CAMERON SMITH▊
In May 1993, a hacker in Ontario nobody in the scene had ever heard of announced to Usenet that the Legion of Doom — the most famous hacking group in America, quietly retired after the federal dragnet of Operation Sun Devil — was back. Reinstated. Running again. Under new management: his. Within days the actual Legion of Doom found his account, called his house, and then said so in public. What followed was one of the purest self-inflicted humiliations the early net ever archived: a coup against a group that no longer existed, put down by the ghosts who used to run it.
THE LOD IS, POSITIVELY, WITHOUT QUESTION, OR BASIS IN ANY DOUBT **BACK**!!! … The world's greatest hacking group has formally been reinstated.
"TDC" (Cameron Smith, "Lord Havoc"), announcing the return of a group he had never belonged to — Usenet, alt.cyberpunk, May 1993 (zooid0.txt)
- WHO
- Cameron Smith — handles "TDC" and "Lord Havoc," posting from
tdc@zooid.guild.org, Ontario, Canada, 1993 FACT
- THE DRAMA
- Posted that LOD was "back" and installed himself as its leader; was tracked, phoned, and publicly disowned by the real ex-members within days
- RECORD
- A published Usenet flamewar, May–June 1993. Smith even shipped a "LOD Technical Journal" #5 on June 18, 1993 — the scene never recognized it — then issued a full public retraction and withdrew the effort FACT
- STATUS
- STOOD DOWN — retracted in his own words as "the product of inexperience, not malice"; no modern claims made here
This is not a crime file. Nobody was raided, nobody was charged, nobody was hurt. It is a small, almost tender comedy about brand equity in a subculture that officially disdained brands. A stranger tried to pick up a legendary name off the ground, assuming it was abandoned property; the previous owners turned out to be very much alive, still on the net, and still touchy about it. The archive keeps it because it is the cleanest illustration of a rule the scene never wrote down: you do not get to appoint yourself the heir of something you were never part of, and if you try, it will be forwarded everywhere with your own words attached.
the drama timeline
ACT I — THE COUP (May 1993)
A hacker the scene had never met decides the throne is empty, and crowns himself.
-
MAY 1993
"LOD >IS< BACK"
Under the handle TDC (also "Lord Havoc"), Cameron Smith posts to alt.cyberpunk that the Legion of Doom — dead since the Operation Sun Devil crackdown — has "formally been reinstated." He promises a revived LOD Technical Journal, solicits article submissions and new members, and offers, without irony, that membership "Won't this look good on the resume." He signs off with the group's old defiance: "We will not be kept down!" The problem: he had never been in the group.
ACT II — THE ORIGINALS ANSWER (late May 1993)
The dead group returns the call. It has caller ID.
-
MAY 13, 1993
The first ghost answers
Smith had begun circulating the "LOD Is Back!" notice in early May — Computer Underground Digest dates the first release to May 4 and files him under "the latest pretender." The first original to answer in public is not Goggans but Todd — "The Marauder," a member since 1986, writing in Telecom Digest: this "'NEW' Legion of Doom… has _NOTHING_ whatsoever to do with the Legion of Doom! group." He points readers to the authoritative record — Lex Luthor's "History of the Legion of Doom" in Phrack #31, "the final word as to who was/was not in LoD" — and notes that in it you will "find no mention of this (ahem) Lord Havoc character." His verdict: "some kids having fun with you all, so relax, take a deep breath, and forget the whole thing."
-
~MAY 27, 1993
Erik Bloodaxe, in public, in full
Chris Goggans — "Erik Bloodaxe," an original LOD member and then-editor of Phrack — has had enough. He posts: "LOD IS NOT COMING BACK. What you are witnessing is a very egocentric attempt on behalf of a lone Canadian named Cameron Smith who has this fantasy that he will bring LOD back from the grave and serve as its leader." He explains that the ex-members traced Smith through his zooid account and called him "about a day after his first post," that every surviving member was contacted, and that all wanted the name left "dormant and be remembered as it was." Then the line that ends it: "You neither posess the skills, nor the experience to be even remotely associated with the group in any form or fashion."
-
MAY 1993 — BY PHONE
"We are the nicest."
Before any of it played out in public, it played out on the phone. By Goggans' own later account, he and Scott Chasin traced Smith and called him "within like say an hour" of the post. Smith did not fold: he said he thought LOD "was a real important thing for the community and I just want to see it continue," promised that "as soon as you see the type of journal I put out, you will be really impressed," and fell back on the argument that "you retired the name and that means it's fair game for anybody else." Goggans' reply doubled as a warning — "If your magazine is good, it will stand on its own merit and you don't need our name" — and then: "Scott and I are the first to call you, there will be many others. We are the nicest. It's not going to be pretty for you."
ACT III — THE FORGERY FARCE (late May – June 1993)
The coup gets so absurd that pranksters start impersonating the impersonator.
-
MAY–JUN 1993
Back. Not back. Back. Not back.
