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

deal of money, but nowhere near the earthshaking wealth
and the galaxy of resources possessed by telcos or federal
agencies. They had no ability to arrest people. They
carried out no phreak and hacker covert dirty-tricks.

But they really knew how to network.

Unlike the other groups in this book, the civil
libertarians have operated very much in the open, more or
less right in the public hurly-burly. They have lectured
audiences galore and talked to countless journalists, and
have learned to refine their spiels. They've kept the
cameras clicking, kept those faxes humming, swapped
that email, run those photocopiers on overtime, licked
envelopes and spent small fortunes on airfare and long-
distance. In an information society, this open, overt,
obvious activity has proven to be a profound advantage.

In 1990, the civil libertarians of cyberspace
assembled out of nowhere in particular, at warp speed.
This "group" (actually, a networking gaggle of interested
parties which scarcely deserves even that loose term) has
almost nothing in the way of formal organization. Those
formal civil libertarian organizations which did take an
interest in cyberspace issues, mainly the Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility and the American
Civil Liberties Union, were carried along by events in 1990,
and acted mostly as adjuncts, underwriters or launching-
pads.

The civil libertarians nevertheless enjoyed the
greatest success of any of the groups in the Crackdown of
1990. At this writing, their future looks rosy and the
political initiative is firmly in their hands. This should be
kept in mind as we study the highly unlikely lives and
lifestyles of the people who actually made this happen.

#

In June 1989, Apple Computer, Inc., of Cupertino,
California, had a problem. Someone had illicitly copied a
small piece of Apple's proprietary software, software which
controlled an internal chip driving the Macintosh screen
display. This Color QuickDraw source code was a closely
guarded piece of Apple's intellectual property. Only
trusted Apple insiders were supposed to possess it.

But the "NuPrometheus League" wanted things
otherwise. This person (or persons) made several illicit
copies of this source code, perhaps as many as two dozen.