Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: here at how Stuff Works, and I want to talk
Speaker 1: today about something really fascinating. First, I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: guys a little peek behind the curtain. Typically, when I
Speaker 1: decide upon a topic, let's say it's one that I've
Speaker 1: just decided I want to cover that wasn't necessarily a
Speaker 1: request from a listener, sometimes I find out through my
Speaker 1: research that I've made an error in judgment. Right. I
Speaker 1: might discover that perhaps the topic I wanted to cover
Speaker 1: isn't as interesting as I thought, or that there is
Speaker 1: some aspect of it that is more interesting than what
Speaker 1: I thought the story was going to be about. So
Speaker 1: that's the case with today's episode. I was originally going
Speaker 1: to do an episode just about how the Electronic Frontier
Speaker 1: Foundation works, the e f F, and I probably still
Speaker 1: will do that, in fact, it might be the episode
Speaker 1: that follows this one. But as I was researching this,
Speaker 1: and I was researching the whole founding of the e
Speaker 1: f F, it made me dive into a deeper and
Speaker 1: deeper investigation into the events that led up to the
Speaker 1: necessity for the Electronic Frontier Foundation to become a thing.
Speaker 1: And that story is so fascinating, and I was actually
Speaker 1: surprised that I didn't know it. I don't have any
Speaker 1: memory of hearing about this story, and it's possible that
Speaker 1: I've just forgotten. But it's a story that I should
Speaker 1: know for multiple reasons. One, it involves some people here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, where I am based. It too. It involves uh,
Speaker 1: a big staying operation that the Secret Service did in
Speaker 1: nine three. It involves a game company that I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of and that had a tenuous, if best, connection
Speaker 1: to all of the shenanigans that went on. So there's
Speaker 1: all these different elements at play where I should have
Speaker 1: known this story already, especially considering that I've done research
Speaker 1: on hacking, and and yet I didn't really remember it.
Speaker 1: And I thought, I want to tell this story, and
Speaker 1: it's been told by other people, and it's been told
Speaker 1: well by other people, but this is my stab at it.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about a big sting operation called
Speaker 1: Operations Sun Devil, and we're gonna talk about how that
Speaker 1: led to the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation or
Speaker 1: the e f F. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the e f F in general, in case you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with this organization. It's the leading nonprofit organization
Speaker 1: defending civil liberties in the digital world, and it's based
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, California. It's dedicated to promoting Internet civil liberty.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot like the American Civil Liberties Union
Speaker 1: or a c l U, except its specifically dedicated to
Speaker 1: championing civil liberties in the realm of the Internet. So
Speaker 1: online civil liberties for the most part is what it
Speaker 1: focuses on. UH and the e f has a website. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they have a very strong web presence, as you would
Speaker 1: imagine considering their focus, and they have this specific statement
Speaker 1: about their organization says, blending the expertise of lawyers, policy analysts, activists,
Speaker 1: and technologists, e f F achieves significant victories on behalf
Speaker 1: of consumers and the general public. E f fights for
Speaker 1: freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits, even
Speaker 1: when that means taking on the US government or large corporations.
Speaker 1: By mobilizing more than one d forty thousand concerned citizens
Speaker 1: through our action center, e f F beats back back legislation.
Speaker 1: In addition to advising policymakers, e f educates the press
Speaker 1: and public. E f F is a donor funded nonprofit
Speaker 1: and depends on your support to continue successfully defending your
Speaker 1: digital rights. Litigation is particularly expensive because two thirds of
Speaker 1: our budget comes from individual donors. Every contribution is critical
Speaker 1: to helping e f fight and win more cases, so
Speaker 1: it is a nonprofit. They do use that money to
Speaker 1: help fund legal cases, either defending people from what they
Speaker 1: see as an overreach on the part of various entities,
Speaker 1: or to help people lay a claim against those entities
Speaker 1: in the case where their their civil liberties were perhaps violated.
Speaker 1: And as I as I said, as I was looking
Speaker 1: into this organization, which I had heard a lot about obviously,
Speaker 1: and I followed e f f H news stories for years,
Speaker 1: and how they've supported concepts like net neutrality and online
Speaker 1: privacy and other protections that they feel everyone should enjoy
Speaker 1: as citizens of the internet. Uh, I had never really
Speaker 1: looked into the backstory behind it. They do use their
Speaker 1: funds to help provide for legal defense in cases in
Speaker 1: which the organization determines the accused may have their civil
Speaker 1: liberties infringed upon, and it was founded back in nine
Speaker 1: in response to a threat to free speech. So here's
Speaker 1: a quick overview and then we're gonna dive deep into
Speaker 1: this story. The United States Secret Service was on a
Speaker 1: mission back in the late eighties and early nineties which
Speaker 1: was to track down the distribution of a document that
Speaker 1: was copied off of a Bell South computer system. That
Speaker 1: document described how enhanced emergency nine one one systems worked,
Speaker 1: and it was called the Shorthand version was called the
Speaker 1: E nine eleven document, and as opposed on Boing Boing
Speaker 1: once said, it's an historic, incredibly dull technical document, which
Speaker 1: is true. You would actually read it. You probably read
Speaker 1: yourself to sleep pretty quickly. But it was also a
Speaker 1: very important document detailing a very sensitive part of the
Speaker 1: phone system infrastructure in regards to emergency systems, and it
Speaker 1: ended up playing a big part in a huge nationwide
Speaker 1: sweep of hackers that would later be known as Operation
Speaker 1: Sun Devil. The United States Attorney's Office in Phoenix, Arizona,
Speaker 1: would announce that operation on May nine, nine nine. The
Speaker 1: day before May, law enforcement officials carried out twenty seven
Speaker 1: search warrants. They made three actual arrests and carried out
Speaker 1: operations and at least a dozen cities. Now, official accounts
Speaker 1: from different agencies and different areas have a different number
Speaker 1: of how many cities were involved, but it's usually at
Speaker 1: the very least twelve and sometimes upwards of fourteen or fifteen.
