Diplomacy Zine -- EP #184 Chapter Six From: Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com Date: Tue, 17 Jul 1990 04:01:26 +0000 Issue #184 of ELECTRONIC PROTOCOL: ************************************************************************ I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work. ************************************************************************ Chapter One contains: BLITZKRIEG, GETTYSBURG, RED STORM RISING, and PASSCHENDAELE And is published by daybell@aludra.usc.edu/Donald Daybell Chapter Two contains: DRAGONSLAYER, JACAL, MANHATTAN, VERSAILLES, DRESDEN, and KHAN And is published by tedward@cs.cornell.edu/Ted Fischer Chapter Three contains: MULHOUSE, DAWN PATROL, SNIKKEL-2, BERLIN, SNIKKEL-1, EL ALAMEIN, SQUALANE, UNGAWE, CAPTAIN CAVEMAN And is published by cwekx@htikub5.bitnet/Constantijn Wekx Chapter Four contains: FIRE WHEN READY, BIG WILLIE, NICKEL, and OZARK And is published by dm8sstaf@miamiu.bitnet/Douglas M. MacFarlane Chapter Five contains: ARCHANGEL, BORDEL, ERIS, MASADA, and YALTA And is published by uunet!bnrgate!bmers1!dgibbs/David Gibbs ----------- Chapter Six ----------- Fall '05 of the game TOKUGAWA (BNC number 1989IS) (GM is rc0o@andrew.cmu.edu/Rob Cochran) Not received yet. Fall '03 of the game GROUND ZERO (BNC number not known) (GM is Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com/Eric Klien Need orders from one player. I will replace him if I don't hear from him within 24 hours. Spring '03 of the game DEADLY DAGGERS (BNC number not known) (GM is ae22@dkauni2.bitnet/Thomas Klaus) Not Received. Spring '02 of the game YORKTOWN (BNC number not known) (GM is gfj@attunix.att.com/Garry Johnson) Wow, after a long wait, much boredom, much excitement, lots of confusion, and a little luck, here are the results for Yorktown, Spring 1902. Retreats due today by midnight, if I get it quick and can send it out today, adjustments will be due tomorrow and I'll publish them tomorrow so you can all stew over the weekend. If there are no objections, there are members of this group that seem to spend time away from their computers on the weekends (wow, what a concept), so I think a Wednesday schedule may be more appropriate. Even though I would be completely shocked if we ever got on a schedule, I'll try. So moves are due by next Wednesday, midnight (7/18). Then results published Thursday, retreats Friday, adjustments Saturday, etc. I'm not quite sure how else to deal with it. Again, please report any errors ASAP. Welcome back and let's play ball! --Garry MOVES: Italy A Venice -> Tyrolia works A Vienna support Venice-Tyrolia works A Trieste support Venice-Tyrolia works A Rome -> Venice works F Naples -> Apulia works F Tunis -> Ionian works France F Por-Spa(sc) works A Spa-Mar works A Bre-Pic works A Par support Mar-Bur works A Mar-Bur works A Bel-Ruh fails Germany A Kie-Hol works F Den S E A Nor-Swe works A Mun-Ruh fails F Ber-Bal works England F North Sea-Helgoland Bight works F Edinburgh-North Sea works A Norway-Sweden works F Norwegian Sea-Norway works Russia F Sweden Holds fails (retreats to fin, ska, or OTB) F Stp to Gob works A Ukr to Gal works A War support Army to Gal works F Sev support F in Rum works A Rum Holds works Turkey F Con supports F Ank -> Black Sea works F Ank -> Black Sea works A Bulgaria -> Rumania fails A Smyrna -> Armenia works Austria F (Gre) - Alb works A (Ser) s A (Gal) - Bud works CENTERS SUMMARY: England(+1): lon, lpl, edi, nor, swe Russia (-1): stp, mos, war, rum, sev Turkey (+0): ank, con, smy, bul Austria(+0): ser, bud, gre Italy (+0): nap, tun, rom, ven, tri, vie France (+0): spa, por, mar, par, bel, bre Germany(+1): ber, kie, mun, den, hol PRESS: The English trawler fleet desires more fruitful fishing grounds. Does Russia wish to interfere? I suggest you let England have Scandinavia or else we can put away our nets and roll our cannons out. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE VIENNA GAZETTE Our Cover Story: (Cover shows Emperor Josef calling a taxi) The entire Austrian government has decided to retire and go on vacation. After tolerating the nasty Austrian winter for the last time, most of the officials packed up and moved to the warmer climates of Greece and Serbia. A loony faction, however, decided that Budapest was just too warm -- they prefered the pleasant ice storms in Galicia! We expect they'll sheepishly return to Budapest when they discover they forgot to take any toilet paper with them. Sports: A lawn bowling match was scheduled to take occur, pitting the Imperious Wizards against the visiting Milan Ferrets. The Wizards forfeited, however, since they were already on the cruise to Greece. Entertainment: Well, we have to admit, the Italians do throw one mean party. Life was really dull here before they arrived, which was another reason for the Imperial Vacation. The rest of the citizens are really whooping it up, however, and enjoying the imported lasagna. Finance: The stock market was up, in anticipation of increased investment by those wild and crazy Italians. Classifieds: "Do you speak Italian? If so, you can earn big money as an Official Translator! Just send your resume to The Royal Palace, 1 Feral Street, Vienna." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Summer '02 of the game YORKTOWN (BNC number not known) (GM is gfj@attunix.att.com/Garry Johnson) Russia retreats F to Finland. Moves for Fall 02 due Wednesday evening unless I hear objections. Spring '01 of the game HELM'S DEEP (BNC number not known) (GM is oleg@crash.cts.com/Oleg Rovner) Not due yet. Autumn and Winter '01 of the game BERLIN WALL (BNC number not known) (GM is leszczyn@cpsin.cps.msu.edu/Jon Leszczynski) Not received. Looking into this. Spring '02 of the game MONTREUIL-SUR-MER (BNC number not known) (GM is brapp@vax1.udel.edu/Brian Rapp) ********************************** * MONTREUIL-SUR-MER, Spring 1902 * ********************************** ((( Headlines ))) AUSTRIA MAKES SURPRISING COMEBACK! Fleet crushes Turkish-occupied Bulgaria! GERMANY LAUNCHES MASSIVE ASSAULT ON RUSSIA! Warsaw appears doomed! England just says "Yes!" to tundra, controlling Norway, Sweden, and Finland! France and Italy square off in the Mediterranean! While slowly advancing in the south, Russia retreats in the north! Turkey repents of aggression against Russia, allows Czar to control the Black! ((( Moves ))) ----- Austria --------------------- A Vienna - Trieste (fails, insufficient support) A Budapest Support A Vie-Tri (cut, Russia) A Serbia Support Gre-Bul(sc) F Greece - Bulgaria(sc) ----------------------------------- ----- England --------------------- A Norway - Finland F Skagerrak - Sweden F Norwegian Sea - Norway F London - North Sea ----------------------------------- ----- France ---------------------- A Spain -> Gascony A Portugal -> Spain F Marseilles - Gulf of Lyon F West Med Support F Mar-GoL F Brest - Mid Atlantic Ocean ----------------------------------- ----- Germany --------------------- A Munich - Silesia A Holland - Kiel A Belgium holds A Berlin - Prussia F Kiel - Baltic Sea F Denmark Support F Kie-Bal ----------------------------------- ----- Italy ----------------------- A Trieste Support RUSSIAN A Gal-Bud (cut, Austria) A Venice Support A Trieste to hold F Rome - Tyrrhenian Sea F Tunis Support F Rom-TyS F Naples - Ionian Sea ----------------------------------- ----- Russia ---------------------- A Galicia - Budapest (fails, insufficient support) A Ukraine - Sevastopol F Gulf of Bothnia - St. Pete(sc) F Sevastopol - Black Sea F Rumania Support F Sev-Bla ----------------------------------- ----- Turkey ---------------------- A Armenia - Ankara A Bulgaria - Serbia (fails, DESTROYED by Austria!) F Smyrna - Aegean Sea F Constantinople Support F Smy-Aeg ----------------------------------- ((( Unit Positions ))) Austria: A: Vie, Bud, Ser F: Bul(sc) England: A: Fin F: NtS, Nwy, Swe France: A: Gas, Spa F: GoL, WMe, MAO Germany: A: Bel, Kie, Sil, Pru F: Bal, Den Italy: A: Tri, Ven F: TyS, Tun, Ion Russia: A: Gal, Sev F: Bla, Rum, StP(sc) Turkey: A: Ank F: Aeg, Con ((( Press ))) ************ Coup Attempt Fails! ******************************************** A coup attempt in the Austrian government was foiled this week when the Kaiser of Austria, Bumblehead von Hapsburg, returned early from his vacation in Greece. The coup was masterminded by his brother, Adolph von Hapsburg, and included elements of the Kaiser's military forces. Apparently, Adolph was "incensed" by the Kaiser's total lack of diplomatic skill in not seeing the attack made by the Italian forces this spring. Said Adolph, "My brother has led us to the brink of ruin with idiotic trust of a notoriously un- trustworthy nation. His lack of leadership in this area has shown that he is unfit for his duties as Kaiser." This statement was released from Adolph's secret hideout, somewhere in Switzerland. Forces loyal to the Kaiser tipped him off to the attempted coup, before it came to fruition, enabling him to return early with his fall campaign battle plans which turned the tide in the war with the Italians and the Russians. The Kaiser was quoted as saying :"Negotiations are underway with the Italians for the return of our homelands. We have shown them that we are capable of, and have the will to, cripple them in any further attempts at conquest if they continue their current plans. We bear the Russians no ill will in this matter, as we had no agreements with them. But the Italians have shown themselves to be a petty, backstabbing lot, and we will trust them very seldom in the future." - UDI ************ Creative German Moves! *************************************** Bavarian Beer Belly Brigade goes coal mining (A Munich ==> Silesia) Kiel Kanal Korps goes swimming (F Kiel ==> Baltic) Dutch Doughboys go home (A Holland ==> Kiel) Belgian Brigade eats chocolate (A Belgium HOLDS) Pastry-eaters cheer swim meet (F Denmark S F Kiel==> Baltic) Brandenburg Brass Band plays Prussia (A Berlin ==> Prussia) ************* Kaiser Condemns German Mobilization ************************* Berlin, April 1, 1902 (DPI) -- The German mobilization on the Russian border was condemned today by no less an authority than Kaiser Ludwig himself, who declared "I am