textfiles-politics/politicalTextFiles/cypunk.txt

610 lines
32 KiB
Plaintext
Raw Normal View History

2023-02-20 12:59:23 -05:00
GURPS LABOR LOST: The Cyberpunk Bust
by Bruce Sterling
Copyright (c) by Bruce Sterling, 1991.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Some months ago, I wrote an article about the raid on Steve Jackson
Games, which appeared in my "Comment" column in the British science
fiction monthly, Interzone(#44, February 1991). This updated version,
specially re-written for dissemination by EFF, reflects the somewhat
greater knowledge I've gained to date, in the course of research on an
upcoming nonfiction book, The Hacker Crackdown: The True Story of the
Digital Dragnet of 1990 and the Start of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation.
The bizarre events suffered by Mr. Jackson and his co-workers, in my
own home town of Austin, Texas, were directly responsible for my
decision to put science fiction aside and to tackle the purportedly
real world of computer crime and electronic free-expression.
The national crackdown on computer hackers in 1990 was the largest and
best-coordinated attack on computer mischief in American history.
There was Arizona's "Operation Sundevil," the sweeping May 8
nationwide raid against outlaw bulletin boards. The BellSouth E911
case (of which the Jackson raid was a small and particularly egregious
part) was coordinated out of Chicago. The New York State Police were
also very active in 1990.
All this vigorous law enforcement activity meant very little to the
narrow and intensely clannish world of science fiction. All we knew
- and this perception persisted, uncorrected, for months - was that
Mr. Jackson had been raided because of his intention to publish a
gaming book about "cyberpunk" science fiction. The Jackson raid
received extensive coverage in science fiction news magazines (yes, we
have these) and became notorious in the world of SF as "the Cyberpunk
Bust." My INTERZONE article attempted to make the Jackson case
intelligible to the British SF audience.
What possible reason could lead an American federal law enforcement
agency to raid the headquarters of a science-fiction gaming company?
Why did armed teams of city police, corporate security men, and
federal agents roust two Texan computer hackers from their beds at
dawn, and then confiscate thousands of dollars' worth of computer
equipment, including the hackers' common household telephones? Why
was an unpublished book called GURPS Cyberpunk seized by the US Secret
Service and declared "a manual for computer crime?" These weird
events were not parodies or fantasies; no, this was real.
The first order of business in untangling this bizarre drama is to
know the players - who come in entire teams.
PLAYER ONE: The Law Enforcement Agencies.
America's defense against the threat of computer crime is a confusing
hodgepodge of state, municipal, and federal agencies. Ranked first,
by size and power, are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the
National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), large, potent and secretive organizations who,
luckily, play almost no role in the Jackson story.
The second rank of such agencies include the Internal Revenue Service
(IRS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the
Justice Department, the Department of Labor, and various branches of
the defense establishment, especially the Air Force Office of Special
Investigations (AFOSI). Premier among these groups, however, is the
highly-motivated US Secret Service (USSS),the suited, mirrorshades-
toting, heavily-armed bodyguards of the President of the United
States.
Guarding high-ranking federal officials and foreign dignitaries is a
hazardous, challenging and eminently necessary task, which has won
USSS a high public profile. But Abraham Lincoln created this oldest
of federal law enforcement agencies in order to foil counterfeiting.
Due to the historical tribulations of the Treasury Department (of
which USSS is a part), the Secret Service also guards historical
documents, analyzes forgeries, combats wire fraud, and battles
"computer fraud and abuse." These may seem unrelated assignments,
but the Secret Service is fiercely aware of its duties. It is also
jealous of its bureaucratic turf, especially in computer-crime, where
it formally shares jurisdiction with its traditional rival, the
Johnny-come-lately FBI.
As the use of plastic money has spread, and their long-established
role as protectors of the currency has faded in importance, the Secret
Service has moved aggressively into the realm of electronic crime.
Unlike the lordly NSA, CIA, and FBI, which generally can't be bothered
with domestic computer mischief, the Secret Service is noted for its
street-level enthusiasm.
