All we can do is try to publicize the facts.
Not what the government is saying, but the facts.
And not simply parrot or regurgitate...
what the government's saying, because that's largely bullshit.
lt was the dead of winter.
l don't remember it ever being so cold.
And we were on a mission.
A bunch of us had volunteered to drive our good friend to his new home...
the Schuylkill Federal Prison in the middle of Pennsylvania.
He called himself Phiber Optik.
You'd have to look hard to find someone who didn't think he was brilliant.
Before we left, we had a night of fun...
in the streets of Philadelphia, in the middle of an ice storm.
Phiber learned by exploring.
He was never too busy to explain...
howthings worked to anyone interested.
l think that's what pissed of the authorities the most.
They never tried to prove that Phiber Optik hacked into any computers.
They got him for conspiracy...
for talking on a tapped phone line...
about howto hack certain sites.
There were people who broke into systems...
and fucked things up, and they never even got arrested.
The feds didn't care.
They wanted to shut down the teachers, the people who didn't knowto keep secrets.
There's Bernie S.
He's another guy who loves to explain...
howtechnology works to anyone who's interested.
He didn't know it, but hell was just around the corner waiting for him.
We made one last stop before we dropped Phiber off.
lt was a town called Frackville.
We thought it was funny because of a hacker newsletter called Phrack.
We thought it'd make a good picture for the hacker community.
But Bernie had the balls to get a Frackville cop...
to pose with Phiber.
These guys had no clue what was going on...
but they quickly got into the spirit.
lt was the last time we laughed that night.
We drove to the prison.
lt felt like it was 20 degrees below zero.
We didn't know they'd throw him in the hole...
for the entire weekend. Some kind of prison welcoming ceremony.
And like the gullible idiots we were...
we figured we'd have a chance to say goodbye.
We didn't.
They grabbed him.
And we had to run out of there to keep them from taking our camera.
Phiber came home 10 months later, a hero.
Everyone knew sending someone like that to prison...
was a big mistake.
After it was over, we were pretty sure it wouldn't happen again.
Were we ever wrong.
Bad boys gone to jail
Look at you, boy, you've come of age
and now you're going around saying you're a bad boy
You say that you'll never go to jail
'Cause you're so bad and you cannot fail
Oh bad boy Oh rude boy
Oh bad boy Gots to believe me
Oh bad boy Here is how you fail
Gots to believe me one time
You went to town just to fool around
You met a girl who was wearing a frown
You going around, boasting, feeling bad
Now you're sitting in jail
don't you feel so sad
This is like the crudest form of communication l've ever had to do.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
l just saw something.
Was that you? Well, we can see your hand.
l doubt you can stick your whole head through the window
Splotch your face up against the window
We'll know it's the right one, we can at least zoom in on it.
Kevin Mitnick, the world's most dangerous computer hacker.
My regret about Cyberpunk is talking about Kevin...
and how he was always eating and how he was overweight.
People have really gotten on my case about that.
Some guy came up to me at anAustin book thing and said:
''Why did you go on and on about Kevin's weight?''
And he was right.
l did that to the point where it just wasn't tasteful.
Where it was sort of...
just beating an issue that didn't need to be beaten.
For a period after he was arrested, incarcerated...
and released into a halfway house...
l couldn't find a single article...
that talked about him without mentioning his weight.
And the real fascination with Kevin's body...
and its relationship to technology..
is one of the things that absolutely hooked me.
l found a number of articles in Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times...
written by people like Markoff and Joshua Quittner and so on.
And they would say Kevin was in a halfway house...
where he no longer touched a computer, and lost 100 pounds.
As if those two things were connected.
1988, USA Today...
put his picture on the front page...
morphed or superimposed with the image of Darth Vader.
And l thought this is a remarkable combination of two things...
and it's really picking up on the idea of the Dark Side hacker.
lf ever there was someone who fit that description, it was Kevin.
The mention of his name was enough to incur the wrath of the authorities.
Over the years, his reputation grew and so did the falsehoods.
ln numerous articles, Kevin was said to have broken into NORAD...
harassed actress Kristy McNichol...
and turned his friends' home phones into payphones.
