They took all three. They also got my wife's in-progress Master's Thesis, and she had to restart from scratch because they refused to return even a copy.

I'm curious where the quote attributed to me was sourced from, as I don't remember saying that. However, since I regularly come across things in old backups that I had totally forgotten, both code and written text, it may be completely legit.

I'm kind of surprised the author didn't bother to contact me at all (I'm hardly difficult to find). We weren't awakened at gunpoint, for instance. That was Goggans. We were awakened by pounding on our apartment door at 6 AM.

As for being woken up at gunpoint, that's sourced from a number of contemporary accounts, including a Mar 5 1990 comp.dcom.telecom post (reposted in Phrack #31) reading "The Mentor was awakened at 6:30am on Thursday (3/1/90) with the gun of a Secret Service agent pointed at his head."

I do apologize if it seems standoffish not to have dropped you a line while I was working on it - it's kind of my shtick that I work exclusively from documentary evidence of the era I'm writing about rather than from interviews today. No method is perfect, but the results tend to be pretty decent.

But a random Usenet post from someone who undoubtedly wasn't there isn't a source, it is hearsay....

And how hard would it have been to look at the cover of Cyberpunk and spell my name right?

And as for the gun in your face, obviously you know best what happened to you, I was just explaining why the article says what it says. I will not repeat the hearsay.

Eg: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/barrett-brown-sentenced-5-years...

"The obstruction charge relates to an attempt by Brown and his mother to hide a laptop from authorities during a search of her home in March 2012. Brown’s mother was separately charged with obstruction and given six months probation."

At any rate, my point was that if you have a list of credit card numbers, and the Secret Service comes and asks for them. It is not ok to keep an off-site backup.

I'm not saying that the US government isn't behaving batshit crazy wrt hackers ever since around the Kevin Mitnick case, or that the current laws makes sense -- nor that the priorities makes sense -- just that "having an off-site backup" isn't a defence against a rouge state. Especially if you are a subject of that state.

However, I'd argue to a judge that I can't be "non-compliant" about surrendering all copies of illegal material until the court decides that the material is indeed illegal. Just because law enforcement wants to bring charges doesn't mean I'm actually guilty of anything yet.