Hacker Crackdown | Page 5

teenage males flung off phone system by enraged authorities.
1939 "Futurian" science-fiction group raided by Secret Service.
1971 Yippie phone phreaks start YIPL/TAP magazine.
1972 RAMPARTS magazine seized in blue-box rip-off scandal.
1978 Ward Christenson and Randy Suess create first personal computer bulletin board
system.
1982 William Gibson coins term "cyberspace."
1982 "414 Gang" raided.
1983-1983 AT&T dismantled in divestiture.
1984 Congress passes Comprehensive Crime Control Act giving USSS jurisdiction over
credit card fraud and computer fraud.
1984 "Legion of Doom" formed.
1984. 2600: THE HACKER QUARTERLY founded.
1984. WHOLE EARTH SOFTWARE CATALOG published.
1985. First police "sting" bulletin board systems established.
1985. Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link computer conference (WELL) goes on-line.
1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act passed.
1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act passed.

1987 Chicago prosecutors form Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force.
1988
July. Secret Service covertly videotapes "SummerCon" hacker convention.
September. "Prophet" cracks BellSouth AIMSX computer network and downloads E911
Document to his own computer and to Jolnet.
September. AT&T Corporate Information Security informed of Prophet's action.
October. Bellcore Security informed of Prophet's action.
1989
January. Prophet uploads E911 Document to Knight Lightning.
February 25. Knight Lightning publishes E911 Document in PHRACK electronic
newsletter.
May. Chicago Task Force raids and arrests "Kyrie."
June. "NuPrometheus League" distributes Apple Computer proprietary software.
June 13. Florida probation office crossed with phone-sex line in switching-station stunt.
July. "Fry Guy" raided by USSS and Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force.
July. Secret Service raids "Prophet," "Leftist," and "Urvile" in Georgia.
1990
January 15. Martin Luther King Day Crash strikes AT&T long-distance network
nationwide.
January 18-19. Chicago Task Force raids Knight Lightning in St. Louis.
January 24. USSS and New York State Police raid "Phiber Optik," "Acid Phreak," and
"Scorpion" in New York City.
February 1. USSS raids "Terminus" in Maryland.
February 3. Chicago Task Force raids Richard Andrews' home.
February 6. Chicago Task Force raids Richard Andrews' business.
February 6. USSS arrests Terminus, Prophet, Leftist, and Urvile.
February 9. Chicago Task Force arrests Knight Lightning.

February 20. AT&T Security shuts down public-access "attctc" computer in Dallas.
February 21. Chicago Task Force raids Robert Izenberg in Austin.
March 1. Chicago Task Force raids Steve Jackson Games, Inc., "Mentor," and "Erik
Bloodaxe" in Austin.
May 7,8,9.
USSS and Arizona Organized Crime and Racketeering Bureau conduct "Operation
Sundevil" raids in Cincinnatti, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, Phoenix, Pittsburgh,
Richmond, Tucson, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco.
May. FBI interviews John Perry Barlow re NuPrometheus case.
June. Mitch Kapor and Barlow found Electronic Frontier Foundation; Barlow publishes
CRIME AND PUZZLEMENT manifesto.
July 24-27. Trial of Knight Lightning.
1991
February. CPSR Roundtable in Washington, D.C.
March 25-28. Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in San Francisco.
May 1. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Steve Jackson, and others file suit against
members of Chicago Task Force.
July 1-2. Switching station phone software crash affects Washington, Los Angeles,
Pittsburgh, San Francisco.
September 17. AT&T phone crash affects New York City and three airports.

Introduction
This is a book about cops, and wild teenage whiz-kids, and lawyers, and hairy-eyed
anarchists, and industrial technicians, and hippies, and high-tech millionaires, and game
hobbyists, and computer security experts, and Secret Service agents, and grifters, and
thieves.
This book is about the electronic frontier of the 1990s. It concerns activities that take
place inside computers and over telephone lines.
A science fiction writer coined the useful term "cyberspace" in 1982. But the territory in
question, the electronic frontier, is about a hundred and thirty years old. Cyberspace is the
"place" where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone,

the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city.
THE PLACE BETWEEN the phones. The indefinite place OUT THERE, where the two
of you, two human beings, actually meet and communicate.
Although it is not exactly "real," "cyberspace" is a genuine place. Things happen there
that have very genuine consequences. This "place" is not "real," but it is serious, it is
earnest. Tens of thousands of people have dedicated their lives to it, to the public service
of public communication by wire and electronics.
People have worked on this "frontier" for generations now. Some people became rich and
famous from their efforts there. Some just played in it, as hobbyists. Others soberly
pondered it, and wrote about it, and regulated it, and negotiated over it in international
forums, and sued one another about it, in gigantic, epic court battles that lasted for years.
And almost since the beginning, some people have committed crimes in this place.
But in the past twenty years, this electrical "space," which was once thin and dark and
one-dimensional--little more than a narrow speaking-tube, stretching from phone to
phone--has flung itself open like a gigantic jack-in-the-box. Light has flooded upon it, the
eerie