His beginning was on ham radio.
And on ham radio, it's a close-knit community.
A couple of dozen people at the most on a particular repeater or channel.
And, you know, they would get into challenges.
And, of course, Mitnick would be the underdog.
''Let's challenge him, let's do this and that.''
When he met their challenges, they'd start crying and screaming...
as if they were innocentvictims of Kevin's.
This has been the case throughout.
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...
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 just to fuck with the guy
And he got some cheap beer out of it too.
lf you go somewhere you're not supposed to be...
and bring something back to show people...
that always struck me as being a whole lot like a panty raid.
And you know, panty raids are really...
in the grandest tradition of this country
Try to make your way in there...
get the stuff, and get back out with it without getting your head cut of.
What we're doing here is we're talking...
on McDonald's external speaker for their drive-thru.
And what we're doing to do that...
is we have a modified ham radio...
meaning it transmits on frequencies other than the ones it was intended to.
ln this case, it's standard business band frequencies.
154.6 megahertz seems to be the standard McDonald's frequency
l'll take your order.
The blonde, would you please kneel down for a second?
Could one of you take off your tops? We'll give you the food for free.
You bastards, you better stop being smart.
-Here comes the manager. -Really?
While corporateAmerica would always be the playground of hackers...
it was mostly about fun and exploration, not damage or profit.
But try telling that to corporateAmerica.
Kevin Mitnick had already paid a heavy price for his curiosity.
He had served a year-and-a-half in 1988...
for logging into DEC computers without authorization.
By simply looking at the VMS operating system...
DEC claimed he caused millions of dollars in damage...
and was sentenced as if he had caused that amount of physical damage.
He was held without bail and was put in solitary confinement for eight months...
because they thought he could do more damage from the prison payphone.
After his sentence, Kevin served three years of supervised release...
reporting to authorities every month...
and being restricted in where he could go and what he could do.
He only had days to go when federal authorities decided...
he had violated the terms of his supervised release...
by associating with Lewis DePayne...
and accessing someone's voice mail without permission.
lt was nothing.
But it was enough.
Knowing howthe media and the court system...
would crucify him over any offense...
because he could start World War lll from a payphone...
Kevin decided to just walk away.
l was devastated.
We were never far away from each other.
And how was he living on his own...
without his family to share things with?
lt was horrible.
What kind of a life is this?
He is not streetwise.
He's a home person.
Kevin managed to avoid attention.
Then, on July 4, 1994, everything changed.
A front page story in the NewYork Times...
turned Kevin Mitnick into a household word all over again.
The evil-looking picture...
the mythical stories about breaking into NORAD computers...
and controlling all the telephones in California...
even the Security Pacific news release tale was retold as fact.
Nobody could figure out howthe story made it onto the front page ofThe Times...
since there was nothing new in the story
But the author was no stranger. John Markoff...
who was quickly becoming a Mitnick expert without ever having met him.
We looked at the story as an amusement back then.
We were planning the first Hackers On Planet Earth conference thatAugust.
The story had gotten so big that we all walked around with Mitnick masks.
They came here to the Hotel Pennsylvania by the hundreds.
These usually anonymous creatures of the cyberworld...
better known as hackers, were holding a convention.
Throughout that weekend, Kevin called in several times to say hi.
We all wished he could be there.
But we knew why he was running.
One of the things Markoff hadn't mentioned in his article...
was the eight months of solitary confinement.
The guy was in solitary confinement for eight months.
Think about it.
l mean, that would definitely change a man.
You would run.You wouldn't want that.
lt was eight months, not for anything he did, but because the judge was scared.
And if you get someone who is that unaware...
of actually what he can do and thinks he can destroy the world.
lf you have someone who has enough power...
to put you in solitary confinement you will run.
lt makes perfect sense to me.
l think it's part hype...
part hysteria, part lack of understanding...
and part fear.
Solitary confinement means no books...
no pencil, no paper, no company.
Nothing to do...
but stare at these small four walls.
He would get out one hour a day..
and that's it.
You know, he might whistle up some missile launch codes.
