py)  ъecovery##        (g recovery)
San Francisco          (g sanfran)           Scams
(g scam)
Sexuality              (g sex)                    Singles
(g singles)
Southern               (g south)                Spanish
(g spanish)
Spirituality           (g spirit)               Tibet
(g tibet)
Transportation  (g transport)      True Confessions  (g tru)
Unclear (g unclear)   WELL Writer's Workshop***(g www)
Whole Earth (g we)           Women on the WELL*(g wow)
Words                  (g words)                 Writers
(g wri)

**** Private Conference - mail wooly for entry
***Private conference - mail sonia for entry
** Private conference - mail flash for entry
*  Private conference - mail reva for entry
#  Private Conference - mail hudu for entry
## Private Conference - mail dhawk for entry

                  Arts - ъecreation - Entertainment
                  -----------------------------------
ArtCom Electronic Net  (g acen)
Audio-Videophilia (g aud)
Bicycles               (g bike)                  Bay Area
Tonight**(g bat)
Boating                (g wet)                  Books
(g books)
CD's                   (g cd)                        Comics
(g comics)
Cooking                (g cook)                 Flying
(g flying)
Fun                    (g fun)                     Games
(g games)
Gardening              (g gard)               Kids
(g kids)
Nightowls*             (g owl)              Jokes
(g jokes)
MIDI                   (g midi)                   Movies
(g movies)
Motorcycling           (g ride)              Motoring
(g car)
Music                  (g mus)                  On Stage
(g onstage)
Pets                   (g pets)                  ъadio
(g rad)
ъestaurant             (g rest)              Science Fiction
(g sf)
Sports                 (g spo)                  Star Trek
(g trek)
Television             (g tv)                  Theater
(g theater)
Weird                  (g weird)
Zines/Factsheet Five(g f5)
* Open from midnight to 6am
** Updated daily

                             Grateful Dead
                             -------------
Grateful Dead          (g gd)          Deadplan*         (g
dp)
Deadlit                (g deadlit)       Feedback
(g feedback)
GD Hour                (g gdh)            Tapes
(g tapes)
Tickets                (g tix)              Tours
(g tours)

* Private conference - mail tnf for entry

                               Computers
                              -----------
AI/Forth/ъealtime      (g realtime)    Amiga             (g
amiga)
Apple                  (g app)       Computer Books    (g
cbook)
Art & Graphics         (g gra)                Hacking
(g hack)
HyperCard              (g hype)                IBM PC
(g ibm)
LANs                   (g lan)                      Laptop
(g lap)
Macintosh              (g mac)    Mactech           (g
mactech)
Microtimes   (g microx)            Muchomedia        (g
mucho)
NeXt                   (g next)                     OS/2
(g os2)
Printers               (g print)
Programmer's Net  (g net)
Siggraph               (g siggraph)           Software
Design   (g sdc)
Software/Programming (software)
Software Support  (g ssc)
Unix                   (g unix)                     Windows
(g windows)
Word Processing        (g word)

                        Technical - Communications
                       ----------------------------
Bioinfo                (g bioinfo)           Info
(g boing)
Media                  (g media)             NAPLPS
(g naplps)
Netweaver              (g netweaver)   Networld (g networld)
Packet ъadio           (g packet)         Photography
(g pho)
ъadio                  (g rad)                  Science
(g science)
Technical Writers   (g tec) Telecommunications(g tele)
Usenet                 (g usenet)           Video
(g vid)
Virtual ъeality        (g vr)

                              The WELL Itself
                              ---------------
Deeper                 (g deeper)           Entry
(g ent)
General                (g gentech)         Help
(g help)
Hosts                  (g hosts)              Policy
(g policy)
System News            (g news)        Test
(g test)


        The list itself is dazzling, bringing to the
untutored
eye a dizzying impression of a bizarre milieu of mountain-
climbing Hawaiian holistic photographers trading true-life
confessions with bisexual word-processing Tibetans.

     But this confusion is more apparent than real.  Each
of these conferences was a little cyberspace world in
itself,
comprising dozens and perhaps hundreds of sub-topics.
Each conference was commonly frequented by a fairly
small, fairly like-minded community of perhaps a few
dozen people.   It was  humanly impossible to encompass
the entire Well (especially since access to the Well's
mainframe computer was billed by the hour).  Most long-
time users contented themselves with a few favorite
topical neighborhoods, with the occasional foray
elsewhere for a taste of exotica.   But especially important
news items, and hot topical debates, could catch the
attention of the entire Well community.

