d the manifesto, the foundation would "fund,
conduct, and support legal efforts to demonstrate that the Secret
Service has exercised prior restraint on publications, limited free
speech, conducted improper seizure of equipment and data, used undue
force, and generally conducted itself in a fashion which is arbitrary,
oppressive, and unconstitutional."

"Crime and Puzzlement" was distributed far and wide through computer
networking channels, and also printed in the Whole Earth Review. The
sudden declaration of a coherent, politicized counter-strike from the
ranks of hackerdom electrified the community. Steve Wozniak (perhaps a
bit stung by the NuPrometheus scandal) swiftly offered to match any
funds Kapor offered the Foundation.

John Gilmore, one of the pioneers of Sun Microsystems, immediately
offered his own extensive financial and personal support. Gilmore, an
ardent libertarian, was to prove an eloquent advocate of electronic
privacy issues, especially freedom from governmental and corporate
computer-assisted surveillance of private citizens.

A second meeting in San Francisco rounded up further allies: Stewart
Brand of the Point Foundation, virtual-reality pioneers Jaron Lanier
and Chuck Blanchard, network entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nat
Goldhaber. At this dinner meeting, the activists settled on a formal
title: the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Incorporated. Kapor became
its president. A new EFF Conference was opened on the Point
Foundation's Well, and the Well was declared "the home of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation."

Press coverage was immediate and intense. Like their
nineteenth-century spiritual ancestors, Alexander Graham Bell and
Thomas Watson, the high-tech computer entrepreneurs of the 1970s and
1980s--people such as Wozniak, Jobs, Kapor, Gates, and H. Ross Perot,
who had raised themselves by their bootstraps to dominate a glittering
new industry--had always made very good copy.

But while the Wellbeings rejoiced, the press in general seemed
nonplussed by the self-declared "civilizers of cyberspace." EFF's
insistence that the war against "hackers" involved grave Constitutional
civil liberties issues seemed somewhat farfetched, especially since
none of EFF's organizers were lawyers or established politicians. The
business press in particular found it easier to seize on the apparent
core of the story--that high-tech entrepreneur Mitchell Kapor had
established a "defense fund for