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f if Steve Jackson didn't have computers. Golden and Foley claimed that they had both never even heard of the Privacy Protection Act. Cook had heard of the Act, but he'd decided on his own that the Privacy Protection Act had nothing to do with Steve Jackson.
The Jackson case was also a very politicized trial, both sides deliberately angling for a long-term legal precedent that would stake-out big claims for their interests in cyberspace. Jackson and his EFF advisors tried hard to establish that the least e-mail remark of the lonely electronic pamphleteer deserves the same somber civil-rights protection as that afforded THE NEW YORK TIMES. By stark contrast, the Secret Service's attorneys argued boldly that the contents of an electronic bulletin board have no more expectation of privacy than a heap of postcards. In the final analysis, very little was firmly nailed down. Formally, the legal rulings in the Jackson case apply only in the federal Western District of Texas. It was, however, established that these were real civil-liberties issues that powerful people were prepared to go to the courthouse over; the seizure of bulletin board systems, though it still goes on, can be a perilous act for the seizer. The Secret Service owes Steve Jackson $50,000 in damages, and a thousand dollars each to three of Jackson's angry and offended board users. And Steve Jackson, rather than owning the single-line bulletin board system "Illuminati" seized in 1990, now rejoices in possession of a huge privately-owned Internet node, "io.com," with dozens of phone- lines on its own T-1 trunk.
Jackson has made the entire blow-by-blow narrative of his case available electronically, for interested parties. And yet, the Jackson case may still not be over; a Secret Service appeal seems likely and the EFF is also gravely dissatisfied with the ruling on electronic interception.
The WELL, home of the American electronic civil libertarian movement, added two thousand more users and dropped its aging Sequent computer in favor
