5 Apr
2001
5 Apr
'01
1:05 a.m.
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
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