Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 12:49:07 EST
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@EFF.ORG>
Subject: File 3--Steve Jackson Games case (Day 1)

EFF Staff Attorney Shari Steele writes the following from Austin, Texas.

>From ssteele Tue Jan 26 18:59:17 1993
Date--Tue, 26 Jan 1993 18:58:54 -0500
To--eff-board, eff-staff
From--ssteele (Shari Steele)

The Steve Jackson Games case finally got underway a little after 1:00
pm today.  There were settlement efforts up until the end, but it
turned out the attorneys for the government could not get approval
from DC for the terms necessary.  Jim George and Pete Kennedy did a
terrific job of representing our plaintiffs in the case.  First they
sequestered all witnesses so they couldn't hear each others' stories
in attempts to make them match.  Then they called Tim Foley (Secret
Service) as the first witness.  They asked him lots of questions about
his knowledge at the time of the raid.  He testified that he did not
know whether Phrack, with the evil E-911 document, had been sent to
SJG.  He also said that he knew that e-mail was on the menu of the
BBS, implying that there was e-mail on the system at the time of the
seizure (although he denied actually knowing if there was e-mail on
the system.  He denied ever making the statement that GURPS Cyberpunk
was a handbook for computer crime.  He wouldn't give Steve copies of
anything from the machine that ran the BBS because he was afraid it
might have been "booby-trapped."  He also didn't know Congress had
passed any laws giving special protection during searches to
publishers.

They next called Larry Coutorie, police officer at the University of
Texas.  The original affidavit filed by Foley to support the search
warrant stated that Coutorie provided the Secret Service with
Blankenship's (SJG employee suspected of evil-doing) address and place
of business.  Coutorie insisted that he didn't remember doing that,
and agreed with Pete Kennedy as he proved that he couldn't have known
anything about Blankenship to pass on.  It was a good moment!

Barbara Golden, Secret Service in charge of search on-site (Foley was
not on-site at the time of the search) was next called.  She started
out by admitting that she didn't know anything about computers -- that
she had telco people conducting the search under her supervision.  She
also didn't know there was a special law for publishers regarding
searches.  She was the one who decided to take the entire BBS, but she
didn't even check to see what the system contained.  Once she
completed the inventory of what was taken, she was no longer involved
with the case.

Steve Jackson was called next.  He gave a demo of the BBS as it was
returned to him by the Secret Service that the judge seemed to really
enjoy.  He testified that the Secret Service took 3 computers (1 was
completely disassembled - they took the parts), 2 hard disks, and more
than 300 floppies.  Steve's testimony will continue tomorrow morning.

All in all, I think the trial is going quite well.  The judge has a
very dry sense of humor and is very down-to-earth -- he's left his
robe unzipped the whole trial.  He's not a technoid, but he seems to
be trying to understand.  I'll report again tomorrow.  Shari

------------------------------

From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@EFF.ORG>
Subject: File 4--Steve Jackson Games Update 1/28/93 Day 2)

Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253