- The world's most infamous computer hacker, out of jail
and eking a living as an actor in a television drama, has denounced the
new Patriot Act - which would allow FBI and police to snoop on emails and
monitor US internet activity in their efforts to counter terrorism.
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- Kevin Mitnick, 38, imprisoned for breaking into the computer
systems of America's leading telephone companies, told The Observer that
the legislation proposed in the wake of the 11 September attacks was 'ludicrous'.
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- 'Terrorists have proved that they are interested in total
genocide, not subtle little hacks of the US infrastructure, yet the government
wants a blank search warrant to spy and snoop on everyone's communications,'
he said. Mitnick also warned that hackers risked inordinately heavy exemplary
jail sentences. 'Trust me, you do not want to be the next big winner of
the scapegoat sweepstakes.'
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- Mitnick says he was a scapegoat. He was arrested and
charged with committing seven software felonies in 1995 and held without
bail, sometimes in solitary confinement, until his conviction in 1999.
Altogether he served four and a half years before being freed in January
last year.
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- Under the terms of his release, he is banned until January
2003 from using a computer, finding employment as a technical consultant
or even writing about computer technology without permission from his probation
officer. He was only recently given approval to carry a mobile phone to
keep in touch with family members following the death of his father five
months ago. Faced with the restrictions, Mitnick has found work in an ABC
spy drama, Alias, in which he plays a CIA computer expert.
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- Mitnick, whose career won him a place in the Guinness
Book of World Records as the world's most notorious hacker, says he was
a victim of circumstance. 'I am not innocent but I certainly didn't do
most of what I was accused of,' he says. 'A hacker doesn't deliberately
destroy data or profit from his activities. I never made any money directly
from hacking. I wasn't malicious. A lot of the unethical things I did were
to cover my own ass when I was a fugitive.'
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- He hacked into the email of New York Times reporter John
Markoff, who was covering the FBI's pursuit of him.
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- Mitnick says: 'I read the emails because they were discussing
how the FBI was going to catch me. I didn't read it all, just searched
for a combination of letters that's in my name, and words like "trap",
"trace" and things like that. Again, this is something I had
to do to cover my ass, total self-preservation.' He and Markoff subsequently
co-wrote a book about the case.
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- Having testified before a Senate committee on the dangers
of politically motivated hackings, Mitnick continues to believe that the
threat from cyberterrorism could easily be countered by strengthening security
measures at government institutions and private corporations.
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- 'Yes, a co-ordinated team of hackers could take down
the communications systems, the power system, perhaps the financial markets,'
he says. 'But all of those systems would be back online pretty quickly
- you can't really knock them out for an extended period. You could use
those outrages as a decoy though, to draw attention from what you are really
planning.'
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- But, he warns, now is not the time to be hacking. He
cites the case of Dmitry Skylarov, a Russian software programmer awaiting
trial in the US on charges that he violated the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act. 'I hope Dmitry puts up a good fight. He's got a great lawyer, I had
a public defender. He's innocent, whereas I wasn't.'
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2001 http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,577846,00.html
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