With the affair now a spectator sport, forged posts begin appearing — messages in TDC's name announcing and un-announcing the revival on a loop. Even Goggans noticed: "someone was just out to make him look foolish. (To whoever that was, nice try!)" Smith's countermeasure is almost poignant in its earnestness: he starts PGP-signing his posts and publishes his public key so the community can tell the real self-appointed LOD leader from the fake ones — cryptographic authentication for a title nobody recognized in the first place. He suspects, correctly, that even his own sysadmin is now watching his mail.
-
JUN 4, 1993
Doubling down, cryptographically
A week after Goggans' public teardown, Smith is not gone — he is escalating. He reposts the entire "LOD Is Back!" announcement, now PGP-signed with a published public key, and declares the revival "proceeding on schedule despite the efforts of a few unhappy hackers to stop it. The LOD will never be stopped!!!" He claims "several new members" are aboard, tells doubters they "can either choose to join us… or you can be left out," and signs off "Long live LOD!!!" He adds that he now believes his own system administrator is monitoring his mail. The self-appointment had been rejected by every living member of the group; his answer was to cryptographically authenticate it.
ACT IV — THE CLIMBDOWN (June 1993)
And then, to his credit, he simply admits it.
-
JUN 18, 1993
The journal actually shipped
And then, against every prediction, he delivered. On June 18, 1993 — the exact release date promised in the first announcement — a "LOD Technical Journal, Volume 1, Issue 5" went out under the zooid account: a twelve-file issue that opened by quoting the real Legion of Doom's federal indictment and a line from Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown, then solicited members "to fill its ranks" while name-dropping the actual former membership — Mark Tabas, The Mentor, The Prophet. It was, almost exactly, the "so ludicrous… with LOD emblazoned all over it" artifact Goggans had feared it would be. And it changed nothing: nobody in the scene treated the file, or its author, as the Legion of Doom.
-
JUN 1993
"The Legion of Doom is NOT back."
Smith posts a full retraction and, unusually for the genre, means it. He concedes he has "no legitimite right to use the LOD name," that he "was never afiliated with the original group," and — disarmingly — that he does "not possess at this time the hacking and phreaking knowledge which would have gotten me into the group to begin with." He thanks the ex-members for their patience with his "sincere but misguided folly" and closes with the epitaph the whole episode deserves: "It was the product of inexperience, not malice." He had, in fact, shipped a "Technical Journal #5" — the scene simply never recognized it. Either way, the effort was over. The name went back in its box.
-
1993–94 — AFTERMATH
The coup that worked — for the other side
The strangest part of the record is the ending Goggans gave it himself. Chasing down a stranger's fake revival meant contacting every surviving member — and in doing so, the originals, scattered for years, found one another again. "It got a bunch of us back together again," Goggans said; catching up, they discovered that "damn near everybody who was ever involved in the group is doing very well… Ph.D.s, Master Degrees" — "certainly not what one would expect from the world's most infamous hacker group." His verdict on Smith is almost gentle: "the whole Cameron Smith New Legion of Doom thing, it didn't accomplish anything for him, but it certainly did accomplish something for us." By the time the summer convention circuit met, the "new LOD" no longer even rated a debate — Phrack's con report notes the matter "was broached, however very little was discussed on it." Meanwhile the actual veterans were already assembling their own project: a documentary history of the mid-1980s underground — the real heir to the name, built by the people entitled to it.
both sides, on the record
The originals' case: the Legion of Doom was a real group with a real history, retired deliberately by the people who built it. A stranger with no connection to it tried to seize the name, the reputation, and the leadership in one post, then solicited members and submissions off that borrowed authority. Goggans called it what it plainly was — "a very egocentric attempt" to "usurp the name" [2]. When thirty-odd ex-members unanimously ask you to stop and you keep going, the objection is fair. There was even an authoritative record to check against — Lex Luthor's published "History of the Legion of Doom" in Phrack #31, which The Marauder called "the final word as to who was/was not in LoD" — and Smith's name appears nowhere in it [7].
The name mattered: whatever you think of hacker crews, LOD's members had paid for that reputation — some in equipment seizures and criminal cases. Watching an outsider try to inherit it for free was a real grievance, not vanity.
He was a kid who overreached, and he knew it: by his own account the whole thing was "sincere but misguided folly," born of enthusiasm for a scene he thought had lost its way. He never claimed to have hacked anything in LOD's name; the "crime" was announcing a comeback for a defunct club [3].
He retracted, cleanly and in public: no doubling down, no fake-hack to prove himself, no smear campaign against the men who dressed him down. He conceded every point — no right to the name, not skilled enough for the group, nothing gained by using it — and apologized by name to the ex-members he had annoyed [3]. That is more grace than most flamewars produce.
Some of the humiliation wasn't even his: forged posts piled on in his name, and by Goggans' own admission someone was working to make Smith "look foolish" beyond anything Smith himself did [2]. The record is messier than the mockery.
And the wreckage did some good: chasing down the impostor put the scattered originals back in touch for the first time in years. By Goggans' own account the affair "didn't accomplish anything for him, but it certainly did accomplish something for us" — it reunited the group [8]. Not many humiliations end with the humiliated party having done the injured party a favor.
