BOOK REVIEW

Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
by Bruce Sterling
$23.00, Bantam Books, 313 pages
Review by The Devil's Advocate

    The denizens of cyberspace have long revered Bruce Sterling as one of
cyberfiction's earliest pioneers. Now, Sterling has removed his steel-edged
mirrorshades to cast a deep probing look into the heart of our modern-day
electronic frontier. The result is The Hacker Crackdown, the latest account of
the hacker culture and Sterling's first foray into non-fiction.

    At first glance, Crackdown would appear to follow in the narrative
footsteps of The Cuckoo's Egg and Cyberpunk. The setting is cyberspace, 1990:
year of the AT&T crash and the aftermath of Ma Bell's fragmentation; year of
Operation Sundevil, the Atlanta raids, and the Legion of Doom breakup; year of
the E911 document and the trial of Knight Lightning; year of the hacker
crackdown, and the formation of that bastion of computer civil liberties, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. Unlike Cuckoo and Cyberpunk, however, Sterling's
work does not center around characters and events so much as the parallels
he draws between them. Crackdown is far less story and far more analysis.
Crackdown is also personal. Missing is the detached and unbiased aloofness
expected of a journalist. Intermingled with the factual accounts, for
instance, are Sterling's keen wit and insight:

    "In my opinion, any teenager enthralled by computers, fascinated by the
ins and outs of computer security, and attracted by the lure of specialized
forms of knowledge and power, would do well to forget all about hacking and
set his (or her) sights on becoming a Fed. Feds can trump hackers at almost
every single thing hackers do, including gathering intelligence, undercover
disguise, trashing, phone-tapping, building dossiers, networking, and
infiltrating computer systems...."

    Sterling is fair. He effectively gets into the psyche of hacker and
enforcer alike, oftentimes poking fun at the absurdity in both lines of
reasoning. To hackers he is honest and brutal: "Phone phreaks pick on the
weak." Before the advent of ANI, hackers exploited AT&T. Then they drifted to
the Baby Bells where security was less than stellar. From there it was a
gradual regression all the way down to local PBX's, the weakest kids on the
block,  and  certainly  not  the megacorporate entities that give rise to
"steal from the rich" Robin Hood excuses. To enforcers he is equally brutal,
charting a chronicle of civil liberty abuses by the FBI, Secret Service, and
local law enforcement agencies.

    Perhaps the best reason to read Crackdown is to learn what other books
have neglected to focus on: the abuses of power by law enforcement. Indeed, it
is these abuses that are the main focus of Sterling's work. One by one he
gives a grim account of the raids of 1990, the Crackdown or cultural genocide
that was to have as its goal the complete and absolute extinction of hacking
in all of its manifestations.

    On February 21, 1990, Robert Izenberg was raided by the Secret Service.
They shut down his UUCP site, seized twenty thousand dollars' worth of
professional equipment as "evidence," including some 140 megabytes of files,
mail, and data belonging to himself and his users. Izenberg was neither
arrested nor charged with any crime. Two years later he would still be trying
to get his equipment back.

    On March 1, 1990, twenty-one-year- old Erlk Bloodaxe was awakened by a
revolver pointed at his head. Secret Service agents seized everything even
remotely electronic, including his telephone. Bloodaxe was neither arrested
nor charged with any crime. Two years later he would still be wondering where
all his equipment went.

    Mentor was yet another victim of the Crackdown. Secret Service agents
"rousted him and his wife from bed in their underwear," and proceeded to seize
thousands of dollars' worth of work- related computer equipment, including his
wife's incomplete academic thesis stored on a hard disk. Two years later and
Mentor would still be waiting for the return of his equipment.

    Then came the infamous Steve Jackson Games raid. Again, no one was
arrested and no charges were filed. "Everything appropriated was officially
kept as 'evidence' of crimes never specified."

    Bruce Sterling explains (in an unusual first-person shift in the
narrative) that it was this raid above all else which compelled him to "put
science fiction aside until l had discovered what had happened and where this
trouble had come from."

    Crackdown culminates with what is perhaps the most stunning example of
injustice outside of the Steve Jackson raid. Although the trial of Knight
Lightning is over, its bittersweet memories still linger in the collective
mind of cyberspace. This, after all, was the trial in which William Cook
maliciously tried (and failed) to convict a fledgling teenage journalist for
printing a worthless garble of bureaucratic dreck by claiming that it was in
fact a $79,449 piece of "proprietary" code. In an effort to demonstrate the
sheer boredom and tediousness of the E911 document, and the absurdity of
Cook's prosecution, Crackdown includes a hefty sampling of this document (at a
savings of over $79,449 by Cook's standardsl).

    More than any other book to date, Crackdown concentrates on the political
grit and grime of computer law enforcement, answering such perennial favorites
as why does the Secret Service have anything to do with hackers anyway? In
Crackdown we learn that something of a contest exists between the Secret
Service and the FBI when it comes to busting hackers. Also touched upon are
the "waffling" First Amendment issues that have sprung forth from cyberspace.

    Crackdown is a year in the life of the electronic frontier. For some, a
forgotten mote of antiquity; for others, a spectral preamble of darker things
to come. But for those who thrive at the cutting edge of cyberspace,
Crackdown is certain to bridge those distant points of light with its account
of a year that will not be forgotten.