shocked, truly shocked, that the German Army could so blatantly violate the sacred Poison Pill Pact I made with Tsar Mikhail. All I told General Blunderbuss was that I wanted to munch on some Polish sausage -- I didn't expect him to lay siege to Warsaw to get it." Professor Leon Shyster of the Berlin International Law Kouncil (BILK) disagreed with the Kaiser, maintaining that Germany had NOT violated the Russo-German Poison Pill Pact. "The pact does not forbid acts of aggression. It merely stipulates that the victim of such an attack should launch a massive counter-attack, even to the point of abandoning his other fronts. The responsibilities are now all on Russia, not Germany. Moreover, by not building an army last winter the Tsar made such a counterattack impossible, in direct violation of the Pact. Shame on him!" Captain Andreas Drinkbeernotvasser of the Bavarian Beer Belly Brigade, one of the units sent east, neither agreed nor disagreed. "We just wanna get out of Munich. We finished all the beer weeks ago". *************** Court Condemns German Law Scholar *********************** Berlin, April 8, 1902 (DPI) -- A noted German lawyer was arrested tried, and found guilty this week of misdemeanor treason and of "making really idiotic statements to the foreign press", a felony. The trial of Leon Shyster took less than one hour, including just 47 seconds for jury deliberations. The jury foreman summed up everybody's feelings, saying "What a dork! He'll be perfect for the Russian front." *************************************************************************** YELLOW TEAM MAKES TREATENING MOVES AGAINST ALLY, CALLED OFFSIDE! The Yellow team was declared offside today, after making unwarranted aggressive moves against the Russians. The Italian referee handed out 5 red cards to the Yellows, in what Miaowara James called, "Revenge for the Italian embarrassment of 1990 in soccer." James went on to say, "Yeah, well, we're sorry, but playing 5 men short is a bit much." Both Russia and Italy went on record as saying that they have no idea what Miaowara James is taking about. **************************************************************************** Liverpool (Diplomacy Press International) - A band from Liverpool is making it big - The Beatles. The country has fallen for their simple lyrics about love, peace, and Norwegian wood. We asked them about the Norwegian wood, and they replied, "Its a funny song, about funny people, but we like the people of Norway. In fact, we really like Scandinavia. We're so glad that the English have brought peace to these lands..... Yea, aren't those the 'high' lands, they're really cool..... They're not cool, they're cold..... No, they are the 'high' lands. I should know. I was there..... No you weren't..... Yes I was..... No you weren't..... Yes I was..... No you weren't..... Oh yea, well then I quit." We think the band will stay together. It seems that someone quits every other day. Its basically a tradition. Read next week when Ringo says, "My nose, what's wrong with my nose? All right then. I quit!" **************************************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Brian Rapp | rapp@freezer.it.udel.edu | brapp@vax1.udel.edu | Ferret | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spring '01 of the game HIROSHIMA (BNC number not known) (GM is okamoto@hp-ses.hp.com/Jeff Okamoto) Not due yet. Fall '01 of the warp game GENGHIS KHAN (BNC number not known) (GM is 74270.2276@compuserve.com/Bob Aube) ------------------------------------------- Game #63 - Genghis Kahn - Fall 1901 GM: Bob Aube/74270.2276@compuserve.com ------------------------------------------- -----> Italians, French butt heads in Munich; Germany say "Thanks!" -----> Russia pulls a fast one on Turkey! Austria: Augie Kuo/akuo@scam.berkeley.edu England: Thom Burnett/V117GV8R@ubvmsc.cc.buffalo.edu France : Larry Hardouin/att!druwa!hardlj or hardlj@druwa.att.com Germany: Douglas M. MacFarlane/dm8sstaf@miamiu.bitnet Italy : Oleg Rovner/oleg@crash.cts.com Russia : Tim Krekoski/krek@mcmaster.ca Turkey : Ziad Munson/muns@midway.uchicago.edu Fall 1901 Results: Austria: F Adr-Tri; <A Ser-Bud>; <A Vie-Bud> England: A Edi-Nwy; F Nth C A Edi-Nwy; F Nrg S A Edi-Nwy France : F Mid-Por; <A Bur-Mun>; A Spa H Germany: A Ruh-Bel; F Hol H; A Kie-Den Italy : <A Trl-Mun>; F Ion-Tun; <A Ven-Trl> Russia : F Bot-Swe; <A Stp-Nwy>; A Gal-Rum; F Rum-Bla Turkey : A Bul H; F Con-Aeg; A Smy H Units by Owner - Fall 1901: Austria (3): F Tri; A Ser; A Vie England (3): A Nwy; F Nth; F Nrg France (3): F Por; A Bur; A Spa Germany (3): A Bel; F Hol; A Den Italy (3): A Trl; F Tun; A Ven Russia (4): F Swe; A Stp; A Rum; F Bla Turkey (3): A Bul; F Aeg; A Smy Centers by Owner - Fall 1901: Austria has 4 (+1): Bud Tri Vie *Ser* England has 4 (+1): Edi Lon Lpl *Nwy* France has 5 (+2): Bre Mar Par *Spa* *Por* Germany has 6 (+3): Ber Kie Mun *Bel* *Den* *Hol* Italy has 4 (+1): Nap Rom Ven *Tun* Russia has 6 (+2): Mos Sev Stp War *Rum* *Swe* Turkey has 4 (+1): Ank Con Smy *Bul* Adjustments - Fall 1901: Austria builds 1 England builds 1 France builds 2 Germnay