hundreds of similar documents with impenetrable titles. However,
having blundered over it in the course of his illicit wanderings
through AIMSX, he decided to take it with him as a trophy. It might
prove very useful in some future boasting, bragging, and strutting
session. So, some time in September 1988, Prophet ordered the AIMSX
mainframe computer to copy this document (henceforth called simply
called "the E911 Document") and to transfer this copy to his home
computer.

No one noticed that Prophet had done this. He had "stolen" the E911
Document in some sense, but notions of property in cyberspace can be
tricky. BellSouth noticed nothing wrong, because BellSouth still had
their original copy. They had not been "robbed" of the document
itself. Many people were supposed to copy this document--specifically,
people who worked for the nineteen BellSouth "special services and
major account centers," scattered throughout the Southeastern United
States. That was what it was for, why it was present on a computer
network in the first place: so that it could be copied and read--by
telco employees. But now the data had been copied by someone who
wasn't supposed to look at it.

Prophet now had his trophy. But he further decided to store yet
another copy of the E911 Document on another person's computer. This
unwitting person was a computer enthusiast named Richard Andrews who
lived near Joliet, Illinois. Richard Andrews was a UNIX programmer by
trade, and ran a powerful UNIX board called "Jolnet," in the basement
of his house.

Prophet, using the handle "Robert Johnson," had obtained an account on
Richard Andrews' computer. And there he stashed the E911 Document, by
storing it in his own private section of Andrews' computer.

Why did Prophet do this? If Prophet had eliminated the E911 Document
from his own computer, and kept it hundreds of miles away, on another
machine, under an alias, then he might have been fairly safe from
discovery and prosecution--although his sneaky action had certainly put
the unsuspecting Richard Andrews at risk.

But, like most hackers, Prophet was a pack-rat for illicit data. When
it came to the crunch, he could not bear to part from his trophy. When
Prophet's place in Decatur, Georgia was raided in July 1989, there was
the E911 Document, a smoking gun. And there was Prophet in the hands
of the Secret Service, doing his best to "explain."

Our story now takes us away from the At