust m ake that distinction. It's not
acceptable for the phone system or any other essentialservice to 'go
dow n.' If w e continue to trust technology w ithout understanding it,w e
can look forw ard to m any variations on this them e. "A T& T ow es it to its
custom ers to be prepared to *instantly* sw itch to another netw ork if
som ething strange and unpredictable starts occurring. The new s here
isn't so m uch the failure of a com puter program , but the failure of
A T& T's entire structure."
The very idea of this.... this *person*.... offering "advice" about

"A T& T's entire structure" is m ore than som e people can easily bear.
H ow dare this near-crim inaldictate w hat is or isn't "acceptable"
behavior from A T& T? Especially w hen he's publishing, in the very sam e
issue, detailed schem atic diagram s for creating various sw itching-net-
w ork signalling tones unavailable to the public.
"See w hat happens w hen you drop a 'silver box'tone or tw o dow n your
localexchange or through different long distance service carriers,"
advises *2600* contributor "M r. Upsetter" in "H ow To Build a Signal
Box." "If you experim ent system atically and keep good records, you w ill
surely discover som ething interesting."
This is, of course, the scientific m ethod, generally regarded as a praise-

w orthy activity and one of the flow ers of m odern civilization. O ne can
indeed learn a great dealw ith this sort of structured intellectualactivi-
ty. Telco em ployees regard this m ode of "exploration" as akin to fling-
ing sticks of dynam ite into their pond to see w hat lives on the bottom .
*2600* has been published consistently since 1984. It has also run a
bulletin board com puter system , printed *2600* T-shirts, taken fax
calls... The Spring 1991 issue has an interesting announcem ent on page
45: "W e just discovered an extra set of w ires 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 m onitored."

In the w orldview 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 w orld is a m aelstrom of corporate crim e and high-level
governm entalcorruption, occasionally tem pered w ith w ell-m eaning
ignorance. To read a few issues in a row is to enter a nightm are akin to
Solzhenitsyn's, som ew hat tem pered by the fact that *2600* is often
extrem ely funny.
Goldstein did not becom e a target of the Hacker Crackdow n,though he

protested loudly, eloquently, and publicly about it, and it added consid-
erably to his fam e.It w as not that he is not regarded as dangerous,
because he is so regarded. Goldstein has had brushes w ith the law in the
past: in 1985, a *2600* bulletin board com puter w as seized by the
FBI, and som e softw are on it w as form ally declared "a burglary toolin
the form of a com puter program ." But Goldstein escaped direct repres-
sion in 1990, because his m agazine is printed on paper, and recognized
as subject to Constitutionalfreedom of the press protection. A s w as seen
in the *Ram parts* case, this is far from an absolute guarantee. Still,
as a practicalm atter, shutting dow n *2600* by court-order w ould
create so m uch legalhassle that it is sim ply unfeasible, at least for the
present. Throughout 1990, both Goldstein and his m agazine w ere
peevishly thriving.
Instead, the Crackdow n of 1990 w ould concern itself w ith the com put-
erized version of forbidden data. The crackdow n itself, first and fore-
m ost, w as about *bulletin board system s.* Bulletin Board System s,
m ost often know n by the ugly and un-pluralizable acronym "BBS," are
the life-blood of the digitalunderground. Boards w ere also centralto
law enforcem ent's tactics and strategy in the Hacker Crackdow n.
A "bulletin board system " can be form ally defined as a com puter w hich
serves as an inform ation and m essage- passing center for users dialing-
up over the phone-lines through the use of m odem s. A "m odem ," or
m odulator- dem odulator, is a device w hich translates the digital
im pulses of com puters into audible analog telephone signals, and vice
versa. M odem s connect com puters to phones and thus to each other.

Large-scale m ainfram e com puters have been connected since the
1960s, but *personal* com puters, run by individuals out of their
hom es, w ere first netw orked in the late 1970s. The "board" created by
W ard Christensen and Randy Suess in February 1978, in Chicago,
Illinois, is generally regarded as the first personal-com puter bulletin
board system w orthy of the nam e.
Boards run on m any different m achines, em ploying m any different kinds

of softw are. Early boards w ere crude and buggy, and their m anagers,
know n as "system operators" or "sysops," w ere hard-w orking technical
experts w ho w rote their ow n softw are. But like m ost everything else in
the w orld of electronics, boards becam e faster, cheaper, better-
designed, and generally far m ore sophisticated throughout the 1980s.
They also m oved sw iftly out of the hands of pioneers and into those of the
generalpublic. By 1985 there w ere som ething in the neighborhood of
4,000 boards in A m erica. By 1990 it w as calculated, vaguely, that
there w ere about 30,000 boards in the US, w ith uncounted thousands
overseas.
Com puter bulletin boards are unregulated enterprises. Running a board

is a rough-and-ready, catch- as-catch-can proposition. Basically,
anybody w ith a com puter, m odem , softw are and a phone-line can start a
board. W ith second-hand equipm ent and public-dom ain free softw are,
the price of a board m ight be quite sm all— less than it w ould take to
publish a m agazine or even a decent pam phlet. Entrepreneurs eagerly
sellbulletin- board softw are, and w illcoach nontechnicalam ateur
sysops in its use.
Boards are not "presses." They are not m agazines, or libraries, or

phones, or CB radios, or traditionalcork bulletin boards dow n at the
locallaundry, though they have som e passing resem blance to those ear-
lier m edia. Boards are a new m edium — they m ay even be a *large num -
ber* of new m edia.
Consider these unique characteristics: boards are cheap, yet they can
have a national, even globalreach. Boards can be contacted from any-
w here in the globaltelephone netw ork, at *no cost* to the person run-
ning the board — the caller pays the phone bill, and if the caller is local,

the callis free. Boards do not involve an editorialelite addressing a
m ass audience. The "sysop" of a board is not an exclusive publisher or
w riter — he is m anaging an electronic salon, w here individuals can
address the generalpublic, play the part of the generalpublic, and also
exchange private m ailw ith other individuals. A nd the "conversation" on
boards, though fluid, rapid, and highly interactive, is not spoken, but
w ritten. It is also relatively anonym ous, som etim es com pletely so.
A nd because boards are cheap and ubiquitous, regulations and licensing

requirem ents w ould likely be practically unenforceable. It w ould
alm ost be easier to "regulate" "inspect" and "license" the content of
private m ail— probably m ore so, since the m ailsystem is operated by
the federalgovernm ent. Boards are run by individuals, independently,
entirely at their ow n w him .
For the sysop, the cost of operation is not the prim ary lim iting factor.
O nce the investm ent in a com puter and m odem has been m ade,the only
steady cost is the charge for m aintaining a phone line (or severalphone
lines). The prim ary lim its for sysops are tim e and energy. Boards
require upkeep. N ew users are generally "validated" — they m ust be
issued individualpassw ords, and called at hom e by voice-phone, so that
their identity can be verified. O bnoxious users, w ho exist in plenty,
m ust be chided or purged. Proliferating m essages m ust be deleted w hen
they grow old,so that the capacity of the system is not overw helm ed.
A nd softw are program s (if such things are kept on the board) m ust be
exam ined for possible com puter viruses. If there is a financialcharge
to use the board (increasingly com m on, especially in larger and fancier
system s) then accounts m ust be kept,and users m ust be billed. A nd if
the board crashes — a very com m on occurrence — then repairs m ust be
m ade.
Boards can be distinguished by the am ount of effort spent in regulating

them . First,w e have the com pletely open board,w hose sysop is off
chugging brew s and w atching re-runs w hile his users generally degen-
erate over tim e into peevish anarchy and eventualsilence.Second com es
the supervised board, w here the sysop breaks in every once in a w hile
to tidy up, calm braw ls, issue announcem ents, and rid the com m unity of
dolts and troublem akers. Third is the heavily supervised board, w hich

sternly urges adult and responsible behavior and sw iftly edits any m es-
sage considered offensive, im pertinent, illegalor irrelevant. A nd last
com es the com pletely edited "electronic publication," w hich is pre-
sented to a silent audience w hich is not allow ed to respond directly in
any w ay.
Boards can also be grouped by their degree of anonym ity. There is the
com pletely anonym ous board, w here everyone uses pseudonym s — "han-
dles" — and even the sysop is unaw are of the user's true identity. The
sysop him self is likely pseudonym ous on a board of this type. Second,
and rather m ore com m on, is the board w here the sysop know s (or
thinks he know s) the true nam es and addresses of allusers, but the
users don't know one another's nam es and m ay not know his. Third is
the board w here everyone has to use realnam es, and roleplaying and
pseudonym ous posturing are forbidden.
Boards can be grouped by their im m ediacy. "Chat- lines" are boards

linking severalusers together over severaldifferent phone-lines
sim ultaneously,so that people exchange m essages at the very m om ent
that they type. (M any large boards feature "chat" capabilities along
w ith other services.) Less im m ediate boards, perhaps w ith a single
phoneline, store m essages serially, one at a tim e. A nd som e boards are
only open for business in daylight hours or on w eekends, w hich greatly
slow s response. A *netw ork* of boards, such as "FidoN et," can carry
electronic m ailfrom board to board, continent to continent, across huge
distances — but at a relative snail's pace,so that a m essage can take
severaldays to reach its target audience and elicit a reply.
Boards can be grouped by their degree of com m unity. Som e boards

em phasize the exchange of private, person-to-person electronic m ail.
O thers em phasize public postings and m ay even purge people w ho
"lurk," m erely reading posts but refusing to openly participate. Som e
boards are intim ate and neighborly. O thers are frosty and highly tech-
nical. Som e are little m ore than storage dum ps for softw are, w here
users "dow nload" and "upload" program s,but interact am ong them selves
little if at all.
Boards can be grouped by their ease of access. Som e boards are entirely

public. O thers are private and restricted only to personalfriends of the
sysop. Som e boards divide users by status. O n these boards,som e
users, especially beginners, strangers or children, w illbe restricted to
generaltopics, 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. H igh- status users can be given access to hidden areas in the board,
such as off-color topics, private discussions, and/or valuable softw are.
Favored users m ay even becom e "rem ote sysops" w ith the pow er to take
rem ote controlof the board through their ow n hom e com puters. Q uite
often "rem ote sysops" end up doing allthe w ork and taking form alcon-
trolof the enterprise, despite the fact that it's physically located in
som eone else's house. Som etim es several"co-sysops" share pow er.
A nd boards can also be grouped by size. M assive, nationw ide com m ercial
netw orks, such as Com puServe, D elphi, GEnie and Prodigy, are run on
m ainfram e com puters and are generally not considered "boards," though
they share m any of their characteristics, such as electronic m ail, dis-
cussion topics, libraries of softw are, and persistent and grow ing prob-
lem s w ith civil-liberties issues. Som e private boards have as m any as
thirty phone-lines and quite sophisticated hardw are. A nd then there
are tiny boards.
Boards vary in popularity. Som e boards are huge and crow ded, w here
users m ust claw their w ay in against a constant busy-signal. O thers are
huge and em pty — there are few things sadder than a form erly flourish-
ing board w here no one posts any longer,and the dead conversations of
vanished users lie about gathering digitaldust. Som e boards are tiny
and intim ate, their telephone num bers intentionally kept confidentialso
that only a sm allnum ber can log on.
A nd som e boards are *underground.*
Boards can be m ysterious entities. The activities of their users can be

hard to differentiate from conspiracy. Som etim es they *are* conspira-
cies. Boards have harbored, or have been accused of harboring, all
m anner of fringe groups,and have abetted,or been accused of abetting,
every m anner of frow ned-upon, sleazy, radical, and crim inalactivity.

There are Satanist boards. N aziboards. Pornographic boards.
Pedophile boards. D rug- dealing boards. A narchist boards. Com m unist
boards. Gay and Lesbian boards (these exist in great profusion, m any of
them quite lively w ith w ell-established histories). Religious cult
boards. Evangelicalboards. W itchcraft boards, hippie boards, punk
boards, skateboarder boards. Boards for UFO believers. There m ay w ell
be boards for serial killers, airline terrorists and professional assas-
sins. There is sim ply no w ay to tell. Boards spring up, flourish, and
disappear in large num bers, in m ost every corner of the developed
w orld. Even apparently innocuous public boards can, and som etim es do,
harbor secret areas know n only to a few . A nd even on the vast, public,
com m ercialservices, private m ailis very private — and quite possibly
crim inal.
Boards cover m ost every topic im aginable and som e that are hard to
im agine. They cover a vast spectrum of socialactivity. H ow ever, all
board users do have som ething in com m on: their possession of com put-
ers and phones. N aturally, com puters and phones are prim ary topics of
conversation on alm ost every board.
A nd hackers and phone phreaks,those utter devotees of com puters and

phones, live by boards. They sw arm by boards. They are bred by
boards. By the late 1980s, phone-phreak groups and hacker groups,
united by boards, had proliferated fantastically.
A s evidence, here is a list of hacker groups com piled by the editors of

*Phrack* on A ugust 8, 1988.
The A dm inistration. A dvanced Telecom m unications, Inc. A LIA S.

A m erican Tone Travelers. A narchy Inc. A pple M afia. The A ssociation.
A tlantic Pirates G uild.
Bad A ss M other Fuckers. Bellcore. BellShock Force. Black Bag.
Cam orra. C& M Productions. Catholics A nonym ous. Chaos Com puter
Club. Chief Executive O fficers. Circle O f D eath. Circle O f D eneb. Club
X. Coalition of H i-Tech Pirates. Coast-To-Coast. Corrupt Com puting.
Cult O f The Dead Cow . Custom Retaliations.

Dam age Inc. D& B Com m unications.The Dange Gang. Dec Hunters.
D igitalGang. D PA K.
Eastern A lliance. The Elite H ackers Guild. Elite Phreakers and H ackers
Club. The Elite Society O f A m erica. EPG. Executives O f Crim e. Extasyy
Elite.
Fargo 4A . Farm ers O f D oom . The Federation. Feds R Us. First Class.
Five O . Five Star. Force H ackers. The 414s.
H ack-A -Trip. H ackers O f A m erica. H igh M ountain H ackers. H igh

Society. The H itchhikers.
IBM Syndicate. The Ice Pirates. Im perial W arlords. Inner Circle.

Inner Circle II. Insanity Inc. InternationalCom puter U nderground
Bandits.
Justice League of A m erica.
Kaos Inc. Knights O f Shadow . Knights O f The Round Table.
League O f A depts. Legion O f Doom . Legion O f Hackers. Lords O f Chaos.

Lunatic Labs, Unlim ited.
M aster H ackers. M A D ! The M arauders. M D /PhD . M etal

Com m unications, Inc. M etalliBashers, Inc. M BI. M etro
Com m unications. M idw est Pirates Guild.
N A SA Elite. The N A TO A ssociation. N eon Knights. N ihilist O rder.

O rder O f The Rose. O SS.
Pacific Pirates Guild. Phantom A ccess A ssociates. PH ido PH reaks. The

Phirm . Phlash. PhoneLine Phantom s. Phone Phreakers O f A m erica.
Phortune 500. Phreak H ack D elinquents. Phreak H ack D estroyers.
Phreakers, H ackers, A nd Laundrom at Em ployees Gang (PH A LSE Gang).
Phreaks A gainst Geeks. Phreaks A gainst Phreaks A gainst Geeks.
Phreaks and H ackers of A m erica. Phreaks A nonym ous W orld W ide.

Project Genesis. The Punk M afia.
The Racketeers. Red Daw n Text Files. Roscoe Gang.
SA BRE. Secret Circle of Pirates. Secret Service. 707 Club. Shadow

Brotherhood. Sharp Inc. 65C02 Elite. SpectralForce. Star League.
Stow aw ays. Strata-Crackers.
Team Hackers '86. Team Hackers '87. TeleCom putist N ew sletter Staff.
TribunalO f Know ledge. Triple Entente. Turn O ver A nd D ie Syndrom e
(TO A D S). 300 Club. 1200 Club. 2300 Club. 2600 Club. 2601 Club.
2A F.
The United Soft W areZ Force. United TechnicalUnderground.
W are Brigade. The W arelords. W A SP.
Contem plating this list is an im pressive, alm ost hum bling business.
A s a culturalartifact, the thing approaches poetry.
Underground groups — subcultures — can be distinguished from inde-

pendent cultures by their habit of referring constantly to the parent
society. Undergrounds by their nature constantly m ust m aintain a
m em brane of differentiation. Funny/distinctive clothes and hair, spe-
cialized jargon, specialized ghettoized areas in cities, different hours of
rising, w orking, sleeping.... The digitalunderground, w hich specializes
in inform ation, relies very heavily on language to distinguish itself. A s
can be seen from this list, they m ake heavy use of parody and m ockery.
It's revealing to see w ho they choose to m ock.
First, large corporations. W e have the Phortune 500, The Chief

Executive O fficers, Bellcore, IBM Syndicate, SA BRE (a com puterized
reservation service m aintained by airlines). The com m on use of "Inc."
is telling — none of these groups are actualcorporations, but take clear
delight in m im icking them .
Second, governm ents and police. N A SA Elite,N A TO A ssociation. "Feds R

Us" and "Secret Service" are fine bits of fleering boldness. O SS — the

O ffice of Strategic Services w as the forerunner of the CIA .
Third, crim inals. Using stigm atizing pejoratives as a perverse badge of

honor is a tim e-honored tactic for subcultures: punks, gangs, delin-
quents, m afias, pirates, bandits, racketeers.
Specialized orthography, especially the use of "ph" for "f" and "z" for
the plural"s," are instant recognition sym bols. So is the use of the
num eral"0" for the letter "O " — com puter-softw are orthography gen-
erally features a slash through the zero, m aking the distinction obvious.
Som e term s are poetically descriptive of com puter intrusion: the

Stow aw ays, the H itchhikers, the PhoneLine Phantom s, Coast-to-Coast.
O thers are sim ple bravado and vainglorious puffery. (N ote the insistent
use of the term s "elite" and "m aster.") Som e term s are blasphem ous,
som e obscene, others m erely cryptic — anything to puzzle, offend, con-
fuse,and keep the straights at bay.
M any hacker groups further re-encrypt their nam es by the use of

acronym s: United TechnicalUnderground becom es UTU, Farm ers of
Doom becom e FoD, the United SoftW areZ Force becom es,at its ow n
insistence, "TuSw F," and w oe to the ignorant rodent w ho capitalizes the
w rong letters.
It should be further recognized that the m em bers of these groups are

them selves pseudonym ous. If you did, in fact, run across the
"PhoneLine Phantom s," you w ould find them to consist of "Carrier
Culprit," "The Executioner," "Black M ajik," "Egyptian Lover," "Solid
State," and "M r Icom ." "Carrier Culprit" w illlikely be referred to by
his friends as "CC," as in, "Igot 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 com plete list of underground groups — there has
never been such a list, and there never w illbe. G roups rise, flourish,
decline, share m em bership, m aintain a cloud of w annabes and casual
hangers-on. People pass in and out, are ostracized, get bored, are bust-
ed by police, or are cornered by telco security and presented w ith huge
bills. M any "underground groups" are softw are pirates, "w arez d00dz,"

w ho m ight break copy protection and pirate program s, but likely
w ouldn't dare to intrude on a com puter-system .
It is hard to estim ate the true population of the digitalunderground.

There is constant turnover. M ost hackers start young,com e and go,then
drop out at age 22 — the age of college graduation. A nd a large m ajority
of "hackers" access pirate boards,adopt a handle, sw ipe softw are and
perhaps abuse a phone-code or tw o, w hile never actually joining the
elite.
Som e professionalinform ants, w ho m ake it their business to retail

know ledge of the underground to paym asters in private corporate secu-
rity, have estim ated the hacker population at as high as fifty thousand.
This is likely highly inflated, unless one counts every single teenage
softw are pirate and petty phone-booth thief. M y best guess is about
5,000 people. O f these,Iw ould guess that as few as a hundred are
truly "elite" — active com puter intruders, skilled enough to penetrate
sophisticated system s and truly to w orry corporate security and law
enforcem ent.
A nother interesting speculation is w hether this group is grow ing or not.

Young teenage hackers are often convinced that hackers exist in vast
sw arm s and w illsoon dom inate the cybernetic universe. O lder and
w iser veterans, perhaps as w izened as 24 or 25 years old, are con-
vinced that the glory days are long gone,that the cops have the under-
ground's num ber now , and that kids these days are dirt-stupid and just
w ant to play N intendo.
M y ow n assessm ent is that com puter intrusion, as a non-profit act of

intellectualexploration and m astery, is in slow decline, at least in the
United States; but that electronic fraud, especially telecom m unication
crim e, is grow ing by leaps and bounds.
O ne m ight find a usefulparallelto the digitalunderground in the drug

underground. There w as a tim e, now m uch-obscured by historical
revisionism , w hen Bohem ians freely shared joints at concerts, and hip,
sm all- scale m arijuana dealers m ight turn people on just for the sake of
enjoying a long stoned conversation about the D oors and A llen Ginsberg.

N ow drugs are increasingly verboten, except in a high-stakes, highly-
crim inalw orld of highly addictive drugs. O ver years of disenchantm ent
and police harassm ent, a vaguely ideological, free-w heeling drug
underground has relinquished the business of drug- dealing to a far
m ore savage crim inalhard-core. This is not a pleasant prospect to
contem plate, but the analogy is fairly com pelling.
W hat does an underground board look like? W hat distinguishes it from

a standard board? It isn't necessarily the conversation — hackers often
talk about com m on board topics, such as hardw are, softw are, sex, sci-
ence fiction, current events, politics, m ovies, personalgossip.
Underground boards can best be distinguished by their files, or
"philes," pre-com posed texts w hich teach the techniques and ethos of
the underground. These are prized reservoirs of forbidden know ledge.
Som e are anonym ous,but m ost proudly bear the handle of the "hacker"
w ho has created them , and his group affiliation, if he has one.
H ere is a partialtable-of-contents of philes from an underground

board, som ew here in the heart of m iddle A m erica, circa 1991. The
descriptions are m ostly 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 m anuals about com puter intrusion.
The above is only a sm allsection of a m uch larger library of hacking and
phreaking techniques and history. W e now m ove 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
*H oly Cow !* The dam ned thing is fullof stuff about bom bs!
W hat are w e to m ake of this?
First, it should be acknow ledged that spreading know ledge about dem oli-
tions to teenagers is a highly and deliberately antisocialact. It is not,
how ever, illegal.
Second,it should be recognized that m ost of these philes w ere in fact

*w ritten* by teenagers. M ost adult A m erican m ales w ho can rem em ber
their teenage years w illrecognize that the notion of building a
flam ethrow er in your garage is an incredibly neat-o idea. *A ctually*
building a flam ethrow er in your garage, how ever, is fraught w ith dis-
couraging difficulty. Stuffing gunpow der into a booby-trapped flash-
light, so as to blow the arm off your high-schoolvice-principal, can be
a thing of dark beauty to contem plate. A ctually com m itting assault by
explosives w illearn you the sustained attention of the federalBureau of
A lcohol, Tobacco and Firearm s.
Som e people, how ever, w illactually try these plans. A determ inedly
m urderous A m erican teenager can probably buy or steala handgun far
m ore easily than he can brew fake "napalm " in the kitchen sink.
N evertheless, if tem ptation is spread before people a certain num ber
w illsuccum b, and a sm allm inority w illactually attem pt these stunts.
A large m inority of that sm all m inority w ill either fail or, quite likely,
m aim them selves, since these "philes" have not been checked for accu-
racy, are not the product of professionalexperience, and are often high-
ly fanciful. But the gloating m enace of these philes is not to be entirely
dism issed.
H ackers m ay not be "serious" about bom bing; if they w ere, w e w ould

hear far m ore about exploding flashlights,hom em ade bazookas,and gym
teachers poisoned by chlorine and potassium . H ow ever, hackers are
*very* serious about forbidden know ledge. They are possessed not
m erely by curiosity, but by a positive *lust to know .* The desire to
know w hat others don't is scarcely new . But the *intensity* of this

desire,as m anifested by these young technophilic denizens of the
Inform ation A ge, m ay in fact *be* new , and m ay represent som e basic
shift in socialvalues — a harbinger of w hat the w orld m ay com e to, as
society lays m ore and m ore value on the possession, assim ilation and
retailing of *inform ation* as a basic com m odity of daily life.
There have alw ays been young m en w ith obsessive interests in these
topics. N ever before,how ever,have they been able to netw ork so
extensively and easily, and to propagandize their interests w ith
im punity to random passers-by. H igh-schoolteachers w illrecognize
that there's alw ays one in a crow d,but w hen the one in a crow d escapes
controlby jum ping into the phone-lines, and becom es a hundred such
kids alltogether on a board, then trouble is brew ing visibly. The urge
of authority to *do som ething,* even som ething drastic, is hard to
resist. A nd in 1990, authority did som ething. In fact authority did a
great deal.
_____
The process by w hich boards create hackers goes som ething like this. A
youngster becom es interested in com puters — usually, com puter gam es.
H e hears from friends that "bulletin boards" exist w here gam es can be
obtained for free. (M any com puter gam es are "freew are," not copy-
righted — invented sim ply for the love of it and given aw ay to the pub-
lic;som e of these gam es are quite good.) He bugs his parents for a
m odem ,or quite often,uses his parents'm odem .
The w orld of boards suddenly opens up. Com puter gam es can be quite
expensive, realbudget-breakers for a kid, but pirated gam es, stripped
of copy protection, are cheap or free. They are also illegal, but it is
very rare, alm ost unheard of, for a sm all-scale softw are pirate to be
prosecuted. O nce "cracked" of its copy protection,the program ,being
digitaldata, becom es infinitely reproducible. Even the instructions to
the gam e,any m anuals that accom pany it,can be reproduced as text
files, or photocopied from legitim ate sets. O ther users on boards can
give m any usefulhints in gam e-playing tactics. A nd a youngster w ith an
infinite supply of free com puter gam es can certainly cut quite a sw ath
am ong his m odem - less friends.

A nd boards are pseudonym ous. No one need know that you're fourteen
years old — w ith 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 m an, or anybody you can im agine. If you
find this kind of deception gratifying, there is am ple opportunity to hone
your ability on boards.
But localboards can grow stale. A nd alm ost every board m aintains a list
of phone-num bers to other boards, som e in distant, tem pting, exotic
locales. W ho know s w hat they're up to, in O regon or A laska or Florida
or California? It's very easy to find out — just order the m odem to call
through its softw are — nothing to this, just typing on a keyboard, the
sam e thing you w ould do for m ost any com puter gam e. The m achine
reacts sw iftly and in a few seconds you are talking to a bunch of inter-
esting people on another seaboard.
A nd yet the *bills* for this trivialaction can be staggering! Just by

going tippety-tap w ith your fingers, you m ay have saddled your parents
w ith four hundred bucks in long-distance charges,and gotten chew ed out
but good. That hardly seem s fair.
How horrifying to have m ade friends in another state and to be deprived

of their com pany — and their softw are — just because telephone com -
panies dem and absurd am ounts of m oney! How painful,to be restricted
to boards in one's ow n *area code* — w hat the heck is an "area code"
anyw ay, and w hat m akes it so special? A few grum bles, com plaints,
and innocent questions of this sort w illoften elicit a sym pathetic reply
from another board user — som eone w ith som e stolen codes to hand.
You dither a w hile, know ing this isn't quite right, then you m ake up
your m ind to try them anyhow — *and they w ork!* Suddenly you're
doing som ething even your parents can't do. Six m onths ago you w ere
just som e kid — now , you're the Crim son Flash of A rea Code 512!
You're bad — you're nationw ide!
M aybe you'llstop at a few abused codes. M aybe you'lldecide that boards

aren't allthat interesting after all, that it's w rong, not w orth the risk
— but m aybe you w on't.The next step is to pick up your ow n repeat-
dialling program — to learn to generate your ow n stolen codes. (This

w as dead easy five years ago,m uch harder to get aw ay w ith now adays,
but not yet im possible.) A nd these dialling program s are not com plex
or intim idating — som e are as sm allas tw enty lines of softw are.
Now ,you too can share codes. You can trade codes to learn other tech-
niques. If you're sm art enough to catch on,and obsessive enough to
w ant to bother, and ruthless enough to start seriously bending rules,
then you'llget better,fast. You start to develop a rep. You m ove up to a
heavier class of board — a board w ith a bad attitude,the kind of board
that naive dopes like your classm ates and your form er 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 m an,you never
realized you could be a real*outlaw * w ithout ever leaving your bed-
room .
You stillplay other com puter gam es, but now you have a new and bigger
gam e. This one w illbring you a different kind of status than destroying
even eight zillion lousy space invaders.
H acking is perceived by hackers as a "gam e." This is not an entirely

unreasonable or sociopathic perception. You can w in or lose at hacking,
succeed or fail, but it never feels "real." It's not sim ply that im agina-
tive youngsters som etim es have a hard tim e telling "m ake-believe"
from "reallife." Cyberspace is *not real!* "Real" things are physical
objects like trees and shoes and cars. Hacking takes place on a screen.
W ords aren't physical, num bers (even telephone num bers and credit
card num bers) aren't physical. Sticks and stones m ay break m y bones,
but data w illnever hurt m e. Com puters *sim ulate* reality, like com -
puter gam es that sim ulate tank battles or dogfights or spaceships.
Sim ulations are just m ake- believe, and the stuff in com puters is *not
real.*
Consider this: if "hacking" is supposed to be so serious and real-life and

dangerous, then how com e *nine-year-old kids* have com puters and
m odem s? You w ouldn't give a nine year old his ow n car, or his ow n
rifle, or his ow n chainsaw — those things are "real."
People underground are perfectly aw are that the "gam e" is frow ned upon

by the pow ers that be. W ord gets around about busts in the under-
ground. Publicizing busts is one of the prim ary functions of pirate
boards, but they also prom ulgate an attitude about them ,and their ow n
idiosyncratic ideas of justice. The users of underground boards w on't
com plain if som e guy is busted for crashing system s, spreading viruses,
or stealing m oney by w ire- fraud. They m ay shake their heads w ith a
sneaky grin,but they w on't openly defend these practices. But w hen a
kid is charged w ith som e theoreticalam ount of theft: $233,846.14, for
instance,because he sneaked into a com puter and copied som ething,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 m istaken the
im m aterialgam e of com puting for their realand boring everyday w orld
of fatcat corporate m oney.
It's as if big com panies and their suck-up law yers think that com puting
belongs to them , and they can retailit w ith price stickers, as if it w ere
boxes of laundry soap! But pricing "inform ation" is like trying to price
air or price dream s. W ell, anybody on a pirate board know s that com -
puting can be, and ought to be, *free.* Pirate boards are little indepen-
dent w orlds in cyberspace,and they don't belong to anybody but the
underground. Underground boards aren't "brought to you by Procter &
Gam ble."
To log on to an underground board can m ean to experience liberation,to

enter a w orld w here, for once, m oney isn't everything and adults don't
have allthe answ ers.
Let's sam ple another vivid hacker m anifesto. H ere are som e excerpts
from "The Conscience of a H acker," by "The M entor," from *Phrack*
V olum e O ne, Issue 7, Phile 3.
"Im ade a discovery today. Ifound a com puter. W ait a second,this is

cool. It does w hat Iw ant it to. If it m akes a m istake, it's because I
screw ed it up. N ot because it doesn't like m e.(...) "A nd then it hap-
pened... a door opened to a w orld... rushing through the phone line like
heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a
refuge from day-to-day incom petencies is sought... a board is found.
'This is it... this is w here Ibelong...' "Iknow everyone here... even if

I've never m et them , never talked to them , m ay never hear from them
again... Iknow you all...(...) "This is our w orld now .... the w orld of the
electron and the sw itch,the beauty of the baud. W e m ake use of a ser-
vice already existing w ithout paying for w hat could be dirt-cheap if it
w asn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you callus crim inals. W e
explore... and you callus crim inals. W e seek after know ledge... and you
callus crim inals. W e exist w ithout skin color, w ithout nationality,
w ithout religious bias... and you callus crim inals. You build atom ic
bom bs,you w age w ars,you m urder,cheat and lie to us and try to m ake
us believe that it's for our ow n good, yet w e're the crim inals. "Yes, Iam
a crim inal. M y crim e is that of curiosity. M y crim e is that of judging
people by w hat they say and think, not w hat they look like. M y crim e is
that of outsm arting you, som ething that you w illnever forgive m e for."
_____
There have been underground boards alm ost as long as there have been
boards. O ne of the first w as 8BBS,w hich becam e a stronghold of the
W est Coast phone- phreak elite. A fter going on-line in M arch 1980,
8BBS sponsored "Susan Thunder," and "Tuc," and, m ost notoriously,
"the Condor." "The Condor" bore the singular distinction of becom ing
the m ost vilified A m erican phreak and hacker ever. A ngry underground
associates, fed up w ith Condor's peevish behavior, turned him in to
police, along w ith a heaping double-helping of outrageous hacker leg-
endry. A s a result, Condor w as kept in solitary confinem ent for seven
m onths, for fear that he m ight start W orld W ar Three by triggering
m issile silos from the prison payphone. (H aving served his tim e,
Condor is now w alking around loose; W W IIIhas thus far conspicuously
failed to occur.)
The sysop of 8BBS w as an ardent free-speech enthusiast w ho sim ply felt

that *any* attem pt to restrict the expression of his users w as uncon-
stitutionaland im m oral. Sw arm s of the technically curious entered
8BBS and em erged as phreaks and hackers, until, in 1982, a friendly
8BBS alum nus passed the sysop a new m odem w hich had been purchased
by credit-card fraud. Police took this opportunity to seize the entire
board and rem ove w hat they considered an attractive nuisance.
Plovernet w as a pow erfulEast Coast pirate board that operated in both

N ew York and Florida. O w ned and operated by teenage hacker "Q uasi
M oto," Plovernet attracted five hundred eager users in 1983.
"Em m anuelGoldstein" w as one-tim e co-sysop of Plovernet, along w ith
"Lex Luthor," founder of the "Legion of D oom " group. Plovernet bore
the signalhonor of being the originalhom e of the "Legion of D oom ,"
about w hich the reader w illbe hearing a great deal, soon.
"Pirate-80," or "P-80," run by a sysop know n as "Scan- M an," got

into the gam e very early in Charleston, and continued steadily for years.
P-80 flourished so flagrantly that even its m ost hardened users becam e
nervous,and som e slanderously speculated that "Scan M an" m ust have
ties to corporate security, a charge he vigorously denied.
"414 Private" w as the hom e board for the first *group* to attract con-
spicuous trouble, the teenage "414 Gang," w hose intrusions into Sloan-
Kettering Cancer Center and Los A lam os m ilitary com puters w ere to be a
nine-days- w onder in 1 9 8 2 .
A t about this tim e, the first softw are piracy boards began to open up,
trading cracked gam es for the A tari800 and the Com m odore C64.
N aturally these boards w ere heavily frequented by teenagers. A nd w ith
the 1983 release of the hacker-thriller m ovie *W ar G am es,* the scene
exploded. It seem ed that every kid in A m erica had dem anded and gotten
a m odem for Christm as. M ost of these dabbler w annabes put their
m odem s in the attic after a few w eeks,and m ost of the rem ainder m inded
their P's and Q 's and stayed w ellout of hot w ater. But som e stubborn
and talented diehards had this hacker kid in *W ar Gam es* figured for a
happening dude. They sim ply could not rest untilthey had contacted the
underground — or, failing that, created their ow n.
In the m id-80s, underground boards sprang up like digitalfungi.

Shadow Spaw n Elite. Sherw ood Forest I, II, and III. D igitalLogic D ata
Service in Florida, sysoped by no less a m an than "D igitalLogic" him -
self; Lex Luthor of the Legion of D oom w as prom inent on this board,
since it w as in his area code. Lex's ow n board, "Legion of D oom ," start-
ed in 1984. The N eon Knights ran a netw ork of A pple- hacker boards:
N eon Knights N orth, South, East and W est. Free W orld IIw as run by
"M ajor H avoc." Lunatic Labs is stillin operation as of this w riting.

D r. Ripco in Chicago, an anything-goes anarchist board w ith an exten-
sive and raucous history, w as seized by Secret Service agents in 1990
on Sundevilday, but up again alm ost im m ediately, w ith new m achines
and scarcely dim inished vigor.
The St. Louis scene w as not to rank w ith m ajor centers of A m erican
hacking such as N ew York and L.A . But St. Louis did rejoice in posses-
sion of "Knight Lightning" and "Taran King," tw o of the forem ost
*journalists* native to the underground. M issouriboards like M etal
Shop, M etalShop Private, M etalShop Brew ery, m ay not have been the
heaviest boards around in term s of illicit expertise. But they becam e
boards w here hackers could exchange socialgossip and try to figure out
w hat the heck w as going on nationally — and internationally. Gossip
from M etalShop w as put into the form of new s files, then assem bled
into a generalelectronic publication, *Phrack,* a portm anteau title
coined from "phreak" and "hack." The *Phrack* editors w ere as obses-
sively curious about other hackers as hackers w ere about m achines.
*Phrack,* being free of charge and lively reading, began to circulate

throughout the underground. A s Taran King and Knight Lightning left
high schoolfor college, *Phrack* began to appear on m ainfram e
m achines linked to BITN ET, and, through BITN ET to the "Internet," that
loose but extrem ely potent not-for-profit netw ork w here academ ic,
governm entaland corporate m achines trade data through the UN IX
TCP/IP protocol. (The "Internet W orm " of N ovem ber 2-3,1988,
created by Cornellgrad student Robert M orris, w as to be the largest
and best- publicized com puter-intrusion scandalto date. M orris
claim ed that his ingenious "w orm " program w as m eant to harm lessly
explore the Internet, but due to bad program m ing, the W orm replicated
out of controland crashed som e six thousand Internet com puters.
Sm aller- scale and less am bitious Internet hacking w as a standard for
the underground elite.)
M ost any underground board not hopelessly lam e and out-of-it w ould
feature a com plete run of *Phrack* — and, possibly, the lesser-know n
standards of the underground: the *Legion of D oom TechnicalJournal,*
the obscene and raucous *Cult of the D ead Cow * files, *P/H UN * m aga-
zine, *Pirate,* the *Syndicate Reports,* and perhaps the highly

anarcho-political*A ctivist Tim es Incorporated.*
Possession of *Phrack* on one's board w as prim a facie evidence of a

bad attitude. *Phrack* w as seem ingly everyw here, aiding, abetting,
and spreading the underground ethos. A nd this did not escape the atten-
tion of corporate security or the police.
W e now com e to the touchy subject of police and boards. Police,do,in

fact, ow n boards. In 1989, there w ere police-sponsored boards in
California, Colorado, Florida, G eorgia, Idaho, M ichigan, M issouri,
Texas, and V irginia: boards such as "Crim e Bytes," "Crim estoppers,"
"A llPoints" and "Bullet-N -Board." Police officers, as private com -
puter enthusiasts, ran their ow n boards in A rizona, California,
Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, M issouri, M aryland, N ew M exico, N orth
Carolina,O hio,Tennessee and Texas. Police boards have often proved
helpfulin com m unity relations. Som etim es crim es are reported on
police boards.
Som etim es crim es are *com m itted* on police boards. This has som e-
tim es happened by accident, as naive hackers blunder onto police boards
and blithely begin offering telephone codes. Far m ore often, how ever, it
occurs through the now alm ost-traditionaluse of "sting boards." The
first police sting-boards w ere established in 1985: "Underground
Tunnel" in A ustin, Texas, w hose sysop Sgt. Robert A nsley called him self
"Pluto" — "The Phone Com pany" in Phoenix, A rizona, run by Ken
M acLeod of the M aricopa County Sheriff's office — and Sgt.Dan
Pasquale's board in Frem ont, California. Sysops posed as hackers, and
sw iftly garnered coteries of ardent users,w ho posted codes and loaded
pirate softw are w ith abandon,and cam e to a sticky end.
Sting boards, like other boards, are cheap to operate, very cheap by the
standards of undercover police operations. O nce accepted by the local
underground, sysops w illlikely be invited into other pirate boards,
w here they can com pile m ore dossiers. A nd w hen the sting is announced
and the w orst offenders arrested, the publicity is generally gratifying.
The resultant paranoia in the underground — perhaps m ore justly
described as a "deterrence effect" — tends to quelllocallaw breaking for
quite a w hile.

O bviously police do not have to beat the underbrush for hackers. O n the
contrary, they can go trolling for them . Those caught can be grilled.
Som e becom e usefulinform ants. They can lead the w ay to pirate boards
allacross the country.
A nd boards allacross the country show ed the sticky fingerprints of

*Phrack,* and of that loudest and m ost flagrant of allunderground
groups,the "Legion of Doom ."
The term "Legion of Doom " cam e from com ic books.The Legion of Doom ,
a conspiracy of costum ed super- villains headed by the chrom e-dom ed
crim inalultra- m asterm ind Lex Luthor, gave Superm an a lot of four-
color graphic trouble for a num ber of decades. O f course, Superm an,
that exem plar of Truth, Justice, and the A m erican W ay, alw ays w on in
the long run. This didn't m atter to the hacker D oom sters — "Legion of
D oom " w as not som e thunderous and evilSatanic reference,it w as not
m eant to be taken seriously. "Legion of D oom " cam e from funny-books
and w as supposed to be funny.
"Legion of D oom " did have a good m outhfilling ring to it,though. It

sounded really cool. O ther groups, such as the "Farm ers of D oom ,"
closely allied to LoD , recognized this grandiloquent quality, and m ade fun
of it. There w as even a hacker group called "Justice League of A m erica,"
nam ed after Superm an's club of true-blue crim efighting superheros.
But they didn't last; the Legion did.
The originalLegion of D oom , hanging out on Q uasiM oto's Plovernet

board, w ere phone phreaks. They w eren't m uch into com puters. "Lex
Luthor" him self (w ho w as under eighteen w hen he form ed the Legion)
w as a CO SM O S expert, CO SM O S being the "CentralSystem for M ainfram e
O perations," a telco internalcom puter netw ork. Lex w ould eventually
becom e quite a dab hand at breaking into IBM m ainfram es, but although
everyone liked Lex and adm ired his attitude,he w as not considered a
truly accom plished com puter intruder. N or w as he the "m asterm ind" of
the Legion of D oom — LoD w ere never big on form alleadership. A s a
regular on Plovernet and sysop of his "Legion of D oom BBS," Lex w as

the Legion's cheerleader and recruiting officer.
Legion of D oom began on the ruins of an earlier phreak group, The

Knights of Shadow . Later,LoD w as to subsum e the personnelof the
hacker group "Tribunalof Know ledge." People cam e and w ent constantly
in LoD ; groups split up or form ed offshoots.
Early on, the LoD phreaks befriended a few com puter-intrusion enthu-
siasts,w ho becam e the associated "Legion of Hackers." Then the tw o
groups conflated into the "Legion of D oom /Hackers," or LoD /H.W hen
the original"hacker" w ing, M essrs. "Com pu- Phreak" and "Phucked
A gent 04," found other m atters to occupy their tim e, the extra "/H"
slow ly atrophied out of the nam e; but by this tim e the phreak w ing,
M essrs. Lex Luthor, "Blue A rcher," "G ary Seven," "Kerrang Khan,"
"M aster of Im pact," "Silver Spy," "The M arauder," and "The
V ideosm ith," had picked up a plethora of intrusion expertise and had
becom e a force to be reckoned w ith.
LoD m em bers seem ed to have an instinctive understanding that the w ay

to realpow er in the underground lay through covert publicity. LoD
w ere flagrant. N ot only w as it one of the earliest groups, but the m em -
bers took pains to w idely distribute their illicit know ledge. Som e LoD
m em bers, like "The M entor," w ere close to evangelicalabout it.
*Legion of D oom TechnicalJournal* began to show up on boards
throughout the underground.
*LoD TechnicalJournal* w as nam ed in cruelparody of the ancient and

honored *A T& T TechnicalJournal.* The m aterialin these tw o publica-
tions w as quite sim ilar — m uch of it, adopted from public journals and
discussions in the telco com m unity. A nd yet,the predatory attitude of
LoD m ade even its m ost innocuous data seem deeply sinister;an outrage;
a clear and present danger.
To see w hy this should be, let's consider the follow ing (invented) para-
graphs, as a kind of thought experim ent.
(A ) "W . Fred Brow n, A T& T V ice President for A dvanced Technical

D evelopm ent, testified M ay 8 at a W ashington hearing of the N ational

Telecom m unications and Inform ation A dm inistration (N TIA ), regarding
Bellcore's GA RD EN project. GA RD EN (Generalized A utom atic Rem ote
D istributed Electronic N etw ork) is a telephone-sw itch program m ing
toolthat m akes it possible to develop new telecom services, including
hold-on-hold and custom ized m essage transfers, from any keypad ter-
m inal, w ithin seconds. The GA RD EN prototype com bines centrex lines
w ith a m inicom puter using UN IX operating system softw are."
(B) "Crim son Flash 512 of the Centrex M obsters reports: D 00dz, you
w ouldn't believe this GA RD EN bullshit Bellcore's just com e up w ith!
Now you don't even need a lousy Com m odore to reprogram a sw itch —
just log on to GA RD EN as a technician, and you can reprogram sw itches
right off the keypad in any public phone booth! You can give yourself
hold-on-hold and custom ized m essage transfers, and best of all, the
thing is run off (notoriously insecure) centrex lines using — get this —
standard UN IX softw are! H a ha ha ha!"
M essage (A ), couched in typicaltechno- bureaucratese, appears tedious

and alm ost unreadable. (A ) scarcely seem s threatening or m enacing.
M essage (B), on the other hand, is a dreadfulthing, prim a facie evi-
dence of a dire conspiracy, definitely not the kind of thing you w ant your
teenager reading.
The *inform ation,* how ever, is identical. It is *public* inform ation,

presented before the federalgovernm ent in an open hearing. It is not
"secret." It is not "proprietary." It is not even "confidential." O n the
contrary,the developm ent of advanced softw are system s is a m atter of
great public pride to Bellcore.
H ow ever, w hen Bellcore publicly announces a project of this kind, it

expects a certain attitude from the public — som ething along the lines of
*gosh w ow , you guys are great, keep that up, w hatever it is* — cer-
tainly not cruelm im ickry, one-upm anship and outrageous speculations
about possible security holes.
N ow put yourself in the place of a policem an confronted by an outraged

parent, or telco official, w ith a copy of V ersion (B). This w ell-m eaning
citizen, to his horror, has discovered a localbulletin-board carrying

outrageous stuff like (B), w hich his son is exam ining w ith a deep and
unhealthy interest. If (B) w ere printed in a book or m agazine, you, as
an A m erican law enforcem ent officer, w ould know that it w ould take a
hellof a lot of trouble to do anything about it; but it doesn't take techni-
calgenius to recognize that if there's a com puter in your area harboring
stuff like (B), there's going to be trouble.
In fact, if you ask around, any com puter-literate cop w illtellyou

straight out that boards w ith stuff like (B) are the *source* of trouble.
A nd the *w orst* source of trouble on boards are the ringleaders invent-
ing and spreading stuff like (B). If it w eren't for these jokers, there
w ouldn't *be* any trouble.
A nd Legion of Doom w ere on boards like nobody else. Plovernet. The

Legion of Doom Board. The Farm ers of Doom Board. M etalShop. O SUN Y.
Blottoland. Private Sector. A tlantis. D igitalLogic. H ellPhrozen O ver.
LoD m em bers also ran their ow n boards. "Silver Spy" started his ow n
board,"Catch-22," considered one of the heaviest around. So did
"M entor," w ith his "Phoenix Project." W hen they didn't run boards
them selves,they show ed up on other people's boards,to brag,boast,and
strut. A nd w here they them selves didn't go, their philes w ent, carrying
evilknow ledge and an even m ore evilattitude.
A s early as 1986, the police w ere under the vague im pression that
*everyone* in the underground w as Legion of D oom . LoD w as never
that large — considerably sm aller than either "M etalCom m unications"
or "The A dm inistration," for instance — but LoD got trem endous press.
Especially in *Phrack,* w hich at tim es read like an LoD fan m agazine;
and *Phrack* w as everyw here, especially in the offices of telco securi-
ty. You couldn't *get* busted as a phone phreak,a hacker,or even a
lousy codes kid or w arez dood,w ithout the cops asking if you w ere LoD .
This w as a difficult charge to deny, as LoD never distributed m em ber-

ship badges or lam inated ID cards. If they had, they w ould likely have
died out quickly, for turnover in their m em bership w as considerable.
LoD w as less a high-tech street-gang than an ongoing state-of- m ind.
LoD w as the Gang That Refused to D ie. By 1990, LoD had *ruled* for

ten years, and it seem ed *w eird* to police that they w ere continually
busting people w ho w ere only sixteen years old. A llthese teenage
sm all-tim ers w ere pleading the tiresom e hacker litany of "just curi-
ous, no crim inalintent." Som ew here at the center of this conspiracy
there had to be som e serious adult m asterm inds, not this seem ingly end-
less supply of m yopic suburban w hite kids w ith high SA Ts and funny
haircuts.
There w as no question that m ost any A m erican hacker arrested w ould

"know " LoD . They knew the handles of contributors to *LoD Tech
Journal,* and w ere likely to have learned their craft through LoD
boards and LoD activism . But they'd never m et anyone from LoD .Even
som e of the rotating cadre w ho w ere actually and form ally "in LoD "
knew one another only by board-m ailand pseudonym s. This w as a
highly unconventionalprofile for a crim inalconspiracy. Com puter
netw orking, and the rapid evolution of the digitalunderground, m ade
the situation very diffuse and confusing.
Furtherm ore, a big reputation in the digitalunderground did not coin-

cide w ith one's w illingness to com m it "crim es." Instead, reputation
w as based on cleverness and technicalm astery. A s a result, it often
seem ed that the *heavier* the hackers w ere, the *less* likely they
w ere to have com m itted any kind of com m on, easily prosecutable crim e.
There w ere som e hackers w ho could really steal. A nd there w ere hack-
ers w ho could really hack. But the tw o groups didn't seem to overlap
m uch, if at all. For instance, m ost people in the underground looked up
to "Em m anuelGoldstein" of *2600* as a hacker dem igod. But
Goldstein's publishing activities w ere entirely legal— Goldstein just
printed dodgy stuff and talked about politics,he didn't even hack.W hen
you cam e right dow n to it, Goldstein spent half his tim e com plaining that
com puter security *w asn't strong enough* and ought to be drastically
im proved across the board!
Truly heavy-duty hackers, those w ith serious technicalskills w ho had

earned the respect of the underground, never stole m oney or abused
credit cards.Som etim es they m ight abuse phone-codes — but often,they
seem ed to get allthe free phone-tim e they w anted w ithout leaving a
trace of any kind.

The best hackers, the m ost pow erfuland technically accom plished, w ere
not professionalfraudsters. They raided com puters habitually, but
w ouldn't alter anything, or dam age anything. They didn't even steal
com puter equipm ent — m ost had day-jobs m essing w ith hardw are, and
could get allthe cheap secondhand equipm ent they w anted. The hottest
hackers, unlike the teenage w annabes, w eren't snobs about fancy or
expensive hardw are. Their m achines tended to be raw second-hand dig-
italhot-rods fullof custom add-ons that they'd cobbled together out of
chickenw ire, m em ory chips and spit. Som e w ere adults, com puter soft-
w are w riters and consultants by trade, and m aking quite good livings at
it. Som e of them *actually w orked for the phone com pany* — and for
those, the "hackers" actually found under the skirts of M a Bell, there
w ould be little m ercy in 1990.
It has long been an article of faith in the underground that the "best"
hackers never get caught.They're far too sm art,supposedly. They
never get caught because they never boast,brag,or strut. These
dem igods m ay read underground boards (w ith a condescending sm ile),
but they never say anything there. The "best" hackers,according to
legend, are adult com puter professionals, such as m ainfram e system
adm inistrators, w ho already know the ins and outs of their particular
brand of security. Even the "best" hacker can't break in to just any
com puter at random :the know ledge of security holes is too specialized,
varying w idely w ith different softw are and hardw are. But if people are
em ployed to run, say, a UN IX m ainfram e or a V A X/V M S m achine, then
they tend to learn security from the inside out. A rm ed w ith this know l-
edge,they can look into m ost anybody else's UN IX or V M S w ithout m uch
trouble or risk, if they w ant to. A nd, according to hacker legend, of
course they w ant to,so of course they do. They just don't m ake a big
dealof w hat they've done. So nobody ever finds out.
It is also an article of faith in the underground that professionaltelco

people "phreak" like crazed w easels. *O f course* they spy on M adonna's
phone calls — Im ean, *w ouldn't you?* O f course they give them selves
free long- distance — w hy the hellshould *they* pay, they're running
the w hole shebang!

