On January 27, a lucky break provided Shimmy and his team with the first strand of the net they would weave in the hope of closing in on me. The Well had an automated "disk hog" program that would periodically send emails to users who were using a lot of disk space. One of these messages went to Bruce Koball, who had a role in staging an annual public-policy event called the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference (CFP).