The third-rank of law enforcement are the local "dedicated computer
crime units." There are few such groups, pitifully under staffed.
They struggle hard for funding and the vital light of publicity. It's
difficult to make white-collar computer crimes seem pressing, to an
American public that lives in terror of armed and violent street-
crime.
These local groups are small - often, one or two officers, computer
hobbyists, who have drifted into electronic crimebusting because they
alone are game to devote time and effort to bringing law to the
electronic frontier. California's Silicon Valley has three computer-
crime units. There are others in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland,
Texas, Colorado, and a formerly very active one in Arizona - all told,
though, perhaps only fifty people nationwide.
The locals do have one great advantage, though. They all know one
another. Though scattered across the country, they are linked by both
public-sector and private-sector professional societies, and have a
commendable subcultural esprit-de-corps. And in the well-manned
Secret Service, they have willing national-level assistance.
PLAYER TWO: The Telephone Companies.
In the early 80s, after years of bitter federal court battle,
America's telephone monopoly was pulverized. "Ma Bell," the national
phone company, became AT&T, AT&T Industries, and the regional "Baby
Bells," all purportedly independent companies, who compete with new
communications companies and other long-distance providers. As a
class, however, they are all sorely harassed by fraudsters, phone
phreaks, and computer hackers, and they all maintain computer-security
experts. In a lot of cases these "corporate security divisions"
consist of just one or two guys, who drifted into the work from
backgrounds in traditional security or law enforcement. But, linked
by specialized security trade journals and private sector trade
groups, they all know one another.
PLAYER THREE: The Computer Hackers.
The American "hacker" elite consists of about a hundred people, who
all know one another. These are the people who know enough about
computer intrusion to baffle corporate security and alarm police (and
who, furthermore, are willing to put their intrusion skills into
actual practice). The somewhat older subculture of "phone-
phreaking," once native only to the phone system, has blended into
hackerdom as phones have become digital and computers have been
netted-together by telephones. "Phone phreaks," always tarred with
the stigma of rip-off artists, are nowadays increasingly hacking PBX
systems and cellular phones. These practices, unlike computer-
intrusion, offer easy profit to fraudsters.
There are legions of minor "hackers," such as the "kodez kidz," who
purloin telephone access codes to make free (i.e., stolen) phone
calls. Code theft can be done with home computers, and almost looks
like real "hacking," though "kodez kidz" are regarded with lordly
contempt by the elite. "Warez d00dz," who copy and pirate computer
games and software, are a thriving subspecies of "hacker," but they
played no real role in the crackdown of 1990 or the Jackson case. As
for the dire minority who create computer viruses, the less said the
better.
The princes of hackerdom skate the phone-lines, and computer networks,
as a lifestyle. They hang out in loose, modem-connected gangs like
the "Legion of Doom" and the "Masters of Destruction." The craft of
hacking is taught through "bulletin board systems," personal computers
that carry electronic mail and can be accessed by phone. Hacker
bulletin boards generally sport grim, scary, sci-fi heavy metal names
like BLACK ICE - PRIVATE or SPEED DEMON ELITE. Hackers themselves
often adopt romantic and highly suspicious tough-guy monickers like
"Necron 99," "Prime Suspect," "Erik Bloodaxe," "Malefactor" and "Phase
Jitter." This can be seen as a kind of cyberpunk folk-poetry - after
all, baseball players also have colorful nicknames. But so do the
Mafia and the Medellin Cartel.
PLAYER FOUR: The Simulation Gamers.
Wargames and role-playing adventures are an old and honored pastime,
much favored by professional military strategists and H.G. Wells, and
now played by hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts throughout North
America, Europe and Japan. In today's market, many simulation games
are computerized, making simulation gaming a favorite pastime of
hackers, who dote on arcane intellectual challenges and the thrill of
doing simulated mischief.