YOU DECIDE
Cameron Smith tried to lead a group he had never joined, was publicly and comprehensively corrected by the people who actually built it, doubled down, shipped a doomed "Technical Journal #5" anyway, and then — instead of the usual scorched-earth flameout — admitted the whole thing was a mistake and walked away. The overreach was real. So was the climbdown. Strip the legend away and you are left with a small, human error: a young hacker who mistook a retired name for an empty throne, discovered the previous tenants were still on the net, and had the sense to say sorry.
The archive does not pile on. The archive keeps the coup — and the retraction that ended it in the same breath.
evidence locker
PRIMARY / LOCAL ARCHIVE
Usenet — "LOD >IS< BACK" (TDC / Lord Havoc) ARCHIVE — Smith's revival announcement to
alt.cyberpunk: LOD "positively… **BACK**," "formally reinstated," call for members and Technical Journal submissions. Local mirror:
research/zines/textfiles/LOD/zooid0.txt (reasserted post at
zooid3.txt, with his PGP key).
textfiles.com/magazines/LOD/ Usenet — Chris Goggans ("Erik Bloodaxe"), public reply ARCHIVE — "LOD IS NOT COMING BACK… a very egocentric attempt on behalf of a lone Canadian named Cameron Smith who has this fantasy that he will bring LOD back from the grave and serve as its leader"; the trace-and-call account; the forgery aside. Local mirror:
research/zines/textfiles/LOD/zooid1.txt.
troll.fan/dossiers/erik-bloodaxe.html Usenet — "Legion of Doom is NOT back!" (Smith's retraction) ARCHIVE — full climbdown: no right to the name, "never afiliated," not skilled enough, "sincere but misguided folly," "the product of inexperience, not malice." Local mirror:
research/zines/textfiles/LOD/zooid2.txt.
textfiles.com/magazines/LOD/ Usenet / textfiles — "LOD Technical Journal, Vol.1 #5" (TDC / Lord Havoc) ARCHIVE — the journal Smith actually shipped, dated "Released: June 18, 1993," opening with the real LOD's federal indictment and a Bruce Sterling
Hacker Crackdown quote, recruiting members against the names of the actual former membership. Corrects the belief that it never appeared. Local mirror:
research/zines/textfiles/LOD/lod-5.
textfiles.com/magazines/LOD/ Computer Underground Digest #5.36 — The Marauder's rebuttal ARCHIVE — CUD flags Smith as "the latest pretender" and reprints original member Todd ("The Marauder") from
Telecom Digest V13 #327: the New LOD "has _NOTHING_ whatsoever to do with" the real group;
Phrack #31's LOD history is "the final word… find no mention of this (ahem) Lord Havoc character"; "some kids having fun." Local mirror:
research/zines/textfiles/CUD/cud0536.txt.
textfiles.com/magazines/CUD/cud0536.txt Computer Underground Digest #6.94 — Chris Goggans interview ARCHIVE — Goggans' retrospective: the within-the-hour phone call with Scott Chasin; Smith's "fair game for anybody else" defense; "We are the nicest. It's not going to be pretty for you"; and the aftermath — the hunt "got a bunch of us back together again." Local mirror:
research/zines/textfiles/CUD/cud0694.txt.
textfiles.com/magazines/CUD/cud0694.txt
CONTEXT & CROSS-LINKS
Computer Underground Digest #5.39 — the real LOD, on the record ARCHIVE — interviewed about their underground-history project, the originals list the name-squatters of the day (including "a never before heard of Lord Havoc in Canada"); The Marauder: "these clowns are tainting the 'name'… I just think they are pitiful." Local mirror:
research/zines/textfiles/CUD/cud0539.txt.
textfiles.com/magazines/CUD/cud0539.txt Phrack #43, File 7 — convention report ATTRIBUTED — the "new LOD" affair reaches the summer con circuit, where it "was broached, however very little was discussed on it." (The same report carries a cruel personal jab at Smith, deliberately not reproduced here.) Local mirror:
research/zines/phrack/issue43/7.txt.
phrack.org/issues/43/7
The standard. Every quotation here is verbatim from the 1993 record as archived in the local mirror: the Usenet posts (zooid0.txt–zooid3.txt), the "LOD Technical Journal #5" Smith actually shipped (lod-5), and the contemporaneous Computer Underground Digest and Phrack reports (CUD #5.36 / #5.39 / #6.94, Phrack #43). That includes Smith's own announcements, his PGP-signed reassertion, his journal, and his retraction; The Marauder's and Chris Goggans' public replies; and Goggans' later interview — each attributed to its author. One source (the Phrack #43 con report) contains a cruel personal jab at Smith; it is referenced but deliberately not reproduced. This is a documented, ~30-year-old dispute over the use of a group name — low stakes, no charges, no victims. Smith's side is given at full strength, including his gracious withdrawal and the forgeries posted in his name by others. No modern personal information about Cameron Smith is asserted or included; contact details that appear in the original posts are deliberately omitted. If a line here couldn't survive scrutiny, it wouldn't be on the page.