Loyd Blankenship: The Hacker Manifesto Author Whose Game Book Was Seized by the Secret Service
Loyd Blankenship is best known by his online name, The Mentor, and for the short essay that made him an enduring figure in hacker culture: The Hacker Manifesto.
Written after his arrest in 1986, the essay described the frustration, curiosity and sense of belonging that drew young people into the computer underground. Its words would eventually reach far beyond the bulletin boards where hackers first read them.
But Blankenship's encounters with the authorities were far from over. Four years later, a Secret Service raid would sweep up his work for a game publisher and help spark a battle over the rights of computer users.
Loyd Blankenship at a Glance
- Known as The Mentor, Loyd Blankenship participated in the 1980s computer underground and belonged to groups including Extasyy Elite and the Legion of Doom.
- On January 8, 1986, shortly after an arrest, he wrote The Conscience of a Hacker, the essay published in Phrack that became known as The Hacker Manifesto.
- In 1989, Blankenship joined Steve Jackson Games and worked on GURPS Cyberpunk, a role-playing game sourcebook about a future shaped by hackers and powerful corporations.
- The Secret Service raided his home and the company's offices in March 1990, seizing computers and copies of the game manuscript.
- The raid helped galvanize the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which backed the publisher and its bulletin board users in a successful lawsuit against the agency.
- Blankenship's manifesto went on to appear in films, inspire music and become one of the most recognizable statements of hacker identity.
The Life of Loyd Blankenship
Blankenship's Early Interest in Computers
As a schoolboy in Texas, Blankenship began spending time at a university computer lab after his family moved from Austin to San Marcos. He played games on the machines and became interested in how they worked.
In a 2000 interview, he recalled obtaining a printout of the BASIC code for a Star Trek game. Adapting it to run on another computer became his way of teaching himself the language.
For Blankenship, hacking began with that kind of experimentation. But his interest also extended to accessing computers without permission, an activity that'd eventually bring him into conflict with the law.
The World Behind the Modem
By the 1980s, a growing community of computer enthusiasts was finding ways to meet without ever being in the same room.
Before the web, bulletin board systems, or BBSes, provided places to exchange messages and download files. A user connected a computer to a modem, dialed a board's telephone number and entered a community maintained by its operator.
For hackers, these boards were especially valuable. They held technical explanations, accounts of experiments and discussions about the workings of telephone networks and computer systems. Someone who knew few other enthusiasts locally could find people with the same interests on a distant board.
- Steven Levy's history of the MIT, Homebrew and game hackers who wrote the hacker ethic before it had a name. Essential background for the culture the manifesto spoke to.
Blankenship became part of this underground under the name The Mentor. And in 1986, he wrote an account of its appeal that'd outlast many of the systems it described.
Writing The Hacker Manifesto
On January 8, 1986, shortly after his arrest, Blankenship wrote The Conscience of a Hacker.
He later described himself as going through "hacking withdrawal" when Phrack's Knight Lightning needed material for an upcoming issue. He was also reading Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and had become fascinated by its theme of revolution.
- Heinlein's revolution-on-the-Moon classic, the book Blankenship was reading the night he wrote The Conscience of a Hacker. Read it and the manifesto's rebellion makes more sense.
Phrack published the essay in Volume One, Issue 7, later that year. It became known as The Hacker Manifesto.
The essay opens with reports of another hacker's arrest and the dismissive response of the adults around him: "Damn kids. They're all alike."
Blankenship then shifts into the hacker's world. His narrator is bored at school, misunderstood by teachers and eager for a challenge. A computer offers something different: a machine that responds to his instructions, with mistakes he can investigate and understand.
A bulletin board brings an equally important discovery. There are other people who feel the same way, and the narrator finally has somewhere to belong.
Near the end, that frustration becomes an accusation: "Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity."
The closing line turns the adults' dismissal into a declaration of solidarity: "You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike."
Blankenship later explained that he wanted to describe "what I really felt was the essence of what we were doing". The 1983 film WarGames had helped shape the public image of hackers, and he wanted to explain the motivations behind that image.
From the Legion of Doom to Game Design
Blankenship's involvement in the underground continued after the manifesto appeared. He belonged to Extasyy Elite and later described joining the second generation of the Legion of Doom through contacts made at Summercon in 1988.
The Legion brought together hackers with extensive knowledge of telephone networks and computer systems. Its members exchanged information and explored systems that also attracted the attention of security investigators.
- Joseph Menn traces the hacking supergroup from 1980s Texas bulletin boards to hacktivism and Washington. The same underground era, told through its most famous group.
