"Hacker Crackdown.Part 3 LAW AND ORDER" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

But the seizure of twenty-five boards, and the
multi-megabyte mountains of possibly useful
evidence contained in these boards (and in their
owners' other computers, also out the door), were far
from the only motives for Operation Sundevil. An
unprecedented action of great ambition and size,
Sundevil's motives can only be described as
political. It was a public-relations effort, meant to
pass certain messages, meant to make certain
situations clear: both in the mind of the general
public, and in the minds of various constituencies of
the electronic community.

First -- and this motivation was vital -- a
"message" would be sent from law enforcement to
the digital underground. This very message was
recited in so many words by Garry M. Jenkins, the
Assistant Director of the US Secret Service, at the
Sundevil press conference in Phoenix on May 9,
1990, immediately after the raids. In brief, hackers
were mistaken in their foolish belief that they could
hide behind the "relative anonymity of their
computer terminals." On the contrary, they should
fully understand that state and federal cops were
actively patrolling the beat in cyberspace -- that they
were on the watch everywhere, even in those sleazy
and secretive dens of cybernetic vice, the
underground boards.

This is not an unusual message for police to
publicly convey to crooks. The message is a
standard message; only the context is new.

In this respect, the Sundevil raids were the
digital equivalent of the standard vice-squad
crackdown on massage parlors, porno bookstores,
head-shops, or floating crap-games. There may be
few or no arrests in a raid of this sort; no convictions,
no trials, no interrogations. In cases of this sort,
police may well walk out the door with many pounds
of sleazy magazines, X-rated videotapes, sex toys,
gambling equipment, baggies of marijuana....

Of course, if something truly horrendous is
discovered by the raiders, there will be arrests and
prosecutions. Far more likely, however, there will
simply be a brief but sharp disruption of the closed
and secretive world of the nogoodniks. There will be
"street hassle." "Heat." "Deterrence." And, of