covertly conspiring to register all modems in the
service of an Orwellian surveillance regime. Mostly, though, this
fearsome phantom is a "hacker." He's strange, he doesn't belong, he's
not authorized, he doesn't smell right, he's not keeping his proper
place, he's not one of us. The focus of fear is the hacker, for much
the same reasons that Stanley's fancied assailant is black.

Stanley's demon can't go away, because he doesn't exist. Despite
singleminded and tremendous effort, he can't be arrested, sued, jailed,
or fired. The only constructive way to do ANYTHING about him is to
learn more about Stanley himself. This learning process may be
repellent, it may be ugly, it may involve grave elements of paranoiac
confusion, but it's necessary. Knowing Stanley requires something more
than class-crossing condescension. It requires more than steely legal
objectivity. It requires human compassion and sympathy.

To know Stanley is to know his demon. If you know the other guy's
demon, then maybe you'll come to know some of your own. You'll be able
to separate reality from illusion. And then you won't do your cause,
and yourself, more harm than good. Like poor damned Stanley from
Chicago did.

#

The Federal Computer Investigations Committee (FCIC) is the most
important and influential organization in the realm of American
computer-crime. Since the police of other countries have largely taken
their computer-crime cues from American methods, the FCIC might well be
called the most important computer crime group in the world.

It is also, by federal standards, an organization of great unorthodoxy.
State and local investigators mix with federal agents. Lawyers,
financial auditors and computer-security programmers trade notes with
street cops. Industry vendors and telco security people show up to
explain their gadgetry and plead for protection and justice. Private
investigators, think-tank experts and industry pundits throw in their
two cents' worth. The FCIC is the antithesis of a formal bureaucracy.

Members of the FCIC are obscurely proud of this fact; they recognize
their group as aberrant, but are entirely convinced that this, for
them, outright WEIRD behavior is nevertheless ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to
get their jobs done.

FCIC regulars --from the Secret Service, the FBI, the IRS, the
Department of Labor, the offices of federal attorneys, state police,
the Air Force, from military intelligence--often at