CYBERCRIME
On January 21, federal prisoner #89950-012, otherwise known as convicted cracker Kevin Mitnick, walked out the gates of a lockup in Lompoc, California, a free man. But Mitnick, imprisoned for almost five years, isn't completely free: For three years, he's forbidden to use a computer or any wireless device. During that period, he's also required to make monthly restitution payments of $125 to be divided among more than a dozen companies and institutions.
What's remarkable about the case is how unremarkable it's actually turned out to be. Though charged with 25 counts of computer and wire fraud, Mitnick pled guilty to only one cracking charge - changing data on computers at the University of Southern California, which totaled only $1,000 to fix.
"What he got busted for was not his best work," says former cracker Kevin Poulsen, who himself served five years for phone hacking.
Prosecutors wildly inflated the harm caused by Mitnick, calculating the total damage at nearly $300 million. They arrived at the figure by computing the total cost to develop the software and operating systems Mitnick infiltrated.
Mitnick's supporters displayed their own excesses, painting the socially maladjusted lawbreaker as a high-minded political prisoner, the computer world's Mumia Abu-Jamal. In reality, Mitnick's serial cracking may stem more from an obsessive-compulsive disorder than a desire to test the limits of electronic freedom. Even Mitnick's own lawyer asked that his client be early-released into a program to treat his compulsive cracking. Instead, the court simply made him serve out his sentence - no follow-up 12-step required.
Technomartyr or raging crackaholic? In the end, the Mitnick case says more about society's uneasy relationship with technology than it does about Mitnick himself.
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