The Hacker Crackdown_ Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier.pdf

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LITERARY FREEWARE — Not for Commercial Use
by Bruce Sterling
<bruces@well.sf.ca.us>
Sideways PDF version 0.1 by E-Scribe <info@e-scribe.com>
CONTENTS
Preface
to the Electronic Release of
The Hacker Crackdown
Chronology
of the Hacker Crackdown
Introduction
Part 1:
CRASHING THE SYSTEM A Brief History of Telephony
/ Bell's Golden Vaporware / Universal Service / Wild Boys
and Wire Women / The Electronic Communities / The Ungentle
Giant / The Breakup / In Defense of the System / The Crash
Post- Mortem / Landslides in Cyberspace
Part 2:
THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND Steal This Phone /
Phreaking and Hacking / The View From Under the
Floorboards / Boards: Core of the Underground / Phile Phun /
The Rake's Progress / Strongholds of the Elite / Sting Boards
/ Hot Potatoes / War on the Legion / Terminus / Phile 9-1-1
/ War Games / Real Cyberpunk
Part 3:
LAW AND ORDER Crooked Boards / The World's
Biggest Hacker Bust / Teach Them a Lesson / The U.S. Secret
Service / The Secret Service Battles the Boodlers / A Walk
Downtown / FCIC: The Cutting-Edge Mess / Cyberspace
Rangers / FLETC: Training the Hacker-Trackers
Part 4:
THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS NuPrometheus + FBI =
Grateful Dead / Whole Earth + Computer Revolution = WELL /
Phiber Runs Underground and Acid Spikes the Well / The Trial
of Knight Lightning / Shadowhawk Plummets to Earth / Kyrie
in the Confessional / $79,499 / A Scholar Investigates /
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
Electronic Afterword
to *The Hacker Crackdown,* New
Years' Day 1994
B R U CE S T ER L I NG —
TH E HAC KE R CR AC KD OW N
NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
2
Preface to the Electronic Release
of
The Hacker Crackdown
January 1, 1994 — Austin, Texas
Hi, I'm Bruce Sterling, the author of this electronic book.
Out in the traditional world of print, *The Hacker Crackdown* is ISBN
0-553-08058-X, and is formally catalogued by the Library of
Congress as "1. Computer crimes — United States. 2. Telephone —
United States — Corrupt practices. 3. Programming (Electronic com-
puters) — United States — Corrupt practices." 'Corrupt practices,' I
always 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 Hacker Crackdown,* an action I encourage heartily, you
may 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 legal boilerplate from the publisher. It says, and I quote:
"No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information address:
Bantam Books."
This is a pretty good disclaimer, as such disclaimers go. I collect intel-
lectual-property disclaimers, and I've seen dozens of them, and this one
is at least pretty straightforward. In this narrow and particular case,
however, it isn't quite accurate. Bantam Books puts that disclaimer on
every book they publish, but Bantam Books does not, in fact, own the
electronic rights to this book. I do, because of certain extensive con-
tract maneuverings my agent and I went through before this book was
B R U CE S T ER L IN G —
T H E HAC KE R CR A C KD OW N
NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
3
written. I want to give those electronic publishing rights away 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 scheme of mine,
Bantam Books is not going to fuss about this. Provided you don't try to
sell the book, they are not going to bother you for what you do with the
electronic copy of this book. If you want to check this out personally,
you can ask them; they're at 1540 Broadway NY NY 10036. However,
if you were so foolish as to print this book and start retailing it for
money in violation of my copyright and the commercial interests of
Bantam Books, then Bantam, a part of the gigantic Bertelsmann multi-
national publishing combine, would roust some of their heavy-duty
attorneys out of hibernation and crush you like a bug. This is only to be
expected. I didn't write this book so that you could make money out of it.
If anybody is gonna make money out of this book, it's gonna be me and my
publisher.
My publisher deserves to make money out of this book. Not only did the
folks at Bantam Books commission me to write the book, and pay me a
hefty sum to do so, but they bravely printed, in text, an electronic doc-
ument the reproduction of which was once alleged to be a federal felony.
Bantam Books and their numerous attorneys were very brave and forth-
right about this book. Furthermore, my former editor at Bantam Books,
Betsy Mitchell, genuinely cared about this project, and worked hard on
it, and had a lot of wise things to say about the manuscript. Betsy
deserves genuine credit for this book, credit that editors too rarely get.
The critics were very kind to *The Hacker Crackdown,* and commer-
cially the book has done well. On the other hand, I didn't write this book
in order to squeeze every last nickel and dime out of the mitts of impov-
erished sixteen-year-old cyberpunk high-school-students. Teenagers
don't have any money — (no, not even enough for the six- dollar
*Hacker Crackdown* paperback, with its attractive bright-red cover
and useful index). That's a major reason why teenagers sometimes
succumb to the temptation to do things they shouldn't, such as swiping
my books out of libraries. Kids: this one is all yours, all right? Go
give the print version back. *8-)
B R U CE S TE R L IN G —
T H E HAC KER CR A C KD OW N
NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
4
Well-meaning, public-spirited civil libertarians don't have much
money, either. And it seems almost criminal to snatch cash out of the
hands of America's direly underpaid electronic law enforcement com-
munity.
If you're a computer cop, a hacker, or an electronic civil liberties
activist, you are the target audience for this book. I wrote this book
because I wanted to help you, and help other people understand you and
your unique, uhm, problems. I wrote this book to aid your activities,
and to contribute to the public discussion of important political issues.
In giving the text away in this fashion, I am directly contributing to the
book's ultimate aim: to help civilize cyberspace.
Information *wants* to be free. And the information inside this book
longs for freedom with a peculiar intensity. I genuinely believe that the
natural habitat of this book is inside an electronic network. That may
not be the easiest direct method to generate revenue for the book's
author, but that doesn't matter; this is where this book belongs by its
nature. I've written other books — plenty of other books — and I'll
write more and I am writing more, but this one is special. I am making
*The Hacker Crackdown* available electronically as widely as I can
conveniently manage, and if you like the book, and think it is useful,
then I urge you to do the same with it.
You can copy this electronic book. Copy the heck out of it, be my guest,
and give those copies to anybody who wants them. The nascent world of
cyberspace is full of sysadmins, teachers, trainers, cybrarians, netgu-
rus, and various species of cybernetic activist. If you're one of those
people, I know about you, and I know the hassle you go through to try to
help people learn about the electronic frontier. I hope that possessing
this book in electronic form will lessen your troubles. Granted, this
treatment of our electronic social spectrum is not the ultimate in acade-
mic rigor. And politically, it has something to offend and trouble almost
everyone. But hey, I'm told it's readable, and at least the price is right.
You can upload the book onto bulletin board systems, or Internet nodes,
or electronic discussion groups. Go right ahead and do that, I am giving
BR U C E S T E R LI NG —
T H E HA C KER CR A CKD OWN
NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE
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