At the time of the Jackson seizure, I had no experience whatsoever with underground boards. But I knew that no one on Illuminati talked about breaking into systems illegally, or about robbing phone companies. Illuminati didn't even offer pirated computer games. Steve Jackson, like many creative artists, was markedly touchy about theft of intellectual property.
It seemed to me that Jackson was either seriously suspected of some crime—in which case, he would be charged soon, and would have his day in court—or else he was innocent, in which case the Secret Service would quickly return his equipment, and everyone would have a good laugh. I rather expected the good laugh. The situation was not without its comic side. The raid, known as the "Cyberpunk Bust" in the science fiction community, was winning a great deal of free national publicity both for Jackson himself and the "cyberpunk" science fiction writers generally.
Besides, science fiction people are used to being misinterpreted. Science fiction is a colorful, disreputable, slipshod occupation, full of unlikely oddballs, which, of course, is why we like it. Weirdness can be an occupational hazard in our field. People who wear Halloween costumes are sometimes mistaken for monsters.
Once upon a time—back in 1939, in New York City—science fiction and the U.S. Secret Service collided in a comic case of mistaken identity. This weird incident involved a literary group quite famous in science fiction, known as "the Futurians," whose membership included such future genre greats as Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, and Damon Knight. The Futurians were every bit as offbeat and wacky as any of their spiritual descendants, including the cyberpunks, and were given to communal living, spontaneous group renditions of light opera, and midnight fencing exhibitions on the lawn. The Futurians didn't have bulletin board systems, but they did have the technological equivalent in 1939—mimeographs and a private printing press. These were in steady use, producing a stream of science-fiction fan magazines, literary manifestos, and weird articles, which were picked up in ink-sticky bundles by a succession of strange, gangly, spotty young men in fedoras and overcoats.
The neighbors grew alarmed at the antics of the Futurians and reported them to the Secret Service as suspected counterfeiters. In the winter of 1939, a squad of USSS agents with drawn guns burst into "Futurian House," prepared to confiscate the forged currency and illicit printing presses. There they discovered a slumbering science fiction fan named George Hahn, a guest of the Futurian commune who had just arrived in New York. George Hahn managed to explain himself and his group, and the Secret Service agents left the Futurians in peace henceforth. (Alas, Hahn died in 1991, just before I had discovered this astonishing historical parallel, and just before I could interview him for this book.)
But the Jackson case did not come to a swift and comic end. No quick answers came his way, or mine; no swift reassurances that all was right in the digital world, that matters were well in hand after all. Quite the opposite. In my alternate role as a sometime pop-science journalist, I interviewed Jackson and his staff for an article in a British magazine. The strange details of the raid left me more concerned than ever. Without its computers, the company had been financially and operationally crippled. Half the SJG workforce, a group of entirely innocent people, had been sorrowfully fired, deprived of their livelihoods by the seizure. It began to dawn on me that authors—American writers—might well have their computers seized, under sealed warrants, without any criminal charge; and that, as Steve Jackson had discovered, there was no immediate recourse for this. This was no joke; this wasn't science fiction; this was real.
I determined to put science fiction aside until I had discovered what had happened and where this trouble had come from. It was time to enter the purportedly real world of electronic free expression and computer crime. Hence, this book. Hence, the world of the telcos; and the world of the digital underground; and next, the world of the police.
PART THREE: LAW AND ORDER
Of the various anti-hacker activities of 1990, "Operation Sundevil" had by far the highest public profile. The sweeping, nationwide computer seizures of May 8, 1990 were unprecedented in scope and highly, if rather selectively, publicized.