"Hacker Crackdown.Part 4.THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

The list itself is dazzling, bringing to the untutored
eye a dizzying impression of a bizarre milieu of mountain-
climbing Hawaiian holistic photographers trading true-life
confessions with bisexual word-processing Tibetans.

But this confusion is more apparent than real. Each
of these conferences was a little cyberspace world in itself,
comprising dozens and perhaps hundreds of sub-topics.
Each conference was commonly frequented by a fairly
small, fairly like-minded community of perhaps a few
dozen people. It was humanly impossible to encompass
the entire Well (especially since access to the Well's
mainframe computer was billed by the hour). Most long-
time users contented themselves with a few favorite
topical neighborhoods, with the occasional foray
elsewhere for a taste of exotica. But especially important
news items, and hot topical debates, could catch the
attention of the entire Well community.

Like any community, the Well had its celebrities, and
John Perry Barlow, the silver-tongued and silver-
modemed lyricist of the Grateful Dead, ranked
prominently among them. It was here on the Well that
Barlow posted his true-life tale of computer-crime
encounter with the FBI.

The story, as might be expected, created a great stir.
The Well was already primed for hacker controversy. In
December 1989, *Harper's* magazine had hosted a
debate on the Well about the ethics of illicit computer
intrusion. While over forty various computer-mavens
took part, Barlow proved a star in the debate. So did
"Acid Phreak" and "Phiber Optik," a pair of young New
York hacker-phreaks whose skills at telco switching-station
intrusion were matched only by their apparently limitless
hunger for fame. The advent of these two boldly
swaggering outlaws in the precincts of the Well created a
sensation akin to that of Black Panthers at a cocktail party
for the radically chic.

Phiber Optik in particular was to seize the day in 1990.
A devotee of the *2600* circle and stalwart of the New York
hackers' group "Masters of Deception," Phiber Optik was
a splendid exemplar of the computer intruder as
committed dissident. The eighteen-year-old Optik, a
high-school dropout and part-time computer repairman,
was young, smart, and ruthlessly obsessive, a sharp-
dressing, sharp-talking digital dude who was utterly and