On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
> [1] John Perry Barlow, Grateful Dead lyricist, was visited by the FBI
> around the time of Operation Sundevil [2] and he found the FBI agent
> nice, but completely overwhelmed by technology. After the visit he
> wrote "Crime and Puzzlement" (do a Google search to find it) about
> the visit, and shortly after it was published, he got together with
> Mitch Kapor and formed the EFF to keep law enforcement from
> trampling our rights in the electronic sphere.
I think this is also written about in _Hacker Crackdown_.
> [2] It was also during this time that Erik Bloodaxe, editor of
> "Phrack," was indicted, along with three other hackers, for
> the publication of an AT&T document about 911. AT&T claimed
> the document was worth over $79,000 (US, 1990) and would do
> irrepreble damage to the phone system, but the defense was
> able to show that the document in question was available to
> *anyone* for about $15 (US, 1990). AT&T quietly dropped the
> case.
Well, not so quietly. Erik Bloodaxe had to spend quite a bit of money on
lawyers to get the case dropped. He fought it all the way. It was only
reluctantly that it was dropped. It's all chronicled in the pages of 2600
magazine from issues of the same era (around 1990).
It's amazing what abuses get overlooked in this country every day.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
Received on Thu Apr 05 2001 - 00:05:59 BST