From: paul@hawksbill.sprintmrn.com (Paul Ferguson)
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 95 18:58:12 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: ... and speaking of WiReD...
Message-ID: <9501160258.AA09372@hawksbill.sprintmrn.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Given the recent discussion on WireD, I thought some of you
might enjoy this editorial (read: rant) authored by Erik Bloodaxe.

Enjoy.

- paul



Forwarded message:

> Date:         Sun, 15 Jan 1995 20:34:00 CST
> Reply-To: TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU
> Sender: CU-DIGEST list <CUDIGEST@UIUCVMD.BITNET>
> From: "Cu Digest (tk0jut2@mvs.cso.niu.edu)" <TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU>
> Subject:      Cu Digest, #7.03
> To: Multiple recipients of list CUDIGEST <CUDIGEST@UIUCVMD.BITNET>
> 
> Computer underground Digest    Sun  Jan 15, 1995   Volume 7 : Issue 03
>                            ISSN  1004-042X
> 
>        Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET)
>        Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
>        Retiring Shadow Archivist: Stanton McCandlish
>        Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
>                           Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
>                           Ian Dickinson
>        Copy Reader:       Laslo Toth
> 
> CONTENTS, #7.03 (Sun, Jan 15, 1995)
> 
> File 1--Open Letter to Wired Magazine (fwd)
> File 2--More Legal Analysis of Steve Jackson Games (Legal Bytes)
> File 3--The Stupid Net.Coverage News Awards -- 1994 and 1995
> File 4--Alliance for Community Media -- Call for Workshops
> File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Nov 1994)
> 
> CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
> THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 20:08:38 -0600 (CST)
> From: David Smith <bladex@BGA.COM>
> Subject: File 1--Open Letter to Wired Magazine (fwd)
> 
>                ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> 
> >From--phrack@well.sf.ca.us (Chris Goggans)
> >Subject--Open Letter to Wired Magazine
> >Date--13 Jan 1995 00:51:09 GMT
> 
> To Whom It May Concern:
> 
> I am writing this under the assumption that the editorial staff at
> Wired will "forget" to print it in the upcoming issue, so I am also
> posting it on every relevant newsgroup and online discussion forum
> that I can think of.
> 
> When I first read your piece "Gang War In Cyberspace" I nearly choked
> on my own stomach bile.  The whole tone of this piece was so far
> removed from reality that I found myself questioning what color the
> sky must be in Wired's universe.  Not that I've come to expect any
> better from Wired.  Your magazine, which could have had the potential
> to actually do something, has become a parody...a politically correct
> art-school project that consistently falls short of telling the whole
> story or making a solid point.  (Just another example of Kapor-Kash
> that ends up letting everyone down.)
> 
> I did however expect more from Josh Quittner.
> 
> I find it interesting that so much emphasis can be placed on an issue
> of supposed racial slurs as the focus of an imaginary "gang war,"
> especially so many years after the fact.
> 
> It's also interesting to me that people keep overlooking the fact that
> one of the first few members of our own little Legion of Doom was
> black (Paul Muad'dib.)  Maybe if he had not died a few years back that
> wouldn't be so quickly forgotten.  (Not that it makes a BIT of
> difference what color a hacker is as long as he or she has a brain and
> a modem, or these days at least a modem.)
> 
> I also find it interesting that a magazine can so easily implicate
> someone as the originator of the so-called "fighting words" that
> allegedly sparked this online-battle, without even giving a second
> thought as to the damage that this may do to the person so named.  One
> would think that a magazine would have more journalistic integrity
> than that (but then again, this IS Wired, and political correctness
> sells magazines and satisfies advertisers.) Thankfully, I'll only have
> to endure one moth of the "Gee Chris, did you know you were a racist
> redneck?" phone calls.
> 
> It's further odd that someone characterized as so sensitive to insults
> allegedly uttered on a party-line could have kept the company he did.
> Strangely enough, Quittner left out all mention of the MOD member who
> called himself "SuperNigger."  Surely, John Lee must have taken
> umbrage to an upper-middle class man of Hebrew descent so shamefully
> mocking him and his entire race, wouldn't he?   Certainly he wouldn't
> associate in any way with someone like that...especially be in the
> same group with, hang out with, and work on hacking projects with,
> would he?
> 
> Please, of course he would, and he did.  (And perhaps he still
> does...)
> 
> The whole "racial issue" was a NON-ISSUE.  However, such things make
> exciting copy and garner many column inches so keep being rehashed.
> In fact, several years back when the issue first came up, the
> statement was cited as being either "Hang up, you nigger," or "Hey,
> SuperNigger," but no one was sure which was actually said.  Funny how
> the wording changes to fit the slant of the "journalist" over time,
> isn't it?
> 
> I wish I could say for certain which was actually spoken, but alas, I
> was not privy to such things.  Despite the hobby I supposedly so
> enjoyed according to Quittner, "doing conference bridges," I abhorred
> the things.  We used to refer to them as "Multi-Loser Youps"
> (multi-user loops) and called their denizens "Bridge Bunnies."  The
> bridge referred to in the story was popularzed by the callers of the
> 5A BBS in Houston, Texas.  (A bulletin board, that I never even got
> the chance to call, as I had recently been raided by the Secret