Speaker 1: The entities that were responsed bull or at least given
Speaker 1: credit for operations on Devil would include the Assistant Attorney
Speaker 1: General of Arizona, who is Gail Thackeray at the time,
Speaker 1: the Assistant U S Attorney Tim Holtzon, and the U
Speaker 1: S Secret Service. The Assistant Director of the Secret Service,
Speaker 1: Gary M. Jenkins, gave a statement at the press event
Speaker 1: that summarized the government's perspective. Uh here's a selection of
Speaker 1: what Mr Jenkins said today. The Secret Service is sending
Speaker 1: a clear message to those computer hackers who have decided
Speaker 1: to violate the laws of this nation in the mistaken
Speaker 1: belief that they can successfully avoid detection by hiding behind
Speaker 1: the relative anonymity of their computer terminals. Underground groups have
Speaker 1: been formed for the purpose of exchanging information relevant to
Speaker 1: their criminal activities. These groups often communicate with each other
Speaker 1: through message systems between computers called bulletin boards. Our experience
Speaker 1: shows that many computer hackers suspects are no longer misguided
Speaker 1: teenagers mischievously playing games with their computers in their bedrooms.
Speaker 1: Some are now high tech computer operators using computers to
Speaker 1: engage in unlawful conduct. This was a complicated statement to
Speaker 1: make back in because technology was outpacing the legal system.
Speaker 1: So while you could argue that some of the things
Speaker 1: that were happening were against the law, it was a
Speaker 1: lot more challenging to find which law it was against.
Speaker 1: In some cases, it really didn't make sense to charge
Speaker 1: the person with anything because there just weren't any laws
Speaker 1: that were relevant in that case, which became extremely problematic.
Speaker 1: Now the story dates way back further than if we
Speaker 1: want to understand the series of events that led up
Speaker 1: to Operations Sun Devil and then ultimately to the foundation
Speaker 1: of the e f F. So this is gonna be
Speaker 1: kind of a gather around the campfire and listen to
Speaker 1: Grandpa tell you as a tail, that's what's happening right now.
Speaker 1: So get some high coco, get some marshmallows for roasting.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have ourselves story time right now. And I
Speaker 1: think it's a pretty fascinating story. Now to understand this, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I keep peeling back layers whenever I go
Speaker 1: into history, and it always seems like I go further
Speaker 1: back than I need to. But that's really so that
Speaker 1: we can kind of see where things were headed when
Speaker 1: the events were interested in really took off. So to
Speaker 1: understand the hacker motivation, you have to look at previous movements,
Speaker 1: things that kind of had that same sort of philosophy
Speaker 1: that fed into the formation of hacker culture. And I
Speaker 1: would argue that a lot of that grew primarily out
Speaker 1: of an older movement called freaking. Freaking had to do
Speaker 1: with phones, phone systems, not not computer systems. So you
Speaker 1: think of hacker is to computer as freaker is to
Speaker 1: phone systems. But we'll talk more about freaking in a second.
Speaker 1: But freaking, in turn, was fueled in part by a
Speaker 1: powerful anti authoritarian sentiment that was running in the United
Speaker 1: States in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. This was
Speaker 1: the time of political turmoil in the United States. The
Speaker 1: Vietnam War had created an enormous cultural divide in the country,
Speaker 1: with a growing population of people, mostly young people, feeling
Speaker 1: underrepresented and exploited. Because it was the young people who
Speaker 1: were being sent overseas in their mind just to die
Speaker 1: in jungles, and a lot of people felt that no
Speaker 1: one was listening to their voices, and this gave rise
Speaker 1: to a movement, several movements. In fact, you had a
Speaker 1: lot of different movements in the sixties and seventies, but
Speaker 1: one in particular was called the Youth International Party, and
Speaker 1: the members of this group called themselves Yippies. He had
Speaker 1: hippies and yippies. Yippies were largely anarchists. They had a
Speaker 1: deep distrust of authority and government. They also celebrated in
Speaker 1: lots of acts that were hedonistic, perhaps, including things like
Speaker 1: drug abuse and uh and sexual exploration. Stuff that's kind
Speaker 1: of put towards the hippies as well. In this era
Speaker 1: of the late sixties and early seventies, it was largely
Speaker 1: the era of free love. So a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff is all kind of feeding in on itself. And
Speaker 1: they rejected the trappings of government. They felt that the
Speaker 1: system had previously rejected them, so they're now rejecting it back.