Modern simulation games frequently have a heavily science-fictional
cast. Over the past decade or so, fueled by very respectable
royalties, the world of simulation gaming has increasingly permeated
the world of science-fiction publishing. TSR, Inc., proprietors of
the best-known role-playing game, "Dungeons and Dragons," own the
venerable science-fiction magazine "Amazing." Gaming-books, once
restricted to hobby outlets, now commonly appear in chain-stores like
B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks, and sell vigorously.
Steve Jackson Games, Inc., of Austin, Texas, is a games company of the
middle rank. In early 1990, it employed fifteen people. In 1989, SJG
grossed about half a million dollars. SJG's Austin headquarters is a
modest two-story brick office-suite, cluttered with phones,
photocopiers, fax machines and computers. A publisher's digs, it
bustles with semi-organized activity and is littered with glossy
promotional brochures and dog-eared SF novels. Attached to the
offices is a large tin-roofed warehouse piled twenty feet high with
cardboard boxes of games and books. This building was the site of the
"Cyberpunk Bust."
A look at the company's wares, neatly stacked on endless rows of cheap
shelving, quickly shows SJG's long involvement with the Science
Fiction community. SJG's main product, the Generic Universal Role-
Playing System or GURPS, features licensed and adapted works from many
genre writers. There is GURPS Witch World, GURPS Conan, GURPS
Riverworld, GURPS Horseclans, many names eminently familiar to SF
fans. (GURPS Difference Engine is currently in the works.) GURPS
Cyberpunk, however, was to be another story entirely.
PLAYER FIVE: The Science Fiction Writers.
The "cyberpunk" SF writers are a small group of mostly college-
educated white litterateurs, without conspicuous criminal records,
scattered throughout the US and Canada. Only one, Rudy Rucker, a
professor of computer science in Silicon Valley, would rank with even
the humblest computer hacker. However, these writers all own
computers and take an intense, public, and somewhat morbid interest in
the social ramifications of the information industry. Despite their
small numbers, the "cyberpunk" writers all know one another, and are
linked by antique print-medium publications with unlikely names like
Science Fiction Eye, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Omni and
Interzone.
PLAYER SIX: The Civil Libertarians.
This small but rapidly growing group consists of heavily politicized
computer enthusiasts and heavily cyberneticized political activists: a
mix of wealthy high-tech entrepreneurs, veteran West Coast
troublemaking hippies, touchy journalists, and toney East Coast civil
rights lawyers. They are all getting to know one another.
We now return to our story. By 1988, law enforcement officials, led
by contrite teenage informants, had thoroughly permeated the world of
underground bulletin boards, and were alertly prowling the nets
compiling dossiers on wrongdoers. While most bulletin board systems
are utterly harmless, some few had matured into alarming reservoirs of
forbidden knowledge. One such was BLACK ICE - PRIVATE, located
"somewhere in the 607 area code," frequented by members of the
"Legion of Doom" and notorious even among hackers for the violence of
its rhetoric, which discussed sabotage of phone-lines, drug-
manufacturing techniques, and the assembly of home-made bombs, as well
as a plethora of rules-of-thumb for penetrating computer security.
Of course, the mere discussion of these notions is not illegal - many
cyberpunk SF stories positively dote on such ideas, as do hundreds of
spy epics, techno-thrillers and adventure novels. It was no
coincidence that "ICE," or "Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics,"
was a term invented by cyberpunk writer Tom Maddox, and "BLACK ICE,"
or a computer-defense that fries the brain of the unwary trespasser,
was a coinage of William Gibson.
A reference manual from the US National Institute of Justice,
Dedicated Computer Crime Units by J. Thomas McEwen, suggests that
federal attitudes toward bulletin-board systems are ambivalent at
best:
"There are several examples of how bulletin boards have been used in
support of criminal activities.... (B)ulletin boards were used to
relay illegally obtained access codes into computer service companies.
Pedophiles have been known to leave suggestive messages on bulletin
boards, and other sexually oriented messages have been found on
bulletin boards. Members of cults and sects have also communicated
through bulletin boards. While the storing of information on bulletin
boards may not be illegal, the use of bulletin boards has certainly
advanced many illegal activities."
