Talk:Loyd Blankenship

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From Loyd Blankenship: "I added the pic of me and my niece -- I look hostile and drunk in the one from H2K2 (I was neither at the time. Or, at least, I wasn't hostile). This is the kinder, gentler Mentor :)"

Heh. :) — NRen2k5 01:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

For us young’uns here… what was TheMentor arrested for, exactly? — NRen2k5 01:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The full story is in the Bruce Sterling book cited in the main article. The quick version is that he hosted some files on his BBS (for you young'uns, a BBS is a Bulletin Board System; it's like a website). The files were from an electronic magazine called Phrack, which were written by, about, and for the hacker community of the 80's. This was before organized crime and national security agencies moved into hacking in a big way.

Anyway, one of those files included an excerpt of a Bell Telephone Company article on the 911 system. The Secret Service tried to arrest everyone who had a copy and accuse them of grand theft of a document that could be used by terrorists and was worth tens of thousands of dollars. At trial, it turned out that the document was harmless, and Bell itself sold that 911 article for like $8 per copy. Sterling's book includes the entire document so the reader can decide for himself. The case fell apart. If I recall, all the charges against Blankenship stemmed from hosting Phrack on his BBS; he wasn't the guy who downloaded the article and to my knowledge committed no actual crimes.

One item of fallout is that the raid against his employer (Steve Jackson Games) was aimed at seeing if they had a copy of Phrack on their BBS, which they didn't. At the time, they told SJGames that they'd been raided to block publication of GURPS Cyberpunk, which they called "a manual for cybercrime". The attack on a publisher to block publication of a work of fiction deemed politically objectionable was what helped turn the SS's raid into a PR fiasco. The subsequent collapse of the case made them look even worse. It also ironically turned GURPS Cyberpunk into an instant roleplaying classic via the Streisand Effect. 98.192.38.120 (talk) 19:48, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

1970s? Didn't he start investigating Hacking/Phreaking circa 1986 and didn't really get into it until a few years later? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.156.93.5 (talk) 06:12, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Woodworking

I was surprised to see that his website's front page is all about woodworking. I find it even more surprising that some of the pages on that site list FrontPage as the creator (e.g. http://www.blankenship.com/spice.htm ), and end with a whole bunch of <p>&nbsp;</p> blocks. Are we sure that's the same Lloyd Blankenship? --Slashme (talk) 21:32, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

When was he arrested?

The timeline is a problem for me, even in this short article. The article page for Hacker Manifesto says it (the Manifesto) was written in January, 1986, after his arrest. But the raid on Steve Jackson Games was in 1990, right? Was the arrest unrelated to the raid? Because SJ Games says that no one was ever arrested, indicted, or even interviewed after the raid. But the Usenet Archive post of the article in Phrack says "This was the last published file written by The Mentor. Shortly after releasing it, he was busted by the FBI. The Mentor, sadly missed." I'm just learning about those events now, and the WP articles have me confused. Was there an FBI "bust," then the Manifesto, then a period of work at SJ Games while still operating the BBS (after having been busted for something else), then the Secret Service raid? Dcs002 (talk) 04:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Due to his involvement?

Quote from the lead paragraph: "He also wrote the cyberpunk role-playing sourcebook GURPS Cyberpunk, which, due to his involvement, was confiscated by the U.S. Secret Service." There's a BLP problem in that statement. "Due to his involvement" means that Blankenship did something that necessitated the manuscript seizure (not confiscation) by being involved with something (which is not defined). However, the source materials say that the Secret Service not only seized the manuscript as part of a wrongful action on their part, not Blankenship's (court findings), that the judge in the case reprimanded the Secret Service for their incompetence in handling the case, and that neither the Secret Service nor any prosecutor has brought a case to court to show that Blankenship had done anything wrong that would justify the raid and seizures (let alone proven such a case). The raid & seizure were all about the Secret service, not Blankenship. It doesn't matter if Loyd has seen this version and not said anything about it, or even endorsed it. (That would be primary sourcing.) BLP breaches are cause for immediate action, so I'm re-wording that sentence so it's consistent with the public record & WP policy. (My apologies if my tone is a bit harsh. I'm trying to be specific, not arrogant & angry.) Dcs002 (talk) 05:52, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

This copy of the warrant affidavit used in the case, states that he was arrested, basically because he, as The Mentor, posted on a BBS called The Phoenix Project, a message explaining what Kermit was, as part of a supposed illegal password decryption service.--Auric (talk) 01:05, 19 September 2012 (UTC)