mine the copy instead of the
original.

Now our lecturer distributed copied diagrams of a typical LAN or "Local
Area Network", which happened to be out of Connecticut. ONE HUNDRED
AND FIFTY-NINE desktop computers, each with its own peripherals. Three
"file servers." Five "star couplers" each with thirty-two ports. One
sixteen-port coupler off in the corner office. All these machines
talking to each other, distributing electronic mail, distributing
software, distributing, quite possibly, criminal evidence. All linked
by high-capacity fiber-optic cable. A bad guy--cops talk a about "bad
guys" --might be lurking on PC #47 lot or #123 and distributing his ill
doings onto some dupe's "personal" machine in another office--or
another floor--or, quite possibly, two or three miles away! Or,
conceivably, the evidence might be "data-striped"--split up into
meaningless slivers stored, one by one, on a whole crowd of different
disk drives.

The lecturer challenged us for solutions. I for one was utterly
clueless. As far as I could figure, the Cossacks were at the gate;
there were probably more disks in this single building than were seized
during the entirety of Operation Sundevil.

"Inside informant," somebody said. Right. There's always the human
angle, something easy to forget when contemplating the arcane recesses
of high technology. Cops are skilled at getting people to talk, and
computer people, given a chair and some sustained attention, will talk
about their computers till their throats go raw. There's a case on
record of a single question--"How'd you do it?"--eliciting a
forty-five-minute videotaped confession from a computer criminal who
not only completely incriminated himself but drew helpful diagrams.

Computer people talk. Hackers BRAG. Phone-phreaks talk
PATHOLOGICALLY--why else are they stealing phone-codes, if not to
natter for ten hours straight to their friends on an opposite seaboard?
Computer-literate people do in fact possess an arsenal of nifty gadgets
and techniques that would allow them to conceal all kinds of exotic
skullduggery, and if they could only SHUT UP about it, they could
probably get away with all manner of amazing information-crimes. But
that's just not how it works--or at least, that's not how it's worked
SO FAR.

Most every phone-phreak ever busted has swiftly implicated his mentors,
his disciples, and his friends. Most every white-collar
computer-criminal, smugly convi