builds 3 Italy builds 1 Russia builds 2 Turkey builds 1 --------- Press --------- <Roman Holiday Times> "H. M. Alessandro I has been greviously offended by the actions of the German majority in the great city of Munich. After repeated calls to the German government to rectify the situation, especially the repression of the italian minority and the Catholic Church, HM has had no alternative, but to use the means at his disposal to protect Italian interests in the area. Italian 6th fleet under the command of Admiral Visconti is currently helping to establish friendly relations on the African continent. All correspondence should be adressed accordingly. Great rejoicing in the Italian capital has greeted the arriving French ambassador. The Ambassador is in town to discuss further Italian-French cooperation. ------------ Deadline ------------ The deadline for Winter 1901 adjustments is Wednesday, July 11 at midnight EDT. Winter '01 of the warp game GENGHIS KHAN (BNC number not known) (GM is 74270.2276@compuserve.com/Bob Aube) ------------------------------------------- Game #63 - Genghis Kahn - Winter 1901 GM: Bob Aube/74270.2276@compuserve.com ------------------------------------------- Austria: Augie Kuo/akuo@scam.berkeley.edu England: Thom Burnett/V117GV8R@ubvmsc.cc.buffalo.edu France : Larry Hardouin/att!druwa!hardlj or hardlj@druwa.att.com Germany: Douglas M. MacFarlane/dm8sstaf@miamiu.bitnet Italy : Oleg Rovner/oleg@crash.cts.com Russia : Tim Krekoski/krek@mcmaster.ca Turkey : Ziad Munson/muns@midway.uchicago.edu Centers by Owner - Winter 1901: Austria has 4 (+1): Bud Tri Vie *Ser* England has 4 (+1): Edi Lon Lpl *Nwy* France has 5 (+2): Bre Mar Par *Spa* *Por* Germany has 6 (+3): Ber Kie Mun *Bel* *Den* *Hol* Italy has 4 (+1): Nap Rom Ven *Tun* Russia has 6 (+2): Mos Sev Stp War *Rum* *Swe* Turkey has 4 (+1): Ank Con Smy *Bul* Adjustments - Winter 1901: Austria builds A Bud England builds F Lon France builds A Par; F Bre Germnay builds A Ber; A Mun; F Kie Italy builds F Nap Russia builds A Mos; A War Turkey builds F Con Units by Owner - Winter 1901: Austria (4): F Tri; A Ser; A Vie; A Bud England (4): A Nwy; F Nth; F Nrg; F Lon France (5): F Por; A Bur; A Spa; A Par; F Bre Germany (6): A Bel; F Hol; A Den; A Ber; A Mun; F Kie Italy (4): A Trl; F Tun; A Ven; F Nap Russia (6): F Swe; A Stp; A Rum; F Bla; A Mos; A War Turkey (4): A Bul; F Aeg; A Smy; F Con ------------ Deadline ------------ The deadline for Spring 1902 orders is Monday, July 16 at midnight EDT. Spring '01 of the blind game SEA LION (BNC number not known) (GM is jdshaw@sun.udel.edu/John D Shaw) Not due yet. Spring '01 of the game VIOLENT PEACE (BNC number not known) (GM is mike@x.co.uk/Mike Moore) Not due yet. Publisher comments: Quote is from Gallagher. I need scribes to type in Diplomacy articles! Following is an article of interest to people worried about their cyberspace civil rights. A group that I belong to had their BBS and other computer equipment confiscated by the government two years ago, and when the equipment was returned after a year, it was greatly damaged, and my group still doesn't have its BBS working today. In addition, we spent nearly one million dollars fighting various Big Brother actions last year. For the record, we have been convicted of no crimes, and have actually managed to double our membership based on all the publicity attached to our legal problems. But when you consider our annual budget was $50,000/year before the Feds hit us, you can imagine how close we came to collapse. We are currently suing the California government, trying to get them to enforce their e-mail privacy laws. (We are suing them for plenty of other reasons also.) This was submitted by dougi@astro.as.utexas.edu/Doug Ingram. I also received it on the McGraw-Hill BBS, BIX: CRIME AND PUZZLEMENT by John Perry Barlow barlow@well.sf.ca.us Desperados of the DataSphere So me and my sidekick Howard, we was sitting out in front of the 40 Rod Saloon one evening when he all of a sudden says, "Lookee here. What do you reckon?" I look up and there's these two strangers riding into town. They're young and got kind of a restless, bored way about 'em. A person don't need both eyes to see they mean trouble... Well, that wasn't quite how it went. Actually, Howard and I were floating blind as cave fish in the electronic barrens of the WELL, so the whole incident passed as words on a display screen: Howard: Interesting couple of newusers just signed on. One calls himself acid and the other's optik. Barlow: Hmmm. What are their real names? Howard: Check their finger files. And so I typed !finger acid. Several seconds later the WELL's Sequent computer sent the following message to my Macintosh in Wyoming: Login name: acid In real life: Acid Phreak By this, I knew that the WELL had a new resident and that his corporeal analog was supposedly called Acid Phreak. Typing !finger optik yielded results of similar insufficiency, including the claim that someone, somewhere in the real world, was walking around calling himself Phiber Optik. I doubted it. However, associating these sparse data with