A while later they got a lucky break. The Sprint technician running the surveillance equipment picked up a conversation. John Markoff, who had just arrived in Raleigh to join the chase, recognized one of the voices. It was the well-known founder of the magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly , Eric Corley (though he preferred going by his chosen handle, Emmanuel Goldstein, after a character in the novel 1984 ). Moments later, above the hiss and static and intermittent reception, they heard the voice on the other end of the conversation. Markoff recognized that one, too.