The late afternoon pace of the City Room at the Times tended to be chaotic. As deadlines approached and the paper was laid out for the printers, the flurry of activity was associated with an increase in the loudness of the room. Scott Mason listened with one hand over his right ear and the phone so awkwardly pressed between his left ear and shoulder that his glasses sat askew on his face. Suddenly hanging up the phone, Scott sprung up shout- ing, "I got it." Several people stopped and stared in his direction, but seeing nothing of concern or interest to them, they returned to their own world. Scott ripped a page from a notebook and ran into and around his co-workers. "Doug, I got it. Confirmed by the President." "You're kidding me?" Doug stopped his red pencil mid-stroke. "Give it to me from the top." He turned in his swivel chair to face Scott more directly. "It goes like this. A few weeks ago Sovereign Bank in Atlanta found that someone had entered their central computers without permission." Scott perused his notes. "It didn't take long for them to find the intruder. He left a calling card. It said that the hackers had found a hole to crawl through undetected into their computers. Was the bank interested in knowing how it was done? They left a Compuserve Mail Box. "As you can imagine the bank freaked out and told their computer people to fix whatever it was. They called in the FBI, that's from my contact, and went on an internal rampage. Those good ol' boys don't trust nobody," Scott added sounding like a poor imita- tion of Andy from Mayberry. "Anybody that could spell computer was suspect and they turned the place upside down. Found grass, cocaine, ludes, a couple of weapons and a lot of people got fired. But no state secrets. You talk about a dictatorship," commented Scott on the side. "There's no privacy at all. They scanned everyone's electronic mail boxes looking for clues and instead found them staring at invasion of privacy suits from employees and ex-employees who were fired because of the contents of their private mail. "The computer jocks unplugged the computers, turned them inside out and screwed them back together. Nothing. They found nada. So they tighten the reins and give away less passwords, to less people. That's all they figured they could do." "This is where the fun starts." Scott actively gestured with his hands as he shifted weight to his other foot. "A few days later they discover another message in their computer. Says something like, 'sorry Charlie' or something to that effect. The hackers were back. And this time they wanted to sell their services to the bank. For a nominal fee, say, a million bucks, we'll show you how to sew up the holes." "Well, what does that sound like to you?" Scott asked Doug. "Extortion."