The Hacker Crackdown

by Bruce Sterling

  The free-spirited Barlow made this transition with ease. He genuinely enjoyed computers. With a beep of his modem, he leapt from small-town Pinedale, Wyoming, into electronic contact with a large and lively crowd of bright, inventive, technological sophisticates from all over the world. Barlow found the social milieu of computing attractive: its fast-lane pace, its blue-sky rhetoric, its open- endedness. Barlow began dabbling in computer journalism, with marked success, as he was a quick study, and both shrewd and eloquent. He frequently travelled to San Francisco to network with Deadhead friends. There Barlow made extensive contacts throughout the Californian computer community, including friendships among the wilder spirits at Apple.

  In May 1990, Barlow received a visit from a local Wyoming agent of the FBI. The NuPrometheus case had reached Wyoming.

  Barlow was troubled to find himself under investigation in an area of his interests once quite free of federal attention. He had to struggle to explain the very nature of computer-crime to a headscratching local FBI man who specialized in cattle-rustling. Barlow, chatting helpfully and demonstrating the wonders of his modem to the puzzled fed, was alarmed to find all "hackers" generally under FBI suspicion as an evil influence in the electronic community. The FBI, in pursuit of a hacker called "NuPrometheus," were tracing attendees of a suspect group called the Hackers Conference.

  The Hackers Conference, which had been started in 1984, was a yearly Californian meeting of digital pioneers and enthusiasts. The hackers of the Hackers Conference had little if anything to do with the hackers of the digital underground. On the contrary, the hackers of this conference were mostly well-to-do Californian high-tech CEOs, consultants, journalists and entrepreneurs. (This group of hackers were the exact sort of "hackers" most likely to react with militant fury at any criminal degradation of the term "hacker.")

  Barlow, though he was not arrested or accused of a crime, and though his computer had certainly not gone out the door, was very troubled by this anomaly. He carried the word to the Well.

  Like the Hackers Conference, "the Well" was an emanation of the Point Foundation. Point Foundation, the inspiration of a wealthy Californian 60s radical named Stewart Brand, was to be a major launch-pad of the civil libertarian effort.

  Point Foundation's cultural efforts, like those of their fellow Bay Area Californians the Grateful Dead, were multifaceted and multitudinous. Rigid ideological consistency had never been a strong suit of the *Whole Earth Catalog.* This Point publication had enjoyed a strong vogue during the late 60s and early 70s, when it offered hundreds of practical (and not so practical) tips on communitarian living, environmentalism, and getting back-to-the-land. The *Whole Earth Catalog,* and its sequels, sold two and half million copies and won a National Book Award.

  With the slow collapse of American radical dissent, the *Whole Earth Catalog* had slipped to a more modest corner of the cultural radar; but in its magazine incarnation, *CoEvolution Quarterly,* the Point Foundation continued to offer a magpie potpourri of "access to tools and ideas."

  *CoEvolution Quarterly,* which started in 1974, was never a widely popular magazine. Despite periodic outbreaks of millenarian fervor, *CoEvolution Quarterly* failed to revolutionize Western civilization and replace leaden centuries of history with bright new Californian paradigms. Instead, this propaganda arm of Point Foundation cakewalked a fine line between impressive brilliance and New Age flakiness. *CoEvolution Quarterly* carried no advertising, cost a lot, and came out on cheap newsprint with modest black-and-white graphics. It was poorly distributed, and spread mostly by subscription and word of mouth.

  It could not seem to grow beyond 30,000 subscribers. And yet -- it never seemed to shrink much, either. Year in, year out, decade in, decade out, some strange demographic minority accreted to support the magazine. The enthusiastic readership did not seem to have much in the way of coherent politics or ideals. It was sometimes hard to understand what held them together (if the often bitter debate in the letter-columns could be described as "togetherness").

  But if the magazine did not flourish, it was resilient; it got by. Then, in 1984, the birth-year of the Macintosh computer, *CoEvolution Quarterly* suddenly hit the rapids. Point Foundation had discovered the computer revolution. Out came the *Whole Earth Software Catalog* of 1984, arousing headscratching doubts among the tie- dyed faithful, and rabid enthusiasm among the nascent "cyberpunk" milieu, present company included. Point Foundation started its yearly Hackers Conference, and began to take an extensive interest in the strange new possibilities of digital counterculture. *CoEvolution Quarterly* folded its teepee, replaced by *Whole Earth Software Review* and eventually by *Whole Earth Review* (the magazine's present incarnation, currently under the editorship of virtual-reality maven Howard Rheingold).

  1985 saw the birth of the "WELL" -- the "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link." The Well was Point Foundation's bulletin board system.