     Like any community, the Well had its celebrities, and
John Perry Barlow, the silver-tongued and silver-
modemed lyricist of the Grateful Dead, ranked
prominently among them.  It was here on the Well that
Barlow posted his true-life tale of computer-crime
encounter with the FBI.

     The story, as might be expected, created a great stir.
The Well was already primed for hacker controversy.  In
December 1989, *Harper's* magazine had hosted a
debate on the Well about the ethics of illicit computer
intrusion.   While over forty various computer-mavens
took part,  Barlow proved a star in the debate.   So did
"Acid Phreak" and "Phiber Optik," a pair of young New
York hacker-phreaks whose skills at telco switching-station
intrusion were matched only by their apparently limitless
hunger for fame.   The advent of these two boldly
swaggering outlaws in the precincts of the Well created a
sensation akin to that of Black Panthers at a cocktail party
for the radically chic.

     Phiber Optik in particular was to seize the day in
1990.
A devotee of the *2600* circle and stalwart of the New York
hackers' group "Masters of Deception,"  Phiber Optik was
a splendid exemplar of the computer intruder as
committed dissident.   The eighteen-year-old Optik, a
high-school dropout and part-time computer repairman,
was young, smart, and ruthlessly obsessive, a sharp-
dressing, sharp-talking digital dude who was utterly and
airily contemptuous of anyone's rules but his own.    By
late 1991, Phiber Optik had appeared in *Harper's,*
*Esquire,*  *The New York Times,* in countless public
debates and conventions, even on a television show
hosted by Geraldo ъivera.

     Treated with gingerly respect by Barlow and other
Well mavens,   Phiber Optik swiftly became a Well
celebrity.   Strangely, despite his thorny attitude and
utter
single-mindedness, Phiber Optik seemed to arouse strong
protective instincts in most of the people who met him.
He was great copy for journalists, always fearlessly ready
to swagger, and, better yet, to actually *demonstrate*
some off-the-wall digital stunt.   He was a born media
darling.

     Even cops seemed to recognize that there was
something peculiarly unworldly and uncriminal about this
particular troublemaker.   He was so bold, so flagrant, so
young, and so obviously doomed, that even those who
strongly disapproved of his actions grew anxious for his
welfare, and began to flutter about him as if he were an
endangered seal pup.

     In January 24, 1990 (nine days after the Martin Luther
King Day Crash), Phiber Optik, Acid Phreak, and a third
NYC scofflaw named Scorpion were raided by the Secret
Service.   Their computers went out the door, along with
the usual blizzard of papers, notebooks, compact disks,
answering machines, Sony Walkmans, etc.  Both Acid
Phreak and Phiber Optik were accused of having caused
the Crash.

     The mills of justice ground slowly.  The case
eventually fell into the hands of the New York State Police.
Phiber had lost his machinery in the raid,  but there were
no charges  filed against him for over a year.   His
predicament was extensively publicized on the Well,
where it caused much resentment for police tactics.  It's
one thing to merely hear about a hacker raided or busted;
it's another to see the police attacking someone you've
come to know personally, and who has explained his
motives at length.   Through the *Harper's* debate on the
Well, it had become clear to the Wellbeings that Phiber
Optik was not in fact going to "hurt anything."   In their
own salad days, many Wellbeings had tasted tear-gas in
pitched street-battles with police.  They were inclined to
indulgence for acts of civil disobedience.

     Wellbeings were also startled to learn of the
draconian thoroughness of a typical hacker search-and-
seizure.   It took no great stretch of imagination for them
to
envision themselves suffering much the same treatment.

     As early as January 1990, sentiment on the Well had
already begun to sour, and people had begun to grumble
that "hackers" were getting a raw deal from the ham-
handed powers-that-be.   The resultant issue of *Harper's*
magazine posed the question as to whether computer-
intrusion was a "crime" at all.   As Barlow put it later:
"I've
begun to wonder if we wouldn't also regard spelunkers as
desperate criminals if AT&T owned all the caves."

     In February 1991, more than a year after the raid on
his home, Phiber Optik was finally arrested, and was
charged with first-degree Computer Tampering and
Computer Trespass, New York state offenses.   He was also
charged with a theft-of-service misdemeanor, involving a
complex free-call scam to a 900 number.  Phiber Optik
pled guilty to the misdemeanor charge, and was
sentenced to  35 hours of community service.