the knowledge that the WELL was about to host a conference on computers and security rendered the conclusion that I had made my first sighting of genuine computer crackers. As the arrival of an outlaw was a major event to the settlements of the Old West, so was the appearance of crackers cause for stir on the WELL. The WELL (or Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) is an example of the latest thing in frontier villages, the computer bulletin board. In this kind of small town, Main Street is a central minicomputer to which (in the case of the WELL) as many as 64 microcomputers may be connected at one time by phone lines and little blinking boxes called modems. In this silent world, all conversation is typed. To enter it, one forsakes both body and place and becomes a thing of words alone. You can see what your neighbors are saying (or recently said), but not what either they or their physical surroundings look like. Town meetings are continuous and discussions rage on everything from sexual kinks to depreciation schedules. There are thousands of these nodes in the United States, ranging from PC clone hamlets of a few users to mainframe metros like CompuServe, with its 550,000 subscribers. They are used by corporations to transmit memoranda and spreadsheets, universities to disseminate research, and a multitude of factions, from apiarists to Zoroastrians, for purposes unique to each. Whether by one telephonic tendril or millions, they are all connected to one another. Collectively, they form what their inhabitants call the Net. It extends across that immense region of electron states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses and thought which sci-fi writer William Gibson named Cyberspace. Cyberspace, in its present condition, has a lot in common with the 19th Century West. It is vast, unmapped, culturally and legally ambiguous, verbally terse (unless you happen to be a court stenographer), hard to get around in, and up for grabs. Large institutions already claim to own the place, but most of the actual natives are solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of sociopathy. It is, of course, a perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and new ideas about liberty. Recognizing this, Harper's Magazine decided in December, 1989 to hold one of its periodic Forums on the complex of issues surrounding computers, information, privacy, and electronic intrusion or "cracking." Appropriately, they convened their conference in Cyberspace, using the WELL as the "site." Harper's invited an odd lot of about 40 participants. These included: Clifford Stoll, whose book The Cuckoo's Egg details his cunning efforts to nab a German cracker. John Draper or "Cap'n Crunch," the grand-daddy of crackers whose blue boxes got Wozniak and Jobs into consumer electronics. Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly of Whole Earth fame. Steven Levy, who wrote the seminal Hackers. A retired Air Force colonel named Dave Hughes. Lee Felsenstein, who designed the Osborne computer and was once called the "Robespierre of computing." A UNIX wizard and former hacker named Jeff Poskanzer. There was also a score of aging techno-hippies, the crackers, and me. What I was doing there was not precisely clear since I've spent most of my working years either pushing cows or song-mongering, but I at least brought to the situation a vivid knowledge of actual cow-towns, having lived in or around one most of my life. That and a kind of innocence about both the technology and morality of Cyberspace which was soon to pass into the confusion of knowledge. At first, I was inclined toward sympathy with Acid 'n' Optik as well as their colleagues, Adelaide, Knight Lightning, Taran King, and Emmanuel. I've always been more comfortable with outlaws than Republicans, despite having more certain credentials in the latter camp. But as the Harper's Forum mushroomed into a boom-town of ASCII text (the participants typing 110,000 words in 10 days), I began to wonder. These kids were fractious, vulgar, immature, amoral, insulting, and too damned good at their work. Worse, they inducted a number of former kids like myself into Middle Age. The long feared day had finally come when some gunsel would yank my beard and call me, too accurately, an old fart. Under ideal circumstances, the blind gropings of bulletin board discourse force a kind of Noh drama stylization on human commerce. Intemperate responses, or "flames" as they are called, are common even among conference participants who understand one another, which, it became immediately clear, the cyberpunks and techno-hippies did not. My own initial enthusiasm for the crackers wilted under a steady barrage of typed testosterone. I quickly remembered I didn't know much about who they were, what they did, or how they did it. I also remembered stories about crackers working in league with the Mob, ripping off credit card numbers and getting paid for them in (stolen) computer equipment. And I remembered Kevin Mitnik. Mitnik, now 25, is currently serving federal time for a variety of computer