WEBVTT - Operation Sundevil and the Birth of the EFF - Part One 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.120 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:17.599 I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.000 here at how Stuff Works, and I want to talk 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:26.400 today about something really fascinating. First, I'm gonna give you 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:30.280 guys a little peek behind the curtain. Typically, when I 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:32.959 decide upon a topic, let's say it's one that I've 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:36.559 just decided I want to cover that wasn't necessarily a 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:40.680 request from a listener, sometimes I find out through my 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.800 research that I've made an error in judgment. Right. I 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:48.040 might discover that perhaps the topic I wanted to cover 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:51.360 isn't as interesting as I thought, or that there is 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.400 some aspect of it that is more interesting than what 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.920 I thought the story was going to be about. So 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:00.279 that's the case with today's episode. I was originally going 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.760 to do an episode just about how the Electronic Frontier 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.120 Foundation works, the e f F, and I probably still 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.320 will do that, in fact, it might be the episode 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:13.880 that follows this one. But as I was researching this, 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:16.680 and I was researching the whole founding of the e 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:19.560 f F, it made me dive into a deeper and 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:24.440 deeper investigation into the events that led up to the 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.320 necessity for the Electronic Frontier Foundation to become a thing. 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.000 And that story is so fascinating, and I was actually 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:36.720 surprised that I didn't know it. I don't have any 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.640 memory of hearing about this story, and it's possible that 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.959 I've just forgotten. But it's a story that I should 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:47.640 know for multiple reasons. One, it involves some people here 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:53.920 in Atlanta, where I am based. It too. It involves uh, 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:57.400 a big staying operation that the Secret Service did in 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:03.280 nine three. It involves a game company that I'm a 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:10.240 fan of and that had a tenuous, if best, connection 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.920 to all of the shenanigans that went on. So there's 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:16.240 all these different elements at play where I should have 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:20.040 known this story already, especially considering that I've done research 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:23.239 on hacking, and and yet I didn't really remember it. 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.560 And I thought, I want to tell this story, and 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:28.720 it's been told by other people, and it's been told 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.520 well by other people, but this is my stab at it. 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:35.720 So we're gonna talk about a big sting operation called 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.320 Operations Sun Devil, and we're gonna talk about how that 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:42.960 led to the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation or 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:45.320 the e f F. So let's talk a little bit 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:47.160 about the e f F in general, in case you're 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.880 not familiar with this organization. It's the leading nonprofit organization 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.320 defending civil liberties in the digital world, and it's based 0:02:54.480 --> 0:03:00.200 in San Francisco, California. It's dedicated to promoting Internet civil liberty. 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.880 So it's a lot like the American Civil Liberties Union 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.720 or a c l U, except its specifically dedicated to 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:12.800 championing civil liberties in the realm of the Internet. So 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.200 online civil liberties for the most part is what it 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:21.040 focuses on. UH and the e f has a website. Obviously, 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:23.400 they have a very strong web presence, as you would 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:29.119 imagine considering their focus, and they have this specific statement 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:35.840 about their organization says, blending the expertise of lawyers, policy analysts, activists, 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:40.640 and technologists, e f F achieves significant victories on behalf 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.240 of consumers and the general public. E f fights for 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:48.040 freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits, even 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.960 when that means taking on the US government or large corporations. 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:56.440 By mobilizing more than one d forty thousand concerned citizens 0:03:56.440 --> 0:04:01.000 through our action center, e f F beats back back legislation. 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.920 In addition to advising policymakers, e f educates the press 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:08.880 and public. E f F is a donor funded nonprofit 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:12.400 and depends on your support to continue successfully defending your 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:16.440 digital rights. Litigation is particularly expensive because two thirds of 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:20.359 our budget comes from individual donors. Every contribution is critical 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:23.520 to helping e f fight and win more cases, so 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.760 it is a nonprofit. They do use that money to 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:31.720 help fund legal cases, either defending people from what they 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:36.360 see as an overreach on the part of various entities, 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.840 or to help people lay a claim against those entities 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.680 in the case where their their civil liberties were perhaps violated. 