> Service and had no computer.)  Many people from Texas did call the
> BBS, however, and subsequently used the bridge, but so did people from
> Florida, Arizona, Michigan, New York and Louisiana.  And as numbers do
> in the underground, word of a new place to hang out caused it to
> propagate rapidly.
> 
> To make any implications that such things were strictly a New York
> versus Texas issue is ludicrous, and again simply goes to show that a
> "journalist" was looking for more points to add to his (or her)
> particular angle.
> 
> This is not to say that I did not have problems with any of the people
> who were in MOD.  At the time I still harbored strong feelings towards
> Phiber Optik for the NYNEX-Infopath swindle, but that was about it.
> And that was YEARS ago.  (Even I don't harbor a grudge that long.)
> Even the dozen or so annoying phone calls I receied in late 1990 and
> early 1991 did little to evoke "a declaration of war."  Like many
> people, I know how to forward my calls, or unplug the phone.  Amazing
> how technology works, isn't it?
> 
> Those prank calls also had about as much to do with the formation of
> Comsec as bubble-gum had to do with the discovery of nuclear fission.
> (I'm sure if you really put some brain power to it, and consulted
> Robert Anton Wilson, you could find some relationships.)  At the risk
> of sounding glib, we could have cared less about hackers at Comsec.
> If there were no hackers, or computer criminals, there would be no
> need for computer security consultants.  Besides, hackers account for
> so little in the real picture of computer crime, that their existence
> is more annoyance than something to actually fear.
> 
> However, when those same hackers crossed the line and began tapping
> our phone lines, we were more than glad to go after them.  This is one
> of my only rules of action:  do whatever you want to anyone else, but
> mess with me and my livelihood and I will devote every ounce of my
> being to paying you back.  That is exactly what we did.
> 
> This is not to say that we were the only people from the computer
> underground who went to various law enforcement agencies with
> information about MOD and their antics.  In fact, the number of
> hackers who did was staggering, especially when you consider the usual
> anarchy of the underground.  None of these other people ever get
> mentioned and those of us at Comsec always take the lead role as the
> "narks," but we were far from alone.  MOD managed to alienate the vast
> majority of the computer underground, and people reacted.
> 
> All in all, both in this piece, and in the book itself, "MOD, The Gang
> That Ruled Cyberspace," Quittner has managed to paint a far too
> apologetic piece about a group of people who cared so very little
> about the networks they played in and the people who live there.  In
> the last 15 years that I've been skulking around online, people in the
> community have always tended to treat each other and the computers
> systems they voyeured with a great deal of care and respect.  MOD was
> one of the first true examples of a groupthink exercise in hacker
> sociopathy.  Selling long distance codes, selling credit card numbers,
> destroying systems and harassing innocent people is not acceptable
> behavior among ANY group, even the computer underground.
> 
> There have always been ego flares and group rivalries in the
> underground, and there always will be.  The Legion of Doom itself was
> FOUNDED because of a spat between its founder (Lex Luthor) and members
> of a group called The Knights of Shadow.  These rivalries keep things
> interesting, and keep the community moving forward, always seeking the
> newest bit of information in a series of healthy one-upsmanship.  MOD
> was different.  They took things too far against everyone, not just
> against two people in Texas.
> 
> I certainly don't condemn everyone in the group.  I don't even know a
> number of them (electronically or otherwise.)  I honestly believe that
> Mark Abene (Phiber) and Paul Stira (Scorpion) got royally screwed
> while the group's two biggest criminals, Julio Fernandez (Outlaw) and
> Allen Wilson (Wing), rolled over on everyone else and walked away free
> and clear.  This is repulsive when you find out that Win in particular
> has gone on to be implicated in more damage to the Internet (as Posse
> and ILF) than anyone in the history of the computing.  This I find
> truly disgusting, and hope that the Secret Service are proud of
> themselves.
> 
> Imagine if I wrote a piece about the terrible treatment of a poor
> prisoner in Wisconsin who was bludgeoned to death by other inmates
> while guards looked away.  Imagine if I tried to explain the fact that
> poor Jeff Dahmer was provoked to murder and cannibalism by the mocking
> of adolescent boys who teased and called him a faggot.  How would you
> feel if I tried to convince you that we should look upon him with pity
> and think of him as a misunderstood political prisoner?  You would
> probably feel about how I do about Quittner's story.
> 
> 'Hacker' can just as easily be applied to "journalists" too, and with
> this piece Quittner has joined the Hack Journalist Hall of Fame,
> taking his place right next to Richard Sandza.
> 
> Quittner did get a few things right.  I do have a big cat named Spud,
> I do work at a computer company and I do sell fantastic t-shirts.  Buy
> some.
> 
> With Love,
> 
> Chris Goggans
> aka Erik Bloodaxe
> 
>  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> 
>                  http://fringeware.com/staff/jonl
>


-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Paul Ferguson                         
US Sprint                                          tel: 703.689.6828
Managed Network Engineering                   internet: paul@hawk.sprintmrn.com
Reston, Virginia  USA                             http://www.sprintmrn.com