John Perry Barlow's Electronic Freedom Foundation started with a visit from the FBI.

https://www.eff.org/pages/not-terribly-brief-history-electronic-frontier-foundation

So it looks to me like JPB was always a spook a la Dave McGowan & the Lauren Canton stories.

Here we have a member of the Grateful Dead smoothing the transition for hippies from the free love hobo culture into the techno-hacker culture.

I did not realize he was linked up immediately with the FBI. If you read this it seems to me like they are creating the narrative that the FBI was just a bunch of boomers who knew literally NOTHING about cyberspace or computers. .. This is why the cool kids had to step in and create a crack team of ex hippies (riiiight) to set the bureau straight.

All this shit the FBI thought was hacking was just awesome freedom loving techpreneurship!

just throwing the theory out there. I do not like the vibe off JPB.