Crime & Puzzlement [4/8]

From

Max Belankov (2:5054/2.31)

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All ()

Date

1996-08-29T23:11Z

Area

PERM.LANGUAGE

Hello All!


=== Cut ===
******


Rich Andrews was not the last to learn about the Secret Service's
debonair new attitude toward the 4th Amendment's protection
against unreasonable seizure.

Early on March 1, 1990, the offices of a role-playing game publisher in
Austin, Texas called Steve Jackson Games were visited by agents of
the United States Secret Service.  They ransacked the premises, broke
into several locked filing cabinets (damaging them irreparably in the
process) and eventually left carrying 3 computers, 2 laser printers,
several hard disks, and many boxes of paper and floppy disks.

Later in the day, callers to the Illuminati BBS (which Steve Jackson
Games operated to keep in touch with roll-players around the
country) encountered the following message:

"So far we have not received a clear explanation of what the Secret Service
was looking  for, what they expected to find, or much of anything else. We are
fairly certain  that Steve  Jackson Games is not the target of whatever
investigation is being conducted;  in any case,  we have done nothing illegal
and have nothing whatsoever to hide.  However, the  equipment that was
seized is apparently considered to be evidence in  whatever they're
investigating, so we aren't likely to get it back any time soon. It could be a
month, it could  be never."

It's been three months as I write this and, not only has nothing been
returned to them, but, according to Steve Jackson, the Secret Service
will no longer take his calls.  He figures that, in the months since the
raid, his little company has lost an estimated $125,000.  With such a
fiscal hemorrhage, he can't afford a lawyer to take after the Secret
Service.  Both the state and national offices of the ACLU told him to
"run along" when he solicited their help.

He tried to go to the press.  As in most other cases, they were
unwilling to raise the alarm.  Jackson theorized, "The conservative
press is taking the attitude that the suppression of evil hackers is a
good thing and that anyone who happens to be put out of business in
the meantime...well, that's just their tough luck."

In fact, Newsweek did run a story about the event, portraying it from
Jackson's perspective, but they were almost alone in dealing with it.

What had he done to deserve this nightmare?  Role-playing games, of
which Dungeons and Dragons is the most famous, have been accused
of creating obsessive involvement in their nerdy young players, but
no one before had found it necessary to prevent their publication.

It seems that Steve Jackson had hired the wrong writer.  The
managing editor of Steve Jackson Games is a former cracker,  known
by his fellows in the Legion of Doom as The Mentor.  At the time of
the raid, he and the rest of Jackson staff had been working for over a
year on a game called GURPS Cyberpunk, High-Tech Low-Life Role-
Playing.

At the time of the Secret Service raids, the game resided entirely on
the hard disks they confiscated.  Indeed, it was their target.  They told
Jackson that, based on its author's background, they had reason to
believe it was a "handbook on computer crime."  It was therefore
inappropriate for publication, 1st Amendment or no 1st Amendment.

> [Пеpвая попpавка к Конституции США гаpантиpует свободу слова. -- MB]

I got a copy of the game from the trunk of The Mentor's car in an
Austin parking lot.  Like the Bell South document, it seemed pretty
innocuous to me, if a little inscrutable.   Borrowing its flavor from the
works of William Gibson and Austin sci-fi author Bruce Sterling, it is
filled with silicon brain implants, holodecks, and gauss guns.

It is, as the cover copy puts it, "a fusion of the dystopian visions of
George Orwell and Timothy Leary." Actually, without the gizmos, it
describes a future kind of like the present its publisher is
experiencing at the hands of the Secret Service.

>[To /20: так значит демокpатия от диктатуpы отличается наличием свободы
>слова? -- MB]

An unbelievably Byzantine world resides within its 120 large pages
of small print.  (These roll-players must be some kind of idiots
savants...)

> [Навеpное, я должен на это обидеться... 8) -- MB]

  Indeed, it's a thing of such complexity that I can't swear
there's no criminal information in there, but then I can't swear that
Grateful Dead records don't have satanic messages if played
backwards.  Anything's possible, especially inside something as
remarkable as Cyberpunk.

The most remarkable thing about Cyberpunk is the fact that it was
printed at all.  After much negotiation, Jackson was able to get the
Secret Service to let him have some of his data back.  However, they
told him that he would be limited to an hour and a half with only one
of his three computers.  Also, according to Jackson, "They insisted
that all the copies be made by a Secret Service agent who was a two-
finger typist.  So we didn't get much. "

In the end, Jackson and his staff had to reconstruct most of the game
from neural rather than magnetic memory.  They did have a few very
old backups, and they retrieved some scraps which had been passed
around to game testers.  They also had the determination of the
enraged.

Despite government efforts to impose censorship by prior restraint,
Cyberpunk is now on the market.  Presumably, advertising it as "The
book that was seized by the U.S. Secret Service" will invigorate sales.
But Steve Jackson Games, the heretofore prosperous publisher of
more than a hundred role-playing games, has been forced to lay off
more than half of its employees and may well be mortally wounded.

Any employer who has heard this tale will think hard before he hires
a computer cracker.  Which may be, of course, among the effects the
Secret Service desires.


=== Cut ===


                                 With best wishes,
           Max

Kime: Если быть откpовенным до конца, никогда нельзя быть откpовенным до конца.

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