Speaker 1: And many of their activities, like I said, fell on
Speaker 1: this kind of questionable criminal side in some cases, and
Speaker 1: they kind of celebrated in that as well, and increasingly
Speaker 1: popular activity for yippies was coming up with different ways
Speaker 1: to rip off the system. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: where that can of the man comes into play, where
Speaker 1: you've got the man that's the authority figure, and how
Speaker 1: can you stick it to the man. What can you
Speaker 1: do that will be at least a tiny irritation to them?
Speaker 1: And one of the things that yippies like to do
Speaker 1: was find ways to game a system to get stuff
Speaker 1: for free. Not just to get free stuff, although more
Speaker 1: and more people did start doing it just for that,
Speaker 1: but because their money would not go to large corporations
Speaker 1: and tax money would not go to the government to
Speaker 1: fund what they saw as an unjust and perhaps even
Speaker 1: illegal war in their eyes. So they thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna take these actions, I'm not gonna enable you.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna pay money to you. I'll find ways
Speaker 1: to get the stuff I want for free. And so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like almost like a robin Hood mentality,
Speaker 1: although around in a roundabout way, and obviously some people
Speaker 1: were less concerned with that aspect of the philosophy and
Speaker 1: they just want their hands on the free stuff. So
Speaker 1: there are a lot of folks who were enjoying the
Speaker 1: thrill of stealing essentially, and they didn't really care if
Speaker 1: there was any political statement associated with that. They were
Speaker 1: mostly concerned with getting the stuff for free and perhaps
Speaker 1: causing a little trouble in the process. Now this leads
Speaker 1: up to the nineteen seventies when phone freaking really became
Speaker 1: a big activity. And I've done a full episode on
Speaker 1: freaking in the past, so if you want to check
Speaker 1: that out, it's freaking a spelled with a pH, because
Speaker 1: of course it's all about the phone systems, but essentially
Speaker 1: it's all about manipulating those phone systems in different ways,
Speaker 1: typically to navigate through the various subsystems that phone companies have,
Speaker 1: sometimes to make long distance phone calls for free, or
Speaker 1: to do other mischievous things like reroute calls so that
Speaker 1: they don't go to where they're supposed to go. That's
Speaker 1: all part of phone freaking. And there were some pretty
Speaker 1: famous people who were into that that scene, like Steve
Speaker 1: Wozniak and Steve Jobs. They were really into the phone
Speaker 1: freaking stuff in the seventies. Really, Steve Wozniak was more
Speaker 1: of the one who would design the the technology that
Speaker 1: would take advantage of phone systems, and Steve Jobs just
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of funny and also was trying
Speaker 1: to find ways to sell it. Curious folks also were
Speaker 1: just wanting to know how the phone systems were. Some
Speaker 1: people weren't into phone freaking to cause mischief. They just
Speaker 1: wanted to know how does this work, like what what
Speaker 1: makes it tick? And they would sort of reverse engineer
Speaker 1: the phone system from the outside. Just pretty ingenious and
Speaker 1: there's some great stories from the phone freaking days. And uh,
Speaker 1: they weren't necessarily trying to exploit the system, but rather
Speaker 1: just understand it, and so would engage in exploiting that
Speaker 1: knowledge later on, sometimes just to test it, sometimes just
Speaker 1: to have fun. Um. Some ended up doing it as
Speaker 1: a way to show off their skill and understanding. So
Speaker 1: they might pull a big prank, but it's so that
Speaker 1: they can impress their friends in the freaking community. And
Speaker 1: some did it because hey, man, free long distance. Once
Speaker 1: upon a time, long distance was not free. You paid
Speaker 1: for that. Every minute you were on the phone on
Speaker 1: a long distance call, you were racking up charges. That
Speaker 1: doesn't tend to be the case today. Long distance today
Speaker 1: is largely meaningless. But for a long time, that was
Speaker 1: a big deal, and if you happen to have friends
Speaker 1: and distant places, then you know you might bristle at
Speaker 1: the thought of having to pay extra just to talk
Speaker 1: to them. A lot of freakers felt that it was
Speaker 1: not really justified, and they also didn't really see the
Speaker 1: use of their knowledge of the system being used to
Speaker 1: make free long distance calls. They didn't see that as
Speaker 1: theft of service because nothing's really being lost, although there
Speaker 1: were lots of different methods that would end up costing
Speaker 1: other people. Typically, freakers would reroute information so that they
Speaker 1: can make long distance calls and someone else gets footed
Speaker 1: for the bill. Many freakers would target companies or notable
Speaker 1: personalities as the recipient of that phone bill because they
Speaker 1: thought was funny or they just felt again like they
Speaker 1: were sticking it to the man. Other people just didn't
Speaker 1: care who the bill went to as long as it
Speaker 1: wasn't them. So V two You Get a magazine called Ramparts,
Speaker 1: and Ramparts published an article that detailed how to make
Speaker 1: a device called a blue box that would allow users
Speaker 1: to receive long distance calls in such a way that
Speaker 1: the person on the other end of the call would
Speaker 1: not get billed for it, they'd be able to make
Speaker 1: it for free. So if you had one of these
Speaker 1: blue boxes attached to your phone and someone from another
Speaker 1: state called you, it would act as if it was
Speaker 1: a local call, or that there was no call at all,
Speaker 1: and you could have that call for free. You couldn't
Speaker 1: make outgoing calls for free, but you could accept incoming
Speaker 1: calls and the other person would never get charged for it.
