join one of Terminus's discussion groups on
the Internet, where friendly and knowledgeable hackers would help you
for free. Naturally the remarks within this group were less than
flattering about the Death Star ... was THAT the problem?

Foley told Izenberg that Terminus had been acquiring hot software
through his, Izenberg's, machine.

Izenberg shrugged this off. A good eight megabytes of data flowed
through his UUCP site every day. UUCP nodes spewed data like fire
hoses. Elephant had been directly linked to Netsys--not surprising,
since Terminus was a 3B2 expert and Izenberg had been a 3B2 contractor.
Izenberg was also linked to "attctc" and the University of Texas.
Terminus was a well-known UNIX expert, and might have been up to all
manner of hijinks on Elephant. Nothing Izenberg could do about that.
That was physically impossible. Needle in a haystack.

In a four-hour grilling, Foley urged Izenberg to come clean and admit
that he was in conspiracy with Terminus, and a member of the Legion of
Doom.

Izenberg denied this. He was no weirdo teenage hacker--he was
thirty-two years old, and didn't even have a "handle." Izenberg was a
former TV technician and electronics specialist who had drifted into
UNIX consulting as a full-grown adult. Izenberg had never met
Terminus, physically. He'd once bought a cheap high-speed modem from
him, though.

Foley told him that this modem (a Telenet T2500 which ran at 19.2
kilobaud, and which had just gone out Izenberg's door in Secret Service
custody) was likely hot property. Izenberg was taken aback to hear
this; but then again, most of Izenberg's equipment, like that of most
freelance professionals in the industry, was discounted, passed
hand-to-hand through various kinds of barter and gray-market. There
was no proof that the modem was stolen, and even if it were, Izenberg
hardly saw how that gave them the right to take every electronic item
in his house.

Still, if the United States Secret Service figured they needed his
computer for national security reasons--or whatever--then Izenberg
would not kick. He figured he would somehow make the sacrifice of his
twenty thousand dollars' worth of professional equipment, in the spirit
of full cooperation and good citizenship.

Robert Izenberg was not arrested. Izenberg was not charged with any
crime. His UUCP node--full of some 140 megabytes of the files, mail,
and data of himself and his dozen or so entirely innocent