and telephone related crimes. Prior to incarceration, Mitnik was, by all accounts, a dangerous guy with a computer. He disrupted phone company operations and arbitrarily disconnected the phones of celebrities. Like the kid in Wargames, he broke into the North American Defense Command computer in Colorado Springs. Unlike the kid in Wargames, he made a practice of destroying and altering data, including the credit information of his probation officer and other enemies. Digital Equipment claimed that his depredations cost them more than $4 million in computer downtime and file rebuilding. Eventually, he was turned in by a friend who, after careful observation, had decided he was "a menace to society." His spectre began to hang over the conference. After several days of strained diplomacy, the discussion settled into a moral debate on the ethics of security and went critical. The techno-hippies were of the unanimous opinion that, in Dylan's words, one "must be honest to live outside the law." But these young strangers apparently lived by no code save those with which they unlocked forbidden regions of the Net. They appeared to think that improperly secured systems deserved to be violated and, by extension, that unlocked houses ought to be robbed. This latter built particular heat in me since I refuse, on philosophical grounds, to lock my house. Civility broke down. We began to see exchanges like: Dave Hughes: Clifford Stoll said a wise thing that no one has commented on. That networks are built on trust. If they aren't, they should be. Acid Phreak: Yeah. Sure. And we should use the 'honor system' as a first line of security against hack attempts. Jef Poskanzer: This guy down the street from me sometimes leaves his back door unlocked. I told him about it once, but he still does it. If I had the chance to do it over, I would go in the back door, shoot him, and take all his money and consumer electronics. It's the only way to get through to him. Acid Phreak: Jef Poskanker (Puss? Canker? yechh) Anyway, now when did you first start having these delusions where computer hacking was even *remotely* similar to murder? Presented with such a terrifying amalgam of raw youth and apparent power, we fluttered like a flock of indignant Babbitts around the Status Quo, defending it heartily. One former hacker howled to the Harper's editor in charge of the forum, "Do you or do you not have names and addresses for these criminals?" Though they had committed no obvious crimes, he was ready to call the police. They finally got to me with: Acid: Whoever said they'd leave the door open to their house... where do you live? (the address) Leave it to me in mail if you like. I had never encountered anyone so apparently unworthy of my trust as these little nihilists. They had me questioning a basic tenet, namely that the greatest security lies in vulnerability. I decided it was time to put that principal to the test... Barlow: Acid. My house is at 372 North Franklin Street in Pinedale, Wyoming. If you're heading north on Franklin, you go about two blocks off the main drag before you run into hay meadow on the left. I've got the last house before the field. The computer is always on... And is that really what you mean? Are you merely just the kind of little sneak that goes around looking for easy places to violate? You disappoint me, pal. For all your James Dean-On-Silicon rhetoric, you're not a cyberpunk. You're just a punk. Acid Phreak: Mr. Barlow: Thank you for posting all I need to get your credit information and a whole lot more! Now, who is to blame? ME for getting it or YOU for being such an idiot?! I think this should just about sum things up. Barlow: Acid, if you've got a lesson to teach me, I hope it's not that it's idiotic to trust one's fellow man. Life on those terms would be endless and brutal. I'd try to tell you something about conscience, but I'd sound like Father O'Flannigan trying to reform the punk that's about to gutshoot him. For no more reason that to watch him die. But actually, if you take it upon yourself to destroy my credit, you might do be a favor. I've been looking for something to put the brakes on my burgeoning materialism. I spent a day wondering whether I was dealing with another Kevin Mitnik before the other shoe dropped: Barlow: ... With crackers like acid and optik, the issue is less intelligence than alienation. Trade their modems for skateboards and only a slight conceptual shift would occur. Optik: You have some pair of balls comparing my talent with that of a skateboarder. Hmmm... This was indeed boring, but nonetheless: At which point he downloaded my credit history. Optik had hacked the core of TRW, an institution which has made my business (and yours) their business, extracting from it an abbreviated (and incorrect) version of my personal financial life. With this came the implication that he and Acid could and would revise it to my disadvantage if I didn't back off. I have since learned that while getting someone's TRW file is fairly trivial, changing it is not. But at that time, my assessment of the crackers' black