"Bruce Sterling - Gurps' Labour Lost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

confiscate thousands of dollars' worth of computer equipment,
including the hackers' common household telephones? Why was an
unpublished book called G.U.R.P.S. Cyberpunk seized by the US
Secret Service and declared "a manual for computer crime?"
These weird events were not parodies or fantasies; no, this was
real.

The first order of business in untangling this bizarre drama is
to understand the players -- who come in entire teams.



Dramatis Personae



PLAYER ONE: The Law Enforcement Agencies.



America's defense against the threat of computer crime is a
confusing hodgepodge of state, municipal, and federal agencies.
Ranked first, by size and power, are the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), large, potent and
secretive organizations who, luckily, play almost no role in the
Jackson story.

The second rank of such agencies include the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS), the National Aeronatics and Space Administration
(NASA), the Justice Department, the Department of Labor, and
various branches of the defense establishment, especially the
Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). Premier
among these groups, however, is the highly-motivated US Secret
Service (USSS), best-known to Britons as the suited,
mirrorshades-toting, heavily-armed bodyguards of the President
of the United States.

Guarding high-ranking federal officials and foreign dignitaries
is a hazardous, challenging and eminently necessary task, which
has won USSS a high public profile. But Abraham Lincoln created
this oldest of federal law enforcement agencies in order to foil
counterfeiting. Due to the historical tribulations of the
Treasury Department (of which USSS is a part), the Secret
Service also guards historical documents, analyzes forgeries,
combats wire fraud, and battles "computer fraud and abuse."
These may seem unrelated assignments, but the Secret Service is
fiercely aware of its duties. It is also jealous of its
bureaucratic turf, especially in computer-crime, where it
formally shares jurisdiction with its traditional rival, the