That's a big problem with hackers nowadays.
They get a little pissed off and they launch some nukes by whistling.
The fear factor is just insane.
Once or twice or maybe more, l can't even remember...
they didn't even bring him down to the visitors' room.
They took my daughter and l...
upstairs to a floor...
that wasn't occupied at that time.
We were the only ones there and the guard.
They were hovering over him...
as though he was an absolute monster
What could he possibly do, you know?
Could he make...
a computer out of the telephone?
l don't know what they were afraid of!
First of all, he had no desire to.
Secondly, it wouldn't have accomplished anything.
Thirdly, he couldn't do it.
Kevin managed to elude the authorities 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 ''Yes, we're in front of Congress'' thing.
And Shimomura is there in this surfer gear.
And he pulls thisAT&T cell phone...
pulls it out of the shrink-wrap, finger-hacks it...
and starts monitoring phone calls...
going up and down Capitol Hill...
while an FBl agent is standing at his shoulder listening to him.
l'm like, ''This fucker's got balls the size of durian fruit.''
You know, this is unbelievable. This is the heaviest guy l've ever seen.
l mean, he's hacking, right?
He was finger-hacking this phone in front of Congress...
with two FBl agents and John Gage from Sun Microsystems...
in the room with him.And l was like, ''Wow,'' you know.
l mean, l was impressed.
lnside of a week, Shimomura and Markoff had signed a book deal...
estimated to be worth $750,000.
lt would be another 19 months before Kevin would even be indicted.
The book, entitledTakedown, was finished by the end of the year.
When l read it, l was aghast.
lt was Tsutomu's eating and skateboarding habits.
l'd been to a lot of the restaurants he'd been to...
but l didn't need a hacker book to tell me about them.
Takedown. Well....
l don't what l want to say aboutTakedown.
Takedown was not well received.
1996 came and went as did 1997.
Kevin remained in prison without even a bail hearing...
and no prospect of a trial anytime soon.
A25-count indictment accused him of nothing more serious...
than lying on the telephone about who he was...
and copying software which he never tried to sell or even distribute.
Nothing about hacking into Shimomura's machine...
or having 20,000 credit card numbers...
nothing that would have appeared in a John Markoff story.
North Carolina had also charged him with making free cellular phone calls.
Kevin was given a two-year sentence...
more than he would have gotten for manslaughter.
But the federal charges still remained.
They even put him in solitary confinement again...
because the authorities were convinced he'd build a transmitter out of a Walkman...
sneak into the warden's office and monitor his conversations.
The mainstream media made light of it...
claiming Mitnick was put in solitary for having too many cans of tuna.
What everyone seemed to forget was years were going by...
and this guy had yet to be tried.
And then, things got a whole lot worse.
June 1998.
A movie version of Takedown was announced.
Skeet Ulrich, who played a killer in Scream...
was set to play Kevin Mitnick.
And Russell Wong from The Joy Luck Club...
would be Tsutomu Shimomura.
lt didn't seem to matter to anyone...
that the real-life Kevin was still rotting in prison without a trial.
According to the script we got our hands on...
he had been found guilty and sentenced already.
The magic of Hollywood.
They even brought Kevin and Tsutomu closer.
ln real life, they'd only met for a few seconds in a courtroom.
ln the Hollywood version they met in a dark alleyway...
where Kevin would proceed to bash Tsutomu on the head...
with a garbage can lid.
We had to tell the world that this was a big mistake.
The truth needed to be told.
And we could either do it ourselves, or use the media.
That's right, the media, democracy's biggest allies...
committed to informing the public no matter the cost.
The true conscience of America.
-Stop pushing! -Get out of the way, Brad.
Watch yourselves!
Come on, guys.
Don't yell at me, everyone's in front of me.
Tell them to come back.
He's coming to the mike!
Would you guys get down?
Watch the mikes!
Let's get out of the way.
Come on.
We decided to do it ourselves.
We found Skeet Ulrich's apartment in New York in a phone book...
and paid a visit to try and get him the real story
But he had moved.
l know, because the doorman let me look at every single name in the book.