skills was one of superstitious awe. They were digital brujos about to zombify my economic soul. To a middle-class American, one's credit rating has become nearly identical to his freedom. It now appeared that I was dealing with someone who had both the means and desire to hoodoo mine, leaving me trapped in a life of wrinkled bills and money order queues. Never again would I call the Sharper Image on a whim. I've been in redneck bars wearing shoulder-length curls, police custody while on acid, and Harlem after midnight, but no one has ever put the spook in me quite as Phiber Optik did at that moment. I realized that we had problems which exceeded the human conductivity of the WELL's bandwidth. If someone were about to paralyze me with a spell, I wanted a more visceral sense of him than could fit through a modem. I e-mailed him asking him to give me a phone call. I told him I wouldn't insult his skills by giving him my phone number and, with the assurance conveyed by that challenge, I settled back and waited for the phone to ring. Which, directly, it did. In this conversation and the others that followed I encountered an intelligent, civilized, and surprisingly principled kid of 18 who sounded, and continues to sound, as though there's little harm in him to man or data. His cracking impulses seemed purely exploratory, and I've begun to wonder if we wouldn't also regard spelunkers as desperate criminals if AT&T owned all the caves. The terrifying poses which Optik and Acid had been striking on screen were a media-amplified example of a human adaptation I'd seen before: One becomes as he is beheld. They were simply living up to what they thought we, and, more particularly, the editors of Harper's, expected of them. Like the televised tears of disaster victims, their snarls adapted easily to mass distribution. Months later, Harper's took Optik, Acid and me to dinner at a Manhattan restaurant which, though very fancy, was appropriately Chinese. Acid and Optik, as material beings, were well-scrubbed and fashionably-clad. They looked to be dangerous as ducks. But, as Harper's and the rest of the media have discovered to their delight, the boys had developed distinctly showier personae for their rambles through the howling wilderness of Cyberspace. Glittering with spikes of binary chrome, they strode past the kleig lights and into the digital distance. There they would be outlaws. It was only a matter of time before they started to believe themselves as bad as they sounded. And no time at all before everyone else did. In this, they were like another kid named Billy, many of whose feral deeds in the pre-civilized West were encouraged by the same dime novelist who chronicled them. And like Tom Horn, they seemed to have some doubt as to which side of the law they were on. Acid even expressed an ambition to work for the government someday, nabbing "terrorists and code abusers." There is also a frontier ambiguity to the "crimes" the crackers commit. They are not exactly stealing VCR's. Copying a text file from TRW doesn't deprive its owner of anything except informational exclusivity. (Though it may said that information has monetary value only in proportion to its containment.) There was no question that they were making unauthorized use of data channels. The night I met them, they left our restaurant table and disappeared into the phone booth for a long time. I didn't see them marshalling quarters before they went. And, as I became less their adversary and more their scoutmaster, I began to get "conference calls" in which six or eight of them would crack pay phones all over New York and simultaneously land on my line in Wyoming. These deft maneuvers made me think of sky-diving stunts where large groups convene geometrically in free fall. In this case, the risk was largely legal. Their other favorite risky business is the time-honored adolescent sport of trespassing. They insist on going where they don't belong. But then teen-age boys have been proceeding uninvited since the dawn of human puberty. It seems hard-wired. The only innovation is in the new form of the forbidden zone the means of getting in it. In fact, like Kevin Mitnik, I broke into NORAD when I was 17. A friend and I left a nearby "woodsie" (as rustic adolescent drunks were called in Colorado) and tried to get inside the Cheyenne Mountain. The chrome- helmeted Air Force MP's held us for about 2 hours before letting us go. They weren't much older than us and knew exactly our level of national security threat. Had we come cloaked in electronic mystery, their alert status certainly would have been higher. Whence rises much of the anxiety. Everything is so ill-defined. How can you guess what lies in their hearts when you can't see their eyes? How can one be sure that, like Mitnik, they won't cross the line from trespassing into another adolescent pastime, vandalism? And how can you be sure they pose no threat when you don't know what a threat might be? And for the crackers some thrill is derived from the metamorphic vagueness of the laws themselves. On the Net, their effects are