But Terminus had odd friends and a spotted history. Terminus had once been the subject of an admiring interview in *Phrack* (Volume II, Issue 14, Phile 2 -- dated May 1987). In this article, *Phrack* co-editor Taran King described "Terminus" as an electronics engineer, 5'9", brown-haired, born in 1959 -- at 28 years old, quite mature for a hacker.
Terminus had once been sysop of a phreak/hack underground board called "MetroNet," which ran on an Apple II. Later he'd replaced "MetroNet" with an underground board called "MegaNet," specializing in IBMs. In his younger days, Terminus had written one of the very first and most elegant code-scanning programs for the IBM-PC. This program had been widely distributed in the underground. Uncounted legions of PC- owning phreaks and hackers had used Terminus's scanner program to rip-off telco codes. This feat had not escaped the attention of telco security; it hardly could, since Terminus's earlier handle, "Terminal Technician," was proudly written right on the program.
When he became a full-time computer professional (specializing in telecommunications programming), he adopted the handle Terminus, meant to indicate that he had "reached the final point of being a proficient hacker." He'd moved up to the UNIX-based "Netsys" board on an AT&T computer, with four phone lines and an impressive 240 megs of storage. "Netsys" carried complete issues of *Phrack,* and Terminus was quite friendly with its publishers, Taran King and Knight Lightning.
In the early 1980s, Terminus had been a regular on Plovernet, Pirate-80, Sherwood Forest and Shadowland, all well-known pirate boards, all heavily frequented by the Legion of Doom. As it happened, Terminus was never officially "in LoD," because he'd never been given the official LoD high-sign and back-slap by Legion maven Lex Luthor. Terminus had never physically met anyone from LoD. But that scarcely mattered much -- the Atlanta Three themselves had never been officially vetted by Lex, either.
As far as law enforcement was concerned, the issues were clear. Terminus was a full-time, adult computer professional with particular skills at AT&T software and hardware -- but Terminus reeked of the Legion of Doom and the underground.
On February 1, 1990 -- half a month after the Martin Luther King Day Crash -- USSS agents Tim Foley from Chicago, and Jack Lewis from the Baltimore office, accompanied by AT&T security officer Jerry Dalton, travelled to Middle Town, Maryland. There they grilled Terminus in his home (to the stark terror of his wife and small children), and, in their customary fashion, hauled his computers out the door.
The Netsys machine proved to contain a plethora of arcane UNIX software -- proprietary source code formally owned by AT&T. Software such as: UNIX System Five Release 3.2; UNIX SV Release 3.1; UUCP communications software; KORN SHELL; RFS; IWB; WWB; DWB; the C++ programming language; PMON; TOOL CHEST; QUEST; DACT, and S FIND.
In the long-established piratical tradition of the underground, Terminus had been trading this illicitly- copied software with a small circle of fellow UNIX programmers. Very unwisely, he had stored seven years of his electronic mail on his Netsys machine, which documented all the friendly arrangements he had made with his various colleagues.
Terminus had not crashed the AT&T phone system on January 15. He was, however, blithely running a not- for-profit AT&T software-piracy ring. This was not an activity AT&T found amusing. AT&T security officer Jerry Dalton valued this "stolen" property at over three hundred thousand dollars.
AT&T's entry into the tussle of free enterprise had been complicated by the new, vague groundrules of the information economy. Until the break-up of Ma Bell, AT&T was forbidden to sell computer hardware or software. Ma Bell was the phone company; Ma Bell was not allowed to use the enormous revenue from telephone utilities, in order to finance any entry into the computer market.
AT&T nevertheless invented the UNIX operating system. And somehow AT&T managed to make UNIX a minor source of income. Weirdly, UNIX was not sold as computer software, but actually retailed under an obscure regulatory exemption allowing sales of surplus equipment and scrap. Any bolder attempt to promote or retail UNIX would have aroused angry legal opposition from computer companies. Instead, UNIX was licensed to universities, at modest rates, where the acids of academic freedom ate away steadily at AT&T's proprietary rights.
Come the breakup, AT&T recognized that UNIX was a potential gold-mine. By now, large chunks of UNIX code had been created that were not AT&T's, and were being sold by others. An entire rival UNIX-based operating system had arisen in Berkeley, California (one of the world's great founts of ideological hackerdom). Today, "hackers" commonly consider "Berkeley UNIX" to be technically superior to AT&T's "System V UNIX," but AT&T has not allowed mere technical elegance to intrude on the real-world business of marketing proprietary software. AT&T has made its own code deliberately incompatible with other folks' UNIX, and has written code that it can prove is copyrightable, even if that code happens to be somewhat awkward -- "kludgey." AT&T UNIX user licenses are serious business agreements, replete with very clear copyright statements and non- disclosure clauses.
AT&T has not exactly kept the UNIX cat in the bag, but it kept a grip on its scruff with some success. By the rampant, explosive standards of software piracy, AT&T UNIX source code is heavily copyrighted, well-guarded, well-licensed. UNIX was traditionally run only on mainframe machines, owned by large groups of suit-and- tie professionals, rather than on bedroom machines where people can get up to easy mischief.
And AT&T UNIX source code is serious high-level programming. The number of skilled UNIX programmers with any actual motive to swipe UNIX source code is small. It's tiny, compared to the tens of thousands prepared to rip-off, say, entertaining PC games like "Leisure Suit Larry."
But by 1989, the warez-d00d underground, in the persons of Terminus and his friends, was gnawing at AT&T UNIX. And the property in question was not sold for twenty bucks over the counter at the local branch of Babbage's or Egghead's; this was massive, sophisticated, multi-line, multi-author corporate code worth tens of thousands of dollars.
It must be recognized at this point that Terminus's purported ring of UNIX software pirates had not actually made any money from their suspected crimes. The $300,000 dollar figure bandied about for the contents of Terminus's computer did not mean that Terminus was in actual illicit possession of three hundred thousand of AT&T's dollars. Terminus was shipping software back and forth, privately, person to person, for free. He was not making a commercial business of piracy. He hadn't asked for money; he didn't take money. He lived quite modestly.
AT&T employees -- as well as freelance UNIX consultants, like Terminus -- commonly worked with "proprietary" AT&T software, both in the office and at home on their private machines. AT&T rarely sent security officers out to comb the hard disks of its consultants. Cheap freelance UNIX contractors were quite useful to AT&T; they didn't have health insurance or retirement programs, much less union membership in the Communication Workers of America. They were humble digital drudges, wandering with mop and bucket through the Great Technological Temple of AT&T; but when the Secret Service arrived at their homes, it seemed they were eating with company silverware and sleeping on company sheets! Outrageously, they behaved as if the things they worked with every day belonged to them!
And these were no mere hacker teenagers with their hands full of trash-paper and their noses pressed to the corporate windowpane. These guys were UNIX wizards, not only carrying AT&T data in their machines and their heads, but eagerly networking about it, over machines that were far more powerful than anything previously imagined in private hands. How do you keep people disposable, yet assure their awestruck respect for your property? It was a dilemma.