📸

Epi Logue

Perhaps the main effect of the Secret Service crackdown was to create a new climate in the American wing of the computer underworld, a fear that anyone could get busted and be thrown in jail. The crackdown was called a witch-hunt, the innocence of its victims taken for granted — though, with few exceptions, most of those raided were guilty at least of hacking. The difference between the authorities and the computer underworld remains philosophical: control of information versus free access to all knowledge.

In the new atmosphere, hackers moved further underground, became more furtive. Some hackers left the US altogether, to get beyond the jurisdiction of the Secret Service.

In 1989 Bill Squire packed his bags and left San Francisco for the friendlier clime of Amsterdam. It was becoming too restrictive in the States, he said; hacking and phreaking were becoming dangerous. 'In Holland,' Bill says, 'hacking is legal.' Or rather, it's not expressly illegal.

Sometimes Bill regrets having to move. He's one of the old-timers in the computer underground. He was twelve years old and living in San José when he started phreaking. His mentor was Denny, the same man who showed Captain Crunch that the way into a telephone's heart was via a Hammond organ. This was in 1969, and for the subsequent twenty years Bill was a dedicated phreaker and hacker.

He rubbed shoulders with the two Steves in the early days of Apple and, like many others, would marvel at the fortunes to be won in the silicon casino. He saw that the phreakers helped create personal computers, and that the PCs begat hacking, and that it had all stretched the frontiers of computing. 'Who's going to teach the young

📸