WASHINGTON -- Kevin Mitnick says he never intended to spend part of an evening chatting pleasantly with the federal prosecutor who put him behind bars.
The 38-year-old convicted cracker (turned cause célèbre, turned conference pundit) showed up at the National Press Club on Thursday to hear a scheduled presentation by Richard Clarke, President Bush's new cyber-security czar.
But Clarke had bowed out of participating in the event, and Christopher Painter, now deputy chief of the Justice Department's computer crime section, took his place.
"I was shocked to see him here," Mitnick says of Painter, who had been a lead attorney in his prosecution. "If I knew he was going to be here, I wouldn't have come."
At first, Painter seemed reluctant to speak with the world's most infamous hacker-defendant. After all, Painter had included the U.S. v. Mitnick case on the bio distributed to the roughly 60 attendees. But after half an hour or so -- the open bar may have helped -- prosecutor and ex-hacker were chatting amiably enough about old times.
"I told him that my case was over," Mitnick says. "Let bygones be bygones. He said he had no animosity toward me."
Painter phoned us Friday to set the record straight.
"My problem with Mitnick these days is that he's never really accepted responsibility for his conduct," Painter said.
Painter added: "I hope he gets his life together, and I bear him no ill-will, but I think if you don't accept responsibility and you glamorize hacking and you get attention based on your former exploits, that sends the wrong message to people."
Also on the panel was Mark Rasch, yet another Justice Department attorney -- albeit one now in private practice -- who had helped with Mitnick's prosecution.
Rasch greeted his old adversary -- who didn't recognize him -- warmly enough. "I knew more about you than you knew about me," said Rasch, who's now vice president of Predictive Systems.
Mitnick was in town to speak at the Business Software Alliance's annual tech summit. He's barred from using computers until his parole expires in Jan. 2003, but manages to host a Sunday-morning radio show anyway.
He says he's also working on a book, tentatively titled The Art of Deception: Exploiting the Human Element, to be published in September 2002 by Wiley and Sons.
His co-author is Bill Simon, an accomplished writer probably best known for ghostwriting a book with former Apple Computer CEO Gil Amelio.
"What we're writing about is the most overlooked aspect of corporate security," says Simon. He says "almost nothing has been written" on the topic so far.
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No criticism permitted: Attorney General John Ashcroft seems to dislike his critics almost as much as he would an al-Qaida terrorist.
During an appearance this week before the Senate Judiciary committee, America's top law enforcement officer proclaimed that warning of lost liberty was almost, well, un-American.
His prepared remarks say: "We need honest, reasoned debate, not fear mongering. To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists.
"For they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve," Ashcroft continued. "They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil."
That drew a rebuke from the Washington Post. In an editorial on Friday, the paper said Ashcroft's "job is to defend dissent, not to use the moral authority of his office to discourage people from participating in one of the most fundamental obligations of citizenship."
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Microsoft update: The 10 remaining states pursuing Microsoft through the courts have released their demands for an antitrust settlement.
The requested remedies focus on areas such as setting uniform prices for Windows, including Java in Windows and appointing a special master to resolve disputes.
Microsoft would also be required to auction off many of its product lines, including the widely used Office suite of productivity tools, to third-party companies. They would in turn port the software to other operating systems -- Linux, perhaps -- and sell licenses.
Microsoft's revenue would come from the auction -- it wouldn't receive any of the licensing fees.
"What we have tried to do is a set of remedies that are effective, strong and fair," Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in a conference call Friday.
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No wiretap worries: A top Clinton administration official downplayed concerns about the controversial USA Patriot Act this week.
Appearing at a panel discussion Wednesday, John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff, said the new law "will not have a major impact in reduction of civil rights and liberties."
The law, which received overwhelming support in Congress, gives police unprecedented legal authority to conduct surveillance of telephone calls and Internet communications.
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DOI-DOA: An embarrassed Interior Department was forced to pull the plug on its websites this week.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Department Secretary Gail Norton to close off Internet access to any computer that may leak personal information about names (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58456-2001Dec4.html) to the American Indian trust.
The offline sites include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
Ben Polen contributed to this report.
