JOE MCCARTHY IN A LEISURE SUIT: (WITCH)HUNTING FOR THE COMPUTER UNDERGROUND Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer Department of Sociology Northern Illinois University DeKalb, IL 60115 (From: The Critical Criminologist, 2(September), 1990). We are indebted to John Schneider for suggesting the title and framework for this work. We also thank the numerous anonymous computer underground participants who provided information. Special acknowledgement goes to Hatchet Molly, Hot Mix #1, Jedi, The Mentor, Knight Lightning, Taran King, and the Legion of Doom. JOE MCCARTHY IN A LEISURE SUIT: (WITCH)HUNTING FOR THE COMPUTER UNDERGROUND It was 1950. Senator Joe McCarthy announced that he had the names of 205 Communists working the in State Department. The first two members of the Hollywood Ten started serving prison terms for refusing to answer questions of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in a cheap Mickey Spillane thriller, hero Mike Hammer tells a friend: You know what, Lee, I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs in the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw . . .they were Commies, Lee. They were red sons-of bitches who should have died long ago. . . . Witch hunts are about images and social control. They have typically occured during times of social upheaval as a way of re-affirming normative boundaries or providing social unity in the face of a perceived threat. Similarly, in the 1950s, the imagery of good against evil was played out in media portrayals, political rhetoric, public ideology, and legislation. In both, the public was whipped into a paranoid frenzy by the creation of mysterious alien demons, in which the ends justified the means in removing the scourge from the public midst. Currently, expanding computer technology has created a new type of social demon as the techno-revolution challenges definitions of law, property rights, privacy, and conventional social control strategies. This has led to law enforcement fears that subcultures other than their own may possess the means to acquire, manipulate, or transmit knowledge that in rare cases may be predatory, but generally are not. In response, particularly the Secret Service has aggressively stigmatized and attacked those they perceive as a subversive threat to the hegemony of elite power to control information. At stake is control of knowledge and information. Should it be controlled by an elite, and should those who possess information that is defined as "unauthorized" be criminalized and persecuted? Should electronic communication be offered the same First Amendment protections as print media? Will current excesses of federal zealous prosecution lead to a loss of Constitutional protections? Recent state and federal legislation and law enforcement crackdowns, especially in Operation Sun Devil, a national purge not only of "hackers," but also of those who may possess information about them, has brought the battle for information control and Constitutional rights into the hi-tech world of computer users. In this note we identify one BBS subculture, the computer underground (CU), whose activities have been criminalized in ways reminiscent of witch hunts. Our argument proceeds from several inter-related propositions: First, we live in an era of state intervention and social engineering, one characteristic of which is the legislation against a variety of "profane" behaviors that violate an accepted moral order and invoke the criminal justice process. Second, new technology has increased faster than social understanding, laws, legislative statutes, or enforcement strategies can match. This has resulted in a "techno-crisis" in which a relocation of normative, ideological, and information boundaries have led to changes in the kinds of behavior handled by agents of social control. Third, the invocation of the criminal justice system against specific groups or behaviors follows a "moral panic" in which the targeted groups undergo a ritualized symbolic transformation in which they become defined as "profaners of the sacred moral order." This transformation is a form of scapegoating, in which public troubles are traced to and blamed on others. Although sometimes the others are guilty of some anti-social act, the response exceeds the harm of the act, and the targets are pursued not only for what they may have done, but also for the stigmatizing signs they bear (Girard, 1985). Fourth, this transformative process and the corresponding enforcement of the behaviors that emerge from it resembles what, in earlier times, are called witch hunts. Agents of control, responding to the panic, actively seek out those whose social identity has been transformed in a systematic and highly visible manner. We suggest that the CU serves as a type of scapegoat, by which we mean the persecution of a group perceived to threaten social stability in a time of social crisis. The data on which we base our conclusion may be found in Meyer (1989), Meyer and Thomas (1990), Thomas and Meyer (1990a; 1990b), and Computer underground Digest). Computer underground activity is usually thought of as "hacking," which is the unauthorized attempt to gain access to another's computer system through telephone lines. However, "hacking" simply refers to mucking about in a system or program as a way to learn more about it and to satisfy intellectual curiosity, and unauthorized access to another computer system is not necessary to the hacking enterprise. The CU also includes a variety of other behaviors. These include "phreaking," or the attempt to obtain free phone calls; pirating, which is the use or distribution of copyright software that one has not purchased; anarchy, the sharing of knowledge for potentially disruptive