Speaker 1: The box would do this by mimicking the phone system's
Speaker 1: signal tone to UH to fool the system into allowing
Speaker 1: this to happen. Now, police acting on behalf of Pacific
Speaker 1: Bell raided Ramparts magazine and required the company to recall issues.
Speaker 1: They also seized issues on newsstands, which ended up driving
Speaker 1: Ramparts out of business, and this brought up some questions
Speaker 1: about free speech, like could a an instrument of the
Speaker 1: free press publish something and have the government come in
Speaker 1: and effectively shut down the the the journal. But even
Speaker 1: though these questions came up, no one really pursued them
Speaker 1: with any tenacity. So a lot of people seemed to
Speaker 1: feel like Ramparts had overstepped its bounce, like it had
Speaker 1: published something that was meant to be kept away from
Speaker 1: the public, and that that was not the realm of
Speaker 1: free press that you know, you can't just because you
Speaker 1: have free press, you can't do something that might be illegal.
Speaker 1: And it was technically against the law according to California
Speaker 1: State Penal Code Section five oh two point seven, which
Speaker 1: says it is illegal to sell plans for any instrument, apparatus,
Speaker 1: or device intended to avoid telephone toll charges. So you
Speaker 1: could argue, while, it's against the law because you're selling
Speaker 1: the magazine, and the magazine has an article in it
Speaker 1: that tells you how to get around toll charges, so
Speaker 1: therefore it breaks this law. However, you could then argue, well,
Speaker 1: that law is unconstitutional because of free speech, but Ramparts
Speaker 1: didn't have the luxury of arguing that, and so the
Speaker 1: company went under. Now, the yippie movement began to transform
Speaker 1: as the Vietnam War was ending. A lot of political
Speaker 1: motivation transitioned into anti corporate philosophy and the Youth International
Speaker 1: Party Line, which was a newsletter that had been in
Speaker 1: publication for a few years and would document different activities
Speaker 1: and ways to stick it to the man, changed gradually
Speaker 1: into a new format called the Technical Assistance Program or TAP,
Speaker 1: and TAP was largely a parody of the technical documents
Speaker 1: you could find at places like Bell Systems. Only here's
Speaker 1: the thing. The documents that TAP would publish were supposed
Speaker 1: to again be internal corporate documents. They weren't supposed to
Speaker 1: be exposed to to the public. Uh. And it again
Speaker 1: was raising some questions is it ethical to publish something
Speaker 1: that is an internal document of another company? And raised
Speaker 1: questions about intellectual property and again freedom of speech. Uh.
Speaker 1: TAP itself fizzled out in the late nineteen seventies, but
Speaker 1: this wasn't due to any pressure from the government. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was also a time of transformation. Phone systems were
Speaker 1: becoming digitized and that would lead to a new era. People,
Speaker 1: mostly young men, became interested in a new emerging technology, computers.
Speaker 1: So from the sixties through the seventies, computers were largely
Speaker 1: the domain of colleges. So you did have some hackers
Speaker 1: in those early days who were working on different computer
Speaker 1: systems and creating interesting programs and making computers do stuff
Speaker 1: that their creators didn't necessarily intend for them to do,
Speaker 1: but didn't really take off until the late seventies, and
Speaker 1: by night the nineties, freaking would largely give way to
Speaker 1: computer hacking, in which curious people began to prod at
Speaker 1: various systems, whether they were individual computers or networked machines,
Speaker 1: in order to see how those systems worked, and some
Speaker 1: people would take advantage of that knowledge and end up
Speaker 1: getting a bit mischievous. So this is when we can
Speaker 1: once again touch on the differences in the concepts of
Speaker 1: hacker versus cracker for lack of a better term. So
Speaker 1: if you go by the strictly traditional, original definition of hacker,
Speaker 1: that would be someone who wants to learn how something works,
Speaker 1: typically by taking it apart and examining all the parts
Speaker 1: and putting it back together, maybe putting it back together
Speaker 1: in a different way, so that the thing that they
Speaker 1: were using is now behaving in a different way, it
Speaker 1: can do different stuff. Those are all hacks. Whether it's
Speaker 1: physical or with software, it's a hack. It's not necessarily elegant,
Speaker 1: but ideally it just works. So you might create a
Speaker 1: computer program and call it a hack because you were
Speaker 1: just trying to get to a specific goal, and it
Speaker 1: didn't really matter how you got there or how much
Speaker 1: code it took or how pretty it was, as long
Speaker 1: as it would give you the output. You wanted. Hackers
Speaker 1: worked with in code and in actual physical circuits. They
Speaker 1: might take machines apart literally and put them back together.