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.160 And as I as I said, as I was looking 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.320 into this organization, which I had heard a lot about obviously, 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:55.760 and I followed e f f H news stories for years, 0:04:56.200 --> 0:05:00.839 and how they've supported concepts like net neutrality and online 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:06.240 privacy and other protections that they feel everyone should enjoy 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:10.159 as citizens of the internet. Uh, I had never really 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.880 looked into the backstory behind it. They do use their 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.640 funds to help provide for legal defense in cases in 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.799 which the organization determines the accused may have their civil 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:23.160 liberties infringed upon, and it was founded back in nine 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:27.520 in response to a threat to free speech. So here's 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:30.479 a quick overview and then we're gonna dive deep into 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.880 this story. The United States Secret Service was on a 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.719 mission back in the late eighties and early nineties which 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:39.440 was to track down the distribution of a document that 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:43.400 was copied off of a Bell South computer system. That 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:48.000 document described how enhanced emergency nine one one systems worked, 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:51.160 and it was called the Shorthand version was called the 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.040 E nine eleven document, and as opposed on Boing Boing 0:05:55.120 --> 0:06:00.200 once said, it's an historic, incredibly dull technical document, which 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:04.480 is true. You would actually read it. You probably read 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:07.720 yourself to sleep pretty quickly. But it was also a 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:11.760 very important document detailing a very sensitive part of the 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:16.880 phone system infrastructure in regards to emergency systems, and it 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.080 ended up playing a big part in a huge nationwide 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.920 sweep of hackers that would later be known as Operation 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.880 Sun Devil. The United States Attorney's Office in Phoenix, Arizona, 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:32.480 would announce that operation on May nine, nine nine. The 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:36.880 day before May, law enforcement officials carried out twenty seven 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:40.840 search warrants. They made three actual arrests and carried out 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:45.160 operations and at least a dozen cities. Now, official accounts 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:50.800 from different agencies and different areas have a different number 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.480 of how many cities were involved, but it's usually at 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.600 the very least twelve and sometimes upwards of fourteen or fifteen. 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.520 The entities that were responsed bull or at least given 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:06.320 credit for operations on Devil would include the Assistant Attorney 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.520 General of Arizona, who is Gail Thackeray at the time, 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.440 the Assistant U S Attorney Tim Holtzon, and the U 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:18.160 S Secret Service. The Assistant Director of the Secret Service, 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.760 Gary M. Jenkins, gave a statement at the press event 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.920 that summarized the government's perspective. Uh here's a selection of 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:30.000 what Mr Jenkins said today. The Secret Service is sending 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:33.040 a clear message to those computer hackers who have decided 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:35.840 to violate the laws of this nation in the mistaken 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:40.040 belief that they can successfully avoid detection by hiding behind 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:44.640 the relative anonymity of their computer terminals. Underground groups have 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.280 been formed for the purpose of exchanging information relevant to 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:52.040 their criminal activities. These groups often communicate with each other 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:57.720 through message systems between computers called bulletin boards. Our experience 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.960 shows that many computer hackers suspects are no longer misguided 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:05.160 teenagers mischievously playing games with their computers in their bedrooms. 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:09.080 Some are now high tech computer operators using computers to 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:14.200 engage in unlawful conduct. This was a complicated statement to 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:19.760 make back in because technology was outpacing the legal system. 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:22.440 So while you could argue that some of the things 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.520 that were happening were against the law, it was a 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.480 lot more challenging to find which law it was against. 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.880 In some cases, it really didn't make sense to charge 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:34.400 the person with anything because there just weren't any laws 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:39.280 that were relevant in that case, which became extremely problematic. 