81 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
81 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
THE TOP TEN MEDIA ERRORS ABOUT THE SJ GAMES RAID updated 2-12-92
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As this story has developed, occasional errors creep into news stories--
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and many of them have taken on a life of their own. Some reporters, working
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from their clipping files, have turned out stories that are almost 100%
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free of facts. There are a lot of those floating around . . . but here are
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our Top Ten.
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10. Steve Jackson Games is a computer game company.
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No we're not. None of our games are computer games. We use computers
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to WRITE the games, like every other publisher in the '90s. And the
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game that was seized, GURPS CYBERPUNK, was about computers. But we're
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not a computer game company any more than George Bush is a gardener.
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9. GURPS Cyberpunk is a computer game.
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No it's not. Aieeeeee! It's a roleplaying game. It is not played
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on a computer. It's played on a table, with dice.
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8. We're out of business.
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No we're not. It's been reported that we are bankrupt, or filing for
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bankruptcy. It was very close, and we're not out of the woods by any
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means - we did have to lay off half our staff after the raid
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. . . but we're not dead yet.
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7. We were raided by the FBI.
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No we weren't. We were raided by the US Secret Service. The FBI had
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nothing to do with it. (In fact, when Bill Cook, the assistant US
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attorney named in our suit, was doing his "research," he talked to the
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FBI. They told him he didn't have a case. We have this from FBI sources!)
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6. Some of our staff members were arrested by the Secret Service and
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charged with hacking.
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No they weren't. No member of our staff was arrested, indicted, or
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charged. Nobody was even QUESTIONED after the day of the raid.
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5. This was part of Operation Sun Devil.
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No it wasn't. Sun Devil was a totally separate project, aimed at
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credit card fraud. Because it had a neat name, it got a lot of headlines.
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Since computers were involved, some reporters got the two confused. The
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Secret Service helped the confusion along by refusing to comment on what
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was, or wasn't part of Sun Devil. Sun Devil was not a "hacker"
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investigation. So says Gail Thackeray, who was its spearhead.
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4. The raid was after GURPS Cyberpunk.
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No it wasn't. The Secret Service suspected one of our staffers of
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wrongdoing, using his computer at home. They had nothing connecting his
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alleged misdeeds with our office, but they raided us anyway, and took a
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lot of things. One of the things they took was the GURPS Cyberpunk
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manuscript. Their agents were very critical of it, and on March 2 in
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their office, one of them called it a "handbook for computer crime."
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Since their warrant was sealed, and they wouldn't comment, our best guess
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was that they were trying to suppress the book. They did suppress it, but
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apparently it was through bureaucratic inertia and stonewalling rather
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than because it was a target of the raid. Unfortunately, they let us
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believe for 7 months (until their warrant affidavit was unsealed)
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that they had been after the book.
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3. There was a hacker threat to sabotage the 911 system.
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No there wasn't. This story has been cynically spread by phone company
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employees (who know better) and by Secret Service spokesmen (who probably
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believe it, because they still don't understand any of this). They're
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using this story to panic the media, to try to justify the illegal things
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they've done and the huge amount of money they've spent.
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What happened was this: A student got access to a phone company
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computer and copied a text file - not a program. This file was nothing
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but administrative information, and was publicly available elsewhere.
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Bell South tried to value it at $79,000, but in court they admitted that
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they sold copies for under $20. There was no way this file could be used
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to hurt the 911 system, even if anybody had wanted to. To say otherwise
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shows an incredible ignorance of the facts. It's as though a banker
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claimed "This criminal made an illegal copy of the list of our Board of
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Directors. He can use that to break into our vault."
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2. GURPS Cyberpunk was written by Lloyd Blankenship.
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He spells his name Loyd, with one L.
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And the Number One "false fact" ever reported about this story . . .
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1. Steve Jackson Games is the second largest game company in the USA.
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Don't we wish!
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