Here is a troubling concept indeed: invisible electronic pornography,
to be printed out at home and read by sects and cults. It makes a
mockery of the traditional law-enforcement techniques concerning the
publication and prosecution of smut. In fact, the prospect of large
numbers of antisocial conspirators, congregating in cyberspace without
official oversight of any kind, is enough to trouble the sleep of
anyone charged with maintaining public order.
Even the sternest free-speech advocate will likely do some
headscratching at the prospect of digitized "anarchy files" teaching
lock-picking, pipe-bombing, martial arts techniques, and highly
unorthodox uses for shotgun shells, especially when these neat-o
temptations are distributed freely to any teen (or pre-teen) with a
modem.
These may be largely conjectural problems at present, but the use of
bulletin boards to foment hacker mischief is real. Worse yet, the
bulletin boards themselves are linked, sharing their audience and
spreading the wicked knowledge of security flaws in the phone network,
and in a wide variety of academic, corporate and governmental computer
systems.
This strength of the hackers is also a weakness, however. If the
boards are monitored by alert informants and/or officers, the whole
wicked tangle can be seized all along its extended electronic vine,
rather like harvesting pumpkins.
The war against hackers, including the "Cyberpunk Bust," was primarily
a war against hacker bulletin boards. It was, first and foremost, an
attack against the enemy's means of information.
This basic strategic insight supplied the tactics for the crackdown
of 1990. The variant groups in the national subculture of cyber-law
would be kept apprised, persuaded to action, and diplomatically
martialled into effective strike position. Then, in a burst of energy
and a glorious blaze of publicity, the whole nest of scofflaws would
be wrenched up root and branch. Hopefully, the damage would be
permanent; if not, the swarming wretches would at least keep their
heads down.
"Operation Sundevil," the Phoenix-inspired crackdown of May 8,1990,
concentrated on telephone code-fraud and credit-card abuse, and
followed this seizure plan with some success. Boards went down all
over America, terrifying the underground and swiftly depriving them of
at least some of their criminal instruments. It also saddled analysts
with some 24,000 floppy disks, and confronted harried Justice
Department prosecutors with the daunting challenge of a gigantic
nationwide hacker show-trial involving highly technical issues in
dozens of jurisdictions. As of July 1991, it must be questioned
whether the climate is right for an action of this sort, especially
since several of the most promising prosecutees have already been
jailed on other charges.
"Sundevil" aroused many dicey legal and constitutional questions, but
at least its organizers were spared the spectacle of seizure victims
loudly proclaiming their innocence - (if one excepts Bruce Esquibel,
sysop of "Dr. Ripco," an anarchist board in Chicago).
The activities of March 1, 1990, including the Jackson case, were the
inspiration of the Chicago-based Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force.
At telco urging, the Chicago group were pursuing the purportedly vital
"E911 document" with headlong energy. As legal evidence, this Bell
South document was to prove a very weak reed in the Craig Neidorf
trial, which ended in a humiliating dismissal and a triumph for
Neidorf. As of March 1990, however, this purloined data-file seemed
a red-hot chunk of contraband, and the decision was made to track it
down wherever it might have gone, and to shut down any board that had
touched it - or even come close to it.
In the meantime, however - early 1990 - Mr. Loyd Blankenship, an
employee of Steve Jackson Games, an accomplished hacker, and a
sometime member and file-writer for the Legion of Doom, was
contemplating a "cyberpunk" simulation-module for the flourishing
GURPS gaming-system.
The time seemed ripe for such a product, which had already been proven
in the marketplace. The first games-company out of the gate, with a
product boldly called "Cyberpunk" in defiance of possible
infringement-of-copyright suits, had been an upstart group called R.
Talsorian. Talsorian's "Cyberpunk" was a fairly decent game, but the
mechanics of the simulation system sucked. But the game sold like
crazy.
The next "cyberpunk" game had been the even more successful
"Shadowrun" by FASA Corporation. The mechanics of this game were
fine, but the scenario was rendered moronic by lame fantasy elements
like orcs, dwarves, trolls, magicians, and dragons - all highly
ideologically incorrect, according to the hard-edged, high-tech
standards of cyberpunk science fiction. No true cyberpunk fan could
play this game without vomiting, despite FASA's nifty T-shirts and
street-samurai lead figurines.