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:44.440 Now the story dates way back further than if we 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.839 want to understand the series of events that led up 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:51.360 to Operations Sun Devil and then ultimately to the foundation 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:54.720 of the e f F. So this is gonna be 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.560 kind of a gather around the campfire and listen to 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.840 Grandpa tell you as a tail, that's what's happening right now. 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.559 So get some high coco, get some marshmallows for roasting. 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:08.600 We're gonna have ourselves story time right now. And I 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:15.400 think it's a pretty fascinating story. Now to understand this, uh, 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.280 you know, I keep peeling back layers whenever I go 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:20.959 into history, and it always seems like I go further 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:23.200 back than I need to. But that's really so that 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:27.040 we can kind of see where things were headed when 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:32.080 the events were interested in really took off. So to 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:39.439 understand the hacker motivation, you have to look at previous movements, 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.199 things that kind of had that same sort of philosophy 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:47.599 that fed into the formation of hacker culture. And I 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:50.120 would argue that a lot of that grew primarily out 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.880 of an older movement called freaking. Freaking had to do 0:09:55.040 --> 0:10:00.400 with phones, phone systems, not not computer systems. So you 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.839 think of hacker is to computer as freaker is to 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:08.080 phone systems. But we'll talk more about freaking in a second. 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:10.720 But freaking, in turn, was fueled in part by a 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:14.480 powerful anti authoritarian sentiment that was running in the United 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:18.520 States in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. This was 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:20.920 the time of political turmoil in the United States. The 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:25.240 Vietnam War had created an enormous cultural divide in the country, 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:30.040 with a growing population of people, mostly young people, feeling 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.880 underrepresented and exploited. Because it was the young people who 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:37.040 were being sent overseas in their mind just to die 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:39.800 in jungles, and a lot of people felt that no 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.160 one was listening to their voices, and this gave rise 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:45.240 to a movement, several movements. In fact, you had a 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:47.319 lot of different movements in the sixties and seventies, but 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:51.480 one in particular was called the Youth International Party, and 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:55.400 the members of this group called themselves Yippies. He had 0:10:55.440 --> 0:11:01.679 hippies and yippies. Yippies were largely anarchists. They had a 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:07.520 deep distrust of authority and government. They also celebrated in 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:15.320 lots of acts that were hedonistic, perhaps, including things like 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:21.559 drug abuse and uh and sexual exploration. Stuff that's kind 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:25.840 of put towards the hippies as well. In this era 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:28.280 of the late sixties and early seventies, it was largely 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:30.920 the era of free love. So a lot of this 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.120 stuff is all kind of feeding in on itself. And 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:36.040 they rejected the trappings of government. They felt that the 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:39.960 system had previously rejected them, so they're now rejecting it back. 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:43.360 And many of their activities, like I said, fell on 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:49.160 this kind of questionable criminal side in some cases, and 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.319 they kind of celebrated in that as well, and increasingly 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:56.360 popular activity for yippies was coming up with different ways 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.440 to rip off the system. So this is kind of 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.200 where that can of the man comes into play, where 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:05.480 you've got the man that's the authority figure, and how 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:07.520 can you stick it to the man. What can you 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:11.200 do that will be at least a tiny irritation to them? 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.200 And one of the things that yippies like to do 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:19.199 was find ways to game a system to get stuff 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:22.079 for free. Not just to get free stuff, although more 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:24.760 and more people did start doing it just for that, 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:31.839 but because their money would not go to large corporations 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:34.360 and tax money would not go to the government to 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:38.040 fund what they saw as an unjust and perhaps even 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:42.320 illegal war in their eyes. So they thought, well, you know, 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:46.240 if you're gonna take these actions, I'm not gonna enable you. 