It has, as a third m atter, long been an article of faith that any hacker
caught can escape serious punishm ent if he confesses *how he did it.*
H ackers seem to believe that governm entalagencies and large corpora-
tions are blundering about in cyberspace like eyeless jellyfish or cave
salam anders. They feelthat these large but pathetically stupid organi-
zations w illproffer up genuine gratitude, and perhaps even a security
post and a big salary, to the hot-shot intruder w ho w illdeign to reveal
to them the suprem e genius of his m odus operandi.
In the case of longtim e LoD m em ber "Control-C," this actually hap-

pened, m ore or less. Control-C had led M ichigan Bella m erry chase,
and w hen captured in 1987, he turned out to be a bright and apparently
physically harm less young fanatic, fascinated by phones. There w as no
chance in hellthat Control-C w ould actually repay the enorm ous and
largely theoreticalsum s in long-distance service that he had accum u-
lated from M ichigan Bell. H e could alw ays be indicted for fraud or
com puter-intrusion, but there seem ed little realpoint in this — he
hadn't physically dam aged any com puter. He'd just plead guilty,and he'd
likely get the usualslap-on-the-w rist, and in the m eantim e it w ould be
a big hassle for M ichigan Belljust to bring up the case. But if kept on
the payroll, he m ight at least keep his fellow hackers at bay.
There w ere uses for him . For instance, a contrite Control-C w as fea-
tured on M ichigan Bellinternalposters, sternly w arning em ployees to
shred their trash. H e'd alw ays gotten m ost of his best inside info from
"trashing" — raiding telco dum psters, for usefuldata indiscreetly
throw n aw ay. He signed these posters,too. Control-C had becom e
som ething like a M ichigan Bellm ascot. A nd in fact, Control-C *did*
keep other hackers at bay. Little hackers w ere quite scared of Control-
C and his heavy-duty Legion of D oom friends. A nd big hackers *w ere*
his friends and didn't w ant to screw up his cushy situation.
N o m atter w hat one m ight say of LoD,they did stick together. W hen
"W asp," an apparently genuinely m alicious N ew York hacker, began
crashing Bellcore m achines, Control-C received sw ift volunteer help
from "the M entor" and the Georgia LoD w ing m ade up of "The Prophet,"
"Urvile," and "Leftist." Using M entor's Phoenix Project board to coor-
dinate, the D oom sters helped telco security to trap W asp, by luring him

into a m achine w ith a tap and line-trace installed. W asp lost. LoD w on!
A nd m y, did they brag.
U rvile, Prophet and Leftist w ere w ell-qualified for this activity, prob-
ably m ore so even than the quite accom plished Control-C. The Georgia
boys knew allabout phone sw itching-stations. Though relative johnny-
com e- latelies in the Legion of D oom ,they w ere considered som e of
LoD's heaviest guys,into the hairiest system s around.They had the good
fortune to live in or near A tlanta, hom e of the sleepy and apparently
tolerant BellSouth RBO C.
A s RBO C security w ent, BellSouth w ere "cake." US W est (of A rizona,

the Rockies and the Pacific N orthw est) w ere tough and aggressive,
probably the heaviest RBO C around. Pacific Bell, California's PacBell,
w ere sleek, high- tech, and longtim e veterans of the LA phone-phreak
w ars. N YN EX had the m isfortune to run the N ew York City area, and
w ere w arily prepared for m ost anything. Even M ichigan Bell, a divi-
sion of the A m eritech RBO C,at least had the elem entary sense to hire
their ow n hacker as a usefulscarecrow . But BellSouth, even though
their corporate P.R. proclaim ed them to have "Everything You Expect
From a Leader," w ere pathetic.
W hen rum or about LoD 's m astery of Georgia's sw itching netw ork got
around to BellSouth through Bellcore and telco security scuttlebutt,
they at first refused to believe it. If you paid serious attention to every
rum or out and about these hacker kids, you w ould hear allkinds of
w acko saucer-nut nonsense: that the N ationalSecurity A gency m oni-
tored allA m erican phone calls, that the CIA and D EA tracked traffic on
bulletin-boards w ith w ord- analysis program s, that the Condor could
start W orld W ar IIIfrom a payphone.
If there w ere hackers into BellSouth sw itching- stations, then how com e
nothing had happened? N othing had been hurt. BellSouth's m achines
w eren't crashing. BellSouth w asn't suffering especially badly from
fraud. BellSouth's custom ers w eren't com plaining. BellSouth w as head-
quartered in A tlanta, am bitious m etropolis of the new high-tech
Sunbelt; and BellSouth w as upgrading its netw ork by leaps and bounds,
digitizing the w orks left right and center. They could hardly be consid-

ered sluggish or naive. BellSouth's technicalexpertise w as second to
none, thank you kindly.
But then cam e the Florida business.
O n June 13, 1989, callers to the Palm Beach County Probation

D epartm ent, in D elray Beach, Florida, found them selves involved in a
rem arkable discussion w ith a phone-sex w orker nam ed "Tina" in N ew
York State. Som ehow , *any* callto this probation office near M iam i
w as instantly and m agically transported across state lines, at no extra
charge to the user, to a pornographic phone- sex hotline hundreds of
m iles aw ay!
This practicaljoke m ay seem utterly hilarious at first hearing, and

indeed there w as a good dealof chuckling about it in phone phreak cir-
cles, including the A utum n 1989 issue of *2600.* But for Southern
Bell (the division of the BellSouth RBO C supplying localservice for
Florida, G eorgia, N orth Carolina and South Carolina), this w as a sm ok-
ing gun. For the first tim e ever, a com puter intruder had broken into a
BellSouth centraloffice sw itching station and re-program m ed it!
O r so BellSouth thought in June 1989. A ctually, LoD m em bers had been

frolicking harm lessly in BellSouth sw itches since Septem ber 1987.
The stunt of June 13 — call-forw arding a num ber through m anipulation
of a sw itching station — w as child's play for hackers as accom plished as
the Georgia w ing of LoD . Sw itching calls interstate sounded like a big
deal,but it took only four lines of code to accom plish this. A n easy,yet
m ore discreet, stunt, w ould be to call-forw ard another num ber to your
ow n house. If you w ere carefuland considerate,and changed the soft-
w are back later,then not a soulw ould know . Except you. A nd w hoever
you had bragged to about it.
A s for BellSouth, w hat they didn't know w ouldn't hurt them .
Except now som ebody had blow n the w hole thing w ide open,and
BellSouth knew .
A now alerted and considerably paranoid BellSouth began searching

sw itches right and left for signs of im propriety, in that hot sum m er of
1989. N o few er than forty-tw o BellSouth em ployees w ere put on 12-
hour shifts, tw enty-four hours a day, for tw o solid m onths, poring over
records and m onitoring com puters for any sign of phony access. These
forty-tw o overw orked experts w ere know n as BellSouth's "Intrusion
Task Force."
W hat the investigators found astounded them . Proprietary telco databas-

es had been m anipulated:phone num bers had been created out of thin
air, w ith no users' nam es and no addresses. A nd perhaps w orst of all, no
charges and no records of use. The new digitalReM O B (Rem ote
O bservation) diagnostic feature had been extensively tam pered w ith —
hackers had learned to reprogram ReM O B softw are, so that they could
listen in on any sw itch-routed callat their leisure! They w ere using
telco property to *spy!*
The electrifying new s w ent out throughout law enforcem ent in 1989. It
had never really occurred to anyone at BellSouth that their prized and
brand-new digitalsw itching-stations could be *re-program m ed.*
People seem ed utterly am azed that anyone could have the nerve. O f
course these sw itching stations w ere "com puters," and everybody knew
hackers liked to "break into com puters:" but telephone people's com -
puters w ere *different* from norm alpeople's com puters.
The exact reason *w hy* these com puters w ere "different" w as rather
ill-defined. It certainly w asn't the extent of their security. The secu-
rity on these BellSouth com puters w as lousy; the A IM SX com puters, for
instance,didn't even have passw ords. But there w as no question that
BellSouth strongly *felt* that their com puters w ere very different
indeed. A nd if there w ere som e crim inals out there w ho had not gotten
that m essage,BellSouth w as determ ined to see that m essage taught.
A fter all, a 5ESS sw itching station w as no m ere bookkeeping system for

som e localchain of florists. Public service depended on these stations.
Public *safety* depended on these stations.
A nd hackers, lurking in there call-forw arding or ReM obbing, could spy

on anybody in the localarea! They could spy on telco officials! They

could spy on police stations! They could spy on localoffices of the Secret
Service....
In 1989, electronic cops and hacker-trackers began using scram bler-

phones and secured lines. It only m ade sense. There w as no telling w ho
w as into those system s.W hoever they w ere,they sounded scary. This
w as som e new levelof antisocialdaring. Could be W est Germ an hackers,
in the pay of the KGB. That too had seem ed a w eird and farfetched
notion, untilClifford Stollhad poked and prodded a sluggish W ashington
law -enforcem ent bureaucracy into investigating a com puter intrusion
that turned out to be exactly that — *hackers,in the pay of the KGB!*
Stoll, the system s m anager for an Internet lab in Berkeley California,
had ended up on the front page of the *N ew York Tim es,* proclaim ed a
national hero in the first true story of internationalcom puter espi-
onage. Stoll's counterspy efforts, w hich he related in a bestselling book,
*The Cuckoo's Egg,* in 1989, had established the credibility of 'hack-
ing' as a possible threat to nationalsecurity. The United States Secret
Service doesn't m ess around w hen it suspects a possible action by a for-
eign intelligence apparat.
The Secret Service scram bler-phones and secured lines put a trem en-
dous kink in law enforcem ent's ability to operate freely; to get the w ord
out, cooperate, prevent m isunderstandings. N evertheless, 1989
scarcely seem ed the tim e for half-m easures. If the police and Secret
Service them selves w ere not operationally secure, then how could they
reasonably dem and m easures of security from private enterprise? A t
least,the inconvenience m ade people aw are of the seriousness of the
threat.
If there w as a finalspur needed to get the police off the dim e,it cam e in
the realization that the em ergency 911 system w as vulnerable. The
911 system has its ow n specialized softw are, but it is run on the sam e
digitalsw itching system s as the rest of the telephone netw ork. 911 is
not physically different from norm altelephony. But it is certainly cul-
turally different, because this is the area of telephonic cyberspace
reserved for the police and em ergency services.
Your average policem an m ay not know m uch about hackers or phone-

phreaks. Com puter people are w eird; even com puter *cops* are rather
w eird;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, peo-
ple can die.
Im agine being in a car-w reck, staggering to a phone- booth, punching

911 and hearing "Tina" pick up the phone-sex line som ew here in N ew
York! The situation's no longer com ical, som ehow .
A nd w as it possible? N o question. Hackers had attacked 911 system s

before. Phreaks can m ax-out 911 system s just by siccing a bunch of
com puter-m odem s on them in tandem , dialling them over and over until
they clog. That's very crude and low -tech, but it's stilla serious busi-
ness.
The tim e had com e for action. It w as tim e to take stern m easures w ith
the underground. It w as tim e to start picking up the dropped threads,
the loose edges,the bits of braggadocio here and there;it w as tim e to get
on the stick and start putting serious casew ork together. H ackers
w eren't "invisible." They *thought* they w ere invisible; but the truth
w as,they had just been tolerated too long.
Under sustained police attention in the sum m er of '89, the digital

underground began to unravelas never before.
The first big break in the case cam e very early on: July 1989, the fol-
low ing m onth. The perpetrator of the "Tina" sw itch w as caught, and
confessed. H is nam e w as "Fry Guy," a 16-year-old in Indiana. Fry Guy
had been a very w icked young m an.
Fry Guy had earned his handle from a stunt involving French fries. Fry
Guy had filched the log-in of a localM acD onald's m anager and had
logged-on to the M acD onald's m ainfram e on the Sprint Telenet system .
Posing as the m anager, Fry Guy had altered M acD onald's records, and
given som e teenage ham burger-flipping friends of his, generous raises.
He had not been caught.
Em boldened by success, Fry Guy m oved on to credit- card abuse. Fry

Guy w as quite an accom plished talker; w ith a gift for "socialengineer-
ing." If you can do "socialengineering" — fast-talk, fake-outs,
im personation,conning,scam m ing — then card abuse com es easy.
(Getting aw ay w ith it in the long run is another question).
Fry Guy had run across "Urvile" of the Legion of D oom on the A LTO S Chat
board in Bonn, Germ any. A LTO S Chat w as a sophisticated board, accessi-
ble through globe-spanning com puter netw orks like BITnet, Tym net,
and Telenet. A LTO S w as m uch frequented by m em bers of Germ any's
Chaos Com puter Club. Tw o Chaos hackers w ho hung out on A LTO S,
"Jaeger" and "Pengo," had been the centralvillains of Clifford Stoll's
CUCKO O 'S EGG case: consorting in East Berlin w ith a spym aster from
the KGB, and breaking into A m erican com puters for hire, through the
Internet.
W hen LoD m em bers learned the story of Jaeger's depredations from

Stoll's book, they w ere rather less than im pressed, technically speak-
ing. O n LoD 's ow n favorite board of the m om ent, "Black Ice," LoD m em -
bers bragged that they them selves could have done allthe Chaos break-
ins in a w eek flat! N evertheless, LoD w ere grudgingly im pressed by the
Chaos rep, the sheer hairy-eyed daring of hash-sm oking anarchist
hackers w ho had rubbed shoulders w ith the fearsom e big-boys of inter-
nationalCom m unist espionage. LoD m em bers som etim es traded bits of
know ledge w ith friendly Germ an hackers on A LTO S — phone num bers for
vulnerable V A X/V M S com puters in Georgia, for instance. D utch and
British phone phreaks, and the A ustralian clique of "Phoenix," "N om ,"
and "Electron," w ere A LTO S regulars, too. In underground circles, to
hang out on A LTO S w as considered the sign of an elite dude,a sophisti-
cated hacker of the internationaldigitaljet-set.
Fry G uy quickly learned how to raid inform ation from credit-card con-
sum er-reporting agencies. H e had over a hundred stolen credit-card
num bers in his notebooks, and upw ards of a thousand sw iped long-dis-
tance access codes.He knew how to get onto A ltos,and how to talk the talk
of the underground convincingly. He now w heedled know ledge of sw itch-
ing-station tricks from Urvile on the A LTO S system .
Com bining these tw o form s of know ledge enabled Fry Guy to bootstrap

his w ay up to a new form of w ire- fraud. First, he'd snitched credit
card num bers from credit-com pany com puters. The data he copied
included nam es, addresses and phone num bers of the random card-hold-
ers.
Then Fry Guy, im personating a card-holder, called up W estern Union

and asked for a cash advance on "his" credit card. W estern Union,as a
security guarantee, w ould callthe custom er back, at hom e, to verify the
transaction.
But, just as he had sw itched the Florida probation office to "Tina" in

N ew York, Fry Guy sw itched the card- holder's num ber to a localpay-
phone. There he w ould lurk in w ait, m uddying his trailby routing and
re-routing the call, through sw itches as far aw ay as Canada. W hen the
callcam e through, he w ould boldly "social-engineer," or con, the
W estern Union people, pretending to be the legitim ate card-holder.
Since he'd answ ered the proper phone num ber,the deception w as not
very hard.W estern Union's m oney w as then shipped to a confederate of
Fry Guy's in his hom e tow n in Indiana.
Fry Guy and his cohort, using LoD techniques, stole six thousand dollars
from W estern Union betw een D ecem ber 1988 and July 1989. They also
dabbled in ordering delivery of stolen goods through card-fraud. Fry
Guy w as intoxicated w ith success. The sixteen-year-old fantasized
w ildly to hacker rivals, boasting that he'd used rip-off m oney to hire
him self a big lim ousine, and had driven out-of-state w ith a groupie
from his favorite heavy- m etalband, M otley Crue.
A rm ed w ith know ledge, pow er, and a gratifying stream of free m oney,
Fry Guy now took it upon him self to calllocalrepresentatives of Indiana
Bellsecurity, to brag, boast, strut, and utter torm enting w arnings that
his pow erfulfriends in the notorious Legion of D oom could crash the
nationaltelephone netw ork. Fry Guy even nam ed a date for the schem e:
the Fourth of July, a nationalholiday.
This egregious exam ple of the begging-for-arrest syndrom e w as shortly

follow ed by Fry Guy's arrest. A fter the Indiana telephone com pany fig-
ured out w ho he w as, the Secret Service had D N Rs — D ialed N um ber

Recorders — installed on his hom e phone lines. These devices are not
taps,and can't record the substance of phone calls,but they do record
the phone num bers of allcalls going in and out. Tracing these num bers
show ed Fry Guy's long-distance code fraud, his extensive ties to pirate
bulletin boards, and num erous personalcalls to his LoD friends in
A tlanta. By July 11, 1989, Prophet, Urvile and Leftist also had Secret
Service D N R "pen registers" installed on their ow n lines.
The Secret Service show ed up in force at Fry Guy's house on July 22,
1989, to the horror of his unsuspecting parents. The raiders w ere led
by a specialagent from the Secret Service's Indianapolis office.
H ow ever, the raiders w ere accom panied and advised by Tim othy M . Foley
of the Secret Service's Chicago office (a gentlem an about w hom w e w ill
soon be hearing a great deal).
Follow ing federalcom puter-crim e techniques that had been standard

since the early 1980s, the Secret Service searched the house thorough-
ly, and seized allof Fry Guy's electronic equipm ent and notebooks. A ll
Fry Guy's equipm ent w ent out the door in the custody of the Secret
Service, w hich put a sw ift end to his depredations.
The USSS interrogated Fry Guy at length. His case w as put in the charge
of D eborah D aniels, the federalUS A ttorney for the Southern D istrict of
Indiana. Fry Guy w as charged w ith eleven counts of com puter fraud,
unauthorized com puter access, and w ire fraud. The evidence w as thor-
ough and irrefutable. For his part, Fry Guy blam ed 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
nationalholiday. A nd w hen A T& T crashed on M artin Luther King D ay,
1990, this lent a credence to his claim that genuinely alarm ed telco
security and the Secret Service.
Fry Guy eventually pled guilty on M ay 31, 1990. O n Septem ber 14, he
w as sentenced to forty-four m onths' probation and four hundred hours'
com m unity service. He could have had it m uch w orse; but it m ade sense
to prosecutors to take it easy on this teenage m inor, w hile zeroing in on
the notorious kingpins of the Legion of Doom .
B RU C E ST E RL I N G — T H E H AC KER CR AC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 112

But the case against LoD had nagging flaw s.Despite the best effort of
investigators, it w as im possible 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 m em bers of the Legion of
D oom had achieved unprecedented pow er over the telco sw itching sta-
tions, and that they w ere in active conspiracy to obtain m ore pow er yet.
Investigators w ere privately convinced that the Legion of D oom intended
to do aw fulthings w ith this know ledge, but m ere evilintent w as not
enough to put them in jail.
A nd although the A tlanta Three — Prophet, Leftist, and especially Urvile

— had taught Fry Guy plenty, they w ere not them selves credit-card
fraudsters. The only thing they'd "stolen" w as long-distance service —
and since they'd done m uch of that through phone-sw itch m anipulation,
there w as no easy w ay to judge how m uch they'd "stolen," or w hether
this practice w as even "theft" of any easily recognizable kind.
Fry Guy's theft of long-distance codes had cost the phone com panies
plenty. The theft of long-distance service m ay be a fairly theoretical
"loss," but it costs genuine m oney and genuine tim e to delete allthose
stolen codes,and to re-issue new codes to the innocent ow ners of those
corrupted codes. The ow ners of the codes them selves are victim ized,and
lose tim e and m oney and peace of m ind in the hassle. A nd then there
w ere the credit-card victim s to dealw ith, too, and W estern Union.
W hen it cam e to rip-off, Fry Guy w as far m ore of a thief than LoD . It
w as only w hen it cam e to actualcom puter expertise that Fry Guy w as
sm allpotatoes.
The A tlanta Legion thought m ost "rules" of cyberspace w ere for rodents
and losers, but they *did* have rules. *They never crashed anything,
and they never took m oney.* These w ere rough rules-of-thum b, and
rather dubious principles w hen it com es to the ethicalsubtleties of
cyberspace, but they enabled the A tlanta Three to operate w ith a rela-
tively clear conscience (though never w ith peace of m ind).
If you didn't hack for m oney, if you w eren't robbing people of actual
funds — m oney in the bank, that is — then nobody *really* got hurt, in

LoD 's opinion. "Theft of service" w as a bogus issue, and "intellectual
property" w as a bad joke. But LoD had only elitist contem pt for rip-off
artists, "leechers," thieves. They considered them selves clean. In
their opinion, if you didn't sm ash-up or crash any system s — (w ell,
not on purpose,anyhow — accidents can happen,just ask Robert
M orris) then it w as very unfair to callyou a "vandal" or a "cracker."
W hen you w ere hanging out on-line w ith your "pals" in telco security,
you could face them dow n from the higher plane of hacker m orality. A nd
you could m ock the police from the supercilious heights of your hacker's
quest for pure know ledge.
But from the point of view of law enforcem ent and telco security, how -
ever, Fry Guy w as not really dangerous. The A tlanta Three *w ere* dan-
gerous. It w asn't the crim es they w ere com m itting, but the *danger,*
the potentialhazard, the sheer *technicalpow er* LoD had accum ulated,
that had m ade the situation untenable.
Fry Guy w as not LoD . H e'd never laid eyes on anyone in LoD ; his only
contacts w ith them had been electronic. Core m em bers of the Legion of
Doom tended to m eet physically for conventions every year or so,to get
drunk, give each other the hacker high-sign, send out for pizza and rav-
age hotelsuites. Fry Guy had never done any of this. D eborah D aniels
assessed Fry Guy accurately as "an LoD w annabe."
N evertheless Fry Guy's crim es w ould be directly attributed to LoD in

m uch future police propaganda. LoD w ould be described as "a closely
knit group" involved in "num erous illegalactivities" including "stealing
and m odifying individualcredit histories," and "fraudulently obtaining
m oney and property." Fry Guy did this, but the A tlanta Three didn't;
they sim ply w eren't into theft, but rather intrusion. This caused a
strange kink in the prosecution's strategy. LoD w ere accused of "dis-
sem inating inform ation about attacking com puters to other com puter
hackers in an effort to shift the focus of law enforcem ent to those other
hackers and aw ay from the Legion of Doom ."
This last accusation (taken directly from a press release by the Chicago
Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force) sounds particularly far-fetched.
O ne m ight conclude at this point that investigators w ould have been

w ell-advised to go ahead and "shift their focus" from the "Legion of
Doom ." M aybe they *should* concentrate on "those other hackers" —
the ones w ho w ere actually stealing m oney and physicalobjects.
But the H acker Crackdow n of 1990 w as not a sim ple policing action. It
w asn't m eant just to w alk the beat in cyberspace — it w as a *crack-
dow n,* a deliberate attem pt to nailthe core of the operation,to send a
dire and potent m essage that w ould settle the hash of the digitalunder-
ground for good.
By this reasoning, Fry Guy w asn't m uch m ore than the electronic equiv-
alent of a cheap streetcorner dope dealer. A s long as the m asterm inds of
LoD w ere stillflagrantly operating, pushing their m ountains of illicit
know ledge right and left, and w hipping up enthusiasm for blatant law -
breaking, then there w ould be an *infinite supply* of Fry Guys.
Because LoD w ere flagrant, they had left trails everyw here, to be picked
up by law enforcem ent in N ew York, Indiana, Florida, Texas, A rizona,
M issouri, even A ustralia. But 1990's w ar on the Legion of D oom w as
led out of Illinois, by the Chicago Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force.
_____
The Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force, led by federalprosecutor
W illiam J. Cook, had started in 1987 and had sw iftly becom e one of the
m ost aggressive local"dedicated com puter-crim e units." Chicago w as a
naturalhom e for such a group. The w orld's first com puter bulletin-
board system had been invented in Illinois. The state of Illinois had
som e of the nation's first and sternest com puter crim e law s. Illinois
State Police w ere m arkedly alert to the possibilities of w hite-collar
crim e and electronic fraud.
A nd W illiam J. Cook in particular w as a rising star in electronic

crim e-busting. H e and his fellow federalprosecutors at the U.S.
A ttorney's office in Chicago had a tight relation w ith the Secret Service,
especially go- getting Chicago-based agent Tim othy Foley. W hile Cook
and his D epartm ent of Justice colleagues plotted strategy,Foley w as
their m an on the street.

Throughout the 1980s, the federalgovernm ent had given prosecutors an
arm ory of new , untried legaltools against com puter crim e. Cook and his
colleagues w ere pioneers in the use of these new statutes in the real-life
cut-and-thrust of the federalcourtroom .
O n O ctober 2,1986,the US Senate had passed the "Com puter Fraud and
A buse A ct" unanim ously, but there w ere pitifully few convictions under
this statute. Cook's group took their nam e from this statute,since they
w ere determ ined to transform this pow erfulbut rather theoreticalA ct
of Congress into a real-life engine of legaldestruction against com puter
fraudsters and scofflaw s.
It w as not a question of m erely discovering crim es, investigating them ,

and then trying and punishing their perpetrators. The Chicago unit,
like m ost everyone else in the business, already *knew * w ho the bad
guys w ere: the Legion of D oom and the w riters and editors of *Phrack.*
The task at hand w as to find som e legalm eans of putting these characters
aw ay.
This approach m ight seem a bit dubious,to som eone not acquainted w ith
the gritty realities of prosecutorialw ork. But prosecutors don't put
people in jailfor crim es they have com m itted; they put people in jail
for crim es they have com m itted *that can be proved in court.* Chicago
federalpolice put A lCapone in prison for incom e-tax fraud. Chicago is
a big tow n, w ith a rough- and-ready bare-knuckle tradition on both
sides of the law .
Fry Guy had broken the case w ide open and alerted telco security to the
scope of the problem . But Fry Guy's crim es w ould not put the A tlanta
Three behind bars — m uch less the w acko underground journalists of
*Phrack.* So on July 22, 1989, the sam e day that Fry Guy w as raided
in Indiana,the Secret Service descended upon the A tlanta Three.
This w as likely inevitable. By the sum m er of 1989, law enforcem ent

w ere closing in on the A tlanta Three from at least six directions at once.
First, there w ere the leads from Fry Guy, w hich had led to the D N R reg-
isters being installed on the lines of the A tlanta Three. The D N R evi-
dence alone w ould have finished them off, sooner or later.

But second, the A tlanta lads w ere already w ell-know n to Control-C and
his telco security sponsors. LoD 's contacts w ith telco security had m ade
them overconfident and even m ore boastfulthan usual;they felt that
they had pow erfulfriends in high places, and that they w ere being open-
ly tolerated by telco security. But BellSouth's Intrusion Task Force
w ere hot on the trailof LoD and sparing no effort or expense.
The A tlanta Three had also been identified by nam e and listed on the
extensive anti-hacker files m aintained, and retailed for pay, by private
security operative John M axfield of D etroit. M axfield, w ho had exten-
sive ties to telco security and m any inform ants in the underground, w as
a bete noire of the *Phrack* crow d, and the dislike w as m utual.
The A tlanta Three them selves had w ritten articles for *Phrack.* This
boastfulact could not possibly escape telco and law enforcem ent atten-
tion.
"Knightm are," a high-schoolage hacker from A rizona, w as a close

friend and disciple of A tlanta LoD , but he had been nabbed by the form i-
dable A rizona O rganized Crim e and Racketeering Unit. Knightm are w as
on som e of LoD 's favorite boards — "Black Ice" in particular — and w as
privy to their secrets. A nd to have GailThackeray, the A ssistant
A ttorney Generalof A rizona, on one's trailw as a dreadfulperilfor any
hacker.
A nd perhaps w orst of all, Prophet had com m itted a m ajor blunder by

passing an illicitly copied BellSouth com puter-file to Knight Lightning,
w ho had published it in *Phrack.* This, as w e w illsee, w as an act of
dire consequence for alm ost everyone concerned.
O n July 22, 1989, the Secret Service show ed up at the Leftist's house,
w here he lived w ith his parents. A m assive squad of som e tw enty offi-
cers surrounded the building: Secret Service, federalm arshals, local
police, possibly BellSouth telco security; it w as hard to tellin the
crush. Leftist's dad, at w ork in his basem ent office, first noticed a m us-
cular stranger in plain clothes crashing through the back yard w ith a
draw n pistol. A s m ore strangers poured into the house, Leftist's dad

naturally assum ed there w as an arm ed robbery in progress.
Like m ost hacker parents,Leftist's m om and dad had only the vaguest
notions of w hat their son had been up to allthis tim e. Leftist had a day-
job repairing com puter hardw are. H is obsession w ith com puters
seem ed a bit odd, but harm less enough, and likely to produce a w ell-
paying career. The sudden, overw helm ing raid left Leftist's parents
traum atized.
The Leftist him self had been out after w ork w ith his co-w orkers, sur-
rounding a couple of pitchers of m argaritas. A s he cam e trucking on
tequila-num bed feet up the pavem ent, toting a bag fullof floppy-disks,
he noticed a large num ber of unm arked cars parked in his drivew ay. A ll
the cars sported tiny m icrow ave antennas.
The Secret Service had knocked the front door off its hinges,alm ost
flattening his M om .
Inside,Leftist w as greeted by SpecialA gent Jam es Coolof the US Secret

Service,A tlanta office. Leftist w as flabbergasted. He'd never m et a
Secret Service agent before. He could not im agine that he'd ever done
anything w orthy of federalattention. H e'd alw ays figured that if his
activities becam e intolerable, one of his contacts in telco security w ould
give him a private phone-calland tellhim to knock it off.
But now Leftist w as pat-searched for w eapons by grim professionals,

and his bag of floppies w as quickly seized. H e and his parents w ere all
shepherded into separate room s and grilled at length as a score of offi-
cers scoured their hom e for anything electronic.
Leftist w as horrified as his treasured IBM A T personalcom puter w ith

its forty-m eg hard disk, and his recently purchased 80386 IBM -clone
w ith a w hopping hundred-m eg hard disk, both w ent sw iftly out the door
in Secret Service custody. They also seized allhis disks, allhis note-
books,and a trem endous booty in dogeared telco docum ents that Leftist
had snitched out of trash dum psters.
Leftist figured the w hole thing for a big m isunderstanding. H e'd never

been into *m ilitary* com puters. H e w asn't a *spy* or a *Com m unist.*
He w as just a good ol'Georgia hacker,and now he just w anted allthese
people out of the house. But it seem ed they w ouldn't go untilhe m ade
som e kind of statem ent.
A nd so, he levelled w ith them .
A nd that, Leftist said later from his federalprison cam p in Talladega,

A labam a, w as a big m istake.
The A tlanta area w as unique,in that it had three m em bers of the Legion
of D oom w ho actually occupied m ore or less the sam e physical locality.
Unlike the rest of LoD,w ho tended to associate by phone and com puter,
A tlanta LoD actually *w ere* "tightly knit." It w as no realsurprise that
the Secret Service agents apprehending Urvile at the com puter-labs at
Georgia Tech, w ould discover Prophet w ith him as w ell.
U rvile, a 2 1 -year-old G eorgia Tech student in polym er chem istry,

posed quite a puzzling case for law enforcem ent. Urvile — also know n
as "N ecron 99," as w ellas other handles,for he tended to change his
cover-alias about once a m onth — w as both an accom plished hacker and a
fanatic sim ulation-gam er.
Sim ulation gam es are an unusualhobby; but then hackers are unusual
people,and their favorite pastim es tend to be som ew hat out of the ordi-
nary. The best-know n A m erican sim ulation gam e is probably
"D ungeons & D ragons," a m ulti-player parlor entertainm ent played
w ith paper, m aps, pencils, statisticaltables and a variety of oddly-
shaped dice. Players pretend to be heroic characters exploring a w hol-
ly-invented fantasy w orld. The fantasy w orlds of sim ulation gam ing are
com m only pseudo-m edieval, involving sw ords and sorcery — spell-
casting w izards, knights in arm or, unicorns and dragons, dem ons and
goblins.
Urvile and his fellow gam ers preferred their fantasies highly techno-
logical. They m ade use of a gam e know n as "G.U.R.P.S.," the "Generic
UniversalRole Playing System ," published by a com pany called Steve
Jackson Gam es (SJG).

"G.U.R.P.S." served as a fram ew ork for creating a w ide variety of arti-
ficialfantasy w orlds. Steve Jackson Gam es published a sm orgasboard of
books, fullof detailed inform ation and gam ing hints, w hich w ere used to
flesh-out m any different fantastic backgrounds for the basic GURPS
fram ew ork. Urvile m ade extensive use of tw o SJG books called *GURPS
H igh-Tech* and *G URPS SpecialO ps.*
In the artificial fantasy-w orld of *G U RPS Special O ps,* players

entered a m odern fantasy of intrigue and internationalespionage. O n
beginning the gam e, players started sm alland pow erless, perhaps as
m inor-league CIA agents or penny-ante arm s dealers. But as players
persisted through a series of gam e sessions (gam e sessions generally
lasted for hours, over long, elaborate cam paigns that m ight be pursued
for m onths on end) then they w ould achieve new skills, new know ledge,
new pow er. They w ould acquire and hone new abilities, such as m arks-
m anship, karate, w iretapping, or W atergate burglary. They could also
w in various kinds of im aginary booty, like Berettas, or m artinishak-
ers, or fast cars w ith ejection seats and m achine-guns under the head-
lights.
A s m ight be im agined from the com plexity of these gam es, Urvile's gam -
ing notes w ere very detailed and extensive. Urvile w as a "dungeon-
m aster," inventing scenarios for his fellow gam ers, giant sim ulated
adventure-puzzles for his friends to unravel. Urvile's gam e notes cov-
ered dozens of pages w ith allsorts of exotic lunacy, allabout ninja raids
on Libya and break-ins on encrypted Red Chinese supercom puters. H is
notes w ere w ritten on scrap-paper and kept in loose-leaf binders.
The handiest scrap paper around Urvile's college digs w ere the m any
pounds of BellSouth printouts and docum ents that he had snitched out of
telco dum psters. H is notes w ere w ritten on the back of m isappropriated
telco property. W orse yet, the gam ing notes w ere chaotically inter-
spersed w ith U rvile's hand-scraw led records involving *actualcom -
puter intrusions* that he had com m itted.
N ot only w as it next to im possible to tellUrvile's fantasy gam e-notes

from cyberspace "reality," but U rvile him self barely m ade this dis-

tinction. It's no exaggeration to say that to Urvile it w as *all* a gam e.
Urvile w as very bright, highly im aginative, and quite careless of other
people's notions of propriety. H is connection to "reality" w as not som e-
thing to w hich he paid a great dealof attention.
H acking w as a gam e for Urvile. It w as an am usem ent he w as carrying

out, it w as som ething he w as doing for fun. A nd Urvile w as an obsessive
young m an. He could no m ore stop hacking than he could stop in the
m iddle of a jigsaw puzzle, or stop in the m iddle of reading a Stephen
D onaldson fantasy trilogy. (The nam e "Urvile" cam e from a best-sell-
ing D onaldson novel.)
Urvile's airy, bulletproof attitude seriously annoyed his interrogators.

First of all, he didn't consider that he'd done anything w rong. There w as
scarcely a shred of honest rem orse in him . O n the contrary, he seem ed
privately convinced that his police interrogators w ere operating in a
dem ented fantasy-w orld alltheir ow n. Urvile w as too polite and w ell-
behaved to say this straight- out, but his reactions w ere askew and dis-
quieting.
For instance, there w as the business about LoD 's ability to m onitor
phone-calls to the police and Secret Service. Urvile agreed that this
w as 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, m uch as
they had discussed m any other nifty notions, such as building personal
flam e-throw ers and jury-rigging fistfulls of blasting-caps. They had
hundreds of dial-up num bers for governm ent agencies that they'd gotten
through scanning A tlanta phones, or had pulled from raided V A X/V M S
m ainfram e com puters.
Basically, they'd never gotten around to listening in on the cops because

the idea w asn't interesting enough to bother w ith. Besides,if they'd
been m onitoring Secret Service phone calls, obviously they'd never have
been caught in the first place. Right?
The Secret Service w as less than satisfied w ith this rapier-like hacker
logic.

Then there w as the issue of crashing the phone system . N o problem ,
Urvile adm itted sunnily. A tlanta LoD could have shut dow n phone ser-
vice allover A tlanta any tim e they liked. *Even the 911 service?*
N othing specialabout that, Urvile explained patiently. Bring the
sw itch to its knees, w ith say the UN IX "m akedir" bug, and 911 goes
dow n too as a m atter of course. The 911 system w asn't very interest-
ing, frankly. It m ight be trem endously interesting to cops (for odd
reasons of their ow n), but as technicalchallenges w ent, the 911 service
w as yaw nsville.
So of course the A tlanta Three could crash service. They probably could
have crashed service allover BellSouth territory, if they'd w orked at it
for a w hile. But A tlanta LoD w eren't crashers. O nly losers and rodents
w ere crashers. LoD w ere *elite.*
Urvile w as privately convinced that sheer technicalexpertise could w in

him free of any kind of problem . A s far as he w as concerned, elite status
in the digitalunderground had placed him perm anently beyond the intel-
lectualgrasp of cops and straights. Urvile had a lot to learn.
O f the three LoD stalw arts, Prophet w as in the m ost direct trouble.
Prophet w as a UN IX program m ing expert w ho burrow ed in and out of the
Internet as a m atter of course. He'd started his hacking career at
around age 14, m eddling w ith a UN IX m ainfram e system at the
U niversity of N orth Carolina.
Prophet him self had w ritten the handy Legion of D oom file "UN IX Use
and Security From the Ground Up." UN IX (pronounced "you-nicks") is
a pow erful, flexible com puter operating-system , for m ulti-user,
m ulti-tasking com puters. In 1969, w hen UN IX w as created in Bell
Labs, such com puters w ere exclusive to large corporations and univer-
sities, but today UN IX is run on thousands of pow erfulhom e m achines.
U N IX w as particularly w ell- suited to telecom m unications program -
m ing, and had becom e a standard in the field. N aturally, UN IX also
becam e a standard for the elite hacker and phone phreak.
Lately, Prophet had not been so active as Leftist and Urvile, but Prophet
w as a recidivist. In 1986, w hen he w as eighteen, Prophet had been

convicted of "unauthorized access to a com puter netw ork" in N orth
Carolina. H e'd been discovered breaking into the Southern BellD ata
N etw ork, a UN IX-based internaltelco netw ork supposedly closed to the
public. He'd gotten a typicalhacker sentence: six m onths suspended,
120 hours com m unity service, and three years' probation.
A fter that hum iliating bust, Prophet had gotten rid of m ost of his ton-
nage of illicit phreak and hacker data, and had tried to go straight. He
w as, after all, stillon probation. But by the autum n of 1988, the
tem ptations of cyberspace had proved too m uch for young Prophet,and
he w as shoulder-to-shoulder w ith Urvile and Leftist into som e of the
hairiest system s around.
In early Septem ber 1988, he'd broken into BellSouth's centralized

autom ation system ,A IM SX or "A dvanced Inform ation M anagem ent
System ." A IM SX w as an internalbusiness netw ork for BellSouth,
w here telco em ployees stored electronic m ail, databases, m em os, and
calendars, and did text processing. Since A IM SX did not have public
dial-ups, it w as considered utterly invisible to the public, and w as not
w ell-secured — it didn't even require passw ords. Prophet abused an
account know n as "w aa1," the personalaccount of an unsuspecting telco
em ployee. D isguised as the ow ner of w aa1, Prophet m ade about ten vis-
its to A IM SX.
Prophet did not dam age or delete anything in the system . His presence
in A IM SX w as harm less and alm ost invisible. But he could not rest con-
tent w ith that.
O ne particular piece of processed text on A IM SX w as a telco docum ent

know n as "BellSouth Standard Practice 660-225-104SV Control
O ffice A dm inistration of Enhanced 911 Services for SpecialServices and
M ajor A ccount Centers dated M arch 1988."
Prophet had not been looking for this docum ent. It w as m erely one
am ong hundreds of sim ilar docum ents w ith im penetrable titles.
H ow ever, having blundered over it in the course of his illicit w ander-
ings through A IM SX, he decided to take it w ith him as a trophy. It m ight
prove very usefulin som e future boasting, bragging, and strutting ses-

sion. So, som e tim e in Septem ber 1988, Prophet ordered the A IM SX
m ainfram e com puter to copy this docum ent (henceforth called sim ply
called "the E911 D ocum ent") and to transfer this copy to his hom e
com puter.
No one noticed that Prophet had done this. He had "stolen" the E911
D ocum ent in som e sense,but notions of property in cyberspace can be
tricky. BellSouth noticed nothing w rong, because BellSouth stillhad
their originalcopy. They had not been "robbed" of the docum ent itself.
M any people w ere supposed to copy this docum ent — specifically,people
w ho w orked for the nineteen BellSouth "specialservices and m ajor
account centers," scattered throughout the Southeastern United States.
That w as w hat it w as for, w hy it w as present on a com puter netw ork in
the first place:so that it could be copied and read — by telco em ployees.
But now the data had been copied by som eone w ho w asn't supposed to look
at it.
Prophet now had his trophy. But he further decided to store yet another
copy of the E911 D ocum ent on another person's com puter. This unw it-
ting person w as a com puter enthusiast nam ed Richard A ndrew s w ho
lived near Joliet, Illinois. Richard A ndrew s w as a U N IX program m er by
trade, and ran a pow erfulUN IX board called "Jolnet," in the basem ent of
his house.
Prophet,using the handle "Robert Johnson," had obtained an account on

Richard A ndrew s'com puter. A nd there he stashed the E911 D ocum ent,
by storing it in his ow n private section of A ndrew s' com puter.
W hy did Prophet do this? If Prophet had elim inated the E911 D ocum ent
from his ow n com puter, and kept it hundreds of m iles aw ay, on another
m achine, under an alias, then he m ight have been fairly safe from dis-
covery and prosecution — although his sneaky action had certainly put
the unsuspecting Richard A ndrew s at risk.
But, like m ost hackers, Prophet w as a pack-rat for illicit data. W hen it
cam e to the crunch, he could not bear to part from his trophy. W hen
Prophet's place in D ecatur, Georgia w as raided in July 1989, there w as
the E911 D ocum ent,a sm oking gun. A nd there w as Prophet in the hands

of the Secret Service, doing his best to "explain."
O ur story now takes us aw ay from the A tlanta Three and their raids of
the Sum m er of 1989. W e m ust leave A tlanta Three "cooperating fully"
w ith their num erous investigators. A nd allthree of them did cooperate,
as their Sentencing M em orandum from the US D istrict Court of the
N orthern D ivision of Georgia explained — just before allthree of them
w ere sentenced to various federalprisons in N ovem ber 1990.
W e m ust now catch up on the other aspects of the w ar on the Legion of

D oom . The w ar on the Legion w as a w ar on a netw ork — in fact,a net-
w ork of three netw orks, w hich intertw ined and interrelated in a com -
plex fashion. The Legion itself, w ith A tlanta LoD , and their hanger-on
Fry Guy, w ere the first netw ork. The second netw ork w as *Phrack*
m agazine, w ith its editors and contributors.
The third netw ork involved the electronic circle around a hacker
know n as "Term inus."
The w ar against these hacker netw orks w as carried out by a law

enforcem ent netw ork. A tlanta LoD and Fry Guy w ere pursued by USSS
agents and federalprosecutors in A tlanta, Indiana, and Chicago.
"Term inus" found him self pursued by USSS and federalprosecutors
from Baltim ore and Chicago. A nd the w ar against Phrack w as alm ost
entirely a Chicago operation.
The investigation of Term inus involved a great dealof energy, m ostly

from the Chicago Task Force, but it w as to be the least-know n and least-
publicized of the Crackdow n operations. Term inus, w ho lived in
M aryland, w as a U N IX program m er and consultant, fairly w ell- know n
(under his given nam e) in the UN IX com m unity, as an acknow ledged
expert on A T& T m inicom puters. Term inus idolized A T& T, especially
Bellcore, and longed for public recognition as a UN IX expert; his highest
am bition w as to w ork for BellLabs.
But Term inus had odd friends and a spotted history.Term inus had once
been the subject of an adm iring interview in *Phrack* (V olum e II,
Issue 1 4 , Phile 2 — dated M ay 1 9 8 7 ). In this article, *Phrack* co-

editor Taran King described "Term inus" as an electronics engineer,
5'9", brow n-haired, born in 1959 — at 28 years old, quite m ature for
a hacker.
Term inus had once been sysop of a phreak/hack underground board

called "M etroN et," w hich ran on an A pple II. Later he'd replaced
"M etroN et" w ith an underground board called "M egaN et," specializing in
IBM s. In his younger days, Term inus had w ritten one of the very first
and m ost elegant code-scanning program s for the IBM -PC. This pro-
gram had been w idely distributed in the underground. Uncounted legions
of PC- ow ning phreaks and hackers had used Term inus's scanner pro-
gram to rip-off telco codes. This feat had not escaped the attention of
telco security; it hardly could, since Term inus's earlier handle,
"Term inalTechnician," w as proudly w ritten right on the program .
W hen he becam e a full-tim e com puter professional(specializing in

telecom m unications program m ing), he adopted the handle Term inus,
m eant to indicate that he had "reached the finalpoint of being a profi-
cient hacker." He'd m oved up to the UN IX-based "N etsys" board on an
A T& T com puter, w ith four phone lines and an im pressive 240 m egs of
storage. "N etsys" carried com plete issues of *Phrack,* and Term inus
w as quite friendly w ith its publishers, Taran King and Knight Lightning.
In the early 1980s, Term inus had been a regular on Plovernet, Pirate-
80, Sherw ood Forest and Shadow land, allw ell-know n pirate boards, all
heavily frequented by the Legion of D oom . A s it happened,Term inus
w as never officially "in LoD ," because he'd never been given the official
LoD high-sign and back-slap by Legion m aven Lex Luthor. Term inus
had never physically m et anyone from LoD . But that scarcely m attered
m uch — the A tlanta Three them selves had never been officially vetted by
Lex, either.
A s far as law enforcem ent w as concerned, the issues w ere clear.

Term inus w as a full-tim e, adult com puter professionalw ith particular
skills at A T& T softw are and hardw are — but Term inus reeked of the
Legion of Doom and the underground.
O n February 1, 1990 — half a m onth after the M artin Luther King D ay

Crash — USSS agents Tim Foley from Chicago, and Jack Lew is from the
Baltim ore office, accom panied by A T& T security officer Jerry D alton,
travelled to M iddle Tow n, M aryland. There they grilled Term inus in his
hom e (to the stark terror of his w ife and sm allchildren), and, in their
custom ary fashion, hauled his com puters out the door.
The N etsys m achine proved to contain a plethora of arcane UN IX softw are

— proprietary source code form ally ow ned by A T& T. Softw are such as:
UN IX System Five Release 3.2; UN IX SV Release 3.1; UUCP com m unica-
tions softw are; KO RN SH ELL; RFS; IW B; W W B; D W B; the C+ + pro-
gram m ing language; PM O N ; TO O L CHEST; Q UEST; D A CT, and S FIN D .
In the long-established piraticaltradition of the underground,

Term inus had been trading this illicitly- copied softw are w ith a sm all
circle of fellow UN IX program m ers. V ery unw isely, he had stored
seven years of his electronic m ailon his N etsys m achine, w hich docu-
m ented allthe friendly arrangem ents he had m ade w ith his various col-
leagues.
Term inus had not crashed the A T& T phone system on January 15. He
w as, how ever, blithely running a not- for-profit A T& T softw are-pira-
cy ring. This w as not an activity A T& T found am using. A T& T security
officer Jerry D alton valued this "stolen" property at over three hundred
thousand dollars.
A T& T's entry into the tussle of free enterprise had been com plicated by
the new , vague groundrules of the inform ation econom y. Untilthe
break-up of M a Bell, A T& T w as forbidden to sellcom puter hardw are or
softw are. M a Bellw as the phone com pany; M a Bellw as not allow ed to
use the enorm ous revenue from telephone utilities, in order to finance
any entry into the com puter m arket.
A T& T nevertheless invented the UN IX operating system . A nd som ehow

A T& T m anaged to m ake UN IX a m inor source of incom e. W eirdly, UN IX
w as not sold as com puter softw are, but actually retailed under an
obscure regulatory exem ption allow ing sales of surplus equipm ent and
scrap. A ny bolder attem pt to prom ote or retailUN IX w ould have aroused
angry legalopposition from com puter com panies. Instead, UN IX w as

licensed to universities, at m odest rates, w here the acids of academ ic
freedom ate aw ay steadily at A T& T's proprietary rights.
Com e the breakup,A T& T recognized that UN IX w as a potentialgold-

m ine. By now ,large chunks of UN IX code had been created that w ere not
A T& T's, and w ere being sold by others. A n entire rivalUN IX-based
operating system had arisen in Berkeley, California (one of the w orld's
great founts of ideologicalhackerdom ). Today, "hackers" com m only con-
sider "Berkeley UN IX" to be technically superior to A T& T's "System V
UN IX," but A T& T has not allow ed m ere technicalelegance to intrude on
the real-w orld business of m arketing proprietary softw are. A T& T has
m ade its ow n code deliberately incom patible w ith other folks' UN IX, and
has w ritten code that it can prove is copyrightable, even if that code
happens to be som ew hat aw kw ard — "kludgey." A T& T UN IX user licens-
es are serious business agreem ents, replete w ith very clear copyright
statem ents and nondisclosure clauses.
A T& T has not exactly kept the UN IX cat in the bag,but it kept a grip on
its scruff w ith som e success. By the ram pant, explosive standards of
softw are piracy, A T& T UN IX source code is heavily copyrighted, w ell-
guarded, w ell-licensed. UN IX w as traditionally run only on m ainfram e
m achines, ow ned by large groups of suit-and- tie professionals, rather
than on bedroom m achines w here people can get up to easy m ischief.
A nd A T& T UN IX source code is serious high-levelprogram m ing. The

num ber of skilled UN IX program m ers w ith any actualm otive to sw ipe
UN IX source code is sm all. It's tiny,com pared to the tens of thousands
prepared to rip-off, say, entertaining PC gam es like "Leisure Suit
Larry."
But by 1989, the w arez-d00d underground, in the persons of Term inus

and his friends, w as gnaw ing at A T& T UN IX. A nd the property in ques-
tion w as not sold for tw enty bucks over the counter at the localbranch
of Babbage's or Egghead's; this w as m assive, sophisticated, m ulti-line,
m ulti-author corporate code w orth tens of thousands of dollars.
It m ust be recognized at this point that Term inus's purported ring of

UN IX softw are pirates had not actually m ade any m oney from their sus-

pected crim es. The $300,000 dollar figure bandied about for the con-
tents of Term inus's com puter did not m ean that Term inus w as in actual
illicit possession of three hundred thousand of A T& T's dollars.
Term inus w as shipping softw are back and forth, privately, person to
person, for free. H e w as not m aking a com m ercialbusiness of piracy.
He hadn't asked for m oney;he didn't take m oney. He lived quite m odest-
ly.
A T& T em ployees — as w ellas freelance UN IX consultants, like Term inus

— com m only w orked w ith "proprietary" A T& T softw are, both in the
office and at hom e on their private m achines. A T& T rarely sent securi-
ty officers out to com b the hard disks of its consultants. Cheap free-
lance UN IX contractors w ere quite usefulto A T& T; they didn't have
health insurance or retirem ent program s, m uch less union m em bership
in the Com m unication W orkers of A m erica. They w ere hum ble digital
drudges,w andering w ith m op and bucket through the Great Technological
Tem ple of A T& T; but w hen the Secret Service arrived at their hom es, it
seem ed they w ere eating w ith com pany silverw are and sleeping on com -
pany sheets! O utrageously,they behaved as if the things they w orked
w ith every day belonged to them !
A nd these w ere no m ere hacker teenagers w ith their hands fullof trash-
paper and their noses pressed to the corporate w indow pane. These guys
w ere UN IX w izards, not only carrying A T& T data in their m achines and
their heads, but eagerly netw orking about it, over m achines that w ere
far m ore pow erfulthan anything previously im agined in private hands.
How do you keep people disposable, yet assure their aw estruck respect
for your property? It w as a dilem m a.
M uch U N IX code w as public-dom ain, available for free. M uch "propri-

etary" UN IX code had been extensively re-w ritten, perhaps altered so
m uch that it becam e an entirely new product — or perhaps not.
Intellectualproperty rights for softw are developers w ere, and are,
extraordinarily com plex and confused. A nd softw are "piracy," like the
private copying of videos, is one of the m ost w idely practiced "crim es"
in the w orld today.
The USSS w ere not experts in UN IX or fam iliar w ith the custom s of its

use. The United States Secret Service,considered as a body,did not
have one single person in it w ho could program in a UN IX environm ent
— no, not even one. The Secret Service *w ere* m aking extensive use of
expert help, but the "experts" they had chosen w ere A T& T and Bellcore
security officials, the very victim s of the purported crim es under
investigation, the very people w hose interest in A T& T's "proprietary"
softw are w as m ost pronounced.
O n February 6, 1990, Term inus w as arrested by A gent Lew is.

Eventually, Term inus w ould be sent to prison for his illicit use of a
piece of A T& T softw are.
The issue of pirated A T& T softw are w ould bubble along in the back-
ground during the w ar on the Legion of Doom . Som e half-dozen of
Term inus's on-line acquaintances, including people in Illinois, Texas
and California, w ere grilled by the Secret Service in connection w ith the
illicit copying of softw are. Except for Term inus, how ever, none w ere
charged w ith a crim e. N one of them shared his peculiar prom inence in
the hacker underground.
But that did not m eant that these people w ould,or could,stay out of
trouble. The transferralof illicit data in cyberspace is hazy and ill-
defined business, w ith paradoxicaldangers for everyone concerned:
hackers, signalcarriers, board ow ners, cops, prosecutors, even ran-
dom passers-by. Som etim es, w ell-m eant attem pts to avert trouble or
punish w rongdoing bring m ore trouble than w ould sim ple ignorance,
indifference or im propriety.
Term inus's "N etsys" board w as not a com m on-or- garden bulletin board
system ,though it had m ost of the usualfunctions of a board. N etsys w as
not a stand-alone m achine, but part of the globe-spanning "UUCP"
cooperative netw ork. The UUCP netw ork uses a set of Unix softw are
program s called "Unix-to-Unix Copy," w hich allow s Unix system s to
throw data to one another at high speed through the public telephone
netw ork. UUCP is a radically decentralized, not-for-profit netw ork of
UN IX com puters. There are tens of thousands of these UN IX m achines.
Som e are sm all, but m any are pow erfuland also link to other netw orks.
UUCP has certain arcane links to m ajor netw orks such as JA N ET,

EasyN et, BITN ET, JUN ET, V N ET, D A Snet, PeaceN et and FidoN et, as w ell
as the gigantic Internet. (The so-called "Internet" is not actually a net-
w ork itself, but rather an "internetw ork" connections standard that
allow s severalglobe-spanning com puter netw orks to com m unicate w ith
one another.Readers fascinated by the w eird and intricate tangles of
m odern com puter netw orks m ay enjoy John S. Q uarterm an's authorita-
tive 7 1 9 -page explication, *The M atrix,* D igital Press, 1 9 9 0 .)
A skilled user of Term inus' UN IX m achine could send and receive elec-
tronic m ailfrom alm ost any m ajor com puter netw ork in the w orld.
N etsys w as not called a "board" per se,but rather a "node." "N odes"
w ere larger, faster, and m ore sophisticated than m ere "boards," and for
hackers,to hang out on internationally-connected "nodes" w as quite the
step up from m erely hanging out on local"boards."
Term inus's N etsys node in M aryland had a num ber of direct links to
other, sim ilar UUCP nodes, run by people w ho shared his interests and
at least som ething of his free-w heeling attitude. O ne of these nodes w as
Jolnet, ow ned by Richard A ndrew s, w ho, like Term inus, w as an inde-
pendent UN IX consultant. Jolnet also ran UN IX,and could be contacted at
high speed by m ainfram e m achines from allover the w orld. Jolnet w as
quite a sophisticated piece of w ork, technically speaking, but it w as still
run by an individual, as a private, not-for-profit hobby. Jolnet w as
m ostly used by other UN IX program m ers — for m ail, storage, and access
to netw orks. Jolnet supplied access netw ork access to about tw o hundred
people, as w ellas a localjunior college.
A m ong its various features and services, Jolnet also carried *Phrack*
m agazine.
For reasons of his ow n, Richard A ndrew s had becom e suspicious of a new

user called "Robert Johnson." Richard A ndrew s took it upon him self to
have a look at w hat "Robert Johnson" w as storing in Jolnet. A nd
A ndrew s found the E911 Docum ent.
"Robert Johnson" w as the Prophet from the Legion of Doom ,and the
E911 D ocum ent w as illicitly copied data from Prophet's raid on the
BellSouth com puters.

The E911 D ocum ent, a particularly illicit piece of digitalproperty, w as
about to resum e its long, com plex, and disastrous career.
It struck A ndrew s as fishy that som eone not a telephone em ployee should
have a docum ent referring to the "Enhanced 911 System ." Besides, the
docum ent itself bore an obvious w arning.
"W A RN IN G: N O T FO R USE O R D ISCLO SURE O UTSID E BELLSO UTH O R A N Y

O F ITS SUBSID IA RIES EXCEPT UN D ER W RITTEN A G REEM EN T."
These standard nondisclosure tags are often appended to allsorts of cor-

porate m aterial. Telcos as a species are particularly notorious for
stam ping m ost everything in sight as "not for use or disclosure." Still,
this particular piece of data w as about the 911 System . That sounded
bad to Rich A ndrew s.
A ndrew s w as not prepared to ignore this sort of trouble. He thought it

w ould be w ise to pass the docum ent along to a friend and acquaintance on
the UN IX netw ork, for consultation. So, around Septem ber 1988,
A ndrew s sent yet another copy of the E911 D ocum ent electronically to
an A T& T em ployee, one Charles Boykin, w ho ran a UN IX-based node
called "attctc" in D allas, Texas.
"A ttctc" w as the property of A T& T,and w as run from A T& T's Custom er
Technology Center in Dallas,hence the nam e "attctc." "A ttctc" w as bet-
ter-know n as "Killer," the nam e of the m achine that the system w as
running on. "Killer" w as a hefty, pow erful, A T& T 3B2 500 m odel, a
m ulti-user, m ulti-tasking UN IX platform w ith 32 m eg of m em ory and a
m ind-boggling 3.2 Gigabytes of storage. W hen Killer had first arrived
in Texas,in 1985,the 3B2 had been one of A T& T's great w hite hopes for
going head- to-head w ith IBM for the corporate com puter-hardw are
m arket. "Killer" had been shipped to the Custom er Technology Center in
the D allas Infom art, essentially a high-technology m all, and there it
sat, a dem onstration m odel.
Charles Boykin, a veteran A T& T hardw are and digitalcom m unications

expert, w as a localtechnicalbackup m an for the A T& T 3B2 system . A s

a display m odelin the Infom art m all, "Killer" had little to do, and it
seem ed a sham e to w aste the system 's capacity. So Boykin ingeniously
w rote som e UN IX bulletin-board softw are for "Killer," and plugged the
m achine in to the localphone netw ork. "Killer's" debut in late 1985
m ade it the first publicly available UN IX site in the state of Texas.
A nyone w ho w anted to play w as w elcom e.
The m achine im m ediately attracted an electronic com m unity. It joined

the UUCP netw ork, and offered netw ork links to over eighty other com -
puter sites, allof w hich becam e dependent on Killer for their links to
the greater w orld of cyberspace. A nd it w asn't just for the big guys;
personalcom puter users also stored freew are program s for the A m iga,
the A pple, the IBM and the M acintosh on Killer's vast 3,200 m eg
archives. A t one tim e, Killer had the largest library of public-dom ain
M acintosh softw are in Texas.
Eventually, Killer attracted about 1 ,5 0 0 users, allbusily com m unicat-

ing, uploading and dow nloading, getting m ail, gossipping, and linking to
arcane and distant netw orks.
Boykin received no pay for running Killer. H e considered it good pub-

licity for the A T& T 3B2 system (w hose sales w ere som ew hat less than
stellar), but he also sim ply enjoyed the vibrant com m unity his skill
had created. He gave aw ay the bulletin-board UN IX softw are he had
w ritten, free of charge.
In the UN IX program m ing com m unity, Charlie Boykin had the reputation
of a w arm , open-hearted, level- headed kind of guy. In 1989, a group
of Texan UN IX professionals voted Boykin "System A dm inistrator of the
Year." He w as considered a fellow you could trust for good advice.
In Septem ber 1988, w ithout w arning, the E911 D ocum ent cam e plung-
ing into Boykin's life, forw arded by Richard A ndrew s. Boykin im m edi-
ately recognized that the Docum ent w as hot property. He w as not a
voice- com m unications m an, and knew little about the ins and outs of the
Baby Bells, but he certainly knew w hat the 911 System w as, and he w as
angry to see confidentialdata about it in the hands of a nogoodnik. This
w as clearly a m atter for telco security. So, on Septem ber 21, 1988,

Boykin m ade yet *another* copy of the E911 D ocum ent and passed this
one along to a professionalacquaintance of his,one Jerom e D alton,from
A T& T Corporate Inform ation Security. Jerry D alton w as the very fel-
low w ho w ould later raid Term inus's house.
From A T& T's security division, the E911 D ocum ent w ent to Bellcore.
Bellcore (or BELL CO m m unications REsearch) had once been the cen-
trallaboratory of the BellSystem . BellLabs em ployees had invented
the UN IX operating system . N ow Bellcore w as a quasi-independent,
jointly ow ned com pany that acted as the research arm for allseven of
the Baby BellRBO Cs. Bellcore w as in a good position to co-ordinate
security technology and consultation for the RBO Cs,and the gentlem an in
charge of this effort w as H enry M . Kluepfel, a veteran of the Bell
System w ho had w orked there for tw enty-four years.
O n O ctober 13,1988,D alton passed the E911 D ocum ent to Henry

Kluepfel. Kluepfel, a veteran expert w itness in telecom m unications
fraud and com puter-fraud cases, had certainly seen w orse trouble than
this. He recognized the docum ent for w hat it w as: a trophy from a
hacker break-in.
H ow ever, w hatever harm had been done in the intrusion w as presum -

ably old new s. A t this point there seem ed little to be done. Kluepfel
m ade a carefulnote of the circum stances and shelved the problem for the
tim e being.
W hole m onths passed.
February 1 9 8 9 arrived. The A tlanta Three w ere living it up in Bell

South's sw itches,and had not yet m et their com euppance. The Legion
w as thriving. So w as *Phrack* m agazine. A good six m onths had passed
since Prophet's A IM SX break-in. Prophet, as hackers w ill, grew w eary
of sitting on his laurels. "Knight Lightning" and "Taran King," the edi-
tors of *Phrack,* w ere alw ays begging Prophet for m aterialthey could
publish. Prophet decided that the heat m ust be off by this tim e,and that
he could safely brag, boast, and strut.

