The Hacker Crackdown Part 51

"Visitors, vendors, contractors, and all others are required to visibly wear a daily pa.s.s.

"Thank you.

Kevin C. Stanton.

Building Security Coordinator."

Outside, around the corner, is a pull-down ribbed metal security door, a locked delivery entrance. Some pa.s.sing stranger has grafitti-tagged this door, with a single word in red spray-painted cursive:

Fury

My book on the Hacker Crackdown is almost over now.

I have deliberately saved the best for last.

In February 1991, I attended the CPSR Public Policy Roundtable, in Washington, DC. CPSR, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, was a sister organization of EFF, or perhaps its aunt, being older and perhaps somewhat wiser in the ways of the world of politics.

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility began in 1981 in Palo Alto, as an informal discussion group of Californian computer scientists and technicians, united by nothing more than an electronic mailing list. This typical high-tech ad-hocracy received the dignity of its own acronym in 1982, and was formally incorporated in 1983.

CPSR lobbied government and public alike with an educational outreach effort, sternly warning against any foolish and unthinking trust in complex computer systems.

CPSR insisted that mere computers should never be considered a magic panacea for humanity's social, ethical or political problems. CPSR members were especially troubled about the stability, safety, and dependability of military computer systems, and very especially troubled by those systems controlling nuclear a.r.s.enals. CPSR was best-known for its persistent and well-publicized attacks on the scientific credibility of the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars").

In 1990, CPSR was the nation's veteran cyber-political activist group, with over two thousand members in twenty- one local chapters across the US.

It was especially active in Boston, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC, where its Washington office sponsored the Public Policy Roundtable.

The Roundtable, however, had been funded by EFF, which had pa.s.sed CPSR an extensive grant for operations. This was the first large-scale, official meeting of what was to become the electronic civil libertarian community.

Sixty people attended, myself included--in this instance, not so much as a journalist as a cyberpunk author. Many of the luminaries of the field took part: Kapor and G.o.dwin as a matter of course.

Richard Civille and Marc Rotenberg of CPSR. Jerry Berman of the ACLU.

John Quarterman, author of The Matrix. Steven Levy, author of Hackers.

George Perry and Sandy Weiss of Prodigy Services, there to network about the civil-liberties troubles their young commercial network was experiencing. Dr. Dorothy Denning. Cliff Figallo, manager of the Well. Steve Jackson was there, having finally found his ideal target audience, and so was Craig Neidorf, "Knight Lightning" himself, with his attorney, Sheldon Zenner.

Katie Hafner, science journalist, and co-author of Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. Dave Farber, ARPAnet pioneer and fabled Internet guru. Janlori Goldman of the ACLU's Project on Privacy and Technology. John Nagle of Autodesk and the Well. Don Goldberg of the House Judiciary Committee.

Tom Guidoboni, the defense attorney in the Internet Worm case.

Lance Hoffman, computer-science professor at The George Washington University. Eli Noam of Columbia. And a host of others no less distinguished.

Senator Patrick Leahy delivered the keynote address, expressing his determination to keep ahead of the curve on the issue of electronic free speech. The address was well-received, and the sense of excitement was palpable.

Every panel discussion was interesting--some were entirely compelling. People networked with an almost frantic interest.

I myself had a most interesting and cordial lunch discussion with Noel and Jeanne Gayler, Admiral Gayler being a former director of the National Security Agency. As this was the first known encounter between an actual no-kidding cyberpunk and a chief executive of America's largest and best-financed electronic espionage apparat, there was naturally a bit of eyebrow-raising on both sides.

Unfortunately, our discussion was off-the-record. In fact all the discussions at the CPSR were officially off-the-record, the idea being to do some serious networking in an atmosphere of complete frankness, rather than to stage a media circus.

In any case, CPSR Roundtable, though interesting and intensely valuable, was as nothing compared to the truly mind-boggling event that transpired a mere month later.

"Computers, Freedom and Privacy." Four hundred people from every conceivable corner of America's electronic community.

As a science fiction writer, I have been to some weird gigs in my day, but this thing is truly BEYOND THE PALE. Even "Cyberthon,"

Point Foundation's "Woodstock of Cybers.p.a.ce" where Bay Area psychedelia collided headlong with the emergent world of computerized virtual reality, was like a Kiwanis Club gig compared to this astonishing do.

The "electronic community" had reached an apogee.

Almost every princ.i.p.al in this book is in attendance.

Civil Libertarians. Computer Cops. The Digital Underground.

Even a few discreet telco people. Colorcoded dots for lapel tags are distributed. Free Expression issues.

Law Enforcement. Computer Security. Privacy. Journalists.

Lawyers. Educators. Librarians. Programmers.

Stylish punk-black dots for the hackers and phone phreaks.

