Some of the nation's computer pioneers see the digital world in
which they toil as a cybernetic rangeland with its own kind of
frontier justice.  And some of them have set out to change the
system.

Their rallying cry is Operation Sun Devil and other government
probes into malfeasance by so-called computer "hackers."  These
investigations, they assert, smack of hang-em-high justice and
all to often become examples of government heavy-handedness.

"Some of the government's actions clearly weren't
constitutional," said Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development
Corp. and a new software firm ON Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

Kapor, along with a small group of fellow computer pioneers,
recently announced the formation of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a group dedicated to protecting the rights of
computer users.  Its ultimate goal is to extend the same First
Amendment protection that the print and broadcast media enjoy to
digital communications.

"Our idea is to get people to understand the issues and not to
try and make decisions in a controversial and confrontational
atmosphere," Kapor said.

Secret Service and U.S. Justice Department spokesmen in
Washington declined to comment on Operation Sun Devil or other
computer investigations.  But they stressed that the federal
agencies are mindful of the need to protect civil rights.

"We are not just some renegade agency breaking into peoples's
computer systems,"said Secret Service Agent Rich Adams.  "We
would not be investigating if we were not mandated by Congress. 
That's why we're involved."

The foundation is pushing its goals by providing legal assistance
to computer users who become victims of what they see as overly
zealous law enforcement officials.  It also is awarding grants to
civil liberties organizations such as the Computer Professionals
for Social Responsibility in Palo Alto.

Kapor stresses that the foundation is not a defense fund for
"hackers" and does not support breaking into computer systems or
pirating software.

The foundation has already had an impact.  It recently located
defense witnesses in the government's case against computer
bulletin board operator and newsletter publisher Craig Neidorf. 
On July 27, in the middle of the trial, the government abruptly
dropped its case against Neidorf.

Neidorf was accused of interstate transportation of a stolen
BellSouth Corp. document describing its emergency 911 system, a
charge which stems from the government's investigation into a
group of hackers called the Legion of Doom.

Prosecutors dropped Neidorf's case when Sheldon Zenner, Neidorf's
attorney, showed that the information which BellSouth alleged was
proprietary could be purchased by calling an 800 number and
paying $13.

'Private police force'
Terry Gross, an attorney that aided Neidorf's defense team,
accused the government of serving as a private police force for
large corporations.

"I think it is a very serious concern that we should all have of
the government being used as a private police force for private
corporations," Gross said.  "Especially when BellSouth made a
claim that the government accepted."

The foundation contends that prosecutors, policemen and judges
must think of computer communications in the same way they think
of printed and broadcast communications.

In the eyes of foundation leaders, their main opponent is the
federal government.  Operation Sun Devil, a two-year
investigation, has so far resulted in seven arrests and some 40
computers and 23,000 disks of data.

Kapor's group draws a parallel between the Pentagon Papers case,
which involved classified government papers documenting the
history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and Neidorf's.  If
Neidorf had published the document in a newspaper, as The New
York Times and The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers,
he would have been protected.

"The example they use is a good one," said Ken Wasch, executive
director of the Software Publishers Association.  If someone
printed a document on how to get into a federal facility there
would be no restrictions on publication, he explained.  "But if
you put it on a (computer) bulletin board there would be."