But when the FBI showed up, at Apple's behest, Kapor was shocked at the extent of their naivete. Here were these well-dressed federal officials, politely "Mr. Kapor"- ing him right and left, ready to carry out a war to the knife against evil marauding "hackers." They didn't seem to grasp that "hackers" had built the entire personal computer industry. Jobs was a hacker, Wozniak too, even Bill Gates, the youngest billionaire in the history of America -- all "hackers." The new buttoned-down regime at Apple had blown its top, and as for the feds, they were willing, but clueless. Well, let's be charitable -- the feds were "cluefully challenged." "Clue-impaired." "Differently clued...."

Back in the 70s (as Kapor recited to the hushed and respectful young hackers) he himself had practiced "software piracy" -- as those activities would be known today. Of course, back then, "computer software" hadn't been a major industry -- but today, "hackers" had police after them for doing things that the industry's own pioneers had pulled routinely. Kapor was irate about this. His own personal history, the lifestyle of his pioneering youth, was being smugly written out of the historical record by the latter-day corporate androids. Why, nowadays, people even blanched when Kapor forthrightly declared that he'd done LSD in the Sixties.

Quite a few of the younger hackers grew alarmed at this admission of Kapor's, and gazed at him in wonder, as if expecting him to explode.

"The law only has sledgehammers, when what we need are parking tickets and speeding tickets," Kapor said. Anti-hacker hysteria had gripped the nation in 1990. Huge law enforcement efforts had been mounted against illusory threats. In Washington DC, on the very day when the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation had been announced, a Congressional committee had been formally presented with the plotline of a thriller movie -- DIE HARD II, in which hacker terrorists seize an airport computer -- as if this Hollywood fantasy posed a clear and present danger to the American republic.