"Operation Sundevil," the Phoenix-inspired crackdown of May 8,1990, concentrated on telephone code-fraud and credit-card abuse, and followed this seizure plan with some success. Boards went down all over America, terrifying the underground and swiftly depriving them of at least some of their criminal instruments. It also saddled analysts with some 24,000 floppy disks, and confronted harried Justice Department prosecutors with the daunting challenge of a gigantic nationwide hacker show-trial involving highly technical issues in dozens of jurisdictions. As of July 1991, it must be questioned whether the climate is right for an action of this sort, especially since several of the most promising prosecutees have already been jailed on other charges.
"Sundevil" aroused many dicey legal and constitutional questions, but at least its organizers were spared the spectacle of seizure victims loudly proclaiming their innocence -- (if one excepts Bruce Esquibel, sysop of "Dr. Ripco," an anarchist board in Chicago).
The activities of March 1, 1990, however, including the Jackson case, were the inspiration of the Chicago-based Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force. At telco urging, the Chicago group were pursuing the purportedly vital "E911 document" with headlong energy. As legal evidence, this proprietary Bell South document was to prove a very weak reed in the Craig Neidorf trial, which ended in a humiliating dismissal and a triumph for Neidorf. As of March 1990, however, this purloined data-file seemed a red-hot chunk of contraband, and the decision was made to track it down wherever it might have gone, and to shut down any board that had touched it -- or even come close to it.
In the meantime, however -- early 1990 -- Mr. Loyd Blankenship, an employee of Steve Jackson Games, an accomplished hacker, and a sometime member and file-writer for the Legion of Doom, was contemplating a "cyberpunk" simulation-module for the flourishing GURPS gaming-system.
The time seemed ripe for such a product, which had already been proven in the marketplace. The first games-company out of the gate, with a product boldly called "Cyberpunk" in defiance of possible infringement-of-copyright suits, had been an upstart group called R. Talsorian. Talsorian's "Cyberpunk" was a fairly decent game, but the mechanics of the simulation system sucked, and the nerds who wrote the manual were the kimd of half-hip twits who wrote their own fake rock lyrics and, worse yet, published them. The game sold like crazy, though.
The next "cyberpunk" game had been the even more successful "Shadowrun" by FASA Corporation. The mechanics of this game were fine, but the scenario was rendered moronic by lame fantasy elements like orcs, dwarves, trolls, magicians, and dragons -- all highly ideologically-incorrect, according to the hard-edged, high-tech standards of cyberpunk science fiction. No true cyberpunk fan could play this game without vomiting, despite FASA's nifty T-shirts and street-samurai lead figurines.
Lured by the scent of money, other game companies were champing at the bit. Blankenship reasoned that the time had come for a real "Cyberpunk" gaming-book -- one that the princes of computer-mischief in the Legion of Doom could play without laughing themselves sick. This book, GURPS Cyberpunk, would reek of culturally on-line authenticity.
Hot discussion soon raged on the Steve Jackson Games electronic bulletin board, the "Illuminati BBS." This board was named after a bestselling SJG card-game, involving antisocial sects and cults who war covertly for the domination of the world. Gamers and hackers alike loved this board, with its meticulously detailed discussions of pastimes like SJG's "Car Wars," in which souped-up armored hot-rods with rocket-launchers and heavy machine-guns do battle on the American highways of the future.
While working, with considerable creative success, for SJG, Blankenship himself was running his own computer bulletin board, "The Phoenix Project," from his house. It had been ages -- months, anyway -- since Blankenship, an increasingly sedate husband and author, had last entered a public phone-booth without a supply of pocket-change. However, his intellectual interest in computer-security remained intense. He was pleased to notice the presence on "Phoenix" of Henry Kluepfel, a phone-company security professional for Bellcore. Such contacts were risky for telco employees; at least one such gentleman who reached out to the hacker underground had been accused of divided loyalties and summarily fired. Kluepfel, on the other hand, was bravely engaging in friendly banter with heavy-dude hackers and eager telephone-wannabes. Blankenship did nothing to spook him away, and Kluepfel, for his part, passed dark warnings about "Phoenix Project" to the Chicago group. "Phoenix Project" glowed with the radioactive presence of the E911 document, passed there in a copy of Craig Neidorf's electronic hacker fan-magazine, Phrack.
"Illuminati" was prominently mentioned on the Phoenix Project. Phoenix users were urged to visit Illuminati, to discuss the upcoming "cyberpunk" game and possibly lend their expertise. It was also frankly hoped that they would spend some money on SJG games.
Illuminati and Phoenix had become two ripe pumpkins on the criminal vine.
Hacker busts were nothing new. They had always been somewhat problematic for the authorities. The offenders were generally high-IQ white juveniles with no criminal record. Public sympathy for the phone companies was limited at best. Trials often ended in puzzled dismissals or a slap on the wrist. But the harassment suffered by "the business community" -- always the best friend of law enforcement -- was real, and highly annoying both financially and in its sheer irritation to the target corporation.
Through long experience, law enforcement had come up with an unorthodox but workable tactic. This was to avoid any trial at all, or even an arrest. Instead, somber teams of grim police would swoop upon the teenage suspect's home and box up his computer as "evidence." If he was a good boy, and promised contritely to stay out of trouble forthwith, the highly expensive equipment might be returned to him in short order. If he was a hard-case, though, too bad. His toys could stay boxed-up and locked away for a couple of years.
The busts in Austin were an intensification of this tried-and-true technique. There were adults involved in this case, though, reeking of a hardened bad-attitude. The supposed threat to the 911 system, apparently posed by the E911 document, had nerved law enforcement to extraordinary effort. The 911 system is, of course, the emergency dialling system used by the police themselves. Any threat to it was a direct and insolent hacker menace to the electronic home-turf of American law enforcement.
Had Steve Jackson been arrested and directly accused of a plot to destroy the 911 system, the resultant embarrassment would likely have been sharp, but brief. The Chicago group, instead, chose total operational security. They may have suspected that their search for E911, once publicized, would cause that "dangerous" document to spread like wildfire throughout the underground. Instead, they allowed the misapprehension to spread that they had raided Steve Jackson to stop the publication of a book: GURPS Cyberpunk. This was a grave public-relations blunder which caused the darkest fears and suspicions to spread -- not in the hacker underground, but among the general public.
On March 1, 1990, 21-year-old hacker Chris Goggans (aka "Erik Bloodaxe") was wakened by a police revolver levelled at his head. He watched, jittery, as Secret Service agents appropriated his 300 baud terminal and, rifling his files, discovered his treasured source-code for the notorious Internet Worm. Goggans, a co-sysop of "Phoenix Project" and a wily operator, had suspected that something of the like might be coming. All his best equipment had been hidden away elsewhere. They took his phone, though, and considered hauling away his hefty arcade-style Pac-Man game, before deciding that it was simply too heavy. Goggans was not arrested. To date, he has never been charged with a crime. The police still have what they took, though.