Freedom Downtime Page #2

And then people

would start unfairly using...

other contacts that they had.

ln one case there was a lieutenant

or commander in the LAPD....

One ham radio operator

who was a friend of his...

got him to write a letter saying Kevin

was interfering with LAPD communications.

And all sorts of crazy things in his past.

Cyberpunk was published in 1991...

Cyberpunk was published in 1991...

by Katie Hafner

and then-husband John Markof...

and relied almost entirely

on the words of people...

who Kevin had had a falling out with...

as well as those who didn't know him at all.

Hafner and Markoff never talked to Kevin,

because he wanted to be paid for his time.

But it didn't take much to dispel the rumors.

NORAD denied any break-ins...

Kristy McNichol had no idea

she was being harassed...

and no evidence ever surfaced

of any payphone conversions.

But none of this ever got printed.

Kevin's name was enough to convict him,

regardless of the actual evidence.

And then there was Security Pacific.

After being hired,

Kevin had once again been terminated...

because of the stories that followed him.

And this resulted in

yet another Mitnick myth being born.

There was a Newswire article coming out

that stated...

that Security Pacific

had lost billions of dollars or something...

in bad loans...

which would have affected their stock price.

That was actually tracked down

to some error...

that someone made

in entering the information.

lt had nothing to do with it not being true...

but it was an error that someone made

in entering the information.

lmmediately, because there were

employees at Security Pacific...

that knew Kevin Mitnick,

including one ham radio operator...

immediately that was attributed to,

''Kevin Mitnick did this.''

And that's howthat rumor spread.

l'd seen this all before.

Hackers were always getting blamed

for things they didn't do.

ln many cases

for things that weren't even possible.

lt was obvious

somebody had to set the record straight...

somebody who would command respect.

Hackers break into government

and business computers...

stealing and destroying information...

raiding bank accounts,

running up credit card charges...

extorting money by threats

to unleash computer viruses.

Whoa, hold on a second.

What was this guy reading?

The Weekly World News?

Hackers don't steal and extort,

they play with all kinds of things.

Like those Simplex locks

on the FedEx boxes.

ln typical corporate brainpower...

FedEx uses the same combination

on every drop box in the country.

lt's fun to stick something

really big in there...

that couldn't possibly fit in the chute

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