ety if phone phreaking
and computer hacking, as hobbies, simply dried up and blew away, so
that nobody ever did it again.

She seems surprised. "No," she says swiftly. "Maybe a little ... in
the old days ... the MIT stuff.... But there's a lot of wonderful,
legal stuff you can do with computers now, you don't have to break into
somebody else's just to learn. You don't have that excuse. You can
learn all you like."

Did you ever hack into a system? I ask.

The trainees do it at Glynco. Just to demonstrate system
vulnerabilities. She's cool to the notion. Genuinely indifferent.

"What kind of computer do you have?"

"A Compaq 286LE," she mutters.

"What kind do you WISH you had?"

At this question, the unmistakable light of true hackerdom flares in
Gail Thackeray's eyes. She becomes tense, animated, the words pour
out: "An Amiga 2000 with an IBM card and Mac emulation! The most
common hacker machines are Amigas and Commodores. And Apples." If she
had the Amiga, she enthuses, she could run a whole galaxy of seized
computer-evidence disks on one convenient multifunctional machine. A
cheap one, too. Not like the old Attorney General lab, where they had
an ancient CP/M machine, assorted Amiga flavors and Apple flavors, a
couple IBMS, all the utility software ... but no Commodores. The
workstations down at the Attorney General's are Wang dedicated
word-processors. Lame machines tied in to an office net--though at
least they get on-line to the Lexis and Westlaw legal data services.

I don't say anything. I recognize the syndrome, though. This
computer-fever has been running through segments of our society for
years now. It's a strange kind of lust: K-hunger, Meg-hunger; but it's
a shared disease; it can kill parties dead, as conversation spirals
into the deepest and most deviant recesses of software releases and
expensive peripherals.... The mark of the hacker beast. I have it
too. The whole "electronic community," whatever the hell that is, has
it. Gail Thackeray has it. Gail Thackeray is a hacker cop. My
immediate reaction is a strong rush of indignant pity: WHY DOESN'T
SOMEBODY BUY THIS WOMAN HER AMIGA?! It's not like she's asking for a
Cray X-MP supercomputer mainframe; an Amiga's a sweet little cookie-box
thing. We're losing zillions in organized fraud; prosecuting and
defending a single hacker case in court can cost a hundred grand easy.
How come nobody can come up with four lousy gra