Hacker News Reader

Comment by zyxley | Hacker News Reader

> The raid couldn’t have come at a worse time for Steve Jackson Games. Already in debt, the company depended heavily on new releases for cash flow, and the confiscation of the GURPS Cyberpunk manuscript would significantly delay the book’s release. On March 9, the company let go eight people from its staff of seventeen. Since the Secret Service did not immediately return the manuscript, the team frantically reconstructed it from earlier draft materials and hurried it into print.

The other moral the story: always keep an off-site backup.

View on HN

As the guy they're talking about, I did keep an offsite backup. The GURPS Cyberpunk manuscript existed in three places -- my computer at home, my computer at work, and the Illuminati BBS.

They took all three. They also got my wife's in-progress Master's Thesis, and she had to restart from scratch because they refused to return even a copy.

I'm curious where the quote attributed to me was sourced from, as I don't remember saying that. However, since I regularly come across things in old backups that I had totally forgotten, both code and written text, it may be completely legit.

I'm kind of surprised the author didn't bother to contact me at all (I'm hardly difficult to find). We weren't awakened at gunpoint, for instance. That was Goggans. We were awakened by pounding on our apartment door at 6 AM.

Hi, I wrote the article. The long quote from you is sourced from a (pre-raid) article you wrote for Steve Jackson's house organ of the time "Roleplayer" #15; be happy to send you a scan if you're don't have one.

As for being woken up at gunpoint, that's sourced from a number of contemporary accounts, including a Mar 5 1990 comp.dcom.telecom post (reposted in Phrack #31) reading "The Mentor was awakened at 6:30am on Thursday (3/1/90) with the gun of a Secret Service agent pointed at his head."

I do apologize if it seems standoffish not to have dropped you a line while I was working on it - it's kind of my shtick that I work exclusively from documentary evidence of the era I'm writing about rather than from interviews today. No method is perfect, but the results tend to be pretty decent.

Like I said, it doesn't surprise me that I said that, I just didn't remember it.

But a random Usenet post from someone who undoubtedly wasn't there isn't a source, it is hearsay....

And how hard would it have been to look at the cover of Cyberpunk and spell my name right?

I hadn't noticed that your name is misspelled in the published version - sorry about that, I'll see if that can get fixed. It must have been spellchecked somewhere late in the editorial process.

And as for the gun in your face, obviously you know best what happened to you, I was just explaining why the article says what it says. I will not repeat the hearsay.

They had guns when they came in the door, but Goggans had said something to the effect of 'you'll never take me alive' on a BBS post, so they were a little more proactive in his case... :)

They did manage to correct your name in the story, fyi.

If the innocent material you have suddenly becomes subject to search-and-seizure by the Secret Service, off-site backup would likely be targeted as well. Keeping a copy might even be a felony even if it turns out the data was innocent (obstructing an investigation/operation etc).

I'm not sure how even ignorant law enforcement raids go from "maintaining additional copies" to "obstructing justice."

I just meant that if the Secret Service think you have some illegal material, like login/pws to a VPN for ATM machines -- then not handing over all copies is likely considered obstruction/non-compliance. Even if it turned out that those documents were not actually of the nature -- if the warrant/investigation was otherwise legal, one isn't allowed to simply "keep a backup".

Eg: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/barrett-brown-sentenced-5-years...

"The obstruction charge relates to an attempt by Brown and his mother to hide a laptop from authorities during a search of her home in March 2012. Brown’s mother was separately charged with obstruction and given six months probation."

At any rate, my point was that if you have a list of credit card numbers, and the Secret Service comes and asks for them. It is not ok to keep an off-site backup.

I'm not saying that the US government isn't behaving batshit crazy wrt hackers ever since around the Kevin Mitnick case, or that the current laws makes sense -- nor that the priorities makes sense -- just that "having an off-site backup" isn't a defence against a rouge state. Especially if you are a subject of that state.

Now I see your point.

However, I'd argue to a judge that I can't be "non-compliant" about surrendering all copies of illegal material until the court decides that the material is indeed illegal. Just because law enforcement wants to bring charges doesn't mean I'm actually guilty of anything yet.

It was far more difficult in the early 90s.

I imagine that even clumsy methods of doing so would have been cheaper than the turmoil that goes with having to fire half your staff.

We thought three copies in two separate locations was backup enough. All three of the computers (my home system, my work system, and the Illuminati BBS) were seized.

Hindsight = 20/20, eh?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com