overseer who apparently did nothing else but watch
the author for five weeks. Editing twelve pages had taken two days.
Printing and mailing an electronic document (which was already
available on the Southern Bell Data Network to any telco employee who
needed it), had cost over a thousand dollars.

But this was just the beginning. There were also the HARDWARE
EXPENSES. Eight hundred fifty dollars for a VT220 computer monitor.
THIRTY-ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS for a sophisticated VAXstation II computer.
Six thousand dollars for a computer printer. TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND
DOLLARS for a copy of "Interleaf" software. Two thousand five hundred
dollars for VMS software. All this to create the twelve-page Document.

Plus ten percent of the cost of the software and the hardware, for
maintenance. (Actually, the ten percent maintenance costs, though
mentioned, had been left off the final $79,449 total, apparently
through a merciful oversight).

Mr. Megahee's letter had been mailed directly to William Cook himself,
at the office of the Chicago federal attorneys. The United States
Government accepted these telco figures without question.

As incredulity mounted, the value of the E911 Document was officially
revised downward. This time, Robert Kibler of BellSouth Security
estimated the value of the twelve pages as a mere $24,639.05--based,
purportedly, on "R&D costs." But this specific estimate, right down to
the nickel, did not move the skeptics at all; in fact it provoked open
scorn and a torrent of sarcasm.

The financial issues concerning theft of proprietary information have
always been peculiar. It could be argued that BellSouth had not "lost"
its E911 Document at all in the first place, and therefore had not
suffered any monetary damage from this "theft." And Sheldon Zenner did
in fact argue this at Neidorf's trial--that Prophet's raid had not been
"theft," but was better understood as illicit copying.

The money, however, was not central to anyone's true purposes in this
trial. It was not Cook's strategy to convince the jury that the E911
Document was a major act of theft and should be punished for that
reason alone. His strategy was to argue that the E911 Document was
DANGEROUS. It was his intention to establish that the E911 Document
was "a road-map" to the Enhanced 911 System. Neidorf had deliberately
and recklessly distributed a dangerous weapon. Neidorf and the Prophet
did not care (or perhaps even gloated a