Speaker 1: And they might infiltrate a computer system just to kind
Speaker 1: of snoop around and see what makes it tick, like
Speaker 1: just again to get that knowledge of what's going on
Speaker 1: and how it all works together. But strictly speaking, hackers
Speaker 1: are not inherently malicious. They might be a bit mischievous,
Speaker 1: but they're not necessarily out to cause problems. Crackers, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, would use their knowledge and experience to
Speaker 1: exploit systems in some way, and that could include anything
Speaker 1: from theft to sabotage. And these are the types of
Speaker 1: people who work for profit. They're using their knowledge to
Speaker 1: leverage a system in some way in order to profit
Speaker 1: from it, either financially or otherwise. And that's regardless of ethics.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter who the target is, uh, They're
Speaker 1: just using their their expertise and their abilities and knowledge
Speaker 1: to you make money off of this in some way
Speaker 1: or to otherwise benefit from it in some way. Now,
Speaker 1: over time, those two definitions have kind of merged and
Speaker 1: all become part of just the word hacker. So if
Speaker 1: you use the word hacker. A lot of people immediately
Speaker 1: think of someone who is specifically intent on infiltrating a
Speaker 1: computer system for some reason, whether it's to poke around
Speaker 1: or to spy, or to cause the system to collapse
Speaker 1: in some way, it all tends to get lumped under
Speaker 1: the term hacker. So I'll be talking about the word
Speaker 1: hacker in the very general sense from this point forward,
Speaker 1: because that's how most of us think of it at
Speaker 1: this point anyway. And and to be fair, there are
Speaker 1: lots and lots of examples of hackers causing this shift
Speaker 1: or giving into the urge to steal, and I think
Speaker 1: that kind of justifies this point of view about hackers
Speaker 1: being a broader term. So in the hacking community, one
Speaker 1: of the most important elements is respect among your peers.
Speaker 1: There are hackers out there who just want to use
Speaker 1: their their talents or often just the tools at their
Speaker 1: disposal in order to make a profit. But quote unquote,
Speaker 1: real hackers tend to look down on those people because
Speaker 1: they like to get into systems for other reasons, reasons
Speaker 1: they consider to be above material gain. However, the esteem
Speaker 1: of their fellow hackers is something that they crave, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of a digital currency, respect among your peers.
Speaker 1: It's an important system. So if you are a hacker
Speaker 1: and you gain access to a system that is known
Speaker 1: to be particularly robust with very good security, then that's
Speaker 1: a badge of honor. But it's only a badge of
Speaker 1: honor if people know about it. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: double edged sword because as a hacker, if you're really good,
Speaker 1: you're covering your tracks so that the people who are
Speaker 1: in control of whatever system you're checking out don't notice
Speaker 1: that you are there. You don't want to leave any
Speaker 1: evidence behind that you were there because you don't want
Speaker 1: to get caught. But the on the flip side, you
Speaker 1: do want your fellow hackers to know about your exploits
Speaker 1: because then you can brag about it and you can
Speaker 1: get some cashet that way. So it's a delicate balance.
Speaker 1: Uh So, a hacker might test him or herself in
Speaker 1: an interesting way and then try and take some sort
Speaker 1: of proof of whatever their exploits were so that they
Speaker 1: could brag about it to their peers. And it's because
Speaker 1: again they thrive on that respect and validation that their
Speaker 1: peers could give them. And this could lead also to
Speaker 1: some hackers sidestepping or breaking rules and laws when applicable.
Speaker 1: But again the issue here is that at the time
Speaker 1: there were are not that many laws that specifically dealt
Speaker 1: with the digital side of the world. So there were
Speaker 1: a lot of times where you could argue, yeah, what
Speaker 1: they did was wrong, but there weren't any laws in place,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't illegal for the simple reason that there
Speaker 1: was no law to break. Uh, though later there would
Speaker 1: be laws that would certainly cover that. It's just that, again,
Speaker 1: technology had outpaced the legal system. It was on an
Speaker 1: effort to maintain or gain status, and that was a
Speaker 1: very powerful motivator, powerful enough again to push some hackers
Speaker 1: to doing activities that perhaps they should not have because
Speaker 1: it would have surprised or amazed or delighted their fellow hackers.
Speaker 1: And in order to show that they were truly responsible
Speaker 1: for the acts they got up to, hackers would often
Speaker 1: use information that they could only have through a successful hack,
Speaker 1: and that became sort of their way of saying, look,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm talking about. Here's the proof. So
Speaker 1: you might do this either by giving information about the
Speaker 1: system to other hackers so that they could access that
Speaker 1: same system and thus they would know that you were
Speaker 1: telling the truth, or you might, you know, copy some
Speaker 1: files to prove that you were there and that you
Speaker 1: actually have some evidence of what you did that will
Speaker 1: come back into play later in this episode. So you
Speaker 1: just wanted to prove to people you actually possessed the
Speaker 1: skills and the moxie, not just the skill to get
Speaker 1: into a system, but that you have it, have what
Speaker 1: it takes to actually take those steps, and you're brave
Speaker 1: enough to do it and you're not afraid of getting caught.
Speaker 1: Most hacker groups would actually have their own guidelines and rules,
Speaker 1: largely unspoken but generally agreed upon. So hackers might say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we like to goof around and we like to mess
Speaker 1: with systems and play around and learn how they work
Speaker 1: and sometimes manipulate them a little bit, but we don't
Speaker 1: want to take a system down on purpose, or steal
Speaker 1: money or otherwise do anything for specific financial gain. A
Speaker 1: lot of hacker groups had that kind of unspoken group
Speaker 1: of rules that guided their own ethical decisions were what
Speaker 1: they saw as ethical decisions. Breaking the rules if you
Speaker 1: were part of this hacker group, but typically get you
Speaker 1: ostracized from that group, and if you broke the rules
Speaker 1: badly enough, or if you were a repeat offender. A
Speaker 1: hacker might even report you to the authorities. Hackers frequently
Speaker 1: would do this in order to get rid of problematic individuals.