So he sent a copy of the E911 Docum ent — yet another one — from Rich
A ndrew s'Jolnet m achine to Knight Lightning's BITnet account at the
U niversity of M issouri.
Let's review the fate of the docum ent so far.
0. The originalE911 D ocum ent. This in the A IM SX system on a m ain-

fram e com puter in A tlanta, available to hundreds of people, but allof
them , presum ably, BellSouth em ployees. A n unknow n num ber of them
m ay have their ow n copies of this docum ent, but they are allprofes-
sionals and alltrusted by the phone com pany.
1. Prophet's illicit copy, at hom e on his ow n com puter in D ecatur,

Georgia.
2. Prophet's back-up copy, stored on Rich A ndrew 's Jolnet m achine in

the basem ent of Rich A ndrew s' house near Joliet Illinois.
3. Charles Boykin's copy on "Killer" in D allas, Texas, sent by Rich

A ndrew s from Joliet.
4. Jerry D alton's copy at A T& T Corporate Inform ation Security in N ew

Jersey, sent from Charles Boykin in D allas.
5. H enry Kluepfel's copy at Bellcore security headquarters in N ew

Jersey, sent by D alton.
6. Knight Lightning's copy, sent by Prophet from Rich A ndrew s'

m achine, and now in Colum bia, M issouri.
W e can see that the "security" situation of this proprietary docum ent,
once dug out of A IM SX, sw iftly becam e bizarre. W ithout any m oney
changing hands, w ithout any particular specialeffort, this data had been
reproduced at least six tim es and had spread itself allover the continent.
By far the w orst, how ever, w as yet to com e.
In February 1989, Prophet and Knight Lightning bargained electroni-

cally over the fate of this trophy.Prophet w anted to boast,but,at the

sam e tim e,scarcely w anted to be caught.
For his part, Knight Lightning w as eager to publish as m uch of the docu-
m ent as he could m anage. Knight Lightning w as a fledgling political-
science m ajor w ith a particular interest in freedom -of-inform ation
issues. H e w ould gladly publish m ost anything that w ould reflect glory
on the prow ess of the underground and em barrass the telcos. How ever,
Knight Lightning him self had contacts in telco security, and som etim es
consulted them on m aterialhe'd received that m ight be too dicey for
publication.
Prophet and Knight Lightning decided to edit the E911 Docum ent so as
to delete m ost of its identifying traits. First of all, its large "N O T FO R
USE O R D ISCLO SURE" w arning had to go. Then there w ere other m atters.
For instance, it listed the office telephone num bers of severalBellSouth
911 specialists in Florida. If these phone num bers w ere published in
*Phrack,* the BellSouth em ployees involved w ould very likely be has-
sled by phone phreaks, w hich w ould anger BellSouth no end, and pose a
definite operationalhazard for both Prophet and *Phrack.*
So Knight Lightning cut the D ocum ent alm ost in half, rem oving the
phone num bers and som e of the touchier and m ore specific inform ation.
H e passed it back electronically to Prophet; Prophet w as stillnervous,
so Knight Lightning cut a bit m ore. They finally agreed that it w as ready
to go, and that it w ould be published in *Phrack* under the pseudonym ,
"The Eavesdropper."
A nd this w as done on February 25, 1989.
The tw enty-fourth issue of *Phrack* featured a chatty interview w ith

co-ed phone-phreak "Chanda Leir," three articles on BITN ET and its
links to other com puter netw orks, an article on 800 and 900 num bers
by "Unknow n User," "V axCat's" article on telco basics (slyly entitled
"Lifting M a Bell's V eilof Secrecy,)" and the usual"Phrack W orld
N ew s."
The N ew s section, w ith painfulirony, featured an extended account of

the sentencing of "Shadow haw k," an eighteen-year-old Chicago hacker

w ho had just been put in federalprison by W illiam J. Cook him self.
A nd then there w ere the tw o articles by "The Eavesdropper." The first

w as the edited E911 D ocum ent,now titled "ControlO ffice
A dm inistration O f Enhanced 911 Services for SpecialServices and
M ajor A ccount Centers." Eavesdropper's second article w as a glossary
of term s explaining the blizzard of telco acronym s and buzzw ords in the
E911 D ocum ent.
The hapless docum ent w as now distributed, in the usual*Phrack* rou-

tine,to a good one hundred and fifty sites. N ot a hundred and fifty *peo-
ple,* m ind you — a hundred and fifty *sites,* som e of these sites linked
to UN IX nodes or bulletin board system s, w hich them selves had reader-
ships of tens,dozens,even hundreds of people.
This w as February 1989. N othing happened im m ediately. Sum m er

cam e, and the A tlanta crew w ere raided by the Secret Service. Fry Guy
w as apprehended. Stillnothing w hatever happened to *Phrack.* Six
m ore issues of *Phrack* cam e out, 30 in all, m ore or less on a m onthly
schedule. Knight Lightning and co-editor Taran King w ent untouched.
*Phrack* tended to duck and cover w henever the heat cam e dow n.
D uring the sum m er busts of 1987 — (hacker busts tended to cluster in
sum m er, perhaps because hackers w ere easier to find at hom e than in
college) — *Phrack* had ceased publication for severalm onths, and laid
low . SeveralLoD hangers-on had been arrested, but nothing had hap-
pened to the *Phrack* crew , the prem iere gossips of the underground.
In 1988, *Phrack* had been taken over by a new editor, "Crim son
D eath," a raucous youngster w ith a taste for anarchy files.
1989, how ever, 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. A tlanta LoD w ent dow n hard in
the sum m er of 1 9 8 9 , but *Phrack* rolled m errily on. Prophet's
E911 D ocum ent seem ed unlikely to cause *Phrack* any trouble. By
January 1990, it had been available in *Phrack* for alm ost a year.
Kluepfeland D alton, officers of Bellcore and A T& T security, had pos-
sessed the docum ent for sixteen m onths — in fact,they'd had it even

before Knight Lightning him self, and had done nothing in particular to
stop its distribution. They hadn't even told Rich A ndrew s or Charles
Boykin to erase the copies from their UN IX nodes, Jolnet and Killer.
But then cam e the m onster M artin Luther King D ay Crash of January
15, 1990.
A flat three days later, on January 18, four agents show ed up at Knight
Lightning's fraternity house. O ne w as Tim othy Foley, the second
Barbara Golden,both of them Secret Service agents from the Chicago
office. A lso along w as a University of M issourisecurity officer, and
Reed N ew lin, a security m an from Southw estern Bell, the RBO C having
jurisdiction over M issouri.
Foley accused Knight Lightning of causing the nationw ide crash of the
phone system .
Knight Lightning w as aghast at this allegation. O n the face of it,the

suspicion w as not entirely im plausible — though Knight Lightning knew
that he him self hadn't done it. Plenty of hot-dog hackers had bragged
that they could crash the phone system ,how ever. "Shadow haw k," for
instance, the Chicago hacker w hom W illiam Cook had recently put in
jail,had severaltim es boasted on boards that he could "shut dow n
A T& T's public sw itched netw ork."
A nd now this event, or som ething that looked just like it, had actually
taken place. The Crash had lit a fire under the Chicago Task Force. A nd
the form er fence- sitters at Bellcore and A T& T w ere now ready to roll.
The consensus am ong telco security — already horrified by the skillof
the BellSouth intruders — w as that the digitalunderground w as out of
hand. LoD and *Phrack* m ust go.
A nd in publishing Prophet's E911 D ocum ent, *Phrack* had provided

law enforcem ent w ith w hat appeared to be a pow erfullegalw eapon.
Foley confronted Knight Lightning about the E911 D ocum ent.
Knight Lightning w as cow ed. H e im m ediately began "cooperating fully"

in the usualtradition of the digitalunderground.
H e gave Foley a com plete run of *Phrack,*printed out in a set of three-

ring binders. H e handed over his electronic m ailing list of *Phrack*
subscribers. Knight Lightning w as grilled for four hours by Foley and
his cohorts. Knight Lightning adm itted that Prophet had passed him the
E911 Docum ent,and he adm itted that he had know n it w as stolen booty
from a hacker raid on a telephone com pany. Knight Lightning signed a
statem ent to this effect, and agreed, in w riting, to cooperate w ith inves-
tigators.
N ext day — January 19, 1990, a Friday — the Secret Service returned
w ith a search w arrant, and thoroughly searched Knight Lightning's
upstairs room in the fraternity house. They took allhis floppy disks,
though, interestingly, they left Knight Lightning in possession of both
his com puter and his m odem . (The com puter had no hard disk, and in
Foley's judgem ent w as not a store of evidence.) But this w as a very
m inor bright spot am ong Knight Lightning's rapidly m ultiplying trou-
bles. By this tim e, Knight Lightning w as in plenty of hot w ater, not only
w ith federalpolice, prosecutors, telco investigators, and university
security, but w ith the elders of his ow n cam pus fraternity, w ho w ere
outraged to think that they had been unw ittingly harboring a federal
com puter-crim inal.
O n M onday,Knight Lightning w as sum m oned to Chicago,w here he w as

further grilled by Foley and USSS veteran agent Barbara Golden, this
tim e w ith an attorney present. A nd on Tuesday, he w as form ally indicted
by a federalgrand jury.
The trialof Knight Lightning, w hich occurred on July 2 4 -2 7 , 1 9 9 0 ,

w as the crucialshow -trialof the H acker Crackdow n. W e w illexam ine
the trialat som e length in Part Four of this book.
In the m eantim e,w e m ust continue our dogged pursuit of the E911
D ocum ent.
It m ust have been clear by January 1990 that the E911 D ocum ent, 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 direc-
tions. To attem pt to put this electronic genie back in the bottle w as
flatly im possible.
A nd yet, the E911 D ocum ent w as *still* stolen property, form ally and
legally speaking. A ny electronic transference of this docum ent, by any-
one unauthorized to have it, could be interpreted as an act of w ire fraud.
Interstate transfer of stolen property, including electronic property,
w as a federalcrim e.
The Chicago Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force had been assured that
the E911 Docum ent w as w orth a hefty sum of m oney. In fact,they had a
precise estim ate of its w orth from BellSouth security personnel:
$79,449. A sum of this scale seem ed to w arrant vigorous prosecution.
Even if the dam age could not be undone,at least this large sum offered a
good legalpretext for stern punishm ent of the thieves. It seem ed likely
to im press judges and juries. A nd it could be used in court to m op up the
Legion of Doom .
The A tlanta crow d w as already in the bag,by the tim e the Chicago Task
Force had gotten around to *Phrack.* But the Legion w as a hydra-headed
thing. In late 89, a brand-new Legion of D oom board, "Phoenix
Project," had gone up in A ustin, Texas. Phoenix Project w as sysoped by
no less a m an than the M entor him self, ably assisted by University of
Texas student and hardened D oom ster "Erik Bloodaxe."
A s w e have seen from his *Phrack* m anifesto, the M entor w as a hacker

zealot w ho regarded com puter intrusion as som ething close to a m oral
duty. Phoenix Project w as an am bitious effort, intended to revive the
digitalunderground to w hat M entor considered the fullflow er of the
early 80s. The Phoenix board w ould also boldly bring elite hackers
face-to-face w ith the telco "opposition." O n "Phoenix," A m erica's
cleverest hackers w ould supposedly sham e the telco squareheads out of
their stick-in-the-m ud attitudes, and perhaps convince them that the
Legion of D oom elite w ere really an all-right crew . The prem iere of
"Phoenix Project" w as heavily trum peted by *Phrack,* and "Phoenix
Project" carried a com plete run of *Phrack* issues, including the
E911 D ocum ent as *Phrack* had published it.

Phoenix Project w as only one of m any — possibly hundreds — of nodes
and boards allover A m erica that w ere in guilty possession of the E911
Docum ent. But Phoenix w as an outright,unasham ed Legion of Doom
board. Under M entor's guidance, it w as flaunting itself in the face of
telco security personnel. W orse yet, it w as actively trying to *w in them
over* as sym pathizers for the digitalunderground elite. "Phoenix" had
no cards or codes on it. Its hacker elite considered Phoenix at least
technically legal. But Phoenix w as a corrupting influence, w here
hacker anarchy w as eating aw ay like digitalacid at the underbelly of
corporate propriety.
The Chicago Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force now prepared to
descend upon A ustin,Texas.
O ddly, not one but *tw o* trails of the Task Force's investigation led
tow ard A ustin. The city of A ustin, like A tlanta, had m ade itself a bul-
w ark of the Sunbelt's Inform ation A ge, w ith a strong university
research presence, and a num ber of cutting-edge electronics com panies,
including M otorola, D ell, Com puA dd, IBM , Sem atech and M CC.
W here com puting m achinery w ent, hackers generally follow ed. A ustin
boasted not only "Phoenix Project," currently LoD 's m ost flagrant
underground board, but a num ber of UN IX nodes.
O ne of these nodes w as "Elephant," run by a UN IX consultant nam ed

Robert Izenberg. Izenberg, in search of a relaxed Southern lifestyle and
a low ered cost-of-living, had recently m igrated to A ustin from N ew
Jersey. In N ew Jersey, Izenberg had w orked for an independent con-
tracting com pany, program m ing UN IX code for A T& T itself. "Term inus"
had been a frequent user on Izenberg's privately ow ned Elephant node.
H aving interview ed Term inus and exam ined the records on N etsys, the
Chicago Task Force w ere now convinced that they had discovered an
underground gang of UN IX softw are pirates, w ho w ere dem onstrably
guilty of interstate trafficking in illicitly copied A T& T source code.
Izenberg w as sw ept into the dragnet around Term inus, the self-pro-
claim ed ultim ate UN IX hacker.

Izenberg, in A ustin, had settled dow n into a UN IX job w ith a Texan
branch of IBM . Izenberg w as no longer w orking as a contractor for
A T& T,but he had friends in N ew Jersey,and he stilllogged on to A T& T
UN IX com puters back in N ew Jersey, m ore or less w henever it pleased
him . Izenberg's activities appeared highly suspicious to the Task Force.
Izenberg m ight w ellbe breaking into A T& T com puters, sw iping A T& T
softw are, and passing it to Term inus and other possible confederates,
through the UN IX node netw ork. A nd this data w as w orth,not m erely
$79,499, but hundreds of thousands of dollars!
O n February 21, 1990, Robert Izenberg arrived hom e from w ork at

IBM to find that allthe com puters had m ysteriously vanished from his
A ustin apartm ent.N aturally he assum ed that he had been robbed. His
"Elephant" node, his other m achines, his notebooks, his disks, his tapes,
allgone! How ever,nothing m uch else seem ed disturbed — the place had
not been ransacked.
The puzzle becam ing m uch stranger som e five m inutes later. A ustin U.
S. Secret Service A gent A lSoliz, accom panied by University of Texas
cam pus-security officer Larry Coutorie and the ubiquitous Tim Foley,
m ade their appearance at Izenberg's door. They w ere in plain clothes:
slacks, polo shirts. They cam e 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 ." A nd
w hat about a certain stolen E911 Docum ent,that posed a direct threat to
the police em ergency lines? Izenberg claim ed that he'd never heard of
that, either.
H is interrogators found this difficult to believe. D idn't he know

Term inus?
W ho?
They gave him Term inus's realnam e. O h yes, said Izenberg. H e knew
*that* guy allright — he w as leading discussions on the Internet about
A T& T com puters, especially the A T& T 3B2.

A T& T had thrust this m achine into the m arketplace, but, like m any of
A T& T's am bitious attem pts to enter the com puting arena, the 3B2 pro-
ject had som ething less than a glittering success. Izenberg him self had
been a contractor for the division of A T& T that supported the 3B2.The
entire division had been shut dow n.
N ow adays,the cheapest and quickest w ay to get help w ith this fractious

piece of m achinery w as to join one of Term inus's discussion groups on
the Internet, w here friendly and know ledgeable hackers w ould help you
for free. N aturally the rem arks w ithin this group w ere less than flat-
tering about the D eath Star.... w as *that* the problem ?
Foley told Izenberg that Term inus had been acquiring hot softw are
through his, Izenberg's, m achine.
Izenberg shrugged this off. A good eight m egabytes of data flow ed

through his UUCP site every day. UUCP nodes spew ed data like fire
hoses. Elephant had been directly linked to N etsys — not surprising,
since Term inus w as a 3B2 expert and Izenberg had been a 3B2 contrac-
tor. Izenberg w as also linked to "attctc" and the University of Texas.
Term inus w as a w ell-know n UN IX expert, and m ight have been up to all
m anner of hijinks on Elephant. N othing Izenberg could do about that.
That w as physically im possible. N eedle in a haystack.
In a four-hour grilling, Foley urged Izenberg to com e clean and adm it

that he w as in conspiracy w ith Term inus, and a m em ber of the Legion of
D oom .
Izenberg denied this. H e w as no w eirdo teenage hacker — he w as thirty-

tw o years old,and didn't even have a "handle." Izenberg w as a form er TV
technician and electronics specialist w ho had drifted into UN IX consult-
ing as a full-grow n adult. Izenberg had never m et Term inus, physical-
ly. He'd once bought a cheap high- speed m odem from him ,though.
Foley told him that this m odem (a Telenet T2500 w hich ran at 19.2
kilobaud, and w hich had just gone out Izenberg's door in Secret Service
custody) w as likely hot property. Izenberg w as taken aback to hear

this; but then again, m ost of Izenberg's equipm ent, like that of m ost
freelance professionals in the industry, w as discounted, passed hand-
to-hand through various kinds of barter and gray-m arket. There w as
no proof that the m odem w as stolen, and even if it w as, 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 com -
puter for nationalsecurity reasons — or w hatever — then Izenberg
w ould not kick. H e figured he w ould som ehow m ake the sacrifice of his
tw enty thousand dollars' w orth of professionalequipm ent, in the spirit
of fullcooperation and good citizenship.
Robert Izenberg w as not arrested. Izenberg w as not charged w ith any

crim e. H is UUCP node — fullof som e 140 m egabytes of the files, m ail,
and data of him self and his dozen or so entirely innocent users — w ent
out the door as "evidence." A long w ith the disks and tapes,Izenberg had
lost about 800 m egabytes of data.
Six m onths w ould pass before Izenberg decided to phone the Secret
Service and ask how the case w as going.That w as the first tim e that
Robert Izenberg w ould ever hear the nam e of W illiam Cook. A s of
January 1992, a fulltw o years after the seizure, Izenberg, stillnot
charged w ith any crim e, w ould be struggling through the m orass of the
courts, in hope of recovering his thousands of dollars' w orth of seized
equipm ent.
In the m eantim e, the Izenberg case received absolutely no press cover-

age. The Secret Service had w alked into an A ustin hom e,rem oved a
UN IX bulletin- board system , and m et w ith no operationaldifficulties
w hatsoever.
Except that w ord of a crackdow n had percolated through the Legion of

D oom . "The M entor" voluntarily shut dow n "The Phoenix Project." It
seem ed a pity, especially as telco security em ployees had, in fact, show n
up on Phoenix,just as he had hoped — along w ith the usualm otley crow d
of LoD heavies, hangers-on, phreaks, hackers and w annabes. There w as
"Sandy" Sandquist from US SPRIN T security, and som e guy nam ed H enry

Kluepfel, from Bellcore itself! Kluepfelhad been trading friendly ban-
ter w ith hackers on Phoenix since January 30th (tw o w eeks after the
M artin Luther King D ay Crash). The presence of such a stellar telco
officialseem ed quite the coup for Phoenix Project.
Still, M entor could judge the clim ate. A tlanta in ruins, *Phrack* in
deep trouble, som ething w eird going on w ith UN IX nodes — discretion
w as advisable. Phoenix Project w ent off-line.
Kluepfel, of course, had been m onitoring this LoD bulletin board for his
ow n purposes — and those of the Chicago unit. A s far back as June
1987,Kluepfelhad logged on to a Texas underground board called
"Phreak Klass 2600." There he'd discovered an Chicago youngster
nam ed "Shadow haw k," strutting and boasting about rifling A T& T com -
puter files, and bragging of his am bitions to riddle A T& T's Bellcore
com puters w ith trojan horse program s. Kluepfelhad passed the new s to
Cook in Chicago,Shadow haw k's com puters had gone out the door in
Secret Service custody, and Shadow haw k him self had gone to jail.
N ow it w as Phoenix Project's turn. Phoenix Project postured about

"legality" and "m erely intellectualinterest," but it reeked of the under-
ground. It had *Phrack* on it. It had the E911 D ocum ent. It had a lot of
dicey talk about breaking into system s, including som e bold and reckless
stuff about a supposed "decryption service" that M entor and friends
w ere planning to run, to help crack encrypted passw ords off of hacked
system s.
M entor w as an adult. There w as a bulletin board at his place of w ork,

as w ell. Kleupfellogged onto this board,too,and discovered it to be
called "Illum inati." It w as run by som e com pany called Steve Jackson
Gam es.
O n M arch 1, 1990, the A ustin crackdow n w ent into high gear.
O n the m orning of M arch 1 — a Thursday — 21-year- old University of

Texas student "Erik Bloodaxe," co-sysop of Phoenix Project and an
avow ed m em ber of the Legion of Doom ,w as w akened by a police revolver
levelled at his head.

Bloodaxe w atched, jittery, as Secret Service agents appropriated his
300 baud term inaland, rifling his files, discovered his treasured
source-code for Robert M orris's notorious Internet W orm . But
Bloodaxe,a w ily operator,had suspected that som ething of the like
m ight be com ing. A llhis best equipm ent had been hidden aw ay else-
w here. The raiders took everything electronic, how ever, including his
telephone. They w ere stym ied by his hefty arcade-style Pac-M an gam e,
and left it in place, as it w as sim ply too heavy to m ove.
Bloodaxe w as not arrested. He w as not charged w ith any crim e. A good

tw o years later, the police stillhad w hat they had taken from him , how -
ever.
The M entor w as less w ary. The daw n raid rousted him and his w ife from
bed in their underw ear, and six Secret Service agents, accom panied by
an A ustin policem an and H enry Kluepfelhim self, m ade a rich haul. O ff
w ent the w orks, into the agents' w hite Chevrolet m inivan: an IBM PC-
A T clone w ith 4 m eg of RA M and a 120-m eg hard disk; a H ew lett-
Packard LaserJet IIprinter; a com pletely legitim ate and highly expen-
sive SCO -Xenix 286 operating system ; Pagem aker disks and docum enta-
tion; and the M icrosoft W ord w ord-processing program . M entor's w ife
had her incom plete academ ic thesis stored on the hard-disk; that w ent,
too,and so did the couple's telephone. A s of tw o years later,allthis
property rem ained in police custody.
M entor rem ained under guard in his apartm ent as agents prepared to
raid Steve Jackson Gam es. The fact that this w as a business headquar-
ters and not a private residence did not deter the agents. It w as still
very early;no one w as at w ork yet. The agents prepared to break dow n
the door, but M entor, eavesdropping on the Secret Service w alkie-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 w ould not let
anyone else into the building. Their search w arrant, w hen produced,
w as unsigned. A pparently they breakfasted from the local
"W hataburger," as the litter from ham burgers w as later found inside.
They also extensively sam pled a bag of jellybeans kept by an SJG

em ployee. Som eone tore a "D ukakis for President" sticker from the
w all.
SJG em ployees, diligently show ing up for the day's w ork, w ere m et at
the door and briefly questioned by U.S.Secret Service agents. The
em ployees w atched in astonishm ent as agents w ielding crow bars and
screw drivers em erged w ith captive m achines. They attacked outdoor
storage units w ith boltcutters. The agents w ore blue nylon w indbreak-
ers w ith "SECRET SERV ICE" stencilled across the back, w ith running-
shoes and jeans.
Jackson's com pany lost three com puters, severalhard-disks, hundred

of floppy disks, tw o m onitors, three m odem s, a laser printer, various
pow ercords, cables, and adapters (and, oddly, a sm allbag of screw s,
bolts and nuts). The seizure of Illum inatiBBS deprived SJG of allthe
program s, text files, and private e-m ailon the board. The loss of tw o
other SJG com puters w as a severe blow as w ell, since it caused the loss
of electronically stored contracts, financialprojections, address direc-
tories, m ailing lists, personnelfiles, business correspondence, and, not
least,the drafts of forthcom ing gam es and gam ing books.
No one at Steve Jackson Gam es w as arrested. No one w as accused of any

crim e. N o charges w ere filed. Everything appropriated w as officially
kept as "evidence" of crim es never specified.
A fter the *Phrack* show -trial, the Steve Jackson Gam es scandalw as
the m ost bizarre and aggravating incident of the Hacker Crackdow n of
1990. This raid by the Chicago Task Force on a science-fiction gam ing
publisher w as to rouse a sw arm ing host of civilliberties issues, and
gave rise to an enduring controversy that w as stillre-com plicating
itself, and grow ing in the scope of its im plications, a fulltw o years
later.
The pursuit of the E911 Docum ent stopped w ith the Steve Jackson Gam es
raid. A s w e have seen, there w ere hundreds, perhaps thousands of com -
puter users in A m erica w ith the E911 D ocum ent in their possession.
Theoretically, Chicago had a perfect legalright to raid any of these peo-
ple, and could have legally seized the m achines of anybody w ho sub-

scribed to *Phrack.* H ow ever, there w as no copy of the E911 D ocum ent
on Jackson's Illum inatiboard. A nd there the Chicago raiders stopped
dead;they have not raided anyone since.
It m ight be assum ed that Rich A ndrew s and Charlie Boykin, w ho had

brought the E911 Docum ent to the attention of telco security,m ight be
spared any officialsuspicion. But as w e have seen, the w illingness to
"cooperate fully" offers little, if any, assurance against federalanti-
hacker prosecution.
Richard A ndrew s found him self in deep trouble, thanks to the E911
D ocum ent. A ndrew s lived in Illinois, the native stom ping grounds of the
Chicago Task Force. O n February 3 and 6, both his hom e and his place of
w ork w ere raided by USSS. His m achines w ent out the door,too,and he
w as grilled at length (though not arrested). A ndrew s proved to be in
purportedly guilty possession of: UN IX SV R 3.2; UN IX SV R 3.1; UUCP;
PM O N ; W W B; IW B; D W B; N RO FF; KO RN SH ELL '88; C++; and Q UEST,
am ong other item s. A ndrew s had received this proprietary code —
w hich A T& T officially valued at w ellover $250,000 — through the
UN IX netw ork, m uch of it supplied to him as a personalfavor by
Term inus. Perhaps w orse yet, A ndrew s adm itted to returning the favor,
by passing Term inus a copy of A T& T proprietary STA RLA N source code.
Even Charles Boykin, him self an A T& T em ployee, entered som e very hot
w ater. By 1990,he'd alm ost forgotten about the E911 problem he'd
reported in Septem ber 88;in fact,since that date,he'd passed tw o m ore
security alerts to Jerry D alton, concerning m atters that Boykin consid-
ered far w orse than the E911 D ocum ent.
But by 1990, year of the crackdow n, A T& T Corporate Inform ation

Security w as fed up w ith "Killer." This m achine offered no direct
incom e to A T& T,and w as providing aid and com fort to a cloud of suspi-
cious yokels from outside the com pany, som e of them actively m alicious
tow ard A T& T, its property, and its corporate interests. W hatever
goodw illand publicity had been w on am ong Killer's 1,500 devoted users
w as considered no longer w orth the security risk. O n February 20,
1990, Jerry D alton arrived in D allas and sim ply unplugged the phone
jacks, to the puzzled alarm of Killer's m any Texan users. Killer w ent

perm anently off-line, w ith the loss of vast archives of program s and
huge quantities of electronic m ail; it w as never restored to service.
A T& T show ed no particular regard for the "property" of these 1,500
people. W hatever "property" the users had been storing on A T& T's com -
puter sim ply vanished com pletely.
Boykin, w ho had him self reported the E911 problem , now found him self
under a cloud of suspicion. In a w eird private-security replay of the
Secret Service seizures, Boykin's ow n hom e w as visited by A T& T
Security and his ow n m achines w ere carried out the door.
H ow ever, there w ere m arked specialfeatures in the Boykin case.

Boykin's disks and his personalcom puters w ere sw iftly exam ined by his
corporate em ployers and returned politely in just tw o days — (unlike
Secret Service seizures, w hich com m only take m onths or years).
Boykin w as not charged w ith any crim e or w rongdoing, and he kept his
job w ith A T& T (though he did retire from A T& T in Septem ber 1991, at
the age of 52).
It's interesting to note that the US Secret Service som ehow failed to
seize Boykin's "Killer" node and carry A T& T's ow n com puter out the
door. N or did they raid Boykin's hom e. They seem ed perfectly w illing
to take the w ord of A T& T Security that A T& T's em ployee,and A T& T's
"Killer" node, w ere free of hacker contraband and on the up-and-up.
It's digital w ater-under-the-bridge at this point, as K iller's 3 ,2 0 0

m egabytes of Texan electronic com m unity w ere erased in 1990, and
"Killer" itself w as shipped out of the state.
But the experiences of A ndrew s and Boykin, and the users of their sys-
tem s,rem ained side issues. They did not begin to assum e the social,
political, and legalim portance that gathered, slow ly but inexorably,
around the issue of the raid on Steve Jackson Gam es.
_____
W e m ust now turn our attention to Steve Jackson Gam es itself,and

explain w hat SJG w as, w hat it really did, and how it had m anaged to
attract this particularly odd and virulent kind of trouble. The reader

m ay recallthat this is not the first but the second tim e that the com pany
has appeared in this narrative; a Steve Jackson gam e called GURPS w as a
favorite pastim e of A tlanta hacker Urvile, and Urvile's science-fictional
gam ing notes had been m ixed up prom iscuously w ith notes about his
actualcom puter intrusions.
First, Steve Jackson Gam es, Inc., w as *not* a publisher of "com puter
gam es." SJG published "sim ulation gam es," parlor gam es that w ere
played on paper, w ith pencils, and dice, and printed guidebooks fullof
rules and statistics tables. There w ere no com puters involved in the
gam es them selves. W hen you bought a Steve Jackson Gam e,you did not
receive any softw are disks. W hat you got w as a plastic bag w ith som e
cardboard gam e tokens,m aybe a few m aps or a deck of cards. M ost of
their products w ere books.
H ow ever, com puters *w ere* deeply involved in the Steve Jackson

Gam es business. Like alm ost allm odern publishers, Steve Jackson and
his fifteen em ployees used com puters to w rite text,to keep accounts,
and to run the business generally. They also used a com puter to run
their officialbulletin board system for Steve Jackson Gam es, a board
called Illum inati. O n Illum inati, sim ulation gam ers w ho happened to
ow n com puters and m odem s could associate,trade m ail,debate the theo-
ry and practice of gam ing,and keep up w ith the com pany's new s and its
product announcem ents.
Illum inatiw as a m odestly popular board, run on a sm allcom puter w ith

lim ited storage, only one phone-line, and no ties to large-scale com -
puter netw orks. It did, how ever, have hundreds of users, m any of them
dedicated gam ers w illing to callfrom out-of-state.
Illum inatiw as *not* an "underground" board. It did not feature hints

on com puter intrusion, or "anarchy files," or illicitly posted credit
card num bers, or long-distance access codes. Som e of Illum inati's
users,how ever,w ere m em bers of the Legion of Doom . A nd so w as one
of Steve Jackson's senior em ployees — the M entor. The M entor w rote
for *Phrack,* and also ran an underground board, Phoenix Project —
but the M entor w as not a com puter professional. The M entor w as the
m anaging editor of Steve Jackson Gam es and a professionalgam e design-

er by trade. These LoD m em bers did not use Illum inatito help their
*hacking* activities. They used it to help their *gam e-playing* activ-
ities — and they w ere even m ore dedicated to sim ulation gam ing than
they w ere to hacking.
"Illum inati" got its nam e from a card-gam e that Steve Jackson him self,
the com pany's founder and sole ow ner, had invented. This m ulti-player
card-gam e w as one of M r Jackson's best-know n, m ost successful, m ost
technically innovative products. "Illum inati" w as a gam e of paranoiac
conspiracy in w hich various antisocialcults w arred covertly to dom i-
nate the w orld. "Illum inati" w as hilarious, and great fun to play,
involving flying saucers, the CIA , the KGB, the phone com panies, the Ku
Klux Klan, the South A m erican N azis, the cocaine cartels, the Boy
Scouts,and dozens of other splinter groups from the tw isted depths of
M r. Jackson's professionally fervid im agination. For the uninitiated,
any public discussion of the "Illum inati" card-gam e sounded, by turns,
utterly m enacing or com pletely insane.
A nd then there w as SJG's "Car W ars," in w hich souped-up arm ored hot-
rods w ith rocket-launchers and heavy m achine-guns did battle on the
A m erican highw ays of the future. The lively Car W ars discussion on
the Illum inatiboard featured m any m eticulous, painstaking discussions
of the effects of grenades, land-m ines, flam ethrow ers and napalm . It
sounded like hacker anarchy files run am uck.
M r Jackson and his co-w orkers earned their daily bread by supplying
people w ith m ake-believe adventures and w eird ideas. The m ore far-
out, the better.
Sim ulation gam ing is an unusualpastim e, but gam ers have not generally
had to beg the perm ission of the Secret Service to exist. W argam es and
role-playing adventures are an old and honored pastim e, m uch favored
by professionalm ilitary strategists. O nce little- know n, these gam es
are now played by hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts throughout
N orth A m erica, Europe and Japan. Gam ing-books, once restricted to
hobby outlets, now com m only appear in chain-stores like B. D alton's
and W aldenbooks, and sellvigorously.

Steve Jackson Gam es,Inc.,of A ustin,Texas,w as a gam es com pany of the
m iddle rank. In 1989, SJG grossed about a m illion dollars. Jackson
him self had a good reputation in his industry as a talented and innovative
designer of rather unconventionalgam es, but his com pany w as som e-
thing less than a titan of the field — certainly not like the m ultim illion-
dollar TSR Inc., or Britain's gigantic "G am es W orkshop."
SJG's A ustin headquarters w as a m odest tw o-story brick office-suite,

cluttered w ith phones, photocopiers, fax m achines and com puters. It
bustled w ith sem i-organized activity and w as littered w ith glossy pro-
m otionalbrochures and dog-eared science-fiction novels. A ttached to
the offices w as a large tin-roofed w arehouse piled tw enty feet high w ith
cardboard boxes of gam es and books. Despite the w eird im aginings that
w ent on w ithin it, the SJG headquarters w as quite a quotidian, everyday
sort of place. It looked like w hat it w as: a publishers' digs.
Both "Car W ars" and "Illum inati" w ere w ell-know n, popular gam es.
But the m ainstay of the Jackson organization w as their Generic
UniversalRole-Playing System , "G .U.R.P.S." The G URPS system w as
considered solid and w ell-designed, an asset for players. But perhaps
the m ost popular feature of the GURPS system w as that it allow ed gam -
ing-m asters to design scenarios that closely resem bled w ell-know n
books,m ovies,and other w orks of fantasy. Jackson had licensed and
adapted w orks from m any science fiction and fantasy authors. There w as
*G U RPS C onan,* *G U RPS Riverw orld,* *G U RPS H orseclans,* *G U RPS
W itch W orld,* nam es em inently fam iliar to science-fiction readers.
A nd there w as *GURPS SpecialO ps,* from the w orld of espionage fan-
tasy and unconventionalw arfare.
A nd then there w as *GURPS Cyberpunk.*
"Cyberpunk" w as a term given to certain science fiction w riters w ho

had entered the genre in the 1980s. "Cyberpunk," as the labelim plies,
had tw o generaldistinguishing features. First, its w riters had a com -
pelling interest in inform ation technology, an interest closely akin to
science fiction's earlier fascination w ith space travel. A nd second, these
w riters w ere "punks," w ith allthe distinguishing features that that
im plies: Bohem ian artiness, youth run w ild, an air of deliberate rebel-

lion, funny clothes and hair, odd politics, a fondness for abrasive rock
and roll; in a w ord, trouble.
The "cyberpunk" SF w riters w ere a sm allgroup of m ostly college-edu-

cated w hite m iddle-class litterateurs, scattered through the US and
Canada. O nly one, Rudy Rucker, a professor of com puter science in
Silicon V alley, could rank w ith even the hum blest com puter hacker.
But, except for Professor Rucker, the "cyberpunk" authors w ere not
program m ers or hardw are experts; they considered them selves artists
(as, indeed, did Professor Rucker). H ow ever, these w riters allow ned
com puters, and took an intense and public interest in the socialram ifi-
cations of the inform ation industry.
The cyberpunks had a strong follow ing am ong the globalgeneration that
had grow n up in a w orld of com puters, m ultinationalnetw orks, and
cable television. Their outlook w as considered som ew hat m orbid, cyni-
cal, and dark, but then again, so w as the outlook of their generational
peers. A s that generation m atured and increased in strength and influ-
ence, so did the cyberpunks. A s science-fiction w riters w ent, they
w ere doing fairly w ellfor them selves. By the late 1980s, their w ork
had attracted attention from gam ing com panies,including Steve Jackson
Gam es, w hich w as planning a cyberpunk sim ulation for the flourishing
GURPS gam ing- system .
The tim e seem ed ripe for such a product, w hich had already been proven
in the m arketplace. The first gam es- com pany out of the gate, w ith a
product boldly called "Cyberpunk" in defiance of possible infringem ent-
of- copyright suits, had been an upstart group called R. Talsorian.
Talsorian's Cyberpunk w as a fairly decent gam e, but the m echanics of
the sim ulation system left a lot to be desired. Com m ercially, how ever,
the gam e did very w ell.
The next cyberpunk gam e had been the even m ore successful
*Shadow run* by FA SA Corporation. The m echanics of this gam e w ere
fine, but the scenario w as rendered m oronic by sappy fantasy elem ents
like elves, trolls, w izards, and dragons — allhighly ideologically-
incorrect, according to the hard-edged, high-tech standards of cyber-
punk science fiction.

O ther gam e designers w ere cham ping at the bit.Prom inent am ong them
w as the M entor, a gentlem an w ho, like m ost of his friends in the Legion
of Doom ,w as quite the cyberpunk devotee. M entor reasoned that the
tim e had com e for a *real* cyberpunk gam ing-book — one that the
princes of com puter-m ischief in the Legion of D oom could play w ithout
laughing them selves sick. This book, *GURPS Cyberpunk,* w ould reek
of culturally on- line authenticity.
M entor w as particularly w ell-qualified for this task. N aturally, he

knew far m ore about com puter-intrusion and digitalskullduggery than
any previously published cyberpunk author. N ot only that, but he w as
good at his w ork. A vivid im agination, com bined w ith an instinctive
feeling for the w orking of system s and, especially, the loopholes w ithin
them , are excellent qualities for a professionalgam e designer.
By M arch 1st, *GURPS Cyberpunk* w as alm ost com plete, ready to

print and ship. Steve Jackson expected vigorous sales for this item ,
w hich, he hoped, w ould keep the com pany financially afloat for several
m onths. *GURPS Cyberpunk,* like the other GURPS "m odules," w as not
a "gam e" like a M onopoly set,but a *book:* a bound paperback book the
size of a glossy m agazine, w ith a slick color cover, and pages fullof text,
illustrations,tables and footnotes. It w as advertised as a gam e,and w as
used as an aid to gam e-playing, but it w as a book, w ith an ISBN num -
ber, published in Texas, copyrighted, and sold in bookstores.
A nd now ,that book,stored on a com puter,had gone out the door in the
custody of the Secret Service.
The day after the raid, Steve Jackson visited the localSecret Service
headquarters w ith a law yer in tow . There he confronted Tim Foley (still
in A ustin at that tim e) and dem anded his book back. But there w as
trouble. *GURPS Cyberpunk,* alleged a Secret Service agent to aston-
ished businessm an Steve Jackson, w as "a m anualfor com puter crim e."
"It's science fiction," Jackson said.
"N o, this is real." This statem ent w as repeated severaltim es, by sev-

eralagents. Jackson's om inously accurate gam e had passed from pure,
obscure, sm all- scale fantasy into the im pure, highly publicized,
large- scale fantasy of the H acker Crackdow n.
N o m ention w as m ade of the realreason for the search. A ccording to

their search w arrant, the raiders had expected to find the E911
D ocum ent stored on Jackson's bulletin board system . But that w arrant
w as sealed; a procedure that m ost law enforcem ent agencies w illuse
only w hen lives are dem onstrably in danger. The raiders' true m otives
w ere not discovered untilthe Jackson search- w arrant w as unsealed by
his law yers, m any m onths later. The Secret Service, and the Chicago
Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force,said absolutely nothing to Steve
Jackson about any threat to the police 911 System . They said nothing
about the A tlanta Three, nothing about *Phrack* or Knight Lightning,
nothing about Term inus.
Jackson w as left to believe that his com puters had been seized because
he intended to publish a science fiction book that law enforcem ent con-
sidered too dangerous to see print.
This m isconception w as repeated again and again,for m onths,to an

ever-w idening public audience. It w as not the truth of the case; but as
m onths passed, and this m isconception w as publicly printed again and
again,it becam e one of the few publicly know n "facts" about the m yste-
rious Hacker Crackdow n. The Secret Service had seized a com puter to
stop the publication of a cyberpunk science fiction book.
The second section of this book, "The D igitalUnderground," is alm ost

finished now . W e have becom e acquainted w ith allthe m ajor figures of
this case w ho actually belong to the underground m ilieu of com puter
intrusion. W e have som e idea of their history, their m otives, their
generalm odus operandi. W e now know , Ihope, w ho they are, w here
they cam e from ,and m ore or less w hat they w ant. In the next section of
this book, "Law and O rder," w e w illleave this m ilieu and directly enter
the w orld of A m erica's com puter-crim e police.
A t this point, how ever, Ihave another figure to introduce: m yself.

M y nam e is Bruce Sterling. Ilive in A ustin, Texas, w here Iam a sci-
ence fiction w riter by trade: specifically, a *cyberpunk* science fic-
tion w riter.
Like m y "cyberpunk" colleagues in the U.S. and Canada, I've never been
entirely happy w ith this literary label— especially after it becam e a
synonym for com puter crim inal. But Idid once edit a book of stories by
m y colleagues, called *M IRRO RSH A D ES: the Cyberpunk A nthology,*
and I've long been a w riter of literary- criticalcyberpunk m anifestos.
Iam not a "hacker" of any description, though Ido have readers in the
digitalunderground.
W hen the Steve Jackson Gam es seizure occurred, Inaturally took an

intense interest. If "cyberpunk" books w ere being banned by federal
police in m y ow n hom e tow n, Ireasonably w ondered w hether Im yself
m ight be next. W ould m y com puter be seized by the Secret Service? A t
the tim e, Iw as in possession of an aging A pple IIe w ithout so m uch as a
hard disk. If Iw ere to be raided as an author of com puter-crim e m anu-
als, the loss of m y feeble w ord-processor w ould likely provoke m ore
snickers than sym pathy.
I'd know n Steve Jackson for m any years. W e knew one another as col-
leagues, for w e frequented the sam e localscience-fiction conventions.
I'd played Jackson gam es, and recognized his cleverness; but he certain-
ly had never struck m e as a potentialm asterm ind of com puter crim e.
Ialso knew a little about com puter bulletin-board system s. In the m id-
1980s Ihad taken an active role in an A ustin board called "SM O F-BBS,"
one of the first boards dedicated to science fiction. Ihad a m odem ,and on
occasion I'd logged on to Illum inati, w hich alw ays looked entertainly
w acky, but certainly harm less enough.
A t the tim e of the Jackson seizure, Ihad no experience w hatsoever w ith

underground boards. But Iknew that no one on Illum inatitalked about
breaking into system s illegally, or about robbing phone com panies.
Illum inatididn't even offer pirated com puter gam es. Steve Jackson, like
m any creative artists, w as m arkedly touchy about theft of intellectual
property.

It seem ed to m e that Jackson w as either seriously suspected of som e
crim e — in w hich case,he w ould be charged soon,and w ould have his day
in court — or else he w as innocent, in w hich case the Secret Service
w ould quickly return his equipm ent, and everyone w ould have a good
laugh. Irather expected the good laugh. The situation w as not w ithout
its com ic side. The raid, know n as the "Cyberpunk Bust" in the science
fiction com m unity, w as w inning a great dealof free nationalpublicity
both for Jackson him self and the "cyberpunk" science fiction w riters
generally.
Besides, science fiction people are used to being m isinterpreted.

Science fiction is a colorful, disreputable, slipshod occupation, fullof
unlikely oddballs, w hich, of course, is w hy w e like it. W eirdness can
be an occupationalhazard in our field. People w ho w ear H allow een cos-
tum es are som etim es m istaken for m onsters.
O nce upon a tim e — back in 1939, in N ew York City — science fiction

and the U.S. Secret Service collided in a com ic case of m istaken identity.
This w eird incident involved a literary group quite fam ous in science
fiction, know n as "the Futurians," w hose m em bership included such
future genre greats as Isaac A sim ov, Frederik Pohl, and D am on Knight.
The Futurians w ere every bit as offbeat and w acky as any of their spiri-
tualdescendants, including the cyberpunks, and w ere given to com m unal
living, spontaneous group renditions of light opera, and m idnight fenc-
ing exhibitions on the law n. The Futurians didn't have bulletin board
system s, but they did have the technologicalequivalent in 1939 —
m im eographs and a private printing press. These w ere in steady use,
producing a stream of science-fiction fan m agazines, literary m ani-
festos, and w eird articles, w hich w ere picked up in ink-sticky bundles
by a succession of strange,gangly,spotty young m en in fedoras and
overcoats.
The neighbors grew alarm ed at the antics of the Futurians and reported
them to the Secret Service as suspected counterfeiters. In the w inter of
1939, a squad of USSS agents w ith draw n guns burst into "Futurian
H ouse," prepared to confiscate the forged currency and illicit printing
presses. There they discovered a slum bering science fiction fan nam ed

George H ahn, a guest of the Futurian com m une w ho had just arrived in
N ew York. George Hahn m anaged to explain him self and his group, and
the Secret Service agents left the Futurians in peace henceforth. (A las,
H ahn died in 1991, just before Ihad discovered this astonishing histor-
icalparallel, and just before Icould interview him for this book.)
But the Jackson case did not com e to a sw ift and com ic end. No quick
answ ers cam e his w ay, or m ine; no sw ift reassurances that allw as
right in the digitalw orld, that m atters w ere w ellin hand after all.
Q uite the opposite. In m y alternate role as a som etim e pop-science
journalist, Iinterview ed Jackson and his staff for an article in a
British m agazine. The strange details of the raid left m e m ore con-
cerned than ever. W ithout its com puters, the com pany had been finan-
cially and operationally crippled. H alf the SJG w orkforce, a group of
entirely innocent people, had been sorrow fully fired, deprived of their
livelihoods by the seizure. It began to daw n on m e that authors —
A m erican w riters — m ight w ellhave their com puters seized, under
sealed w arrants, w ithout any crim inalcharge; and that, as Steve
Jackson had discovered, there w as no im m ediate recourse for this. This
w as no joke; this w asn't science fiction; this w as real.
Ideterm ined to put science fiction aside untilIhad discovered w hat had
happened and w here this trouble had com e from . It w as tim e to enter the
purportedly realw orld of electronic free expression and com puter
crim e.Hence,this book. Hence,the w orld of the telcos; and the w orld of
the digitalunderground; and next, the w orld of the police.

P A R T T H R EE
LA W A N D O R D ER
O f the various anti-hacker activities of 1990, "O peration Sundevil" had
by far the highest public profile. The sw eeping, nationw ide com puter
seizures of M ay 8, 1990 w ere unprecedented in scope and highly, if
rather selectively, publicized.
Unlike the efforts of the Chicago Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force,
"O peration Sundevil" w as not intended to com bat "hacking" in the sense
of com puter intrusion or sophisticated raids on telco sw itching stations.
N or did it have anything to do w ith hacker m isdeeds w ith A T& T's soft-
w are, or w ith Southern Bell's proprietary docum ents.
Instead, "O peration Sundevil" w as a crackdow n on those traditional

scourges of the digitalunderground: credit-card theft and telephone
code abuse. The am bitious activities out of Chicago,and the som ew hat
lesser-know n but vigorous anti- hacker actions of the N ew York State
Police in 1990, w ere never a part of "O peration Sundevil" per se,
w hich w as based in A rizona.
N evertheless, after the spectacular M ay 8 raids, the public, m isled by

police secrecy, hacker panic, and a puzzled nationalpress-corps, con-
flated allaspects of the nationw ide crackdow n in 1990 under the blanket
term "O peration Sundevil." "Sundevil" is stillthe best-know n synonym
for the crackdow n of 1990. But the A rizona organizers of "Sundevil"
did not really deserve this reputation — any m ore, for instance, than all
hackers deserve a reputation as "hackers."
There w as som e justice in this confused perception, though. For one

thing,the confusion w as abetted by the W ashington office of the Secret
Service,w ho responded to Freedom of Inform ation A ct requests on
"O peration Sundevil" by referring investigators to the publicly know n
cases of Knight Lightning and the A tlanta Three. A nd "Sundevil" w as
certainly the largest aspect of the Crackdow n,the m ost deliberate and
the best-organized. A s a crackdow n on electronic fraud, "Sundevil"
lacked the frantic pace of the w ar on the Legion of Doom ;on the con-

trary, Sundevil's targets w ere picked out w ith cooldeliberation over an
elaborate investigation lasting tw o fullyears.
A nd once again the targets w ere bulletin board system s.
Boards can be pow erfulaids to organized fraud. Underground boards

carry lively, extensive, detailed, and often quite flagrant "discussions"
of law breaking techniques and law breaking activities. "D iscussing"
crim e in the abstract, or "discussing" the particulars of crim inalcases,
is not illegal— but there are stern state and federallaw s against cold-
bloodedly conspiring in groups in order to com m it crim es.
In the eyes of police, people w ho 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 them selves form al-
ly indicted by prosecutors as "gangs," "racketeers," "corrupt organiza-
tions" and "organized crim e figures."
W hat's m ore, the illicit data contained on outlaw boards goes w ellbeyond
m ere acts of speech and/or possible crim inalconspiracy. A s w e have
seen, it w as com m on practice in the digitalunderground to post pur-
loined telephone codes on boards,for any phreak or hacker w ho cared to
abuse them . Is posting digitalbooty of this sort supposed to be protected
by the First A m endm ent? H ardly — though the issue, like m ost issues
in cyberspace, is not entirely resolved. Som e theorists argue that to
m erely *recite* a num ber publicly is not illegal — only its *use* is
illegal. But anti-hacker police point out that m agazines and new spa-
pers (m ore traditionalform s of free expression) never publish stolen
telephone codes (even though this m ight w ellraise their circulation).
Stolen credit card num bers, being riskier and m ore valuable, w ere less
often publicly posted on boards — but there is no question that som e
underground boards carried "carding" traffic, generally exchanged
through private m ail.
Underground boards also carried handy program s for "scanning" tele-

phone codes and raiding credit card com panies, as w ellas the usual
obnoxious galaxy of pirated softw are, cracked passw ords, blue-box

schem atics, intrusion m anuals, anarchy files, porn files, and so forth.
But besides their nuisance potentialfor the spread of illicit know ledge,
bulletin boards have another vitally interesting aspect for the profes-
sionalinvestigator. Bulletin boards are cram -fullof *evidence.* A ll
that busy trading of electronic m ail, allthose hacker boasts, brags and
struts, even the stolen codes and cards, can be neat, electronic, real-
tim e recordings of crim inalactivity.
A s an investigator,w hen you seize a pirate board,you have scored a

coup as effective as tapping phones or intercepting m ail. H ow ever, you
have not actually tapped a phone or intercepted a letter. The rules of
evidence regarding phone-taps and m ailinterceptions are old, stern and
w ellunderstood by police, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike.
The rules of evidence regarding boards are new , w affling, and under-
stood by nobody at all.
Sundevilw as the largest crackdow n on boards in w orld history. O n M ay

7, 8, and 9, 1990, about forty- tw o com puter system s w ere seized. O f
those forty- tw o com puters, about tw enty-five actually w ere running
boards. (The vagueness of this estim ate is attributable to the vagueness
of (a) w hat a "com puter system " is, and (b) w hat it actually m eans to
"run a board" w ith one — or w ith tw o com puters, or w ith three.)
A bout tw enty-five boards vanished into police custody in M ay 1990. A s

w e have seen, there are an estim ated 30,000 boards in A m erica today.
If w e assum e that one board in a hundred is up to no good w ith codes and
cards (w hich rather flatters the honesty of the board-using com m uni-
ty), then that w ould leave 2,975 outlaw boards untouched by Sundevil.
Sundevilseized about one tenth of one percent of allcom puter bulletin
boards in A m erica. Seen objectively, this is som ething less than a com -
prehensive assault. In 1990, Sundevil's organizers — the team at the
Phoenix Secret Service office, and the A rizona A ttorney General's office
— had a list of at least *three hundred* boards that they considered
fully deserving of search and seizure w arrants. The tw enty-five
boards actually seized w ere m erely am ong the m ost obvious and egre-
gious of this m uch larger list of candidates. A llthese boards had been
exam ined beforehand — either by inform ants, w ho had passed printouts

to the Secret Service, or by Secret Service agents them selves, w ho not
only com e equipped w ith m odem s but know how to use them .
There w ere a num ber of m otives for Sundevil. First, it offered a chance
to get ahead of the curve on w ire-fraud crim es. Tracking back credit-
card ripoffs to their perpetrators can be appallingly difficult. If these
m iscreants have any kind of electronic sophistication, they can snarl
their tracks through the phone netw ork into a m ind-boggling, untrace-
able m ess, w hile stillm anaging to "reach out and rob som eone." Boards,
how ever,fullof brags and boasts,codes and cards,offer evidence in the
handy congealed form .
Seizures them selves — the m ere physicalrem ovalof m achines — tends

to take the pressure off. D uring Sundevil, a large num ber of code kids,
w arez d00dz,and credit card thieves w ould be deprived of those boards
— their m eans of com m unity and conspiracy — in one sw ift blow . A s
for the sysops them selves (com m only am ong the boldest offenders) they
w ould be directly stripped of their com puter equipm ent, and rendered
digitally m ute and blind.
A nd this aspect of Sundevilw as carried out w ith great success.

Sundevilseem s to have been a com plete tacticalsurprise — unlike the
fragm entary and continuing seizures of the w ar on the Legion of D oom ,
Sundevilw as precisely tim ed and utterly overw helm ing. A t least forty
"com puters" w ere seized during M ay 7, 8 and 9, 1990, in Cincinnati,
D etroit, Los A ngeles, M iam i, N ew ark, Phoenix, Tucson, Richm ond, San
D iego, San Jose, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. Som e cities saw m ulti-
ple raids, such as the five separate raids in the N ew York City environs.
Plano, Texas (essentially a suburb of the D allas/Fort W orth m etroplex,
and a hub of the telecom m unications industry) saw four com puter
seizures. Chicago, ever in the forefront, saw its ow n localSundevil
raid, briskly carried out by Secret Service agents Tim othy Foley and
Barbara Golden.
M any of these raids occurred, not in the cities proper, but in associated
w hite-m iddle class suburbs — places like M ount Lebanon, Pennsylvania
and Clark Lake, M ichigan. There w ere a few raids on offices; m ost took
place in people's hom es,the classic hacker basem ents and bedroom s.

The Sundevilraids w ere searches and seizures, not a group of m ass
arrests. There w ere only four arrests during Sundevil. "Tony the
Trashm an," a longtim e teenage bete noire of the A rizona Racketeering
unit, w as arrested in Tucson on M ay 9. "D r. Ripco," sysop of an outlaw
board w ith the m isfortune to exist in Chicago itself, w as also arrested
— on illegalw eapons charges. Localunits also arrested a 19-year-old
fem ale phone phreak nam ed "Electra" in Pennsylvania, and a m ale
juvenile in California. Federalagents how ever w ere not seeking
arrests, but com puters.
H ackers are generally not indicted (if at all) untilthe evidence in their
seized com puters is evaluated — a process that can take w eeks,m onths
— even years. W hen hackers are arrested on the spot, it's generally an
arrest for other reasons. D rugs and/or illegalw eapons show up in a
good third of anti-hacker com puter seizures (though not during
Sundevil).
That scofflaw teenage hackers (or their parents) should have m arijuana
in their hom es is probably not a shocking revelation, but the surpris-
ingly com m on presence of illegalfirearm s in hacker dens is a bit dis-
quieting. A PersonalCom puter can be a great equalizer for the techno-
cow boy — m uch like that m ore traditionalA m erican "Great Equalizer,"
the PersonalSixgun. M aybe it's not allthat surprising that som e guy
obsessed w ith pow er through illicit technology w ould also have a few
illicit high-velocity-im pact devices around. A n elem ent of the digital
underground particularly dotes on those "anarchy philes," and this ele-
m ent tends to shade into the crackpot m ilieu of survivalists, gun-nuts,
anarcho-leftists and the ultra-libertarian right-w ing.
This is not to say that hacker raids to date have uncovered any m ajor
crack-dens or illegalarsenals; but Secret Service agents do not regard
"hackers" as "just kids." They regard hackers as unpredictable people,
bright and slippery. It doesn't help m atters that the hacker him self has
been "hiding behind his keyboard" allthis tim e. Com m only, police have
no idea w hat he looks like. This m akes him an unknow n quantity, som e-
one best treated w ith proper caution.

To date,no hacker has com e out shooting,though they do som etim es brag
on boards that they w illdo just that. Threats of this sort are taken
seriously. Secret Service hacker raids tend to be sw ift, com prehen-
sive, w ell-m anned (even over- m anned); and agents generally burst
through every door in the hom e at once,som etim es w ith draw n guns.
A ny potentialresistance is sw iftly quelled. H acker raids are usually
raids on people's hom es.It can be a very dangerous business to raid an
A m erican hom e; people can panic w hen strangers invade their sanctum .
Statistically speaking, the m ost dangerous thing a policem an can do is to
enter som eone's hom e. (The second m ost dangerous thing is to stop a car
in traffic.) People have guns in their hom es. M ore cops are hurt in
hom es than are ever hurt in biker bars or m assage parlors.
But in any case, no one w as hurt during Sundevil, or indeed during any
part of the H acker Crackdow n.
N or w ere there any allegations of any physicalm istreatm ent of a sus-

pect. Guns w ere pointed, interrogations w ere sharp and prolonged; but
no one in 1990 claim ed any act of brutality by any crackdow n raider.
In addition to the forty or so com puters, Sundevilreaped floppy disks in

particularly great abundance — an estim ated 23,000 of them , w hich
naturally included every m anner of illegitim ate data: pirated gam es,
stolen codes,hot credit card num bers,the com plete text and softw are of
entire pirate bulletin-boards. These floppy disks, w hich rem ain in
police custody today, offer a gigantic, alm ost em barrassingly rich
source of possible crim inalindictm ents. These 23,000 floppy disks
also include a thus-far unknow n quantity of legitim ate com puter gam es,
legitim ate softw are, purportedly "private" m ailfrom boards, business
records, and personalcorrespondence of allkinds.
Standard com puter-crim e search w arrants lay great em phasis on seiz-

ing w ritten docum ents as w ellas com puters — specifically including
photocopies, com puter printouts, telephone bills, address books, logs,
notes,m em oranda and correspondence. In practice,this has m eant that
diaries, gam ing m agazines, softw are docum entation, nonfiction books on
hacking and com puter security, som etim es even science fiction novels,
have allvanished out the door in police custody. A w ide variety of elec-

tronic item s have been know n to vanish as w ell, including telephones,
televisions, answ ering m achines, Sony W alkm ans, desktop printers,
com pact disks,and audiotapes.
N o few er than 150 m em bers of the Secret Service w ere sent into the
field during Sundevil. They w ere com m only accom panied by squads of
localand/or state police. M ost of these officers — especially the locals
— had never been on an anti- hacker raid before. (This w as one good
reason, in fact, w hy so m any of them w ere invited along in the first
place.) A lso, the presence of a uniform ed police officer assures the
raidees that the people entering their hom es are, in fact, police. Secret
Service agents w ear plain clothes. So do the telco security experts w ho
com m only accom pany the Secret Service on raids (and w ho m ake no
particular effort to identify them selves as m ere em ployees of telephone
com panies).
A typicalhacker raid goes som ething like this. First, police storm in
rapidly, through every entrance, w ith overw helm ing force, in the
assum ption that this tactic w illkeep casualties to a m inim um . Second,
possible suspects are im m ediately rem oved from the vicinity of any and
allcom puter system s, so that they w illhave no chance to purge or
destroy com puter evidence.Suspects are herded into a room w ithout
com puters, com m only the living room , and kept under guard — not
*arm ed* guard, for the guns are sw iftly holstered, but under guard
nevertheless. They are presented w ith the search w arrant and w arned
that anything they say m ay be held against them .Com m only they have a
great dealto say, especially if they are unsuspecting parents.
Som ew here in the house is the "hot spot" — a com puter tied to a phone
line (possibly severalcom puters and severalphones). Com m only it's a
teenager's bedroom ,but it can be anyw here in the house;there m ay be
severalsuch room s. This "hot spot" is put in charge of a tw o-agent
team , the "finder" and the "recorder." The "finder" is com puter-
trained,com m only the case agent w ho has actually obtained the search
w arrant from a judge. He or she understands w hat is being sought, and
actually carries out the seizures: unplugs m achines, opens draw ers,
desks, files, floppy-disk containers, etc. The "recorder" photographs
allthe equipm ent, just as it stands — especially the tangle of w ired con-

nections in the back, w hich can otherw ise be a realnightm are to
restore. The recorder w illalso com m only photograph every room in the
house, lest som e w ily crim inalclaim that the police had robbed him
during the search. Som e recorders carry videocam s or tape recorders;
how ever, it's m ore com m on for the recorder to sim ply take w ritten
notes. O bjects are described and num bered as the finder seizes them ,
generally on standard preprinted police inventory form s.
Even Secret Service agents w ere not, and are not, expert com puter
users. They have not m ade,and do not m ake,judgem ents on the fly about
potentialthreats posed by various form s of equipm ent. They m ay exer-
cise discretion; they m ay leave D ad his com puter, for instance, but they
don't *have* to. Standard com puter-crim e search w arrants, w hich
date back to the early 80s,use a sw eeping language that targets com put-
ers, m ost anything attached to a com puter,m ost anything used to oper-
ate a com puter — m ost anything that rem otely resem bles a com puter —
plus m ost any and allw ritten docum ents surrounding it. Com puter-
crim e investigators have strongly urged agents to seize the w orks.
In this sense, O peration Sundevilappears to have been a com plete suc-

cess. Boards w ent dow n allover A m erica,and w ere shipped en m asse to
the com puter investigation lab of the Secret Service, in W ashington D C,
along w ith the 23,000 floppy disks and unknow n quantities of printed
m aterial.
But the seizure of tw enty-five boards, and the m ulti-m egabyte m oun-
tains of possibly usefulevidence contained in these boards (and in their
ow ners' other com puters, also out the door), w ere far from the only
m otives for O peration Sundevil. A n unprecedented action of great
am bition and size, Sundevil's m otives can only be described as political.
It w as a public-relations effort, m eant to pass certain m essages, m eant
to m ake certain situations clear: both in the m ind of the generalpublic,
and in the m inds of various constituencies of the electronic com m unity.
First — and this m otivation w as vital— a "m essage" w ould be sent from
law enforcem ent to the digitalunderground. This very m essage w as
recited in so m any w ords by Garry M . Jenkins, the A ssistant D irector of
the US Secret Service, at the Sundevilpress conference in Phoenix on

M ay 9, 1990, im m ediately after the raids. In brief, hackers w ere
m istaken in their foolish belief that they could hide behind the "relative
anonym ity of their com puter term inals." O n the contrary, they should
fully understand that state and federalcops w ere actively patrolling the
beat in cyberspace — that they w ere on the w atch everyw here,even in
those sleazy and secretive dens of cybernetic vice,the underground
boards.
This is not an unusualm essage for police to publicly convey to crooks.

The m essage is a standard m essage;only the context is new .
In this respect, the Sundevilraids w ere the digitalequivalent of the

standard vice-squad crackdow n on m assage parlors, porno bookstores,
head-shops, or floating crap-gam es. There m ay be few or no arrests in
a raid of this sort; no convictions, no trials, no interrogations. In cases
of this sort, police m ay w ellw alk out the door w ith m any pounds of
sleazy m agazines, X-rated videotapes, sex toys, gam bling equipm ent,
baggies of m arijuana....
O f course, if som ething truly horrendous is discovered by the raiders,

there w illbe arrests and prosecutions. Far m ore likely, how ever,
there w illsim ply be a brief but sharp disruption of the closed and
secretive w orld of the nogoodniks. There w illbe "street hassle."
"Heat." "Deterrence." A nd,of course,the im m ediate loss of the seized
goods. It is very unlikely that any of this seized m aterialw illever be
returned. W hether charged or not, w hether convicted or not, the per-
petrators w illalm ost surely lack the nerve ever to ask for this stuff to
be given back.
A rrests and trials — putting people in jail— m ay involve allkinds of

form allegalities; but dealing w ith the justice system is far from the
only task of police. Police do not sim ply arrest people. They don't sim -
ply 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 form s of public relations, keeping public order is not
an exact science. Keeping public order is som ething of an art-form .
If a group of tough-looking teenage hoodlum s w as loitering on a street-

corner, no one w ould be surprised to see a street-cop arrive and sternly
order them to "break it up." O n the contrary, the surprise w ould com e
if one of these ne'er-do-w ells stepped briskly into a phone-booth,
called a civilrights law yer, and instituted a civilsuit in defense of his
Constitutionalrights of free speech and free assem bly. But som ething
m uch along this line w as one of the m any anom olous outcom es of the
H acker Crackdow n.
Sundevilalso carried useful"m essages" for other constituents of the

electronic com m unity.These m essages m ay not have been read aloud
from the Phoenix podium in front of the press corps, but there w as lit-
tle m istaking their m eaning. There w as a m essage of reassurance for
the prim ary victim s of coding and carding: the telcos, and the credit
com panies. Sundevilw as greeted w ith joy by the security officers of the
electronic business com m unity. A fter years of high-tech harassm ent
and spiralling revenue losses, their com plaints of ram pant outlaw ry
w ere being taken seriously by law enforcem ent. N o m ore head-scratch-
ing or dism issive shrugs; no m ore feeble excuses about "lack of com put-
er-trained officers" or the low priority of "victim less" w hite-collar
telecom m unication crim es.
Com puter-crim e experts have long believed that com puter-related

offenses are drastically under-reported. They regard this as a m ajor
open scandalof their field. Som e victim s are reluctant to com e forth,
because they believe that police and prosecutors are not com puter-lit-
erate, and can and w illdo nothing. O thers are em barrassed by their
vulnerabilities, and w illtake strong m easures to avoid any publicity;
this is especially true of banks, w ho fear a loss of investor confidence
should an em bezzlem ent-case or w ire-fraud surface. A nd som e victim s
are so helplessly confused by their ow n high technology that they never
even realize that a crim e has occurred — even w hen they have been
fleeced to the bone.
The results of this situation can be dire. Crim inals escape apprehension
and punishm ent. The com puter-crim e units that do exist, can't get w ork.
The true scope of com puter-crim e: its size, its realnature, the scope of
its threats, and the legalrem edies for it — allrem ain obscured.