So the next stop was Miramax Films on the West Side.
We figured they'd appreciate a chance to correct the mistakes in the screenplay.
And we knew we'd be warmly received because this was Miramax.
The company had distributed Michael Moore's latest film...
you know, the guy who films in everybody's lobby.
Hi, we're looking for Miramax?
-What's your name? -Emmanuel Goldstein.
Who you here to see?
Sorry, you can't film in here.
-You can't film here? -No, it's a landmark.
Sorry, you can't....
So there's no way you can call upstairs....
You have to call them, they will call me.
This wasn't going well.
How could a movie company tell us to stop filming?
All we wanted to do was talk to somebody.
What a letdown.
His light is on, so he's capturing everything.
So please go outside before he has to call the police.
All right, we don't want that, so we'll go outside....
We called the office and waited to hear from them, but we never did.
lt was like they were scared of us. Maybe they agreed with Bill Clinton...
that hackers were as one-dimensional as they were in the script.
How could we get them to see the other side?
That night, NewYork City introduced unlimited ride MetroCards.
We decided to find out how long it would take for our cards to reset...
so we could let people in for free.
This is what the hacker world was really all about.
Why didn't they see this?
Why did it always have to be something evil to the people who didn't get it?
We had only one option.
''For Off The Hook, l recently heard the show...
''where you got the copy of a script for Takedown.
''l found it really amusing howthe scriptwriters can take the truth...
''and not twist it or fabricate it, but just plain lie about what happened.''
l've heard about Kevin's story, and thanks to Off The Hook...
l heard about this meeting, and l decided to come...
and see how l can help.
lt wasn't from me, it's from somebody else, l knew who that is.
-ls there a good catchiness? -Yeah. ''From Supermax to Miramax:
''Three-and-a-halfYears With No Trial.''
And then you can make another one, ''From Miramax to Supermax:
''And No Trial.''
When they see two ''Free Kevin'' stickers...
when they see 10, 20, 100, they're gonna say, ''Who the hell is Kevin?''
They'll keep saying it until somebody answers them.
One or two people that know more about it are one or two people more on our side.
Those two people get two people who get two people.That's how it is.
We're gonna be in their face every step of the way.
lf it comes to showing this thing on the screen, in theaters...
we're going to be there, too.
l mean, what we're doing now isn't going to be finished...
until Kevin has his trial, until Kevin is out.
''Guilty by Hollywood'' or something like that.
-That's a good one. -l like that.
Yeah, l did look at the script, and....
l don't know.
lt's a shame and it definitely shouldn't be something out there...
for someone who knows very little about Kevin...
to then see this movie and have ideas in their head that are untrue.
We had tried talking to them and they wouldn't listen.
Now, by having a demonstration outside their offices, they would have to listen.
But we were hackers. What did we know about demonstrations?
Just that they can turn into riots...
especially when the Mayor bans demonstrations outside City Hall...
and the cops shoot people a lot more.
We needed guidance, someone with experience.
We looked all over town for an activist.
Maybe one of those gray-haired hippies from the '60s.
We found one. Sort of.
What's it like demonstrating here? Do you get harassed?
They hate our guts because they don't want the truth to come out.
Why do you think there isn't more activism?
Because people don't care, they're scared...
they're afraid they'll get into trouble. l can understand it.
But we still have to take a stand, afraid or not.
We have to at least give it a try, we have to give it a shot.
-Has this cop been giving you any trouble? -No, he hasn't bothered me.
And we have a President that wants to suck their brains out.
That bothers a lot of people, but....
Anybody that's decent gets bothered when a little child is tortured to death.
Or when a President is sucking their brains out.
Yeah.
He wasn't exactly what we had in mind.
l got a real earful about the evils of homosexuals and communists.
But in the end, he told us the one thing we needed to hear
When you demonstrate, make sure you're in the right.
And that's the one thing we were sure of: We were right.
The day arrived. We had no idea what to expect.
We just stood there for a while, not knowing what to do.
Our converted phone company van got more attention than us.
My name is Noah Kenickstein, l'm an attorney.
