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Regulating the Electronic Netherworld
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10271 |
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BOOK WORLD
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12 / 1993 |
1,923 Words |
| Author
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Lawrence Person
Lawrence Person is a science-fiction writer and former editor
of Citizens' Agenda living in Austin, Texas. |
THE HACKER CRACKDOWN
Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
Bruce Sterling
New York: Bantam Books, 1992
328 pp., $23.00
In March 1993, federal Judge Sam Sparks awarded Steve Jackson Games, an Austin, Texas, role-playing game publisher, more than $50,000 in damages resulting from a raid conducted by the U.S. Secret Service three years before. During that raid, the Secret Service carted off computers, hard drives, modems, monitors, and hundreds of floppy disks, all of which were held as evidence.
On those computers and disks were projects, mailing lists, financial records, and correspondence vital to the continued operation of the company. Due to the loss of those materials, Steve Jackson Games was forced to lay off half its employees and was almost driven to bankruptcy.
And what charges did the Secret Service bring against the company?
None. Neither Jackson nor any of his employees were ever charged with any crime. Because the warrant used in the raid was sealed, for a long time Jackson and his lawyer could not even determine why the raid had taken place. Even after the trial, the Secret Service was still in possession of some of the seized equipment and refused to say when it might be returned.
By an odd string of circumstances, Jackson had found himself the most famous victim of a concerted national law-enforcement operation that came to be known as the Hacker Crackdown. Following that raid, Bruce Sterling, a cyberpunk science-fiction writer from Austin, decided to find out exactly how and why Jackson and dozens of other people across the country had their homes invaded and their computers seized. What Sterling relates in The Hacker Crackdown has serious implications for the future of computers, free speech, and constitutional law in the United States.
As reviled and/or glorified in movies such as War Games and Sneakers, hackers are people who "break into" (that is, gain unauthorized electronic access to) other people's computer systems, usually over a telephone modem line. The techniques of hacking lend themselves to all sorts of illegal actions, such as "phreaking" (using long-distance service for free), phone and credit card fraud, and the
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