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            L  E  G  A  L  *  I  M  P  L  I  C  A  T  I  O  N  S  *

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                     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.  [If  you don't know about this, it's a
document which was downloaded  off  one  of  the  computer systems handling the
"911" exchange in the area, and  reproduced in Phrack online magazine. Dialling
991 in the US is  equivalent to dialling  999  in the UK, so this sort of thing
would be like hacking into  an  emergency  Ambulance service computer system in
Central London and downloading one of  the  "help"  text files! This was widely
publiscised, and a lot of  people  were  shocked-  the  hacker  that did it did
nothing else, but what if he wanted to muck up the system? -EGBSS]

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.


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