A nother problem is very little publicized, but it is a cause of genuine
concern. W here there is persistent crim e, but no effective police pro-
tection, then vigilantism can result. Telcos, banks, credit com panies,
the m ajor corporations w ho m aintain extensive com puter netw orks
vulnerable to hacking — these organizations are pow erful, w ealthy, and
politically influential. They are disinclined to be pushed around by
crooks (or by m ost anyone else, for that m atter). They often m aintain
w ell-organized private security forces, com m only run by experienced
veterans of m ilitary and police units, w ho have left public service for
the greener pastures of the private sector. For police, the corporate
security m anager can be a pow erfulally; but if this gentlem an finds no
allies in the police, and the pressure is on from his board-of-directors,
he m ay quietly take certain m atters into his ow n hands.
N or 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 gum shoed
arm ies of "security consultants," "rent-a- cops," "private eyes,"
"outside experts" — every m anner of shady operator w ho retails in
"results" and discretion. O r course, m any of these gentlem en and ladies
m ay be paragons of professionaland m oralrectitude. But as anyone
w ho has read a hard-boiled detective novelknow s, police tend to be less
than fond of this sort of private-sector com petition.
Com panies in search of com puter-security have even been know n to

hire hackers. Police shudder at this prospect.
Police treasure good relations w ith the business com m unity. Rarely
w illyou see a policem an so indiscreet as to allege publicly that som e
m ajor em ployer in his state or city has succum bed to paranoia and gone
off the rails. N evertheless, police — and com puter police in particular
— are aw are of this possibility. Com puter-crim e police can and do
spend up to half of their business hours just doing public relations:
sem inars, "dog and pony show s," som etim es w ith parents' groups or
com puter users, but generally w ith their core audience: the likely vic-
tim s of hacking crim es. These, of course, are telcos, credit card com pa-
nies and large com puter- equipped corporations. The police strongly
urge these people, as good citizens, to report offenses and press crim i-

nalcharges;they pass the m essage that there is som eone in authority
w ho cares, understands, and, best of all, w illtake usefulaction should a
com puter-crim e occur.
But reassuring talk is cheap. Sundeviloffered action.
The finalm essage of Sundevilw as intended for internalconsum ption by

law enforcem ent. Sundevilw as offered as proof that the com m unity of
A m erican com puter-crim e police had com e of age. Sundevilw as proof
that enorm ous things like Sundevilitself could now be accom plished.
Sundevilw as proof that the Secret Service and its locallaw -enforce-
m ent allies could act like a w ell- oiled m achine — (despite the ham per-
ing use of those scram bled phones). It w as also proof that the A rizona
O rganized Crim e and Racketeering Unit — the sparkplug of Sundevil—
ranked w ith the best in the w orld in am bition, organization, and sheer
conceptualdaring.
A nd, as a finalfillip, Sundevilw as a m essage from the Secret Service to

their longtim e rivals in the FederalBureau of Investigation. By
Congressionalfiat, both USSS and FBIform ally share jurisdiction over
federalcom puter-crim ebusting activities. N either of these groups has
ever been rem otely happy w ith this m uddled situation. It seem s to sug-
gest that Congress cannot m ake up its m ind as to w hich of these groups is
better qualified. A nd there is scarcely a G-m an or a SpecialA gent any-
w here w ithout a very firm opinion on that topic.
_____
For the neophyte,one of the m ost puzzling aspects of the crackdow n on

hackers is w hy the United States Secret Service has anything at allto do
w ith this m atter.
The Secret Service is best know n for its prim ary public role: its agents
protect the President of the United States. They also guard the
President's fam ily, the V ice President and his fam ily, form er
Presidents, and Presidentialcandidates. They som etim es guard foreign
dignitaries w ho are visiting the United States, especially foreign heads
of state,and have been know n to accom pany A m erican officials on diplo-
m atic m issions overseas.

SpecialA gents of the Secret Service don't w ear uniform s, but the Secret
Service also has tw o uniform ed police agencies. There's the form er
W hite H ouse Police (now know n as the Secret Service Uniform ed
D ivision, since they currently guard foreign em bassies in W ashington,
as w ellas the W hite H ouse itself). A nd there's the uniform ed Treasury
Police Force.
The Secret Service has been charged by Congress w ith a num ber of lit-
tle-know n duties. They guard the precious m etals in Treasury vaults.
They guard the m ost valuable historicaldocum ents of the United States:
originals of the Constitution, the D eclaration of Independence, Lincoln's
Second InauguralA ddress, an A m erican-ow ned copy of the M agna Carta,
and so forth. O nce they w ere assigned to guard the M ona Lisa,on her
A m erican tour in the 1960s.
The entire Secret Service is a division of the Treasury D epartm ent.

Secret Service SpecialA gents (there are about 1,900 of them ) are
bodyguards for the President et al, but they allw ork for the Treasury.
A nd the Treasury (through its divisions of the U.S. M int and the Bureau
of Engraving and Printing) prints the nation's m oney.
A s Treasury police, the Secret Service guards the nation's currency; it

is the only federallaw enforcem ent agency w ith direct jurisdiction over
counterfeiting and forgery. It analyzes docum ents for authenticity, and
its fight against fake cash is stillquite lively (especially since the
skilled counterfeiters of M edellin, Colum bia have gotten into the act).
Governm ent checks, bonds, and other obligations, w hich exist in untold
m illions and are w orth untold billions, are com m on targets for forgery,
w hich the Secret Service also battles. It even handles forgery of
postage stam ps.
But cash is fading in im portance today as m oney has becom e electronic.

A s necessity beckoned,the Secret Service m oved from fighting the coun-
terfeiting of paper currency and the forging of checks, to the protection
of funds transferred by w ire.
From w ire-fraud, it w as a sim ple skip-and-jum p to w hat is form ally

know n 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" seem s intuitively sim ple. It's som e kind of
high-tech gizm o you use to get m oney w ith. It m akes good sense to put
this sort of thing in the charge of counterfeiting and w ire- fraud
experts.
H ow ever, in Section 1029, the term "access device" is very generously

defined. A n access device is:"any card,plate,code,account num ber,or
other m eans of account access that can be used,alone or in conjunction
w ith another access device,to obtain m oney,goods,services,or any
other thing of value, or that can be used to initiate a transfer of funds."
"A ccess device" can therefore be construed to include credit cards them -
selves (a popular forgery item now adays). It also includes credit card
account *num bers,* those standards of the digitalunderground. The
sam e goes for telephone charge cards (an increasingly popular item
w ith telcos,w ho are tired of being robbed of pocket change by phone-
booth thieves). A nd also telephone access *codes,* those *other* stan-
dards of the digitalunderground. (Stolen telephone codes m ay not
"obtain m oney," but they certainly do obtain valuable "services," w hich
is specifically forbidden by Section 1029.)
W e can now see that Section 1029 already pits the United States Secret
Service directly against the digitalunderground, w ithout any m ention at
allof the w ord "com puter."
Standard phreaking devices, like "blue boxes," used to stealphone ser-

vice from old-fashioned m echanicalsw itches, are unquestionably
"counterfeit access devices." Thanks to Sec.1029, it is not only illegal
to *use* counterfeit access devices, but it is even illegalto *build*
them . "Producing," "designing" "duplicating" or "assem bling" blue
boxes are allfederalcrim es today, and if you do this, the Secret Service
has been charged by Congress to com e after you.
A utom atic Teller M achines, w hich replicated allover A m erica during

the 1980s,are definitely "access devices," too,and an attem pt to tam -
per w ith their punch-in codes and plastic bank cards falls directly
under Sec. 1029.
Section 1029 is rem arkably elastic. Suppose you find a com puter pass-
w ord in som ebody's trash. That passw ord m ight be a "code" — it's cer-
tainly a "m eans of account access." Now suppose you log on to a com put-
er and copy som e softw are for yourself. You've certainly obtained "ser-
vice" (com puter service) and a "thing of value" (the softw are).
Suppose you tella dozen friends about your sw iped passw ord,and let
them use it, too. N ow you're "trafficking in unauthorized access
devices." A nd w hen the Prophet,a m em ber of the Legion of Doom ,passed
a stolen telephone com pany docum ent to Knight Lightning at *Phrack*
m agazine,they w ere both charged under Sec.1029!
There are tw o lim itations on Section 1029. First, the offense m ust
"affect interstate or foreign com m erce" in order to becom e a m atter of
federaljurisdiction. The term "affecting com m erce" is not w elldefined;
but you m ay take it as a given that the Secret Service can take an inter-
est if you've done m ost anything that happens to cross a state line.State
and localpolice can be touchy about their jurisdictions, and can som e-
tim es be m ulish w hen the feds show up. But w hen it com es to com put-
er- crim e, the localpolice are pathetically gratefulfor federalhelp —
in fact they com plain that they can't get enough of it. If you're stealing
long-distance service, you're alm ost certainly crossing state lines, and
you're definitely "affecting the interstate com m erce" of the telcos. A nd
if you're abusing credit cards by ordering stuff out of glossy catalogs
from , say, V erm ont, you're in for it.
The second lim itation is m oney. A s a rule, the feds don't pursue penny-
ante offenders. Federaljudges w illdism iss cases that appear to w aste
their tim e. Federalcrim es m ust be serious; Section 1029 specifies a
m inim um loss of a thousand dollars.
W e now com e to the very next section of Title 18, w hich is Section
1030, "Fraud and related activity in connection w ith com puters." This
statute gives the Secret Service direct jurisdiction over acts of com put-
er intrusion. O n the face of it, the Secret Service w ould now seem to

com m and the field. Section 1030, how ever, is now here near so ductile
as Section 1029.
The first annoyance is Section 1030(d), w hich reads:
"(d) The United States Secret Service shall, *in addition to any other
agency having such authority,* have the authority to investigate offens-
es under this section. Such authority of the United States Secret Service
shallbe exercised in accordance w ith an agreem ent w hich shallbe
entered into by the Secretary of the Treasury *and the A ttorney
G eneral.*" (A uthor's italics.)
The Secretary of the Treasury is the titular head of the Secret Service,
w hile the A ttorney Generalis in charge of the FBI. In Section (d),
Congress shrugged off responsibility for the com puter-crim e turf-bat-
tle betw een the Service and the Bureau,and m ade them fight it out allby
them selves. The result w as a rather dire one for the Secret Service, for
the FBIended up w ith exclusive jurisdiction over com puter break-ins
having to do w ith nationalsecurity, foreign espionage, federally insured
banks, and U .S. m ilitary bases, w hile retaining joint jurisdiction over
allthe other com puter intrusions. Essentially, w hen it com es to Section
1030, the FBInot only gets the realglam or stuff for itself, but can peer
over the shoulder of the Secret Service and barge in to m eddle w henever
it suits them .
The second problem has to do w ith the dicey term "Federalinterest com -
puter." Section 1030(a)(2) m akes it illegalto "access a com puter
w ithout authorization" if that com puter belongs to a financialinstitution
or an issuer of credit cards (fraud cases, in other w ords). Congress
w as quite w illing to give the Secret Service jurisdiction over m oney-
transferring com puters, but Congress balked at letting them investigate
any and allcom puter intrusions. Instead, the USSS had to settle for the
m oney m achines and the "Federalinterest com puters." A "Federal
interest com puter" is a com puter w hich the governm ent itself ow ns, or
is using. Large netw orks of interstate com puters, linked over state
lines, are also considered to be of "Federalinterest." (This notion of
"Federalinterest" 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 com puter break-ins that w ere *not* of
"Federalinterest," but conceivably som eday this m ight happen.)
So the Secret Service's authority over "unauthorized access" to com put-

ers covers a lot of territory, but by no m eans the w hole ballof
cyberspatialw ax. If you are, for instance, a *local* com puter retail-
er, or the ow ner of a *local* bulletin board system , then a m alicious
*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.
A t least, it can't do anything *directly.* But the Secret Service w illdo

plenty to help the localpeople w ho can.
The FBIm ay have dealt itself an ace off the bottom of the deck w hen it
com es to Section 1030;but that's not the w hole story;that's not the
street.W hat's Congress thinks is one thing,and Congress has been
know n to change its m ind. The *real* turf- struggle is out there in the
streets w here it's happening. If you're a localstreet-cop w ith a com -
puter problem , the Secret Service w ants you to know w here you can find
the realexpertise. W hile the Bureau crow d are off having their
favorite shoes polished — (w ing-tips) — and m aking 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 capitalof every state in the Union. N eed advice?
They'llgive you advice, or at least point you in the right direction. N eed
training? They can see to that,too.
If you're a localcop and you callin the FBI, the FBI(as is w idely and
slanderously rum ored) w illorder you around like a coolie, take allthe
credit for your busts, and m op up every possible scrap of reflected
glory. The Secret Service, on the other hand, doesn't brag a lot. They're
the quiet types. *V ery* quiet. V ery cool. Efficient. H igh-tech.
M irrorshades, icy stares, radio ear-plugs, an U zi m achine-pistol
tucked som ew here in that w ell-cut jacket. A m erican sam urai, sw orn to
give their lives to protect our President. "The granite agents." Trained
in m artialarts, absolutely fearless. Every single one of 'em has a top-
secret security clearance. Som ething goes a little w rong, you're not

gonna hear any w hining and m oaning and politicalbuck- passing out of
these guys.
The facade of the granite agent is not,of course,the reality. Secret

Service agents are hum an beings. A nd the realglory in Service w ork is
not in battling com puter crim e — not yet, anyw ay — but in protecting
the President. The realglam our of Secret Service w ork is in the W hite
House D etail. If you're at the President's side, then the kids and the
w ife see you on television; you rub shoulders w ith the m ost pow erful
people in the w orld. That's the realheart of Service w ork, the num ber
one priority. M ore than one com puter investigation has stopped dead in
the w ater w hen Service agents vanished at the President's need.
There's rom ance in the w ork of the Service. The intim ate access to cir-
cles of great pow er; the esprit- de-corps of a highly trained and disci-
plined elite; the high responsibility of defending the Chief Executive; the
fulfillm ent of a patriotic duty. A nd as police w ork goes, the pay's not
bad. But there's squalor in Service w ork, too. You m ay get spat upon by
protesters how ling abuse — and if they get violent,if they get too close,
som etim es you have to knock one of them dow n — discreetly.
The realsqualor in Service w ork is drudgery such as "the quarterlies,"

traipsing out four tim es a year, year in, year out, to interview the var-
ious pathetic w retches, m any of them in prisons and asylum s, w ho have
seen fit to threaten the President's life. A nd then there's the grinding
stress of searching allthose faces in the endless bustling crow ds, look-
ing for hatred, looking for psychosis, looking for the tight, nervous face
of an A rthur Brem er, a Squeaky From m e, a Lee H arvey O sw ald. It's
w atching allthose grasping, w aving hands for sudden m ovem ents, w hile
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 w ho ever shot at a President. It's the unsung w ork of the
Protective Research Section, w ho study scraw led, anonym ous death
threats w ith allthe m eticulous tools of anti- forgery techniques.
A nd it's m aintaining the hefty com puterized files on anyone w ho ever

threatened the President's life. Civillibertarians have becom e increas-
ingly concerned at the Governm ent's use of com puter files to track
A m erican citizens — but the Secret Service file of potentialPresidential
assassins, w hich has upw ard of tw enty thousand nam es, rarely causes a
peep of protest. If you *ever* state that you intend to killthe
President, the Secret Service w illw ant to know and record w ho you are,
w here you are, w hat you are, and w hat you're up to. If you're a serious
threat — if you're officially considered "of protective interest" — then
the Secret Service m ay w ellkeep tabs on you for the rest of your natur-
allife.
Protecting the President has first callon allthe Service's resources.

But there's a lot m ore to the Service's traditions and history than stand-
ing guard outside the O valO ffice.
The Secret Service is the nation's oldest generalfederallaw -enforce-

m ent agency. Com pared to the Secret Service, the FBIare new -hires
and the CIA are tem ps. The Secret Service w as founded 'w ay back in
1865, at the suggestion of H ugh M cCulloch, A braham Lincoln's
Secretary of the Treasury. M cCulloch w anted a specialized Treasury
police to com bat counterfeiting. A braham Lincoln agreed that this
seem ed a good idea, and, w ith a terrible irony, A braham Lincoln w as
shot that very night by John W ilkes Booth.
The Secret Service originally had nothing to do w ith protecting

Presidents. They didn't take this on as a regular assignm ent untilafter
the Garfield assassination in 1881. A nd they didn't get any
Congressionalm oney for it untilPresident M cKinley w as shot in 1901.
The Service w as originally designed for one purpose: destroying coun-
terfeiters.
_____
There are interesting parallels betw een the Service's nineteenth-cen-

tury entry into counterfeiting, and A m erica's tw entieth-century entry
into com puter-crim e.
In 1865, A m erica's paper currency w as a terrible m uddle. Security

w as drastically bad. Currency w as printed on the spot by localbanks in

literally hundreds of different designs. N o one really knew w hat the
heck a dollar billw as supposed to look like. Bogus bills passed easily. If
som e joker told you that a one-dollar billfrom the Railroad Bank of
Low ell, M assachusetts had a w om an leaning on a shield, w ith a locom o-
tive, a cornucopia, a com pass, various agriculturalim plem ents, a rail-
road bridge,and som e factories,then you pretty m uch had to take his
w ord for it. (A nd in fact he w as telling the truth!)
*Sixteen hundred* localA m erican banks designed and printed their ow n

paper currency, and there w ere no generalstandards for security. Like
a badly guarded node in a com puter netw ork, badly designed bills w ere
easy to fake, and posed a security hazard for the entire m onetary sys-
tem .
N o one knew the exact extent of the threat to the currency. There w ere
panicked estim ates that as m uch as a third of the entire nationalcur-
rency w as faked. Counterfeiters — know n as "boodlers" in the under-
ground slang of the tim e — w ere m ostly technically skilled printers
w ho had gone to the bad. M any had once w orked printing legitim ate cur-
rency. Boodlers operated in rings and gangs. Technicalexperts
engraved the bogus plates — com m only in basem ents in N ew York City.
Sm ooth confidence m en passed large w ads of high-quality, high- denom -
ination fakes, including the really sophisticated stuff — governm ent
bonds, stock certificates, and railw ay shares. Cheaper, botched fakes
w ere sold or sharew ared to low -levelgangs of boodler w annabes. (The
really cheesy low life boodlers m erely upgraded realbills by altering
face values,changing ones to fives,tens to hundreds,and so on.)
The techniques of boodling w ere little-know n and regarded w ith a cer-

tain aw e by the m id- nineteenth-century public. The ability to m anip-
ulate the system for rip-off seem ed diabolically clever. A s the skilland
daring of the boodlers increased, the situation becam e intolerable. The
federalgovernm ent stepped in, and began offering its ow n federalcur-
rency, w hich w as printed in fancy green ink, but only on the back — the
original"greenbacks." A nd at first, the im proved security of the w ell-
designed, w ell-printed federalgreenbacks seem ed to solve the problem ;
but then the counterfeiters caught on. W ithin a few years things w ere
w orse than ever: a *centralized* system w here *all* security w as bad!

The localpolice w ere helpless. The Governm ent tried offering blood
m oney to potentialinform ants, but this m et w ith little success. Banks,
plagued by boodling, gave up hope of police help and hired private secu-
rity m en instead. M erchants and bankers queued up by the thousands to
buy privately-printed m anuals on currency security, slim little books
like Laban H eath's *Infallible Governm ent Counterfeit D etector.* The
back of the book offered Laban Heath's patent m icroscope for five bucks.
Then the Secret Service entered the picture. The first agents w ere a
rough and ready crew . Their chief w as one W illiam P. W ood, a form er
guerilla in the M exican W ar w ho'd w on a reputation busting contractor
fraudsters for the W ar D epartm ent during the CivilW ar. W ood, w ho
w as also Keeper of the CapitalPrison, had a sideline as a counterfeiting
expert, bagging boodlers for the federalbounty m oney.
W ood w as nam ed Chief of the new Secret Service in July 1865. There
w ere only ten Secret Service agents in all: W ood him self, a handful
w ho'd w orked for him in the W ar D epartm ent, and a few form er private
investigators — counterfeiting experts — w hom W ood had w on over to
public service. (The Secret Service of 1865 w as m uch the size of the
Chicago Com puter Fraud Task Force or the A rizona Racketeering Unit of
1990.) These ten "O peratives" had an additionaltw enty or so "A ssistant
O peratives" and "Inform ants." Besides salary and per diem , each Secret
Service em ployee received a w hopping tw enty-five dollars for each
boodler he captured.
W ood him self publicly estim ated that at least *half* of A m erica's cur-
rency w as counterfeit, a perhaps pardonable perception. W ithin a year
the Secret Service had arrested over 200 counterfeiters. They busted
about tw o hundred boodlers a year for four years straight.
W ood attributed his success to travelling fast and light, hitting the bad-
guys hard, and avoiding bureaucratic baggage. "Because m y raids w ere
m ade w ithout m ilitary escort and Idid not ask the assistance of state
officers, Isurprised the professionalcounterfeiter."
W ood's socialm essage to the once-im pudent boodlers bore an eerie ring

of Sundevil: "It w as also m y purpose to convince such characters that it
w ould no longer be healthy for them to ply their vocation w ithout being
handled roughly,a fact they soon discovered."
W illiam P. W ood, the Secret Service's guerilla pioneer, did not end w ell.
H e succum bed to the lure of aim ing for the really big score. The notori-
ous Brockw ay Gang of N ew York City, headed by W illiam E. Brockw ay,
the "King of the Counterfeiters," had forged a num ber of governm ent
bonds. They'd passed these brilliant fakes on the prestigious W allStreet
investm ent firm of Jay Cooke and Com pany. The Cooke firm w ere fran-
tic and offered a huge rew ard for the forgers' plates.
Laboring diligently, W ood confiscated the plates (though not M r.

Brockw ay) and claim ed the rew ard. But the Cooke com pany treacher-
ously reneged. W ood got involved in a dow n-and-dirty law suit w ith the
Cooke capitalists. W ood's boss, Secretary of the Treasury M cCulloch,
felt that W ood's dem ands for m oney and glory w ere unseem ly,and even
w hen the rew ard m oney finally cam e through, M cCulloch refused to pay
W ood anything. W ood found him self m ired in a seem ingly endless round
of federalsuits and Congressionallobbying.
W ood never got his m oney. A nd he lost his job to boot. He resigned in
1869.
W ood's agents suffered,too. O n M ay 12,1869,the second Chief of the

Secret Service took over, and alm ost im m ediately fired m ost of W ood's
pioneer Secret Service agents: O peratives, A ssistants and Inform ants
alike. The practice of receiving $25 per crook w as abolished. A nd the
Secret Service began the long, uncertain process of thorough profes-
sionalization.
W ood ended badly. He m ust have felt stabbed in the back. In fact his
entire organization w as m angled.
O n the other hand, W illiam P. W ood *w as* the first head of the Secret
Service. W illiam W ood w as the pioneer. People stillhonor his nam e.
W ho rem em bers the nam e of the *second* head of the Secret Service?

A s for W illiam Brockw ay (also know n as "ColonelSpencer"), he w as
finally arrested by the Secret Service in 1880. H e did five years in
prison, got out, and w as stillboodling at the age of seventy- four.
_____
A nyone w ith an interest in O peration Sundevil— or in A m erican com -

puter-crim e generally — could scarcely m iss the presence of Gail
Thackeray,A ssistant A ttorney Generalof the State of A rizona.
Com puter-crim e training m anuals often cited Thackeray's group and
her w ork; she w as the highest-ranking state officialto specialize in
com puter-related offenses. H er nam e had been on the Sundevilpress
release (though m odestly ranked w ellafter the localfederalprosecuting
attorney and the head of the Phoenix Secret Service office).
A s public com m entary,and controversy,began to m ount about the

H acker Crackdow n, this A rizonan state officialbegan to take a higher and
higher public profile. Though uttering alm ost nothing specific about the
Sundeviloperation itself, she coined som e of the m ost striking sound-
bites of the grow ing propaganda w ar: "A gents are operating in good
faith, and Idon't think you can say that for the hacker com m unity," w as
one. A nother w as the m em orable "Iam not a m ad dog prosecutor"
(*H ouston Chronicle,* Sept 2, 1990.) In the m eantim e, the Secret
Service m aintained its usualextrem e discretion; the Chicago Unit,
sm arting from the backlash of the Steve Jackson scandal,had gone com -
pletely to earth.
A s Icollated m y grow ing pile of new spaper clippings, GailThackeray

ranked as a com parative fount of public know ledge on police operations.
Idecided that I had to get to know GailThackeray. Iw rote to her at the

A rizona A ttorney General's O ffice. N ot only did she kindly reply to m e,
but, to m y astonishm ent, she knew very w ellw hat "cyberpunk" science
fiction w as.
Shortly after this, G ailThackeray lost her job. A nd I tem porarily m is-
placed m y ow n career as a science-fiction w riter, to becom e a full-tim e
com puter-crim e journalist. In early M arch, 1 9 9 1 , I flew to Phoenix,
A rizona, to interview GailThackeray for m y book on the hacker crack-

dow n.
_____
"Credit cards didn't used to cost anything to get," says GailThackeray.

"N ow they cost forty bucks — and that's alljust to cover the costs from
*rip-off artists.*"
Electronic nuisance crim inals are parasites. O ne by one they're not

m uch harm ,no big deal. But they never com e just one by one.They
com e in sw arm s, heaps, legions, som etim es w hole subcultures. A nd
they bite. Every tim e w e buy a credit card today, w e lose a little finan-
cialvitality to a particular species of bloodsucker.
W hat, in her expert opinion, are the w orst form s of electronic crim e, I
ask, consulting m y notes. Is it — credit card fraud? Breaking into A TM
bank m achines? Phone-phreaking? Com puter intrusions? Softw are
viruses? A ccess-code theft? Records tam pering? Softw are piracy?
Pornographic bulletin boards? Satellite TV piracy? Theft of cable ser-
vice? It's a long list. By the tim e Ireach the end of it Ifeelrather
depressed.
"O h no," says GailThackeray, leaning forw ard over the table, her w hole
body gone stiff w ith energetic indignation, "the biggest dam age is tele-
phone fraud. Fake sw eepstakes, fake charities. Boiler-room con opera-
tions. You could pay off the nationaldebt w ith w hat these guys steal....
They target old people,they get hold of credit ratings and dem ographics,
they rip off the old and the w eak." The w ords com e tum bling out of her.
It's low -tech stuff, your everyday boiler-room fraud. G rifters, con-
ning people out of m oney over the phone,have been around for decades.
This is w here the w ord "phony" cam e from !
It's just that it's so m uch *easier* now , horribly facilitated by

advances in technology and the byzantine structure of the m odern phone
system . The sam e professionalfraudsters do it over and over, Thackeray
tells m e, they hide behind dense onion-shells of fake com panies.... fake
holding corporations nine or ten layers deep, registered allover the
m ap. They get a phone installed under a false nam e in an em pty safe-

house. A nd then they call-forw ard everything out of that phone to yet
another phone, a phone that m ay even be in another *state.* A nd they
don't even pay the charges on their phones;after a m onth or so,they
just split. Set up som ew here else in another Podunkville w ith the sam e
seedy crew of veteran phone-crooks. They buy or stealcom m ercial
credit card reports, slap them on the PC, have a program pick out peo-
ple over sixty-five w ho pay a lot to charities. A w hole subculture liv-
ing off this, m erciless folks on the con.
"The 'light-bulbs for the blind' people," Thackeray m uses, w ith a spe-
cialloathing. "There's just no end to them ."
W e're sitting in a dow ntow n diner in Phoenix, A rizona. It's a tough

tow n,Phoenix. A state capitalseeing som e hard tim es. Even to a Texan
like m yself, A rizona state politics seem rather baroque. There w as, and
rem ains, endless trouble over the M artin Luther King holiday, the sort
of stiff-necked, foot-shooting incident for w hich A rizona politics seem
fam ous. There w as Evan M echam , the eccentric Republican m illionaire
governor w ho w as im peached, after reducing state governm ent to a ludi-
crous sham bles. Then there w as the nationalKeating scandal, involving
A rizona savings and loans, in w hich both of A rizona's U.S. senators,
D eConciniand M cCain, played sadly prom inent roles.
A nd the very latest is the bizarre A zScam case, in w hich state legisla-
tors w ere videotaped, eagerly taking cash from an inform ant of the
Phoenix city police departm ent,w ho w as posing as a V egas m obster.
"O h," says Thackeray cheerfully. "These people are am ateurs here, they
thought they w ere finally getting to play w ith the big boys. They don't
have the least idea how to take a bribe! It's not institutionalcorruption.
It's not like back in Philly."
GailThackeray w as a form er prosecutor in Philadelphia. N ow she's a

form er assistant attorney generalof the State of A rizona. Since m oving
to A rizona in 1986, she had w orked under the aegis of Steve Tw ist, her
boss in the A ttorney General's office. Steve Tw ist w rote A rizona's pio-
neering com puter crim e law s and naturally took an interest in seeing
them enforced.It w as a snug niche,and Thackeray's O rganized Crim e and

Racketeering Unit w on a nationalreputation for am bition and technical
know ledgeability.... Untilthe latest election in A rizona. Thackeray's
boss ran for the top job, and lost. The victor, the new A ttorney General,
apparently w ent to som e pains to elim inate the bureaucratic traces of
his rival, including his pet group — Thackeray's group. Tw elve people
got their w alking papers.
N ow Thackeray's painstakingly assem bled com puter lab sits gathering

dust som ew here in the glass-and-concrete A ttorney General's H Q on
1275 W ashington Street. H er com puter-crim e books, her painstaking-
ly garnered back issues of phreak and hacker zines, allbought at her
ow n expense — are piled in boxes som ew here. The State of A rizona is
sim ply not particularly interested in electronic racketeering at the
m om ent.
A t the m om ent of our interview , GailThackeray, officially unem ployed,

is w orking out of the county sheriff's office, living on her savings, and
prosecuting severalcases — w orking 60-hour w eeks, just as alw ays —
for no pay at all. "I'm trying to train people," she m utters.
H alf her life seem s to be spent training people — m erely pointing out, to
the naive and incredulous (such as m yself) that this stuff is *actually
going on out there.* It's a sm allw orld, com puter crim e. A young w orld.
GailThackeray, a trim blonde Baby- Boom er w ho favors Grand Canyon
w hite-w ater rafting to killsom e slow tim e, is one of the w orld's m ost
senior, m ost veteran "hacker-trackers." H er m entor w as D onn
Parker, the California think-tank theorist w ho got it allstarted 'w ay
back in the m id- 70s, the "grandfather of the field," "the great bald
eagle of com puter crim e."
A nd w hat she has learned, GailThackeray teaches. Endlessly. Tirelessly.

To anybody. To Secret Service agents and state police,at the Glynco,
Georgia federaltraining center. To localpolice, on "roadshow s" w ith
her slide projector and notebook. To corporate security personnel. To
journalists. To parents.
Even *crooks* look to GailThackeray for advice. Phone-phreaks call

her at the office. They know very w ellw ho she is. They pum p her for

inform ation on w hat the cops are up to,how m uch they know .Som etim es
w hole *crow ds* of phone phreaks, hanging out on illegalconference
calls, w illcallGailThackeray up. They taunt her. A nd, as alw ays, they
boast. Phone-phreaks, realstone phone-phreaks, sim ply *cannot shut
up.* They natter on for hours.
Left to them selves, they m ostly 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. A nd w hen talking to GailThackeray, they incrim inate them -
selves. "Ihave tapes," Thackeray says coolly.
Phone phreaks just talk like crazy. "D ial-Tone" out in A labam a has
been know n to spend half-an- hour sim ply reading stolen phone-codes
aloud into voice-m ailansw ering m achines. H undreds, thousands of
num bers, recited in a m onotone, w ithout a break — an eerie phenom e-
non. W hen arrested, it's a rare phone phreak w ho doesn't inform at
endless length on everybody he know s.
H ackers are no better. W hat other group of crim inals, she asks rhetor-
ically, publishes new sletters and holds conventions? She seem s deeply
nettled by the sheer brazenness of this behavior, though to an outsider,
this activity m ight m ake one w onder w hether hackers should be consid-
ered "crim inals" at all. Skateboarders have m agazines, and they tres-
pass a lot. Hot rod people have m agazines and they break speed lim its
and som etim es killpeople....
Iask her w hether it w ould be any loss to society if phone phreaking and
com puter hacking, as hobbies, sim ply dried up and blew aw ay, so that
nobody ever did it again.
She seem s surprised. "N o," she says sw iftly. "M aybe a little... in the old
days... the M IT stuff... But there's a lot of w onderful, legalstuff you can
do w ith com puters now ,you don't have to break into som ebody else's
just to learn. You don't have that excuse. You can learn allyou like."
D id you ever hack into a system ? Iask.

The trainees do it at Glynco. Just to dem onstrate system vulnerabilities.
She's coolto the notion. Genuinely indifferent.
"W hat kind of com puter do you have?"
"A Com paq 286LE," she m utters.
"W hat kind do you *w ish* you had?"
A t this question, the unm istakable light of true hackerdom flares in Gail
Thackeray's eyes. She becom es tense,anim ated,the w ords pour out:
"A n A m iga 2000 w ith an IBM card and M ac em ulation! The m ost com m on
hacker m achines are A m igas and Com m odores. A nd A pples." If she had
the A m iga,she enthuses,she could run a w hole galaxy of seized com put-
er-evidence disks on one convenient m ultifunctionalm achine. A cheap
one,too. N ot like the old A ttorney Generallab,w here they had an
ancient CP/M m achine, assorted A m iga flavors and A pple flavors, a cou-
ple IBM S, allthe utility softw are... but no Com m odores. The w orksta-
tions dow n at the A ttorney General's are W ang dedicated w ord-proces-
sors. Lam e m achines tied in to an office net — though at least they get
on- line to the Lexis and W estlaw legaldata services.
Idon't say anything. Irecognize the syndrom e, though. This com puter-
fever has been running through segm ents of our society for years now .
It's a strange kind of lust: K-hunger, M eg-hunger; but it's a shared dis-
ease; it can killparties dead, as conversation spirals into the deepest
and m ost deviant recesses of softw are releases and expensive peripher-
als.... The m ark of the hacker beast. Ihave it too. The w hole "electronic
com m unity," w hatever the hellthat is, has it. GailThackeray has it.
GailThackeray is a hacker cop. M y im m ediate reaction is a strong rush
of indignant pity: *w hy doesn't som ebody buy this w om an her A m iga?!*
It's not like she's asking for a Cray X-M P supercom puter m ainfram e; an
A m iga's a sw eet little cookie-box thing. W e're losing zillions in orga-
nized fraud; prosecuting and defending a single hacker case in court can
cost a hundred grand easy. How com e nobody can com e up w ith four
lousy grand so this w om an can do her job? For a hundred grand w e could
buy every com puter cop in A m erica an A m iga. There aren't that m any of
'em .

Com puters. The lust, the hunger, for com puters. The loyalty they
inspire, the intense sense of possessiveness. The culture they have
bred. Im yself am sitting in dow ntow n Phoenix, A rizona because it sud-
denly occurred to m e that the police m ight — just *m ight* — com e and
take aw ay m y com puter. The prospect of this, the m ere *im plied
threat,* w as unbearable. It literally changed m y life. It w as changing
the lives of m any others. Eventually it w ould change everybody's life.
GailThackeray w as one of the top com puter- crim e people in A m erica.

A nd Iw as just som e novelist, and yet Ihad a better com puter than hers.
*Practically everybody Iknew * had a better com puter than Gail
Thackeray and her feeble laptop 286. It w as like sending the sheriff in
to clean up D odge City and arm ing her w ith a slingshot cut from an old
rubber tire.
But then again,you don't need a how itzer to enforce the law . You can do a
lot just w ith a badge. W ith a badge alone, you can basically w reak havoc,
take a terrible vengeance on w rongdoers. N inety percent of "com puter
crim e investigation" is just "crim e investigation:" nam es, places,
dossiers, m odus operandi, search w arrants, victim s, com plainants,
inform ants...
W hat w illcom puter crim e look like in ten years? W illit get better?
D id "Sundevil" send 'em reeling back in confusion?
It'llbe like it is now , only w orse, she tells m e w ith perfect conviction.
Stillthere in the background, ticking along, changing w ith the tim es: the
crim inal underw orld. It'll be like drugs are. Like our problem s w ith
alcohol. A llthe cops and law s in the w orld never solved our problem s
w ith alcohol. If there's som ething people w ant, a certain percentage of
them are just going to take it. Fifteen percent of the populace w illnever
steal. Fifteen percent w illstealm ost anything not nailed dow n. The
battle is for the hearts and m inds of the rem aining seventy percent.
A nd crim inals catch on fast. If there's not "too steep a learning curve"
— if it doesn't require a baffling am ount of expertise and practice —
then crim inals are often som e of the first through the gate of a new

technology. Especially if it helps them to hide. They have tons of cash,
crim inals. The new com m unications tech — like pagers, cellular
phones, faxes, FederalExpress — w ere pioneered by rich corporate
people, and by crim inals. In the early years of pagers and beepers, dope
dealers w ere so enthralled this technology that ow ing a beeper w as
practically prim a facie evidence of cocaine dealing. CB radio exploded
w hen the speed lim it hit 55 and breaking the highw ay law becam e a
nationalpastim e. D ope dealers send cash by FederalExpress, despite,
or perhaps *because of,* the w arnings in FedEx offices that tellyou
never to try this. Fed Ex uses X-rays and dogs on their m ail, to stop
drug shipm ents. That doesn't w ork very w ell.
D rug dealers w ent w ild over cellular phones. There are sim ple m ethods
of faking ID on cellular phones, m aking the location of the callm obile,
free of charge, and effectively untraceable. N ow victim ized cellular
com panies routinely bring in vast toll-lists of calls to Colom bia and
Pakistan.
Judge Greene's fragm entation of the phone com pany is driving law
enforcem ent nuts. Four thousand telecom m unications com panies. Fraud
skyrocketing. Every tem ptation in the w orld available w ith a phone and
a credit card num ber. Crim inals untraceable. A galaxy of "new neat
rotten things to do."
If there w ere one thing Thackeray w ould like to have, it w ould be an

effective legalend-run through this new fragm entation m inefield.
It w ould be a new form of electronic search w arrant, an "electronic let-

ter of m arque" to be issued by a judge. It w ould create a new category of
"electronic em ergency." Like a w iretap, its use w ould be rare, but it
w ould cut across state lines and force sw ift cooperation from allcon-
cerned. Cellular, phone, laser, com puter netw ork, PBXes, A T& T, Baby
Bells, long-distance entrepreneurs, packet radio. Som e docum ent, som e
m ighty court-order, that could slice through four thousand separate
form s of corporate red-tape,and get her at once to the source of calls,
the source of em ailthreats and viruses, the sources of bom b threats,
kidnapping threats. "From now on," she says, "the Lindberg baby w ill
alw ays die."

Som ething that w ould m ake the N et sit still, if only for a m om ent.
Som ething that w ould get her up to speed. Seven league boots. That's
w hat she really needs. "Those guys m ove in nanoseconds and I'm on the
Pony Express."
A nd then, too, there's the com ing internationalangle. Electronic crim e

has never been easy to localize, to tie to a physicaljurisdiction. A nd
phone- phreaks and hackers loathe boundaries, they jum p them w hen-
ever they can. The English. The D utch. A nd the Germ ans, especially the
ubiquitous Chaos Com puter Club. The A ustralians. They've alllearned
phone-phreaking from A m erica. It's a grow th m ischief industry. The
m ultinationalnetw orks are global, but governm ents and the police sim -
ply aren't. N either are the law s. O r the legalfram ew orks for citizen
protection.
O ne language is global, though — English. Phone phreaks speak English;

it's their native tongue even if they're Germ ans. English m ay have
started in England but now it's the N et language; it m ight as w ellbe
called "CN N ese."
A sians just aren't m uch into phone phreaking. They're the w orld m as-
ters at organized softw are piracy. The French aren't into phone-
phreaking either. The French are into com puterized industrialespi-
onage.
In the old days of the M IT righteous hackerdom , crashing system s didn't

hurt anybody. N ot allthat m uch, anyw ay. N ot perm anently. N ow the
players are m ore venal. N ow the consequences are w orse. H acking w ill
begin killing people soon. A lready there are m ethods of stacking calls
onto 911 system s,annoying the police,and possibly causing the death of
som e poor soulcalling in w ith a genuine em ergency. H ackers in A m trak
com puters, or air- traffic controlcom puters, w illkillsom ebody som e-
day. M aybe a lot of people. GailThackeray expects it.
A nd the viruses are getting nastier. The "Scud" virus is the latest one
out. It w ipes hard-disks.

A ccording to Thackeray, the idea that phone- phreaks are Robin H oods is
a fraud. They don't deserve this repute. Basically, they pick on the
w eak. A T& T now protects itself w ith the fearsom e A N I(A utom atic
N um ber Identification) trace capability. W hen A T& T w ised up and
tightened security generally, the phreaks drifted into the Baby Bells.
The Baby Bells lashed out in 1989 and 1990, so the phreaks sw itched to
sm aller long-distance entrepreneurs. Today, they are m oving into
locally ow ned PBXes and voice-m ailsystem s, w hich are fullof security
holes, dreadfully easy to hack. These victim s aren't the m oneybags
Sheriff of N ottingham or Bad King John, but sm allgroups of innocent
people w ho find it hard to protect them selves, and w ho really suffer
from these depredations. Phone phreaks pick on the w eak. They do it
for pow er. If it w ere legal, they w ouldn't do it. They don't w ant service,
or know ledge, they w ant the thrillof pow er- tripping. There's plenty
of know ledge or service around, if you're w illing to pay. Phone phreaks
don't pay, they steal. It's because it is illegalthat it feels like pow er,
that it gratifies their vanity.
Ileave GailThackeray w ith a handshake at the door of her office building

— a vast International- Style office building dow ntow n. The Sheriff's
office is renting part of it. Iget the vague im pression that quite a lot of
the building is em pty — realestate crash.
In a Phoenix sports apparelstore, in a dow ntow n m all, Im eet the "Sun

D evil" him self. H e is the cartoon m ascot of A rizona State University,
w hose footballstadium , "Sundevil," is near the localSecret Service H Q
— hence the nam e O peration Sundevil. The Sun D evilhim self is nam ed
"Sparky." Sparky the Sun D evilis m aroon and bright yellow , the school
colors. Sparky brandishes a three-tined yellow pitchfork. H e has a
sm allm ustache, pointed ears, a barbed tail, and is dashing forw ard jab-
bing the air w ith the pitchfork, w ith an expression of devilish glee.
Phoenix w as the hom e of O peration Sundevil.The Legion of D oom ran a

hacker bulletin board called "The Phoenix Project." A n A ustralian
hacker nam ed "Phoenix" once burrow ed through the Internet to attack
Cliff Stoll, then bragged and boasted about it to *The N ew York Tim es.*
This net of coincidence is both odd and m eaningless.

The headquarters of the A rizona A ttorney General, GailThackeray's for-
m er w orkplace, is on 1275 W ashington A venue. M any of the dow ntow n
streets in Phoenix are nam ed after prom inent A m erican presidents:
W ashington, Jefferson, M adison....
A fter dark, allthe em ployees go hom e to their suburbs. W ashington,

Jefferson and M adison — w hat w ould be the Phoenix inner city, if there
w ere an inner city in this spraw ling autom obile-bred tow n — becom e
the haunts of transients and derelicts. The hom eless. The sidew alks along
W ashington are lined w ith orange trees. Ripe fallen fruit lies scattered
like croquet balls on the sidew alks and gutters. N o one seem s to be eat-
ing them . Itry a fresh one. It tastes unbearably bitter.
The A ttorney General's office, built in 1981 during the Babbitt adm in-
istration, is a long low tw o- story building of w hite cem ent and w all-
sized sheets of curtain-glass. Behind each glass w allis a law yer's
office, quite open and visible to anyone strolling by. A cross the street is
a dour governm ent building labelled sim ply ECO N O M IC SECURITY,
som ething that has not been in great supply in the A m erican Southw est
lately.
The offices are about tw elve feet square. They feature tallw ooden cases
fullof red-spined law books; W ang com puter m onitors; telephones;
Post-it notes galore. A lso fram ed law diplom as and a generalexcess of
bad W estern landscape art. A nselA dam s photos are a big favorite, per-
haps to com pensate for the dism alspecter of the parking- lot, tw o acres
of striped black asphalt, w hich features gravellandscaping and som e
sickly-looking barrel cacti.
It has grow n dark. GailThackeray has told m e that the people w ho w ork
late here, are afraid of m uggings in the parking lot. It seem s cruelly
ironic that a w om an tracing electronic racketeers across the interstate
labyrinth of Cyberspace should fear an assault by a hom eless derelict in
the parking lot of her ow n w orkplace.
Perhaps this is less than coincidence. Perhaps these tw o seem ingly dis-
parate w orlds are som ehow generating one another. The poor and disen-
franchised take to the streets, w hile the rich and com puter-equipped,

safe in their bedroom s, chatter over their m odem s. Q uite often the
derelicts kick the glass out and break in to the law yers' offices, if they
see som ething they need or w ant badly enough.
Icross the parking lot to the street behind the A ttorney General's office.
A pair of young tram ps are bedding dow n on flattened sheets of card-
board, under an alcove stretching over the sidew alk. O ne tram p w ears a
glitter-covered T-shirt reading "CA LIFO RN IA " in Coca-Cola cursive.
His nose and cheeks look chafed and sw ollen;they glisten w ith w hat
seem s to be V aseline. The other tram p has a ragged long-sleeved shirt
and lank brow n hair parted in the m iddle. They both w ear blue jeans
coated in grim e. They are both drunk.
"You guys crash here a lot?" Iask them .
They look at m e w arily. Iam w earing black jeans, a black pinstriped

suit jacket and a black silk tie. Ihave odd shoes and a funny haircut.
"It's our first tim e here," says the red-nosed tram p unconvincingly.
There is a lot of cardboard stacked here. M ore than any tw o people could
use.
"W e usually stay at the V innie's dow n the street," says the brow n-
haired tram p, puffing a M arlboro w ith a m editative air, as he spraw ls
w ith his head on a blue nylon backpack. "The Saint V incent's."
"You know w ho w orks in that building over there?" Iask, pointing.
The brow n-haired tram p shrugs. "Som e kind of attorneys, it says."
` W e urge one another to take it easy. Igive them five bucks.
A block dow n the street Im eet a vigorous w orkm an w ho is w heeling

along som e kind of industrialtrolley; it has w hat appears to be a tank of
propane on it.
W e m ake eye contact. W e nod politely. Iw alk past him . "Hey! Excuse
m e sir!" he says.

"Yes?" Isay, stopping and turning.
"H ave you seen," the guy says rapidly, "a black guy, about 6'7", scars
on both his cheeks like this — " he gestures — "w ears a black baseball
cap on backw ards, w andering around here anyplace?"
"Sounds like Idon't m uch *w ant* to m eet him ," Isay.
"H e took m y w allet," says m y new acquaintance. "Took it this m orning.

Y'know , som e people w ould be *scared* of a guy like that. But I'm not
scared. I'm from Chicago. I'm gonna hunt him dow n. W e do things like
that in Chicago."
"Yeah?"
"Iw ent to the cops and now he's got an A PB out on his ass," he says w ith
satisfaction. "You run into him , you let m e know ."
"O kay," Isay. "W hat is your nam e, sir?"
"Stanley...."
"A nd how can Ireach you?"
"O h," Stanley says, in the sam e rapid voice, "you don't have to reach,
uh,m e. You can just callthe cops. Go straight to the cops." He reaches
into a pocket and pulls out a greasy piece of pasteboard."See,here's m y
report on him ."
Ilook. The "report," the size of an index card, is labelled PRO -A CT:
Phoenix Residents O pposing A ctive Crim e Threat.... or is it O rganized
A gainst Crim e Threat? In the darkening street it's hard to read. Som e
kind of vigilante group? N eighborhood w atch? Ifeelvery puzzled.
"A re you a police officer, sir?"
H e sm iles, seem s very pleased by the question.

"N o," he says.
` "But you are a 'Phoenix Resident?'"
"W ould you believe a hom eless person," Stanley says.
"Really? But w hat's w ith the..." For the first tim e Itake a close look at
Stanley's trolley. It's a rubber-w heeled thing of industrialm etal, but
the device Ihad m istaken for a tank of propane is in fact a w ater-cooler.
Stanley also has an A rm y duffel-bag, stuffed tight as a sausage w ith
clothing or perhaps a tent, and, at the base of his trolley, a cardboard
box and a battered leather briefcase.
"Isee," Isay, quite at a loss. For the first tim e Inotice that Stanley has
a w allet. H e has not lost his w allet at all. It is in his back pocket and
chained to his belt. It's not a new w allet. It seem s to have seen a lot of
w ear.
"W ell, you know how it is, brother," says Stanley. N ow that Iknow that
he is hom eless — *a possible threat* — m y entire perception of him
has changed in an instant. His speech, w hich once seem ed just bright
and enthusiastic,now seem s to have a dangerous tang of m ania. "Ihave
to do this!" he assures m e. "Track this guy dow n...It's a thing Ido...you
know ... to keep m yself together!" H e sm iles, nods, lifts his trolley by
its decaying rubber handgrips.
"Gotta w ork together, y'know , " Stanley boom s, his face alight w ith
cheerfulness, "the police can't do everything!"
The gentlem en Im et in m y strollin dow ntow n Phoenix are the only

com puter illiterates in this book. To regard them as irrelevant, how ev-
er, w ould be a grave m istake.
A s com puterization spreads across society, the populace at large is sub-

jected to w ave after w ave of future shock. But,as a necessary converse,
the "com puter com m unity" itself is subjected to w ave after w ave of
incom ing com puter illiterates. H ow w illthose currently enjoying

A m erica's digitalbounty regard, and treat, allthis teem ing refuse
yearning to breathe free? W illthe electronic frontier be another Land
of O pportunity — or an arm ed and m onitored enclave, w here the disen-
franchised snuggle on their cardboard at the locked doors of our houses
of justice?
Som e people just don't get along w ith com puters. They can't read. They
can't type. They just don't have it in their heads to m aster arcane
instructions in w irebound m anuals. Som ew here, the process of com -
puterization of the populace w illreach a lim it. Som e people — quite
decent people m aybe, w ho m ight have thrived in any other situation —
w illbe left irretrievably outside the bounds. W hat's to be done w ith
these people, in the bright new shiny electrow orld? H ow w illthey be
regarded, by the m ouse-w hizzing m asters of cyberspace? W ith con-
tem pt? Indifference? Fear?
In retrospect, it astonishes m e to realize how quickly poor Stanley

becam e a perceived threat. Surprise and fear are closely allied feelings.
A nd the w orld of com puting is fullof surprises.
Im et one character in the streets of Phoenix w hose role in those book is

suprem ely and directly relevant. That personage w as Stanley's giant
thieving scarred phantom . This phantasm is everyw here in this book.
H e is the specter haunting cyberspace.
Som etim es he's a m aniac vandalready to sm ash the phone system for no
sane reason at all. Som etim es he's a fascist fed, coldly program m ing his
m ighty m ainfram es to destroy our Billof Rights. Som etim es he's a telco
bureaucrat, covertly conspiring to register allm odem s in the service of
an O rw ellian surveillance regim e. M ostly, though, this fearsom e
phantom is a "hacker." He's strange,he doesn't belong,he's not autho-
rized, he doesn't sm ellright, he's not keeping his proper place, he's not
one of us. The focus of fear is the hacker,for m uch the sam e reasons
that Stanley's fancied assailant is black.
Stanley's dem on can't go aw ay,because he doesn't exist. Despite single-

m inded and trem endous effort, he can't be arrested, sued, jailed, or
fired. The only constructive w ay to do *anything* about him is to learn

m ore about Stanley him self. This learning process m ay be repellent, it
m ay be ugly, it m ay involve grave elem ents of paranoiac confusion, but
it's necessary. Know ing Stanley requires som ething m ore than class-
crossing condescension. It requires m ore than steely legalobjectivity.
It requires hum an com passion and sym pathy.
To know Stanley is to know his dem on. If you know the other guy's
dem on,then m aybe you'llcom e to know som e of your ow n. You'llbe
able to separate reality from illusion. A nd then you w on't do your
cause,and yourself,m ore harm than good.Like poor dam ned Stanley
from Chicago did.
_____
The FederalCom puter Investigations Com m ittee (FCIC) is the m ost

im portant and influentialorganization in the realm of A m erican com -
puter-crim e. Since the police of other countries have largely taken
their com puter-crim e cues from A m erican m ethods, the FCIC m ight
w ellbe called the m ost im portant com puter crim e group in the w orld.
It is also, by federalstandards, an organization of great unorthodoxy.

