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:
“All real freedom springs from necessity, for it can be gained only through the exercise of the individual will, and that will can be roused to energetic action only by the force of necessity acting upon it from the outside to spur it to effort.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Without our being especially conscious of the transition, the word “parent” has gradually come to be used as much as a verb as a noun. Whereas we formerly thought mainly about “being a parent,” we now find ourselves talking about learning how “to parent.” . . . It suggests that we may now be concentrating on action rather than status, on what we do rather than what or who we are.”
—Bettye M. Caldwell (20th century)
“Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)