On Thu, 6 Nov 1997, John Young wrote:
6 November 1997, Digital Cellular Report:
U.S. government takes hard line on Mitnick. US Hacker Pleads for Help [snip]
I think Kevin's time in custody shapes up to at least 31 months now. He was recently sentenced on a couple of charges, but his time served exceeds the sentence he was given. He has been held without bail for this incredible length of time, yet he has never committed a violent crime, AFAIK, and never profited financially from his hacking. In a hearing a few months back he finally established the fact that he was not a "fugitive" when he went underground, but had completed the release terms he was under shortly before. While I'm not sure I can follow this all to the conclusion that the gov is using his case to distract people from their attempts to regulate the Net, I think it is clear they are using him as a warning sign to potential hackers: Don't believe you have anything like civil liberties, because we can lock your ass up for years without even having to take you to trial. There is a pretty quiet majordomo list about Kevin's case at 2600 -- mitnick@2600.com. Some of us who are concerned about Kevin's case have been participating in an RC5 team that's meant to hopefully draw attention to his case. We're working on RC5-64 now, and people who are interested in joining can visit the URL below. The judge in Kevin's case recently set a tentative trail date, for April of '98, I believe. That means he'll have been in for over 3 years before his federal tial begins. He is facing a 25-count indictment. Rich --- Rich Burroughs rich@paranoid.org PGP Key Fingerprint = 22 BA C5 D7 2C 34 BF 8E B5 82 2E 13 46 38 AA 1D Cracking RC5-64 for Kevin Mitnick http://www.paranoid.org/mitnick/