Lured by the scent of money, other game companies were champing at the
bit. Blankenship reasoned that the time had come for a real
"Cyberpunk" gaming-book - one that the princes of computer-mischief in
the Legion of Doom could play without laughing themselves sick. This
book, GURPS Cyberpunk, would reek of on-line authenticity.
Hot discussion soon raged on the Steve Jackson Games electronic
bulletin board, the "Illuminati BBS." This board was named after a
bestselling SJG card-game, involving antisocial sects and cults who
war covertly for the domination of the world. Gamers and hackers
alike loved this board, with its meticulously detailed discussions of
pastimes like SJG's "Car Wars," in which souped-up armored hot-rods
with rocket-launchers and heavy machine-guns do battle on the American
highways of the future.
While working, with considerable creative success, for SJG,
Blankenship himself was running his own computer bulletin board, "The
Phoenix Project," from his house. It had been ages - months, anyway -
since Blankenship, an increasingly sedate husband and author, had last
entered a public phone-booth without a supply of pocket-change.
However, his intellectual interest in computer-security remained
intense. He was pleased to notice the presence on "Phoenix" of Henry
Kluepfel, a phone-company security professional for Bellcore. Such
contacts were risky for telco employees; at least one such gentleman
who reached out to the hacker underground has been accused of divided
loyalties and summarily fired. Kluepfel, on the other hand, was
bravely engaging in friendly banter with heavy-dude hackers and eager
telephone-wannabes. Blankenship did nothing to spook him away, and
Kluepfel, for his part, passed dark warnings about "Phoenix Project"
to the Chicago group. "Phoenix Project" glowed with the radioactive
presence of the E911 document, passed there in a copy of Craig
Neidorf's electronic hacker fan-magazine, Phrack.
"Illuminati" was prominently mentioned on the Phoenix Project.
Phoenix users were urged to visit Illuminati, to discuss the upcoming
"cyberpunk" game and possibly lend their expertise. It was also
frankly hoped that they would spend some money on SJG games.
Illuminati and Phoenix had become two ripe pumpkins on the criminal
vine.
Hacker busts were nothing new. They had always been problematic for
the authorities. The offenders were generally high-IQ white juveniles
with no criminal record. Public sympathy for the phone companies was
limited at best. Trials often ended in puzzled dismissals or a slap
on the wrist.
Through long experience, law enforcement had come up with an
unorthodox but workable tactic. This was to avoid any trial at all,
or even an arrest. Instead, somber teams of grim police would swoop
upon the teenage suspect's home and box up his computer as "evidence."
If he was a good boy, and promised contritely to stay out of trouble
forthwith, the highly expensive equipment might be returned to him in
short order. If he was a hard-case, though, his toys could stay
boxed-up and locked away for a couple of years.
The busts in Austin were an intensification of this tried-and-true
technique. There were adults involved in this case, though, reeking
of a hardened bad attitude. The supposed threat to the 911 system,
apparently posed by the E911 document, had nerved law enforcement to
extraordinary effort. The 911 system is the emergency system used by
the police themselves. Any threat to it was a direct, insolent hacker
menace to the electronic home turf of American law enforcement.
Had Steve Jackson been arrested and directly accused of a plot to
destroy the 911 system, the resultant embarrassment would likely have
been sharp, but brief. The Chicago group, instead, chose total
operational security. They may have suspected that their search for
E911, once publicized, would cause that "dangerous" document to spread
like wildfire throughout the underground. Instead, they allowed the
impression to spread that they had raided Steve Jackson to stop the
publication of a book: GURPS Cyberpunk. This was a grave public-
relations blunder which caused the darkest fears and suspicions to
spread - not in the hacker underground, but among the general public.
