owd
laughs aloud.

"They didn't laugh at that at my last speech," Bayse observes. He had
been addressing cops--STRAIGHT cops, not computer people. It had been
a worthy meeting, useful one supposes, but nothing like THIS. There
has never been ANYTHING like this. Without any prodding, without any
preparation, people in the audience simply begin to ask questions.
Longhairs, freaky people, mathematicians. Bayse is answering,
politely, frankly, fully, like a man walking on air. The ballroom's
atmosphere crackles with surreality. A female lawyer behind me breaks
into a sweat and a hot waft of surprisingly potent and musky perfume
flows off her pulse-points.

People are giddy with laughter. People are interested, fascinated,
their eyes so wide and dark that they seem eroticized. Unlikely
daisy-chains form in the halls, around the bar, on the escalators: cops
with hackers, civil rights with FBI, Secret Service with phone phreaks.

Gail Thackeray is at her crispest in a white wool sweater with a tiny
Secret Service logo. "I found Phiber Optik at the payphones, and when
he saw my sweater, he turned into a PILLAR OF SALT!" she chortles.

Phiber discusses his case at much length with his arresting officer,
Don Delaney of the New York State Police. After an hour's chat, the
two of them look ready to begin singing "Auld Lang Syne." Phiber
finally finds the courage to get his worst complaint off his chest. It
isn't so much the arrest. It was the CHARGE. Pirating service off 900
numbers. I'm a PROGRAMMER, Phiber insists. This lame charge is going
to hurt my reputation. It would have been cool to be busted for
something happening, like Section 1030 computer intrusion. Maybe some
kind of crime that's scarcely been invented yet. Not lousy phone
fraud. Phooey.

Delaney seems regretful. He had a mountain of possible criminal
charges against Phiber Optik. The kid's gonna plead guilty anyway.
He's a first timer, they always plead. Coulda charged the kid with
most anything, and gotten the same result in the end. Delaney seems
genuinely sorry not to have gratified Phiber in this harmless fashion.
Too late now. Phiber's pled already. All water under the bridge.
Whaddya gonna do?

Delaney's got a good grasp on the hacker mentality. He held a press
conference after he busted a bunch of Masters of Deception kids. Some
journo had asked him: "Would you describe these people as GENIUSES?"
Delaney's deadpan answer, p