State and localinvestigators m ix w ith federalagents. Law yers, finan-
cialauditors and com puter-security program m ers trade notes w ith
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
tw o cents' w orth. The FCIC is the antithesis of a form albureaucracy.
M em bers of the FCIC are obscurely proud of this fact; they recognize
their group as aberrant, but are entirely convinced that this, for them ,
outright *w eird* behavior is nevertheless *absolutely necessary* to
get their jobs done.
FCIC regulars — from the Secret Service, the FBI, the IRS, the
D epartm ent of Labor,the offices of federalattorneys,state police,the
A ir Force, from m ilitary intelligence — often attend m eetings, held
hither and thither across the country, at their ow n expense. The FCIC
doesn't get grants. It doesn't charge m em bership fees. It doesn't have a
boss. It has no headquarters — just a m aildrop in W ashington D C, at the

Fraud D ivision of the Secret Service. It doesn't have a budget. It doesn't
have schedules. It m eets three tim es a year — sort of.Som etim es it
issues publications, but the FCIC has no regular publisher, no treasur-
er, not even a secretary. There are no m inutes of FCIC m eetings. N on-
federalpeople are considered "non-voting m em bers," but there's not
m uch in the w ay of elections. There are no badges, lapelpins or certifi-
cates of m em bership. Everyone is on a first- nam e basis. There are
about forty of them . N obody know s how m any,exactly. People com e,
people go — som etim es people "go" form ally but stillhang around any-
w ay. N obody has ever exactly figured out w hat "m em bership" of this
"Com m ittee" actually entails.
Strange as this m ay seem to som e, to anyone fam iliar w ith the social
w orld of com puting, the "organization" of the FCIC is very recognizable.
For years now ,econom ists and m anagem ent theorists have speculated
that the tidalw ave of the inform ation revolution w ould destroy rigid,
pyram idalbureaucracies, w here everything is top- dow n and centrally
controlled. H ighly trained "em ployees" w ould take on m uch greater
autonom y, being self-starting, and self-m otivating, m oving from place
to place, task to task, w ith great speed and fluidity. "A d-hocracy" w ould
rule, w ith groups of people spontaneously knitting together across
organizationallines, tackling the problem at hand, applying intense
com puter-aided expertise to it, and then vanishing w hence they cam e.
This is m ore or less w hat has actually happened in the w orld of federal
com puter investigation. W ith the conspicuous exception of the phone
com panies, w hich are after allover a hundred years old, practically
*every* organization that plays any im portant role in this book func-
tions just like the FCIC. The Chicago Task Force, the A rizona
Racketeering Unit, the Legion of D oom , the Phrack crow d, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation — they *all* look and act like "tiger team s" or
"user's groups." They are allelectronic ad-hocracies leaping up spon-
taneously to attem pt to m eet a need.
Som e are police. Som e are, by strict definition, crim inals. Som e are
politicalinterest-groups. But every single group has that sam e quality
of apparent spontaneity — "Hey,gang! M y uncle's got a barn — let's put

on a show !"
Every one of these groups is em barrassed by this "am ateurism ," and,
for the sake of their public im age in a w orld of non-com puter people,
they allattem pt to look as stern and form aland im pressive as possible.
These electronic frontier-dw ellers resem ble groups of nineteenth-cen-
tury pioneers hankering after the respectability of statehood. There are
how ever, tw o crucialdifferences in the historicalexperience of these
"pioneers" of the nineteeth and tw enty-first centuries.
First, pow erfulinform ation technology *does* play into the hands of
sm all, fluid, loosely organized groups. There have alw ays been "pio-
neers," "hobbyists," "am ateurs," "dilettantes," "volunteers," "m ove-
m ents," "users' groups" and "blue-ribbon panels of experts" around.
But a group of this kind — w hen technically equipped to ship huge
am ounts of specialized inform ation, at lightning speed, to its m em bers,
to governm ent, and to the press — is sim ply a different kind of anim al.
It's like the difference betw een an eeland an electric eel.
The second crucialchange is that A m erican society is currently in a

state approaching perm anent technologicalrevolution. In the w orld of
com puters particularly, it is practically im possible to *ever* stop
being a "pioneer," unless you either drop dead or deliberately jum p off
the bus. The scene has never slow ed dow n enough to becom e w ell-insti-
tutionalized. A nd after tw enty, thirty, forty years the "com puter revo-
lution" continues to spread, to perm eate new corners of society.
A nything that really w orks is already obsolete.
If you spend your entire w orking life as a "pioneer," the w ord "pioneer"
begins to lose its m eaning. Your w ay of life looks less and less like an
introduction to "som ething else" m ore stable and organized, and m ore
and m ore like *just the w ay things are.* A "perm anent revolution" is
really a contradiction in term s. If "turm oil" lasts long enough, it sim -
ply becom es *a new kind of society* — stillthe sam e gam e of history,
but new players, new rules.
A pply this to the w orld of late tw entieth-century law enforcem ent, and
the im plications are noveland puzzling indeed. A ny bureaucratic rule-

book you w rite about com puter-crim e w illbe flaw ed w hen you w rite it,
and alm ost an antique by the tim e it sees print. The fluidity and fast
reactions of the FCIC give them a great advantage in this regard, w hich
explains their success. Even w ith the best w illin the w orld (w hich it
does not, in fact, possess) it is im possible for an organization the size of
the U.S.FederalBureau of Investigation to get up to speed on the theory
and practice of com puter crim e. If they tried to train alltheir agents to
do this, it w ould be *suicidal,* as they w ould *never be able to do any-
thing else.*
The FBIdoes try to train its agents in the basics of electronic crim e, at
their base in Q uantico, V irginia. A nd the Secret Service, along w ith
m any other law enforcem ent groups, runs quite successfuland w ell-
attended training courses on w ire fraud, business crim e, and com puter
intrusion at the FederalLaw Enforcem ent Training Center (FLETC,
pronounced "fletsy") in Glynco,Georgia. But the best efforts of these
bureaucracies does not rem ove the absolute need for a "cutting-edge
m ess" like the FCIC.
For you see — the m em bers of FCIC *are* the trainers of the rest of law
enforcem ent. Practically and literally speaking, they are the Glynco
com puter-crim e faculty by another nam e. If the FCIC w ent over a cliff
on a bus,the U.S.law enforcem ent com m unity w ould be rendered deaf
dum b and blind in the w orld of com puter crim e, and w ould sw iftly feela
desperate need to reinvent them .A nd this is no tim e to go starting from
scratch.
O n June 11, 1991, Ionce again arrived in Phoenix, A rizona, for the
latest m eeting of the FederalCom puter Investigations Com m ittee. This
w as m ore or less the tw entieth m eeting of this stellar group. The count
w as uncertain, since nobody could figure out w hether to include the
m eetings of "the Colluquy," w hich is w hat the FCIC w as called in the
m id-1980s before it had even m anaged to obtain the dignity of its ow n
acronym .
Since m y last visit to A rizona, in M ay, the localA zScam bribery scandal
had resolved itself in a generalm uddle of hum iliation. The Phoenix
chief of police,w hose agents had videotaped nine state legislators up to
B RU C E ST E RL I N G — T H E H AC KER CR AC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 199

no good, had resigned his office in a tussle w ith the Phoenix city council
over the propriety of his undercover operations.
The Phoenix Chief could now join GailThackeray and eleven of her clos-
est associates in the shared experience of politically m otivated unem -
ploym ent. A s of June, resignations w ere stillcontinuing at the A rizona
A ttorney General's office, w hich could be interpreted as either a N ew
Broom Sw eeping Clean or a N ight of the Long Knives Part II, depending
on your point of view .
The m eeting of FCIC w as held at the Scottsdale Hilton Resort.Scottsdale

is a w ealthy suburb of Phoenix, know n as "Scottsdull" to scoffing local
trendies, but w ell-equipped w ith posh shopping- m alls and m anicured
law ns, w hile conspicuously undersupplied w ith hom eless derelicts. The
Scottsdale H ilton Resort w as a spraw ling hotelin postm odern crypto-
Southw estern style. It featured a "m ission belltow er" plated in
turquoise tile and vaguely resem bling a Saudim inaret.
Inside it w as allbarbarically striped Santa Fe Style decor. There w as a

health spa dow nstairs and a large oddly-shaped poolin the patio. A
poolside um brella-stand offered Ben and Jerry's politically correct
Peace Pops.
Iregistered as a m em ber of FCIC, attaining a handy discount rate, then

w ent in search of the Feds.Sure enough,at the back of the hotelgrounds
cam e the unm istakable sound of GailThackeray holding forth.
Since Ihad also attended the Com puters Freedom and Privacy conference
(about w hich m ore later), this w as the second tim e Ihad seen Thackeray
in a group of her law enforcem ent colleagues. O nce again Iw as struck
by how sim ply pleased they seem ed to see her. It w as naturalthat she'd
get *som e* attention,as Gailw as one of tw o w om en in a group of som e
thirty m en; but there w as a lot m ore to it than that.
GailThackeray personifies the socialglue of the FCIC. They could give a

dam n about her losing her job w ith the A ttorney General. They w ere
sorry about it, of course, but hell, they'd alllost jobs. If they w ere the
kind of guys w ho liked steady boring jobs,they w ould never have gotten

into com puter w ork in the first place.
Iw andered into her circle and w as im m ediately introduced to five

strangers. The conditions of m y visit at FCIC w ere review ed. Iw ould
not quote anyone directly. Iw ould not tie opinions expressed to the
agencies of the attendees. Iw ould not (a purely hypotheticalexam ple)
report the conversation of a guy from the Secret Service talking quite
civilly to a guy from the FBI, as these tw o agencies *never* talk to
each other, and the IRS (also present, also hypothetical) *never talks to
anybody.*
W orse yet,Iw as forbidden to attend the first conference. A nd Ididn't. I

have no idea w hat the FCIC w as up to behind closed doors that afternoon.I
rather suspect that they w ere engaging in a frank and thorough confes-
sion of their errors, goof-ups and blunders, as this has been a feature of
every FCIC m eeting since their legendary M em phis beer- bust of 1986.
Perhaps the single greatest attraction of FCIC is that it is a place w here
you can go, let your hair dow n, and com pletely levelw ith people w ho
actually com prehend w hat you are talking about. N ot only do they under-
stand you, but they *really pay attention,* they are *gratefulfor your
insights,* and they *forgive you,* w hich in nine cases out of ten is
som ething even your boss can't do,because as soon as you start talking
"RO M ," "BBS," or "T-1 trunk," his eyes glaze over.
Ihad nothing m uch to do that afternoon. The FCIC w ere beavering aw ay

in their conference room . D oors w ere firm ly closed, w indow s too dark
to peer through. Iw ondered w hat a realhacker, a com puter intruder,
w ould do at a m eeting like this.
The answ er cam e at once. He w ould "trash" the place. N ot reduce the
place to trash in som e orgy of vandalism ;that's not the use of the term
in the hacker m ilieu. N o, he w ould quietly *em pty the trash baskets*
and silently raid any valuable data indiscreetly throw n aw ay.
Journalists have been know n to do this. (Journalists hunting inform a-

tion have been know n to do alm ost every single unethicalthing that
hackers have ever done. They also throw in a few aw fultechniques all
their ow n.) The legality of 'trashing' is som ew hat dubious but it is not

in fact flagrantly illegal. It w as, how ever, absurd to contem plate
trashing the FCIC. These people knew allabout trashing. Iw ouldn't last
fifteen seconds.
The idea sounded interesting,though. I'd been hearing a lot about the
practice lately. O n the spur of the m om ent, Idecided Iw ould try trash-
ing the office *across the hall* from the FCIC, an area w hich had noth-
ing to do w ith the investigators.
The office w as tiny; six chairs, a table.... N evertheless, it w as open, so I

dug around in its plastic trash can.
To m y utter astonishm ent, Icam e up w ith the torn scraps of a SPRIN T

long-distance phone bill. M ore digging produced a bank statem ent and
the scraps of a hand-w ritten letter, along w ith gum , cigarette ashes,
candy w rappers and a day-old-issue of USA TO D A Y.
The trash w ent back in its receptacle w hile the scraps of data w ent into
m y travelbag. Idetoured through the hotelsouvenir shop for som e
Scotch tape and w ent up to m y room .
Coincidence or not, it w as quite true. Som e poor soulhad, in fact,

throw n a SPRIN T billinto the hotel's trash. D ate M ay 1991, total
am ount due: $252.36. N ot a business phone, either, but a residential
bill, in the nam e of som eone called Evelyn (not her realnam e).
Evelyn's records show ed a ## PA ST D UE BILL ##! H ere w as her
nine-digit account ID . H ere w as a stern com puter-printed w arning:
"TREA T YO UR FO N CA RD A S YO U W O ULD A N Y CREDIT CA RD. TO SECURE

A GA IN ST FRA UD , N EV ER GIV E YO UR FO N CA RD N UM BER O V ER THE PHO N E
UN LESS YO U IN ITIA TED TH E CA LL. IF YO U RECEIV E SUSPICIO US CA LLS
PLEA SE N O TIFY CUSTO M ER SERV ICE IM M ED IA TELY!"
Iexam ined m y w atch. Stillplenty of tim e left for the FCIC to carry on.
Isorted out the scraps of Evelyn's SPRIN T billand re-assem bled them
w ith fresh Scotch tape. H ere w as her ten-digit FO N CA RD num ber.
D idn't seem to have the ID num ber necessary to cause realfraud trouble.

Idid, how ever, have Evelyn's hom e phone num ber. A nd the phone num -
bers for a w hole crow d of Evelyn's long-distance friends and acquain-
tances.In San Diego,Folsom ,Redondo,Las V egas,La Jolla,Topeka,and
N ortham pton M assachusetts. Even som ebody in A ustralia!
Iexam ined other docum ents. Here w as a bank statem ent. It w as

Evelyn's IRA account dow n at a bank in San M ateo California (totalbal-
ance $1877.20). H ere w as a charge-card billfor $382.64. She w as
paying it off bit by bit.
D riven by m otives that w ere com pletely unethicaland prurient, Inow

exam ined the handw ritten notes. They had been torn fairly thoroughly,
so m uch so that it took m e alm ost an entire five m inutes to reassem ble
them .
They w ere drafts of a love letter. They had been w ritten on the lined
stationery of Evelyn's em ployer, a biom edicalcom pany. Probably
w ritten at w ork w hen she should have been doing som ething else.
"D ear Bob," (not his realnam e) "Iguess in everyone's life there com es
a tim e w hen hard decisions have to be m ade,and this is a difficult one
for m e — very upsetting. Since you haven't called m e,and Idon't
understand w hy, Ican only surm ise it's because you don't w ant to. I
thought Iw ould have heard from you Friday. Idid have a few unusual
problem s w ith m y phone and possibly you tried, Ihope so. "Robert, you
asked m e to 'let go'..."
The first note ended. *Unusualproblem s w ith her phone?* Ilooked

sw iftly at the next note.
"Bob, not hearing from you for the w hole w eekend has left m e very per-
plexed..."
N ext draft.
"D ear Bob, there is so m uch Idon't understand right now , and Iw ish I
did. Iw ish Icould talk to you, but for som e unknow n reason you have
elected not to call— this is so difficult for m e to understand..."

She tried again.
"Bob, Since Ihave alw ays held you in such high esteem , Ihad every hope
that w e could rem ain good friends, but now one essentialingredient is
m issing — respect. Your ability to discard people w hen their purpose is
served is appalling to m e. The kindest thing you could do for m e now is
to leave m e alone.You are no longer w elcom e in m y heart or hom e..."
Try again.
"Bob,Iw rote a very factualnote to you to say how m uch respect Ihad
lost for you, by the w ay you treat people, m e in particular, so uncaring
and cold.The kindest thing you can do for m e is to leave m e alone entire-
ly, as you are no longer w elcom e in m y heart or hom e. Iw ould appreci-
ate it if you could retire your debt to m e as soon as possible — Iw ish no
link to you in any w ay. Sincerely, Evelyn."
Good heavens,Ithought,the bastard actually ow es her m oney! Iturned

to the next page.
"Bob: very sim ple. GO O D BYE! N o m ore m ind gam es — no m ore fascina-
tion — no m ore coldness — no m ore respect for you! It's over — Finis.
Evie"
There w ere tw o versions of the finalbrushoff letter, but they read about
the sam e. M aybe she hadn't sent it. The finalitem in m y illicit and
sham efulbooty w as an envelope addressed to "Bob" at his hom e address,
but it had no stam p on it and it hadn't been m ailed.
M aybe she'd just been blow ing off steam because her rascalboyfriend
had neglected to callher one w eekend. Big deal. M aybe they'd kissed and
m ade up,m aybe she and Bob w ere dow n at Pop's Chocolate Shop now ,
sharing a m alted. Sure.
Easy to find out. A llIhad to do w as callEvelyn up. W ith a half-clever

story and enough brass- plated gallIcould probably trick the truth out
of her. Phone-phreaks and hackers deceive people over the phone allthe

tim e. It's called "socialengineering." Socialengineering is a very com -
m on practice in the underground, and alm ost m agically effective. H um an
beings are alm ost alw ays the w eakest link in com puter security. The
sim plest w ay to learn Things You A re N ot M eant To Know is sim ply to
callup and exploit the know ledgeable people. W ith socialengineering,
you use the bits of specialized know ledge you already have as a key,to
m anipulate people into believing that you are legitim ate. You can then
coax, flatter, or frighten them into revealing alm ost anything you w ant
to know . D eceiving people (especially over the phone) is easy and fun.
Exploiting their gullibility is very gratifying; it m akes you feel very
superior to them .
If I'd been a m alicious hacker on a trashing raid, Iw ould now have

Evelyn very m uch in m y pow er. Given allthis inside data, it w ouldn't
take m uch effort at allto invent a convincing lie. If Iw ere ruthless
enough, and jaded enough, and clever enough, this m om entary indiscre-
tion of hers — m aybe com m itted in tears,w ho know s — could cause her a
w hole w orld of confusion and grief.
Ididn't even have to have a *m alicious* m otive. M aybe I'd be "on her
side," and callup Bob instead,and anonym ously threaten to break both
his kneecaps if he didn't take Evelyn out for a steak dinner pronto. It
w as stillprofoundly *none of m y business.* To have gotten this
know ledge at allw as a sordid act and to use it w ould be to inflict a sordid
injury.
To do allthese aw fulthings w ould require exactly zero high-tech

expertise. A llit w ould take w as the w illingness to do it and a certain
am ount of bent im agination.
Iw ent back dow nstairs. The hard-w orking FCIC, w ho had labored forty-
five m inutes over their schedule, w ere through for the day, and
adjourned to the hotelbar. W e allhad a beer.
Ihad a chat w ith a guy about "Isis," or rather IA CIS, the International
A ssociation of Com puter Investigation Specialists. They're into "com -
puter forensics," the techniques of picking com puter- system s apart
w ithout destroying vitalevidence. IA CIS, currently run out of O regon, is

com prised of investigators in the U.S., Canada, Taiw an and Ireland.
"Taiw an and Ireland?" I said. A re *Taiw an* and *Ireland* really in
the forefront of this stuff? W ellnot exactly, m y inform ant adm itted.
They just happen to have been the first ones to have caught on by w ord of
m outh. Still, the internationalangle counts, because this is obviously
an internationalproblem . Phone-lines go everyw here.
There w as a M ountie here from the RoyalCanadian M ounted Police. H e

seem ed to be having quite a good tim e. Nobody had flung this Canadian
out because he m ight pose a foreign security risk. These are cyberspace
cops. They stillw orry a lot about "jurisdictions," but m ere geography
is the least of their troubles.
N A SA had failed to show . N A SA suffers a lot from com puter intrusions,

in particular from A ustralian raiders and a w ell-trum peted Chaos
Com puter Club case, and in 1990 there w as a brief press flurry w hen
it w as revealed that one of N A SA 's Houston branch-exchanges had been
system atically ripped off by a gang of phone-phreaks. But the N A SA
guys had had their funding cut. They w ere stripping everything.
A ir Force O SI, its O ffice of SpecialInvestigations, is the *only* federal

entity dedicated full-tim e to com puter security. They'd been expected to
show up in force,but som e of them had cancelled — a Pentagon budget
pinch.
A s the em pties piled up, the guys began joshing around and telling w ar-
stories. "These are cops," Thackeray said tolerantly. "If they're not
talking shop they talk about w om en and beer."
Iheard the story about the guy w ho,asked for "a copy" of a com puter
disk, *photocopied the labelon it.* He put the floppy disk onto the glass
plate of a photocopier. The blast of static w hen the copier w orked com -
pletely erased allthe realinform ation on the disk.
Som e other poor souls threw a w hole bag of confiscated diskettes into the
squad-car trunk next to the police radio. The pow erfulradio signal
blasted them ,too.

W e heard a bit about D ave Geneson, the first com puter prosecutor, a
m ainfram e-runner in D ade County, turned law yer. D ave Geneson w as
one guy w ho had hit the ground running, a signalvirtue in m aking the
transition to com puter-crim e. It w as generally agreed that it w as easi-
er to learn the w orld of com puters first, then police or prosecutorial
w ork. You could take certain com puter people and train 'em to successful
police w ork — but of course they had to have the *cop m entality.* They
had to have street sm arts. Patience. Persistence. A nd discretion.
You've got to m ake sure they're not hot- shots,show -offs, "cow boys."
M ost of the folks in the bar had backgrounds in m ilitary intelligence, or

drugs, or hom icide. It w as rudely opined that "m ilitary intelligence"
w as a contradiction in term s, w hile even the grisly w orld of hom icide
w as considered cleaner than drug enforcem ent. O ne guy had been 'w ay
undercover doing dope-w ork in Europe for four years straight. "I'm
alm ost recovered now ," he said deadpan, w ith the acid black hum or that
is pure cop. "H ey, now Ican say *fucker* w ithout putting *m other*
in front of it."
"In the cop w orld," another guy said earnestly, "everything is good and
bad, black and w hite. In the com puter w orld everything is gray."
O ne guy — a founder of the FCIC,w ho'd been w ith the group since it w as
just the Colluquy — described his ow n introduction to the field. H e'd
been a W ashington D C hom icide guy called in on a "hacker" case. From
the w ord "hacker," he naturally assum ed he w as on the trailof a knife-
w ielding m arauder,and w ent to the com puter center expecting blood and
a body. W hen he finally figured out w hat w as happening there (after
loudly dem anding, in vain, that the program m ers "speak English"), he
called headquarters and told them he w as clueless about com puters.
They told him nobody else knew diddly either,and to get the hellback to
w ork.
So,he said,he had proceeded by com parisons.By analogy. By m etaphor.

"Som ebody broke in to your com puter, huh?" Breaking and entering; I
can understand that. How 'd he get in? "O ver the phone- lines."
H arassing phone-calls, Ican understand that! W hat w e need here is a
tap and a trace!

It w orked. It w as better than nothing. A nd it w orked a lot faster w hen
he got hold of another cop w ho'd done som ething sim ilar. A nd then the
tw o of them got another,and another,and pretty soon the Colluquy w as a
happening thing. It helped a lot that everybody seem ed to know Carlton
Fitzpatrick, the data-processing trainer in G lynco.
The ice broke big-tim e in M em phis in '86. The Colluquy had attracted a
bunch of new guys — Secret Service, FBI, m ilitary, other feds, heavy
guys.Nobody w anted to tellanybody anything. They suspected that if
w ord got back to the hom e office they'd allbe fired. They passed an
uncom fortably guarded afternoon.
The form alities got them now here. But after the form alsession w as
over, the organizers brought in a case of beer. A s soon as the partici-
pants knocked it off w ith the bureaucratic ranks and turf-fighting,
everything changed. "Ibared m y soul," one veteran rem inisced proudly.
By nightfallthey w ere building pyram ids of em pty beer-cans and doing
everything but com posing a team fight song.
FCIC w ere not the only com puter-crim e people around. There w as
D A TTA (D istrict A ttorneys'Technology Theft A ssociation), though they
m ostly specialized in chip theft, intellectualproperty, and black-m ar-
ket cases. There w as HTCIA (High Tech Com puter Investigators
A ssociation), also out in Silicon V alley, a year older than FCIC and fea-
turing brilliant people like D onald Ingraham . There w as LEETA C (Law
Enforcem ent Electronic Technology A ssistance Com m ittee) in Florida,
and com puter- crim e units in Illinois and M aryland and Texas and O hio
and Colorado and Pennsylvania. But these w ere localgroups. FCIC w ere
the first to really netw ork nationally and on a federallevel.
FCIC people live on the phone lines. N ot on bulletin board system s —

they know very w ellw hat boards are, and they know that boards aren't
secure. Everyone in the FCIC has a voice-phone billlike you w ouldn't
believe. FCIC people have been tight w ith the telco people for a long
tim e. Telephone cyberspace is their native habitat.
FCIC has three basic sub-tribes: the trainers, the security people, and

the investigators. That's w hy it's called an "Investigations Com m ittee"
w ith no m ention of the term "com puter-crim e" — the dreaded "C-w ord."
FCIC, officially, is "an association of agencies rather than individuals;"
unofficially, this field is sm allenough that the influence of individuals
and individualexpertise is param ount. A ttendance is by invitation only,
and m ost everyone in FCIC considers him self a prophet w ithout honor in
his ow n house.
A gain and again Iheard this, w ith different term s but identicalsenti-
m ents. "I'd been sitting in the w ilderness talking to m yself." "Iw as
totally isolated." "Iw as desperate." "FCIC is the best thing there is
about com puter crim e in A m erica." "FCIC is w hat really w orks." "This
is w here you hear realpeople telling you w hat's really happening out
there, not just law yers picking nits." "W e taught each other everything
w e knew ."
The sincerity of these statem ents convinces m e that this is true. FCIC is
the realthing and it is invaluable. It's also very sharply at odds w ith
the rest of the traditions and pow er structure in A m erican law enforce-
m ent. There probably hasn't been anything around as loose and go-get-
ting as the FCIC since the start of the U.S. Secret Service in the 1860s.
FCIC people are living like tw enty-first- century people in a tw enti-
eth-century environm ent, and w hile there's a great dealto be said for
that,there's also a great dealto be said against it,and those against it
happen to controlthe budgets.
Ilistened to tw o FCIC guys from Jersey com pare life histories. O ne of

them had been a biker in a fairly heavy-duty gang in the 1960s. "O h,
did you know so-and-so?" said the other guy from Jersey. "Big guy,
heavyset?"
"Yeah, Iknew him ."
"Yeah,he w as one of ours. He w as our plant in the gang."
"Really? W ow ! Yeah, Iknew him . H elluva guy."
Thackeray rem inisced at length about being tear-gassed blind in the

N ovem ber 1969 antiw ar protests in W ashington Circle, covering them
for her college paper. "O h yeah, Iw as there," said another cop. "Glad to
hear that tear gas hit som ethin'. Haw haw haw ." He'd been so blind
him self, he confessed, that later that day he'd arrested a sm alltree.
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
w orld — your bunco guys, your drug guys, your tax guys, but the only
group that m atches FCIC for sheer isolation are probably the child-
pornography people. Because they both dealw ith conspirators w ho are
desperate to exchange forbidden data and also desperate to hide;and
because nobody else in law enforcem ent even w ants to hear about it.
FCIC people tend to change jobs a lot. They tend not to get the equipm ent
and training they w ant and need. A nd they tend to get sued quite often.
A s the night w ore on and a band set up in the bar, the talk grew darker.
N othing ever gets done in governm ent,som eone opined,untilthere's a
*disaster.* Com puting disasters are aw ful, but there's no denying that
they greatly help the credibility of FCIC people. The Internet W orm ,
for instance. "For years w e'd been w arning about that — but it's nothing
com pared to w hat's com ing." They expect horrors,these people. They
know that nothing w illreally get done untilthere is a horror.
_____
N ext day w e heard an extensive briefing from a guy w ho'd been a com -
puter cop, gotten into hot w ater w ith an A rizona city council, and now
installed com puter netw orks for a living (at a considerable rise in pay).
H e talked about pulling fiber-optic netw orks apart.
Even a single com puter, w ith enough peripherals, is a literal"netw ork"

— a bunch of m achines allcabled together, generally w ith a com plexity
that puts stereo units to sham e. FCIC people invent and publicize
m ethods of seizing com puters and m aintaining their evidence. Sim ple
things, som etim es, but vitalrules of thum b for street cops, w ho now a-
days often stum ble across a busy com puter in the m idst of a drug inves-
tigation or a w hite-collar bust. For instance: Photograph the system
before you touch it. Labelthe ends of allthe cables before you detach

anything. "Park" the heads on the disk drives before you m ove them .
Get the diskettes. D on't put the diskettes in m agnetic fields.D on't w rite
on diskettes w ith ballpoint pens. Get the m anuals. Get the printouts.
Get the handw ritten notes. Copy data before you look at it,and then
exam ine the copy instead of the original.
N ow our lecturer distributed copied diagram s of a typicalLA N or "Local

A rea N etw ork",w hich happened to be out of Connecticut. *O ne hundred
and fifty-nine* desktop com puters, each w ith its ow n peripherals.
Three "file servers." Five "star couplers" each w ith thirty-tw o ports.
O ne sixteen- port coupler off in the corner office. A llthese m achines
talking to each other, distributing electronic m ail, distributing soft-
w are, distributing, quite possibly, crim inalevidence. A lllinked by
high- capacity fiber-optic cable. A bad guy — cops talk a lot about "bad
guys" — m ight be lurking on PC # 4 7 or # 1 2 3 and distributing his ill
doings onto som e dupe's "personal" m achine in another office — or
another floor — or, quite possibly, tw o or three m iles aw ay! O r, con-
ceivably, the evidence m ight be "data-striped" — split up into m eaning-
less slivers stored, one by one, on a w hole crow d of different disk dri-
ves.
The lecturer challenged us for solutions. Ifor one w as utterly clueless.

A s far as Icould figure, the Cossacks w ere at the gate; there w ere prob-
ably m ore disks in this single building than w ere seized during the
entirety of O peration Sundevil.
"Inside inform ant," som ebody said. Right. There's alw ays the hum an
angle,som ething easy to forget w hen contem plating the arcane recesses
of high technology. Cops are skilled at getting people to talk,and com -
puter people, given a chair and som e sustained attention, w illtalk about
their com puters tilltheir throats go raw . There's a case on record of a
single question — "H ow 'd you do it?" — eliciting a forty-five-m inute
videotaped confession from a com puter crim inalw ho not only com plete-
ly incrim inated him self but drew helpfuldiagram s.
Com puter people talk. H ackers *brag.* Phone- phreaks talk *patho-
logically* — w hy else are they stealing phone-codes, if not to natter for
ten hours straight to their friends on an opposite seaboard? Com puter-

literate people do in fact possess an arsenalof nifty gadgets and tech-
niques that w ould allow them to concealallkinds of exotic skullduggery,
and if they could only *shut up* about it, they could probably get aw ay
w ith allm anner of am azing inform ation-crim es. But that's just not
how it w orks — or at least, that's not how it's w orked *so far.*
M ost every phone-phreak ever busted has sw iftly im plicated his m en-
tors, his disciples, and his friends. M ost every w hite-collar com puter-
crim inal, sm ugly convinced that his clever schem e is bulletproof,
sw iftly learns otherw ise w hen, for the first tim e in his life, an actual
no-kidding policem an leans over, grabs the front of his shirt, looks him
right in the eye and says: "A llright, *asshole* — you and m e are going
dow ntow n!" A llthe hardw are in the w orld w illnot insulate your
nerves from these actualreal-life sensations of terror and guilt.
Cops know w ays to get from point A to point Z w ithout thum bing through
every letter in som e sm art-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 com puter through the phone-
lines. But cops can show up *right on your doorstep* and carry off
*you* and your com puter in separate steelboxes. A cop interested in
hackers can grab them and grillthem . A hacker interested in cops has to
depend on hearsay, underground legends, and w hat cops are w illing to
publicly reveal. A nd the Secret Service didn't get nam ed "the *Secret*
Service" because they blab a lot.
Som e people, our lecturer inform ed us, w ere under the m istaken
im pression that it w as "im possible" to tap a fiber-optic line. W ell, he
announced, he and his son had just w hipped up a fiber-optic tap in his
w orkshop at hom e. H e passed it around the audience, along w ith a cir-
cuit-covered LA N plug-in card so w e'd allrecognize one if w e saw it on a
case. W e allhad a look.
The tap w as a classic "Goofy Prototype" — a thum b-length rounded m etal

cylinder w ith a pair of plastic brackets on it. From one end dangled
three thin black cables, each of w hich ended in a tiny black plastic cap.

W hen you plucked the safety-cap off the end of a cable, you could see the
glass fiber — no thicker than a pinhole.
O ur lecturer inform ed us that the m etalcylinder w as a "w avelength

division m ultiplexer." A pparently, w hat one did w as to cut the fiber-
optic cable,insert tw o of the legs into the cut to com plete the netw ork
again,and then read any passing data on the line by hooking up the third
leg to som e kind of m onitor. Sounded sim ple enough. Iw ondered w hy
nobody had thought of it before. Ialso w ondered w hether this guy's son
back at the w orkshop had any teenage friends.
W e had a break. The guy sitting next to m e w as w earing a giveaw ay

baseballcap advertising the Uzisubm achine gun. W e had a desultory
chat about the m erits of Uzis. Long a favorite of the Secret Service, it
seem s Uzis w ent out of fashion w ith the advent of the Persian Gulf W ar,
our A rab allies taking som e offense at A m ericans toting Israeliw eapons.
Besides, Iw as inform ed by another expert, Uzis jam . The equivalent
w eapon of choice today is the Heckler & Koch, m anufactured in Germ any.
The guy w ith the Uzicap w as a forensic photographer. He also did a lot
of photographic surveillance w ork in com puter crim e cases. H e used
to, that is, untilthe firings in Phoenix. H e w as now a private investi-
gator and, w ith his w ife, ran a photography salon specializing in w ed-
dings and portrait photos. A t — one m ust repeat — a considerable rise in
incom e.
He w as stillFCIC. If you w ere FCIC, and you needed to talk to an expert

about forensic photography, w ell, there he w as, w illing and able. If he
hadn't show n up, people w ould have m issed him .
O ur lecturer had raised the point that prelim inary investigation of a

com puter system is vitalbefore any seizure is undertaken. It's vitalto
understand how m any m achines are in there, w hat kinds there are, w hat
kind of operating system they use, how m any people use them ,w here
the actualdata itself is stored. To sim ply barge into an office dem anding
"allthe com puters" is a recipe for sw ift disaster.
This entails som e discreet inquiries beforehand. In fact, w hat it entails

is basically undercover w ork. A n intelligence operation. *Spying,*
not to put too fine a point on it.
In a chat after the lecture, Iasked an attendee w hether "trashing" m ight

w ork.
Ireceived a sw ift briefing on the theory and practice of "trash covers."

Police "trash covers," like "m ailcovers" or like w iretaps, require the
agreem ent of a judge. This obtained, the "trashing" w ork of cops is just
like that of hackers, only m ore so and m uch better organized. So m uch
so, Iw as inform ed, that m obsters in Phoenix m ake extensive use of
locked garbage cans picked up by a specialty high-security trash com -
pany.
In one case,a tiger team of A rizona cops had trashed a localresidence for
four m onths. Every w eek they show ed up on the m unicipalgarbage
truck,disguised as garbagem en,and carried the contents of the suspect
cans off to a shade tree,w here they com bed through the garbage — a
m essy task, especially considering that one of the occupants w as under-
going kidney dialysis. A llusefuldocum ents w ere cleaned, dried and
exam ined. A discarded typew riter-ribbon w as an especially valuable
source of data, as its long one- strike ribbon of film contained the con-
tents of every letter m ailed out of the house. The letters w ere neatly
retyped by a police secretary equipped w ith a large desk-m ounted m ag-
nifying glass.
There is som ething w eirdly disquieting about the w hole subject of

"trashing" — an unsuspected and indeed rather disgusting m ode of deep
personalvulnerability. Things that w e pass by every day, that w e take
utterly for granted, can be exploited w ith so little w ork. O nce discov-
ered, the know ledge of these vulnerabilities tend to spread.
Take the low ly subject of *m anhole covers.* The hum ble m anhole cover
reproduces m any of the dilem m as of com puter-security in m iniature.
M anhole covers are, of course, technologicalartifacts, access-points to
our buried urban infrastructure. To the vast m ajority of us, m anhole
covers are invisible. They are also vulnerable. For m any years now ,
the Secret Service has m ade a point of caulking m anhole covers along all

routes of the Presidentialm otorcade. This is, of course, to deter ter-
rorists from leaping out of underground am bush or, m ore likely, plant-
ing rem ote-controlcar- sm ashing bom bs beneath the street.
Lately, m anhole covers have seen m ore and m ore crim inalexploitation,
especially in N ew York City. Recently, a telco in N ew York City discov-
ered that a cable television service had been sneaking into telco m an-
holes and installing cable service alongside the phone-lines — *w ithout
paying royalties.* N ew York com panies have also suffered a general
plague of (a) underground copper cable theft; (b) dum ping of garbage,
including toxic w aste, and (c) hasty dum ping of m urder victim s.
Industry com plaints reached the ears of an innovative N ew England

industrial-security com pany, and the result w as a new product know n
as "the Intim idator," a thick titanium -steelbolt w ith a precisely
m achined head that requires a specialdevice to unscrew . A llthese
"keys" have registered serialnum bers kept on file w ith the m anufac-
turer. There are now som e thousands of these "Intim idator" bolts being
sunk into A m erican pavem ents w herever our President passes, like
som e m acabre parody of strew n roses. They are also spreading as fast
as steeldandelions around US m ilitary bases and m any centers of pri-
vate industry.
Q uite likely it has never occurred to you to peer under a m anhole cover,
perhaps clim b dow n and w alk around dow n there w ith a flashlight, just
to see w hat it's like. Form ally speaking, this m ight be trespassing, but
if you didn't hurt anything, and didn't m ake an absolute habit of it,
nobody w ould really care. The freedom to sneak under m anholes w as
likely a freedom you never intended to exercise.
You now are rather less likely to have that freedom at all. You m ay
never even have m issed it untilyou read about it here, but if you're in
N ew York City it's gone, and elsew here it's likely going. This is one of
the things that crim e,and the reaction to crim e, does to us.
The tenor of the m eeting now changed as the Electronic Frontier

Foundation arrived. The EFF, w hose personneland history w illbe
exam ined in detailin the next chapter, are a pioneering civilliberties

group w ho arose in direct response to the H acker Crackdow n of 1990.
N ow M itchellKapor, the Foundation's president, and M ichaelGodw in, its

chief attorney, w ere confronting federallaw enforcem ent *m ano a
m ano* for the first tim e ever. Ever alert to the m anifold uses of pub-
licity, M itch Kapor and M ike G odw in had brought their ow n journalist
in tow : Robert D raper, from A ustin, w hose recent w ell- received book
about RO LLIN G STO N E m agazine w as stillon the stands. D raper w as on
assignm ent for TEXA S M O N TH LY.
The Steve Jackson/EFF civillaw suit against the Chicago Com puter Fraud
and A buse Task Force w as a m atter of considerable regionalinterest in
Texas. There w ere now tw o A ustinite journalists here on the case. In
fact, counting Godw in (a form er A ustinite and form er journalist) there
w ere three of us. Lunch w as like O ld H om e W eek.
Later, Itook D raper up to m y hotelroom . W e had a long frank talk

about the case, netw orking earnestly like a m iniature freelance-journo
version of the FCIC: privately confessing the num erous blunders of
journalists covering the story, and trying hard to figure out w ho w as
w ho and w hat the hellw as really going on out there. Ishow ed D raper
everything Ihad dug out of the Hilton trashcan. W e pondered the ethics
of "trashing" for a w hile, and agreed that they w ere dism al. W e also
agreed that finding a SPRIN T billon your first tim e out w as a heck of a
coincidence.
First I'd "trashed" — and now , m ere hours later, I'd bragged to som eone
else. H aving entered the lifestyle of hackerdom , Iw as now , unsurpris-
ingly, follow ing its logic. H aving discovered som ething rem arkable
through a surreptitious action, Iof course *had* to "brag," and to drag
the passing D raper into m y iniquities. Ifelt Ineeded a w itness.
O therw ise nobody w ould have believed w hat I'd discovered....
Back at the m eeting, Thackeray cordially, if rather tentatively, intro-

duced Kapor and Godw in to her colleagues. Papers w ere distributed.
Kapor took center stage. The brilliant Bostonian high-tech entrepre-
neur, norm ally the haw k in his ow n adm inistration and quite an effec-
tive public speaker, seem ed visibly nervous, and frankly adm itted as

m uch. He began by saying he consided com puter-intrusion to be
m orally w rong,and that the EFF w as not a "hacker defense fund," despite
w hat had appeared in print. Kapor chatted a bit about the basic m oti-
vations of his group, em phasizing their good faith and w illingness to
listen and seek com m on ground w ith law enforcem ent — w hen, er, pos-
sible.
Then, at Godw in's urging, Kapor suddenly rem arked that EFF's ow n
Internet m achine had been "hacked" recently, and that EFF did not con-
sider this incident am using.
A fter this surprising confession, things began to loosen up quite rapidly.

Soon Kapor w as fielding questions, parrying objections, challenging
definitions, and juggling paradigm s w ith som ething akin to his usual
gusto.
Kapor seem ed to score quite an effect w ith his shrew d and skeptical
analysis of the m erits of telco "Caller-ID " services. (O n this topic,
FCIC and EFF have never been at loggerheads, and have no particular
established earthw orks to defend.) Caller-ID has generally been pro-
m oted as a privacy service for consum ers, a presentation Kapor
described as a "sm okescreen," the realpoint of Caller-ID being to
*allow corporate custom ers to build extensive com m ercialdatabases on
everybody w ho phones or faxes them .* Clearly, few people in the room
had considered this possibility, except perhaps for tw o late-arrivals
from US W EST RBO C security, w ho chuckled nervously.
M ike Godw in then m ade an extensive presentation on "CivilLiberties

Im plications of Com puter Searches and Seizures." N ow , at last, w e w ere
getting to the realnitty-gritty here, realpoliticalhorse-trading. The
audience listened w ith close attention, angry m utters rising occasional-
ly: "H e's trying to teach us our jobs!" "W e've been thinking about this
for years! W e think about these issues every day!" "If Ididn't seize the
w orks, I'd be sued by the guy's victim s!" "I'm violating the law if I
leave ten thousand disks fullof illegal*pirated softw are* and *stolen
codes!*" "It's our job to m ake sure people don't trash the Constitution
— w e're the *defenders* of the Constitution!" "W e seize stuff w hen w e
know it w illbe forfeited anyw ay as restitution for the victim !"

"If it's forfeitable, then don't get a search w arrant, get a forfeiture
w arrant," Godw in suggested coolly. H e further rem arked that m ost
suspects in com puter crim e don't *w ant* to see their com puters vanish
out the door,headed God knew w here,for w ho know s how long. They
m ight not m ind a search, even an extensive search, but they w ant their
m achines searched on-site.
"A re they gonna feed us?" som ebody asked sourly.
"How about if you take copies of the data?" Godw in parried.
"That'llnever stand up in court."
"O kay, you m ake copies, give *them * the copies, and take the origi-
nals."
Hm m m .
Godw in cham pioned bulletin-board system s as repositories of First

A m endm ent protected free speech. He com plained that federalcom put-
er- crim e training m anuals gave boards a bad press, suggesting that
they are hotbeds of crim e haunted by pedophiles and crooks,w hereas the
vast m ajority of the nation's thousands of boards are com pletely innocu-
ous, and now here near so rom antically suspicious.
People w ho run boards violently resent it w hen their system s 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
w ith other people is infringed. A nd their privacy is violated as their
private electronic m ailbecom es police property.
N ot a soulspoke up to defend the practice of seizing boards. The issue

passed in chastened silence. Legalprinciples aside — (and those prin-
ciples cannot be settled w ithout law s passed or court precedents) —
seizing bulletin boards has becom e public-relations poison for
A m erican com puter police.

A nd anyw ay, it's not entirely necessary. If you're a cop, you can get
'm ost everything you need from a pirate board, just by using an inside
inform ant. Plenty of vigilantes — w ell, *concerned citizens* — w ill
inform police the m om ent they see a pirate board hit their area (and
w illtellthe police allabout it, in such technicaldetail, actually, that
you kinda w ish they'd shut up). They w illhappily supply police w ith
extensive dow nloads or printouts. It's *im possible* to keep this fluid
electronic inform ation out of the hands of police.
Som e people in the electronic com m unity becom e enraged at the prospect
of cops "m onitoring" bulletin boards. This does have touchy aspects,as
Secret Service people in particular exam ine bulletin boards w ith som e
regularity. But to expect electronic police to be deaf dum b and blind in
regard to this particular m edium rather flies in the face of com m on
sense. Police w atch television, listen to radio, read new spapers and
m agazines;w hy should the new m edium of boards be different? Cops
can exercise the sam e access to electronic inform ation as everybody
else. A s w e have seen, quite a few com puter police m aintain *their
ow n* bulletin boards, including anti-hacker "sting" boards, w hich
have generally proven quite effective.
A s a finalclincher, their M ountie friends in Canada (and colleagues in

Ireland and Taiw an) don't have First A m endm ent or A m erican constitu-
tionalrestrictions, but they do have phone lines, and can callany bul-
letin board in A m erica w henever they please. The sam e technological
determ inants that play into the hands of hackers, phone phreaks and
softw are pirates can play into the hands of police. "Technologicaldeter-
m inants" don't have *any* hum an allegiances. They're not black or
w hite, or Establishm ent or U nderground, or pro-or-antianything.
Godw in com plained at length about w hat he called "the Clever Hobbyist
hypothesis" — the assum ption that the "hacker" you're busting is
clearly a technicalgenius, and m ust therefore by searched w ith extrem e
thoroughness. So: from the law 's point of view , w hy risk m issing any-
thing? Take the w orks. Take the guy's com puter. Take his books.Take
his notebooks. Take the electronic drafts of his love letters. Take his
W alkm an. Take his w ife's com puter. Take his dad's com puter. Take his
kid sister's com puter. Take his em ployer's com puter. Take his com pact

disks — they *m ight* be CD -RO M disks, cunningly disguised as pop
m usic. Take his laser printer — he m ight have hidden som ething vital
in the printer's 5m eg of m em ory. Take his softw are m anuals and hard-
w are docum entation. Take his science-fiction novels and his sim ulation-
gam ing books. Take his N intendo Gam e-Boy and his Pac-M an arcade
gam e. Take his answ ering m achine, take his telephone out of the w all.
Take anything rem otely suspicious.
Godw in pointed out that m ost "hackers" are not, in fact, clever genius
hobbyists. Q uite a few are crooks and grifters w ho don't have m uch in
the w ay of technicalsophistication; just som e rule-of-thum b rip-off
techniques. The sam e goes for m ost fifteen- year-olds w ho've dow n-
loaded a code-scanning program from a pirate board. There's no real
need to seize everything in sight. It doesn't require an entire com puter
system and ten thousand disks to prove a case in court.
W hat if the com puter is the instrum entality of a crim e? som eone
dem anded.
Godw in adm itted quietly that the doctrine of seizing the instrum entality
of a crim e w as pretty w ellestablished in the A m erican legalsystem .
The m eeting broke up. Godw in and Kapor had to leave. Kapor w as testi-
fying next m orning before the M assachusetts D epartm ent O f Public
Utility, about ISD N narrow band w ide-area netw orking.
A s soon as they w ere gone,Thackeray seem ed elated. She had taken a

great risk w ith this. H er colleagues had not, in fact, torn Kapor and
Godw in's heads off. She w as very proud of them ,and told them so.
"D id you hear w hat Godw in said about *instrum entality of a crim e?*"
she exulted, to nobody in particular. "W ow , that m eans *M itch isn't
going to sue m e.*"
_____
A m erica's com puter police are an interesting group. A s a socialphe-

nom enon they are far m ore interesting, and far m ore im portant, than
teenage phone phreaks and com puter hackers. First, they're older and

w iser; not dizzy hobbyists w ith leaky m orals, but seasoned adult pro-
fessionals w ith allthe responsibilities of public service. A nd, unlike
hackers, they possess not m erely *technical* pow er alone, but heavy-
duty legaland socialauthority.
A nd, very interestingly, they are just as m uch 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
w ho secretly enjoy a fast ride in rough territory w illsoberly disclaim
any "cow boy" attitude.) But in cyberspace there *are* no rules and
precedents. They are groundbreaking pioneers, Cyberspace Rangers,
w hether they like it or not.
In m y opinion, any teenager enthralled by com puters, fascinated by the

ins and outs of com puter security, and attracted by the lure of special-
ized form s of know ledge and pow er,w ould do w ellto forget allabout
"hacking" and set his (or her) sights on becom ing a fed. Feds can trum p
hackers at alm ost every single thing hackers do, including gathering
intelligence, undercover disguise, trashing, phone-tapping, building
dossiers, netw orking, and infiltrating com puter system s — *crim inal*
com puter system s. Secret Service agents know m ore about phreaking,
coding and carding than m ost phreaks can find out in years, and w hen it
com es to viruses, break-ins, softw are bom bs and trojan horses, Feds
have direct access to red-hot confidentialinform ation that is only vague
rum or in the underground.
A nd if it's an im pressive public rep you're after, there are few people
in the w orld w ho can be so chillingly im pressive as a w ell-trained,
w ell-arm ed United States Secret Service agent.
O f course, a few personalsacrifices are necessary in order to obtain

that pow er and know ledge. First, you'llhave the galling discipline of
belonging to a large organization; but the w orld of com puter crim e is
stillso sm all, and so am azingly fast-m oving, that it w illrem ain spec-
tacularly fluid for years to com e. The second sacrifice is that you'll
have to give up ripping people off. This is not a great loss. A bstaining
from the use of illegaldrugs, also necessary, w illbe a boon to your
health.

A career in com puter security is not a bad choice for a young m an or
w om an today. The field w illalm ost certainly expand drastically in
years to com e. If you are a teenager today,by the tim e you becom e a
professional, the pioneers you have read about in this book w illbe the
grand old m en and w om en of the field, sw am ped by their m any disciples
and successors. O f course, som e of them , like W illiam P. W ood of the
1865 Secret Service, m ay w ellbe m angled in the w hirring m achinery
of legalcontroversy; but by the tim e you enter the com puter-crim e
field, it m ay have stabilized som ew hat, w hile rem aining entertainingly
challenging.
But you can't just have a badge. You have to w in it. First,there's the
federallaw enforcem ent training. A nd it's hard — it's a challenge. A
realchallenge — not for w im ps and rodents.
Every Secret Service agent m ust com plete gruelling courses at the
FederalLaw Enforcem ent Training Center. (In fact, Secret Service
agents are periodically re-trained during their entire careers.)
In order to get a glim pse of w hat this m ight be like, Im yself travelled to
FLETC.
_____
The FederalLaw Enforcem ent Training Center is a 1500-acre facility

on Georgia's A tlantic coast. It's a m ilieu of m arshgrass, seabirds,
dam p, clinging sea-breezes, palm ettos, m osquitos, and bats. Until
1974, it w as a N avy A ir Base, and stillfeatures a w orking runw ay, and
som e W W IIvintage blockhouses and officers' quarters. The Center has
since benefitted by a forty-m illion-dollar retrofit, but there's still
enough forest and sw am p on the facility for the Border Patrolto put in
tracking practice.
A s a tow n, "Glynco" scarcely exists. The nearest realtow n is

Brunsw ick, a few m iles dow n H ighw ay 17, w here Istayed at the aptly
nam ed M arshview H oliday Inn. Ihad Sunday dinner at a seafood restau-
rant called "Jinright's," w here Ifeasted on deep-fried alligator tail.
This localfavorite w as a heaped basket of bite-sized chunks of w hite,

tender, alm ost fluffy reptile m eat, steam ing in a peppered batter crust.
A lligator m akes a culinary experience that's hard to forget, especially
w hen liberally basted w ith hom em ade cocktailsauce from a Jinright
squeeze-bottle.
The crow ded clientele w ere tourists, fisherm en, localblack folks in
their Sunday best, and w hite Georgian locals w ho allseem ed to bear an
uncanny resem blance to Georgia hum orist Lew is Grizzard.
The 2,400 students from 75 federalagencies w ho m ake up the FLETC

population scarcely seem to m ake a dent in the low -key localscene. The
students look like tourists,and the teachers seem to have taken on m uch
of the relaxed air of the D eep South. M y host w as M r. Carlton
Fitzpatrick, the Program Coordinator of the FinancialFraud Institute.
Carlton Fitzpatrick is a m ustached, sinew y, w ell-tanned A labam a native
som ew here near his late forties, w ith a fondness for chew ing tobacco,
pow erfulcom puters, and salty, dow n-hom e hom ilies. W e'd m et before,
at FCIC in A rizona.
The FinancialFraud Institute is one of the nine divisions at FLETC.

Besides Financial Fraud, there's D river & M arine, Firearm s, and
PhysicalTraining. These are specialized pursuits. There are also five
generaltraining divisions: Basic Training, O perations, Enforcem ent
Techniques, LegalD ivision, and BehavioralScience.
Som ew here in this curriculum is everything necessary to turn green

college graduates into federalagents. First they're given ID cards. Then
they get the rather m iserable-looking blue coveralls know n as "sm urf
suits." The trainees are assigned a barracks and a cafeteria, and im m e-
diately set on FLETC's bone-grinding physicaltraining routine. Besides
the obligatory daily jogging — (the trainers run up danger flags beside
the track w hen the hum idity rises high enough to threaten heat stroke)
— there's the N autilus m achines, the m artialarts, the survivalskills....
The eighteen federalagencies w ho m aintain on- site academ ies at FLETC

em ploy a w ide variety of specialized law enforcem ent units, som e of
them rather arcane. There's Border Patrol, IRS Crim inalInvestigation
D ivision, Park Service, Fish and W ildlife, Custom s, Im m igration,

Secret Service and the Treasury's uniform ed subdivisions.... If you're a
federalcop and you don't w ork for the FBI, you train at FLETC. This
includes people as apparently obscure as the agents of the Railroad
Retirem ent Board Inspector General. O r the Tennessee V alley A uthority
Police, w ho are in fact federalpolice officers, and can and do arrest
crim inals on the federalproperty of the Tennessee V alley A uthority.
A nd then there are the com puter-crim e people. A llsorts, allback-

grounds. M r. Fitzpatrick is not jealous of his specialized know ledge.
Cops allover, in every branch of service, m ay feela need to learn w hat
he can teach. Backgrounds don't m atter m uch. Fitzpatrick him self w as
originally a Border Patrolveteran, then becam e a Border Patrol
instructor at FLETC. H is Spanish is stillfluent — but he found him self
strangely fascinated w hen the first com puters show ed up at the Training
Center. Fitzpatrick did have a background in electricalengineering, and
though he never considered him self a com puter hacker, he som ehow
found him self w riting usefullittle program s for this new and prom ising
gizm o.
H e began looking into the generalsubject of com puters and crim e, read-
ing D onn Parker's books and articles, keeping an ear cocked for w ar
stories, usefulinsights from the field, the up-and-com ing people of the
localcom puter-crim e and high- technology units.... Soon he got a repu-
tation around FLETC as the resident "com puter expert," and that reputa-
tion alone brought him m ore exposure, m ore experience — untilone day
he looked around, and sure enough he *w as* a federalcom puter-crim e
expert.
In fact, this unassum ing, genialm an m ay be *the* federalcom puter-

crim e expert. There are plenty of very good com puter people, and
plenty of very good federalinvestigators, but the area w here these
w orlds of expertise overlap is very slim . A nd Carlton Fitzpatrick has
been right at the center of that since 1985, the first year of the
Colluquy, a group w hich ow es m uch to his influence.
H e seem s quite at hom e in his m odest, acoustic-tiled office, w ith its

A nselA dam s-style W estern photographic art, a gold-fram ed Senior
Instructor Certificate, and a tow ering bookcase cram m ed w ith three-

ring binders w ith om inous titles such as *D atapro Reports on
Inform ation Security* and *CFCA Telecom Security '90.*
The phone rings every ten m inutes;colleagues show up at the door to

chat about new developm ents in locksm ithing or to shake their heads
over the latest dism aldevelopm ents in the BCCIglobalbanking scandal.
Carlton Fitzpatrick is a fount of com puter-crim e w ar-stories, related

in an acerbic draw l. H e tells m e the colorfultale of a hacker caught in
California som e years back. H e'd been raiding system s, typing code
w ithout a detectable break, for tw enty, tw enty-four, thirty-six hours
straight. N ot just logged on — *typing.* Investigators w ere baffled.
Nobody could do that. Didn't he have to go to the bathroom ? W as it som e
kind of autom atic keyboard-w hacking device that could actually type
code?
A raid on the suspect's hom e revealed a situation of astonishing squalor.

The hacker turned out to be a Pakistanicom puter-science student w ho
had flunked out of a California university. H e'd gone com pletely under-
ground as an illegalelectronic im m igrant, and w as selling stolen
phone- service to stay alive. The place w as not m erely m essy and dirty,
but in a state of psychotic disorder. Pow ered by som e w eird m ix of cul-
ture shock,com puter addiction,and am phetam ines,the suspect had in
fact been sitting in front of his com puter for a day and a half straight,
w ith snacks and drugs at hand on the edge of his desk and a cham ber-pot
under his chair.
W ord about stuff like this gets around in the hacker-tracker com m uni-
ty.
Carlton Fitzpatrick takes m e for a guided tour by car around the FLETC
grounds. O ne of our first sights is the biggest indoor firing range in the
w orld. There are federaltrainees in there, Fitzpatrick assures m e
politely, blasting aw ay w ith a w ide variety of autom atic w eapons: Uzis,
Glocks, A K-47s.... H e's w illing to take m e inside. Itellhim I'm sure
that's really interesting, but I'd rather see his com puters. Carlton
Fitzpatrick seem s quite surprised and pleased. I'm apparently the first
journalist he's ever seen w ho has turned dow n the shooting gallery in

favor of m icrochips.
O ur next stop is a favorite w ith touring Congressm en: the three-m ile
long FLETC driving range. H ere trainees of the D river & M arine
D ivision are taught high-speed pursuit skills, setting and breaking
road-blocks, diplom atic security driving for V IP lim ousines.... A
favorite FLETC pastim e is to strap a passing Senator into the passenger
seat beside a D river & M arine trainer, hit a hundred m iles an hour,
then take it right into "the skid-pan," a section of greased track w here
tw o tons of D etroit iron can w hip and spin like a hockey puck.
Cars don't fare w ellat FLETC. First they're rifled again and again for
search practice. Then they do 25,000 m iles of high-speed pursuit
training; they get about seventy m iles per set of steel-belted radials.
Then it's off to the skid pan, w here som etim es they rolland tum ble
headlong in the grease. W hen they're sufficiently grease-stained, dent-
ed, and creaky, they're sent to the roadblock unit, w here they're bat-
tered w ithout pity. A nd finally then they're sacrificed to the Bureau of
A lcohol, Tobacco and Firearm s, w hose trainees learn the ins and outs of
car-bom b w ork by blow ing them into sm oking w reckage.
There's a railroad box-car on the FLETC grounds, and a large grounded

boat, and a propless plane; alltraining-grounds for searches. The
plane sits forlornly on a patch of w eedy tarm ac next to an eerie block-
house know n as the "ninja com pound," w here anti-terrorism specialists
practice hostage rescues. A s Igaze on this creepy paragon of m odern
low -intensity w arfare, m y nerves are jangled by a sudden staccato out-
burst of autom atic w eapons fire, som ew here in the w oods to m y right.
"N ine- m illim eter," Fitzpatrick judges calm ly.
Even the eldritch ninja com pound pales som ew hat com pared to the truly
surrealarea know n as "the raid-houses." This is a street lined on both
sides w ith nondescript concrete-block houses w ith flat pebbled roofs.
They w ere once officers' quarters. N ow they are training grounds. The
first one to our left, Fitzpatrick tells m e, has been specially adapted for
com puter search-and-seizure practice. Inside it has been w ired for
video from top to bottom , w ith eighteen pan-and-tilt rem otely con-
trolled videocam s m ounted on w alls and in corners. Every m ovem ent of

the trainee agent is recorded live by teachers, for later taped analysis.
W asted m ovem ents, hesitations, possibly lethaltacticalm istakes — all
are gone over in detail.
Perhaps the w eirdest single aspect of this building is its front door,
scarred and scuffed allalong the bottom ,from the repeated im pact,day
after day, of federalshoe-leather.
D ow n at the far end of the row of raid-houses som e people are practicing
a m urder. W e drive by slow ly as som e very young and rather nervous-
looking federaltrainees interview a heavyset bald m an on the raid-
house law n. D ealing w ith m urder takes a lot of practice; first you have
to learn to controlyour ow n instinctive disgust and panic, then you
have to learn to controlthe reactions of a nerve- shredded crow d of
civilians, som e of w hom m ay have just lost a loved one, som e of w hom
m ay be m urderers — quite possibly both at once.
A dum m y plays the corpse. The roles of the bereaved, the m orbidly
curious, and the hom icidalare played, for pay, by localGeorgians:
w aitresses,m usicians,m ost anybody w ho needs to m oonlight and can
learn a script. These people, som e of w hom are FLETC regulars year
after year, m ust surely have one of the strangest jobs in the w orld.
Som ething about the scene: "norm al" people in a w eird situation, stand-
ing around talking in bright G eorgia sunshine, unsuccessfully pretend-
ing that som ething dreadfulhas gone on, w hile a dum m y lies inside on
faked bloodstains.... W hile behind this w eird m asquerade, like a nested
set of Russian dolls, are grim future realities of realdeath, realvio-
lence, realm urders of realpeople, that these young agents w illreally
investigate, m any tim es during their careers.... O ver and over.... W ill
those anticipated m urders look like this, feellike this — not as "real" as
these am ateur actors are trying to m ake it seem , but both as "real," and
as num bingly unreal, as w atching fake people standing around on a fake
law n? Som ething about this scene unhinges m e. It seem s nightm arish to
m e, Kafkaesque. Isim ply don't know how to take it;m y head is turned
around; Idon't know w hether to laugh, cry, or just shudder.
W hen the tour is over, Carlton Fitzpatrick and Italk about com puters.

For the first tim e cyberspace seem s like quite a com fortable place. It
seem s very realto m e suddenly, a place w here Iknow w hat I'm talking
about, a place I'm used to. It's real. "Real." W hatever.
Carlton Fitzpatrick is the only person I've m et in cyberspace circles

w ho is happy w ith his present equipm ent. H e's got a 5 M eg RA M PC w ith
a 112 m eg hard disk;a 660 m eg's on the w ay. He's got a Com paq 386
desktop, and a Zenith 386 laptop w ith 120 m eg. D ow n the hallis a N EC
M ulti-Sync 2A w ith a CD -RO M drive and a 9600 baud m odem w ith four
com -lines. There's a training m inicom puter, and a 10-m eg localm ini
just for the Center, and a lab-fullof student PC clones and half-a-dozen
M acs or so.There's a D ata GeneralM V 2500 w ith 8 m eg on board and a
370 m eg disk.
Fitzpatrick plans to run a UN IX board on the D ata Generalw hen he's fin-
ished beta-testing the softw are for it, w hich he w rote him self. It'll
have E- m ailfeatures, m assive files on allm anner of com puter-crim e
and investigation procedures, and w illfollow the com puter-security
specifics of the D epartm ent of D efense "O range Book." H e thinks it w ill
be the biggest BBS in the federalgovernm ent.
W ill it have *Phrack* on it? I ask w ryly.
Sure, he tells m e. *Phrack,* *TA P,* *Com puter U nderground

D igest,* allthat stuff. W ith proper disclaim ers, of course.
Iask him if he plans to be the sysop. Running a system that size is very
tim e-consum ing, and Fitzpatrick teaches tw o three-hour courses every
day.
N o,he says seriously, FLETC has to get its m oney w orth out of the
instructors. H e thinks he can get a localvolunteer to do it, a high-
schoolstudent.
H e says a bit m ore, som ething Ithink about an Eagle Scout law -enforce-
m ent liaison program , but m y m ind has rocketed off in disbelief.
"You're going to put a *teenager* in charge of a federalsecurity BBS?"

I'm speechless. It hasn't escaped m y notice that the FLETC Financial
Fraud Institute is the *ultim ate* hacker-trashing target; there is stuff
in here,stuff of such utter and consum m ate coolby every standard of
the digitalunderground.... Iim agine the hackers of m y acquaintance,
fainting dead-aw ay from forbidden- know ledge greed-fits, at the m ere
prospect of cracking the superultra top-secret com puters used to train
the Secret Service in com puter-crim e....
"Uhm , Carlton," Ibabble, "I'm sure he's a really nice kid and all, but
that's a terrible tem ptation to set in front of som ebody w ho's,you know ,
into com puters and just starting out..."
"Yeah," he says, "that did occur to m e." For the first tim e Ibegin to
suspect that he's pulling m y leg.
He seem s proudest w hen he show s m e an ongoing project called JICC,

Joint Intelligence ControlCouncil. It's based on the services provided
by EPIC, the ElPaso Intelligence Center, w hich supplies data and intel-
ligence to the D rug Enforcem ent A dm inistration, the Custom s Service,
the Coast Guard,and the state police of the four southern border states.
Certain EPIC files can now be accessed by drug-enforcem ent police of
CentralA m erica, South A m erica and the Caribbean, w ho can also trade
inform ation am ong them selves. Using a telecom program called "W hite
H at," w ritten by tw o brothers nam ed Lopez from the D om inican
Republic, police can now netw ork internationally on inexpensive PCs.
Carlton Fitzpatrick is teaching a class of drug-w ar agents from the
Third W orld, and he's very proud of their progress. Perhaps soon the
sophisticated sm uggling netw orks of the M edellin Cartelw illbe m atched
by a sophisticated com puter netw ork of the M edellin Cartel's sw orn
enem ies. They'lltrack boats, track contraband, track the international
drug-lords w ho now leap over borders w ith great ease, defeating the
police through the clever use of fragm ented nationaljurisdictions.
JICC and EPIC m ust rem ain beyond the scope of this book. They seem to
m e to be very large topics fraught w ith com plications that Iam not fit to
judge. Ido know , how ever, that the international, com puter-assisted
netw orking of police, across nationalboundaries, is som ething that
Carlton Fitzpatrick considers very im portant, a harbinger of a desir-

able future. Ialso know that netw orks by their nature ignore physical
boundaries. A nd Ialso know that w here you put com m unications you put
a com m unity, and that w hen those com m unities becom e self-aw are they
w illfight to preserve them selves and to expand their influence. Im ake
no judgem ents w hether this is good or bad. It's just cyberspace; it's
just the w ay things are.
Iasked Carlton Fitzpatrick w hat advice he w ould have for a tw enty-

year-old w ho w anted to shine som eday in the w orld of electronic law
enforcem ent.
He told m e that the num ber one rule w as sim ply not to be scared of com -
puters. You don't need to be an obsessive "com puter w eenie," but you
m ustn't be buffaloed just because som e m achine looks fancy. The advan-
tages com puters give sm art crooks are m atched by the advantages they
give sm art cops. Cops in the future w illhave to enforce the law "w ith
their heads,not their holsters." Today you can m ake good cases w ithout
ever leaving your office. In the future, cops w ho resist the com puter
revolution w illnever get far beyond w alking a beat.
Iasked Carlton Fitzpatrick if he had som e single m essage for the public;
som e single thing that he w ould m ost like the A m erican public to know
about his w ork.
H e thought about it w hile. "Yes," he said finally. "*Tell* m e the rules,

and I'll*teach* those rules!" H e looked m e straight in the eye. "Ido the
best that Ican."

