t the sinister idea) that the
E911 Document could be used by hackers to disrupt 911 service, "a life
line for every person certainly in the Southern Bell region of the
United States, and indeed, in many communities throughout the United
States," in Cook's own words. Neidorf had put people's lives in danger.

In pre-trial maneuverings, Cook had established that the E911 Document
was too hot to appear in the public proceedings of the Neidorf trial.
The JURY ITSELF would not be allowed to ever see this Document, lest it
slip into the official court records, and thus into the hands of the
general public, and, thus, somehow, to malicious hackers who might
lethally abuse it.

Hiding the E911 Document from the jury may have been a clever legal
maneuver, but it had a severe flaw. There were, in point of fact,
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, already in possession of the
E911 Document, just as Phrack had published it. Its true nature was
already obvious to a wide section of the interested public (all of
whom, by the way, were, at least theoretically, party to a gigantic
wire-fraud conspiracy). Most everyone in the electronic community who
had a modem and any interest in the Neidorf case already had a copy of
the Document. It had already been available in Phrack for over a year.

People, even quite normal people without any particular prurient
interest in forbidden knowledge, did not shut their eyes in terror at
the thought of beholding a "dangerous" document from a telephone
company. On the contrary, they tended to trust their own judgement and
simply read the Document for themselves. And they were not impressed.

One such person was John Nagle. Nagle was a forty-one-year-old
professional programmer with a masters' degree in computer science from
Stanford. He had worked for Ford Aerospace, where he had invented a
computer-networking technique known as the "Nagle Algorithm," and for
the prominent Californian computer-graphics firm "Autodesk," where he
was a major stockholder.

Nagle was also a prominent figure on the Well, much respected for his
technical knowledgeability.

Nagle had followed the civil-liberties debate closely, for he was an
ardent telecommunicator. He was no particular friend of computer
intruders, but he believed electronic publishing had a great deal to
offer society at large, and attempts to restrain its growth, or to
censor free electronic expression, strongly roused his ire.

The N