A closer look
In 1986, an extremely pissed-off Florida satellite dish dealer named John MacDougall decided he was done paying HBO's ridiculous scrambled subscription fees. Using the very equipment he sold, he brute-forced his way into HBO's satellite uplink, overriding the movie "The Falcon and the Snowman" with a brightly colored, aggressively polite threat signed "Captain Midnight." It was the ultimate middle finger to corporate media monopolies, sparking a nationwide panic about broadcast security and turning an angry nerd into a folk hero.