  As boards went, the Well was an anomaly from the beginning, and remained one. It was local to San Francisco. It was huge, with multiple phonelines and enormous files of commentary. Its complex UNIX-based software might be most charitably described as "user- opaque." It was run on a mainframe out of the rambling offices of a non-profit cultural foundation in Sausalito. And it was crammed with fans of the Grateful Dead.

  Though the Well was peopled by chattering hipsters of the Bay Area counterculture, it was by no means a "digital underground" board. Teenagers were fairly scarce; most Well users (known as "Wellbeings") were thirty- and forty-something Baby Boomers. They tended to work in the information industry: hardware, software, telecommunications, media, entertainment. Librarians, academics, and journalists were especially common on the Well, attracted by Point Foundation's open-handed distribution of "tools and ideas."

  There were no anarchy files on the Well, scarcely a dropped hint about access codes or credit-card theft. No one used handles. Vicious "flame-wars" were held to a comparatively civilized rumble. Debates were sometimes sharp, but no Wellbeing ever claimed that a rival had disconnected his phone, trashed his house, or posted his credit card numbers.

  The Well grew slowly as the 1980s advanced. It charged a modest sum for access and storage, and lost money for years -- but not enough to hamper the Point Foundation, which was nonprofit anyway. By 1990, the Well had about five thousand users. These users wandered about a gigantic cyberspace smorgasbord of "Conferences", each conference itself consisting of a welter of "topics," each topic containing dozens, sometimes hundreds of comments, in a tumbling, multiperson debate that could last for months or years on end.

  In 1991, the Well's list of conferences looked like this:

  CONFERENCES ON THE WELL

  WELL "Screenzine" Digest (g zine)

  Best of the WELL - vintage material - (g best)

  Index listing of new topics in all conferences - (g newtops)

  Business - Education ----------------------

  Apple Library Users Group(g alug) Agriculture (g agri) Brainstorming (g brain) Classifieds (g cla) Computer Journalism (g cj) Consultants (g consult) Consumers (g cons) Design (g design) Desktop Publishing (g desk) Disability (g disability) Education (g ed) Energy (g energy91) Entrepreneurs (g entre) Homeowners (g home) Indexing (g indexing) Investments (g invest) Kids91 (g kids) Legal (g legal) One Person Business (g one) Periodical/newsletter(g per) Telecomm Law (g tcl) The Future (g fut) Translators (g trans) Travel (g tra) Work (g work)

  Electronic Frontier Foundation (g eff) Computers, Freedom & Privacy (g cfp) Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (g cpsr)

  Social - Political - Humanities ---------------------------------

  Aging (g gray) AIDS (g aids) Amnesty International (g amnesty) Archives (g arc) Berkeley (g berk) Buddhist (g wonderland) Christian (g cross) Couples (g couples) Current Events (g curr) Dreams (g dream) Drugs (g dru) East Coast (g east) Emotional Health**** (g private) Erotica (g eros) Environment (g env) Firearms (g firearms) First Amendment (g first) Fringes of Reason (g fringes) Gay (g gay) Gay (P
rivate)# (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 impression of a bizarre milieu of mountain- climbing Hawaiian holistic photographers trading true-life confessions with bisexual word-processing Tibetans.

  But this confusion is more apparent than real. Each of these conferences was a little cyberspace world in itself, comprising dozens and perhaps hundreds of sub-topics. Each conference was commonly frequented by a fairly small, fairly like-minded community of perhaps a few dozen people. It was humanly impossible to encompass the entire Well (especially since access to the Well's mainframe computer was billed by the hour). Most long- time users contented themselves with a few favorite topical neighborhoods, with the occasional foray elsewhere for a taste of exotica. But especially important news items, and hot topical debates, could catch the attention of the entire Well community.

  Like any community, the Well had its celebrities, and John Perry Barlow, the silver-tongued and silver- modemed lyricist of the Grateful Dead, ranked prominently among them. It was here on the Well that Barlow posted his true-life tale of computer-crime encounter with the FBI.

  The story, as might be expected, created a great stir. The Well was already primed for hacker controversy. In December 1989, *Harper's* magazine had hosted a debate on the Well about the ethics of illicit computer intrusion. While over forty various computer-mavens took part, Barlow proved a star in the debate. So did "Acid Phreak" and "Phiber Optik," a pair of young New York hacker-phreaks whose skills at telco switching-station intrusion were matched only by their apparently limitless hunger for fame. The advent of these two boldly swaggering outlaws in the precincts of the Well created a sensation akin to that of Black Panthers at a cocktail party for the radically chic.

