y lively, extensive,
detailed, and often quite flagrant "discussions" of
lawbreaking techniques and lawbreaking activities.
"Discussing" crime in the abstract, or "discussing"
the particulars of criminal cases, is not illegal -- but
there are stern state and federal laws against
coldbloodedly conspiring in groups in order to
commit crimes.

     In the eyes of police, people who actively
conspire to break the law are not regarded as
"clubs," "debating salons," "users' groups," or "free
speech advocates."   ъather, such people tend to
find themselves formally indicted by prosecutors as
"gangs," "racketeers," "corrupt organizations" and
"organized crime figures."

     What's more, the illicit data contained on
outlaw boards goes well beyond mere acts of speech
and/or possible criminal conspiracy.  As we have
seen, it was common practice in the digital
underground to post purloined telephone codes on
boards, for any phreak or hacker who cared to abuse
them.  Is posting digital booty of this sort supposed
to be protected by the First Amendment?  Hardly --
though the issue, like most issues in cyberspace, is
not entirely resolved.   Some theorists argue that to
merely *recite* a number publicly is not illegal --
only its *use* is illegal.   But anti-hacker police point
out that magazines and newspapers (more
traditional forms of free expression) never publish
stolen telephone codes (even though this might well
raise their circulation).

     Stolen credit card numbers, being riskier and
more valuable, were less often publicly posted on
boards -- but there is no question that some
underground boards carried "carding" traffic,
generally exchanged through private mail.

     Underground boards also carried handy
programs for "scanning" telephone codes and
raiding credit card companies, as well as the usual
obnoxious galaxy of pirated software, cracked
passwords, blue-box schematics, intrusion manuals,
anarchy files, porn files, and so forth.

     But besides their nuisance potential for the
spread of illicit knowledge, bulletin boards have
another vitally interesting aspect for the professional
investigator.  Bulletin boards are cram-full of
*evidence.*  All that busy trading of electronic mail,
all those hacker boasts, brags and struts,  even the
stolen codes and cards, can be neat, electronic, real-
time recordings of criminal activity.

     As an investigator, when you seize a pirate
board, you have scored a coup as effective as
tapping phones or intercepting mail.  However, you
have not actually tapped a phone or intercepted a
letter.   The rules of evidence regarding phone-taps
and mail interceptions are old, stern and well-
understood by police, prosecutors and defense
attorneys alike.  The rules of evidence regarding
boards are new, waffling, and understood by nobody
at all.

     Sundevil was the largest crackdown on boards in
world history.  On May 7, 8, and 9, 1990, about forty-
two computer systems were seized.  Of those forty-
two computers, about twenty-five actually were
running boards.  (The vagueness of this estimate is
attributable to the vagueness of (a) what a
"computer system" is, and (b) what it actually means
to "run a board" with one -- or with two computers, or
with three.)

     About twenty-five boards vanished into police
custody in May 1990.   As we have seen, there are an
estimated 30,000 boards in America today.  If we
assume that one board in a hundred is up to no good
with codes and cards (which rather flatters the
honesty of the board-using community), then that
would leave 2,975 outlaw boards untouched by
Sundevil.  Sundevil seized about one tenth of one
percent of all computer bulletin boards in America.
Seen objectively, this is something less than a
comprehensive assault.   In 1990, Sundevil's
organizers -- the team at the Phoenix Secret Service
office, and the Arizona Attorney General's office --
had a list of at least *three hundred* boards that
they considered fully deserving of search and
seizure warrants.   The twenty-five boards actually
seized were merely among the most obvious and
egregious of this much larger list of candidates.   All
these boards had been examined beforehand --
either by informants, who had passed printouts to
the Secret Service, or by Secret Service agents
themselves, who not only come equipped with
modems but know how to use them.

     There were a number of motives for Sundevil.
First, it offered a chance to get ahead of the curve on
wire-fraud crimes.  Tracking back credit-card ripoffs
to their perpetrators can be appallingly difficult.  If
these miscreants have any kind of electronic
sophistication, they can snarl their tracks through
the phone network into a mind-boggling,
untraceable mess, while still managing to "reach out
and rob someone."  Boards, however, full of brags
and boasts, codes and cards, offer evidence in the
handy congealed form.