On March 1, 1990, 21-year-old hacker Chris Goggans (aka "Erik
Bloodaxe") was wakened by a police revolver levelled at his head. He
watched, jittery, as Secret Service agents appropriated his 300 baud
terminal and, rifling his files, discovered his treasured source-code
for the notorious Internet Worm. Goggans, a co-sysop of "Phoenix
Project" and a wily operator, had suspected that something of the like
might be coming. All his best equipment had been hidden away
elsewhere. They took his phone, though, and considered hauling away
his hefty arcade-style Pac-Man game, before deciding that it was
simply too heavy. Goggans was not arrested. To date, he has never
been charged with a crime. The police still have what they took,
though.
Blankenship was less wary. He had shut down "Phoenix" as rumors
reached him of a crackdown coming. Still, a dawn raid rousted him and
his wife from bed in their underwear, and six Secret Service agents,
accompanied by a bemused Austin cop and a corporate security agent
from Bellcore, made a rich haul. Off went the works, into the agents'
white Chevrolet minivan: an IBM PC-AT clone with and a 120-meg hard
disk; a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet II printer; a completely legitimate
and highly expensive SCO-Xenix 286 operating system; Pagemaker disks
and documentation; the Microsoft Word word-processing program; Mrs.
Blankenship's incomplete academic thesis stored on disk; and the
couple's telephone. All this property remains in police custody
today.
The agents then bundled Blankenship into a car and it was off the
Steve Jackson Games in the bleak light of dawn. The fact that this
was a business headquarters, and not a private residence, did not
deter the agents. It was still early; no one was at work yet. The
agents prepared to break down the door, until Blankenship offered his
key.
The exact details of the next events are unclear. The agents would
not let anyone else into the building. Their search warrant, when
produced, was unsigned. Apparently they breakfasted from
"Whataburger," as the litter from hamburgers was later found inside.
They also extensively sampled a bag of jellybeans kept by an SJG
employee. Someone tore a "Dukakis for President" sticker from the
wall.
SJG employees, diligently showing up for the day's work, were met at
the door. They watched in astonishment as agents wielding crowbars
and screwdrivers emerged with captive machines. The agents wore blue
nylon windbreakers with "SECRET SERVICE" stencilled across the back,
with running-shoes and jeans. Confiscating computers can be heavy
physical work.
No one at Steve Jackson Games was arrested. No one was accused of any
crime. There were no charges filed. Everything appropriated was
officially kept as "evidence" of crimes never specified. Steve
Jackson will not face a conspiracy trial over the contents of his
science-fiction gaming book. On the contrary, the raid's organizers
have been accused of grave misdeeds in a civil suit filed by EFF, and
if there is any trial over GURPS Cyberpunk it seems likely to be
theirs.
The day after the raid, Steve Jackson visited the local Secret Service
headquarters with a lawyer in tow. There was trouble over GURPS
Cyberpunk, which had been discovered on the hard-disk of a seized
machine. GURPS Cyberpunk, alleged a Secret Service agent to
astonished businessman Steve Jackson, was "a manual for computer
crime."
"It's science fiction," Jackson said.
"No, this is real." This statement was repeated several times, by
several agents. This is not a fantasy, no, this is real. Jackson's
ominously "accurate" game had passed from pure, obscure, small-scale
fantasy into the impure, highly publicized, large-scale fantasy of the
hacker crackdown. No mention was made of the real reason for the
search, the E911 document. Indeed, this fact was not discovered until
the Jackson search-warrant was unsealed months later. Jackson was
left to believe that his board had been seized because he intended to
publish a science fiction book that law enforcement considered too
dangerous to see print. This misconception was repeated again and
again, for months, to an ever-widening audience. The effect of this
statement on the science fiction community was, to say the least,
striking.
GURPS Cyberpunk, now published and available from Steve Jackson Games
(Box 18957, Austin, Texas 78760), does discuss some of the
commonplaces of computer-hacking, such as searching through trash for
useful clues, or snitching passwords by boldly lying to gullible
users. Reading it won't make you a hacker, any more than reading
Spycatcher will make you an agent of MI5. Still, this bold
insistence by the Secret Service on its authenticity has made GURPS
Cyberpunk the Satanic Verses of simulation gaming, and has made
Steve Jackson the first martyr-to-the-cause for the computer world's
civil libertarians.
