Brett Slocum <slocum@ssdc.honeywell.com> (05/07/91)
With regards to the 911 Investigation involving Craig Neidorf
and Steve Jackson Games:
The following list recently appeared on the Illuminati BBS
(512-447-4449). It was written by Steve Jackson. Many of you will
know some of this, but I thought it would be good to clear up all
this:
THE TOP TEN MEDIA ERRORS ABOUT THE SJ GAMES RAID 5-03-91
As this story has developed, occasional errors creep into news stories
- and many of them have taken on a life of their own. Some reporters,
working from their clipping files, have turned out stories that are
almost 100% free of facts. There are a lot of those floating around ...
but here are our Top Ten.
10. Steve Jackson Games is a computer game company.
No we're not. None of our games are computer games. We use
computers to WRITE the games, like every other publisher in the '90s.
And the game that was seized, GURPS CYBERPUNK, was about computers.
But we' not a computer game company any more than George Bush is a
gardener.
9. GURPS Cyberpunk is a computer game.
No it's not. Aieeeeee! It's a roleplaying game. It is not played
on a computer. It's played on a table, with dice.
8. We're out of business.
No we're not. It's been reported that we are bankrupt, or filing
for bankruptcy. It was very close, and we're not out of the woods by
any means - we did have to lay off half our staff ... but we're not
dead yet.
7. We were raided by the FBI.
No we weren't. We were raided by the US Secret Service. The FBI
had nothing to do with it. (In fact, when Bill Cook, the assistant US
attorney named in our suit, was doing his "research," he talked to the
FBI. They told him he didn't have a case. We have this from FBI
sources!)
6. Some of our staff members were arrested by the Secret Service and
charged with hacking.
No they weren't. No member of our staff was arrested, indicted, or
charged. Nobody was even QUESTIONED after the day of the raid.
5. This was part of Operation Sun Devil.
No it wasn't. Sun Devil was a totally separate project, aimed at
credit card fraud. Because it had a neat name, it got a lot of
headlines. Since computers were involved, some reporters got the two
confused. The Secret Service helped the confusion along by refusing to
comment on what was, or wasn't part of Sun Devil. Sun Devil was not a
"hacker" investigation. So says Gail Thackeray, who was its spearhead.
4. The raid was after GURPS Cyberpunk.
No it wasn't. The Secret Service suspected one of our staffers of
wrongdoing, using his computer at home. They had nothing connecting
his alleged misdeeds with our office, but they raided us anyway, and
took a lot of things. One of the things they took was the GURPS
Cyberpunk manuscript. Their agents were very critical of it, and on
March 2 in their office, one of them called it a "handbook for
computer crime." Since their warrant was sealed, and they wouldn't
comment, our best guess was that they were trying to suppress the
book. They did suppress it, though apparently it was through
bureaucratic inertia and stonewalling rather than because it was a
target of the raid.
3. There was a hacker threat to sabotage the 911 system.
No there wasn't. This story has been cynically spread by phone
company employees (who know better) and by Secret Service spokesmen
(who probably believe it, because they still don't understand any of
this). They're using this story to panic the media, to try to justify
the illegal things they've done and the huge amount of money they've
spent.
What happened was this: A student got access to a phone company
computer and copied a text file - not a program. This file was nothing
but administrative information, and was publicly available elsewhere.
Bell South tried to value it at $79,000, but in court they admitted
that they sold copies for under $20. There was no way this file could
be used to hurt the 911 system, even if anybody had wanted to. To say
otherwise shows an incredible ignorance of the facts. It's as though a
banker claimed "This criminal made an illegal copy of the list of our
Board of Directors. He can use that to break into our vault."
2. We have an employee named Lloyd Blankenship.
He spells his name Loyd, with one L.
And the Number One "false fact" ever reported about this story . . .
1. Steve Jackson Games is the second largest game company in the USA.
Don't we wish!
Brett Slocum <slocum@ssdc.honeywell.com> or <uunet!ssdc.honeywell.com!slocum>
NOTICE: my address has changed!
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. This one's mine, not my company's."