     This passing harassment from the unfathomable
world of straight people seemed to bother Optik himself
little if at all.  Deprived of his computer by the  January
search-and-seizure, he simply bought himself a portable
computer so the cops could no longer monitor the phone
where he lived with his Mom, and he went right on with his
depredations, sometimes on live radio or in front of
television cameras.

     The crackdown raid may have done little to dissuade
Phiber Optik, but its  galling affect on the Wellbeings was
profound.  As 1990 rolled on, the slings and arrows
mounted:  the Knight Lightning raid, the Steve Jackson
raid, the nation-spanning Operation Sundevil.   The
rhetoric of law enforcement made it clear that there was,
in fact, a concerted crackdown on hackers in progress.

     The hackers of the Hackers Conference, the
Wellbeings, and their ilk, did not really mind the
occasional public misapprehension of "hacking"; if
anything, this membrane of differentiation from straight
society made the "computer community" feel different,
smarter, better.   They had never before been confronted,
however, by a concerted vilification campaign.

     Barlow's central role in the counter-struggle was one
of the major anomalies of 1990.   Journalists investigating
the controversy often stumbled over the truth about
Barlow, but they commonly dusted themselves off and
hurried on as if nothing had happened.   It was as if it
were
*too much to believe*  that a  1960s freak from the Grateful
Dead had taken on a federal law enforcement operation
head-to-head and *actually seemed to be winning!*

     Barlow had no easily detectable power-base for a
political struggle of this kind.  He had no formal legal or
technical credentials.   Barlow was, however, a computer
networker of truly stellar brilliance.   He had a poet's
gift of
concise, colorful phrasing.  He also had a journalist's
shrewdness, an off-the-wall, self-deprecating wit, and a
phenomenal wealth of simple personal charm.

     The kind of influence Barlow possessed is fairly
common currency in literary, artistic, or musical circles.
A
gifted critic can wield great artistic influence simply
through defining the temper of the times,  by coining the
catch-phrases and the terms of debate that become the
common currency of the period.  (And as it happened,
Barlow *was*  a part-time art critic, with a special
fondness
for the Western art of Frederic ъemington.)

     Barlow was the first  commentator to adopt William
Gibson's striking science-fictional term "cyberspace" as a
synonym for the present-day nexus of computer and
telecommunications networks.   Barlow was insistent that
cyberspace should be regarded as a  qualitatively new
world, a "frontier."   According to Barlow, the world of
electronic communications, now made visible through the
computer screen, could no longer be usefully regarded as
just a tangle of high-tech wiring.  Instead, it had become a
*place,*   cyberspace, which demanded a new set of
metaphors, a new set of rules and behaviors.  The term, as
Barlow employed it, struck a useful chord, and this
concept of cyberspace was picked up by *Time,*
*Scientific American,*  computer police, hackers, and
even Constitutional scholars.   "Cyberspace" now seems
likely to become a permanent fixture of the language.

     Barlow was very striking in person: a tall, craggy-
faced, bearded, deep-voiced Wyomingan in a dashing
Western ensemble of jeans, jacket, cowboy boots, a
knotted throat-kerchief and an ever-present Grateful
Dead cloisonne lapel pin.

     Armed with a modem, however, Barlow was truly in
his element.  Formal hierarchies were not Barlow's strong
suit; he rarely missed a chance to belittle the "large
organizations and their drones," with their uptight,
institutional mindset.   Barlow was very much of the free-
spirit persuasion, deeply unimpressed by brass-hats and
jacks-in-office.  But when it came to the digital grapevine,
Barlow was a cyberspace ad-hocrat par excellence.

     There was not a mighty army of Barlows.  There was
only one Barlow, and he was a fairly anomolous individual.
However, the situation only seemed to *require*  a single
Barlow.   In fact, after 1990, many people must have
concluded that a single Barlow was far more than they'd
ever bargained for.

     Barlow's  querulous mini-essay about his encounter
with the FBI struck a strong chord on the Well.   A number
of other free spirits on the fringes of Apple Computing had
come under suspicion, and they liked it not one whit better
than he did.

