"Hacker Crackdown.Part 2 THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Bruce Sterling
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Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use

THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: Law and Disorder on the
Electronic Frontier

PART TWO: THE DIGITAL UNDERGROUND


The date was May 9, 1990. The Pope was touring
Mexico City. Hustlers from the Medellin Cartel were
trying to buy black-market Stinger missiles in Florida. On
the comics page, Doonesbury character Andy was dying of
AIDS. And then.... a highly unusual item whose novelty
and calculated rhetoric won it headscratching attention in
newspapers all over America.

The US Attorney's office in Phoenix, Arizona, had
issued a press release announcing a nationwide law
enforcement crackdown against "illegal computer hacking
activities." The sweep was officially known as "Operation
Sundevil."

Eight paragraphs in the press release gave the bare
facts: twenty-seven search warrants carried out on May 8,
with three arrests, and a hundred and fifty agents on the
prowl in "twelve" cities across America. (Different counts
in local press reports yielded "thirteen," "fourteen," and
"sixteen" cities.) Officials estimated that criminal losses
of revenue to telephone companies "may run into millions
of dollars." Credit for the Sundevil investigations was
taken by the US Secret Service, Assistant US Attorney Tim
Holtzen of Phoenix, and the Assistant Attorney General of
Arizona, Gail Thackeray.

The prepared remarks of Garry M. Jenkins,
appearing in a U.S. Department of Justice press release,
were of particular interest. Mr. Jenkins was the Assistant
Director of the US Secret Service, and the highest-ranking
federal official to take any direct public role in the hacker
crackdown of 1990.

"Today, the Secret Service is sending a clear message
to those computer hackers who have decided to violate
the laws of this nation in the mistaken belief that they can
successfully avoid detection by hiding behind the relative
anonymity of their computer terminals.(...)