The Internet is a wondrous place. Practically anything you could ever want is available on the Net. It's like a big city, it has the highly prestigious areas, and the sex-ridden slums. It has the upstanding citizens, and it has the criminals. On the Net, crime is more abundant than in a large city, though, mainly because of the difficulties in tracking and prosecuting offenders. Even from its beginnings, the Internet has always been a battlefield between phreaks and administrators. The Internet hasn't always

been a public forum. In fact, the Internet has been around for years. The Internet is just a new fad ("The More I Learn" A1). The Internet originally began as DARPANET, a government-created network, which was designed for defense communications. The Net structure is such that it could survive a nuclear war ("Internet History"). The creation of the Net can not be blamed for the existence of hackers though, hackers are older than the Net itself, but the Net is the largest '!

Spencer, Will. "Beyond the OK Corral." Communications of the New Order VII: File 12.

Engel, Joyce A. Letter. Saginaw News 10 March 1995: A5.

Quittner, Joshua. "The Password is Loopholes." Newsday 1 March 1994: 61.

e things leaving the Internet open to phreaking, is it any wonder that so many phreaks exist? The United States Government has all of its computer systems on the Internet, yet many universities have better security than government computers containing confidential information (Spencer, "Know" 27). A majority of break-ins occur in university computers, mainly because of the stiff penalties for being caught in a government computer (FtS, "Avoiding"). Over 10,000 break-ins that have occurred in recent months are blamed on The Posse, a group of young phreaks (Quittner 61). If break-ins are done on universities, then how secure are the government's secrets? Both hackers and phreakers tend to stay away from heavy-duty government hacking, though. Exploring innocently and generally harmless pranks are done the most, and many hacks/phreaks don't limit themselves to the Internet, or even to a computer (Spencer, "Hacking McDonalds" 6). The next step up for a good computer hack/phreak is !

"'The More I Learn, The Less I Know'." Saginaw News 16 March 1995: A1-A2.

Spencer, Will. "Stranglehold on the Net." Phrack 21 January 1995: File 8.

tic computer users can be circumvented by routing through an overseas computer (Savage). The government doesn't have the power to completely shut down the Net. In order to do that, every one of the millions of computers on the Net must be disconnected. Even if only two remain, the Net will continue to exist (Spencer, "Hacking McDonalds" 6). To ease of adding something to the Net is also a factor preventing the total regulation of the Net. A new site can be added to the Net in a matter of seconds, and can be removed just as quickly. It takes authorities considerable time to trace a connection back to it's physical address, and if it disappears, it makes tracking it all that more difficult (FtS, "Avoiding"). Once a resource becomes widespread, removing

Some common words found in the essay are:
Spencer Stranglehold, Hacking McDonalds, Internet History, FtS Avoiding, Phreaking Field, Internet Quittner, Net It's, United Government, Avoiding Stopping, Spencer Territory, spencer hacking, hacking mcdonalds 6, mcdonalds 6, hacking mcdonalds, march 1995, internet history, spencer hacking mcdonalds, spencer stranglehold, field phreaking, computerized text, stranglehold 8, spencer stranglehold 8, phrack 11 november, phrack 11, saginaw 16 march,
Approximate Word count = 1739
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)