Speaker 1: They might say, like, this person is just stirring up trouble,
Speaker 1: and even if that trouble never comes back to us,
Speaker 1: I still find it distasteful, and so therefore I'm going
Speaker 1: to give up their identity to someone authority because they
Speaker 1: have broken these rules. So there was some honor among hackers,
Speaker 1: even those who didn't view theft as being all that
Speaker 1: bad of a concept, or they just didn't recognize digital
Speaker 1: copying as any kind of similarity to theft. Many hackers
Speaker 1: who were apprehended by law enforcement would end up spilling
Speaker 1: all the beans. There would be no beans left unspilled.
Speaker 1: Most of them were extremely cooperative with law enforcement once
Speaker 1: they got snatched, and they would talk all about the
Speaker 1: bulletin board systems they would use, the other hackers that
Speaker 1: they would roll with where they learned skills. If they
Speaker 1: were using tools that someone else made, they might talk
Speaker 1: about that. There are a lot of hackers who weren't
Speaker 1: really hackers. They were what some folks derisively called script kiddies.
Speaker 1: These would be people who would use code that was
Speaker 1: designed by other people, and it would be code that
Speaker 1: would do something typically uh, something that could be malicious,
Speaker 1: and then they would execute that code themselves, and that
Speaker 1: would give these people power over others. But it's not
Speaker 1: like they made the tools they were using. They were
Speaker 1: just relying upon them. They were willing to use those tools,
Speaker 1: and those would be the script kiddies. Often if they
Speaker 1: got picked up, they would just spill the beans about
Speaker 1: all the people who worked on those tools in the
Speaker 1: first place, even if the people who made the tools
Speaker 1: never had any intention of using them in a malicious way,
Speaker 1: and that would lead to some difficult, difficult situations because
Speaker 1: law enforcement doesn't necessarily make that designation between someone who
Speaker 1: has created a tool that could be good or bad
Speaker 1: and someone who has created a bad tool on purpose
Speaker 1: in order to be bad all the time. There's a
Speaker 1: level of subtlety there that frequently law enforcement would just
Speaker 1: overlook because us it gets pretty complicated when you start
Speaker 1: trying to look at it as a spectrum. Now. Hacker
Speaker 1: culture at the time was largely the realm of bulletin
Speaker 1: board systems, and those were message boards and file storage
Speaker 1: systems that lived on someone's computer somewhere. You had thousands
Speaker 1: of these in the United States, and the way you
Speaker 1: would access it is you would use a dial up modem.
Speaker 1: You would dial into the bulletin board system's phone number
Speaker 1: and you would connect to the remote computer system, and
Speaker 1: there you could access things like files that were on
Speaker 1: the system, you could leave messages for other people. It
Speaker 1: really was a bulletin board system. It was like a
Speaker 1: giant electronic bulletin board, but bulletin board where you could
Speaker 1: also do stuff like play games and um download files.
Speaker 1: So this was kind of a precursor to the Internet,
Speaker 1: although there the Internet at this time did exist, but
Speaker 1: it was something that very few people had access to
Speaker 1: in the late eighties, so bolton boards were really really popular,
Speaker 1: and hackers would go there to discuss their exploits, to
Speaker 1: share information so that other people could get access to
Speaker 1: the same sort of systems that they were in, uh
Speaker 1: and you know, just kind of shoot the breeze with
Speaker 1: fellow hackers. Not all bolton board systems were a den
Speaker 1: of scum and villany or a hive of scum and villainy,
Speaker 1: if I want to be appropriate with that that quote,
Speaker 1: But there were a lot that were catered specifically to hackers.
Speaker 1: So there were underground bolletin board systems as well as
Speaker 1: ones that were more public. They might have some hacker
Speaker 1: activity on them, but that wasn't the primary focus of them.
Speaker 1: But again, law enforcement often will paint everyone with the
Speaker 1: same brush, particularly for things that are rapidly advancing and
Speaker 1: not fully understood, and so bolletin board systems in general
Speaker 1: were viewed with a lot of suspicion. Computer hacking itself
Speaker 1: was relatively new stuff, and for a while hackers were
Speaker 1: mostly ignored as a nuisance, as was evident in that
Speaker 1: quote I gave earlier from the Secret Service talking about
Speaker 1: mischievous people living in their parents homes teenagers. Mostly that
Speaker 1: was the common view of hackers, and in fact it
Speaker 1: really wasn't that inaccurate or a lot of hackers out there.
Speaker 1: A lot of the hackers that caused a lot of
Speaker 1: issues were teenagers who were living at home where they
Speaker 1: were in their early twenties at their oldest, and they
Speaker 1: were in college. There are only a few people in
Speaker 1: their mid twenties or older who were in that hacker culture.
Speaker 1: There were some notable people that were in that age
Speaker 1: group and also were known as hackers. But a lot
Speaker 1: of them were very young, and most of them were guys.
Speaker 1: Cyberspace had tangible values. At this point, information was starting
Speaker 1: to be viewed as property. It wasn't just data data, uh.
Speaker 1: And also it became a weird kind of switcherou because
Speaker 1: universities their whole purpose is to impart information, to to
Speaker 1: give information to people, and now they had computer systems
Speaker 1: where folks were thinking about information is something you were
Speaker 1: to restrict from other people. And it was a weird
Speaker 1: dichotomy that was going on at the time, and in
Speaker 1: what had mostly been viewed as the harmless activity of
Speaker 1: a few hundred or maybe a few thousand computer nerds
Speaker 1: began to take on a new connotation as potentially criminal
Speaker 1: behavior because there were a couple of different incidents that
Speaker 1: were at least criminal adjacent, if not outright criminal activity itself.