In 1989, Blankenship took his knowledge into a different setting: Steve Jackson Games, a publisher based in Austin, Texas.
There, he worked on GURPS Cyberpunk, a sourcebook for the company's role-playing system. Players would enter a future of powerful corporations, advanced technology and computer intrusions, with rules for turning those ideas into a game.
To make the setting convincing, Blankenship corresponded with security specialists and people involved in unauthorized hacking. He also ran the Phoenix Project, a BBS where users discussed the computer underground.
- William Gibson's 1984 novel gave the world cyberspace, console cowboys and the aesthetic every hacker film borrowed. The book behind GURPS Cyberpunk's whole genre.
Those connections would soon bring investigators to his door.
The Secret Service Raid
Since 1988, investigators had been tracking the unauthorized copying and distribution of a BellSouth document about its emergency 911 system. By February 1990, they'd learned that the document was available on the Phoenix Project.
They also knew that Blankenship worked for Steve Jackson Games and helped operate its separate bulletin board, Illuminati.
On March 1, 1990, Secret Service agents raided both his home and the company's offices. They seized computers, printers, hundreds of floppy disks and copies of the GURPS Cyberpunk manuscript.
According to the publisher's account, agents regarded the game book as "a handbook for computer crime". Discussions of fictional technology and futuristic crimes had become objects of suspicion in a real investigation.
The seizure left the publisher struggling to finish the book. Staff reconstructed it from older backups, playtest copies, notes and memories while waiting for the return of their files and equipment.
Some files came back later that month, but most of the hardware wasn't returned until June. The disruption nearly closed the company and forced it to lay off about half its staff.
GURPS Cyberpunk nevertheless reached publication later in 1990. Its cover drew attention to its unexpected distinction: this was the game book seized by the Secret Service.
But the lost manuscript and equipment were only part of the damage. The Illuminati computer had also held private email belonging to the board's users, and those messages had been swept up with it.
Steve Jackson Games Fights Back
The raid drew the attention of people who saw a wider problem: laws protecting publishers and private communications were being poorly understood when computers were involved.
In July 1990, Mitch Kapor, John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF's account of its formation identifies the Steve Jackson Games raid as a central event in its early history.
With the organization's support, the publisher and several Illuminati users filed suit against the Secret Service in May 1991. Their case concerned both the seizure of publishing materials and the handling of private email stored on the bulletin board.
The case went to trial in early 1993. On March 12, the court ruled in the plaintiffs' favor on two of three claims. The company received more than $50,000 in damages, and the individual plaintiffs received additional awards. Legal fees and costs totaled more than $250,000.
The remaining claim concerned whether taking the stored messages also counted as intercepting communications under the federal Wiretap Act. In October 1994, the appeals court rejected that argument, distinguishing stored email from messages intercepted during transmission. The earlier awards remained in place.
The case became an important early victory for electronic privacy and publishing rights. No criminal charges were filed against Steve Jackson Games.
Meanwhile, author Bruce Sterling brought the raid and the wider confrontation between hackers and law enforcement to a larger audience in The Hacker Crackdown. Blankenship's game manuscript had become part of a story reaching well beyond the gaming world.
The Manifesto Reaches a New Audience
As the legal case wound down, Blankenship's earlier writing was finding new readers.
The manifesto reached cinema audiences through hacker movies, most notably the 1995 film Hackers. Characters quote the essay, although the magazine shown in the film is 2600 rather than Phrack.
In July 2002, Blankenship read the manifesto aloud at the H2K2 hacker conference and discussed the arrest that'd prompted it. Years after its publication, audiences still wanted to hear the story from The Mentor himself.
Its appearances continued. A poster of the essay can be seen in The Social Network, and Edward Snowden mentions it in his memoir, Permanent Record.
In 2019, musician Amplitude Problem released Crime of Curiosity, an album dedicated to the manifesto. Blankenship contributed a reading to its closing track, bringing his own voice to words that'd circulated for more than three decades.
Loyd Blankenship: A Voice for the Computer Underground
Blankenship's manifesto captured the feeling of discovering a computer, finding people who shared an unusual interest and wanting to understand more than the world seemed willing to explain.
That curiosity also has outlets in penetration testing, bug bounty programs and security competitions, where participants explore systems with permission. These settings give people a way to put their fascination with computers to work protecting them.
But Blankenship's lasting contribution was putting the experience into words. From an underground magazine to film screens and a musical recording, the voice of The Mentor kept reaching people long after the bulletin boards that first carried it had gone quiet.
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QUOTE:
"Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people."