purposes; and "cyberpunk," which is an affinity for science fiction literature futuristic fantasy "generic role playing games" (GURPS) in which society is seen as harmfully dominated by computer technology. The Witch Hunt Metaphor The metaphor of witch hunt may appear excessively dramatic when applied to the computer underground, but it provides a useful imagery of the labeling and control processes that emerge in times of social tension. A metaphor is any conceptual device that provides an alternative way of viewing and understanding in ways not readily available with literal depictions. Bathos, the rhetorical device of reducing an abstract form of speech to one more mundane, is a means of making the object of discussion less mysterious. When applied to the CU, the metaphor helps ground the relationship between the CU and social control within a context of stigmatization and social strain analogous to similar phenomena with which we are more familiar. Witch hunts are a social response to deviant groups or individuals in which an extreme and stigmatized identity is created. That identity is then used as the justification for enforcing existing social norms or values. This identity generally bears a form of heresy in which the stigmatized group is perceived to be profaning a sacred moral order in ways that threaten the commonweal as well as the ideological grounds on which it is based. Curry (1968: 21-28) suggests that social control mechanisms tend to expand as both official agencies and private individuals spring up to combat the menace. Enforcing perceived computer abuse laws is no exception. The esoteric nature of computer technology requires sophisticated skills to discover and apprehend the targets, and "computer dedicated crime units" of policing agencies and numerous companies in the private sector actively publicize and seek out "crime" at a rapidly increasing rate (e.g. Conly, 1989; McEwen, 1989). The public does not understand the "crimes" and relies on the credibility of "experts" to assess and define the problem and the power of control agents to contain it. Yet, as Barlow (1990) and Thomas and Meyer (1990b) illustrate, the agents assigned to ferret out the "menace" have little, if any, understanding of the nature of those they condemn. Like some drug-crazed prosecutorial Richard Simmons, agents engage in their own variety of intellectual aerobics, flitting about like frenetic fruit flies trying to impose distorted meanings on a variety of CU behavior. For example, the near-universal use of pseudonyms (or "handles") is "proof" of conspiratorial intent or fraud. Possession of unpurchased copyright software is equivalent to stealing computers. Possession (or even discussion) of information about accessing others' computers is a felony (California). In short, control agents have little understanding of either the technology involved or the people they persecute. It is this combination of ignorance on one hand and moral certitude on the other that makes federal agents so dangerous. Aided by new and often untested legislation and by laws originally passed to combat drug use and racketeering, enforcement agents posses considerable legal power to monitor, search, seize property, and prosecute suspected deviants. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions (e.g., U.S. v. Monsanto (109 S.Ct. 2657, 1989, and Chaplin v. Drysdale (109 S.Ct. 2646, 1989), provide law enforcement officials with considerable power to confiscate any private property for which they can claim may have been used in a crime or relevant as potential evidence in prosecuting a crime. Confiscation does not require an indictment. In Austin, Texas, several persons and a small business had equipment confiscated without arrests or indictments (J. Schwartz, 1990). In this incident, federal agents assumed that the product of the company--a producer of science fiction fantasy games--had produced a "hackers manual," which in fact was a fictional work (J. Schwartz, 1990). Several other characteristics are typical of witch hunts. First, charges are often unspecified. Those among the computer underground who are served with search warrants for their premises generally have all computer and computer-related equipment seized as evidence, even though they not be charged with a crime (Barlow, 1990; Markoff, 1990; Schwartz, 1990). In Operation Sun Devil, a "crackdown" on hackers occuring in May, 1990, a two year nationwide investigation of the computer underground resulted in only nine arrests to date, two of which were not computer related. Considering the hundreds of agents required to investigate and arrest the evil-doers, and the presumption that sufficient evidence of a crime is required to justify search warrants, this investment produced little, suggesting that the menace may be a chimera created to bolster reputations. Although prosecutors argue that sifting through computer files for evidence is time-consuming, the innocent are swept up along with the few culprits caught (Markoff, 1990; J. Schwartz, 1990). Second, the enforcement apparatus that apprehends witch hunts generally possess considerable powers. Using laws originally intended to apprehend and convict racketeering and drug offenders, agents are able to expand their powers to search, seize, and confiscate. Although a seemingly small detail, the power to confiscate any perceived computer-related articles, including manuals, printers, personal papers, answering machines, audio cassette tapes, and other property unrelated to the offense, provides considerable latitude to search for evidence of offenses other than those for which search warrants were originally served. Third, as Curry (1968) observes, witch hunts typically stimulate an "industry" to seek out those