P A R T FO U R
T H E C IV IL LIB ER T A R IA N S
The story of the H acker Crackdow n, as w e have follow ed it thus far, has
been technological, subcultural, crim inaland legal. The story of the
CivilLibertarians, though it partakes of allthose other aspects, is pro-
foundly and thoroughly *political.*
In 1990, the obscure, long-sim m ering struggle over the ow nership and
nature of cyberspace becam e loudly and irretrievably public. People
from som e of the oddest corners of A m erican society suddenly found
them selves public figures. Som e of these people found this situation
m uch m ore than they had ever bargained for. They backpedalled,and
tried to retreat back to the m andarin obscurity of their cozy subcultural
niches. This w as generally to prove a m istake.
But the civillibertarians seized the day in 1990. They found them selves
organizing, propagandizing, podium - pounding, persuading, touring,
negotiating, posing for publicity photos, subm itting to interview s,
squinting in the lim elight as they tried a tentative, but grow ingly
sophisticated, buck-and-w ing upon the public stage.
It's not hard to see w hy the civillibertarians should have this com peti-
tive advantage.
The hackers of the digitalunderground are an herm etic elite. They find
it hard to m ake any rem otely convincing case for their actions in front
of the generalpublic. A ctually, hackers roundly despise the "ignorant"
public,and have never trusted the judgem ent of "the system ." Hackers
do propagandize, but only am ong them selves, m ostly in giddy, badly
spelled m anifestos of class w arfare, youth rebellion or naive techie
utopianism . H ackers m ust strut and boast in order to establish and pre-
serve their underground reputations. But if they speak out too loudly

and publicly, they w illbreak the fragile surface-tension of the under-
ground, and they w illbe harrassed or arrested. O ver the longer term ,
m ost hackers stum ble,get busted,get betrayed,or sim ply give up. A s a
politicalforce, the digitalunderground is ham strung.
The telcos, for their part, are an ivory tow er under protracted seige.
They have plenty of m oney w ith w hich to push their calculated public
im age,but they w aste m uch energy and goodw illattacking one another
w ith slanderous and dem eaning ad cam paigns. The telcos have suffered
at the hands of politicians, and, like hackers, they don't trust the pub-
lic's judgem ent. A nd this distrust m ay be w ell-founded. Should the
generalpublic of the high-tech 1990s com e to understand its ow n best
interests in telecom m unications, that m ight w ellpose a grave threat to
the specialized technicalpow er and authority that the telcos have rel-
ished for over a century. The telcos do have strong advantages:loyal
em ployees, specialized expertise, influence in the halls of pow er, tac-
ticalallies in law enforcem ent, and unbelievably vast am ounts of m oney.
But politically speaking, they lack genuine grassroots support; they
sim ply don't seem to have m any friends.
Cops know a lot of things other people don't know . But cops w illingly
revealonly those aspects of their know ledge that they feelw illm eet
their institutionalpurposes and further public order. Cops have
respect, they have responsibilities, they have pow er in the streets and
even pow er in the hom e, but cops don't do particularly w ellin lim elight.
W hen pressed, they w illstep out in the public gaze to threaten bad-
guys, or to cajole prom inent citizens, or perhaps to sternly lecture the
naive and m isguided. But then they go back w ithin their tim e-honored
fortress of the station-house, the courtroom and the rule-book.
The electronic civillibertarians, how ever, have proven to be born

politicalanim als. They seem ed to grasp very early on the postm odern
truism that com m unication is pow er. Publicity is pow er. Soundbites
are pow er. The ability to shove one's issue onto the public agenda — and
*keep it there* — is pow er. Fam e is pow er. Sim ple personalfluency
and eloquence can be pow er,if you can som ehow catch the public's eye
and ear.

The civillibertarians had no m onopoly on "technicalpow er" — though
they allow ned com puters, m ost w ere not particularly advanced com put-
er experts. They had a good dealof m oney,but now here near the earth-
shaking w ealth 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 netw ork.
Unlike the other groups in this book, the civillibertarians have operat-
ed very m uch in the open, m ore 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 cam eras
clicking, kept those faxes hum m ing, sw apped that em ail, run those pho-
tocopiers on overtim e, licked envelopes and spent sm allfortunes on
airfare and long- distance. In an inform ation society, this open, overt,
obvious activity has proven to be a profound advantage.
In 1990, the civillibertarians of cyberspace assem bled out of now here

in particular, at w arp speed. This "group" (actually, a netw orking gag-
gle of interested parties w hich scarcely deserves even that loose term )
has alm ost nothing in the w ay of form alorganization. Those form al
civillibertarian organizations w hich did take an interest in cyberspace
issues, m ainly the Com puter Professionals for SocialResponsibility and
the A m erican CivilLiberties Union, w ere carried along by events in
1990, and acted m ostly as adjuncts, underw riters or launching- pads.
The civillibertarians nevertheless enjoyed the greatest success of any

of the groups in the Crackdow n of 1990. A t this w riting, their future
looks rosy and the politicalinitiative is firm ly in their hands. This
should be kept in m ind as w e study the highly unlikely lives and
lifestyles of the people w ho actually m ade this happen.
_____
In June 1989, A pple Com puter, Inc., of Cupertino, California, had a

problem . Som eone had illicitly copied a sm allpiece of A pple's propri-
etary softw are, softw are w hich controlled an internalchip driving the
M acintosh screen display. This Color Q uickD raw source code w as a

closely guarded piece of A pple's intellectualproperty. O nly trusted
A pple insiders w ere supposed to possess it.
But the "N uProm etheus League" w anted things otherw ise. This person
(or persons) m ade severalillicit copies of this source code, perhaps as
m any as tw o dozen. H e (or she, or they) then put those illicit floppy
disks into envelopes and m ailed them to people allover A m erica: people
in the com puter industry w ho w ere associated w ith, but not directly
em ployed by, A pple Com puter.
The N uProm etheus caper w as a com plex, highly ideological, and very
hacker-like crim e. Prom etheus, it w illbe recalled, stole the fire of the
Gods and gave this potent gift to the generalranks of dow ntrodden
m ankind. A sim ilar god-in-the-m anger attitude w as im plied for the
corporate elite of A pple Com puter, w hile the "N u" Prom etheus had him -
self cast in the role of rebeldem igod. The illicitly copied data w as given
aw ay for free.
The new Prom etheus,w hoever he w as,escaped the fate of the ancient
Greek Prom etheus, w ho w as chained to a rock for centuries by the
vengefulgods w hile an eagle tore and ate his liver. O n the other hand,
N uProm etheus chickened out som ew hat by com parison w ith his role
m odel. The sm allchunk of Color Q uickD raw code he had filched and
replicated w as m ore or less useless to A pple's industrialrivals (or, in
fact, to anyone else). Instead of giving fire to m ankind, it w as m ore as
if N uProm etheus had photocopied the schem atics for part of a Bic
lighter. The act w as not a genuine w ork of industrialespionage. It w as
best interpreted as a sym bolic, deliberate slap in the face for the A pple
corporate heirarchy.
A pple's internalstruggles w ere w ell-know n in the industry. A pple's

founders, Jobs and W ozniak, had both taken their leave long since.
Their raucous core of senior em ployees had been a barnstorm ing crew of
1960s Californians, m any of them m arkedly less than happy w ith the
new button-dow n m ultim illion dollar regim e at A pple. M any of the pro-
gram m ers and developers w ho had invented the M acintosh m odelin the
early 1980s had also taken their leave of the com pany. It w as they, not
the current m asters of A pple's corporate fate,w ho had invented the

stolen Color Q uickD raw code. The N uProm etheus stunt w as w ell-calcu-
lated to w ound com pany m orale.
A pple called the FBI. The Bureau takes an interest in high-profile

intellectual-property theft cases, industrialespionage and theft of trade
secrets. These w ere likely the right people to call, and rum or has it
that the entities responsible w ere in fact discovered by the FBI, and then
quietly squelched by A pple m anagem ent. N uProm etheus w as never pub-
licly charged w ith a crim e, or prosecuted, or jailed. But there w ere no
further illicit releases of M acintosh internalsoftw are. Eventually the
painfulissue of N uProm etheus w as allow ed to fade.
In the m eantim e, how ever, a large num ber of puzzled bystanders found
them selves entertaining surprise guests from the FBI.
O ne of these people w as John Perry Barlow . Barlow is a m ost unusual

m an, difficult to describe in conventionalterm s. H e is perhaps best
know n as a songw riter for the GratefulD ead, for he com posed lyrics for
"H ellin a Bucket," "Picasso M oon," "M exicaliBlues," "IN eed a
M iracle," and m any m ore; he has been w riting for the band since 1970.
Before w e tackle the vexing question as to w hy a rock lyricist should be

interview ed by the FBIin a com puter- crim e case, it m ight be w ellto
say a w ord or tw o about the GratefulD ead. The GratefulD ead are per-
haps the m ost successfuland long-lasting of the num erous cultural
em anations from the H aight-A shbury district of San Francisco, in the
glory days of M ovem ent politics and lysergic transcendance. The
GratefulD ead are a nexus, a veritable w hirlw ind, of applique decals,
psychedelic vans, tie-dyed T-shirts, earth-color denim , frenzied danc-
ing and open and unasham ed drug use. The sym bols,and the realities,of
Californian freak pow er surround the GratefulD ead like knotted
m acram e.
The GratefulDead and their thousands of Deadhead devotees are radical

Bohem ians. This m uch is w idely understood. Exactly w hat this im plies
in the 1990s is rather m ore problem atic.
The GratefulD ead are am ong the w orld's m ost popular and w ealthy

entertainers: num ber 20, according to *Forbes* m agazine, right
betw een M .C. H am m er and Sean Connery. In 1990, this jeans-clad
group of purported raffish outcasts earned seventeen m illion dollars.
They have been earning sum s m uch along this line for quite som e tim e
now .
A nd w hile the D ead are not investm ent bankers or three-piece-suit tax
specialists — they are, in point of fact, hippie m usicians — this m oney
has not been squandered in senseless Bohem ian excess. The Dead have
been quietly active for m any years, funding various w orthy activities in
their extensive and w idespread culturalcom m unity.
The GratefulD ead are not conventionalplayers in the A m erican pow er

establishm ent. They nevertheless are som ething of a force to be reck-
oned w ith. They have a lot of m oney and a lot of friends in m any places,
both likely and unlikely.
The D ead m ay be know n for back-to-the-earth environm entalist

rhetoric, but this hardly m akes them anti-technologicalLuddites. O n
the contrary, like m ost rock m usicians, the GratefulD ead have spent
their entire adult lives in the com pany of com plex electronic equipm ent.
They have funds to burn on any sophisticated tooland toy that m ight
happen to catch their fancy. A nd their fancy is quite extensive.
The D eadhead com m unity boasts any num ber of recording engineers,
lighting experts, rock video m avens, electronic technicians of all
descriptions. A nd the drift goes both w ays. Steve W ozniak,A pple's co-
founder, used to throw rock festivals. Silicon V alley rocks out.
These are the 1990s, not the 1960s. Today, for a surprising num ber of
people allover A m erica, the supposed dividing line betw een Bohem ian
and technician sim ply no longer exists. People of this sort m ay have a
set of w indchim es and a dog w ith a knotted kerchief 'round its neck,but
they're also quite likely to ow n a m ultim egabyte M acintosh running
M ID Isynthesizer softw are and trippy fractalsim ulations. These days,
even Tim othy Leary him self, prophet of LSD , does virtual-reality com -
puter- graphics dem os in his lecture tours.

John Perry Barlow is not a m em ber of the GratefulD ead. H e is, how ev-
er, a ranking D eadhead.
Barlow describes him self as a "techno-crank." A vague term like

"socialactivist" m ight not be far from the m ark, either. But Barlow
m ight be better described as a "poet" — if one keeps in m ind Percy
Shelley's archaic definition of poets as "unacknow ledged legislators of
the w orld."
Barlow once m ade a stab at acknow ledged legislator status. In 1987,he

narrow ly m issed the Republican nom ination for a seat in the W yom ing
State Senate. Barlow is a W yom ing native, the third-generation scion of
a w ell-to-do cattle-ranching fam ily. H e is in his early forties, m ar-
ried and the father of three daughters.
Barlow is not m uch troubled by other people's narrow notions of con-

sistency. In the late 1980s, this Republican rock lyricist cattle ranch-
er sold his ranch and becam e a com puter telecom m unications devotee.
The free-spirited Barlow m ade this transition w ith ease. H e genuinely

enjoyed com puters. W ith a beep of his m odem , he leapt from sm all-
tow n Pinedale, W yom ing, into electronic contact w ith a large and lively
crow d of bright, inventive, technologicalsophisticates from allover the
w orld. Barlow found the socialm ilieu of com puting attractive: its fast-
lane pace, its blue-sky rhetoric, its open- endedness. Barlow began
dabbling in com puter journalism , w ith m arked success, as he w as a
quick study,and both shrew d and eloquent. He frequently travelled to
San Francisco to netw ork w ith D eadhead friends. There Barlow m ade
extensive contacts throughout the Californian com puter com m unity,
including friendships am ong the w ilder spirits at A pple.
In M ay 1990, Barlow received a visit from a localW yom ing agent of the
FBI. The N uProm etheus case had reached W yom ing.
Barlow w as troubled to find him self under investigation in an area of his

interests once quite free of federalattention. He had to struggle to
explain the very nature of com puter-crim e to a headscratching local
FBIm an w ho specialized in cattle-rustling. Barlow , chatting helpfully

and dem onstrating the w onders of his m odem to the puzzled fed,w as
alarm ed to find all"hackers" generally under FBIsuspicion as an evil
influence in the electronic com m unity. The FBI, in pursuit of a hacker
called "N uProm etheus," w ere tracing attendees of a suspect group called
the H ackers Conference.
The H ackers Conference, w hich had been started in 1984, w as a yearly

Californian m eeting of digitalpioneers and enthusiasts. The hackers of
the Hackers Conference had little if anything to do w ith the hackers of
the digitalunderground. O n the contrary, the hackers of this confer-
ence w ere m ostly w ell-to-do Californian high-tech CEO s, consultants,
journalists and entrepreneurs. (This group of hackers w ere the exact
sort of "hackers" m ost likely to react w ith m ilitant fury at any crim inal
degradation of the term "hacker.")
Barlow , though he w as not arrested or accused of a crim e, and though his

com puter had certainly not gone out the door, w as very troubled by this
anom aly. H e carried the w ord to the W ell.
Like the H ackers Conference, "the W ell" w as an em anation of the Point

Foundation. Point Foundation, the inspiration of a w ealthy Californian
60s radicalnam ed Stew art Brand, w as to be a m ajor launch-pad of the
civil libertarian effort.
Point Foundation's culturalefforts, like those of their fellow Bay A rea

Californians the GratefulD ead, w ere m ultifaceted and m ultitudinous.
Rigid ideologicalconsistency had never been a strong suit of the *W hole
Earth Catalog.* This Point publication had enjoyed a strong vogue dur-
ing the late 60s and early 70s, w hen it offered hundreds of practical
(and not so practical) tips on com m unitarian living, environm entalism ,
and getting back-to-the-land. The *W hole Earth Catalog,* and its
sequels, sold tw o and half m illion copies and w on a N ationalBook A w ard.
W ith the slow collapse of A m erican radicaldissent, the *W hole Earth

Catalog* had slipped to a m ore m odest corner of the culturalradar; but
in its m agazine incarnation, *CoEvolution Q uarterly,* the Point
Foundation continued to offer a m agpie potpourriof "access to tools and
ideas."

*CoEvolution Q uarterly,* w hich started in 1974, w as never a w idely
popular m agazine. D espite periodic outbreaks of m illenarian fervor,
*CoEvolution Q uarterly* failed to revolutionize W estern civilization
and replace leaden centuries of history w ith bright new Californian
paradigm s. Instead, this propaganda arm of Point Foundation cakew alked
a fine line betw een im pressive brilliance and N ew A ge flakiness.
*CoEvolution Q uarterly* carried no advertising, cost a lot, and cam e
out on cheap new sprint w ith m odest black-and-w hite graphics. It w as
poorly distributed, and spread m ostly by subscription and w ord of
m outh.
It could not seem to grow beyond 30,000 subscribers.A nd yet — it

never seem ed to shrink m uch, either. Year in, year out, decade in,
decade out,som e strange dem ographic m inority accreted to support the
m agazine.The enthusiastic readership did not seem to have m uch in the
w ay of coherent politics or ideals. It w as som etim es hard to understand
w hat held them together (if the often bitter debate in the letter-colum ns
could be described as "togetherness").
But if the m agazine did not flourish, it w as resilient; it got by. Then, in
1984, the birth-year of the M acintosh com puter, *CoEvolution
Q uarterly* suddenly hit the rapids. Point Foundation had discovered the
com puter revolution. O ut cam e the *W hole Earth Softw are Catalog* of
1984, arousing headscratching doubts am ong the tie- dyed faithful, and
rabid enthusiasm am ong the nascent "cyberpunk" m ilieu, present com -
pany included. Point Foundation started its yearly H ackers Conference,
and began to take an extensive interest in the strange new possibilities
of digitalcounterculture. *CoEvolution Q uarterly* folded its teepee,
replaced by *W hole Earth Softw are Review * and eventually by *W hole
Earth Review * (the m agazine's present incarnation, currently under
the editorship of virtual-reality m aven H ow ard Rheingold).
1985 saw the birth of the "W ELL" — the "W hole Earth 'Lectronic Link."
The W ellw as Point Foundation's bulletin board system .
A s boards w ent, the W ellw as an anom aly from the beginning, and
rem ained one. It w as localto San Francisco. It w as huge, w ith m ultiple

phonelines and enorm ous files of com m entary. Its com plex UN IX-based
softw are m ight be m ost charitably described as "user- opaque." It w as
run on a m ainfram e out of the ram bling offices of a non-profit cultural
foundation in Sausalito. A nd it w as cram m ed w ith fans of the Grateful
D ead.
Though the W ellw as peopled by chattering hipsters of the Bay A rea

counterculture, it w as by no m eans a "digitalunderground" board.
Teenagers w ere fairly scarce; m ost W ellusers (know n as
"W ellbeings") w ere thirty- and forty-som ething Baby Boom ers. They
tended to w ork in the inform ation industry: hardw are, softw are,
telecom m unications, m edia, entertainm ent. Librarians, academ ics, and
journalists w ere especially com m on on the W ell, attracted by Point
Foundation's open-handed distribution of "tools and ideas."
There w ere no anarchy files on the W ell, scarcely a dropped hint about
access codes or credit-card theft. N o one used handles. V icious "flam e-
w ars" w ere held to a com paratively civilized rum ble. D ebates w ere
som etim es sharp, but no W ellbeing ever claim ed that a rivalhad dis-
connected his phone, trashed his house, or posted his credit card num -
bers.
The W ellgrew slow ly as the 1980s advanced. It charged a m odest sum

for access and storage,and lost m oney for years — but not enough to
ham per the Point Foundation, w hich w as nonprofit anyw ay. By 1990,
the W ellhad about five thousand users. These users w andered about a
gigantic cyberspace sm orgasbord of "Conferences",each conference
itself consisting of a w elter of "topics," each topic containing dozens,
som etim es hundreds of com m ents, in a tum bling, m ultiperson debate
that could last for m onths or years on end.
In 1991, the W ell'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 new-
tops)

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 (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

im pression of a bizarre m ilieu of m ountain- clim bing H aw aiian holistic
photographers trading true-life confessions w ith bisexualw ord-pro-
cessing Tibetans.
But this confusion is m ore apparent than real. Each of these conferences
w as a little cyberspace w orld in itself, com prising dozens and perhaps
hundreds of sub-topics.Each conference w as com m only frequented by a
fairly sm all, fairly like-m inded com m unity of perhaps a few dozen peo-
ple. It w as hum anly im possible to encom pass the entire W ell(espe-
cially since access to the W ell's m ainfram e com puter w as billed by the
hour). M ost longtim e users contented them selves w ith a few favorite
topicalneighborhoods, w ith the occasionalforay elsew here for a taste of
exotica. But especially im portant new s item s, and hot topicaldebates,
could catch the attention of the entire W ellcom m unity.
Like any com m unity, the W ellhad its celebrities, and John Perry

Barlow , the silver-tongued and silver- m odem ed lyricist of the G rateful
D ead, ranked prom inently am ong them . It w as here on the W ellthat
Barlow posted his true-life tale of com puter-crim e encounter w ith the
FBI.
The story, as m ight be expected, created a great stir. The W ellw as

already prim ed for hacker controversy. In D ecem ber 1989,
*Harper's* m agazine had hosted a debate on the W ellabout the ethics of
illicit com puter intrusion. W hile over forty various com puter-
m avens took part, Barlow proved a star in the debate. So did "A cid
Phreak" and "Phiber O ptik," a pair of young N ew York hacker-phreaks
w hose skills at telco sw itching-station intrusion w ere m atched only by
their apparently lim itless hunger for fam e. The advent of these tw o
boldly sw aggering outlaw s in the precincts of the W ellcreated a sensa-
tion akin to that of Black Panthers at a cocktailparty for the radically
chic.
Phiber O ptik in particular w as to seize the day in 1990. A devotee of the

*2600* circle and stalw art of the N ew York hackers' group "M asters of
D eception," Phiber O ptik w as a splendid exem plar of the com puter
intruder as com m itted dissident. The eighteen-year-old O ptik, a high-
schooldropout and part-tim e com puter repairm an, w as young, sm art,
and ruthlessly obsessive, a sharp- dressing, sharp-talking digitaldude
w ho w as utterly and airily contem ptuous of anyone's rules but his ow n.
By late 1 9 9 1 , Phiber O ptik had appeared in *H arper's,* *Esquire,*
*The N ew York Tim es,* in countless public debates and conventions,
even on a television show hosted by Geraldo Rivera.
Treated w ith gingerly respect by Barlow and other W ellm avens,

Phiber O ptik sw iftly becam e a W ellcelebrity. Strangely, despite his
thorny attitude and utter single-m indedness, Phiber O ptik seem ed to
arouse strong protective instincts in m ost of the people w ho m et him . He
w as great copy for journalists, alw ays fearlessly ready to sw agger, and,
better yet, to actually *dem onstrate* som e off-the-w alldigitalstunt.
H e w as a born m edia darling.
Even cops seem ed to recognize that there w as som ething peculiarly

unw orldly and uncrim inalabout this particular troublem aker. H e w as

so bold,so flagrant,so young,and so obviously doom ed,that even those
w ho strongly disapproved of his actions grew anxious for his w elfare,
and began to flutter about him as if he w ere an endangered sealpup.
In January 24, 1990 (nine days after the M artin Luther King D ay
Crash), Phiber O ptik, A cid Phreak, and a third N YC scofflaw nam ed
Scorpion w ere raided by the Secret Service. Their com puters w ent out
the door, along w ith the usualblizzard of papers, notebooks, com pact
disks, answ ering m achines, Sony W alkm ans, etc. Both A cid Phreak and
Phiber O ptik w ere accused of having caused the Crash.
The m ills of justice ground slow ly. The case eventually fellinto the
hands of the N ew York State Police. Phiber had lost his m achinery in the
raid, but there w ere no charges filed against him for over a year. H is
predicam ent w as extensively publicized on the W ell, w here it caused
m uch resentm ent for police tactics. It's one thing to m erely hear about
a hacker raided or busted; it's another to see the police attacking som e-
one you've com e to know personally,and w ho has explained his m otives
at length. Through the *Harper's* debate on the W ell, it had becom e
clear to the W ellbeings that Phiber O ptik w as not in fact going to "hurt
anything." In their ow n salad days, m any W ellbeings had tasted tear-
gas in pitched street-battles w ith police. They w ere inclined to indul-
gence for acts of civildisobedience.
W ellbeings w ere also startled to learn of the draconian thoroughness of a

typicalhacker search-and- seizure. It took no great stretch of im agi-
nation for them to envision them selves suffering m uch the sam e treat-
m ent.
A s early as January 1990, sentim ent on the W ellhad already begun to

sour,and people had begun to grum ble that "hackers" w ere getting a raw
dealfrom the ham - handed pow ers-that-be. The resultant issue of
*H arper's* m agazine posed the question as to w hether com puter-
intrusion w as a "crim e" at all. A s Barlow put it later: "I've begun to
w onder if w e w ouldn't also regard spelunkers as desperate crim inals if
A T& T ow ned allthe caves."
In February 1991, m ore than a year after the raid on his hom e, Phiber

O ptik w as finally arrested, and w as charged w ith first-degree Com puter
Tam pering and Com puter Trespass,N ew York state offenses. He w as
also charged w ith a theft-of-service m isdem eanor, involving a com plex
free-callscam to a 900 num ber. Phiber O ptik pled guilty to the m isde-
m eanor charge,and w as sentenced to 35 hours of com m unity service.
This passing harassm ent from the unfathom able w orld of straight people
seem ed to bother O ptik him self little if at all. D eprived of his com puter
by the January search-and-seizure, he sim ply bought him self a
portable com puter so the cops could no longer m onitor the phone w here
he lived w ith his M om , and he w ent right on w ith his depredations,
som etim es on live radio or in front of television cam eras.
The crackdow n raid m ay have done little to dissuade Phiber O ptik, but
its galling affect on the W ellbeings w as profound. A s 1990 rolled on,
the slings and arrow s m ounted: the Knight Lightning raid, the Steve
Jackson raid, the nation-spanning O peration Sundevil. The rhetoric of
law enforcem ent m ade it clear that there w as, in fact, a concerted
crackdow n on hackers in progress.
The hackers of the H ackers Conference, the W ellbeings, and their ilk,
did not really m ind the occasionalpublic m isapprehension of "hacking";
if anything, this m em brane of differentiation from straight society m ade
the "com puter com m unity" feeldifferent, sm arter, better. They had
never before been confronted, how ever, by a concerted vilification cam -
paign.
Barlow 's centralrole in the counter-struggle w as one of the m ajor

anom alies of 1990. Journalists investigating the controversy often
stum bled over the truth about Barlow , but they com m only dusted them -
selves off and hurried on as if nothing had happened. It w as as if it w ere
*too m uch to believe* that a 1960s freak from the GratefulD ead had
taken on a federallaw enforcem ent operation head-to-head and *actual-
ly seem ed to be w inning!*
Barlow had no easily detectable pow er-base for a politicalstruggle of

this kind. H e had no form allegalor technicalcredentials. Barlow w as,
how ever, a com puter netw orker of truly stellar brilliance. H e had a

poet's gift of concise, colorfulphrasing. H e also had a journalist's
shrew dness, an off-the-w all, self-deprecating w it, and a phenom enal
w ealth of sim ple personalcharm .
The kind of influence Barlow possessed is fairly com m on currency in

literary, artistic, or m usicalcircles. A gifted critic can w ield great
artistic influence sim ply through defining the tem per of the tim es, by
coining the catch-phrases and the term s of debate that becom e the com -
m on currency of the period. (A nd as it happened, Barlow *w as* a
part-tim e art critic, w ith a specialfondness for the W estern art of
Frederic Rem ington.)
Barlow w as the first com m entator to adopt W illiam Gibson's striking

science-fictionalterm "cyberspace" as a synonym for the present-day
nexus of com puter and telecom m unications netw orks. Barlow w as
insistent that cyberspace should be regarded as a qualitatively new
w orld, a "frontier." A ccording to Barlow , the w orld of electronic com -
m unications, now m ade visible through the com puter screen, could no
longer be usefully regarded as just a tangle of high-tech w iring.
Instead,it had becom e a *place,* cyberspace,w hich dem anded a new
set of m etaphors, a new set of rules and behaviors. The term , as Barlow
em ployed it, struck a usefulchord, and this concept of cyberspace w as
picked up by *Tim e,* *Scientific A m erican,* com puter police, hack-
ers, and even Constitutionalscholars. "Cyberspace" now seem s likely
to becom e a perm anent fixture of the language.
Barlow w as very striking in person: a tall, craggy- faced, bearded,

deep-voiced W yom ingan in a dashing W estern ensem ble of jeans, jacket,
cow boy boots, a knotted throat-kerchief and an ever-present Grateful
D ead cloisonne lapelpin.
A rm ed w ith a m odem , how ever, Barlow w as truly in his elem ent.

Form alhierarchies w ere not Barlow 's strong suit; he rarely m issed a
chance to belittle the "large organizations and their drones," w ith their
uptight, institutionalm indset. Barlow w as very m uch of the free-
spirit persuasion, deeply unim pressed by brass-hats and jacks-in-
office. But w hen it cam e to the digitalgrapevine, Barlow w as a cyber-
space ad-hocrat par excellence.

There w as not a m ighty arm y of Barlow s. There w as only one Barlow ,
and he w as a fairly anom olous individual. H ow ever, the situation only
seem ed to *require* a single Barlow . In fact, after 1990, m any peo-
ple m ust have concluded that a single Barlow w as far m ore than they'd
ever bargained for.
Barlow 's querulous m ini-essay about his encounter w ith the FBIstruck
a strong chord on the W ell. A num ber of other free spirits on the
fringes of A pple Com puting had com e under suspicion, and they liked it
not one w hit better than he did.
O ne of these w as M itchellKapor, the co-inventor of the spreadsheet

program "Lotus 1-2-3" and the founder of Lotus D evelopm ent
Corporation. Kapor had w ritten-off the passing indignity of being fin-
gerprinted dow n at his ow n localBoston FBIheadquarters, but Barlow 's
post m ade the fullnationalscope of the FBI's dragnet clear to Kapor.
The issue now had Kapor's fullattention. A s the Secret Service sw ung
into anti-hacker operation nationw ide in 1990, Kapor w atched every
m ove w ith deep skepticism and grow ing alarm .
A s it happened, Kapor had already m et Barlow , w ho had interview ed

Kapor for a California com puter journal. Like m ost people w ho m et
Barlow , Kapor had been very taken w ith him . N ow Kapor took it upon
him self to drop in on Barlow for a heart-to-heart talk about the situa-
tion.
Kapor w as a regular on the W ell. Kapor had been a devotee of the

*W hole Earth Catalog* since the beginning, and treasured a com plete
run of the m agazine.A nd Kapor not only had a m odem ,but a private jet.
In pursuit of the scattered high-tech investm ents of Kapor Enterprises
Inc., his personal, m ulti-m illion dollar holding com pany, K apor com -
m only crossed state lines w ith about as m uch thought as one m ight give
to faxing a letter.
The Kapor-Barlow councilof June 1990, in Pinedale, W yom ing, w as

the start of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Barlow sw iftly w rote a
m anifesto, "Crim e and Puzzlem ent," w hich announced his, and Kapor's,

intention to form a politicalorganization 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."
Furtherm ore, proclaim ed the m anifesto, the foundation w ould "fund,

conduct,and support legalefforts to dem onstrate that the Secret Service
has exercised prior restraint on publications, lim ited free speech, con-
ducted im proper seizure of equipm ent and data,used undue force,and
generally conducted itself in a fashion w hich is arbitrary, oppressive,
and unconstitutional."
"Crim e and Puzzlem ent" w as distributed far and w ide through com puter
netw orking channels, and also printed in the *W hole Earth Review .*
The sudden declaration of a coherent, politicized counter-strike from
the ranks of hackerdom electrified the com m unity. Steve W ozniak
(perhaps a bit stung by the N uProm etheus scandal) sw iftly offered to
m atch any funds Kapor offered the Foundation.
John Gilm ore, one of the pioneers of Sun M icrosystem s, im m ediately

offered his ow n extensive financialand personalsupport. Gilm ore, an
ardent libertarian, w as to prove an eloquent advocate of electronic pri-
vacy issues, especially freedom from governm entaland corporate com -
puter-assisted surveillance of private citizens.
A second m eeting in San Francisco rounded up further allies: Stew art

Brand of the Point Foundation, virtual-reality pioneers Jaron Lanier
and Chuck Blanchard, netw ork entrepreneur and venture capitalist N at
Goldhaber. A t this dinner m eeting, the activists settled on a form altitle:
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Incorporated. Kapor becam e its
president.A new EFF Conference w as opened on the Point Foundation's
W ell, and the W ellw as declared "the hom e of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation."
Press coverage w as im m ediate and intense. Like their nineteenth-cen-

tury spiritualancestors, A lexander Graham Belland Thom as W atson,
the high-tech com puter entrepreneurs of the 1970s and 1980s — peo-
ple such as W ozniak, Jobs, Kapor, Gates, and H . Ross Perot, w ho had
raised them selves by their bootstraps to dom inate a glittering new

industry — had alw ays m ade very good copy.
But w hile the W ellbeings rejoiced, the press in generalseem ed non-

plussed by the self-declared "civilizers of cyberspace." EFF's insis-
tence that the w ar against "hackers" involved grave Constitutionalcivil
liberties issues seem ed som ew hat farfetched, especially since none of
EFF's organizers w ere law yers or established politicians. The busi-
ness press in particular found it easier to seize on the apparent core of
the story — that high-tech entrepreneur M itchellKapor had established
a "defense fund for hackers." W as EFF a genuinely im portant political
developm ent — or m erely a clique of w ealthy eccentrics, dabbling in
m atters better left to the proper authorities? The jury w as stillout.
But the stage w as now set for open confrontation.A nd the first and the
m ost criticalbattle w as the hacker show -trialof "Knight Lightning."
_____
It has been m y practice throughout this book to refer to hackers only by

their "handles." There is little to gain by giving the realnam es of these
people, m any of w hom are juveniles, m any of w hom have never been
convicted of any crim e,and m any of w hom had unsuspecting parents w ho
have already suffered enough.
But the trialof Knight Lightning on July 24-27, 1990, m ade this par-
ticular "hacker" a nationally know n public figure. It can do no particu-
lar harm to him self or his fam ily if Irepeat the long-established fact
that his nam e is Craig N eidorf (pronounced N YE-dorf).
N eidorf's jury trialtook place in the United States D istrict Court,

N orthern D istrict of Illinois, Eastern D ivision, w ith the H onorable
N icholas J. Bua presiding. The United States of A m erica w as the plain-
tiff,the defendant M r. N eidorf. The defendant's attorney w as Sheldon T.
Zenner of the Chicago firm of Katten, M uchin and Zavis.
The prosecution w as led by the stalw arts of the Chicago Com puter Fraud
and A buse Task Force: W illiam J. Cook, Colleen D . Coughlin, and D avid A .
Glockner, allA ssistant United States A ttorneys. The Secret Service
Case A gent w as Tim othy M .Foley.

It w illbe recalled that N eidorf w as the co-editor of an underground
hacker "m agazine" called *Phrack*. *Phrack* w as an entirely elec-
tronic publication, distributed through bulletin boards and over elec-
tronic netw orks. It w as am ateur publication given aw ay for free.
N eidorf had never m ade any m oney for his w ork in *Phrack.* N either
had his unindicted co-editor "Taran King" or any of the num erous
*Phrack* contributors.
The Chicago Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force,how ever,had decided
to prosecute N eidorf as a fraudster. To form ally adm it that *Phrack*
w as a "m agazine" and N eidorf a "publisher" w as to open a prosecutorial
Pandora's Box of First A m endm ent issues. To do this w as to play into
the hands of Zenner and his EFF advisers, w hich now included a phalanx
of prom inent N ew York civilrights law yers as w ellas the form idable
legalstaff of Katten, M uchin and Zavis. Instead, the prosecution relied
heavily on the issue of access device fraud: Section 1029 of Title 18,
the section from w hich the Secret Service drew its m ost direct juris-
diction over com puter crim e.
N eidorf's alleged crim es centered around the E911 D ocum ent. He w as

accused of having entered into a fraudulent schem e w ith the Prophet,
w ho, it w illbe recalled, w as the A tlanta LoD m em ber w ho had illicitly
copied the E911 D ocum ent from the BellSouth A IM SX system .
The Prophet him self w as also a co-defendant in the N eidorf case, part-
and-parcelof the alleged "fraud schem e" to "steal" BellSouth's E911
Docum ent (and to pass the Docum ent across state lines,w hich helped
establish the N eidorf trialas a federalcase). The Prophet, in the spirit
of fullco-operation, had agreed to testify against N eidorf.
In fact,allthree of the A tlanta crew stood ready to testify against

N eidorf. Their ow n federalprosecutors in A tlanta had charged the
A tlanta Three w ith: (a) conspiracy, (b) com puter fraud, (c) w ire
fraud, (d) access device fraud, and (e) interstate transportation of
stolen property (Title 18, Sections 371, 1030, 1343, 1029, and
2314).

Faced w ith this blizzard of trouble, Prophet and Leftist had ducked any
public trialand had pled guilty to reduced charges — one conspiracy
count apiece. Urvile had pled guilty to that odd bit of Section 1029
w hich m akes it illegalto possess "fifteen or m ore" illegalaccess devices
(in his case, com puter passw ords). A nd their sentences w ere scheduled
for Septem ber 14, 1990 — w ellafter the N eidorf trial. A s w itnesses,
they could presum ably be relied upon to behave.
N eidorf, how ever, w as pleading innocent. M ost everyone else caught up

in the crackdow n had "cooperated fully" and pled guilty in hope of
reduced sentences. (Steve Jackson w as 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 w ith any crim e in the first place.)
N eidorf had been urged to plead guilty. But N eidorf w as a politicalsci-

ence m ajor and w as disinclined to go to jailfor "fraud" w hen he had not
m ade any m oney,had not broken into any com puter,and had been pub-
lishing a m agazine that he considered protected under the First
A m endm ent.
N eidorf's trialw as the *only* legalaction of the entire Crackdow n that

actually involved bringing the issues at hand out for a public test in
front of a jury of A m erican citizens.
N eidorf, too, had cooperated w ith investigators. H e had voluntarily

handed over m uch of the evidence that had led to his ow n indictm ent. He
had already adm itted in w riting that he knew that the E911 D ocum ent
had been stolen before he had "published" it in *Phrack* — or, from the
prosecution's point of view , illegally transported stolen property by
w ire in som ething purporting to be a "publication."
But even if the "publication" of the E911 Docum ent w as not held to be a
crim e, that w ouldn't let N eidorf off the hook. N eidorf had stillreceived
the E911 D ocum ent w hen Prophet had transferred it to him from Rich
A ndrew s' Jolnet node. O n that occasion, it certainly hadn't been "pub-
lished" — it w as hacker booty, pure and sim ple, transported across state
lines.

The Chicago Task Force led a Chicago grand jury to indict N eidorf on a
set of charges that could have put him in jailfor thirty years. W hen
som e of these charges w ere successfully challenged before N eidorf actu-
ally w ent to trial, the Chicago Task Force rearranged his indictm ent so
that he faced a possible jailterm of over sixty years! A s a first offend-
er, it w as very unlikely that N eidorf w ould in fact receive a sentence so
drastic; but the Chicago Task Force clearly intended to see N eidorf put
in prison, and his conspiratorial"m agazine" put perm anently out of
com m ission. This w as a federalcase, and N eidorf w as charged w ith the
fraudulent theft of property w orth alm ost eighty thousand dollars.
W illiam Cook w as a strong believer in high-profile prosecutions w ith

sym bolic overtones. H e often published articles on his w ork in the
security trade press,arguing that "a clear m essage had to be sent to the
public at large and the com puter com m unity in particular that unautho-
rized attacks on com puters and the theft of com puterized inform ation
w ould not be tolerated by the courts."
The issues w ere com plex, the prosecution's tactics som ew hat unortho-
dox,but the Chicago Task Force had proved sure-footed to date.
"Shadow haw k" had been bagged on the w ing in 1989 by the Task Force,
and sentenced to nine m onths in prison, and a $10,000 fine. The
Shadow haw k case involved charges under Section 1030, the "federal
interest com puter" section.
Shadow haw k had not in fact been a devotee of "federal-interest" com put-
ers per se. O n the contrary,Shadow haw k,w ho ow ned an A T& T hom e
com puter,seem ed to cherish a specialaggression tow ard A T& T. He had
bragged on the underground boards "Phreak Klass 2600" and "D r.
Ripco" of his skills at raiding A T& T, and of his intention to crash
A T& T's nationalphone system .Shadow haw k's brags w ere noticed by
H enry Kluepfelof Bellcore Security, scourge of the outlaw boards,
w hose relations w ith the Chicago Task Force w ere long and intim ate.
The Task Force successfully established that Section 1030 applied to the
teenage Shadow haw k,despite the objections of his defense attorney.
Shadow haw k had entered a com puter "ow ned" by U.S.M issile Com m and

and m erely "m anaged" by A T& T. He had also entered an A T& T com puter
located at Robbins A ir Force Base in Georgia. A ttacking A T& T w as of
"federalinterest" w hether Shadow haw k had intended it or not.
The Task Force also convinced the court that a piece of A T& T softw are
that Shadow haw k had illicitly copied from BellLabs, the "A rtificial
Intelligence C5 Expert System ," w as w orth a coolone m illion dollars.
Shadow haw k's attorney had argued that Shadow haw k had not sold the
program and had m ade no profit from the illicit copying. A nd in point of
fact, the C5 Expert System w as experim entalsoftw are, and had no
established m arket value because it had never been on the m arket in the
first place. A T& T's ow n assessm ent of a "one m illion dollar" figure for
its ow n intangible property w as accepted w ithout challenge by the
court, how ever. A nd the court concurred w ith the governm ent prosecu-
tors that Shadow haw k show ed clear "intent to defraud" w hether he'd got-
ten any m oney or not. Shadow haw k w ent to jail.
The Task Force's other best-know n trium ph had been the conviction and
jailing of "K yrie." K yrie, a true denizen of the digitalcrim inalunder-
ground, w as a 36-year-old Canadian w om an, convicted and jailed for
telecom m unications fraud in Canada. A fter her release from prison,
she had fled the w rath of Canada Belland the RoyalCanadian M ounted
Police, and eventually settled, very unw isely, in Chicago.
"Kyrie," w ho also called herself "Long D istance Inform ation," special-

ized in voice-m ailabuse. She assem bled large num bers of hot long-
distance codes,then read them aloud into a series of corporate voice-
m ailsystem s. Kyrie and her friends w ere electronic squatters in cor-
porate voice-m ailsystem s, using them m uch as if they w ere pirate
bulletin boards, then m oving on w hen their vocalchatter clogged the
system and the ow ners necessarily w ised up. Kyrie's cam p follow ers
w ere a loose tribe of som e hundred and fifty phone-phreaks, w ho fol-
low ed her trailof piracy from m achine to m achine, ardently begging for
her services and expertise.
Kyrie's disciples passed her stolen credit-card num bers, in exchange

for her stolen "long distance inform ation." Som e of Kyrie's clients paid
her off in cash, by scam m ing credit-card cash advances from W estern

Union.
Kyrie travelled incessantly, m ostly through airline tickets and hotel

room s that she scam m ed through stolen credit cards. Tiring of this, she
found refuge w ith a fellow fem ale phone phreak in Chicago. Kyrie's
hostess, like a surprising num ber of phone phreaks, w as blind. She w as
also physically disabled. Kyrie allegedly m ade the best of her new situ-
ation by applying for, and receiving, state w elfare funds under a false
identity as a qualified caretaker for the handicapped.
Sadly, Kyrie's tw o children by a form er m arriage had also vanished

underground w ith her; these pre-teen digitalrefugees had no legal
A m erican identity, and had never spent a day in school.
Kyrie w as addicted to technicalm astery and enthralled by her ow n clev-

erness and the ardent w orship of her teenage follow ers. This foolishly
led her to phone up GailThackeray in A rizona, to boast, brag, strut, and
offer to play inform ant. Thackeray, how ever, had already learned far
m ore than enough about Kyrie,w hom she roundly despised as an adult
crim inalcorrupting m inors, a "fem ale Fagin." Thackeray passed her
tapes of Kyrie's boasts to the Secret Service.
Kyrie w as raided and arrested in Chicago in M ay 1989. She confessed at

great length and pled guilty.
In A ugust 1990, Cook and his Task Force colleague Colleen Coughlin sent
Kyrie to jailfor 27 m onths, for com puter and telecom m unications
fraud. This w as a m arkedly severe sentence by the usualw rist-slap-
ping standards of "hacker" busts. Seven of Kyrie's forem ost teenage
disciples w ere 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 som eone in prison for voice-m ailabuse.
Their pioneering efforts had w on them attention and kudos.
In his article on Kyrie, Cook drove the m essage hom e to the readers of
*Security M anagem ent* m agazine, a trade journalfor corporate secu-
rity professionals. The case, Cook said, and Kyrie's stiff sentence,
"reflect a new reality for hackers and com puter crim e victim s in the

'90s.... Individuals and corporations w ho report com puter and telecom -
m unications crim es can now expect that their cooperation w ith federal
law enforcem ent w illresult in m eaningfulpunishm ent. Com panies and
the public at large m ust report com puter-enhanced crim es if they w ant
prosecutors and the course to protect their rights to the tangible and
intangible property developed and stored on com puters."
Cook had m ade it his business to construct this "new reality for hack-
ers." H e'd also m ade it his business to police corporate property rights
to the intangible.
Had the Electronic Frontier Foundation been a "hacker defense fund" as

that term w as generally understood, they presum ably w ould have stood
up for Kyrie. Her 1990 sentence did indeed send a "m essage" that fed-
eralheat w as com ing dow n on "hackers." But Kyrie found no defenders
at EFF, or anyw here else, for that m atter. EFF w as not a bail-out fund
for electronic crooks.
The N eidorf case paralleled the Shadow haw k case in certain w ays. The
victim once again w as allow ed to set the value of the "stolen" property.
O nce again Kluepfelw as both investigator and technicaladvisor. O nce
again no m oney had changed hands,but the "intent to defraud" w as cen-
tral.
The prosecution's case show ed signs of w eakness early on. The Task
Force had originally hoped to prove N eidorf the center of a nationw ide
Legion of D oom crim inalconspiracy. The *Phrack* editors threw
physicalget-togethers every sum m er, w hich attracted hackers from
across the country;generally tw o dozen or so of the m agazine's favorite
contributors and readers. (Such conventions w ere com m on in the hack-
er com m unity; 2600 M agazine, for instance, held public m eetings of
hackers in N ew York, every m onth.) LoD heavy-dudes w ere alw ays a
strong presence at these *Phrack*-sponsored "Sum m ercons."
In July 1988, an A rizona hacker nam ed "D ictator" attended Sum m ercon
in N eidorf's hom e tow n of St. Louis. D ictator w as one of GailThackeray's
underground inform ants; D ictator's underground board in Phoenix w as a
sting operation for the Secret Service. D ictator brought an undercover

crew of Secret Service agents to Sum m ercon. The agents bored spyholes
through the w allof D ictator's hotelroom in St Louis, and videotaped the
frolicking hackers through a one-w ay m irror. A s it happened, how ev-
er, nothing illegalhad occurred on videotape, other than the guzzling of
beer by a couple of m inors. Sum m ercons w ere socialevents, not sinis-
ter cabals. The tapes show ed fifteen hours of raucous laughter, pizza-
gobbling, in-jokes and back-slapping.
N eidorf's law yer, Sheldon Zenner, saw the Secret Service tapes before
the trial. Zenner w as shocked by the com plete harm lessness of this
m eeting, w hich Cook had earlier characterized as a sinister interstate
conspiracy to com m it fraud. Zenner w anted to show the Sum m ercon
tapes to the jury. It took protracted m aneuverings by the Task Force to
keep the tapes from the jury as "irrelevant."
The E911 D ocum ent w as also proving a w eak reed. It had originally
been valued at $79,449. Unlike Shadow haw k's arcane A rtificial
Intelligence booty, the E911 D ocum ent w as not softw are — it w as w rit-
ten in English. Com puter-know ledgeable people found this value — for a
tw elve-page bureaucratic docum ent — frankly incredible. In his
"Crim e and Puzzlem ent" m anifesto for EFF, Barlow com m ented: "W e
w illprobably never know how this figure w as reached or by w hom ,
though Ilike to im agine an appraisalteam consisting of Franz Kafka,
Joseph H eller, and Thom as Pynchon."
A s it happened, Barlow w as unduly pessim istic. The EFF did, in fact,

eventually discover exactly how this figure w as reached, and by w hom
— but only in 1991, long after the N eidorf trialw as over.
Kim M egahee, a Southern Bellsecurity m anager, had arrived at the doc-

um ent's value by sim ply adding up the "costs associated w ith the pro-
duction" of the E911 Docum ent. Those "costs" w ere as follow s:
1. A technicalw riter had been hired to research and w rite the E911
D ocum ent. 200 hours of w ork, at $35 an hour, cost : $7,000. A
Project M anager had overseen the technicalw riter. 200 hours, at $31
an hour, m ade: $6,200.

2. A w eek of typing had cost $721 dollars. A w eek of form atting had
cost $721. A w eek of graphics form atting had cost $742.
3. Tw o days of editing cost $367.
4. A box of order labels cost five dollars.
5. Preparing a purchase order for the D ocum ent, including typing and
the obtaining of an authorizing signature from w ithin the BellSouth
bureaucracy, cost $129.
6. Printing cost $313. M ailing the D ocum ent to fifty people took fifty
hours by a clerk, and cost $858.
7. Placing the D ocum ent in an index took tw o clerks an hour each,

totalling $43.
Bureaucratic overhead alone, therefore, w as alleged to have cost a

w hopping $17,099. A ccording to M r. M egahee, the typing of a tw elve-
page docum ent had taken a fullw eek. W riting it had taken five w eeks,
including an overseer w ho apparently did nothing else but w atch the
author for five w eeks. Editing tw elve pages had taken tw o days.
Printing and m ailing an electronic docum ent (w hich w as already avail-
able on the Southern BellData N etw ork to any telco em ployee w ho needed
it), had cost over a thousand dollars.
But this w as just the beginning. There w ere also the *hardw are
expenses.* Eight hundred fifty dollars for a V T220 com puter m onitor.
*Thirty-one thousand dollars* for a sophisticated V A Xstation IIcom -
puter. Six thousand dollars for a com puter printer. *Tw enty-tw o
thousand dollars* for a copy of "Interleaf" softw are. Tw o thousand five
hundred dollars for V M S softw are. A llthis to create the tw elve-page
D ocum ent.
Plus ten percent of the cost of the softw are and the hardw are, for m ain-
tenance. (A ctually,the ten percent m aintenance costs,though m en-
tioned, had been left off the final$79,449 total, apparently through a
m erciful oversight).

M r. M egahee's letter had been m ailed directly to W illiam Cook him self,
at the office of the Chicago federalattorneys. The United States
Governm ent accepted these telco figures w ithout question.
A s incredulity m ounted, the value of the E911 D ocum ent w as officially

revised dow nw ard. This tim e, Robert Kibler of BellSouth Security esti-
m ated the value of the tw elve pages as a m ere $24,639.05 — based,
purportedly, on "R& D costs." But this specific estim ate, right dow n to
the nickel, did not m ove the skeptics at all; in fact it provoked open
scorn and a torrent of sarcasm .
The financialissues concerning theft of proprietary inform ation have

alw ays been peculiar. It could be argued that BellSouth had not "lost" its
E911 D ocum ent at allin the first place, and therefore had not suffered
any m onetary dam age from this "theft." A nd Sheldon Zenner did in fact
argue this at N eidorf's trial— that Prophet's raid had not been "theft,"
but w as better understood as illicit copying.
The m oney, how ever, w as not centralto anyone's true purposes in this
trial. It w as not Cook's strategy to convince the jury that the E911
Docum ent w as a m ajor act of theft and should be punished for that reason
alone. His strategy w as to argue that the E911 D ocum ent w as *danger-
ous.* It w as his intention to establish that the E911 D ocum ent w as "a
road-m ap" to the Enhanced 911 System . N eidorf had deliberately and
recklessly distributed a dangerous w eapon. N eidorf and the Prophet did
not care (or perhaps even gloated at the sinister idea) that the E911
D ocum ent could be used by hackers to disrupt 911 service, "a life line
for every person certainly in the Southern Bellregion of the United
States,and indeed,in m any com m unities throughout the United States,"
in Cook's ow n w ords. N eidorf had put people's lives in danger.
In pre-trialm aneuverings, Cook had established that the E911

Docum ent w as too hot to appear in the public proceedings of the N eidorf
trial. The *jury itself* w ould not be allow ed to ever see this
D ocum ent, lest it slip into the officialcourt records, and thus into the
hands of the generalpublic, and, thus, som ehow , to m alicious hackers
w ho m ight lethally abuse it.

H iding the E911 D ocum ent from the jury m ay have been a clever legal
m aneuver, but it had a severe flaw . There w ere, in point of fact, hun-
dreds, perhaps thousands, of people, already in possession of the E911
D ocum ent, just as *Phrack* had published it. Its true nature w as
already obvious to a w ide section of the interested public (allof w hom ,
by the w ay, w ere, at least theoretically, party to a gigantic w ire-fraud
conspiracy). M ost everyone in the electronic com m unity w ho had a
m odem and any interest in the N eidorf case already had a copy of the
D ocum ent. It had already been available in *Phrack* for over a year.
People, even quite norm alpeople w ithout any particular prurient

interest in forbidden know ledge, did not shut their eyes in terror at the
thought of beholding a "dangerous" docum ent from a telephone com pany.
O n the contrary, they tended to trust their ow n judgem ent and sim ply
read the Docum ent for them selves. A nd they w ere not im pressed.
O ne such person w as John N agle. N agle w as a forty- one-year-old pro-

fessionalprogram m er w ith a m asters' degree in com puter science from
Stanford. He had w orked for Ford A erospace,w here he had invented a
com puter-netw orking technique know n as the "N agle A lgorithm ," and
for the prom inent Californian com puter- graphics firm "A utodesk,"
w here he w as a m ajor stockholder.
N agle w as also a prom inent figure on the W ell, m uch respected for his
technicalknow ledgeability.
N agle had follow ed the civil-liberties debate closely, for he w as an

ardent telecom m unicator. H e w as no particular friend of com puter
intruders, but he believed electronic publishing had a great dealto offer
society at large, and attem pts to restrain its grow th, or to censor free
electronic expression, strongly roused his ire.
The N eidorf case,and the E911 D ocum ent,w ere both being discussed in
detailon the Internet, in an electronic publication called *Telecom
D igest.* N agle, a longtim e Internet m aven, w as a regular reader of
*Telecom D igest.* N agle had never seen a copy of *Phrack,* but the
im plications of the case disturbed him .