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:49.240 I'm not gonna pay money to you. I'll find ways 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:52.079 to get the stuff I want for free. And so 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:55.520 it's kind of like almost like a robin Hood mentality, 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.439 although around in a roundabout way, and obviously some people 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:03.840 were less concerned with that aspect of the philosophy and 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.600 they just want their hands on the free stuff. So 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:10.440 there are a lot of folks who were enjoying the 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:15.079 thrill of stealing essentially, and they didn't really care if 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:19.360 there was any political statement associated with that. They were 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.320 mostly concerned with getting the stuff for free and perhaps 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.360 causing a little trouble in the process. Now this leads 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:29.960 up to the nineteen seventies when phone freaking really became 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:33.520 a big activity. And I've done a full episode on 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:35.920 freaking in the past, so if you want to check 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:38.240 that out, it's freaking a spelled with a pH, because 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.840 of course it's all about the phone systems, but essentially 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:44.600 it's all about manipulating those phone systems in different ways, 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:50.640 typically to navigate through the various subsystems that phone companies have, 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:54.480 sometimes to make long distance phone calls for free, or 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.120 to do other mischievous things like reroute calls so that 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:00.720 they don't go to where they're supposed to go. That's 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:02.880 all part of phone freaking. And there were some pretty 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:06.760 famous people who were into that that scene, like Steve 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:10.440 Wozniak and Steve Jobs. They were really into the phone 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:14.120 freaking stuff in the seventies. Really, Steve Wozniak was more 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:18.559 of the one who would design the the technology that 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:20.840 would take advantage of phone systems, and Steve Jobs just 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:23.800 thought it was kind of funny and also was trying 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:33.520 to find ways to sell it. Curious folks also were 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:35.960 just wanting to know how the phone systems were. Some 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:38.920 people weren't into phone freaking to cause mischief. They just 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:41.720 wanted to know how does this work, like what what 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.640 makes it tick? And they would sort of reverse engineer 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:50.280 the phone system from the outside. Just pretty ingenious and 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:55.400 there's some great stories from the phone freaking days. And uh, 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:58.680 they weren't necessarily trying to exploit the system, but rather 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:01.360 just understand it, and so would engage in exploiting that 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:04.360 knowledge later on, sometimes just to test it, sometimes just 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.960 to have fun. Um. Some ended up doing it as 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:10.360 a way to show off their skill and understanding. So 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:13.760 they might pull a big prank, but it's so that 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:18.480 they can impress their friends in the freaking community. And 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:22.360 some did it because hey, man, free long distance. Once 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:26.120 upon a time, long distance was not free. You paid 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:29.440 for that. Every minute you were on the phone on 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.560 a long distance call, you were racking up charges. That 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:35.480 doesn't tend to be the case today. Long distance today 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:39.040 is largely meaningless. But for a long time, that was 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:41.080 a big deal, and if you happen to have friends 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:45.000 and distant places, then you know you might bristle at 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:46.880 the thought of having to pay extra just to talk 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:48.880 to them. A lot of freakers felt that it was 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:52.560 not really justified, and they also didn't really see the 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:56.800 use of their knowledge of the system being used to 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:58.920 make free long distance calls. They didn't see that as 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:04.440 theft of service because nothing's really being lost, although there 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.000 were lots of different methods that would end up costing 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:12.040 other people. Typically, freakers would reroute information so that they 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:14.520 can make long distance calls and someone else gets footed 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:19.040 for the bill. Many freakers would target companies or notable 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:23.480 personalities as the recipient of that phone bill because they 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:25.920 thought was funny or they just felt again like they 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:28.800 were sticking it to the man. Other people just didn't 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:30.600 care who the bill went to as long as it 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:37.040 wasn't them. So V two You Get a magazine called Ramparts, 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:40.760 and Ramparts published an article that detailed how to make 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.400 a device called a blue box that would allow users 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:46.880 to receive long distance calls in such a way that 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:48.600 the person on the other end of the call would 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:50.960 not get billed for it, they'd be able to make 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:52.760 it for free. So if you had one of these 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:56.520 blue boxes attached to your phone and someone from another 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:59.600 state called you, it would act as if it was 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:02.080 a local call, or that there was no call at all, 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:06.159 and you could have that call for free. You couldn't 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:09.040 make outgoing calls for free, but you could accept incoming 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:11.199 calls and the other person would never get charged for it. 