  Phiber Optik in particular was to seize the day in 1990. A devotee of the *2600* circle and stalwart of the New York hackers' group "Masters of Deception," Phiber Optik was a splendid exemplar of the computer intruder as committed dissident. The eighteen-year-old Optik, a high-school dropout and part-time computer repairman, was young, smart, and ruthlessly obsessive, a sharp- dressing, sharp-talking digital dude who was utterly and airily contemptuous of anyone's rules but his own. By late 1991, Phiber Optik had appeared in *Harper's,* *Esquire,* *The New York Times,* in countless public debates and conventions, even on a television show hosted by Geraldo Rivera.

  Treated with gingerly respect by Barlow and other Well mavens, Phiber Optik swiftly became a Well celebrity. Strangely, despite his thorny attitude and utter single-mindedness, Phiber Optik seemed to arouse strong protective instincts in most of the people who met him. He was great copy for journalists, always fearlessly ready to swagger, and, better yet, to actually *demonstrate* some off-the-wall digital stunt. He was a born media darling.

  Even cops seemed to recognize that there was something peculiarly unworldly and uncriminal about this particular troublemaker. He was so bold, so flagrant, so young, and so obviously doomed, that even those who strongly disapproved of his actions grew anxious for his welfare, and began to flutter about him as if he were an endangered seal pup.

  In January 24, 1990 (nine days after the Martin Luther King Day Crash), Phiber Optik, Acid Phreak, and a third NYC scofflaw named Scorpion were raided by the Secret Service. Their computers went out the door, along with the usual blizzard of papers, notebooks, compact disks, answering machines, Sony Walkmans, etc. Both Acid Phreak and Phiber Optik were accused of having caused the Crash.

  The mills of justice ground slowly. The case eventually fell into the hands of the New York State Police. Phiber had lost his machinery in the raid, but there were no charges filed against him for over a year. His predicament was extensively publicized on the Well, where it caused much resentment for police tactics. It's one thing to merely hear about a hacker raided or busted; it's another to see the police attacking someone you've come to know personally, and who has explained his motives at length. Through the *Harper's* debate on the Well, it had become clear to the Wellbeings that Phiber Optik was not in fact going to "hurt anything." In their own salad days, many Wellbeings had tasted tear-gas in pitched street-battles with police. They were inclined to indulgence for acts of civil disobedience.

  Wellbeings were also startled to learn of the draconian thoroughness of a typical hacker search-and- seizure. It took no great stretch of imagination for them to envision themselves suffering much the same treatment.

  As early as January 1990, sentiment on the Well had already begun to sour, and people had begun to grumble that "hackers" were getting a raw deal from the ham- handed powers-that-be. The resultant issue of *Harper's* magazine posed the question as to whether computer- intrusion was a "crime" at all. As Barlow put it later: "I've begun to wonder if we wouldn't also regard spelunkers as desperate criminals if AT&T owned all the caves."

  In February 1991, more than a year after the raid on his home, Phiber Optik was finally arrested, and was charged with first-degree Computer Tampering and Computer Trespass, New York state offenses. He was also charged with a theft-of-service misdemeanor, involving a complex free-call scam to a 900 number
. Phiber Optik pled guilty to the misdemeanor charge, and was sentenced to 35 hours of community service.

  This passing harassment from the unfathomable world of straight people seemed to bother Optik himself little if at all. Deprived of his computer by the January search-and-seizure, he simply bought himself a portable computer so the cops could no longer monitor the phone where he lived with his Mom, and he went right on with his depredations, sometimes on live radio or in front of television cameras.

  The crackdown raid may have done little to dissuade Phiber Optik, but its galling affect on the Wellbeings was profound. As 1990 rolled on, the slings and arrows mounted: the Knight Lightning raid, the Steve Jackson raid, the nation-spanning Operation Sundevil. The rhetoric of law enforcement made it clear that there was, in fact, a concerted crackdown on hackers in progress.

  The hackers of the Hackers Conference, the Wellbeings, and their ilk, did not really mind the occasional public misapprehension of "hacking"; if anything, this membrane of differentiation from straight society made the "computer community" feel different, smarter, better. They had never before been confronted, however, by a concerted vilification campaign.

  Barlow's central role in the counter-struggle was one of the major anomalies of 1990. Journalists investigating the controversy often stumbled over the truth about Barlow, but they commonly dusted themselves off and hurried on as if nothing had happened. It was as if it were *too much to believe* that a 1960s freak from the Grateful Dead had taken on a federal law enforcement operation head-to-head and *actually seemed to be winning!*

  Barlow had no easily detectable power-base for a political struggle of this kind. He had no formal legal or technical credentials. Barlow was, however, a computer networker of truly stellar brilliance. He had a poet's gift of concise, colorful phrasing. He also had a journalist's shrewdness, an off-the-wall, self-deprecating wit, and a phenomenal wealth of simple personal charm.