Almost everyone here seems to wear eight or nine dots, to have six or seven professional hats.

It is a community. Something like Lebanon perhaps, but a digital nation. People who had feuded all year in the national press, people who entertained the deepest suspicions of one another's motives and ethics, are now in each others' laps. "Computers, Freedom and Privacy"

had every reason in the world to turn ugly, and yet except for small irruptions of puzzling nonsense from the convention's token lunatic, a surprising bonhomie reigned.

CFP was like a wedding-party in which two lovers, unstable bride and charlatan groom, tie the knot in a clearly disastrous matrimony.

It is clear to both families--even to neighbors and random guests-- that this is not a workable relationship, and yet the young couple's desperate attraction can brook no further delay. They simply cannot help themselves. Crockery will fly, shrieks from their newlywed home will wake the city block, divorce waits in the wings like a vulture over the Kalahari, and yet this is a wedding, and there is going to be a child from it. Tragedies end in death; comedies in marriage.

The Hacker Crackdown is ending in marriage. And there will be a child.

From the beginning, anomalies reign. John Perry Barlow, cybers.p.a.ce ranger, is here. His color photo in The New York Times Magazine, Barlow scowling in a grim Wyoming snowscape, with long black coat, dark hat, a Macintosh SE30 propped on a fencepost and an awesome frontier rifle tucked under one arm, will be the single most striking visual image of the Hacker Crackdown. And he is CFP's guest of honor-- along with Gail Thackeray of the FCIC! What on earth do they expect these dual guests to do with each other? Waltz?

Barlow delivers the first address. Uncharacteristically, he is hoa.r.s.e--the sheer volume of roadwork has worn him down.

He speaks briefly, congenially, in a plea for conciliation, and takes his leave to a storm of applause.

Then Gail Thackeray takes the stage. She's visibly nervous.

She's been on the Well a lot lately. Reading those Barlow posts.

Following Barlow is a challenge to anyone. In honor of the famous lyricist for the Grateful Dead, she announces reedily, she is going to read-- A POEM. A poem she has composed herself.

It's an awful poem, doggerel in the rollicking meter of Robert W. Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee, but it is in fact, a poem. It's the Ballad of the Electronic Frontier! A poem about the Hacker Crackdown and the sheer unlikelihood of CFP. It's full of in-jokes. The score or so cops in the audience, who are sitting together in a nervous claque, are absolutely cracking-up. Gail's poem is the funniest G.o.dd.a.m.n thing they've ever heard. The hackers and civil-libs, who had this woman figured for Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS, are staring with their jaws hanging loosely.

Never in the wildest reaches of their imagination had they figured Gail Thackeray was capable of such a totally off-the-wall move.

You can see them punching their mental CONTROL-RESET b.u.t.tons.

Jesus! This woman's a hacker weirdo! She's JUST LIKE US!

G.o.d, this changes everything!

Al Bayse, computer technician for the FBI, had been the only cop at the CPSR Roundtable, dragged there with his arm bent by Dorothy Denning. He was guarded and tightlipped at CPSR Roundtable; a "lion thrown to the Christians."

At CFP, backed by a claque of cops, Bayse suddenly waxes eloquent and even droll, describing the FBI's "NCIC 2000", a gigantic digital catalog of criminal records, as if he has suddenly become some weird hybrid of George Orwell and George Gobel. Tentatively, he makes an arcane joke about statistical a.n.a.lysis. At least a third of the crowd laughs aloud.

"They didn't laugh at that at my last speech," Bayse observes.

He had been addressing cops--STRAIGHT cops, not computer people.

It had been a worthy meeting, useful one supposes, but nothing like THIS.

There has never been ANYTHING like this. Without any prodding, without any preparation, people in the audience simply begin to ask questions.

Longhairs, freaky people, mathematicians. Bayse is answering, politely, frankly, fully, like a man walking on air. The ballroom's atmosphere crackles with surreality. A female lawyer behind me breaks into a sweat and a hot waft of surprisingly potent and musky perfume flows off her pulse-points.

People are giddy with laughter. People are interested, fascinated, their eyes so wide and dark that they seem eroticized.

Unlikely daisy-chains form in the halls, around the bar, on the escalators: cops with hackers, civil rights with FBI, Secret Service with phone phreaks.

Gail Thackeray is at her crispest in a white wool sweater with a tiny Secret Service logo. "I found Phiber Optik at the payphones, and when he saw my sweater, he turned into a PILLAR OF SALT!" she chortles.

Phiber discusses his case at much length with his arresting officer, Don Delaney of the New York State Police. After an hour's chat, the two of them look ready to begin singing "Auld Lang Syne."

Phiber finally finds the courage to get his worst complaint off his chest.