W hile in a Stanford bookstore hunting books on robotics, N agle happened
across a book called *The Intelligent N etw ork.* Thum bing through it at
random , N agle cam e across an entire chapter m eticulously detailing the
w orkings of E911 police em ergency system s. This extensive text w as
being sold openly, and yet in Illinois a young m an w as in danger of going
to prison for publishing a thin six-page docum ent about 911 service.
N agle m ade an ironic com m ent to this effect in *Telecom D igest.* From
there, N agle w as put in touch w ith M itch Kapor, and then w ith N eidorf's
law yers.
Sheldon Zenner w as delighted to find a com puter telecom m unications

expert w illing to speak up for N eidorf, one w ho w as not a w acky teenage
"hacker." N agle w as fluent,m ature,and respectable;he'd once had a
federalsecurity clearance.
N agle w as asked to fly to Illinois to join the defense team .
Having joined the defense as an expert w itness, N agle read the entire
E911 D ocum ent for him self. He m ade his ow n judgem ent about its
potentialfor m enace.
The tim e has now com e for you yourself,the reader,to have a look at the
E911 D ocum ent. This six-page piece of w ork w as the pretext for a fed-
eralprosecution that could have sent an electronic publisher to prison
for thirty, or even sixty, years. It w as the pretext for the search and
seizure of Steve Jackson Gam es, a legitim ate publisher of printed books.
It w as also the form alpretext for the search and seizure of the M entor's
bulletin board, "Phoenix Project," and for the raid on the hom e of Erik
Bloodaxe. It also had m uch to do w ith the seizure of Richard A ndrew s'
Jolnet node and the shutdow n of Charles Boykin's A T& T node. The E911
D ocum ent w as the single m ost im portant piece of evidence in the Hacker
Crackdow n. There can be no realand legitim ate substitute for the
D ocum ent itself.
==Phrack Inc.==

V olum e Tw o, Issue 24, File 5 of 13
ControlO ffice A dm inistration O f Enhanced 911 Services

For SpecialServices and A ccount Centers
by the Eavesdropper
M arch, 1988
D escription of Service
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The controloffice for Em ergency 911 service is assigned in accordance w ith
the existing standard guidelines to one of the follow ing centers:
o Special Services Center (SSC)

o M ajor A ccounts Center (M A C)
o Serving Test Center (STC)
o TollControlCenter (TCC)
The SSC/M A C designation is used in this docum ent interchangeably for any of
these four centers. The SpecialServices Centers (SSCs) or M ajor A ccount
Centers (M A Cs) have been designated as the trouble reporting contact for all
E911 custom er (PSA P) reported troubles. Subscribers w ho have trouble on an
E9 1 1 call w ill continue to contact local repair service (CRSA B) w ho w ill refer
the trouble to the SSC/M A C, w hen appropriate.
D ue to the criticalnature of E911 service, the controland tim ely repair of

troubles is dem anded. A s the prim ary E911 custom er contact, the SSC/M A C
is in the unique position to m onitor the status of the trouble and insure its
resolution.
System O verview
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The num ber 911 is intended as a nationw ide universaltelephone num ber w hich
provides the public w ith direct access to a Public Safety A nsw ering Point
(PSA P). A PSA P is also referred to as an Em ergency Service Bureau (ESB).
A PSA P is an agency or facility w hich is authorized by a m unicipality to
receive and respond to police, fire and/or am bulance services. O ne or m ore
attendants are located at the PSA P facilities to receive and handle calls of an
em ergency nature in accordance w ith the localm unicipalrequirem ents.
A n im portant advantage of E911 em ergency service is im proved (reduced)

response tim es for em ergency services. A lso close coordination am ong agen-
cies providing various em ergency services is a valuable capability provided
by E911 service.
1A ESS is used as the tandem office for the E911 netw ork to route all911
calls to the correct (prim ary) PSA P designated to serve the calling station.
The E911 feature w as developed prim arily to provide routing to the correct
PSA P for all 9 1 1 calls. Selective routing allow s a 9 1 1 call originated from a
particular station located in a particular district, zone, or tow n, to be routed
to the prim ary PSA P designated to serve that custom er station regardless of

w ire center boundaries. Thus, selective routing elim inates the problem of
w ire center boundaries not coinciding w ith district or other politicalbound-
aries.
The services available w ith the E9 1 1 feature include:
Forced D isconnect D efault Routing

A lternative Routing N ight Service
Selective Routing A utom atic N um ber Identification (A N I)
Selective Transfer A utom atic Location Identification (A LI)
Preservice/Installation G uidelines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
W hen a contract for an E911 system has been signed, it is the responsibility
of N etw ork M arketing to establish an im plem entation/cutover com m ittee
w hich should include a representative from the SSC/M A C. D uties of the E911
Im plem entation Team include coordination of allphases of the E911 system
deploym ent and the form ation of an on-going E911 m aintenance subcom m ittee.
M arketing is responsible for providing the follow ing custom er specific infor-
m ation to the SSC/M A C prior to the start of callthrough testing:
o A llPSA P's (nam e, address, localcontact)

o A ll PSA P circuit ID 's
o 1004 911 service request including PSA P details on each PSA P (1004
Section K, L, M )
o N etw ork configuration
o A ny vendor inform ation (nam e, telephone num ber, equipm ent)
The SSC/M A C needs to know if the equipm ent and sets at the PSA P are m ain-
tained by the BO Cs, an independent com pany, or an outside vendor, or any
com bination. This inform ation is then entered on the PSA P profile sheets and
review ed quarterly for changes, additions and deletions.
M arketing w illsecure the M ajor A ccount N um ber (M A N ) and provide this

num ber to Corporate Com m unications so that the initialissue of the service
orders carry the M A N and can be tracked by the SSC/M A C via CO RD N ET.
PSA P circuits are official services by definition.
A llservice orders required for the installation of the E9 1 1 system should

include the M A N assigned to the city/county w hich has purchased the system .
In accordance w ith the basic SSC/M A C strategy for provisioning, the

SSC/M A C w ill be O verall Control O ffice (O CO ) for all N ode to PSA P circuits
(official services) and any other services for this custom er. Training m ust
be scheduled for allSSC/M A C involved personnelduring the pre-service
stage of the project.
The E911 Im plem entation Team w illform the on-going m aintenance subcom -
m ittee prior to the initialim plem entation of the E911 system . This sub-com -
m ittee w illestablish post im plem entation quality assurance procedures to

ensure that the E911 system continues to provide quality service to the cus-
tom er. Custom er/Com pany training, trouble reporting interfaces for the cus-
tom er, telephone com pany and any involved independent telephone com panies
needs to be addressed and im plem ented prior to E911 cutover. These func-
tions can be best addressed by the form ation of a subcom m ittee of the E911
Im plem entation Team to set up guidelines for and to secure service com m it-
m ents of interfacing organizations. A SSC/M A C supervisor should chair this
subcom m ittee and include the follow ing organizations:
1) Sw itching ControlCenter
- E9 1 1 translations
- Trunking
- End office and Tandem office hardw are/softw are
2) Recent Change M em ory A dm inistration Center
- D aily RC update activity for TN /ESN translations
- Processes validity errors and rejects
3) Line and N um ber A dm inistration
- V erification of TN /ESN translations
4 ) Special Service Center/M ajor A ccount Center
- Single point of contact for allPSA P and N ode to host troubles
- Logs, tracks & statusing of all trouble reports
- Trouble referral, follow up, and escalation
- Custom er notification of status and restoration
- A nalyzation of "chronic" troubles
- Testing, installation and m aintenance of E911 circuits
5 ) Installation and M aintenance (SSIM /I& M )
- Repair and m aintenance of PSA P equipm ent and Telco ow ned sets
6) M inicom puter M aintenance O perations Center
- E911 circuit m aintenance (w here applicable)
7) A rea M aintenance Engineer
- Technicalassistance on voice (CO -PSA P) netw ork related E9 1 1 trou-
bles
M aintenance Guidelines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The CCN C w illtest the N ode circuit from the 202T at the H ost site to the
202T at the N ode site. Since H ost to N ode (CCN C to M M O C) circuits are offi-
cialcom pany services, the CCN C w illrefer allN ode circuit troubles to the
SSC/M A C. The SSC/M A C is responsible for the testing and follow up to
restoration of these circuit troubles.
A lthough N ode to PSA P circuit are official services, the M M O C w ill refer
PSA P circuit troubles to the appropriate SSC/M A C. The SSC/M A C is respon-
sible for testing and follow up to restoration of PSA P circuit troubles.
The SSC/M A C w ill also receive reports from CRSA B/IM C(s) on subscriber
911 troubles w hen they are not line troubles. The SSC/M A C is responsible
for testing and restoration of these troubles.
M aintenance responsibilities are as follow s:

SCC* V oice N etw ork (A N Ito PSA P)
*SCC responsible for tandem sw itch
SSIM /I& M PSA P Equipm ent (M odem s, CIU 's, sets)
V endor PSA P Equipm ent (w hen CPE)
SSC/M A C PSA P to N ode circuits, and tandem to PSA P voice circuits
(EM N T)
M M OC N ode site (M odem s, cables, etc)
N ote: A llabove w ork groups are required to resolve troubles by interfacing

w ith appropriate w ork groups for resolution.
The Sw itching ControlCenter (SCC) is responsible for E9 1 1 /1 A ESS transla-

tions in tandem centraloffices. These translations route E911 calls, selec-
tive transfer, default routing, speed calling, etc., for each PSA P. The SCC is
also responsible for troubleshooting on the voice netw ork (calloriginating to
end office tandem equipm ent).
For exam ple, A N I failures in the originating offices w ould be a responsibility

of the SCC.
Recent Change M em ory A dm inistration Center (RCM A C) perform s the daily

tandem translation updates (recent change) for routing of individualtelephone
num bers.
Recent changes are generated from service order activity (new service,
address changes, etc.) and com piled into a daily file by the E911 Center
(A LI/D M S E911 Com puter).
SSIM /I& M is responsible for the installation and repair of PSA P equipm ent.
PSA P equipm ent includes A N I Controller, A LI Controller, data sets, cables,
sets, and other peripheralequipm ent that is not vendor ow ned. SSIM /I& M is
responsible for establishing m aintenance test kits, com plete w ith spare parts
for PSA P m aintenance. This includes test gear, data sets, and A N I/A LI
Controller parts.
Special Services Center (SSC) or M ajor A ccount Center (M A C) serves as the

trouble reporting contact for all(PSA P) troubles reported by custom er. The
SSC/M A C refers troubles to proper organizations for handling and tracks
status of troubles, escalating w hen necessary. The SSC/M A C w illclose out
troubles w ith custom er. The SSC/M A C w ill analyze all troubles and tracks
"chronic" PSA P troubles.
Corporate Com m unications N etw ork Center (CCN C) w illtest and refer trou-
bles on allnode to host circuits. A llE9 1 1 circuits are classified as official
com pany property.
The M inicom puter M aintenance O perations Center (M M O C) m aintains the E911

(A LI/D M S) com puter hardw are at the H ost site. This M M O C is also responsi-
ble for m onitoring the system and reporting certain PSA P and system prob-
lem s to the localM M O C's, SCC's or SSC/M A C's. The M M O C personnelalso
operate softw are program s that m aintain the TN data base under the direction
of the E911 Center. The m aintenance of the N O D E com puter (the interface

betw een the PSA P and the A LI/D M S com puter) is a function of the M M O C at
the N O D E site. The M M O C's at the N O D E sites m ay also be involved in the
testing of N O D E to H ost circuits. The M M O C w illalso assist on H ost to PSA P
and data netw ork related troubles not resolved through standard trouble
clearing procedures.
Installation A nd M aintenance Center (IM C) is responsible for referralof E9 1 1

subscriber troubles that are not subscriber line problem s.
E9 1 1 Center - Perform s the role of System A dm inistration and is responsible

for overalloperation of the E911 com puter softw are. The E911 Center does
A -Z trouble analysis and provides statisticalinform ation on the perform ance
of the system .
This analysis includes processing PSA P inquiries (trouble reports) and refer-
ralof netw ork troubles. The E911 Center also perform s daily processing of
tandem recent change and provides inform ation to the RCM A C for tandem
input. The E911 Center is responsible for daily processing of the A LI/D M S
com puter data base and provides error files, etc. to the Custom er Services
departm ent for investigation and correction. The E911 Center participates in
allsystem im plem entations and on-going m aintenance effort and assists in the
developm ent of procedures, training and education of inform ation to all
groups.
A ny group receiving a 911 trouble from the SSC/M A C should close out the
trouble w ith the SSC/M A C or provide a status if the trouble has been
referred to another group. This w illallow the SSC/M A C to provide a status
back to the custom er or escalate as appropriate.
A ny group receiving a trouble from the H ost site (M M O C or CCN C) should

close the trouble back to that group.
The M M O C should notify the appropriate SSC/M A C w hen the H ost, N ode, or
allN ode circuits are dow n so that the SSC/M A C can reply to custom er
reports that m ay be called in by the PSA Ps. This w illelim inate duplicate
reporting of troubles. O n com plete outages the M M O C w illfollow escalation
procedures for a N ode after tw o (2) hours and for a PSA P after four (4)
hours. A dditionally the M M O C w illnotify the appropriate SSC/M A C w hen the
H ost, N ode, or allN ode circuits are dow n.
The PSA P w ill call the SSC/M A C to report E9 1 1 troubles. The person report-
ing the E911 trouble m ay not have a circuit I.D . and w illtherefore report the
PSA P nam e and address. M any PSA P troubles are not circuit specific. In
those instances w here the caller cannot provide a circuit I.D ., the SSC/M A C
w illbe required to determ ine the circuit I.D . using the PSA P profile. Under no
circum stances w illthe SSC/M A C Center refuse to take the trouble. The E911
trouble should be handled as quickly as possible, w ith the SSC/M A C providing
as m uch assistance as possible w hile taking the trouble report from the
caller.
The SSC/M A C w illscreen/test the trouble to determ ine the appropriate

handoff organization based on the follow ing criteria:

PSA P equipm ent problem : SSIM /I& M
C ircuit problem : SSC /M A C
V oice netw ork problem : SCC (report trunk group num ber)
Problem affecting m ultiple PSA Ps (N o A LI report from
allPSA Ps): Contact the M M O C to check for N O D E or
H ost com puter problem s before further testing.
The SSC/M A C w illtrack the status of reported troubles and escalate as

appropriate. The SSC/M A C w illclose out custom er/com pany reports w ith
the initiating contact. G roups w ith specific m aintenance responsibilities,
defined above, w illinvestigate "chronic" troubles upon request from the
SSC/M A C and the ongoing m aintenance subcom m ittee.
A ll"out of service" E9 1 1 troubles are priority one type reports. O ne link

dow n to a PSA P is considered a priority one trouble and should be handled as
if the PSA P w as isolated.
The PSA P w ill report troubles w ith the A N I controller, A LI controller or set
equipm ent to the SSC/M A C.
N O A N I: W here the PSA P reports N O A N I(digitaldisplay screen is blank) ask

if this condition exists on allscreens and on allcalls. It is im portant to dif-
ferentiate betw een blank screens and screens displaying 9 1 1 -0 0 XX, or all
zeroes.
W hen the PSA P reports all screens on all calls, ask if there is any voice con-
tact w ith callers. If there is no voice contact the trouble should be referred
to the SCC im m ediately since 911 calls are not getting through w hich m ay
require alternate routing of calls to another PSA P.
W hen the PSA P reports this condition on allscreens but not allcalls and has
voice contact w ith callers, the report should be referred to SSIM /I& M for
dispatch. The SSC/M A C should verify w ith the SCC that A N Iis pulsing before
dispatching SSIM .
W hen the PSA P reports this condition on one screen for allcalls (others w ork
fine) the trouble should be referred to SSIM /I& M for dispatch, because the
trouble is isolated to one piece of equipm ent at the custom er prem ise.
A n A N Ifailure (i.e. allzeroes) indicates that the A N Ihas not been received by
the PSA P from the tandem office or w as lost by the PSA P A N Icontroller.
The PSA P m ay receive "02" alarm s w hich can be caused by the A N Icon-
troller logging m ore than three allzero failures on the sam e trunk. The PSA P
has been instructed to report this condition to the SSC/M A C since it could
indicate an equipm ent trouble at the PSA P w hich m ight be affecting allsub-
scribers calling into the PSA P. W hen allzeroes are being received on allcalls
or "02" alarm s continue, a tester should analyze the condition to determ ine
the appropriate action to be taken. The tester m ust perform cooperative
testing w ith the SCC w hen there appears to be a problem on the Tandem -PSA P
trunks before requesting dispatch.

W hen an occasionalallzero condition is reported, the SSC/M A C should dis-
patch SSIM /I& M to routine equipm ent on a "chronic" troublesw eep.
The PSA Ps are instructed to report incidentalA N Ifailures to the BO C on a

PSA P inquiry trouble ticket (paper) that is sent to the Custom er Services
E911 group and forw arded to E911 center w hen required. This usually
involves only a particular telephone num ber and is not a condition that w ould
require a report to the SSC/M A C. M ultiple A N I failures w hich our from the
sam e end office (XX denotes end office), indicate a hard trouble condition m ay
exist in the end office or end office tandem trunks. The PSA P w illreport this
type of condition to the SSC/M A C and the SSC/M A C should refer the report
to the SCC responsible for the tandem office. N O TE: XX is the ESCO
(Em ergency Service N um ber) associated w ith the incom ing 911 trunks into
the tandem . It is im portant that the C/M A C tellthe SCC w hat is displayed at
the PSA P (i.e. 911-0011) w hich indicates to the SCC w hich end office is in
trouble.
N ote: It is essential that the PSA P fill out inquiry form on every A N I failure.
The PSA P w illreport a trouble any tim e 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 A N I failure is encountered, the screen w illprovide a display notic-
ing such condition). The SSC/M A C should verify w ith the PSA P w hether the
N O A LIcondition is on one screen or allscreens.
W hen the condition is on one screen (other screens receive A LIinform ation)
the SSC/M A C w ill request SSIM /I& M to dispatch.
If no screens are receiving A LI inform ation, there is usually a circuit trouble

betw een the PSA P and the H ost com puter. The SSC/M A C should test the
trouble and refer for restoral.
N ote: If the SSC/M A C receives calls from m ultiple PSA P's, all of w hich are
receiving N O A LI, there is a problem w ith the N ode or N ode to H ost circuits or
the H ost com puter itself. Before referring the trouble the SSC/M A C should
callthe M M O C to inquire if the N ode or H ost is in trouble.
A larm conditions on the A N Icontroller digitaldisplay at the PSA P are to be

reported by the PSA P's. These alarm s can indicate various trouble conditions
so the SSC/M A C should ask the PSA P if any portion of the E911 system is not
functioning properly.
The SSC/M A C should verify w ith the PSA P attendant that the equipm ent's
prim ary function is answ ering E9 1 1 calls. If it is, the SSC/M A C should
request a dispatch SSIM /I& M . If the equipm ent is not prim arily used for
E911, then the SSC/M A C should advise PSA P to contact their CPE vendor.
N ote: These troubles can be quite confusing w hen the PSA P has vendor equip-
m ent m ixed in w ith equipm ent that the BO C m aintains. The M arketing repre-
sentative should provide the SSC/M A C inform ation concerning any unusualor
exception item s w here the PSA P should contact their vendor. This inform a-
tion should be included in the PSA P profile sheets.

A N Ior A LIcontroller dow n: W hen the host com puter sees the PSA P equip-
m ent dow n and it does not com e back up, the M M O C w illreport the trouble to
the SSC/M A C; the equipm ent is dow n at the PSA P, a dispatch w illbe
required.
PSA P link (circuit) dow n: The M M O C w ill provide the SSC/M A C w ith the cir-
cuit ID that the H ost com puter indicates in trouble. A lthough each PSA P has
tw o circuits, w hen either circuit is dow n the condition m ust be treated as an
em ergency since failure of the second circuit w illcause the PSA P to be iso-
lated.
A ny problem s that the M M O C identifies from the N ode location to the H ost
com puter w illbe handled directly w ith the appropriate M M O C(s)/CCN C.
N ote: The custom er w illcallonly w hen a problem is apparent to the PSA P.

W hen only one circuit is dow n to the PSA P, the custom er m ay not be aw are
there is a trouble, even though there is one link dow n, notification should
appear on the PSA P screen. Troubles called into the SSC/M A C from the
M M O C or other com pany em ployee should not be closed out by calling the
PSA P since it m ay result in the custom er responding that they do not have a
trouble. These reports can only be closed out by receiving inform ation that
the trouble w as fixed and by checking w ith the com pany em ployee that
reported the trouble. The M M O C personnelw illbe able to verify that the
trouble has cleared by review ing a printout from the host.
W hen the CRSA B receives a subscriber com plaint (i.e., cannot dial911) the
RSA should obtain as m uch inform ation as possible w hile the custom er is on
the line.
For exam ple, w hat happened w hen the subscriber dialed 911? The report is
autom atically directed to the IM C for subscriber line testing. W hen no line
trouble is found, the IM C w illrefer the trouble condition to the SSC/M A C.
The SSC/M A C w illcontact Custom er Services E9 1 1 G roup and verify that the
subscriber should be able to call911 and obtain the ESN . The SSC/M A C w ill
verify the ESN via 2 SCCS. W hen both verifications m atch, the SSC/M A C w ill
refer the report to the SCC responsible for the 911 tandem office for investi-
gation and resolution. The M A C is responsible for tracking the trouble and
inform ing the IM C w hen it is resolved.
For m ore inform ation, please refer to E9 1 1 G lossary of Term s.
End of Phrack File

_____________________________________
The reader is forgiven if he or she w as entirely unable to read this doc-

um ent. John Perry Barlow had a great dealof fun at its expense, in
"Crim e and Puzzlem ent:" "Bureaucrat-ese of surpassing opacity.... To

read the w hole thing straight through w ithout entering com a requires
either a m achine or a hum an w ho has too m uch practice thinking like
one. A nyone w ho can understand it fully and fluidly had altered his con-
sciousness beyone the ability to ever again read Blake, W hitm an, or
Tolstoy....the docum ent contains little of interest to anyone w ho is not a
student of advanced organizationalsclerosis."
W ith the D ocum ent itself to hand, how ever, exactly as it w as published
(in its six-page edited form ) in *Phrack,* the reader m ay be able to
verify a few statem ents of fact about its nature. First, there is no soft-
w are, no com puter code, in the D ocum ent. It is not com puter-program -
m ing language like FO RTRA N or C++, it is English; allthe sentences
have nouns and verbs and punctuation. It does not explain how to break
into the E911 system . It does not suggest w ays to destroy or dam age the
E911 system .
There are no access codes in the Docum ent. There are no com puter
passw ords. It does not explain how to steallong distance service. It does
not explain how to break in to telco sw itching stations. There is nothing
in it about using a personalcom puter or a m odem for any purpose at all,
good or bad.
Close study w illrevealthat this docum ent is not about m achinery. The
E911 D ocum ent is about *adm inistration.* It describes how one creates
and adm inisters certain units of telco bureaucracy: SpecialService
Centers and M ajor A ccount Centers (SSC/M A C). It describes how these
centers should distribute responsibility for the E911 service, to other
units of telco bureaucracy, in a chain of com m and, a form alhierarchy.
It describes w ho answ ers custom er com plaints, w ho screens calls, w ho
reports equipm ent failures, w ho answ ers those reports, w ho handles
m aintenance, w ho chairs subcom m ittees, w ho gives orders, w ho follow s
orders, *w ho* tells *w hom * w hat to do. The D ocum ent is not a
"roadm ap" to com puters. The Docum ent is a roadm ap to *people.*
A s an aid to breaking into com puter system s, the D ocum ent is *useless.*
A s an aid to harassing and deceiving telco people,how ever,the Docum ent
m ight prove handy (especially w ith its Glossary, w hich Ihave not
included). A n intense and protracted study of this D ocum ent and its

Glossary,com bined w ith m any other such docum ents,m ight teach one to
speak like a telco em ployee. A nd telco people live by *speech* — they
live by phone com m unication. If you can m im ic their language over the
phone, you can "social-engineer" them . If you can con telco people, you
can w reak havoc am ong them . You can force them to no longer trust one
another; you can break the telephonic ties that bind their com m unity;
you can m ake them paranoid. A nd people w illfight harder to defend
their com m unity than they w illfight to defend their individualselves.
This w as the genuine, gut-levelthreat posed by *Phrack* m agazine.

The realstruggle w as over the controlof telco language,the controlof
telco know ledge. It w as a struggle to defend the social"m em brane of dif-
ferentiation" that form s the w alls of the telco com m unity's ivory tow er
— the specialjargon that allow s telco professionals to recognize one
another, and to exclude charlatans, thieves, and upstarts. A nd the pros-
ecution brought out this fact. They repeatedly m ade reference to the
threat posed to telco professionals by hackers using "socialengineer-
ing."
H ow ever, Craig N eidorf w as not on trialfor learning to speak like a

professionaltelecom m unications expert. Craig N eidorf w as on trialfor
access device fraud and transportation of stolen property. He w as on
trialfor stealing a docum ent that w as purportedly highly sensitive and
purportedly w orth tens of thousands of dollars.
_____
John N agle read the E911 D ocum ent. He drew his ow n conclusions. A nd
he presented Zenner and his defense team w ith an overflow ing box of
sim ilar m aterial, draw n m ostly from Stanford U niversity's engineering
libraries. D uring the trial, the defense team — Zenner, half-a-dozen
other attorneys, N agle, N eidorf, and com puter-security expert D orothy
D enning, allpored over the E911 D ocum ent line-by-line.
O n the afternoon of July 25, 1990, Zenner began to cross-exam ine a

w om an nam ed Billie W illiam s, a service m anager for Southern Bellin
A tlanta. M s. W illiam s had been responsible for the E911 D ocum ent.
(She w as not its author — its original"author" w as a Southern Bellstaff
m anager nam ed Richard H elm s. H ow ever, M r. H elm s should not bear the

entire blam e; m any telco staff people and m aintenance personnelhad
am ended the Docum ent. It had not been so m uch "w ritten" by a single
author, as built by com m ittee out of concrete-blocks of jargon.)
M s. W illiam s had been called as a w itness for the prosecution, and had
gam ely tried to explain the basic technicalstructure of the E911 sys-
tem , aided by charts.
N ow it w as Zenner's turn. H e first established that the "proprietary

stam p" that BellSouth had used on the E911 Docum ent w as stam ped on
*every single docum ent* that BellSouth w rote — *thousands* of docu-
m ents. "W e do not publish anything other than for our ow n com pany,"
M s. W illiam s explained. "A ny com pany docum ent of this nature is con-
sidered proprietary." N obody w as in charge of singling out special
high-security publications for specialhigh-security protection. They
w ere *all* special, no m atter how trivial, no m atter w hat their sub-
ject m atter — the stam p w as put on as soon as any docum ent w as w rit-
ten,and the stam p w as never rem oved.
Zenner now asked w hether the charts she had been using to explain the
m echanics of E911 system w ere "proprietary," too. W ere they *public
inform ation,* these charts, allabout PSA Ps, A LIs, nodes, localend
sw itches? Could he take the charts out in the street and show them to
anybody, "w ithout violating som e proprietary notion that BellSouth
has?"
M s W illiam s show ed som e confusion, but finally agreed that the charts
w ere, in fact, public.
"But isn't this w hat you said w as basically w hat appeared in

*Phrack?*"
M s. W illiam s denied this.
Zenner now pointed out that the E911 D ocum ent as published in Phrack
w as only half the size of the originalE911 D ocum ent (as Prophet had
purloined it). Half of it had been deleted — edited by N eidorf.

M s. W illiam s countered that "M ost of the inform ation that is in the text
file is redundant."
Zenner continued to probe. Exactly w hat bits of know ledge in the

D ocum ent w ere, in fact, unknow n to the public? Locations of E911
com puters? Phone num bers for telco personnel? O ngoing m aintenance
subcom m ittees? H adn't N eidorf rem oved m uch of this?
Then he pounced. "A re you fam iliar w ith Bellcore TechnicalReference

D ocum ent TR-TSY-0 0 0 3 5 0 ?" It w as, Zenner explained, officially
titled "E911 Public Safety A nsw ering Point Interface Betw een 1-1A ESS
Sw itch and Custom er Prem ises Equipm ent." It contained highly detailed
and specific technicalinform ation about the E911 System . It w as pub-
lished by Bellcore and publicly available for about $20.
He show ed the w itness a Bellcore catalog w hich listed thousands of docu-

m ents from Bellcore and from allthe Baby Bells, BellSouth included.
The catalog,Zenner pointed out,w as free. A nyone w ith a credit card
could callthe Bellcore toll-free 800 num ber and sim ply order any of
these docum ents,w hich w ould be shipped to any custom er w ithout ques-
tion. Including, for instance, "BellSouth E911 Service Interfaces to
Custom er Prem ises Equipm ent at a Public Safety A nsw ering Point."
Zenner gave the w itness a copy of "BellSouth E911 Service Interfaces,"

w hich cost,as he pointed out,$13,straight from the catalog. "Look at it
carefully," he urged M s. W illiam s, "and tellm e if it doesn't contain
about tw ice as m uch detailed inform ation about the E911 system of
BellSouth than appeared anyw here in *Phrack.*"
"You w ant m e to...." M s. W illiam s trailed off. "Idon't understand."
"Take a carefullook," Zenner persisted. "Take a look at that docum ent,

and tellm e w hen you're done looking at it if, indeed, it doesn't contain
m uch m ore detailed inform ation about the E911 system than appeared in
*Phrack.*"
"*Phrack* w asn't taken from this," M s. W illiam s said.

"Excuse m e?" said Zenner.
"*Phrack* w asn't taken from this."
"Ican't hear you," Zenner said.
"*Phrack* w as not taken from this docum ent. Idon't understand your
question to m e."
"Iguess you don't," Zenner said.
A t this point, the prosecution's case had been gutshot. M s. W illiam s w as

distressed. H er confusion w as quite genuine. *Phrack* had not been
taken from any publicly available Bellcore docum ent. *Phrack*'s
E911 D ocum ent had been stolen from her ow n com pany's com puters,
from her ow n com pany's text files, that her ow n colleagues had w ritten,
and revised, w ith m uch labor.
But the "value" of the D ocum ent had been blow n to sm ithereens. It w as-
n't w orth eighty grand. A ccording to Bellcore it w as w orth thirteen
bucks. A nd the loom ing m enace that it supposedly posed had been
reduced in instants to a scarecrow . Bellcore itself w as selling m aterial
far m ore detailed and "dangerous," to anybody w ith a credit card and a
phone.
A ctually, Bellcore w as not giving this inform ation to just anybody. They
gave it to *anybody w ho asked,* but not m any did ask. N ot m any people
knew that Bellcore had a free catalog and an 800 num ber. John N agle
knew , but certainly the average teenage phreak didn't know . "Tuc," a
friend of N eidorf's and som etim e *Phrack* contributor, knew , and Tuc
had been very helpfulto the defense,behind the scenes. But the Legion
of Doom didn't know — otherw ise,they w ould never have w asted so m uch
tim e raiding dum psters. Cook didn't know . Foley didn't know . Kluepfel
didn't know . The right hand of Bellcore knew not w hat the left hand w as
doing. The right hand w as battering hackers w ithout m ercy, w hile the
left hand w as distributing Bellcore's intellectualproperty to anybody
w ho w as interested in telephone technicaltrivia — apparently, a
pathetic few .

The digitalunderground w as so am ateurish and poorly organized that
they had never discovered this heap of unguarded riches. The ivory
tow er of the telcos w as so w rapped-up in the fog of its ow n technical
obscurity that it had left allthe w indow s open and flung open the doors.
No one had even noticed.
Zenner sank another nailin the coffin. H e produced a printed issue of

*Telephone Engineer & M anagem ent,* a prom inent industry journal
that com es out tw ice a m onth 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 m ore extensive than
*Phrack*'s.
The trialrum bled on, som ehow , through its ow n m om entum . Tim Foley
testified about his interrogations of N eidorf. N eidorf's w ritten adm is-
sion that he had know n the E911 D ocum ent w as pilfered w as officially
read into the court record.
A n interesting side issue cam e up: "Term inus" had once passed N eidorf a
piece of UN IX A T& T softw are, a log-in sequence, that had been cunningly
altered so that it could trap passw ords. The UN IX softw are itself w as
illegally copied A T& T property, and the alterations "Term inus" had
m ade to it, had transform ed it into a device for facilitating com puter
break-ins. Term inus him self w ould eventually plead guilty to theft of
this piece of softw are,and the Chicago group w ould send Term inus to
prison for it. But it w as of dubious relevance in the N eidorf case.
N eidorf hadn't w ritten the program . He w asn't accused of ever having
used it. A nd N eidorf w asn't being charged w ith softw are theft or ow ning
a passw ord trapper.
O n the next day, Zenner took the offensive. The civillibertarians now
had their ow n arcane, untried legalw eaponry to launch into action —
the Electronic Com m unications Privacy A ct of 1986, 18 US Code,
Section 2701 et seq. Section 2701 m akes it a crim e to intentionally
access w ithout authorization a facility in w hich an electronic com m uni-
cation service is provided — it is, at heart, an anti-bugging and anti-
tapping law , intended to carry the traditionalprotections of telephones

into other electronic channels of com m unication. W hile providing
penalties for am ateur snoops, how ever, Section 2703 of the ECPA also
lays som e form aldifficulties on the bugging and tapping activities of
police.
The Secret Service, in the person of Tim Foley, had served Richard
A ndrew s w ith a federalgrand jury subpoena, in their pursuit of
Prophet, the E911 D ocum ent, and the Term inus softw are ring. But
according to the Electronic Com m unications Privacy A ct, a "provider of
rem ote com puting service" w as legally entitled to "prior notice" from
the governm ent if a subpoena w as used. Richard A ndrew s and his base-
m ent UN IX node, Jolnet, had not received any "prior notice." Tim Foley
had purportedly violated the ECPA and com m itted an electronic crim e!
Zenner now sought the judge's perm ission to cross-exam ine Foley on the
topic of Foley's ow n electronic m isdeeds.
Cook argued that Richard A ndrew s' Jolnet w as a privately ow ned bulletin
board,and not w ithin the purview of ECPA . Judge Bua granted the
m otion of the governm ent to prevent cross-exam ination on that point,
and Zenner's offensive fizzled. This, how ever, w as the first direct
assault on the legality of the actions of the Com puter Fraud and A buse
Task Force itself — the first suggestion that they them selves had broken
the law , and m ight, 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
Docum ent. He also brought up the em barrassing fact that the supposedly
red- hot E911 D ocum ent had been sitting around for m onths, in Jolnet,
w ith Kluepfel's know ledge, w hile Kluepfelhad done nothing about it.
In the afternoon, the Prophet w as brought in to testify for the prosecu-

tion. (The Prophet, it w illbe recalled, had also been indicted in the case
as partner in a fraud schem e w ith N eidorf.) In A tlanta, the Prophet had
already pled guilty to one charge of conspiracy, one charge of w ire fraud
and one charge of interstate transportation of stolen property. The
w ire fraud charge, and the stolen property charge, w ere both directly
based on the E911 Docum ent.

The tw enty-year-old Prophet proved a sorry custom er, answ ering
questions politely but in a barely audible m um ble, his voice trailing off
at the ends of sentences. He w as constantly urged to speak up.
Cook,exam ining Prophet,forced him to adm it that he had once had a

"drug problem ," abusing am phetam ines, m arijuana, cocaine, and LSD .
This m ay have established to the jury that "hackers" are, or can be,
seedy low life characters, but it m ay have dam aged Prophet's credibility
som ew hat. Zenner later suggested that drugs m ight have dam aged
Prophet's m em ory. The interesting fact also surfaced that Prophet had
never physically m et Craig N eidorf. H e didn't even know N eidorf's last
nam e — at least, not untilthe trial.
Prophet confirm ed the basic facts of his hacker career. H e w as a m em -

ber of the Legion of Doom . He had abused codes,he had broken into
sw itching stations and re-routed calls, he had hung out on pirate bul-
letin boards. H e had raided the BellSouth A IM SX com puter, copied the
E911 D ocum ent, stored it on Jolnet, m ailed it to N eidorf. H e and N eidorf
had edited it,and N eidorf had know n w here it cam e from .
Zenner, how ever, had Prophet confirm that N eidorf w as not a m em ber of
the Legion of Doom ,and had not urged Prophet to break into BellSouth
com puters.N eidorf had never urged Prophet to defraud anyone,or to
stealanything. Prophet also adm itted that he had never know n N eidorf
to break in to any com puter. Prophet said that no one in the Legion of
D oom considered Craig N eidorf a "hacker" at all. N eidorf w as not a UN IX
m aven, and sim ply lacked the necessary skilland ability to break into
com puters. N eidorf just published a m agazine.
O n Friday, July 27, 1990, the case against N eidorf collapsed. Cook
m oved to dism iss the indictm ent, citing "inform ation currently avail-
able to us that w as not available to us at the inception of the trial."
Judge Bua praised the prosecution for this action, w hich he described as
"very responsible," then dism issed a juror and declared a m istrial.
N eidorf w as a free m an. H is defense, how ever, had cost him self and his
fam ily dearly. M onths of his life had been consum ed in anguish; he had
seen his closest friends shun him as a federalcrim inal. H e ow ed his

law yers over a hundred thousand dollars, despite a generous paym ent to
the defense by M itch Kapor.
N eidorf w as not found innocent. The trialw as sim ply dropped.

N evertheless, on Septem ber 9, 1991, Judge Bua granted N eidorf's
m otion for the "expungem ent and sealing" of his indictm ent record. The
United States Secret Service w as ordered to delete and destroy allfin-
gerprints, photographs, and other records of arrest or processing
relating to N eidorf's indictm ent, including their paper docum ents and
their com puter records.
N eidorf w ent back to school, blazingly determ ined to becom e a law yer.
H aving seen the justice system at w ork, N eidorf lost m uch of his enthu-
siasm for m erely technicalpow er. A t this w riting, Craig N eidorf is
w orking in W ashington as a salaried researcher for the A m erican Civil
Liberties U nion.
_____
The outcom e of the N eidorf trialchanged the EFF from voices-in-the-

w ilderness to the m edia darlings of the new frontier.
Legally speaking, the N eidorf case w as not a sw eeping trium ph for any-
one concerned. N o constitutionalprinciples had been established. The
issues of "freedom of the press" for electronic publishers rem ained in
legallim bo. There w ere public m isconceptions about the case. M any
people thought N eidorf had been found innocent and relieved of allhis
legaldebts by Kapor. The truth w as that the governm ent had sim ply
dropped the case,and N eidorf's fam ily had gone deeply into hock to sup-
port him .
But the N eidorf case did provide a single, devastating, public sound-bite:
*The feds said it w as w orth eighty grand, and it w as only w orth thirteen
bucks.*
This is the N eidorf case's single m ost m em orable elem ent. N o serious
report of the case m issed this particular elem ent. Even cops could not
read this w ithout a w ince and a shake of the head. It left the public
credibility of the crackdow n agents in tatters.

The crackdow n,in fact,continued,how ever. Those tw o charges against
Prophet, w hich had been based on the E911 D ocum ent, w ere quietly
forgotten at his sentencing — even though Prophet had already pled
guilty to them . Georgia federalprosecutors strongly argued for jailtim e
for the A tlanta Three,insisting on "the need to send a m essage to the
com m unity," "the m essage that hackers around the country need to
hear."
There w as a great dealin their sentencing m em orandum about the aw ful

things that various other hackers had done (though the A tlanta Three
them selves had not, in fact, actually com m itted these crim es). There
w as also m uch speculation about the aw fulthings that the A tlanta Three
*m ight* have done and *w ere capable* of doing (even though they had
not, in fact, actually done them ). The prosecution's argum ent carried
the day. The A tlanta Three w ere sent to prison: Urvile and Leftist both
got 14 m onths each,w hile Prophet (a second offender) got 21 m onths.
The A tlanta Three w ere also assessed staggering fines as "restitution":

$233,000 each. BellSouth claim ed that the defendants had "stolen"
"approxim ately $233,880 w orth" of "proprietary com puter access
inform ation" — specifically, $233,880 w orth of com puter passw ords
and connect addresses. BellSouth's astonishing claim of the extrem e
value of its ow n com puter passw ords and addresses w as accepted at face
value by the Georgia court. Furtherm ore (as if to em phasize its theo-
reticalnature) this enorm ous sum w as not divvied up am ong the A tlanta
Three,but each of them had to pay allof it.
A striking aspect of the sentence w as that the A tlanta Three w ere specif-
ically forbidden to use com puters, except for w ork or under supervi-
sion. D epriving hackers of hom e com puters and m odem s m akes som e
sense if one considers hackers as "com puter addicts," but EFF, filing an
am icus brief in the case, protested that this punishm ent w as unconsti-
tutional— it deprived the A tlanta Three of their rights of free associa-
tion and free expression through electronic m edia.
Term inus, the "ultim ate hacker," w as finally sent to prison for a year
through the dogged efforts of the Chicago Task Force. His crim e,to

w hich he pled guilty, w as the transfer of the UN IX passw ord trapper,
w hich w as officially valued by A T& T at $77,000, a figure w hich
aroused intense skepticism am ong those fam iliar w ith UN IX "login.c"
program s.
The jailing of Term inus and the A tlanta Legionnaires of D oom , how ever,
did not cause the EFF any sense of em barrassm ent or defeat. O n the
contrary, the civillibertarians w ere rapidly gathering strength.
A n early and potent supporter w as Senator Patrick Leahy, D em ocrat

from V erm ont,w ho had been a Senate sponsor of the Electronic
Com m unications Privacy A ct. Even before the N eidorf trial, Leahy had
spoken out in defense of hacker-pow er and freedom of the keyboard:"W e
cannot unduly inhibit the inquisitive 1 3 -year-old w ho, if left to exper-
im ent today, m ay tom orrow develop the telecom m unications or com put-
er technology to lead the United States into the 21st century. He repre-
sents our future and our best hope to rem ain a technologically com peti-
tive nation."
It w as a handsom e statem ent, rendered perhaps rather m ore effective by

the fact that the crackdow n raiders *did not have* any Senators speak-
ing out for *them .* O n the contrary, their highly secretive actions and
tactics, all"sealed search w arrants" here and "confidentialongoing
investigations" there, m ight have w on them a burst of glam orous pub-
licity at first, but w ere crippling them in the on-going propaganda w ar.
GailThackeray w as reduced to unsupported bluster: "Som e of these peo-
ple w ho are loudest on the bandw agon m ay just slink into the back-
ground," she predicted in *N ew sw eek* — w hen allthe facts cam e out,
and the cops w ere vindicated.
But allthe facts did not com e out. Those facts that did,w ere not very
flattering. A nd the cops w ere not vindicated. A nd GailThackeray lost
her job. By the end of 1991, W illiam Cook had also left public em ploy-
m ent.
1990 had belonged to the crackdow n,but by '91 its agents w ere in
severe disarray, and the libertarians w ere on a roll. People w ere
flocking to the cause.

A particularly interesting ally had been M ike Godw in of A ustin, Texas.
Godw in w as an individualalm ost as difficult to describe as Barlow ; he
had been editor of the student new spaper of the University of Texas,and
a com puter salesm an, and a program m er, and in 1990 w as back in law
school, looking for a law degree.
Godw in w as also a bulletin board m aven. H e w as very w ell-know n in

the A ustin board com m unity under his handle "Johnny M nem onic,"
w hich he adopted from a cyberpunk science fiction story by W illiam
Gibson. Godw in w as an ardent cyberpunk science fiction fan. A s a fellow
A ustinite of sim ilar age and sim ilar interests, Im yself had know n
Godw in socially for m any years. W hen W illiam Gibson and m yself had
been w riting our collaborative SF novel, *The D ifference Engine,*
Godw in had been our technicaladvisor in our effort to link our A pple
w ord-processors from A ustin to V ancouver. Gibson and Iw ere so
pleased by his generous expert help that w e nam ed a character in the
novel"M ichaelGodw in" in his honor.
The handle "M nem onic" suited Godw in very w ell. H is erudition and his
m astery of trivia w ere im pressive to the point of stupor; his ardent
curiosity seem ed insatiable,and his desire to debate and argue seem ed
the centraldrive of his life. Godw in had even started his ow n A ustin
debating society, w ryly know n as the "D ullM en's Club." In person,
Godw in could be overw helm ing; a flypaper- brained polym ath w ho
could not seem to let any idea go.O n bulletin boards,how ever,Godw in's
closely reasoned, highly gram m atical, erudite posts suited the m edium
w ell, and he becam e a localboard celebrity.
M ike Godw in w as the m an m ost responsible for the public national

exposure of the Steve Jackson case. The Izenberg seizure in A ustin had
received no press coverage at all. The M arch 1 raids on M entor,
Bloodaxe,and Steve Jackson Gam es had received a brief front-page
splash in the front page of the *A ustin A m erican-Statesm an,* but it
w as confused and ill-inform ed: the w arrants w ere sealed, and the
Secret Service w asn't talking. Steve Jackson seem ed doom ed to obscuri-
ty. Jackson had not been arrested;he w as not charged w ith any crim e;
he w as not on trial. H e had lost som e com puters in an ongoing investi-

gation — so w hat? Jackson tried hard to attract attention to the true
extent of his plight, but he w as draw ing a blank; no one in a position to
help him seem ed able to get a m entalgrip on the issues.
Godw in, how ever, w as uniquely, alm ost m agically, qualified to carry
Jackson's case to the outside w orld.Godw in w as a board enthusiast,a
science fiction fan, a form er journalist, a com puter salesm an, a
law yer-to-be, and an A ustinite. Through a coincidence yet m ore am az-
ing, in his last year of law schoolGodw in had specialized in federal
prosecutions and crim inalprocedure. A cting entirely on his ow n,
Godw in m ade up a press packet w hich sum m arized the issues and pro-
vided usefulcontacts for reporters. Godw in's behind-the-scenes effort
(w hich he carried out m ostly to prove a point in a localboard debate)
broke the story again in the *A ustin A m erican-Statesm an* and then in
*N ew sw eek.*
Life w as never the sam e for M ike Godw in after that. A s he joined the
grow ing civilliberties debate on the Internet, it w as obvious to allpar-
ties involved that here w as one guy w ho, in the m idst of com plete m urk
and confusion, *genuinely understood everything he w as talking about.*
The disparate elem ents of Godw in's dilettantish existence suddenly fell
together as neatly as the facets of a Rubik's cube.
W hen the tim e cam e to hire a full-tim e EFF staff attorney, Godw in w as
the obvious choice. He took the Texas bar exam ,left A ustin,m oved to
Cam bridge, becam e a full-tim e, professional, com puter civil libertari-
an, and w as soon touring the nation on behalf of EFF, delivering w ell-
received addresses on the issues to crow ds as disparate as academ ics,
industrialists, science fiction fans, and federalcops.
M ichaelGodw in is currently the chief legalcounselof the Electronic

Frontier Foundation in Cam bridge, M assachusetts.
_____
A nother early and influentialparticipant in the controversy w as

D orothy D enning. D r. D enning w as unique am ong investigators of the
com puter underground in that she did not enter the debate w ith any set
of politicized m otives. She w as a professionalcryptographer and com -

puter security expert w hose prim ary interest in hackers w as *schol-
arly.* She had a B.A . and M .A . in m athem atics, and a Ph.D . in com put-
er science from Purdue. She had w orked for SRIInternational, the
California think-tank that w as also the hom e of com puter- security
m aven D onn Parker, and had authored an influentialtext called
*Cryptography and D ata Security.* In 1990, D r. D enning w as w orking
for D igitalEquipm ent Corporation in their System s Reseach Center.
H er husband, Peter D enning, w as also a com puter security expert,
w orking for N A SA 's Research Institute for A dvanced Com puter Science.
H e had edited the w ell- received *Com puters Under A ttack: Intruders,
W orm s and V iruses.*
D r. D enning took it upon herself to contact the digitalunderground,

m ore or less w ith an anthropologicalinterest. There she discovered that
these com puter- intruding hackers, w ho had been characterized as
unethical, irresponsible, and a serious danger to society, did in fact
have their ow n subculture and their ow n rules. They w ere not particu-
larly w ell-considered rules, but they w ere, in fact, rules. Basically,
they didn't take m oney and they didn't break anything.
H er dispassionate reports on her researches did a great dealto influence

serious-m inded com puter professionals — the sort of people w ho m ere-
ly rolled their eyes at the cyberspace rhapsodies of a John Perry
Barlow .
For young hackers of the digitalunderground, m eeting D orothy D enning

w as a genuinely m ind-boggling experience. H ere w as this neatly
coiffed, conservatively dressed, dainty little personage, w ho rem inded
m ost hackers of their m om s or their aunts. A nd yet she w as an IBM
system s program m er w ith profound expertise in com puter architec-
tures and high-security inform ation flow , w ho had personalfriends in
the FBIand the N ationalSecurity A gency.
D orothy D enning w as a shining exam ple of the A m erican m athem atical

intelligentsia, a genuinely brilliant person from the centralranks of
the com puter- science elite. A nd here she w as, gently questioning
tw enty-year-old hairy-eyed phone-phreaks over the deeper ethical
im plications of their behavior.

Confronted by this genuinely nice lady, m ost hackers sat up very
straight and did their best to keep the anarchy- file stuff dow n to a faint
w hiff of brim stone. N evertheless, the hackers *w ere* in fact prepared
to seriously discuss serious issues w ith D orothy D enning. They w ere
w illing to speak the unspeakable and defend the indefensible, to blurt
out their convictions that inform ation cannot be ow ned,that the data-
bases of governm ents and large corporations w ere a threat to the rights
and privacy of individuals.
D enning's articles m ade it clear to m any that "hacking" w as not sim ple
vandalism by som e evilclique of psychotics. "H acking" w as not an
aberrant m enace that could be charm ed aw ay by ignoring it, or sw ept
out of existence by jailing a few ringleaders. Instead, "hacking" w as
sym ptom atic of a grow ing, prim alstruggle over know ledge and pow er in
the age of inform ation.
D enning pointed out that the attitude of hackers w ere at least partially
shared by forw ard-looking m anagem ent theorists in the business com -
m unity: people like Peter D rucker and Tom Peters. Peter D rucker, in
his book *The N ew Realities,* had stated that "controlof inform ation
by the governm ent is no longer possible. Indeed, inform ation is now
transnational. Like m oney, it has no 'fatherland.'"
A nd m anagem ent m aven Tom Peters had chided large corporations for
uptight, proprietary attitudes in his bestseller, *Thriving on Chaos:*
"Inform ation hoarding, especially by politically m otivated, pow er-
seeking staffs, had been com m onplace throughout A m erican industry,
service and m anufacturing alike. It w illbe an im possible m illstone
aroung the neck of tom orrow 's organizations."
D orothy D enning had shattered the socialm em brane of the digital

underground. She attended the N eidorf trial, w here she w as prepared to
testify for the defense as an expert w itness. She w as a behind-the-
scenes organizer of tw o of the m ost im portant nationalm eetings of the
com puter civillibertarians. Though not a zealot of any description, she
brought disparate elem ents of the electronic com m unity into a surpris-
ing and fruitfulcollusion.

D orothy D enning is currently the Chair of the Com puter Science
D epartm ent at Georgetow n University in W ashington, D C.
_____
There w ere m any stellar figures in the civillibertarian com m unity.

There's no question, how ever, that its single m ost influentialfigure w as
M itchellD . Kapor. O ther people m ight have form altitles, or govern-
m entalpositions, have m ore experience w ith crim e, or w ith the law , or
w ith the arcanities of com puter security or constitutionaltheory. But
by 1991 Kapor had transcended any such narrow role. Kapor had
becom e "M itch."
M itch had becom e the centralcivil-libertarian ad- hocrat. M itch had

stood up first, he had spoken out loudly, directly, vigorously and angri-
ly, he had put his ow n reputation, and his very considerable personal
fortune, on the line. By m id-'91 Kapor w as the best-know n advocate of
his cause and w as know n *personally* by alm ost every single hum an
being in A m erica w ith any direct influence on the question of civillib-
erties in cyberspace. M itch had built bridges, crossed voids, changed
paradigm s, forged m etaphors, m ade phone-calls and sw apped business
cards to such spectacular effect that it had becom e im possible for anyone
to take any action in the "hacker question" w ithout w ondering w hat
M itch m ight think — and say — and tellhis friends.
The EFF had sim ply *netw orked* the situation into an entirely new
status quo. A nd in fact this had been EFF's deliberate strategy from the
beginning. Both Barlow and Kapor loathed bureaucracies and had delib-
erately chosen to w ork alm ost entirely through the electronic spiderw eb
of "valuable personalcontacts."
A fter a year of EFF, both Barlow and Kapor had every reason to look
back w ith satisfaction. EFF had established its ow n Internet node,
"eff.org," w ith a w ell-stocked electronic archive of docum ents on elec-
tronic civilrights, privacy issues, and academ ic freedom . EFF w as also
publishing *EFFector,* a quarterly printed journal, as w ell as
*EFFector O nline,* an electronic new sletter w ith over 1,200 sub-
scribers. A nd EFF w as thriving on the W ell.

EFF had a nationalheadquarters in Cam bridge and a full-tim e staff. It
had becom e a m em bership organization and w as attracting grass-roots
support. It had also attracted the support of som e thirty civil-rights
law yers,ready and eager to do pro bono w ork in defense of the
Constitution in Cyberspace.
EFF had lobbied successfully in W ashington and in M assachusetts to

change state and federallegislation on com puter netw orking. Kapor in
particular had becom e a veteran expert w itness, and had joined the
Com puter Science and Telecom m unications Board of the N ational
A cadem y of Science and Engineering.
EFF had sponsored m eetings such as "Com puters, Freedom and Privacy"
and the CPSR Roundtable. It had carried out a press offensive that, in
the w ords of *EFFector,* "has affected the clim ate of opinion about
com puter netw orking and begun to reverse the slide into 'hacker hyste-
ria' that w as beginning to grip the nation."
It had helped Craig N eidorf avoid prison.
A nd, last but certainly not least, the Electronic Frontier Foundation had
filed a federallaw suit in the nam e of Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson
Gam es Inc., and three users of the Illum inatibulletin board system . The
defendants w ere, and are, the United States Secret Service, W illiam
Cook, Tim Foley, Barbara Golden and H enry Kleupfel.
The case, w hich is in pre-trialprocedures in an A ustin federalcourt as

of this w riting, is a civilaction for dam ages to redress alleged violations
of the First and Fourth A m endm ents to the United States Constitution,as
w ellas the Privacy Protection A ct of 1980 (42 USC 2000aa et seq.),
and the Electronic Com m unications Privacy A ct (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 fallof 1991 Itravelled to M assachusetts to speak personally w ith

M itch Kapor. It w as m y finalinterview for this book.
_____
The city of Boston has alw ays been one of the m ajor intellectualcenters
of the A m erican republic. It is a very old city by A m erican standards, a
place of skyscrapers overshadow ing seventeenth-century graveyards,
w here the high-tech start-up com panies of Route 128 co-exist w ith the
hand-w rought pre-industrialgrace of "O ld Ironsides," the USS
*Constitution.*
The Battle of Bunker H ill, one of the first and bitterest arm ed clashes of
the A m erican Revolution, w as fought in Boston's environs. Today there
is a m onum entalspire on Bunker H ill, visible throughout m uch of the
city. The w illingness of the republican revolutionaries to take up
arm s and fire on their oppressors has left a culturallegacy that tw o
fullcenturies have not effaced. Bunker H illis stilla potent center of
A m erican politicalsym bolism , and the Spirit of '76 is stilla potent
im age for those w ho seek to m old public opinion.
O f course, not everyone w ho w raps him self in the flag is necessarily a

patriot. W hen Ivisited the spire in Septem ber 1991, it bore a huge,
badly-erased, spray-can grafitto around its bottom reading "BRITS O UT
— IRA PRO V O S." Inside this hallow ed edifice w as a glass-cased dioram a
of thousands of tiny toy soldiers, rebels and redcoats, fighting and dying
over the green hill, the riverside m arshes, the rebeltrenchw orks.
Plaques indicated the m ovem ent of troops,the shiftings of strategy. The
Bunker H illM onum ent is occupied at its very center by the toy soldiers
of a m ilitary w ar-gam e sim ulation.
The Boston m etroplex is a place of great universities, prom inent am ong

the M assachusetts Institute of Technology,w here the term "com puter
hacker" w as first coined. The H acker Crackdow n of 1990 m ight be
interpreted as a politicalstruggle am ong A m erican cities: traditional
strongholds of longhair intellectualliberalism , such as Boston, San
Francisco, and A ustin, versus the bare-knuckle industrialpragm atism
of Chicago and Phoenix (w ith A tlanta and N ew York w rapped in internal
struggle).

The headquarters of the Electronic Frontier Foundation is on 155 Second
Street in Cam bridge, a Bostonian suburb north of the River Charles.
Second Street has w eedy sidew alks of dented,sagging brick and elderly
cracked asphalt; large street-signs w arn "N O PA RKIN G D URIN G
D ECLA RED SN O W EM ERGEN CY." This is an old area of m odest m anufac-
turing industries; the EFF is catecorner from the Greene Rubber
Com pany. EFF's building is tw o stories of red brick; its large w ooden
w indow s feature gracefully arched tops and stone sills.
The glass w indow beside the Second Street entrance bears three sheets of
neatly laser-printed paper, taped against the glass. They read: O N
Technology. EFF. KEI.
"O N Technology" is Kapor's softw are com pany, w hich currently special-
izes in "groupw are" for the A pple M acintosh com puter. "Groupw are" is
intended to prom ote efficient socialinteraction am ong office-w orkers
linked by com puters. O N Technology's m ost successfulsoftw are prod-
ucts to date are "M eeting M aker" and "Instant Update."
"KEI" is Kapor Enterprises Inc., Kapor's personalholding com pany, the

com m ercialentity that form ally controls his extensive investm ents in
other hardw are and softw are corporations.
"EFF" is a politicalaction group — of a specialsort.
Inside,som eone's bike has been chained to the handrails of a m odest

flight of stairs. A w allof m odish glass brick separates this anteroom
from the offices. Beyond the brick, there's an alarm system m ounted on
the w all, a sleek, com plex little num ber that resem bles a cross betw een
a therm ostat and a CD player. Piled against the w allare box after box of
a recent specialissue of *Scientific A m erican,* "H ow to W ork, Play,
and Thrive in Cyberspace," w ith extensive coverage of electronic net-
w orking techniques and politicalissues, including an article by Kapor
him self. These boxes are addressed to Gerard V an der Leun,EFF's
D irector of Com m unications, w ho w illshortly m ailthose m agazines to
every m em ber of the EFF.
The joint headquarters of EFF, KEI, and O N Technology, w hich Kapor

currently rents, is a m odestly bustling place. It's very m uch the sam e
physicalsize as Steve Jackson's gam ing com pany. It's certainly a far
cry from the gigantic gray steel-sided railw ay shipping barn, on the
M onsignor O 'Brien H ighw ay, that is ow ned by Lotus D evelopm ent
Corporation.
Lotus is, of course, the softw are giant that M itchellKapor founded in the
late 70s. The softw are program Kapor co-authored, "Lotus 1-2-3," is
stillthat com pany's m ost profitable product. "Lotus 1-2-3" also bears
a singular distinction in the digitalunderground: it's probably the m ost
pirated piece of application softw are in w orld history.
Kapor greets m e cordially in his ow n office, dow n a hall. Kapor, w hose

nam e is pronounced KA Y-por, is in his early forties, m arried and the
father of tw o. He has a round face,high forehead,straight nose,a
slightly tousled m op of black hair peppered w ith gray. H is large brow n
eyes are w ideset, reflective, one m ight alm ost say soulful. H e disdains
ties, and com m only w ears H aw aiian shirts and tropicalprints, not so
m uch garish as sim ply cheerfuland just that little bit anom alous.
There is just the w hiff of hacker brim stone about M itch Kapor. H e m ay
not have the hard-riding, hell-for- leather, guitar-strum m ing charis-
m a of his W yom ing colleague John Perry Barlow , but there's som ething
about the guy that stillstops one short. He has the air of the Eastern
city dude in the bow ler hat, the dream y, Longfellow -quoting poker
shark w ho only *happens* to know the exact m athem aticalodds against
draw ing to an inside straight. Even am ong his com puter-com m unity
colleagues, w ho are hardly know n for m entalsluggishness, Kapor
strikes one forcefully as a very intelligent m an. H e speaks rapidly,
w ith vigorous gestures, his Boston accent som etim es slipping to the
sharp nasaltang of his youth in Long Island.
Kapor, w hose Kapor Fam ily Foundation does m uch of his philanthropic
w ork, is a strong supporter of Boston's Com puter M useum . Kapor's
interest in the history of his industry has brought him som e rem ark-
able curios, such as the "byte" just outside his office door. This "byte"
— eight digitalbits — has been salvaged from the w reck of an electronic
com puter of the pre-transistor age. It's a standing gunm etalrack about

the size of a sm alltoaster- oven: w ith eight slots of hand-soldered
breadboarding featuring thum b-sized vacuum tubes. If it felloff a table
it could easily break your foot, but it w as state-of-the-art com putation
in the 1940s. (It w ould take exactly 157,184 of these prim ordial
toasters to hold the first part of this book.)
There's also a coiling, m ulticolored, scaly dragon that som e inspired

techno-punk artist has cobbled up entirely out of transistors, capaci-
tors, and brightly plastic-coated w iring.
Inside the office, Kapor excuses him self briefly to do a little m ouse-
w hizzing housekeeping on his personalM acintosh IIfx. If its giant
screen w ere an open w indow , an agile person could clim b through it
w ithout m uch trouble at all. There's a coffee-cup at Kapor's elbow , a
m em ento of his recent trip to Eastern Europe, w hich has a black-and-
w hite stencilled photo and the legend CA PITA LIST FO O LS TO UR. It's
K apor, Barlow , and tw o California venture-capitalist lum inaries of
their acquaintance, four w indblow n, grinning Baby Boom er dudes in
leather jackets, boots, denim , travelbags, standing on airport tarm ac
som ew here behind the form erly Iron Curtain. They look as if they're
having the absolute tim e of their lives.
Kapor is in a rem iniscent m ood. W e talk a bit about his youth — high
schooldays as a "m ath nerd," Saturdays attending Colum bia
University's high-schoolscience honors program , w here he had his
first experience program m ing com puters. IBM 1620s, in 1965 and
'66. "Iw as very interested," says Kapor, "and then Iw ent off to college
and got distracted by drugs sex and rock and roll, like anybody w ith half
a brain w ould have then!" A fter college he w as a progressive-rock D J
in H artford, Connecticut, for a couple of years.
Iask him if he ever m isses his rock and rolldays — if he ever w ished he
could go back to radio w ork.
He shakes his head flatly. "Istopped thinking about going back to be a D J

the day after A ltam ont."
Kapor m oved to Boston in 1974 and got a job program m ing m ainfram es

in CO BO L. He hated it. He quit and becam e a teacher of transcendental
m editation. (It w as Kapor's long flirtation w ith Eastern m ysticism that
gave the w orld "Lotus.")
In 1976 Kapor w ent to Sw itzerland, w here the Transcendental

M editation m ovem ent had rented a gigantic V ictorian hotelin St-M oritz.
It w as an all-m ale group — a hundred and tw enty of them — determ ined
upon Enlightenm ent or Bust. Kapor had given the transcendant his best
shot. He w as becom ing disenchanted by "the nuttiness in the organiza-
tion." "They w ere teaching people to levitate," he says,staring at the
floor. His voice drops an octave, becom es flat. "*They don't levitate.*"
Kapor chose Bust. He w ent back to the States and acquired a degree in
counselling psychology. H e w orked a w hile in a hospital, couldn't stand
that either. "M y rep w as," he says "a very bright kid w ith a lot of
potentialw ho hasn't found him self. A lm ost thirty. Sort of lost."
Kapor w as unem ployed w hen he bought his first personalcom puter — an

A pple II. He sold his stereo to raise cash and drove to N ew Ham pshire to
avoid the sales tax.
"The day after Ipurchased it," Kapor tells m e, "Iw as hanging out in a
com puter store and Isaw another guy, a m an in his forties, w ell-
dressed guy,and eavesdropped on his conversation w ith the salesm an.
He didn't know anything about com puters. I'd had a year program m ing.
A nd Icould program in BA SIC. I'd taught m yself. So Iw ent up to him ,
and Iactually sold m yself to him as a consultant." He pauses. "Idon't
know w here Igot the nerve to do this. It w as uncharacteristic. Ijust
said, 'Ithink Ican help you, I've been listening, this is w hat you need to
do and Ithink Ican do it for you.' A nd he took m e on! He w as m y first
client! Ibecam e a com puter consultant the first day after Ibought the
A pple II."
Kapor had found his true vocation. H e attracted m ore clients for his
consultant service, and started an A pple users' group.
A friend of Kapor's, Eric Rosenfeld, a graduate student at M IT, had a

problem . H e w as doing a thesis on an arcane form of financialstatistics,

but could not w edge him self into the crow ded queue for tim e on M IT's
m ainfram es. (O ne m ight note at this point that if M r. Rosenfeld had dis-
honestly broken into the M IT m ainfram es, Kapor him self m ight have
never invented Lotus 1-2-3 and the PC business m ight have been set
back for years!) Eric Rosenfeld did have an A pple II, how ever, and he
thought it m ight be possible to scale the problem dow n. Kapor, as favor,
w rote a program for him in BA SIC that did the job.
It then occurred to the tw o of them ,out of the blue,that it m ight be pos-

sible to *sell* this program . They m arketed it them selves, in plastic
baggies, for about a hundred bucks a pop, m ailorder. "This w as a total
cottage industry by a m arginalconsultant," Kapor says proudly. "That's
how Igot started,honest to God."
Rosenfeld, w ho later becam e a very prom inent figure on W allStreet,

urged Kapor to go to M IT's business schoolfor an M BA . Kapor did seven
m onths there,but never got his M BA . He picked up som e usefultools —
m ainly a firm grasp of the principles of accounting — and, in his ow n
w ords,"learned to talk M BA ." Then he dropped out and w ent to Silicon
V alley.
The inventors of V isiCalc, the A pple com puter's prem ier business pro-
gram , had show n an interest in M itch Kapor. Kapor w orked diligently
for them for six m onths, got tired of California, and w ent back to Boston
w here they had better bookstores. The V isiCalc group had m ade the
criticalerror of bringing in "professionalm anagem ent." "That drove
them into the ground," Kapor says.
"Yeah,you don't hear a lot about V isiCalc these days," Im use.
Kapor looks surprised. "W ell, Lotus.... w e *bought* it."
"O h. You *bought* it?"
"Yeah."
"Sort of like the BellSystem buying W estern Union?"

