Crime & Puzzlement [2/8]

From

Max Belankov (2:5054/2.31)

To

All ()

Date

1996-08-29T23:10Z

Area

PERM.LANGUAGE

Hello All!


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******


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 IV
 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 c harge 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."


=== Cut ===


                                 With best wishes,
           Max

Kime: Если нельзя, но очень хочется, то можно.

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 * Origin: Кто к нам с чем -- тот оттого и того... (2:5054/2.31)