-For Miramax? -No. For you all!
l didn't even know.
-l'm a lawyer. l'm representing you all. -Okay. Great.
So, no one's getting arrested, right?
-l didn't plan on it. -Good.
The National Lawyers Guild sent someone to protect us...
and that was the turning point.
Things began to come together. Even members of the media showed up.
lt seemed like everyone except Miramax was taking this seriously.
We learned that when you stand outside a film studio's offices with picket signs...
people notice.
These folks are gonna put on a little demonstration here.
They're gonna be marching around. l thought l would tell you.
-You could tell the.... -l'll tell the precinct.
Tell the precinct, and tell them l'm a lawyer lt's nice and calm.
No problems at all.
But they're having a little.... They'll be marching around.
-l've got it. -l wanted to tell you that.
l appreciate thatvery much. Could you tell me approximately how many?
l would say there's gonna be.... 50 people, Patty?
50 to 60, maximum 50.
-What area are you doing it in? -ln front of Miramax Films.
They're demonstrating about a movie that they're making.
Thanks a lot, l appreciate you stopping me.
Everybody's nice and calm.
-l'll tell them that.Thanks for the advice. -Okay, no problem.
No, they're not gonna come on purpose.
People are, you know....
You're talking about suits.
They don't give a fuck. You got to go hand it to them.
Don't harass the people who walk by
Some people have crises going on in their lives.
They can't be bothered with our problems.
Do you have a permit? Who's in charge out here?
Do you all have a permit?
As long as you don't block the front of the entrance.
You stay to the side, please.Thank you.
They can walk in front. The cops have been--
As long as you don't block the entrance, l don't have no problem.
They have a FirstAmendment right.
Don't block the entrance. That's all l'm saying.
lt's ringing. l got put in voice mail, guess they got too many calls.
This one's reaching voice mail. l'll leave a message.
Hi, this is the protest outside. Are you guys there?
lf you get this, come outside. We're right down here.
l see someone.
All right. Maybe you'll pick up the phone or come downstairs later.
You calling the Publicity Department?
No, the main number. l got a hold of them yesterday...
and l asked for directions to the protest...
and they told me they couldn't get me from where l was at to here.
l said, ''Okay, l'll call you back tomorrow when l'm out front.''
-l see them, they've got their heads out. -There's one.
They're not answering the phones.
Waving banners that said ''Free Kevin''...
and holding ''Stop Miramax'' posters...
the small butvocal crowd of protesters...
stood outside Miramax Pictures' New York offices yesterday.
At issue: this script, entitledTakedown...
the story of the nation's most notorious computer hacker, Kevin Mitnick.
Mitnick is currently being held in prison without bail...
awaiting trial on computer crimes.
lt's a script these Kevin Mitnick supporters say is libelous...
and would hurt Mitnick's chances of getting a fair trial.
lt might influence the jury
lt might change a lot of things in a negative way.
He's trying so hard to at least get a trial and then this comes up...
where he's constantly being defamed.
You never know who you might see when you're standing outside a film studio.
Kevin Bacon had no interest whatsoever.
But radio personality Lazlow did.
With the proliferation of the news...
TV news journalism like Primetime Live...
and these shows that completely distort the facts...
and shows like 60 Minutes being forced to go in the same direction...
people don't knowthe facts about the case.
They don't knowthe facts about hackers.
l'd say that hackers...
are the communists of the 1990s...
where, basically, if anybody says ''hacker''...
all of a sudden you've got this demon 666 across your head.
Nobody actually understands any of it.
What l do in my part, on the radio...
with my syndicated show, is try to get people to open their brains...
because l talk to a lot of old people, because l'm on a lot of news talk stations.
When l can, l put Emmanuel or Bernie S., or anybody else on there...
to talk about the state of what's going on, because nobody else will cover it.
The people who cover it in the mainstream media...
do so for profit, like the guy that wrote the book.
The demonstrators say they have sent a copy of this illicitly obtained script...
to Kevin Mitnick in jail, and that he absolutely hates it.
Miramax's parent, Disney, may not like it either.