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.000 The box would do this by mimicking the phone system's 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:19.880 signal tone to UH to fool the system into allowing 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:25.760 this to happen. Now, police acting on behalf of Pacific 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:31.040 Bell raided Ramparts magazine and required the company to recall issues. 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:35.200 They also seized issues on newsstands, which ended up driving 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:39.240 Ramparts out of business, and this brought up some questions 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:43.080 about free speech, like could a an instrument of the 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:46.480 free press publish something and have the government come in 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:52.800 and effectively shut down the the the journal. But even 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:55.720 though these questions came up, no one really pursued them 0:17:55.760 --> 0:18:00.359 with any tenacity. So a lot of people seemed to 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.480 feel like Ramparts had overstepped its bounce, like it had 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:07.600 published something that was meant to be kept away from 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.000 the public, and that that was not the realm of 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:14.280 free press that you know, you can't just because you 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:16.960 have free press, you can't do something that might be illegal. 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.959 And it was technically against the law according to California 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.960 State Penal Code Section five oh two point seven, which 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.760 says it is illegal to sell plans for any instrument, apparatus, 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:32.040 or device intended to avoid telephone toll charges. So you 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:34.600 could argue, while, it's against the law because you're selling 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:36.560 the magazine, and the magazine has an article in it 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:39.080 that tells you how to get around toll charges, so 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.520 therefore it breaks this law. However, you could then argue, well, 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:48.080 that law is unconstitutional because of free speech, but Ramparts 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:51.280 didn't have the luxury of arguing that, and so the 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:55.879 company went under. Now, the yippie movement began to transform 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:58.720 as the Vietnam War was ending. A lot of political 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:04.600 motivation transitioned into anti corporate philosophy and the Youth International 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:09.520 Party Line, which was a newsletter that had been in 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:13.639 publication for a few years and would document different activities 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.720 and ways to stick it to the man, changed gradually 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:22.560 into a new format called the Technical Assistance Program or TAP, 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:25.880 and TAP was largely a parody of the technical documents 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:29.680 you could find at places like Bell Systems. Only here's 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:34.440 the thing. The documents that TAP would publish were supposed 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.560 to again be internal corporate documents. They weren't supposed to 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:43.320 be exposed to to the public. Uh. And it again 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:47.919 was raising some questions is it ethical to publish something 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:52.080 that is an internal document of another company? And raised 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:56.639 questions about intellectual property and again freedom of speech. Uh. 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:00.679 TAP itself fizzled out in the late nineteen seventies, but 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:05.879 this wasn't due to any pressure from the government. Uh. 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:08.840 This was also a time of transformation. Phone systems were 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:12.600 becoming digitized and that would lead to a new era. People, 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:19.440 mostly young men, became interested in a new emerging technology, computers. 