> ISPs turning into jerks came on the heels of that.

> ISPs learned how to be bad from security experts explaining how much mischief a person could get up to and deciding that sounded like a swell idea

Telecommunications companies have played a central role in government surveillance schemes for at least 50 years, well before the advent of WiFi. ECHELON was fairly extensively reported on in the late 90's.

> it might have seemed like you heard about ISPs and hackers around the same time

I connected to the Internet around 1993, but my interest in computer security didn't start until around 1996. I'm not sure if that qualifies.