It's an interesting exercise to think about what could have happened to me had I been born a bit earlier, slightly more skilled, or just (un)lucky enough to score a real penetration. I am probably lucky that my pre-teen ego let me think I was a great hacker when, in fact, I could barely pass for a script kiddie by stealing other folks hacks. I hung out on the edges of real hackerdom-- I met all sorts through friends of friends-- a guy who got a millon plus dollar phone bill and was hauled out of high school in cuffs. Another time, one of the most famous C64 developers actually came to my house and gave me a copy of Fast Hacke'em.
Later on I got to meet a white-hat hero too. I chose to work at NAI in part because Phil worked there and I believe that privacy is a right. Too bad management was more about making money by any means instead of investing in and building useful and desirable product.
When my childhood morals allowed for this sort of thing all they could bust you for was electricity theft. There were no laws covering unauthorized access to a computer system back then. Even if I had been successful and copied some data, the legal consequences would have been nothing compared to today.
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