the glass doors of the front entrance is a handsome bronze
bas-relief of Art Deco vines, sunflowers, and birds, entwining the Bell
logo and the legend NEW ENGLAND TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY--an
entity which no longer officially exists.

The doors are locked securely. I peer through the shadowed glass.
Inside is an official poster reading:

"New England Telephone a NYNEX Company

ATTENTION

"All persons while on New England Telephone Company premises are
required to visibly wear their identification cards (C.C.P. Section 2,
Page 1).

"Visitors, vendors, contractors, and all others are required to visibly
wear a daily pass.

"Thank you.

Kevin C. Stanton. Building Security Coordinator."

Outside, around the corner, is a pull-down ribbed metal security door,
a locked delivery entrance. Some passing stranger has grafitti-tagged
this door, with a single word in red spray-painted cursive:

Fury

#

My book on the Hacker Crackdown is almost over now. I have
deliberately saved the best for last.

In February 1991, I attended the CPSR Public Policy Roundtable, in
Washington, DC. CPSR, Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, was a sister organization of EFF, or perhaps its aunt,
being older and perhaps somewhat wiser in the ways of the world of
politics.

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility began in 1981 in Palo
Alto, as an informal discussion group of Californian computer
scientists and technicians, united by nothing more than an electronic
mailing list. This typical high-tech ad-hocracy received the dignity
of its own acronym in 1982, and was formally incorporated in 1983.

CPSR lobbied government and public alike with an educational outreach
effort, sternly warning against any foolish and unthinking trust in
complex computer systems. CPSR insisted that mere computers should
never be considered a magic panacea for humanity's social, ethical or
political problems. CPSR members were especially troubled about the
stability, safety, and dependability of military computer systems, and
very especially troubled by those systems controlling nuclear arsenals.
CPSR was best-known for its persistent and well-publicized attacks on
the scientific credibility of the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star
Wars").

In 1990, CPSR was the nation's veteran cyber-political activist group,
with over two thousand members in twenty-one local chapters across the
US. It was especially active