ups, but the members
took pains to widely distribute their illicit knowledge. Some LoD
members, like "The Mentor," were close to evangelical about it. Legion
of Doom Technical Journal began to show up on boards throughout the
underground.

LoD Technical Journal was named in cruel parody of the ancient and
honored AT&T Technical Journal. The material in these two publications
was quite similar--much of it, adopted from public journals and
discussions in the telco community. And yet, the predatory attitude of
LoD made even its most innocuous data seem deeply sinister; an outrage;
a clear and present danger.

To see why this should be, let's consider the following (invented)
paragraphs, as a kind of thought experiment.

(A) "W. Fred Brown, AT&T Vice President for Advanced Technical
Development, testified May 8 at a Washington hearing of the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), regarding
Bellcore's GARDEN project. GARDEN (Generalized Automatic Remote
Distributed Electronic Network) is a telephone-switch programming tool
that makes it possible to develop new telecom services, including
hold-on-hold and customized message transfers, from any keypad
terminal, within seconds. The GARDEN prototype combines centrex lines
with a minicomputer using UNIX operating system software."

(B) "Crimson Flash 512 of the Centrex Mobsters reports: D00dz, you
wouldn't believe this GARDEN bullshit Bellcore's just come up with!
Now you don't even need a lousy Commodore to reprogram a switch--just
log on to GARDEN as a technician, and you can reprogram switches right
off the keypad in any public phone booth! You can give yourself
hold-on-hold and customized message transfers, and best of all, the
thing is run off (notoriously insecure) centrex lines using--get
this--standard UNIX software! Ha ha ha ha!"

Message (A), couched in typical techno-bureaucratese, appears tedious
and almost unreadable. (A) scarcely seems threatening or menacing.
Message (B), on the other hand, is a dreadful thing, prima facie
evidence of a dire conspiracy, definitely not the kind of thing you
want your teenager reading.

The INFORMATION, however, is identical. It is PUBLIC information,
presented before the federal government in an open hearing. It is not
"secret." It is not "proprietary." It is not even "confidential." On
the contrary, the development of advanced software systems is a matter
of great public pride to B