Freedom Downtime Page #5

into the next year.

Then, on February 15, 1995...

they found him in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The FBl's most-wanted computer hacker

is behind bars.

Kevin Mitnick was jailed without bond

in Raleigh, North Carolina...

where he was arrested this week.

He's accused of breaking into

corporate computers nationwide.

Private computer experts say

so many other hackers are at work...

that privacy is virtually impossible.

The FBl had managed to track Kevin...

with the help of a mysterious

computer expert, Tsutomu Shimomura...

who, along with some friends

had managed to track...

Kevin's cellular phone signal

to the apartment he was staying in.

One of Shimomura's friends who was there

while the signal was being traced...

was none other than John Markoff...

who wrote an even bigger

front page story this time.

Sure enough, l opened the door,

the next day...

to the hotel room,

and there was The Times outside the door.

And l picked it up and l just thought,

''Oh, my God.''

This article had a new list of things

that Kevin had supposedly done...

including breaking into

Shimomura's ultra-secure computer...

leaving nasty voice mail messages...

and stealing 20,000 credit card numbers...

something that was mentioned

in the first paragraph on the front page.

But 13 paragraphs later, on Page D17...

it was revealed that he had never used

any of them.

They were credit card numbers

that had been left lying around...

by lnternet Service Provider Netcom

for almost a year.

Netcom credit card file,

everybody had that file.

lf you didn't have that file, you were a loser.

Hundreds of people had that,

they swapped it around like bubble gum.

And then they claim that he's the one

who did it, he's the one that had it...

when that was floating around for months

before he theoretically had it.

Everybody and his sister's

got a million credit card numbers.

What's the big deal?

lt's a meaningless thing to have.

What l want to know...

is did he threaten anybody in any way?

Did he claim he was going to do

some particular set of harm?

Are there any notebooks

that showed he had plans...

to conspire to commit any particular thing...

other than humiliating

Tsutomu Shimomura...

which any idiot who's ever met Shimomura

could have told him...

this was not the guy to mess with.

l met Shimomura once.

The first time l met Shimomura

was in front of Congress.

And l was testifying

to a congressional subcommittee...

and there's this guy...

in sandals and, like, ragged-ass cutofs.

And the rest of us are done up in ties...

it's me and theAttorney General

from New Jersey.

And we're sitting there, giving our best

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