Speaker 1: And that ended up becoming a big influence on the
Speaker 1: way we view hacking in general, because went beyond just oh,
Speaker 1: this person is being kind of a a pain in
Speaker 1: my side, to this is someone who could potentially cause
Speaker 1: great harm to me in one way or another. And
Speaker 1: some of those criminal behaviors went beyond being potential. Some
Speaker 1: of them were clearly criminal acts. So here's an example.
Speaker 1: There was a sixteen year old hacker out of Indiana
Speaker 1: who used the handle Fry Guy, and he had been
Speaker 1: committing credit card and wire fraud using hacking techniques that
Speaker 1: he had learned from a group of hackers called the
Speaker 1: Legion of Doom. Hackers love giving them their groups these
Speaker 1: these different connotations, and a lot of them are very playful.
Speaker 1: Legion of Doom while it, you know, sounds kind of wicked,
Speaker 1: you said there and thing like yeah, but that's a
Speaker 1: cartoon group of villains, like that's the bad guys that
Speaker 1: would face off against the Justice League. And in fact
Speaker 1: that was purposefully chosen. The hackers were choosing these names
Speaker 1: partly kind of tongue in cheek, and there were even
Speaker 1: offshoots of this, like the Farmers of Doom uh f
Speaker 1: O D and Legion of Doom was called l O
Speaker 1: d well. Fry Guy had learned some interesting hacking skills
Speaker 1: from folks at the Legion of Doom. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the Legion of Doom folks, they mostly were just interested
Speaker 1: in learning how these computer systems worked. They were they
Speaker 1: were the sort of hackers who were they looked down
Speaker 1: on the concept of stealing. Fry Guy, however, not so
Speaker 1: concerned about this, and Fry Guy liked the association of
Speaker 1: knowing people in the Legion of Doom, but Fry Guy
Speaker 1: was not part of that group. People would refer to
Speaker 1: him as a legion of Doom wanna be, and he
Speaker 1: had ended up stealing more than six thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: Western Union over over time with credit card and wire fraud. Uh.
Speaker 1: Fry Guy also had previously pulled what he thought was
Speaker 1: a hilarious prank by using the knowledge he gained from
Speaker 1: a few members from the Legion of Doom to redirect
Speaker 1: the digital switching system in Bell South and send phone
Speaker 1: calls that were intended for the Palm Beach County Probation
Speaker 1: Department in Florida to a phone sex operator going by
Speaker 1: the name of Tina Up in New York State. But
Speaker 1: Fry Guy also didn't bother to cover his tracks very well,
Speaker 1: which meant that Bell South eventually found out about this,
Speaker 1: and company executives were clearly horrified and also terrified that
Speaker 1: someone had been able to infiltrate their systems and do
Speaker 1: this because if they could redirect calls meant for one
Speaker 1: entity and send it to another they might be able
Speaker 1: to do something way worse, like manipulate the nine one
Speaker 1: one service, which could result in someone's death if if
Speaker 1: emergency responders cannot get to a situation in time. So
Speaker 1: there was a clear level of concern as this was
Speaker 1: going on. Fry Guy's activities caught the attention of the
Speaker 1: Secret Service, largely because Fry Guy, perhaps drunk on his
Speaker 1: own limited power, had been taunting the phone company and
Speaker 1: claiming that his hacker group was going to cause a
Speaker 1: massive disruption in the phone system on a nationwide level
Speaker 1: on July so frieda Guy thought he was being pretty
Speaker 1: clever and hiding his tracks, but he was located by
Speaker 1: Western Union. Western Union passed this information onto the Secret Service,
Speaker 1: which put pen registers on Fry Guy's phones. Now, pen
Speaker 1: registers will detect when calls are going out from a
Speaker 1: phone line. They cannot listen in on the content of
Speaker 1: that conversation. There's no spying on the actual conversations, but
Speaker 1: they can detect where those calls are going, including calls
Speaker 1: being made from a dial up modem. So that's what
Speaker 1: the Secret Service was interested in. They wanted to see
Speaker 1: all the numbers that Fry Guy was calling on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, and they were able to trace those numbers
Speaker 1: to a lot of different entities, including lots of hacker
Speaker 1: and pirate based bulletin board systems and members of the
Speaker 1: Legion of Doom. UH. Those members of Legion of Doom,
Speaker 1: three of them were hackers who lived in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Fry Guy had been using his knowledge of systems to
Speaker 1: steal money. These members of Legion of Doom viewed that
Speaker 1: behavior as being against their own code, so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: do that sort of thing. But because Fry Guy had
Speaker 1: learned the skills from them, and because he was still
Speaker 1: in contact with them, their identities and their their existence
Speaker 1: was a thing of interest to the Secret Service. So
Speaker 1: on July twenty nine, remember Fry Guy had said that
Speaker 1: on the fourth of July there was going to be
Speaker 1: this massive nationwide disruption of the phone service. That didn't happen,
Speaker 1: but on July the Secret Service performed a coordinated sweep
Speaker 1: a Fry Guy and the Atlanta Three as they were known. UH.