so-labelled. The growth of private security consultants who have an interest in maintaining the image of a hacker menace has grown dramatically in the past decades (McEwen, 1989). The growth of special computer abuse units and the advocacy of infiltration and sting tactics among law enforcement agents also creates an organized system of identifying and seeking out computer users and BBSs perceived as potentially dangerous (McEwen, 1989a; Rosenblatt, 1989a). Fourth, witch hunts occur during social transition (Becker, 1955; Erikson, 1966). The current revolution in technology is challenging former conceptions of private property, communication, information production and control, surveillance, and other fundamental aspects of the fundamental social fabric. Neither the technology nor the consequences it engenders is understood by the general populace, leading to suspicion and mistrust of it on one hand, and a tendency to allow social control specialists to supervise and enforce its operation on the other. Fifth, "witches" are typically marked by their possession of esoteric or forbidden knowledge. BBS users indicated knowledge of hacking, piracy, or phreaking, whether they use such knowledge or not, are--judging from conversations with law enforcement officials--assumed to be "guilty." This leads to the final characteristic, which is the social transformation of a class of people who bear the signs of stigma. The current witch hunt has caught up demonstrably innocent bystanders, people who have neither been indicted nor accused of a tangible crime. They suffer for the symbols they bear. Attacking those who associate with, voice support for, or may have knowledge of, CU activity strikes at the heart of the issue: We seem to be re-entering a McCartyesque period of history in which challenges to power are met with repression. Discussion Our own research presents an image of CU activity quite at odds with that promulgated by the media and especially by control agents. Our preliminary findings include: 1. The computer underground is a highly complex mosaic of interests, motives, and skills, and, in principle, possesses a set of values, information processing, language, and norms that give it its cultural identity. 2. Most CU participants are law-abiding, and even on so-called "elite" BBSs questionable activity is discussed more than practiced. Our data suggest that in the main, the vast majority of CU participants are stridently against "phone phreaking," "carding," and all forms of related illegal behavior. 3. The CU possesses an explicit code, the "Hackers' Ethic," which vehemently opposes destructive or predatory actions (Levy, 1984; Meyer and Thomas, 1990a). Some crimes are committed with computers just as some crimes are committed with automobiles or even badges. But, car owners are generally not stigmatized because a neighbor drives an auto in a bank heist. 4. Within the past two years, internal social control mechanisms have broken down, and the hacker ethic is now considered archaic by new, younger computerists. Unlike their counterparts of the eighties who participated in the culture for the pursuit of knowledge and challenge, a new generation of computerists is emerging for whom these pursuits may be secondary. 5. Whatever their individual motives or intents, the CU can be understood as as a form of social rebellion in some ways analogous to the counter culture of the 1960s. In many ways, CU activity may be interpreted as a postmodern form of challenge to an encroaching "totalitarian technology." 6. The law enforcement crackdown on the CU during the past year appears to be more symbolic than substantively effective. Ironically, aggressive enforcement may be contributing to the very behaviors it seeks to control. Several findings lead to this conclusion: a) Licit or only marginally illicit users are dropping out, thus decreasing the socializing processes that discouraged serious predations; b) The secrecy and inaccessibility of the culture to outsiders, which in the past was more symbolic than real, is now becoming a necessity for those committed to continuing illegal behavior; c) As the consequences for violating the law increase, the stakes for which the law is violated also may increase. Computerized information processing and electronic communication are becoming increasing common. Yet, existing case and statute law has not developed the same First Amendment protections for this medium. The current federal crackdowns on alleged hackers threatens to circumscribe protections at a time when other Constitutional protections also seem under attack. We have argued that these attacks resemble a witch hunt because of the similarities shared with other repressive phenomena in U.S. history. The ultimate goals of a witch hunt are to re-affirm moral and other social boundaries, eliminate threats to existing power relations, and re-cast perpetrators as committing unnatural acts that violate the sacred social order. Gary Marx reminds us that democracy is lost not by assassination from ambush, but by a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. Failure to recognize and respond to current attempts by the state to control the possession and use of new information technology will surely place free inquiry on the endangered species list. BIBLIOGRAPHY Barlow, John Perry. 1990 (Forthcoming). "Crime and Puzzlement." Whole Earth Review. Conly, Catherine H. 1989. Organizing for Computer Crime Investigation and Prosecution. Currie, Elliott P. 1968. "Crimes without Criminals: Witchcraft and its Control in Renaissance Europe." Law and Society Review, 3(August): 7-32. Erikson, Kai T. 1966. Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: John Wiley. 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