     Seizures themselves -- the mere physical
removal of machines -- tends to take the pressure
off.  During Sundevil, a large number of code kids,
warez d00dz, and credit card thieves would be
deprived of those boards -- their  means of
community and conspiracy -- in one swift blow.  As
for the sysops themselves (commonly among the
boldest offenders) they would be directly stripped of
their computer equipment, and rendered digitally
mute and blind.

     And this aspect of Sundevil was carried out with
great success.   Sundevil seems to have been a
complete tactical surprise -- unlike the fragmentary
and continuing seizures of the war on the Legion of
Doom, Sundevil was precisely timed and utterly
overwhelming.    At least forty "computers" were
seized during May 7, 8 and 9, 1990, in Cincinnati,
Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, Phoenix,
Tucson, ъichmond, San Diego, San Jose, Pittsburgh
and San Francisco.   Some cities saw multiple raids,
such as the five separate raids in the New York City
environs.  Plano, Texas (essentially a suburb of the
Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and a hub of the
telecommunications industry)  saw four computer
seizures.  Chicago, ever in the forefront, saw its own
local Sundevil raid, briskly carried out by Secret
Service agents Timothy Foley and Barbara Golden.

     Many of these raids occurred, not in the cities
proper, but in associated white-middle class suburbs
-- places like Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania and
Clark Lake, Michigan.   There were a few raids on
offices; most took place in people's homes, the
classic hacker basements and bedrooms.

     The Sundevil raids were searches and seizures,
not a group of mass arrests.  There were only four
arrests during Sundevil.  "Tony the Trashman," a
longtime teenage bete noire of the Arizona
ъacketeering unit, was arrested in Tucson on May 9.
"Dr. ъipco," sysop of an outlaw board with the
misfortune to exist in Chicago itself, was also
arrested  -- on illegal weapons charges.   Local units
also arrested a 19-year-old female phone phreak
named "Electra" in Pennsylvania,  and a male
juvenile in California.  Federal agents however were
not seeking arrests, but computers.

     Hackers are generally not indicted (if at all)
until the evidence in their seized computers is
evaluated -- a process that can take weeks, months --
even years.    When hackers are arrested on the
spot, it's generally an arrest for other reasons.  Drugs
and/or illegal weapons show up in a good third of
anti-hacker computer seizures (though not during
Sundevil).

     That scofflaw teenage hackers (or their parents)
should have marijuana in their homes is probably
not a shocking revelation, but the surprisingly
common presence of illegal firearms in hacker dens
is a bit disquieting.   A Personal Computer can be a
great equalizer for the techno-cowboy -- much like
that more traditional American "Great Equalizer,"
the Personal Sixgun.   Maybe it's not all that
surprising that some guy obsessed with power
through illicit technology would also have a few illicit
high-velocity-impact devices around.  An element of
the digital underground particularly dotes on those
"anarchy philes,"  and this element tends to shade
into the crackpot milieu of survivalists, gun-nuts,
anarcho-leftists and the ultra-libertarian right-wing.

     This is not to say that hacker raids to date have
uncovered any major crack-dens or illegal arsenals;
but Secret Service agents do not regard "hackers" as
"just kids."   They regard hackers as unpredictable
people, bright and slippery.   It doesn't help matters
that the hacker himself has been "hiding behind his
keyboard" all this time.   Commonly, police have no
idea what he looks like.  This makes him an
unknown quantity, someone best treated with
proper caution.

     To date, no hacker has come out shooting,
though they do sometimes brag on boards that they
will do just that.  Threats of this sort are taken
seriously.   Secret Service hacker raids tend to be
swift, comprehensive, well-manned (even over-
manned);  and agents generally burst through every
door in the home at once, sometimes with drawn
guns.  Any potential resistance is swiftly quelled.
Hacker raids are usually raids on people's homes.
It can be a very dangerous business to raid an
American home; people can panic when strangers
invade their sanctum.   Statistically speaking, the
most dangerous thing a policeman can do is to enter
someone's home.  (The second most dangerous
thing is to stop a car in traffic.)  People have guns in
their homes.   More cops are hurt in homes than are
ever hurt in biker bars or massage parlors.