Speaker 1: Those three would include hackers with the handles, the leftist,
Speaker 1: her vile and profit as in like a person who
Speaker 1: can give you a prophecy, not someone who profits off
Speaker 1: of others. Erville was an avid gamer as well as
Speaker 1: a hacker, and he particularly liked a game called a
Speaker 1: Generic Universal role Playing System or GIRPS. Girp's was published
Speaker 1: by a company called Steve Jackson Games. That that game
Speaker 1: company will actually come back into this conversation later, and
Speaker 1: it's not a direct link to this particular fact. I
Speaker 1: just thought it was interesting that there was more than
Speaker 1: one connection to Steve Jackson Games in this Storyville particularly
Speaker 1: like playing a spy themed game using this universal system,
Speaker 1: and relied heavily on two source books called GIRPS High
Speaker 1: Tech and Groups Special Ops. So the Genetic Universal role
Speaker 1: Playing System. You may be familiar with role playing games
Speaker 1: like Dungeons and Dragons, the Generic Universal role Playing System.
Speaker 1: The intent of that was to create a basic set
Speaker 1: of rules that you could then adapt to any setting.
Speaker 1: It could be fantasy like Dungeons and Dragons. It could
Speaker 1: be a Western, it could be science fiction. It could
Speaker 1: be as in the case of Ervill's favorite version, espionage
Speaker 1: and spy work kind of James bond Ish. Now Erville
Speaker 1: himself was the game master of the game he was running,
Speaker 1: and he had tons of notes relating to various game
Speaker 1: related missions in his possession, and because the game was
Speaker 1: about international espionage and would play out like a James
Speaker 1: Bond film, those notes, if viewed by someone looking for
Speaker 1: evidence of criminal behavior, could set off some major alarm bells,
Speaker 1: like reading about various kinds of international espionage and plans
Speaker 1: of assassination and this sort of thing. It doesn't look
Speaker 1: good if the Secret Service comes into your home and
Speaker 1: starts looking at things you've written down on pieces of paper,
Speaker 1: and that includes ways that you can spy on other governments,
Speaker 1: or you might be a you know, a double agent
Speaker 1: or something that tends to make people feel a little antsy.
Speaker 1: It didn't help that Erville was not too picky about
Speaker 1: differentiating fantasy from reality. It uh meant that that whole
Speaker 1: interrogation went a little rocky. And Erville also would put
Speaker 1: these notes on any kind of scrap paper he happen
Speaker 1: to have at his disposal. Unfortunately for Erville, a lot
Speaker 1: of those scraps of paper were on various Bell South
Speaker 1: print outs and documents that he was totally not supposed
Speaker 1: to have. So there are all these documents that were
Speaker 1: meant to be internal Bell South documents that Erville had
Speaker 1: possession of. He had written all these notes about international
Speaker 1: espionage on them, and he was already linked to Fry Guy,
Speaker 1: who had been caught for you know, fraud and uh
Speaker 1: and Fry Guy had even said that the Legion of
Speaker 1: Doom was gonna cause this huge phone outage. So all
Speaker 1: of those cards were stacked against him, and it definitely
Speaker 1: didn't look great. So the Secret Service interrogator Ville and
Speaker 1: asked him about the possibility of his group doing stuff
Speaker 1: like spying on phone conversations or disrupting the system, and
Speaker 1: ours like, uh, yeah, it's totally possible. We could totally
Speaker 1: do that if we wanted to. We could spy on you.
Speaker 1: We could bring down the phone system. It wouldn't even
Speaker 1: be that difficult. It's actually pretty easy. There's just some
Speaker 1: simple code we could run and the whole system would crash.
Speaker 1: And the Secret Service said, what, yeah, I mean, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't because I mean, that's not interesting. He didn't say
Speaker 1: we wouldn't because it's wrong. He says, we wouldn't because
Speaker 1: there's no challenge in it. There's nothing special about it.
Speaker 1: It would just be boring. So that didn't make the
Speaker 1: Secret Service feel much better about what was going on
Speaker 1: at that point. Irville may not have done himself very
Speaker 1: many favors during that interrogation. All right, guys, I'm interrupting
Speaker 1: myself right now and the sas and I'm doing it
Speaker 1: is because you know how I talk a lot. I
Speaker 1: did it a lot today, like more than we had
Speaker 1: anticipated on this topic. And so rather than continue this
Speaker 1: and make it an epic, super duper long episode of
Speaker 1: tech stuff that I'm sure you guys would love, We're
Speaker 1: gonna split up into two super duper long episodes of
Speaker 1: tech stuff, which I'm sure my boss will love for reasons.
Speaker 1: So if you guys have suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech stuff, you should write me the email addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com or draw me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter to handle at both
Speaker 1: of those is tech stuff hs W. Remember I stream
Speaker 1: live over at twitch dot tv slash tech stuff on
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Friday, So go over there and you can
Speaker 1: check out the schedule and join in on the conversation
Speaker 1: and you might even see me do super duper long
Speaker 1: episodes that later on I have to divide into a
Speaker 1: couple of different ones. In our next episode, we will
Speaker 1: continue this amazing story and see how it concludes, and
Speaker 1: how it leads to the formation of the Electronic Frontier
Speaker 1: or Foundation. It's a story in tech that I don't
Speaker 1: think gets circulated enough and it's really fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: And I'll see you guys again soon for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics because at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com