Background:
Background:
A document titled "Control Office Administration of Enhanced 911 Services
for Special Services and Major Account Centers," was sent to Craig Neidorf
by Robert Riggs. Robert Riggs had stolen the document from BellSouth. Neidorf
had published this document in a previous issue. During this time, a worker
in Niedorf magazine, Phrack, sent a copy of the document to a computer
in Steve Jackson's company. Unfortunately, BellSouth was upset at the magazine
Phrack and was looking for a way to get at them. When they found out
that a person at Phrack had sent a copy the document to Jackson's
company, they sent the Secret Service to retrieve the copy.
Steve Jackson:
Steve Jackson is the owner of Steve Jackson Games. He has created a network
of computers, buletin boards, and gathered programmers. His purpose was to
gather information and people that were interested in creating a program
that would allow people to access a role-playing game called GURPS CYBERPUNK.
This was his major project his company was working on.
Problem:
When the Secret Service had gone to seize the copy of the document, they took all of his computer hardware. This included the CPUs, monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, etc. The only real place the document would be is in the hard drive of the CPUs. Steve Jackson was completely closed down. Then the Secret Service held his computers for three months.
"According to Jackson, the... raid cost his company $125,000, and he had to lay off almost half his employees..." Computers, Ethics, and Social Values, p617
Then when Jackson finally received his computers back, more problems had
arise. They were damaged and missing information that applied to information
collected for GURPS CYBERPUNK.
The problem of having Jackson's bulletin board systems seized in this legal cases raises some concern. Why did they hold his system components for three months? Why didn't they just retrieve the document and return the hardware? Why did it take three months? They retrieved the copy of the document and then it sat in some storage area for three months. All the time Steve Jackson was losing money and employees. Why did they take all of his hardware? Did the mice or monitors really be a threat of containing the document? There is no logical reason that a mouse would pose a threat. It can't hold any information.
Sources
"Case: the United States vs. Craig Neidorf" by Dorothy Denning in Computers, Ehtics & Social Values, Deborah G. Johnson & Hellen Nissenbaum page 609
Online Sourses
Article written by:
Frank Dalton (daltonfd@webster2.websteruniv.edu)
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