From the beginning, Steve Jackson declared that he had committed no
crime, and had nothing to hide. Few believed him, for it seemed
incredible that such a tremendous effort by the government would be
spent on someone entirely innocent.
Surely there were a few stolen long-distance codes in "Illuminati," a
swiped credit-card number or two - something. Those who rallied to
the defense of Jackson were publicly warned that they would be caught
with egg on their face when the real truth came out, "later." But
"later" came and went. The fact is that Jackson was innocent of any
crime. There was no case against him; his activities were entirely
legal. He had simply been consorting with the wrong sort of people.
In fact he was the wrong sort of people. His attitude stank. He
showed no contrition; he scoffed at authority; he gave aid and comfort
to the enemy; he was trouble. Steve Jackson comes from subcultures -
gaming, science fiction - that have always smelled to high heaven of
troubling weirdness and deep-dyed unorthodoxy. He was important
enough to attract repression, but not important enough, apparently, to
deserve a straight answer from those who had raided his property and
destroyed his livelihood.
The American law-enforcement community lacks the manpower and
resources to prosecute hackers successfully on the merits of the cases
against them. The cyber-police to date have settled instead for a
cheap "hack" of the legal system: a quasi-legal tactic of seizure and
"deterrence." Humiliate and harass a few ringleaders, the philosophy
goes, and the rest will fall into line. After all, most hackers are
just kids. The few grown-ups among them are sociopathic geeks, not
real players in the political and legal game. In the final analysis,
a small company like Jackson's lacks the resources to make any real
trouble for the Secret Service.
But Jackson, with his conspiracy-obsessed bulletin board and his seedy
SF-fan computer-freak employees, is not "just a kid." He is a
publisher, and he was battered by the police in the full light of
national publicity, under the shocked gaze of journalists, gaming
fans, libertarian activists and millionaire computer entrepreneurs,
many of whom were not "deterred," but genuinely aghast.
"What," reasons the author, "is to prevent the Secret Service from
carting off my word-processor as 'evidence' of some non-existent
crime?"
"What would I do," thinks the small-press owner, "if someone took my
laser-printer?"
Hence the establishment of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Steve Jackson was provided with a high-powered lawyer specializing in
Constitutional freedom-of-the-press issues. Faced with this, a
markedly un-contrite Secret Service returned Jackson's machinery,
after months of delay - some of it broken, with valuable data lost.
Jackson sustained many thousands of dollars in business losses, from
failure to meet deadlines and loss of computer-assisted production.
Half the employees of Steve Jackson Games were sorrowfully laid-off.
Some had been with the company for years - not statistics, these
people, not "hackers" of any stripe, but bystanders, citizens,
deprived of their livelihoods by the zealousness of the March 1
seizure. Some have since been re-hired - perhaps all will be, if
Jackson can pull his company out of its now persistent financial hole.
Devastated by the raid, the company would surely have collapsed in
short order - but SJG's distributors, touched by the company's plight
and feeling some natural subcultural solidarity, advanced him money to
scrape along.
In retrospect, it is hard to see much good for anyone at all in the
activities of March 1. Perhaps the Jackson case has served as a
warning light for trouble in our legal system; but that's not much
recompense for Jackson himself. His own unsought fame may be
helpful, but it doesn't do much for his unemployed co-workers. In
the meantime, "hackers" have been demonized as a national threat.
"Cyberpunk," a literary term, has become a synonym for computer
criminal. The cyber-police have leapt where angels fear to tread.
And the phone companies have badly overstated their case and deeply
embarrassed their protectors.
Sixteen months later, Steve Jackson suspects he may yet pull through.
Illuminati is still on-line. GURPS Cyberpunk, while it failed to
match Satanic Verses, sold fairly briskly. And Steve Jackson Games
headquarters, the site of the raid, was the site of a Cyberspace
Weenie Roast to launch an Austin Chapter of The Electronic Frontier
Foundation.. -