Kapor grins. "Yep! Yep! Yeah, exactly!"
M itch Kapor w as not in fullcom m and of the destiny of him self or his
industry. The hottest softw are com m odities of the early 1980s w ere
*com puter gam es* — the A tariseem ed destined to enter every teenage
hom e in A m erica. Kapor got into business softw are sim ply because he
didn't have any particular feeling for com puter gam es. But he w as
suprem ely fast on his feet, open to new ideas and inclined to trust his
instincts. A nd his instincts w ere good. He chose good people to dealw ith
— gifted program m er Jonathan Sachs (the co-author of Lotus 1-2-3).
Financialw izard Eric Rosenfeld, canny W allStreet analyst and venture
capitalist Ben Rosen. Kapor w as the founder and CEO of Lotus,one of the
m ost spectacularly successfulbusiness ventures of the later tw entieth
century.
H e is now an extrem ely w ealthy m an. Iask him if he actually know s

how m uch m oney he has.
"Yeah," he says. "W ithin a percent or tw o."
H ow m uch does he actually have, then?
He shakes his head. "A lot. A lot. N ot som ething Italk about. Issues of
m oney and class are things that cut pretty close to the bone."
Idon't pry. It's beside the point. O ne m ight presum e, im politely, that
Kapor has at least forty m illion — that's w hat he got the year he left
Lotus. People w ho ought to know claim Kapor has about a hundred and
fifty m illion, give or take a m arket sw ing in his stock holdings. If Kapor
had stuck w ith Lotus, as his colleague friend and rivalBillGates has
stuck w ith his ow n softw are start-up, M icrosoft, then Kapor w ould
likely have m uch the sam e fortune Gates has — som ew here in the neigh-
borhood of three billion, give or take a few hundred m illion. M itch
Kapor has allthe m oney he w ants. M oney has lost w hatever charm it
ever held for him — probably not m uch in the first place. W hen Lotus
becam e too uptight,too bureaucratic,too far from the true sources of
his ow n satisfaction, Kapor w alked. H e sim ply severed allconnections
w ith the com pany and w ent out the door. It stunned everyone — except

those w ho knew him best.
Kapor has not had to strain his resources to w reak a thorough transfor-
m ation in cyberspace politics. In its first year, EFF's budget w as about
a quarter of a m illion dollars. Kapor is running EFF out of his pocket
change.
Kapor takes pains to tellm e that he does not consider him self a civil
libertarian per se. H e has spent quite som e tim e w ith true-blue civil
libertarians lately, and there's a political-correctness to them that
bugs him . They seem to him to spend entirely too m uch tim e in legal
nitpicking and not enough vigorously exercising civilrights in the
everyday realw orld.
K apor is an entrepreneur. Like all hackers, he prefers his involve-

m ents direct,personal,and hands-on."The fact that EFF has a node on
the Internet is a great thing. W e're a publisher. W e're a distributor of
inform ation." A m ong the item s the eff.org Internet node carries is back
issues of *Phrack.* They had an internaldebate about that in EFF, and
finally decided to take the plunge. They m ight carry other digital
underground publications — but if they do, he says, "w e'llcertainly
carry D onn Parker, and anything GailThackeray w ants to put up. W e'll
turn it into a public library, that has the w hole spectrum of use. Evolve
in the direction of people m aking up their ow n m inds." H e grins. "W e'll
try to labelallthe editorials."
Kapor is determ ined to tackle the technicalities of the Internet in the

service of the public interest. "The problem w ith being a node on the
N et today is that you've got to have a captive technicalspecialist. W e
have Chris D avis around, for the care and feeding of the balky beast! W e
couldn't do it ourselves!"
He pauses. "So one direction in w hich technology has to evolve is m uch

m ore standardized units, that a non- technicalperson can feelcom fort-
able w ith. It's the sam e shift as from m inicom puters to PCs. Ican see a
future in w hich any person can have a N ode on the N et. A ny person can
be a publisher. It's better than the m edia w e now have. It's possible.
W e're w orking actively."

Kapor is in his elem ent now , fluent, thoroughly in com m and in his
m aterial. "You go tella hardw are Internet hacker that everyone should
have a node on the N et," he says,"and the first thing they're going to say
is, 'IP doesn't scale!'" ("IP" is the interface protocolfor the Internet.
A s it currently exists, the IP softw are is sim ply not capable of indefi-
nite expansion; it w illrun out of usable addresses, it w illsaturate.)
"The answ er," Kapor says, "is: evolve the protocol! Get the sm art peo-
ple together and figure out w hat to do. Do w e add ID? Do w e add new
protocol? D on't just say, *w e can't do it.*"
Getting sm art people together to figure out w hat to do is a skillat w hich

Kapor clearly excels. Icounter that people on the Internet rather enjoy
their elite technicalstatus, and don't seem particularly anxious to
dem ocratize the Net.
Kapor agrees, w ith a show of scorn. "Itellthem that this is the snob-
bery of the people on the *M ayflow er* looking dow n their noses at the
people w ho cam e 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 ow nership of cyberspace! By w hat right?"
Irem ark that the telcos are an electronic netw ork, too, and they seem to
guard their specialized know ledge pretty closely.
Kapor ripostes that the telcos and the Internet are entirely different
anim als. "The Internet is an open system , everything is published,
everything gets argued about,basically by anybody w ho can get in.
M ostly, it's exclusive and elitist just because it's so difficult. Let's
m ake it easier to use."
O n the other hand, he allow s w ith a sw ift change of em phasis, the so-
called elitists do have a point as w ell. "Before people start com ing in,
w ho are new ,w ho w ant to m ake suggestions,and criticize the N et as 'all
screw ed up'.... They should at least take the tim e to understand the cul-
ture on its ow n term s. It has its ow n history — show som e respect for
it. I'm a conservative, to that extent."

The Internet is Kapor's paradigm for the future of telecom m unications.
The Internet is decentralized, non- heirarchical, alm ost anarchic.
There are no bosses,no chain of com m and,no secret data. If each node
obeys the generalinterface standards, there's sim ply no need for any
centralnetw ork authority.
W ouldn't that spellthe doom of A T& T as an institution? Iask.
That prospect doesn't faze Kapor for a m om ent."Their big advantage,

that they have now , is that they have allof the w iring. But tw o things
are happening. A nyone w ith right-of-w ay is putting dow n fiber —
Southern Pacific Railroad, people like that — there's enorm ous 'dark
fiber' laid in." ("D ark Fiber" is fiber-optic cable, w hose enorm ous
capacity so exceeds the dem ands of current usage that m uch of the fiber
stillhas no light-signals on it — it's still'dark,' aw aiting future use.)
"The other thing that's happening is the local-loop stuff is going to go

w ireless. Everyone from Bellcore to the cable TV com panies to A T& T
w ants to put in these things called 'personalcom m unication system s.'
So you could have localcom petition — you could have m ultiplicity of
people,a bunch of neighborhoods,sticking stuff up on poles. A nd a
bunch of other people laying in dark fiber. So w hat happens to the tele-
phone com panies? There's enorm ous pressure on them from both sides.
"The m ore Ilook at this, the m ore Ibelieve that in a post-industrial,

digitalw orld, the idea of regulated m onopolies is bad. People w illlook
back on it and say that in the 19th and 20th centuries the idea of public
utilities w as an okay com prom ise. You needed one set of w ires in the
ground. It w as too econom ically inefficient, otherw ise. A nd that m eant
one entity running it. But now , w ith pieces being w ireless — the con-
nections are going to be via high- levelinterfaces, not via w ires. I
m ean, *ultim ately* there are going to be w ires — but the w ires are just
a com m odity. Fiber, w ireless. You no longer *need* a utility."
W ater utilities? G as utilities?
O f course w e stillneed those,he agrees. "But w hen w hat you're m oving

is inform ation, instead of physicalsubstances, then you can play by a

different set of rules. W e're evolving those rules now ! H opefully you
can have a m uch m ore decentralized system , and one in w hich there's
m ore com petition in the m arketplace.
"The role of governm ent w illbe to m ake sure that nobody cheats. The
proverbial'levelplaying field.' A policy that prevents m onopolization.
It should result in better service, low er prices, m ore choices, and local
em pow erm ent." H e sm iles. "I'm very big on localem pow erm ent."
Kapor is a m an w ith a vision. It's a very novelvision w hich he and his

allies are w orking out in considerable detailand w ith great energy.
D ark, cynical, m orbid cyberpunk that Iam , Icannot avoid considering
som e of the darker im plications of "decentralized, nonhierarchical,
locally em pow ered" netw orking.
Irem ark that som e pundits have suggested that electronic netw orking —
faxes, phones, sm all-scale photocopiers — played a strong role in dis-
solving the pow er of centralized com m unism and causing the collapse of
the W arsaw Pact.
Socialism is totally discredited, says Kapor, fresh back from the

Eastern Bloc. The idea that faxes did it, allby them selves, is rather
w ishful thinking.
H as it occurred to him that electronic netw orking m ight corrode

A m erica's industrialand politicalinfrastructure to the point w here the
w hole thing becom es untenable, unw orkable — and the old order just
collapses headlong, like in Eastern Europe?
"N o," Kapor says flatly. "I think that's extraordinarily unlikely. In
part, because ten or fifteen years ago, Ihad sim ilar hopes about person-
alcom puters — w hich utterly failed to m aterialize." H e grins w ryly,
then his eyes narrow . "I'm *very* opposed to techno-utopias. Every
tim e Isee one, Ieither run aw ay, or try to killit."
It daw ns on m e then that M itch Kapor is not trying to m ake the w orld
safe for dem ocracy. H e certainly is not trying to m ake it safe for anar-
chists or utopians — least of allfor com puter intruders or electronic

rip-off artists. W hat he really hopes to do is m ake the w orld safe for
future M itch Kapors. This w orld of decentralized, sm all- scale nodes,
w ith instant globalaccess for the best and brightest,w ould be a perfect
m ilieu for the shoestring attic capitalism that m ade M itch Kapor w hat
he is today.
Kapor is a very bright m an. H e has a rare com bination of visionary

intensity w ith a strong practicalstreak. The Board of the EFF: John
Barlow , Jerry Berm an of the A CLU, Stew art Brand, John G ilm ore, Steve
W ozniak, and Esther D yson, the doyenne of East-W est com puter entre-
preneurism — share his gift, his vision, and his form idable netw orking
talents. They are people of the 1960s, w innow ed-out by its turbu-
lence and rew arded w ith w ealth and influence. They are som e of the
best and the brightest that the electronic com m unity has to offer. But
can they do it, in the realw orld? O r are they only dream ing? They are
so few . A nd there is so m uch against them .
Ileave Kapor and his netw orking em ployees struggling cheerfully w ith
the prom ising intricacies of their new ly installed M acintosh System 7
softw are. The next day is Saturday. EFF is closed. Ipay a few visits to
points of interest dow ntow n.
O ne of them is the birthplace of the telephone.
It's m arked by a bronze plaque in a plinth of black- and-w hite speckled

granite. It sits in the plaza of the John F. Kennedy FederalBuilding, the
very place w here Kapor w as once fingerprinted by the FBI.
The plaque has a bas-relief picture of Bell's originaltelephone.

"BIRTH PLA CE O F TH E TELEPH O N E," it reads. "H ere, on June 2, 1875,
A lexander Graham Belland Thom as A . W atson first transm itted sound
over w ires.
"This successfulexperim ent w as com pleted in a fifth floor garret at

w hat w as then 109 Court Street and m arked the beginning of w orld-
w ide telephone service."
109 Court Street is long gone. W ithin sight of Bell's plaque, across a

street, is one of the centraloffices of N YN EX, the local BellRBO C, on 6
Bow doin Square.
Icross the street and circle the telco building, slow ly, hands in m y
jacket pockets. It's a bright, w indy, N ew England autum n day. The cen-
traloffice is a handsom e 1940s-era m egalith in late A rt D eco, eight
stories high.
Parked outside the back is a pow er-generation truck. The generator

strikes m e as rather anom alous. D on't they already have their ow n gen-
erators in this eight-story m onster? Then the suspicion strikes m e
that N YN EX m ust have heard of the Septem ber 17 A T& T pow er-outage
w hich crashed N ew York City. Belt-and-suspenders, this generator.
V ery telco.
O ver the glass doors of the front entrance is a handsom e bronze bas-
relief of A rt D eco vines, sunflow ers, and birds, entw ining the Belllogo
and the legend N EW EN GLA N D TELEPHO N E A N D TELEGRA PH CO M PA N Y —
an entity w hich no longer officially exists.
The doors are locked securely. Ipeer through the shadow ed glass. Inside
is an officialposter reading:
"N ew England Telephone a N YN EX Com pany
A TTEN TIO N
"A llpersons w hile on N ew England Telephone Com pany prem ises are
required to visibly w ear their identification cards (C.C.P. Section 2,
Page 1).
"V isitors, vendors, contractors, and allothers are required to visibly

w ear a daily pass. "Thank you. Kevin C. Stanton. Building Security
Coordinator."
O utside, around the corner, is a pull-dow n ribbed m etalsecurity door, a

locked delivery entrance. Som e passing stranger has grafitti-tagged
this door, w ith a single w ord in red spray-painted cursive:

*Fu ry*
_____
M y book on the H acker Crackdow n is alm ost over now . Ihave deliber-
ately saved the best for last.
In February 1991, Iattended the CPSR Public Policy Roundtable, in

W ashington, D C. CPSR, Com puter Professionals for Social
Responsibility, w as a sister organization of EFF, or perhaps its aunt,
being older and perhaps som ew hat w iser in the w ays of the w orld of pol-
itics.
Com puter Professionals for SocialResponsibility began in 1981 in

Palo A lto, as an inform aldiscussion group of Californian com puter sci-
entists and technicians, united by nothing m ore than an electronic m ail-
ing list. This typicalhigh-tech ad-hocracy received the dignity of its
ow n acronym in 1982, and w as form ally incorporated in 1983.
CPSR lobbied governm ent and public alike w ith an educationaloutreach

effort, sternly w arning against any foolish and unthinking trust in com -
plex com puter system s. CPSR insisted that m ere com puters should
never be considered a m agic panacea for hum anity's social, ethicalor
politicalproblem s. CPSR m em bers w ere especially troubled about the
stability, safety, and dependability of m ilitary com puter system s, and
very especially troubled by those system s controlling nuclear arsenals.
CPSR w as best-know n for its persistent and w ell- publicized attacks on
the scientific credibility of the Strategic D efense Initiative ("Star
W ars").
In 1990, CPSR w as the nation's veteran cyber-politicalactivist group,

w ith over tw o thousand m em bers in tw enty- one localchapters across
the US. It w as especially active in Boston, Silicon V alley, and
W ashington D C, w here its W ashington office sponsored the Public Policy
Roundtable.
The Roundtable,how ever,had been funded by EFF,w hich had passed

CPSR an extensive grant for operations. This w as the first large-scale,

officialm eeting of w hat w as to becom e the electronic civillibertarian
com m unity.
Sixty people attended, m yself included — in this instance, not so m uch as

a journalist as a cyberpunk author. M any of the lum inaries of the field
took part: Kapor and Godw in as a m atter of course. Richard Civille and
M arc Rotenberg of CPSR. Jerry Berm an of the A CLU. John Q uarterm an,
author of *The M atrix.* Steven Levy, author of *H ackers.* George
Perry and Sandy W eiss of Prodigy Services, there to netw ork about the
civil-liberties troubles their young com m ercial netw ork w as experi-
encing. D r. D orothy D enning. Cliff Figallo, m anager of the W ell. Steve
Jackson w as there, having finally found his idealtarget audience, and so
w as Craig N eidorf, "Knight Lightning" him self, w ith his attorney,
Sheldon Zenner. Katie H afner, science journalist, and co- author of
*Cyberpunk: O utlaw s and H ackers on the Com puter Frontier.* D ave
Farber, A RPA net pioneer and fabled Internet guru. JanloriGoldm an of
the A CLU's Project on Privacy and Technology. John N agle of A utodesk
and the W ell. D on Goldberg of the House Judiciary Com m ittee. Tom
Guidoboni,the defense attorney in the Internet W orm case. Lance
H offm an, com puter-science professor at The George W ashington
University. EliN oam of Colum bia. A nd a host of others no less distin-
guished.
Senator Patrick Leahy delivered the keynote address, expressing his

determ ination to keep ahead of the curve on the issue of electronic free
speech. The address w as w ell-received,and the sense of excitem ent w as
palpable. Every paneldiscussion w as interesting — som e w ere entirely
com pelling. People netw orked w ith an alm ost frantic interest.
Im yself had a m ost interesting and cordiallunch discussion w ith N oel

and Jeanne Gayler, A dm iralGayler being a form er director of the
N ationalSecurity A gency. A s this w as the first know n encounter betw een
an actualno-kidding cyberpunk and a chief executive of A m erica's
largest and best-financed electronic espionage apparat, there w as natu-
rally a bit of eyebrow -raising on both sides.
Unfortunately, our discussion w as off-the-record. In fact all the dis-

cussions at the CPSR w ere officially off- the- record, the idea being to

do som e serious netw orking in an atm osphere of com plete frankness,
rather than to stage a m edia circus.
In any case, CPSR Roundtable, though interesting and intensely valu-

able, w as as nothing com pared to the truly m ind-boggling event that
transpired a m ere m onth later.
_____
"Com puters, Freedom and Privacy." Four hundred people from every
conceivable corner of A m erica's electronic com m unity. A s a science
fiction w riter, Ihave been to som e w eird gigs in m y day, but this thing
is truly *beyond the pale.* Even "Cyberthon," Point Foundation's
"W oodstock of Cyberspace" w here Bay A rea psychedelia collided headlong
w ith the em ergent w orld of com puterized virtualreality, w as like a
Kiw anis Club gig com pared to this astonishing do.
The "electronic com m unity" had reached an apogee. A lm ost every prin-
cipalin this book is in attendance. CivilLibertarians. Com puter Cops.
The D igitalUnderground.Even a few discreet telco people. Colorcoded
dots for lapeltags are distributed. Free Expression issues. Law
Enforcem ent. Com puter Security. Privacy. Journalists. Law yers.
Educators. Librarians. Program m ers. Stylish punk-black dots for the
hackers and phone phreaks.A lm ost everyone here seem s to w ear eight
or nine dots, to have six or seven professionalhats.
It is a com m unity. Som ething like Lebanon perhaps, but a digitalnation.

People w ho had feuded allyear in the nationalpress, people w ho enter-
tained the deepest suspicions of one another's m otives and ethics,are
now in each others' laps. "Com puters, Freedom and Privacy" had every
reason in the w orld to turn ugly, and yet except for sm allirruptions of
puzzling nonsense from the convention's token lunatic, a surprising
bonhom ie reigned. CFP w as like a w edding-party in w hich tw o lovers,
unstable bride and charlatan groom , tie the knot in a clearly disastrous
m atrim ony.
It is clear to both fam ilies — even to neighbors and random guests — that
this is not a w orkable relationship, and yet the young couple's desperate
attraction can brook no further delay. They sim ply cannot help them -

selves. Crockery w ill fly, shrieks from their new lyw ed hom e w ill w ake
the city block, divorce w aits in the w ings like a vulture over the
Kalahari, and yet this is a w edding, and there is going to be a child from
it. Tragedies end in death; com edies in m arriage. The H acker Crackdow n
is ending in m arriage. A nd there w illbe a child.
From the beginning, anom alies reign. John Perry Barlow , cyberspace
ranger, is here. H is color photo in *The N ew York Tim es M agazine,*
Barlow scow ling in a grim W yom ing snow scape, w ith long black coat,
dark hat,a M acintosh SE30 propped on a fencepost and an aw esom e
frontier rifle tucked under one arm , w illbe the single m ost striking
visualim age of the Hacker Crackdow n. A nd he is CFP's guest of honor —
along w ith GailThackeray of the FCIC! W hat on earth do they expect
these dualguests to do w ith each other? W altz?
Barlow delivers the first address. Uncharacteristically, he is hoarse —

the sheer volum e of roadw ork has w orn him dow n. H e speaks briefly,
congenially, in a plea for conciliation, and takes his leave to a storm of
applause.
Then GailThackeray takes the stage. She's visibly nervous. She's been
on the W ella lot lately. Reading those Barlow posts. Follow ing Barlow
is a challenge to anyone. In honor of the fam ous lyricist for the Grateful
Dead,she announces reedily,she is going to read — *a poem .* A poem
she has com posed herself.
It's an aw fulpoem , doggerelin the rollicking m eter of Robert W .

Service's *The Crem ation of Sam M cGee,* but it is in fact, a poem . It's
the *Ballad of the Electronic Frontier!* A poem about the H acker
Crackdow n and the sheer unlikelihood of CFP. It's fullof in-jokes. The
score or so cops in the audience, w ho are sitting together in a nervous
claque, are absolutely cracking-up. Gail's poem is the funniest goddam n
thing they've ever heard. The hackers and civil-libs, w ho had this
w om an figured for Ilsa She-W olf of the SS, are staring w ith their jaw s
hanging loosely. N ever in the w ildest reaches of their im agination had
they figured GailThackeray w as capable of such a totally off-the-w all
m ove. You can see them punching their m entalCO N TRO L-RESET but-
tons. Jesus! This w om an's a hacker w eirdo! She's *just like us!*

God, this changes everything!
A lBayse, com puter technician for the FBI, had been the only cop at the
CPSR Roundtable, dragged there w ith his arm bent by D orothy D enning.
He w as guarded and tightlipped at CPSR Roundtable;a "lion throw n to the
Christians."
A t CFP,backed by a claque of cops,Bayse suddenly w axes eloquent and

even droll, describing the FBI's "N CIC 2000", a gigantic digitalcatalog
of crim inalrecords, as if he has suddenly becom e som e w eird hybrid of
George O rw elland George Gobel. Tentatively,he m akes an arcane joke
about statisticalanalysis. A t least a third of the crow d laughs aloud.
"They didn't laugh at that at m y last speech," Bayse observes. He had

been addressing cops — *straight* cops,not com puter people. It had
been a w orthy m eeting, usefulone supposes, but nothing like *this.*
There has never been *anything* like this. W ithout any prodding,
w ithout any preparation, people in the audience sim ply begin to ask
questions. Longhairs, freaky people, m athem aticians. Bayse is answ er-
ing, politely, frankly, fully, like a m an w alking on air. The ballroom 's
atm osphere crackles w ith surreality. A fem ale law yer behind m e
breaks into a sw eat and a hot w aft of surprisingly potent and m usky
perfum e flow s off her pulse-points.
People are giddy w ith laughter. People are interested, fascinated, their
eyes so w ide and dark that they seem eroticized. Unlikely daisy-chains
form in the halls, around the bar, on the escalators: cops w ith hackers,
civilrights w ith FBI, Secret Service w ith phone phreaks.
GailThackeray is at her crispest in a w hite w oolsw eater w ith a tiny

Secret Service logo. "Ifound Phiber O ptik at the payphones, and w hen
he saw m y sw eater, he turned into a *pillar of salt!*" she chortles.
Phiber discusses his case at m uch length w ith his arresting officer, D on
D elaney of the N ew York State Police. A fter an hour's chat,the tw o of
them look ready to begin singing "A uld Lang Syne." Phiber finally finds
the courage to get his w orst com plaint off his chest. It isn't so m uch the
arrest. It w as the *charge.* Pirating service off 900 num bers. I'm a

*program m er,* Phiber insists. This lam e charge is going to hurt m y
reputation. It w ould have been coolto be busted for som ething happen-
ing, like Section 1030 com puter intrusion. M aybe som e kind of crim e
that's scarcely been invented yet. N ot lousy phone fraud. Phooey.
D elaney seem s regretful. H e had a m ountain of possible crim inal

charges against Phiber O ptik. The kid's gonna plead guilty anyw ay. H e's
a first tim er, they alw ays plead. Coulda charged the kid w ith m ost any-
thing,and gotten the sam e result in the end. D elaney seem s genuinely
sorry not to have gratified Phiber in this harm less fashion. Too late
now . Phiber's pled already. A llw ater under the bridge. W haddya gonna
do?
D elaney's got a good grasp on the hacker m entality.He held a press con-
ference after he busted a bunch of M asters of Deception kids. Som e
journo had asked him : "W ould you describe these people as *genius-
es?*" D elaney's deadpan answ er, perfect: "N o, Iw ould describe these
people as *defendants.*" D elaney busts a kid for hacking codes w ith
repeated random dialling. Tells the press that N YN EX can track this
stuff in no tim e flat now adays,and a kid has to be *stupid* to do som e-
thing so easy to catch. Dead on again: hackers don't m ind being thought
of as Genghis Khan by the straights, but if there's anything that really
gets 'em w here they live, it's being called *dum b.*
W on't be as m uch fun for Phiber next tim e around.A s a second offender
he's gonna see prison. Hackers break the law . They're not geniuses,
either. They're gonna be defendants. A nd yet,Delaney m uses over a
drink in the hotelbar, he has found it im possible to treat them as com -
m on crim inals. D elaney know s crim inals. These kids, by com parison,
are clueless — there is just no crook vibe off of them , they don't sm ell
right, they're just not *bad.*
Delaney has seen a lot of action. He did V ietnam .He's been shot at,he has
shot people. He's a hom icide cop from N ew York. He has the appearance
of a m an w ho has not only seen the shit hit the fan but has seen it splat-
tered across w hole city blocks and left to ferm ent for years. This guy
has been around.

He listens to Steve Jackson tellhis story. The dream y gam e strategist
has been dealt a bad hand. He has played it for allhe is w orth. 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. H e w illnever com -
prom ise his principles, never give up. "Steve," D elaney says to Steve
Jackson, "they had som e balls, w hoever busted you. You're allright!"
Jackson, stunned, falls silent and actually blushes w ith pleasure.
N eidorf has grow n up a lot in the past year. The kid is a quick study, you
gotta give him that. D ressed by his m om ,the fashion m anager for a
nationalclothing chain, M issouricollege techie-frat Craig N eidorf out-
dappers everyone at this gig but the toniest East Coast law yers. The iron
jaw s of prison clanged shut w ithout him and now law schoolbeckons for
N eidorf. H e looks like a larvalCongressm an.
N ot a "hacker," our M r. N eidorf. H e's not interested in com puter sci-

ence. W hy should he be? He's not interested in w riting C code the rest
of his life, and besides, he's seen w here the chips fall. To the w orld of
com puter science he and *Phrack* w ere just a curiosity. But to the
w orld of law .... The kid has learned w here the bodies are buried. H e
carries his notebook of press clippings w herever he goes.
Phiber O ptik m akes fun of N eidorf for a M idw estern geek, for believing
that "A cid Phreak" does acid and listens to acid rock. Hellno. A cid's
never done *acid!* A cid's into *acid house m usic.* Jesus. The very
idea of doing LSD . O ur *parents* did LSD , ya clow n.
Thackeray suddenly turns upon Craig N eidorf the fulllighthouse glare of

her attention and begins a determ ined half-hour attem pt to *w in the boy
over.* The Joan of A rc of Com puter Crim e is *giving career advice to
Knight Lightning!* "Your experience w ould be very valuable — a real
asset," she tells him w ith unm istakeable sixty-thousand-w att sinceri-
ty. N eidorf is fascinated. H e listens w ith unfeigned attention. H e's nod-
ding and saying yes m a'am . Yes,Craig,you too can forget allabout
m oney and enter the glam orous and horribly underpaid w orld of PRO SE-
CUTIN G CO M PUTER CRIM E! You can put your form er friends in prison
— ooops....

You cannot go on dueling at m odem 's length indefinitely. You cannot beat
one another senseless w ith rolled-up press-clippings. Sooner or later
you have to com e directly to grips. A nd yet the very act of assem bling
here has changed the entire situation drastically. John Q uarterm an,
author of *The M atrix,* explains the Internet at his sym posium . It is
the largest new s netw ork in the w orld, it is grow ing by leaps and
bounds,and yet you cannot m easure Internet because you cannot stop it
in place. It cannot stop, because there is no one anyw here in the w orld
w ith the authority to stop Internet. It changes, yes, it grow s, it em beds
itself across the post-industrial, postm odern w orld and it generates
com m unity w herever it touches, and it is doing this allby itself.
Phiber is different. A very fin de siecle kid, Phiber O ptik. Barlow says
he looks like an Edw ardian dandy. He does rather. Shaven neck, the
sides of his skullcropped hip-hop close, unruly tangle of black hair on
top that looks pom aded, he stays up tillfour a.m . and m isses allthe ses-
sions, then hangs out in payphone booths w ith his acoustic coupler
gutsily CRA CKIN G SYSTEM S RIGH T IN TH E M ID ST O F TH E H EA V IEST LA W
EN FO RCEM EN T D UD ES IN TH E U.S., or at least *pretending* to....
Unlike "Frank D rake." D rake, w ho w rote D orothy D enning out of
now here, and asked for an interview for his cheapo cyberpunk fanzine,
and then started grilling her on her ethics. She w as squirm in', too....
D rake, scarecrow -tallw ith his floppy blond m ohaw k, rotting tennis
shoes and black leather jacket lettered ILLUM IN A TIin red, gives off an
unm istakeable air of the bohem ian literatus. D rake is the kind of guy
w ho reads British industrialdesign m agazines and appreciates W illiam
Gibson because the quality of the prose is so tasty. D rake could never
touch a phone or a keyboard again, and he'd stillhave the nose- ring and
the blurry photocopied fanzines and the sam pled industrialm usic. H e's
a radicalpunk w ith a desktop- publishing rig and an Internet address.
Standing next to D rake, the dim inutive Phiber looks like he's been
physically coagulated out of phone-lines. Born to phreak.
D orothy D enning approaches Phiber suddenly. The tw o of them are

about the sam e height and body-build. D enning's blue eyes flash behind
the round w indow - fram es of her glasses. "W hy did you say Iw as
'quaint?'" she asks Phiber, quaintly.

It's a perfect description but Phiber is nonplussed... "W ell, Iuh, you
know ...."
"Ialso think you're quaint, D orothy," Isay, novelist to the rescue, the
journo gift of gab... She is neat and dapper and yet there's an arcane
quality to her, som ething like a Pilgrim M aiden behind leaded glass; if
she w ere six inches high D orothy D enning w ould look great inside a
china cabinet... The Cryptographeress.... The Cryptographrix... w hat-
ever... W eirdly, Peter D enning looks just like his w ife, you could pick
this gentlem an out of a thousand guys as the soulm ate of Dorothy
D enning. W earing tailored slacks, a spotless fuzzy varsity sw eater, and
a neatly knotted academ ician's tie.... This fineboned, exquisitely polite,
utterly civilized and hyperintelligent couple seem to have em erged from
som e cleaner and finer paralleluniverse, w here hum anity exists to do
the Brain Teasers colum n in Scientific A m erican. W hy does this N ice
Lady hang out w ith these unsavory characters?
Because the tim e has com e for it,that's w hy.Because she's the best
there is at w hat she does.
D onn Parker is here, the Great Bald Eagle of Com puter Crim e.... W ith
his bald dom e, great height, and enorm ous Lincoln-like hands, the great
visionary pioneer of the field plow s through the lesser m ortals like an
icebreaker.... H is eyes are fixed on the future w ith the rigidity of a
bronze statue.... Eventually, he tells his audience, allbusiness crim e
w illbe com puter crim e, because businesses w illdo everything through
com puters. "Com puter crim e" as a category w illvanish.
In the m eantim e, passing fads w illflourish and failand evaporate....

Parker's com m anding, resonant voice is sphinxlike, everything is
view ed from som e eldritch valley of deep historicalabstraction... Yes,
they've com e and they've gone,these passing flaps in the w orld of digital
com putation.... The radio-frequency em anation scandal... KGB and M I5
and CIA do it every day, it's easy, but nobody else ever has.... The sala-
m i-slice fraud, m ostly m ythical... "Crim oids," he calls them ....
Com puter viruses are the current crim oid cham p, a lot less dangerous
than m ost people let on,but the novelty is fading and there's a crim oid
vacuum at the m om ent, the press is visibly hungering for som ething

m ore outrageous.... The Great M an shares w ith us a few speculations on
the com ing crim oids.... D esktop Forgery! W ow .... Com puters stolen
just for the sake of the inform ation w ithin them — data- napping!
H appened in Britain a w hile ago, could be the com ing thing.... Phantom
nodes in the Internet!
Parker handles his overhead projector sheets w ith an ecclesiastical

air... H e w ears a grey double-breasted suit, a light blue shirt, and a
very quiet tie of understated m aroon and blue paisley... A phorism s
em erge from him w ith slow , leaden em phasis... There is no such thing
as an adequately secure com puter w hen one faces a sufficiently pow erful
adversary.... D eterrence is the m ost socially usefulaspect of security...
People are the prim ary w eakness in allinform ation system s... The
entire baseline of com puter security m ust be shifted upw ard.... D on't
ever violate your security by publicly describing your security m ea-
sures...
People in the audience are beginning to squirm , and yet there is som e-
thing about the elem entalpurity of this guy's philosophy that com pels
uneasy respect.... Parker sounds like the only sane guy left in the
lifeboat, som etim es. The guy w ho can prove rigorously, from deep
m oralprinciples, that H arvey there, the one w ith the broken leg and the
checkered past, is the one w ho has to be, err.... that is, M r. H arvey is
best placed to m ake the necessary sacrifice for the security and indeed
the very survivalof the rest of this lifeboat's crew .... Com puter secu-
rity, Parker inform s us m ournfully, is a nasty topic, and w e w ish w e
didn't have to have it... The security expert,arm ed w ith m ethod and
logic, m ust think — im agine — everything that the adversary m ight do
before the adversary m ight actually do it. It is as if the crim inal's dark
brain w ere an extensive subprogram w ithin the shining cranium of
D onn Parker. H e is a H olm es w hose M oriarty does not quite yet exist
and so m ust be perfectly sim ulated.
CFP is a stellar gathering, w ith the giddiness of a w edding. It is a happy

tim e, a happy ending, they know their w orld is changing forever
tonight,and they're proud to have been there to see it happen,to talk,to
think, to help.

A nd yet as night falls, a certain elegiac quality m anifests itself, as the
crow d gathers beneath the chandeliers w ith their w ineglasses and
dessert plates. Som ething is ending here, gone forever, and it takes a
w hile to pinpoint it.
It is the End of the A m ateurs.

A FT ER W O R D
T he H acker C rackdow n
T hree Years Later
Three years in cyberspace is like thirty years anyplace real. It feels as
if a generation has passed since Iw rote this book. In term s of the gen-
erations of com puting m achinery involved, that's pretty m uch the case.
The basic shape of cyberspace has changed drastically since 1990. A

new U.S. A dm inistration is in pow er w hose personnelare, if anything,
only too aw are of the nature and potentialof electronic netw orks. It's
now clear to allplayers concerned that the status quo is dead-and-gone
in A m erican m edia and telecom m unications, and alm ost any territory on
the electronic frontier is up for grabs. Interactive m ultim edia, cable-
phone alliances, the Inform ation Superhighw ay, fiber- to-the-curb,
laptops and palm tops, the explosive grow th of cellular and the Internet
— the earth trem bles visibly.
The year 1990 w as not a pleasant one for A T& T. By 1993, how ever,
A T& T had successfully devoured the com puter com pany N CR in an
unfriendly takeover, finally giving the pole-clim bers a m ajor piece of
the digitalaction. A T& T m anaged to rid itself of ow nership of the trou-
blesom e UN IX operating system , selling it to N ovell, a netw are com pany,
w hich w as itself preparing for a savage m arket dust-up w ith operating-
system titan M icrosoft. Furtherm ore, A T& T acquired M cCaw Cellular in
a gigantic m erger, giving A T& T a potentialw ireless w hip-hand over its
form er progeny, the RBO Cs. The RBO Cs them selves w ere now A T& T's
clearest potentialrivals, as the Chinese firew alls betw een regulated
m onopoly and frenzied digitalentrepreneurism began to m elt and col-
lapse headlong.
A T& T, m ocked by industry analysts in 1990, w as reaping aw estruck

praise by com m entators in 1993. A T& T had m anaged to avoid any m ore
m ajor softw are crashes in its sw itching stations. A T& T's new found
reputation as "the nim ble giant" w as allthe sw eeter, since A T& T's tra-
ditionalrivalgiant in the w orld of m ultinationalcom puting, IBM , w as
alm ost prostrate by 1993. IBM 's vision of the com m ercialcom puter-
netw ork of the future, "Prodigy," had m anaged to spend $900 m illion
w ithout a w hole heck of a lot to show for it, w hile A T& T, by contrast,
w as boldly speculating on the possibilities of personalcom m unicators
and hedging its bets w ith investm ents in handw ritten interfaces. In
1990 A T& T had looked bad; but in 1993 A T& T looked like the future.
A t least, A T& T's *advertising* looked like the future. Sim ilar public
attention w as riveted on the m assive $22 billion m egam erger betw een
RBO C BellA tlantic and cable-TV giant Tele-Com m unications Inc. N ynex
w as buying into cable com pany V iacom International. BellSouth w as
buying stock in Prim e M anagem ent, Southw estern Bellacquiring a cable
com pany in W ashington D C, and so forth. By stark contrast, the
Internet, a noncom m ercialentity w hich officially did not even exist, had
no advertising budget at all. A nd yet, alm ost below the levelof govern-
m entaland corporate aw areness, the Internet w as stealthily devouring
everything in its path, grow ing at a rate that defied com prehension.
Kids w ho m ight have been eager com puter-intruders a m ere five years
earlier w ere now surfing the Internet, w here their naturalurge to
explore led them into cyberspace landscapes of such m indboggling vast-
ness that the very idea of hacking passw ords seem ed rather a w aste of
tim e.
By 1993, there had not been a solid, knock 'em dow n, panic-striking,
teenage-hacker com puter-intrusion scandalin m any long m onths.
There had, of course, been som e striking and w ell-publicized acts of
illicit com puter access, but they had been com m itted by adult w hite-
collar industry insiders in clear pursuit of personal or com m ercial
advantage. The kids, by contrast, allseem ed to be on IRC, Internet Relay
Chat.
O r, perhaps, frolicking out in the endless glass-roots netw ork of per-

sonalbulletin board system s. In 1993, there w ere an estim ated
60,000 boards in A m erica; the population of boards had fully doubled

since O peration Sundevilin 1990. The hobby w as transm uting fitfully
into a genuine industry. The board com m unity w ere no longer obscure
hobbyists; m any w ere stillhobbyists and proud of it, but board sysops
and advanced board users had becom e a far m ore cohesive and politically
aw are com m unity, no longer allow ing them selves to be obscure.
The specter of cyberspace in the late 1980s, of outw itted authorities

trem bling in fear before teenage hacker w hiz- kids, seem ed dow nright
antiquated by 1993. Law enforcem ent em phasis had changed,and the
favorite electronic villain of 1993 w as not the vandalchild, but the
victim izer of children, the digitalchild pornographer. "O peration
Longarm ," a child- pornography com puter raid carried out by the pre-
viously little- know n cyberspace rangers of the U.S. Custom s Service,
w as alm ost the size of O peration Sundevil, but received very little
notice by com parison.
The huge and w ell-organized "O peration D isconnect," an FBIstrike

against telephone rip-off con-artists, w as actually larger than
Sundevil. "O peration D isconnect" had its brief m om ent in the sun of
publicity, and then vanished utterly. It w as unfortunate that a law -
enforcem ent affair as apparently w ell-conducted as O peration
D isconnect, w hich pursued telecom adult career crim inals a hundred
tim es m ore m orally repugnant than teenage hackers, should have
received so little attention and fanfare, especially com pared to the
abortive Sundeviland the basically disastrous efforts of the Chicago
Com puter Fraud and A buse Task Force. But the life of an electronic
policem an is seldom easy.
If any law enforcem ent event truly deserved full-scale press coverage
(w hile som ehow m anaging to escape it),it w as the am azing saga of N ew
York State Police Senior Investigator D on D elaney V ersus the O rchard
Street Finger- H ackers. This story probably represents the real
future of professionaltelecom m unications crim e in A m erica. The fin-
ger- hackers sold, and stillsell, stolen long-distance phone service to a
captive clientele of illegalaliens in N ew York City. This clientele is des-
perate to callhom e, yet as a group, illegalaliens have few legalm eans of
obtaining standard phone service, since their very presence in the
United States is against the law . The finger-hackers of O rchard Street

w ere very unusual"hackers," w ith an astonishing lack of any kind of
genuine technologicalknow ledge. A nd yet these N ew York call-sell
thieves show ed a street-levelingenuity appalling in its single- m inded
sense of larceny.
There w as no dissident-hacker rhetoric about freedom - of-inform ation

am ong the finger-hackers. M ost of them cam e out of the cocaine-dealing
fraternity, and they retailed stolen calls w ith the sam e street-crim e
techniques of lookouts and bagholders that a crack gang w ould em ploy.
This w as dow n- and-dirty, urban, ethnic, organized crim e, carried out
by crim e fam ilies every day, for cash on the barrelhead, in the harsh
w orld of the streets. The finger-hackers dom inated certain payphones
in certain strikingly unsavory neighborhoods. They provided a service
no one else w ould give to a clientele w ith little to lose.
W ith such a vast supply of electronic crim e at hand, D on D elaney rock-

eted from a background in hom icide to teaching telecom crim e at FLETC
in less than three years. Few can rivalD elaney's hands-on, street-
levelexperience in phone fraud. A nyone in 1993 w ho stillbelieves
telecom m unications crim e to be som ething rare and arcane should have a
few w ords w ith M r D elaney. D on D elaney has also w ritten tw o fine
essays, on telecom fraud and com puter crim e, in Joseph Grau's
*Crim inal and Civil Investigations H andbook* (M cG raw H ill 1 9 9 3 ).
*Phrack* w as stillpublishing in 1 9 9 3 , now under the able editorship

of Erik Bloodaxe. Bloodaxe m ade a determ ined attem pt to get law
enforcem ent and corporate security to pay realm oney for their elec-
tronic copies of *Phrack,* but, as usual, these stalw art defenders of
intellectualproperty preferred to pirate the m agazine. Bloodaxe has
stillnot gotten back any of his property from the seizure raids of M arch
1, 1990. N either has the M entor, w ho is stillthe m anaging editor of
Steve Jackson Gam es.
N or has Robert Izenberg, w ho has suspended his court struggle to get his
m achinery back. M r Izenberg has calculated that his $20,000 of
equipm ent seized in 1990 is, in 1993, w orth $4,000 at m ost. The
m issing softw are,also gone out his door,w as long ago replaced. He
m ight, he says, sue for the sake of principle, but he feels that the people

w ho seized his m achinery have already been discredited, and w on't be
doing any m ore seizures. A nd even if his m achinery w ere returned —
and in good repair, w hich is doubtful— it w ill be essentially w orthless
by 1995. Robert Izenberg no longer w orks for IBM , but has a job pro-
gram m ing for a m ajor telecom m unications com pany in A ustin.
Steve Jackson w on his case against the Secret Service on M arch 12,
1993, just over three years after the federalraid on his enterprise.
Thanks to the delaying tactics available through the legaldoctrine of
"qualified im m unity," Jackson w as tactically forced to drop his suit
against the individuals W illiam Cook, Tim Foley, Barbara Golden and
H enry Kluepfel. (Cook, Foley, Golden and Kluepfeldid, how ever, testify
during the trial.)
The Secret Service fought vigorously in the case, battling Jackson's

law yers right dow n the line, on the (m ostly previously untried) legal
turf of the Electronic Com m unications Privacy A ct and the Privacy
Protection A ct of 1980. The Secret Service denied they w ere legally or
m orally responsible for seizing the w ork of a publisher. They claim ed
that (1) Jackson's gam ing "books" w eren't realbooks anyhow , and (2)
the Secret Service didn't realize SJG Inc w as a "publisher" w hen they
raided his offices, and (3) the books only vanished by accident because
they m erely happened to be inside the com puters the agents w ere appro-
priating.
The Secret Service also denied any w rongdoing in reading and erasing all
the supposedly "private" e-m ailinside Jackson's seized board,
Illum inati. The USSS attorneys claim ed the seizure did not violate the
Electronic Com m unications Privacy A ct, because they w eren't actually
"intercepting" electronic m ailthat w as m oving on a w ire, but only elec-
tronic m ailthat w as quietly sitting on a disk inside Jackson's com puter.
They also claim ed that USSS agents hadn't read any of the private m ailon
Illum inati; and anyw ay, even supposing that they had, they w ere allow ed
to do that by the subpoena.
The Jackson case becam e even m ore peculiar w hen the Secret Service
attorneys w ent so far as to allege that the federalraid against the gam ing
com pany had actually *im proved Jackson's business* thanks to the

ensuing nationw ide publicity.
It w as a long and rather involved trial. The judge seem ed m ost per-
turbed,not by the arcane m atters of electronic law ,but by the fact that
the Secret Service could have avoided alm ost allthe consequent trouble
sim ply by giving Jackson his com puters back in short order. The
Secret Service easily could have looked at everything in Jackson's com -
puters, recorded everything, and given the m achinery back, and there
w ould have been no m ajor scandalor federalcourt suit. O n the con-
trary, everybody sim ply w ould have had a good laugh. Unfortunately, it
appeared that this idea had never entered the heads of the Chicago-based
investigators. They seem ed to have concluded unilaterally, and w ithout
due course of law ,that the w orld w ould be better off if Steve Jackson
didn't have com puters. Golden and Foley claim ed that they had both
never even heard of the Privacy Protection A ct. Cook had heard of the
A ct,but he'd decided on his ow n that the Privacy Protection A ct had
nothing to do w ith Steve Jackson.
The Jackson case w as also a very politicized trial, both sides deliberate-
ly angling for a long-term legalprecedent that w ould stake-out big
claim s for their interests in cyberspace. Jackson and his EFF advisors
tried hard to establish that the least e-m ailrem ark of the lonely elec-
tronic pam phleteer deserves the sam e som ber civil-rights protection as
that afforded *The N ew York Tim es.* By stark contrast, the Secret
Service's attorneys argued boldly that the contents of an electronic bul-
letin board have no m ore expectation of privacy than a heap of postcards.
In the finalanalysis, very little w as firm ly nailed dow n. Form ally, the
legalrulings in the Jackson case apply only in the federalW estern
D istrict of Texas. It w as, how ever, established that these w ere real
civilliberties issues that pow erfulpeople w ere prepared to go to the
courthouse over; the seizure of bulletin board system s, though it still
goes on,can be a perilous act for the seizer.The Secret Service ow es
Steve Jackson $50,000 in dam ages,and a thousand dollars each to three
of Jackson's angry and offended board users. A nd Steve Jackson,rather
than ow ning the single-line bulletin board system "Illum inati" seized in
1990, now rejoices in possession of a huge privately-ow ned Internet
node, "io.com ," w ith dozens of phone-lines on its ow n T-1 trunk.

Jackson has m ade the entire blow -by-blow narrative of his case avail-
able electronically, for interested parties. A nd yet, the Jackson case
m ay stillnot be over; a Secret Service appealseem s likely and the EFF
is also gravely dissatisfied w ith the ruling on electronic interception.
The W ELL, hom e of the A m erican electronic civillibertarian m ovem ent,

added tw o thousand m ore users and dropped its aging Sequent com puter
in favor of a snappy new Sun Sparcstation. Search-and-seizure discus-
sions on the W ELL are now taking a decided back-seat to the current hot
topic in digital civil liberties, unbreakable public-key encryption for
private citizens.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation left its m odest hom e in Boston to

m ove inside the W ashington Beltw ay of the Clinton A dm inistration. Its
new executive director, ECPA pioneer and longtim e A CLU activist Jerry
Berm an, gained a reputation of a m an adept as dining w ith tigers, as the
EFF devoted its attention to netw orking at the highest levels of the com -
puter and telecom m unications industry. EFF's pro- encryption lobby
and anti-w iretapping initiative w ere especially im pressive, success-
fully assem bling a herd of highly variegated industry cam els under the
sam e EFF tent, in open and pow erfulopposition to the electronic am bi-
tions of the FBIand the N SA .
EFF had transm uted at light-speed from an insurrection to an institu-

tion. EFF Co-Founder M itch Kapor once again sidestepped the bureau-
cratic consequences of his ow n success, by rem aining in Boston and
adapting the role of EFF guru and gray em inence. John Perry Barlow ,
for his part, left W yom ing, quit the Republican Party, and m oved to N ew
York City, accom panied by his sw arm of cellular phones. M ike Godw in
left Boston for W ashington as EFF's officiallegaladviser to the elec-
tronically afflicted.
A fter the N eidorf trial, D orothy D enning further proved her firm
scholastic independence-of-m ind by speaking up boldly on the useful-
ness and socialvalue of federalw iretapping. M any civillibertarians,
w ho regarded the practice of w iretapping w ith deep occult horror, w ere
crestfallen to the point of com edy w hen nationally know n "hacker sym -
pathizer" D orothy D enning sternly defended police and public interests

in officialeavesdropping. H ow ever, no am ount of public uproar seem ed
to sw erve the "quaint" D r. D enning in the slightest. She not only m ade
up her ow n m ind, she m ade it up in public and then stuck to her guns.
In 1993, the stalw arts of the M asters of D eception, Phiber O ptik, A cid
Phreak and Scorpion, finally fellafoulof the m achineries of legalpros-
ecution. A cid Phreak and Scorpion w ere sent to prison for six m onths,
six m onths of hom e detention, 750 hours of com m unity service, and,
oddly, a $50 fine for conspiracy to com m it com puter crim e. Phiber
O ptik, the com puter intruder w ith perhaps the highest public profile in
the entire w orld, took the longest to plead guilty, but, facing the possi-
bility of ten years in jail, he finally did so. H e w as sentenced to a year
and a day in prison.
A s for the A tlanta w ing of the Legion of Doom ,Prophet,Leftist and

Urvile... Urvile now w orks for a softw are com pany in A tlanta. H e is
stillon probation and stillrepaying his enorm ous fine. In fifteen
m onths, he w illonce again be allow ed to ow n a personalcom puter. He is
stilla convicted federalfelon, but has not had any legaldifficulties since
leaving prison. H e has lost contact w ith Prophet and Leftist.
Unfortunately, so have I, though not through lack of honest effort.
Knight Lightning, now 24, is a technicalw riter for the federalgovern-

m ent in W ashington D C. He has stillnot been accepted into law school,
but having spent m ore than his share of tim e in the com pany of attor-
neys,he's com e to think that m aybe an M BA w ould be m ore to the point.
H e stillow es his attorneys $30,000, but the sum is dw indling steadily
since he is m anfully w orking tw o jobs. Knight Lightning custom arily
w ears a suit and tie and carries a valise. H e has a federalsecurity
clearance.
U nindicted *Phrack* co-editor Taran King is also a technicalw riter in

W ashington D C, and recently got m arried.
Term inus did his tim e, got out of prison, and currently lives in Silicon
V alley w here he is running a full-scale Internet node, "netsys.com ." H e
program s professionally for a com pany specializing in satellite links
for the Internet.

Carlton Fitzpatrick stillteaches at the FederalLaw Enforcem ent
Training Center, but FLETC found that the issues involved in sponsoring
and running a bulletin board system are rather m ore com plex than they
at first appear to be.
GailThackeray briefly considered going into private security, but then

changed tack, and joined the M aricopa County D istrict A ttorney's O ffice
(w ith a salary). She is stillvigorously prosecuting electronic racke-
teering in Phoenix, A rizona.
The fourth consecutive Com puters, Freedom and Privacy Conference

w illtake place in M arch 1994 in Chicago.
A s for Bruce Sterling... w ell*8 -). Ithankfully abandoned m y brief

career as a true-crim e journalist and w rote a new science fiction
novel, *H eavy W eather,* and assem bled a new collection of short sto-
ries, *G lobalhead.* I also w rite nonfiction regularly, for the popular-
science colum n in *The M agazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.*
Ilike life better on the far side of the boundary betw een fantasy and
reality; but I've com e to recognize that reality has an unfortunate w ay
of annexing fantasy for its ow n purposes. That's w hy I'm on the Police
Liaison Com m ittee for EFF- A ustin, a localelectronic civilliberties
group (eff- austin@ tic.com ). Idon't think Iw illever get over m y
experience of the H acker Crackdow n, and Iexpect to be involved in elec-
tronic civilliberties activism for the rest of m y life.
It w ouldn't be hard to find m aterialfor another book on com puter crim e

and civilliberties issues. Itruly believe that Icould w rite another
book m uch like this one, every year. Cyberspace is very big. There's a
lot going on out there,far m ore than can be adequately covered by the
tiny, though grow ing, cadre of netw ork-literate reporters. Ido w ish I
could do m ore w ork on this topic, because the various people of cyber-
space are an elem ent of our society that definitely requires sustained
study and attention.
But there's only one of m e, and Ihave a lot on m y m ind, and, like m ost

science fiction w riters, Ihave a lot m ore im agination than discipline.
H aving done m y stint as an electronic-frontier reporter, m y hat is off
to those stalw art few w ho do it every day. Im ay return to this topic
som e day,but Ihave no realplans to do so. How ever,Ididn't have any
realplans to w rite "H acker Crackdow n," either. Things happen, now a-
days. There are landslides in cyberspace. I'lljust have to try and stay
alert and on m y feet.
The electronic landscape changes w ith astounding speed. W e are living

through the fastest technologicaltransform ation in hum an history. I
w as glad to have a chance to docum ent cyberspace during one m om ent in
its long m utation; a kind of strobe-flash of the m aelstrom . This book is
already out-of- date, though, and it w illbe quite obsolete in another
five years. It seem s a pity.
H ow ever, in about fifty years, Ithink this book m ight seem quite inter-
esting. A nd in a hundred years, this book should seem m ind-bogglingly
archaic and bizarre, and w illprobably seem far w eirder to an audience
in 2092 than it ever seem ed to the contem porary readership.
Keeping up in cyberspace requires a great dealof sustained attention.

Personally, Ikeep tabs w ith the m ilieu by reading the invaluable elec-
tronic m agazine Com puter underground D igest
(tk0jut2@ m vs.cso.niu.edu w ith the subject header: SUB CuD and a m es-
sage that says: SUB CuD your nam e your.full.internet@ address). I
also read Jack Rickard's bracingly iconoclastic *Boardw atch M agazine*
for print new s of the BBS and online com m unity. A nd, needless to say, I
read *W ired,* the first m agazine of the 1990s that actually looks and
acts like it really belongs in this decade. There are other w ays to learn,
of course, but these three outlets w illguide your efforts very w ell.
W hen Im yself w ant to publish som ething electronically, w hich I'm

doing w ith increasing frequency, Igenerally put it on the gopher at
Texas Internet Consulting, w ho are m y, w ell, Texan Internet consultants
(tic.com ). This book can be found there. Ithink it is a w orthw hile act
to let this w ork go free.
From thence,one's bread floats out onto the dark w aters of cyberspace,

only to return som eday,tenfold. A nd of course,thoroughly soggy,and
riddled w ith an entire am azing ecosystem of bizarre and gnaw ingly hun-
gry cyberm arine life- form s. For this author at least, that's allthat
really counts.
Thanks for your attention *8-)
B ruce S terling
<bruces@ w ell.sf.ca.us>
N ew Years' D ay 1994, A ustin Texas

Hacker Crackdown

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Hacker Crackdown

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

LITERA RY FREEW A RE — N ot for Com m ercialUse

Sidew ays PD F version 0.1 by E-Scribe <info@ e-scribe.com >

P reface to the Electronic Release ofThe H acker Crackdow n

C hronology of the H acker Crackdow n

P art 1 : CRA SH IN G TH E SYSTEM A Brief H istory of Telephony

P art 2 : TH E D IGITA L UN D ERGRO UN D StealThis Phone /

P art 3 : LA W A N D O RD ER Crooked Boards / The W orld's

P art 4 : TH E CIV IL LIBERTA RIA N S N uProm etheus + FBI=

Electronic A fterw ordto *The H acker Crackdow n,* N ew

BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER C RAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 2

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

O ut in the traditionalw orld of print, *The H acker Crackdow n* is ISBN

The paperback is ISBN 0-553-56370-X. If you go and buy a print

"N o part of this book m ay be reproduced or transm itted in any form or

BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER CRAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 3

B RU C E S T E RL I N G — T H E H AC KER CR AC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 4

If you're a com puter cop, a hacker, or an electronic civilliberties

BRU C E ST ERLI N G — T H E H AC KER CRACKD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 5

Bruce Sterling — bruces@ w ell.sf.ca.us

BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KE R C R AC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 6

1876 A lexander Graham Bellinvents telephone.

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

1971 Yippie phone phreaks start YIPL/TA P m agazine.

1972 *Ram parts* m agazine seized in blue-box rip-off scandal.

1 9 7 8 W ard Christenson and Randy Suess create first personalcom -

1982 W illiam Gibson coins term "cyberspace."

1982 "414 Gang" raided.

1 9 8 3 -1 9 8 3 A T& T dism antled in divestiture.

1 9 8 4 Congress passes Com prehensive Crim e ControlA ct giving USSS

1984 "Legion of Doom " form ed.

1984 *2600: The H acker Q uarterly* founded.

1984 *W hole Earth Softw are Catalog* published.

1985 First police "sting" bulletin board system s established.

BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER C RAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 7

1986 Com puter Fraud and A buse A ct passed.

1986 Electronic Com m unications Privacy A ct passed.

1 9 8 7 Chicago prosecutors form Com puter Fraud and A buse Task

July. Secret Service covertly videotapes "Sum m erCon" hacker conven-

Septem ber. A T& T Corporate Inform ation Security inform ed of

O ctober. Bellcore Security inform ed of Prophet's action.

January. Prophet uploads E911 D ocum ent to Knight Lightning.

February 2 5 . Knight Lightning publishes E9 1 1 D ocum ent in *Phrack*

M ay. Chicago Task Force raids and arrests "Kyrie."

June 13. Florida probation office crossed w ith phone-sex line in

BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER C RAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 8

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

January 15. M artin Luther King D ay Crash strikes A T& T long-distance

February 1 . U SSS raids "Term inus" in M aryland.

February 3. Chicago Task Force raids Richard A ndrew s' hom e.

February 6. Chicago Task Force raids Richard A ndrew s' business.

February 6 . U SSS arrests Term inus, Prophet, Leftist, and U rvile.

February 9. Chicago Task Force arrests Knight Lightning.

February 20. A T& T Security shuts dow n public-access "attctc" com -

February 21. Chicago Task Force raids Robert Izenberg in A ustin.

M ay 7,8,9. USSS and A rizona O rganized Crim e and Racketeering Bureau

BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER C RAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 9

June. M itch Kapor and Barlow found Electronic Frontier Foundation;

July 2 4 -2 7 . Trial of K night Lightning.

February. CPSR Roundtable in W ashington, D .C.

M arch 25-28. Com puters, Freedom and Privacy conference in San

M ay 1. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Steve Jackson, and others file

BRU C E ST ERL I N G — T H E H AC KER CRAC KD O W N N OT FOR COMMERCIAL U SE 10

This book is about the electronic frontier of the 1990s. It concerns

A science fiction w riter coined the usefulterm "cyberspace" in 1982.

Electronic A fterw ordto The H acker Crackdow n, N ew

O ut in the traditionalw orld of print, The H acker Crackdow n is ISBN

1972 Ram parts m agazine seized in blue-box rip-off scandal.

1984 2600: The H acker Q uarterly founded.

1984 W hole Earth Softw are Catalog published.

February 2 5 . Knight Lightning publishes E9 1 1 D ocum ent in Phrack