There’s another part to the story which I have told to the folks at SJG, but to which they never responded.
In late 1990, I was working in the basement of the Pentagon, supporting the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the J4 Logistics Readiness Center, inside the National Military Command Center. I was a gamer, but I also had a TS/SCI security clearance. I had heard about the SS raid on SJG, and I was pissed off. So, I decided to spend a lot of money and go out and buy one copy of every GURPS book that I could find at my friendly local gaming store (FLGS).
I had a copy of GURPS CyberPunk, and didn’t think very much of it. I was already in a CyberPunk game, and the GURPS version was a pale imitation. But there was another book that drew my attention. It was oriented towards espionage, and among other things it gave a very accurate description of how satellite surveillance worked. It also happened to use an actual classified military code word in the context of explaining what a classified military code word was and how they were used.
The latter was a clear violation of the law, and as soon as I saw it, I reported it to my security officer. He confirmed that this was a legitimate leak of a classified military code word, and he said he would report it further up the chain of command.
I never heard anything more about it from inside the government, but I have to believe that the SS and the FBI would use a coverup like pointing at a different book, if this was the actual reason that they were doing a raid on SJG.
So, there you go — almost 30 years later, yet another clue as to what might have been the real reason for the raid.
NB: When a classified military code word is leaked, they have to go through a huge process to reclassify all the documents that were covered under the old code word. This is a massive undertaking, and would cost millions or possibly even billions of dollars. And then there is the cost of the damage to National Security by all the documents which might already be in enemy hands but where they didn’t know what the code word covered or what compartment those documents were in. So, a leak of this type would be ... a really big deal.
I find this highly unlikely for a couple of reasons, but the primary reason is that GURPS Cyberpunk was not published until _after_ the SS raid on the company as a part of operation SunDevil.
The actual chronology is closer to something like this: feds target a bunch of hackers, one such hacker is also working on a game for SJG, during raid on his house feds notice all of the galley drafts and docs for GURPS Cyberpunk (some of which may have been internal phone company docs and manuals that would look very suspicious to a non-technical agent who signed up to look cool standing next to the president and has no idea about most of this stuff) and so they ask him about it, he happens to mention all of the other docs are just down the road at the SJG office, some fed gets a bright idea and a bunch of them head over to SJG to make a very big mistake...
Source: Straight from the mouths of Steve and Loyd. I was hired by Steve to start Austin's first real ISP with the money he won in this case and my future brother-in-law worked for SJG at the time of the raid.
So, I'm sure that some people here are still unclear on how I can come to the
values I referenced above. Let's do a little thought experiment, and I'll
show you my thinking on the subject.
Now, PANDA (or PX) covers all signals intelligence. All satellite
surveillance of any type. All "bugging" technologies. All interception of
digital communications, human or otherwise. Basically, pretty much everything
that the NSA does. And a good part of what the CIA does. A TS/SCI/PX
clearance is the minimum necessary to work at the NSA, CIA, White
House Communications Agency, or pretty much any of the other dozens
and dozens of intelligence agencies in the country.
Any compromise of PANDA would mean that hundreds or thousands of classified
military projects would be impacted, some of which might be so sensitive that
they have to be shut down entirely rather than be associated with a
now-compromised keyword. Each of these projects might have to spend thousands
or millions of dollars to reclassify their work, and to do what they can to
mitigate the damage done. Each project might have hundreds or thousands of
personnel who might no longer have jobs, either for the short term or the long
term, because of the compromise.
Now, let's assume that some silly person decides to write an article
about PANDA, using it as an example of how an SCI code word is used
and what it covers, and publishes that in Wikipedia (or Hacker
News). And maybe that also gets published on the front page of the
Wall Street Journal.
Any time you get a single intelligence agency to run around like a chicken
with their head cut off because of some minor compromise, that event probably
costs hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. Now imagine what it
would cost if the code word for the largest SCI compartment was exposed, and
all of the intelligence agencies in the country were running around like
chickens with their heads cut off. And all of DoD, for that matter.
Do the math.
Frankly, I think just "billions of dollars" might actually be
low-balling the numbers somewhat with regards to the upper boundary,
but then I'm just guessing -- I have no first hand knowledge of
that kind of activity or cost.
But I do know which compartment was affected by the book I saw.
Sorry, but this seems like cartoon logic to me.
What power would knowing the word PANDA give me in this case? None. What knowledge does it give me? That the US does signals intelligence, and that someone on wikipedia/HN claims that such SI includes programs X,Y,Z, without any actual evidence.
