the creation of the organization was motivated by the massive search and seizure on steve jackson games executed by the united states secret service early in 1990. similar but officially unconnected law-enforcement raids were being conducted across the united states at about that time as part of a state–federal task force called operation sundevil. gurps cyberpunk, one of the game company's projects, was mistakenly labeled as a handbook for computer crime, and the secret service raided the offices of steve jackson games. the search warrant for the raid was deemed hastily issued, and the games company soon after claimed unauthorized access as well as tampering of their emails. while phone calls were protected by legislation, digital emails were an early concept and had not been considered to fall under the right to personal privacy. the steve jackson games case was eff's first high-profile case, was the major rallying point around which eff began promoting computer- and internet-related civil liberties.