Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use

THE HACKER CRACKDOWN

Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

by

Bruce Sterling

COPYRIGHT 1992, by Bruce Sterling

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, Halloween 1993

THE HACKER CRACKDOWN

Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

by Bruce Sterling

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 computers)—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 intellectual-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 contract maneuverings my agent and I went through before this book was 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 multinational 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 document the reproduction of which was once alleged to be a federal felony. Bantam Books and their numerous attorneys were very brave and forthright 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 commercially 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 impoverished 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-)

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 community.

If you're a computer cop, a hacker, or an electronic civil liberties