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:24.080 So from the sixties through the seventies, computers were largely 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:27.680 the domain of colleges. So you did have some hackers 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:30.600 in those early days who were working on different computer 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:35.120 systems and creating interesting programs and making computers do stuff 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:38.320 that their creators didn't necessarily intend for them to do, 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:41.840 but didn't really take off until the late seventies, and 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.840 by night the nineties, freaking would largely give way to 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:48.399 computer hacking, in which curious people began to prod at 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:52.520 various systems, whether they were individual computers or networked machines, 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:55.840 in order to see how those systems worked, and some 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:58.159 people would take advantage of that knowledge and end up 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:01.840 getting a bit mischievous. So this is when we can 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:05.639 once again touch on the differences in the concepts of 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:10.720 hacker versus cracker for lack of a better term. So 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:15.520 if you go by the strictly traditional, original definition of hacker, 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:19.040 that would be someone who wants to learn how something works, 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.800 typically by taking it apart and examining all the parts 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:24.960 and putting it back together, maybe putting it back together 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:26.959 in a different way, so that the thing that they 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:29.840 were using is now behaving in a different way, it 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:33.760 can do different stuff. Those are all hacks. Whether it's 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:38.840 physical or with software, it's a hack. It's not necessarily elegant, 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:43.399 but ideally it just works. So you might create a 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:46.400 computer program and call it a hack because you were 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:50.240 just trying to get to a specific goal, and it 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:52.880 didn't really matter how you got there or how much 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:55.560 code it took or how pretty it was, as long 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:59.200 as it would give you the output. You wanted. Hackers 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:02.280 worked with in code and in actual physical circuits. They 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.560 might take machines apart literally and put them back together. 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:09.320 And they might infiltrate a computer system just to kind 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:11.879 of snoop around and see what makes it tick, like 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.199 just again to get that knowledge of what's going on 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:17.960 and how it all works together. But strictly speaking, hackers 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:22.080 are not inherently malicious. They might be a bit mischievous, 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:26.679 but they're not necessarily out to cause problems. Crackers, on 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.159 the other hand, would use their knowledge and experience to 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:33.800 exploit systems in some way, and that could include anything 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:38.240 from theft to sabotage. And these are the types of 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:41.919 people who work for profit. They're using their knowledge to 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:45.560 leverage a system in some way in order to profit 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:53.040 from it, either financially or otherwise. And that's regardless of ethics. 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:55.960 It doesn't really matter who the target is, uh, They're 0:22:56.000 --> 0:22:59.840 just using their their expertise and their abilities and knowledge 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:02.440 to you make money off of this in some way 0:23:02.560 --> 0:23:06.200 or to otherwise benefit from it in some way. Now, 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:09.840 over time, those two definitions have kind of merged and 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.320 all become part of just the word hacker. So if 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:16.040 you use the word hacker. A lot of people immediately 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:20.560 think of someone who is specifically intent on infiltrating a 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:24.880 computer system for some reason, whether it's to poke around 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:30.840 or to spy, or to cause the system to collapse 0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:33.520 in some way, it all tends to get lumped under 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:36.800 the term hacker. So I'll be talking about the word 0:23:36.800 --> 0:23:39.680 hacker in the very general sense from this point forward, 0:23:40.359 --> 0:23:42.120 because that's how most of us think of it at 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:45.120 this point anyway. And and to be fair, there are 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:47.960 lots and lots of examples of hackers causing this shift 0:23:48.040 --> 0:23:51.680 or giving into the urge to steal, and I think 0:23:51.720 --> 0:23:54.520 that kind of justifies this point of view about hackers 0:23:54.600 --> 0:24:00.520 being a broader term. So in the hacking community, one 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:04.680 of the most important elements is respect among your peers. 0:24:05.720 --> 0:24:08.320 There are hackers out there who just want to use 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:12.200 their their talents or often just the tools at their 0:24:12.240 --> 0:24:15.840 disposal in order to make a profit. But quote unquote, 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:20.959 real hackers tend to look down on those people because 0:24:21.480 --> 0:24:26.920 they like to get into systems for other reasons, reasons 0:24:26.920 --> 0:24:32.680 they consider to be above material gain. However, the esteem 0:24:32.840 --> 0:24:36.640 of their fellow hackers is something that they crave, so 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:40.480 it's kind of a digital currency, respect among your peers. 0:24:40.520 --> 0:24:45.040 It's an important system. So if you are a hacker 0:24:46.240 --> 0:24:50.160 and you gain access to a system that is known 0:24:50.240 --> 0:24:55.360 to be particularly robust with very good security, then that's 0:24:55.359 --> 0:24:57.199 a badge of honor. But it's only a badge of 0:24:57.200 --> 0:24:59.359 honor if people know about it. Now, this is a 0:24:59.400 --> 0:25:03.320 double edged sword because as a hacker, if you're really good, 0:25:03.640 --> 0:25:07.320 you're covering your tracks so that the people who are 0:25:07.359 --> 0:25:10.960 in control of whatever system you're checking out don't notice 0:25:11.000 --> 0:25:13.280 that you are there. You don't want to leave any 0:25:13.320 --> 0:25:16.560 evidence behind that you were there because you don't want 0:25:16.560 --> 0:25:19.760 to get caught. But the on the flip side, you 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:22.919