The controversy comes on the heels...
of the dumping of $43 million in Disney stock...
by the Texas Board of Education.
The board's complaint: Miramax films have too much sex and violence.
Miramax distorts the facts!
Was that Harvey Weinstein, President of Miramax?
He walked right by us.
He didn't even get a ''Stop Miramax'' brochure?
Of course we had a brochure for Harvey.
Okay, l'll talk to you later. Bye.
-What did they say? -l don't know.
There she is. That's the one who answered the phone.
She hung up on me yesterday
l got through.
They waved. Did you see them wave?
Miramax distorts the facts!
They said if you use a bullhorn...
or obstruct people's walkways, you have to have a permit.
Miramax distorts the facts!
lf you continue to use that, l'm gonna have to call the cops.
l think that three years is a long time to be held without actually having a trial.
And l think that what Miramax is doing...
is going to jeopardize his right to have a free and honest trial.
So that's why l'm out here protesting.
Thank you.
They all were aware of the thing in front of the building in NewYork City.
They talked about it on the set, asked me about it.
They said ''Did you talk to Emmanuel? That's great.''
They were waving. They think it's fantastic.
And they all want Free Kevin stickers. The whole crew.
lf you give me some, l will send it to them. They will put them on their cars.
Hello, sir. Do you know who Kevin Mitnick is?
No, l do not.
Computer hacker who's been in jail for three-and-a-half years without a trial.
Miramax has decided to make a movie about him.
The script is false. lt makes him out to be a violent racist...
which he is not.
l want to know what you think about it.
When are they doing the film?
-They start shooting in a few weeks. -Kevin Mitnick is great.
-How do l find out the truth? -They should take him out of prison.
-Hold on, l want to talk to you. -What's that?
My main thing is the only reason he ended up running afoul of the law...
is because people don't have access to communications.
All you got is big corporations like Miramax with access to communications.
FirstAmendment! Yeah!
This is inAmerica.
-He was in jail three years without a trial? -He's still in jail.
l saw something about this on CNBC on Friday.
This happens a lot, though.
You always have unauthorized biographies and stuff like that.
Where it's like, you have an autobiography...
you have an authorized biography.
-This is sort of like an unauthorized-- -This is going to be big.
-He hasn't had a trial yet? -Hasn't had a trial yet.
Not only that, in the movie, they already wrote that he had a trial.
-You ever hear of Kevin Mitnick? -No. Who's that?
Well, if you're walking away, l really can't....
How did you guys get a hold of the script?
Okay. All right.
You're a lawyer. lsn't it illegal if they're gonna slander him?
Can't they try and stop them on legal grounds?
That's not right.They have to put a waiver--
l think they should hold the film until after he's had a fair trial.
l mean, it happens. lt happened, unfortunately
You know, l don't think it should be....
Obviously, it's probably not legal to have a lawsuit against Miramax.
l think they should have to wait until he's had a fair trial.
And also they shouldn't use his real name.
lf they want to change the facts, they should change the name.
-Make it a fictional story. -Three-and-a-half years is a long time.
Think about what you've done for the last three-and-a-half years.
And imagine being in jail while all that stuf was happening.
For just that. Just for copying software.
l've copied software.
-What did he do? He hacked. -He hacked.
l would like to know your opinion...
on the slandering in this film.
Miramax sucks. So, like, Free Kevin!
l can't talk shit about a movie l haven't seen or read the script of.
But the one relevant thing that l could say..
is it seems to me there is a witch-hunt sort of hysterical mentality..
vis-a-vis hacking, you know.
People are very quick to fly off the handle and condemn as terrorists...
people who are, you know, exploring a newtechnology landscape...
in a way that they don't understand.
-Definitely. -That's as far as l can go not having seen it.
Not only did we find a receptive bunch at local theaters...
they even started to do our work for us.
New York was great. But it was only the start.
We had to travel to get to the right people. So we put together a camera crew...
and made sure none of us had anything planned for the next several weeks.
We charted out a course, and headed to the airport.
That's where we got our economy-sized rental car with unlimited mileage.
The plan was to go to Wilmington, North Carolina...
where filming for Takedown was about to begin.
