corporate people, and by criminals. In the early years of pagers and
beepers, dope dealers were so enthralled this technology that owing a
beeper was practically prima facie evidence of cocaine dealing. CB
radio exploded when the speed limit hit 55 and breaking the highway law
became a national pastime. Dope dealers send cash by Federal Express,
despite, or perhaps BECAUSE OF, the warnings in FedEx offices that tell
you never to try this. Fed Ex uses X-rays and dogs on their mail, to
stop drug shipments. That doesn't work very well.

Drug dealers went wild over cellular phones. There are simple methods
of faking ID on cellular phones, making the location of the call
mobile, free of charge, and effectively untraceable. Now victimized
cellular companies routinely bring in vast toll-lists of calls to
Colombia and Pakistan.

Judge Greene's fragmentation of the phone company is driving law
enforcement nuts. Four thousand telecommunications companies. Fraud
skyrocketing. Every temptation in the world available with a phone and
a credit card number. Criminals untraceable. A galaxy of "new neat
rotten things to do."

If there were one thing Thackeray would like to have, it would be an
effective legal end-run through this new fragmentation minefield.

It would be a new form of electronic search warrant, an "electronic
letter of marque" to be issued by a judge. It would create a new
category of "electronic emergency." Like a wiretap, its use would be
rare, but it would cut across state lines and force swift cooperation
from all concerned. Cellular, phone, laser, computer network, PBXes,
AT&T, Baby Bells, long-distance entrepreneurs, packet radio. Some
document, some mighty court-order, that could slice through four
thousand separate forms of corporate red-tape, and get her at once to
the source of calls, the source of email threats and viruses, the
sources of bomb threats, kidnapping threats. "From now on," she says,
"the Lindbergh baby will always die."

Something that would make the Net sit still, if only for a moment.
Something that would get her up to speed. Seven league boots. That's
what she really needs. "Those guys move in nanoseconds and I'm on the
Pony Express."

And then, too, there's the coming international angle. Electronic
crime has never been easy to localize, to tie to a physical
jurisdiction. And phone-phreaks and hackers loathe boundaries, they
jump them whenever they can. The Engl