Mitnick Rings Bell

[Rich Burroughs]

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 at 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 at 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/