     But in any case, no one was hurt during
Sundevil, or indeed during any part of the Hacker
Crackdown.

     Nor were there any allegations of any physical
mistreatment of a suspect.   Guns were pointed,
interrogations were sharp and prolonged; but no one
in 1990 claimed any act of brutality by any
crackdown raider.

     In addition to the forty or so computers,
Sundevil reaped floppy disks in particularly great
abundance -- an estimated 23,000 of them, which
naturally included every manner of illegitimate
data:  pirated games, stolen codes, hot credit card
numbers, the complete text and software of entire
pirate bulletin-boards.  These floppy disks, which
remain in police custody today, offer a gigantic,
almost embarrassingly rich source of possible
criminal indictments.  These 23,000 floppy disks also
include a thus-far unknown quantity of legitimate
computer games, legitimate software,  purportedly
"private" mail from boards, business records, and
personal correspondence of all kinds.

     Standard computer-crime search warrants lay
great emphasis on seizing written documents as well
as computers -- specifically including photocopies,
computer printouts, telephone bills, address books,
logs, notes, memoranda and correspondence.  In
practice, this has meant that diaries, gaming
magazines, software documentation, nonfiction
books on hacking and computer security,
sometimes even science fiction novels, have all
vanished out the door in police custody.   A wide
variety of electronic items have been known to
vanish as well, including telephones, televisions,
answering machines, Sony Walkmans, desktop
printers, compact disks, and audiotapes.

     No fewer than 150 members of the Secret
Service were sent into the field during Sundevil.
They were commonly accompanied by squads of
local and/or state police.   Most of these officers --
especially  the locals -- had never been on an anti-
hacker raid before.  (This was one good reason, in
fact, why so many of them were invited along in the
first place.)   Also, the presence of a uniformed
police officer assures the raidees that the people
entering their homes are, in fact, police.   Secret
Service agents wear plain clothes.  So do the telco
security experts who commonly accompany the
Secret Service on raids (and who make no particular
effort to identify themselves as mere employees of
telephone companies).

     A typical hacker raid goes something like this.
First, police storm in rapidly, through every
entrance, with overwhelming force, in the
assumption that this tactic will keep casualties to a
minimum.  Second, possible suspects are
immediately removed from the vicinity of any and
all computer systems, so that they will have no
chance to purge or destroy computer evidence.
Suspects are herded into a room without computers,
commonly the living room,  and kept under guard --
not *armed* guard, for the guns are swiftly
holstered, but under guard nevertheless.   They are
presented with the search warrant and warned that
anything they say may be held against them.
Commonly they have a great deal to say, especially
if they are unsuspecting parents.

     Somewhere in the house is the "hot spot" -- a
computer tied to a phone line (possibly several
computers and several phones).   Commonly it's a
teenager's bedroom, but it can be anywhere in the
house; there may be several such rooms.   This "hot
spot" is put in charge of a two-agent team, the
"finder" and the "recorder."   The "finder" is
computer-trained, commonly the case agent who
has actually obtained the search warrant from a
judge.   He or she understands what is being sought,
and actually carries out the seizures: unplugs
machines, opens drawers, desks, files, floppy-disk
containers, etc.   The "recorder" photographs all the
equipment, just as it stands -- especially the tangle
of wired connections in the back, which can
otherwise be a real nightmare to restore.  The
recorder will also commonly photograph every room
in the house, lest some wily criminal claim that the
police had robbed him during the search.   Some
recorders carry videocams or tape recorders;
however, it's more common for the recorder to
simply take written notes.  Objects are described
and numbered as the finder seizes them, generally
on standard preprinted police inventory forms.

     Even Secret Service agents were not, and are
not, expert computer users.  They have not made,
and do not make, judgements on the fly about
potential threats posed by various forms of
equipment.   They may exercise discretion; they may
leave Dad his computer, for instance, but they don't
*have* to.   Standard computer-crime search
warrants, which date back to the early 80s, use a
sweeping language that targets computers,  most
anything attached to a computer, most anything
used to operate a computer -- most anything that
remotely resembles a computer -- plus most any
and all written documents surrounding it.
Computer-crime investigators have strongly urged
agents to seize the works.

