Bruce Fancher

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Bruce Fancher, 2005.
Bruce Fancher, 2005.

Bruce Fancher (also known as Dead Lord) was born on April 13, 1971. Bruce was a member of the legendary Legion of Doom hacker group and co-founded MindVox in 1991, with Patrick K. Kroupa.

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[edit] Early years

Bruce Fancher, Burning Bill Gates. MindVox Offices, Early 90's
Bruce Fancher, Burning Bill Gates. MindVox Offices, Early 90's

Bruce Fancher grew up in New York City. He is the son of Ed Fancher, who founded the Village Voice with Dan Wolf and Norman Mailer, in 1955.[1]

Much like Patrick Kroupa and many of his compatriots from the Legion of Doom, Bruce Fancher was part of the first generation to grow up with access to home computers and the networks that pre-dated the wide-scale adaptation of what became known as the internet.

Unlike most others, Fancher seems to have met most of the people who played major roles in his formative years, in person, at the YIPL/TAP meetings that were taking place on the Lower East Side of New York City. Almost from the start, Fancher's peers were some of the smartest and most accomplished hackers and phone phreaks of the day [1].

The hacker underground didn't care how many years you had spent online, the only prerequisite for acceptance, was being highly intelligent. Fancher fit right in and adapted and refined the cynical and jaded attitude that many of the LOD members had arrived at, and used his newfound skills to wreak havoc and play games with the so-called "Elite" of the time.

The hacker publication Phrack, is filled with out-of-character rants and indignant anger at the games Fancher was playing, as Dead Lord and a host of other names [2], [3], [4], [5]. All of this culminated right around the time MindVox was first launched, with Phrack's first (and only) humor issue (Phrack #36) [6], also called "Diet Phrack", which was filled with LOD members stepping out from behind their usual handles and acting more like what the world had grown to expect from their rival gang, MOD (Masters of Deception).

Among other articles, such as Chris Goggans' infamous "jive" version of the Book of MOD [7] that set off the Great Hacker War, Phrack 36 included the first and last, official publication of an article co-written by Fancher and Kroupa, called "Elite Access" [8], which was a cynical and funny expose of the "elite" and private hacker underground of the day. The article was apparently worked on and edited during a 5 year period, and there are at least 3 different versions of it that still remain online [9], [10], [11], including a much earlier, hardcore technical revision which has most of the commands to control phone company computers, deleted out of it [12].

Fancher and Kroupa's games with the "elite" made it into Kroupa's "Agr1ppa", a surreal parody of William Gibson's, Agrippa, which had been leaked to the world from MindVox. The opening verses include a letter dated 1985, from the SysOp (System Operator) of a pirate BBS which had apparently thrown both Fancher and Kroupa off the system, for uploading cracked software, which they then infected with a virus [13].

[edit] Lunatics running the asylum

Neither Kroupa nor Fancher ever discussed the excess that was taking place behind the scenes until nearly a decade after the fact, but it was not a well kept secret. Although MindVox quickly became notorious for the escapades of its hard-partying clientele, there is little or no evidence that Fancher was personally involved in the wild lifestyles of its members. However, he was at least indirectly affected, in that by 1995 Kroupa's drug use was fast becoming legendary and his ability to function on a daily basis was diminishing. While the media's fascination with MindVox never ended, the development and growth of the system had slowed down and Phantom Access Technologies was taking on consulting positions to help other companies create their own online presence [14], and Fancher gained growing acclaim as a software architect and member of the dot.com technocracy [15], [16], [17], [18], [19].

Perhaps the most unusual picture into what were the last days of MindVox were provided by investigative journalist and author Ken Kappel.

Kappel is the author of Chappaquiddick Revealed: What Really Happened [20], a book investigating Ted Kennedy's possible role in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. During the mid 90s Ken Kappel was apparently employed by MindVox, which eventually resulted in a falling out of epic proportions.

Ken Kappel ended up suing Fancher, Kroupa and MindVox, and after failing to get satisfaction in court, Kappel scanned approximately 50 pages of text he had written and sent to one of MindVox's lawyers, Philip Pierce, and made the full copies available online [21].

Kappel's letters read more like The Great Gatsby than legal documents and in fact, quote directly from Gatsby:

In the end you are like that Gatsby, those people who: "It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people... they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" [22].

From another document:

These sons of wealth act out as rock stars on the road, burn money-with no respect for the property of others, or concept of professional ethics. And why not? Why should they act professionally? Their messes are always cleaned up for them, they know no other way [23].
Bruce Fancher, unknown date and location
Bruce Fancher, unknown date and location

In addition to all the personal attacks, paranoid fantasies, and attempts at character assassination present in Kappel's letters, there is a treasure-trove of behind-the-scenes information about MindVox available in the archives of his web site. One of the more interesting allegations was the long-suspected and never proved theory that some of the principles who founded MindVox, never stopped their black hat activities, including "hacking into non public-access databases" [24].

Despite writing off Ken Kappel as "the local neighborhood wackjob" and claiming that his stories about Fancher and MindVox had no merit, according to whois records Bruce Fancher purchased the kenkappel.com domain after Mr. Kappel apparently let the registration lapse and did not renew it in time, and shut down the site. The only remaining archives are those that were scraped by Archive.org [25].

The only public comments made by Fancher or Kroupa regarding Ken Kappel, appeared on the "Vox" list, hosted by MindVox and open to the public since 2000, "Ken had a very unique[sic] legal strategy, he was going to cause us to cave into his demands by submitting short-stories to our lawyers".

[edit] 21st. century

While the last days of MindVox are more the stuff of mythology than recorded fact, and there are perpetual signs of MindVox coming back to life and opening again [26], [27], it appears likely that MindVox either went dark, or shut off public access, at some time in late 1997. The two main publications which covered the shutting of the gates, were The New York Times and Wired, who were apparently unable to arrive at a consensus, with the Times listing the sale of MindVox's client-base and the closing of the system, in 1996 [28], while Wired was still covering an apparently open and at least partially operational MindVox circa 1997, more than one year after the Times listed MindVox as being closed [29].

Whatever the past and future of MindVox holds, by the late 90's Fancher seems to have gone through a series of start-ups where he was one of the initial founders, saw the company through the first few years, and promptly cashed out. The best-known of these appears to be DuoCash [30], a micropayments company made infamous through a series of photographs posted on MindVox [31], taken from the DuoCash office building, located across the street from where the World Trade Center had stood a few days before [32], [33].

As of 2005, Bruce Fancher is the Vice President of Technology at Lagardere Active, North America [34].

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[edit] References

  1. ^ village voice > aboutus

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