unpredictable. One never knows when they'll bite. This is because most of the statutes invoked against the crackers were designed in a very different world from the one they explore. For example, can unauthorized electronic access can be regarded as the ethical equivalent of old-fashioned trespass? Like open range, the property boundaries of Cyberspace are hard to stake and harder still to defend. Is transmission through an otherwise unused data channel really theft? Is the track-less passage of a mind through TRW's mainframe the same as the passage of a pickup through my Back 40? What is a place if Cyberspace is everywhere? What are data and what is free speech? How does one treat property which has no physical form and can be infinitely reproduced? Is a computer the same as a printing press? Can the history of my business affairs properly belong to someone else? Can anyone morally claim to own knowledge itself? If such questions were hard to answer precisely, there are those who are ready to try. Based on their experience in the Virtual World, they were about as qualified to enforce its mores as I am to write the Law of the Sea. But if they lacked technical sophistication, they brought to this task their usual conviction. And, of course, badges and guns. Operation Sun Devil "Recently, we have witnessed an alarming number of young people who, for a variety of sociological and psychological reasons, have become attached to their computers and are exploiting their potential in a criminal manner. Often, a progression of criminal activity occurs which involves telecommunications fraud (free long distance phone calls), unauthorized access to other computers (whether for profit, fascination, ego, or the intellectual challenge), credit card fraud (cash advances and unauthorized purchases of goods), and then move on to other destructive activities like computer viruses." "Our experience shows that many computer hacker suspects are no longer misguided teenagers mischievously playing games with their computers in their bedrooms. Some are now high tech computer operators using computers to engage in unlawful conduct." --Excerpts from a statement by Garry M. Jenkins Asst. Director, U. S. Secret Service "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, support by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." --Amendment VI United States Constitution On January 24, 1990, a platoon of Secret Service agents entered the apartment which Acid Phreak shares with his mother and 12 year-old sister. The latter was the only person home when they burst through the door with guns drawn. They managed to hold her at bay for about half an hour until their quarry happened home. By then, they were nearly done packing up Acid's worldly goods, including his computer, his notes (both paper and magnetic), books, and such dubiously dangerous tools as a telephone answering machine, a ghetto blaster and his complete collection of audio tapes. One agent asked him to define the real purpose of the answering machine and was frankly skeptical when told that it answered the phone. The audio tapes seemed to contain nothing but music, but who knew what dark data Acid might have encoded between the notes... When Acid's mother returned from work, she found her apartment a scene of apprehended criminality. She asked what, exactly, her son had done to deserve all this attention and was told that, among other things, he had caused the AT&T system crash several days earlier. (Previously AT&T had taken full responsibility.) Thus, the agent explained, her darling boy was thought to have caused over a billion dollars in damage to the economy of the United States. This accusation was never turned into a formal charge. Indeed, no charge of any sort of was filed against Mr. Phreak then and, although the Secret Service maintained resolute possession of his hardware, software, and data, no charge had been charged 4 months later. Across town, similar scenes were being played out at the homes of Phiber Optik and another colleague code-named Scorpion. Again, equipment, notes, disks both hard and soft, and personal effects were confiscated. Again no charges were filed. Thus began the visible phase of Operation Sun Devil, a two-year Secret Service investigation which involved 150 federal agents, numerous local and state law enforcement agencies. and the combined security resources of PacBell, AT&T, Bellcore, Bell South MCI, U.S. Sprint, Mid-American, Southwestern Bell, NYNEX, U.S. West and American Express. The focus of this impressive institutional array was the Legion of Doom, a group which never had any formal membership list but was thought by the members with whom I spoke to number less than 20, nearly all of them in their teens or early twenties. I asked Acid why they'd chosen such a threatening name. "You wouldn't want a fairy kind of thing like Legion of Flower Pickers or something. But the media ate it up too. Probing the Legion of Doom like it was a gang or something, when really it was just a bunch of geeks behind terminals." Continued in next issue! Eric Klien Up