     In this sense, Operation Sundevil appears to
have been a complete success.  Boards went down
all over America, and were shipped en masse to the
computer investigation lab of the Secret Service, in
Washington DC, along with the 23,000 floppy disks
and unknown quantities of printed material.

     But the seizure of twenty-five boards, and the
multi-megabyte mountains of possibly useful
evidence contained in these boards (and in their
owners' other computers, also out the door), were far
from the only motives for Operation Sundevil.   An
unprecedented action of great ambition and size,
Sundevil's motives can only be described as
political.   It was a public-relations effort, meant to
pass certain messages, meant to make certain
situations clear:  both in the mind of the general
public, and in the minds of various constituencies of
the electronic community.

      First  -- and this motivation was vital -- a
"message" would be sent from law enforcement to
the digital underground.   This very message was
recited in so many words by Garry M. Jenkins, the
Assistant Director of the US Secret Service, at the
Sundevil press conference in Phoenix on May 9,
1990, immediately after the raids.   In brief, hackers
were mistaken in their foolish belief that they could
hide behind the "relative anonymity of their
computer terminals."  On the contrary, they should
fully understand that state and federal cops were
actively patrolling the beat in cyberspace -- that they
were on the watch everywhere, even in those sleazy
and secretive dens of cybernetic vice, the
underground boards.

     This is not an unusual message for police to
publicly convey to crooks.   The message is a
standard message; only the context is new.

     In this respect,  the Sundevil raids were the
digital equivalent of the standard vice-squad
crackdown on massage parlors, porno bookstores,
head-shops,  or floating crap-games.  There may be
few or no arrests in a raid of this sort; no convictions,
no trials, no interrogations.   In cases of this sort,
police may well walk out the door with many pounds
of sleazy magazines, X-rated videotapes, sex toys,
gambling equipment, baggies of marijuana....

     Of course, if something truly horrendous is
discovered by the raiders, there will be arrests and
prosecutions.   Far more likely, however, there will
simply be a brief but sharp disruption of the closed
and secretive world of the nogoodniks.  There will be
"street hassle."  "Heat."  "Deterrence."  And, of
course, the immediate loss of the seized goods.  It is
very unlikely that any of this seized material will ever
be returned.   Whether charged or not, whether
convicted or not, the perpetrators will almost surely
lack the nerve ever to ask for this stuff to be given
back.

     Arrests and trials -- putting people in jail -- may
involve all kinds of formal legalities; but dealing with
the justice system is far from the only task of police.
Police do not simply arrest people.  They don't
simply put people in jail.   That is not how the police
perceive their jobs.  Police "protect and serve."
Police "keep the peace," they "keep public order."
Like other forms of public relations, keeping public
order is not an exact science.  Keeping public order
is something of an art-form.

     If a group of tough-looking teenage hoodlums
was loitering on a street-corner, no one would be
surprised to see a street-cop arrive and sternly order
them to "break it up."   On the contrary, the surprise
would come if one of these ne'er-do-wells stepped
briskly into a phone-booth, called a civil rights
lawyer, and instituted a civil suit in defense of his
Constitutional rights of free speech and free
assembly.  But  something much  along this line was
one of the many anomolous outcomes of the Hacker
Crackdown.

     Sundevil also carried useful "messages" for
other constituents of the electronic community.
These messages may not have been read aloud
from the Phoenix podium in front of the press corps,
but there was little mistaking their meaning.  There
was a message of reassurance for the primary
victims of coding and carding:  the telcos, and the
credit companies.  Sundevil was greeted with joy by
the security officers of the electronic business
community.   After years of high-tech harassment
and spiralling revenue losses, their complaints of
rampant outlawry were being taken seriously by law
enforcement.  No more head-scratching or
dismissive shrugs; no more feeble excuses about
"lack of computer-trained officers" or the low priority
of "victimless" white-collar telecommunication
crimes.

     Computer-crime experts have long believed
that computer-related offenses are drastically
under-reported.   They regard this as a major open
scandal of their field.  Some victims are reluctant to
come forth, because they believe that police and
prosecutors are not computer-literate, and can and
will do nothing.  Others are embarrassed by their
vulnerabilities, and will