For all I know, SJG picked a cool sounding word a 16 year old would like, e.g. SHARK, and it just happened to be an actual code word.
I think they had to do this once before when Roosevelt was photographed and the code word stamped at the top was legible. I think they gave up when the puzzle palace book revealed the replacement word around '90.
I'm not saying this isn't true, but I am going to say that it's nuts to do this without evidence that there is actually a compromise rather than a coincidence. Otherwise I could put up a pile of randomly generated pages ("AARDVARK is a classified keyword" etc for all dictionary words) and render the system unworkable.
Maybe this is why the F35 is so far behind and expensive.
Famously the Times crossword on the day prior to D-day included several of the codewords, but this appears to have been a total coincidence.
But what would the enemy know because of this "leak"?
That someone who is known to have a TS/SCI/PX clearance is a signal intelligence expert? Where is the threat, compared to other easy ways to figure out someone is a NSA employee?
What a budget item is about? Somewhat interesting, but hardly compromising security (assuming the budget wasn't obfuscated, e.g. by splitting entries and adding fake ones, to begin with).
That PANDA is probably small enough to have no subcompartments? A lot of data would be required to confirm such an hint, and clearly not a running around like a chicken with their head cut off matter.
I don't see what you're getting at here: if the raid was about stopping the publishing of a gurps mod of "top secret" or something ; it'd be a pretty poor job as you bought the book after raid.
Second, I believe it's a matter of record that SJG got caught in "operation sundevil" - a massive crackdown driven by a couple of high profile hacks, mixed in with paranoia driven by such authorative sources as the fictional move "war games"...
[ed: whops, no - that's one of the top ten false facts; apparently sundevil was limited to credit card fraud]
"It also happened to use an actual classified military code word in the context of explaining what a classified military code word was and how they were used."
Was the true meaning of the code word described, or might it just have been a coincidence? Like, if I used the words "CASE NIGHTMARE PINK" as an example of a military code word, and it just so happened to be a real military code word? Because stuff like that is probably bound to happen.
It has actually happened before. In 1944 a bunch of codenames used by the allies for the D-Day invasion appeared as answers to the crossword puzzle in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
How likely is it that the game was really the first outing of a leaked secret name? A random name clash or copying from another source seem just as likely.
Also, making names secret under threat of criminal punishment sounds quite problematic. A name itself after all doesn't convey information, and you have to be able to name something to, for example, contest its secret status through legal channels available to a citizen.
In 2011 (2010?), at the Origins convention in Columbus then VP Biden was conducting a fundraiser at the same time at the same convention center. It was hilarious to see the secret service agents walking around. At first I thought it was some kind of MIB LARP or something. Seeing Secret Service agents trailing behind the (armed with swords and maces and such) entourage of a minotaur was hilarious.
Sadly, no one got the joke when I asked if anyone had warned the Steve Jackson Games crew.
Scheduling at the Columbus Convention Center really seems to be done without any regard for neighboring events. An Ohio Linuxfest a couple years ago was done right alongside a youth cheerleading competition, which had made some parents seem noticeably uncomfortable. And other weekends have mixed conventions like Wizard's World Comic Con and Origins, where I'd guess there's an overlap of people who'd like to go to both but not pay for a split experience. The expansion which has been under construction for a couple years is finally done, and the "As We Are"[0] art installation was added including a decent chunk of event space.
Hahaha, many years ago I went to a MarCon in Columbus that had been scheduled alongside a high school prom. Not necessarily a problem, but there are always people in costume at these things, and there happened to be a dominatrix leading two gimps on leashes through the main concourse at the same time that the kids were parading through...
Many Cons have had to establish boundary rules for that sort of "play" regardless of if they are scheduled alongside a more "normal" event. Also, BDSM culture itself has fought hard to move towards a more consent-based culture and publicly displaying such things without public consent is increasingly considered rude.
Nerds and men with wizard beards near loads of young women, almost all of whom are still in high school. Men with lower than average social skills, grooming and attendance to the normal rituals of social behaviour. American high school stuff, basically.
The issue at that convention center (from my experiences there) are that multiple events really occupy the same space, not adjacent spaces. Like if there are 4 event halls in a row with two groups (A and B) it won't be AAAB, it'll be ABAA. And you have to travel through the common (very large) hallway to get to these areas.
