From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 05:38:46 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: The Real Bell Issue / Re: Bell, etc
In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19970820140006.0365b7a4@panix.com>
Message-ID: <199708202112.XAA29879@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




>Don't worry.  If you were busted it would cause a real stink.  Remember 
>Operation Sun Devil.  The Feds really lost it.  Aggressiveness doesn't just 
>mean publicity.  It means strategy at trial as well.  They have to try you 
>and that would be risky for them because we all have an easy First Amendment 
>argument to hammer them with.  The List is defined by its expression and not 
>by anything else so attacks on the list are ipso facto attacks on expression.

>From my point of view, operation sundevil was never about arrests or
prosecuting criminals, it was about scaring the shit out of 15 year olds.

First, many of the people raided under operation sundevil already KNEW that
they were going to be raided, or at least suspected. I myself was informed,
by some friends, some time before the raid that there was a DNR on my phone
line. I also recieved an anonymous phone call "warning" me to stay away
from "hackers". 

Second, the secret service agents actualy preforming the raid seemed to
view it as an elaborate joke after the figured out that the threat to
national security or whatever was 14 years old, in fact, the only agent
there that seemed to take it seriously was a postal inspector who solemly
informed me " your going to jail for a long time buddy" as the secret
service agents chatted about vaious trips to russia guarding reagan and
complimented me on how smart i must be. 

Third, their cell phones didnt work, and after calling the office to get
them to DTMF decode numbers in my speed dial, they never erased the redial
on my phone, leaving their office number there for me to DTMF decode myself. 

They seemed to ignore things that actualy WERE evidence and took things
like calulators and batteries ( they were really excited by the fact that
i had loads of batteries because early blue boxes used loads of power and
you needed to change batteries frequently). 

My lawyer couldnt get ANY information about the investigation and i never
recieved any calls and was never even questioned, dont you think that if
they were interested in breaking a worldwide conspiricy of hackers they
would have at least asked me a few questions? (besides what i used all the
batteries for). 

In any case, there is a HUGE difference between raiding the houses of some
14-15 year old computer geeks who actualy think they will be shot when they
are woken up by a secret service agent with a shotgun in their face and
still believe that an arrest for " computer crimes" will ruin their life
and at best has their very very irate parents to arrange for their defence
and raiding the house of an adult who knows what the effects of their
actions will be, which in computer crimes is just alot of attention, little
jail time, and a fat job when you get out. I almost wish i had gone to
trial, I would never have had to go to college to get a CS degree. 

BTW. about 3 years ago I recieved a call from the NYC secret service field
office , I thought at first they had finaly decided to arrest me. But what
in fact happened is that they decided to return all the computer equipment
siezed in the raid. They returned 2 huge boxes of now obsolete computers
and peripherals , complete with SS evidence tags saying " Location :
Bedroom , Sex: Male" , and SS disks in the 5 1/4 floppy drives  
to potect the heads". Its a good thing they never realized that I gave my
then brand new 20 mb external hard drive to a friend with all the real
evidence on it untill after the raid. They also informed me that the
investigation was still underway and I should wait for further contact.