barlow posted an account of this experience to the well online community and was contacted by mitch kapor, who had had a similar experience. the pair agreed that there was a need to defend civil liberties on the internet. kapor agreed to fund any legal fees associated with such a defense and the pair contacted new york lawyers rabinowitz, boudin, standard, krinsky and lieberman about defending several computer hackers from a "harper's" magazine forum on computers and freedom who had been the target of secret service raids. this generated a large amount of publicity which led to offers of financial support from john gilmore and steve wozniak. barlow and kapor continued to research conflicts between the government and technology and in june 1990, barlow posted online the influential article entitled "crime & puzzlement" in which barlow announced his and kapor's plans to create an organization to "raise and disburse funds for education, lobbying, and litigation in the areas relating to digital speech and the extension of the constitution into cyberspace."