SJ Games vs. the Secret Service
On March 1 1990, the offices of Steve
Jackson Games, in Austin, Texas, were raided
by the U.S. Secret Service as part of a
nationwide investigation of data piracy. The
initial news stories simply reported that
the Secret Service had raided a suspected
ring of hackers. Gradually, the true story
emerged.
More than three years later, a federal
court awarded damages and attorneys' fees to
the game company, ruling that the raid had
been careless, illegal, and completely
unjustified. Electronic civil-liberties
advocates hailed the case as a landmark. It
was the first step toward establishing that
online speech IS speech, and entitled to
Constitutional protection . . . and,
specifically, that law-enforcement agents
can't seize and hold a BBS with impunity.
The Raid
On the morning of March 1, without
warning, a force of armed Secret Service
agents - accompanied by Austin police and at
least one civilian "expert" from the phone
company - occupied the offices of Steve
Jackson Games and began to search for
computer equipment. The home of Loyd
Blankenship, the writer of
GURPS Cyberpunk, was also
raided. A large amount of equipment was
seized, including four computers, two laser
printers, some loose hard disks and a great
deal of assorted hardware. One of the
computers was the one running the
Illuminati BBS.
The only computers taken were those with
GURPS Cyberpunk files; other
systems were left in place. In their
diligent search for evidence, the agents
also cut off locks, forced open footlockers,
tore up dozens of boxes in the warehouse,
and bent two of the office letter openers
attempting to pick the lock on a file
cabinet.
The next day, accompanied by an attorney,
Steve Jackson visited the Austin offices of
the Secret Service. He had been promised
that he could make copies of the company's
files. As it turned out, he was only allowed
to copy a few files, and only from one
system. Still missing were all the current
text files and hard copy for this book, as
well as the files for the Illuminati BBS
with their extensive playtest comments.
In the course of that visit, it became
clear that the investigating agents
considered GURPS Cyberpunk to
be "a handbook for computer crime." They
seemed to make no distinction between a
discussion of futuristic credit fraud, using
equipment that doesn't exist, and modern
real-life credit card abuse. A repeated
comment by the agents was "This is real."
Over the next few weeks, the Secret
Service repeatedly assured the SJ Games
attorney that complete copies of the files
would be returned "tomorrow." But these
promises weren't kept; the book was
reconstructed from old backups, playtest
copies, notes and memories.
On March 26, almost four weeks after the
raid, some (but not all) of the files were
returned. It was June 21, nearly four months later, when most (but not all) of
the hardware was returned. The Secret
Service kept one company hard disk, all
Loyd's personal equipment and files, the
printouts of GURPS Cyberpunk,
and several other things.
The raid, and especially the confiscation
of the game manuscript, caused a
catastrophic interruption of the company's
business. SJ Games very nearly closed its
doors. It survived only by laying off half
its employees, and it was years before it
could be said to have "recovered."
Why was SJ Games raided? That was
a mystery until October 21, 1990, when the
company finally received a copy of the
Secret Service warrant
affidavit - at their request, it had
been sealed. And the answer was . . .
guilt by remote association.
While reality-checking the book, Loyd
Blankenship corresponded with a variety of
people, from computer security experts to
self-confessed computer crackers. From his
home, he ran a legal BBS which
discussed the "computer underground," and he
knew many of its members. That was enough to
put him on a federal List of Dangerous
Hoodlums! The
affidavit on which SJ Games were raided
was unbelievably flimsy . . . Loyd
Blankenship was suspect because he ran a
technologically literate and politically
irreverent BBS, because he wrote about
hacking, and because he received and
re-posted a copy of the /Phrack
newsletter. The company was raided simply
because Loyd worked there and used its
(entirely different) BBS!
As for GURPS Cyberpunk, it
had merely been a target of opportunity . .
. something "suspicious" that the agents
picked up at the scene. The Secret Service
allowed SJ Games (and the public) to
believe, for months, that the book had been
the target of the raid.
The one bright spot in this whole affair
was the
creation of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. In mid-1990, Mitch Kapor, John
Barlow and John Gilmore formed the EFF to
address this and similar outrages. It's a
nonprofit organization dedicated to
preserving the Constitutional rights of
computer users. (For more information, look
at the EFF web
site, or write them at 454 Shotwell St.,
San Francisco, CA 94110.) The EFF provided
the financial backing that made it possible
for SJ Games and four Illuminati users to
file suit against the Secret Service.
Two active electronic-civil-liberties
groups also formed in Texas: EFF-Austin and
Electronic Frontiers Houston, which have
since merged to become
Electronic
Frontiers Texas.
And science fiction writer Bruce Sterling
turned his hand to journalism and wrote The Hacker Crackdown about this and
other cases where the law collided with
technology. A few months after it was
published in hardback, he released it to the
Net, and you can
read it online.
In early 1993, the case finally came to
trial. SJ Games was represented by the
Austin firm of George, Donaldson & Ford. The
lead counsel was Pete Kennedy.
And we won. The judge gave the Secret
Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ
Games on two out of the three counts, and
awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over
$250,000 in attorney's fees. In October
1994, the Fifth Circuit turned down SJ
Games' appeal of the last (interception)
count . . . meaning that right now, in the
Fifth Circuit, it is not "interception" of
your e-mail messages when law enforcement
officials walk out the door with the
computer holding them.
Case Documents
- The
affidavit under which the Secret
Service obtained its warrant to raid SJ
Games. (This was first made public in
issue 2.11 of the Computer
Underground Digest, which we have
reproduced here in its entirety to
recognize the work of the CuD editors.)
- The
complaint filed by SJ Games against
the Secret Service.
- The final
judge's decision in the case.
- The
Fifth Circuit opinion on the
"interception" question.
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