Action
Along with the Chicago Task Force and the Arizona Organized Crime and Racketeering Bureau, the operation involved raids in Austin, Plano, Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Newark, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Tucson, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco. The raids were centered in Arizona, where the press conference occurred.
Raids generally took place in middle-class suburbs and targeted credit card thieves and telephone abusers. They were carried out by local police, with the aid of over 150 Secret Service agents. Twenty-seven search warrants, resulting in three arrests, were issued and executed on May 7 and 8, 1990. Police also took around 42 computers and approximately 25 BBSes, making it the largest crackdown on electronic bulletin boards in world history. Finally, about 23,000 floppy disks were also seized. These held a variety of data, including software and other pirated material. The three people arrested were "Tony the Trashman," "Dr. Ripco," and "Electra."
Other parts of the operation targeted the underground ezine Phrack, which had published the contents of a proprietary text file copied from Bell South computers and containing information about the E911 emergency response system, although this was later made null in a court case in which it was proven that the same information about the E911 system was also provided to the public through a mail-order catalog.
Read more about this topic: Operation Sundevil
Famous quotes containing the word action:
“The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He who has been impoverished for a long time ... who has long stood before the door of the mighty in darkness and begged for alms, has filled his heart with bitterness so that it resembles a sponge full of gall; he knows about the injustice and folly of all human action and sometimes his lips tremble with rage and a stifled scream.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)