ributed
membership badges or laminated ID cards. If they had, they would
likely have died out quickly, for turnover in their membership was
considerable. LoD was less a high-tech street-gang than an ongoing
state-of-mind. LoD was the Gang That Refused to Die. By 1990, LoD had
RULED for ten years, and it seemed WEIRD to police that they were
continually busting people who were only sixteen years old. All these
teenage small-timers were pleading the tiresome hacker litany of "just
curious, no criminal intent." Somewhere at the center of this
conspiracy there had to be some serious adult masterminds, not this
seemingly endless supply of myopic suburban white kids with high SATs
and funny haircuts.

There was no question that most any American hacker arrested would
"know" LoD. They knew the handles of contributors to LoD Tech Journal,
and were likely to have learned their craft through LoD boards and LoD
activism. But they'd never met anyone from LoD. Even some of the
rotating cadre who were actually and formally "in LoD" knew one another
only by board-mail and pseudonyms. This was a highly unconventional
profile for a criminal conspiracy. Computer networking, and the rapid
evolution of the digital underground, made the situation very diffuse
and confusing.

Furthermore, a big reputation in the digital underground did not
coincide with one's willingness to commit "crimes." Instead, reputation
was based on cleverness and technical mastery. As a result, it often
seemed that the HEAVIER the hackers were, the LESS likely they were to
have committed any kind of common, easily prosecutable crime. There
were some hackers who could really steal. And there were hackers who
could really hack. But the two groups didn't seem to overlap much, if
at all. For instance, most people in the underground looked up to
"Emmanuel Goldstein" of 2600 as a hacker demigod. But Goldstein's
publishing activities were entirely legal--Goldstein just printed dodgy
stuff and talked about politics, he didn't even hack. When you came
right down to it, Goldstein spent half his time complaining that
computer security WASN'T STRONG ENOUGH and ought to be drastically
improved across the board!

Truly heavy-duty hackers, those with serious technical skills who had
earned the respect of the underground, never stole money or abused
credit cards. Sometimes they might abuse phone-codes--but often, they
seemed to get all the free phone-time the