     One of these was Mitchell Kapor, the co-inventor of
the spreadsheet program "Lotus 1-2-3" and the founder of
Lotus Development Corporation.   Kapor had written-off
the passing indignity of being fingerprinted down at his
own local Boston FBI headquarters, but Barlow's post
made the full national scope of the FBI's dragnet clear to
Kapor.   The issue now had Kapor's full attention.   As the
Secret Service swung into anti-hacker operation
nationwide in 1990, Kapor watched every move with deep
skepticism and growing alarm.

     As it happened, Kapor had already met Barlow, who
had interviewed Kapor for a California computer journal.
Like most people who met Barlow, Kapor had been very
taken with him.   Now Kapor took it upon himself to drop
in on Barlow for a heart-to-heart talk about the situation.

     Kapor was a regular on the Well.  Kapor had been a
devotee of the *Whole Earth Catalog* since the
beginning, and treasured a complete run of the magazine.
And Kapor not only had a modem, but a private jet.   In
pursuit of the scattered high-tech investments of Kapor
Enterprises Inc., his personal, multi-million dollar holding
company, Kapor commonly crossed state lines with about
as much thought as one might give to faxing a letter.

      The Kapor-Barlow council of June 1990, in Pinedale,
Wyoming, was the start of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation.   Barlow swiftly wrote a manifesto, "Crime and
Puzzlement,"  which announced his, and Kapor's,
intention to form a political organization to "raise and
disburse funds for education, lobbying, and litigation in
the areas relating to digital speech and the extension of
the Constitution into Cyberspace."

     Furthermore, proclaimed the manifesto, the
foundation would "fund, conduct, and support legal efforts
to demonstrate that the Secret Service has exercised prior
restraint on publications, limited free speech, conducted
improper seizure of equipment and data, used undue
force, and generally conducted itself in a fashion which is
arbitrary, oppressive, and unconstitutional."

     "Crime and Puzzlement" was distributed far and wide
through computer networking channels, and also printed
in the *Whole Earth ъeview.*  The sudden declaration of a
coherent, politicized counter-strike from the ranks of
hackerdom electrified the community.   Steve Wozniak
(perhaps a bit stung by the  NuPrometheus scandal)
swiftly offered to match any funds Kapor offered the
Foundation.

     John Gilmore, one of the pioneers of Sun
Microsystems, immediately offered his own extensive
financial and personal support.   Gilmore, an ardent
libertarian, was to prove an eloquent advocate of
electronic privacy issues, especially freedom from
governmental and corporate computer-assisted
surveillance of private citizens.

     A second meeting in San Francisco rounded up
further allies:  Stewart Brand of the Point Foundation,
virtual-reality pioneers Jaron Lanier and Chuck
Blanchard,  network entrepreneur and venture capitalist
Nat Goldhaber.  At this dinner meeting, the activists
settled on a formal title: the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, Incorporated.  Kapor became its president.
A new EFF Conference was opened on the Point
Foundation's Well, and the Well was declared "the home
of the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

     Press coverage was immediate and intense.   Like
their nineteenth-century spiritual ancestors, Alexander
Graham Bell and Thomas Watson, the high-tech
computer entrepreneurs of the 1970s and 1980s -- people
such as Wozniak, Jobs, Kapor, Gates, and H. ъoss Perot,
who had raised themselves by their bootstraps to
dominate a glittering new industry -- had always made
very good copy.

     But while the Wellbeings rejoiced, the press in
general seemed nonplussed by the self-declared
"civilizers of cyberspace."   EFF's insistence that the war
against "hackers" involved grave Constitutional civil
liberties issues seemed somewhat farfetched, especially
since none of EFF's organizers were lawyers or established
politicians.    The business press in particular found it
easier to seize on the apparent core of the story -- that
high-tech entrepreneur Mitchell Kapor had established a
"defense fund for hackers."   Was EFF a genuinely
important  political development -- or merely a clique of
wealthy eccentrics, dabbling in matters better left to the
proper authorities?  The jury was still out.

     But the stage was now set for open confrontation.
And the first and the most critical battle was the hacker
show-trial of "Knight Lightning."

                         #

     It has been my practice throughout this book to refer
to hackers only by their "handles."   There is little to
gain
by giving the real names of these people, many of whom
are juveniles, many of whom have never been convicted of
any crime, and many of whom had unsuspecting parents
who have already suffered enough.

     But the  trial of Knight Lightning on July 24-27, 1990,
made this particular "hacker" a nationally known public
figure.  It can do no particular harm to himse