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CRACKDOWN

prefer to force open a locker and cut the locks off exterior storage units, despite the offer of the appropriate keys.

The agents then pulled on their regulation blue nylon windbreakers (with Secret Service motifs), and seized all the computer equipment they could find. They also tore open cartons in the warehouse. Steve was mystified. The agents said they were looking for the handbook on computer crime that was in preparation: they intended to seize all copies before it could be distributed. The handbook had been written by Loyd, they added.

The 'handbook on computer crime' turned out to be a game called GURPS Cyberpunk, being published by Steve Jackson Games.⁵ The coincidence of the name Cyberpunk and the author of its manual — Loyd — led the authorities to the obvious conclusion: that the program was part of the Phoenix Project, a conspiracy to spread hacking techniques nation-wide. The Secret Service seized the copies of the game at the company's premises and made doubly certain they collected the data for Loyd's manual as well.

Two months later the Operation Sundevil busts further ravaged the computer underworld.⁶ On 8 May co-ordinated raids on hackers in fourteen cities were carried out. Over 150 Secret Service agents were deployed, teamed with numerous local and state law enforcement agencies. The agents served twenty-seven search warrants in Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Plano (in Texas), Richmond, San Diego, San José and Tucson. Forty computers and 23,000 diskettes were seized.

The official reason for the busts was fraud, specifically telecommunications fraud. The raids were synchronized because of fears that piecemeal busts would alert the hacker community to the impending crackdown, and cause evidence to be destroyed.

That nearly happened anyway. As reports of the Atlanta and New York raids circulated, a number of hacker boards carried warnings that another 'major bust' was imminent. (Captain Zap, the Philadelphia hacker arrested years before for theft, takes credit for the messages.) One of those who took the warnings seriously was Erik Bloodaxe, the LoD member so keen on selling US military secrets to the 'kamerads'. All his equipment, as well as any documents that could

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