The story in the next paragraph leads me to reflect on a change in the business climate in the past thirty years.
"Nathaniel Heatwole, 20, allegedly slipped bags containing the box cutters and other banned items through airport security and hid them on Southwest Airlines planes on Sept. 12 and Sept. 14, and then sent an e-mail describing what he had done on Sept. 15 to the federal Transportation Security Administration, according to an affidavit accompanying a criminal charge."
Many people, including some members of Congress, suggested that Heatwole be sentenced to work for the Homeland Security Agency. This is interesting because in the current business climate it is considered possible that such an event might occur. The example we all have in mind is that software companies hire hackers to test and design computer security systems.
Thirty years ago I was a friend of John Draper known as Captain Crunch. Crunch was the father of the blue and the black box, an electronic sound maker that was used to make free phone calls and manipulate the phone system.
Thirty years ago, I was a foundation president and corporate activist. I had helped Crunch on a number of minor projects. I realized that Crunch could be of great help to the phone company (there was only Ma Bell at the time) as an employee who deeply knew the phone network technology. I approached several of my friends in Pacific Bell about hiring Crunch.
My friends at Pacific Bell made it clear to me that no freak (they were called fone freaks at the time) could possibly fit into a corporate bureaucratic environment.
What was different in the business climate then that made hiring a freak so outrageous?
(1) MaBell was gigantic and the local Pacific Bell division would never take a wild idea to the somber headquarters guys in New York City.
(2) New York Headquarters had barely heard of San Francisco and the Peninsula (where Crunch lived) and certainly couldn't imagine useful technology coming from the Bay Area.
(3) Independent contractor was a nearly unknown term at the time. People who worked for a company were either employees, outside auditors, board members or legal counsel. That was it.
There was simply no conceptual place for Crunch at MaBell.
Today, there are many ways that Nathaniel Heatwole could work for a bureaucracy ranging from independent contractor or individual consultant to employee of an outside consulting firm.