I could understand parents being somewhat disconcerted with finding their teenage daughters surrounded by a bunch of adult men. Especially if they didn't know that another convention was going on (at first). Imagine you take a large group of young teenage girls somewhere and find that there are a couple thousand adult men seemingly at the same event. At first it'd seem very odd.
The Hacker Crackdown of 1990 by Bruce sterling was the first long form e book I read. It foretold the future in many ways. 1st, it was a bright shining line between the old world of govt doing this stuff in shadows, buried in a blurb on of 10 of the newspaper, and it being in the open for millions to read all the details, about plain as day. As long as you knew bbses... it was there. Second, it was distributed for free so I payed the author nothing, which felt weird. Like a piece was misssing. Third it introduced me to brutal fatalism, which is a cousin of realism but also a neighbor of depression. There was no happy ending, people did not learn from their mistakes, bad deeds were not apologized for not punished, and laws did not change. Law enforcement are still, largely, uneducated and technically illiterate, and they are still going after harmless nobodies for no good reason.
For those who are unaware, the money made from Lotus 1-2-3 (which was game changing spreadsheet software of the early 1980s) eventually went on to found the EFF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Kapor
I mean, yeah kind of. But I don't think that's entirely accurate. Wikipedia says "Initial funding was provided by Kapor, Wozniak, and an anonymous benefactor."
It's not like he funneled his Lotus gains into the EFF. A foundation is also a money raising endeavor and there were likely many people who contributed a great deal in their early years (and now).
Your statement could just as easily be applied to Wozniak, as in "the money made from Apple (a game changing computer company) eventually went on the found the EFF". It's a fun fact, but not all that accurate.
I remember reading that the Secret Service was investigating an Austin game company because they were one of the first companies to buy CD duplicating equipment so were suspected of piracy by the Secret Service. For some reason I remember that as being Origin Systems but it may have actually been Steve Jackson Games.
Off-topic: I seem to recall Steve Jackson Games had a magazine during the 1980s? Does anyone recall the name of it? I remember seeing a few copies of it and really liking it. They had some good sci-fi.
This was when I started getting into role playing. I remember buying their Cyberpunk addendum book and being doubly intrigued by the Secret Service raid.
Also: GURPS cyberpunk was a great expansion to a great game. I have good memories of being 10 years old and playing that with an older neighbor friend.
>And we won. The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees.
You know, this really sounds like a "win" only in the sense it's the "win" we're "allowed" to have.
Everyone's lives were ruined for years. They almost lost their business. They lost a product they had poured countless hours into. They had to pay up front for attorney's fees (even though they were completely in the right), and spent years in court.
And all the Secret Service lost was some "sharply worded comments" and a tear-drop amount of taxpayer money that wouldn't even register on their budget and had zero affect on their future budgets.
The only brightsides were indirect ones. The EFF was founded, and their case law would likely be used for future cases and possibly future government actions (before they act) since they know they wouldn't be able to get away with it.
In late 1990, I was working in the basement of the Pentagon, supporting the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the J4 Logistics Readiness Center, inside the National Military Command Center. I was a gamer, but I also had a TS/SCI security clearance. I had heard about the SS raid on SJG, and I was pissed off. So, I decided to spend a lot of money and go out and buy one copy of every GURPS book that I could find at my friendly local gaming store (FLGS).
I had a copy of GURPS CyberPunk, and didn’t think very much of it. I was already in a CyberPunk game, and the GURPS version was a pale imitation. But there was another book that drew my attention. It was oriented towards espionage, and among other things it gave a very accurate description of how satellite surveillance worked. It also happened to use an actual classified military code word in the context of explaining what a classified military code word was and how they were used.
The latter was a clear violation of the law, and as soon as I saw it, I reported it to my security officer. He confirmed that this was a legitimate leak of a classified military code word, and he said he would report it further up the chain of command.
I never heard anything more about it from inside the government, but I have to believe that the SS and the FBI would use a coverup like pointing at a different book, if this was the actual reason that they were doing a raid on SJG.
So, there you go — almost 30 years later, yet another clue as to what might have been the real reason for the raid.
NB: When a classified military code word is leaked, they have to go through a huge process to reclassify all the documents that were covered under the old code word. This is a massive undertaking, and would cost millions or possibly even billions of dollars. And then there is the cost of the damage to National Security by all the documents which might already be in enemy hands but where they didn’t know what the code word covered or what compartment those documents were in. So, a leak of this type would be ... a really big deal.