On the way, we figured we'd make a detour and stop at Defcon...
the annual hacker convention in Las Vegas.
lf we were going to do that, we should stop in San Diego...
to say hi to Tsutomu Shimomura...
and maybe convince him to stop using Kevin Mitnick as a cash cow.
And if we did that, it would be rude not to visit John Markof...
to ask him to inject some accuracy into his stories about Kevin.
Since we were suddenly adding 10,000 miles to this rental car...
we might as well visit some of the corporations...
who were claiming Kevin Mitnick cost them millions of dollars in damages...
just to see what the hell they were talking about.
There's something about Pennsylvania. l call it the Prison State.
That's because they seem to have prisons everywhere you look.
And almost everyone l know who's gone to prison seems to wind up in Pennsylvania.
Weird.
Besides, every time l get pulled over by a cop...
l seem to find myself in the Prison State. l knew l'd better be careful.
Let's not get off on the wrong foot, Pennsylvania's great.
Home of such landmarks as the Liberty Bell, lndependence Hall...
that little surveillance camera above lndependence Hall...
and the house where Thomas Jefferson signed the Declaration of lndependence...
just down the block from theAfro-American Museum and its new neighbor.
A maximum-security federal prison right in the middle of Philadelphia.
Howtimes change.
They say it's illegal to take pictures of any prison...
even those under construction, even those right in the middle of a city
We couldn't find a law anywhere that backed this up...
but try taking a picture of a prison...
without getting threatened by some prison guard or cop.
Here, look at this part.
Maybe there are subtle details that will lead to a prison uprising some day
l think fully half of the people in federal prison, if not more...
shouldn't be there.
lt's notviolent criminals.
Drug crimes. Somebody gets a mandatory 10 years...
for selling $800 worth of LSD.
That's not right either. That's the way the federal system works.
lt's just not right.
l knowthe state of California has more prisoners than SouthAfrica.
lncarceration is a big business. l think that's part of the reason.
There is less and less tolerance on the part of the public...
for people who have transgressed the rules.
We have a huge prison population. This gets into other questions.
Putting a computer hacker in with sex offenders and murderers...
is probably the worst thing you can possibly do...
to somebody who has...
not murdered, is not a violent criminal!
Somebody who's a technological.... Who's gone over the edge.
Then, again, we have to define what we mean.
We need a new classification system for technological law.
ln one of my books l talked about setting up a court system...
especially for technology where the people that were prosecuting...
and the judges and the people involved in the cases...
would have some technological basis...
to evaluate and try the case in a reasonable manner...
and to come up with an alternative sentencing system...
that reflected more the nature of the crime.
lf you're exposed to people like that for too long, you change with them.
You become one of them.
Next thing you know you'll be locked away again for doing what they do.
One night...
...l was in my cell in a minimum-security facility, Bucks County Prison.
Two guards stormed in...
and flipped my bed upside down...
and locked me in handcufs and started rummaging through my storage locker..
demanding to know where my computer was.
l'm like, ''l don't have a computer here. What are you talking about?''
They were squeezing the toothpaste out of my tube...
ostensibly looking for a computer or whatever they were looking for.
lt was bizarre!
But Pennsylvania was more than prisons, it was a place of learning.
And theAge Expo was where thousands of senior citizens learned...
that corporateAmerica really cared about them.
The guy representing BellAtlantic was the most sincere of all.
How could you not trust a fox?
Freddie the Phone-Fraud Fox was passing corporate numbers to the seniors:
Over $4 billion in phone fraud every year.
Freddie said most of that was because of evil computer hackers.
And l met him.
Freddie knew words like ''digit'' would only confuse older people.
lt made more sense to say things like ''ten-number number.''
lt means they will have to dial the area code...
along with their seven-digit number each time they place a call...
within and between 215, 610...
and the new 267 for 215...
and the 484 for 610 area code.
You give them out in blocks of 10,000 and people that get these blocks of 10,000...
end up using 300 numbers and all the others are tied up wasted.
Easy listening Never mind the world outside
Easy listening Famine, war, and genocide
Easy listening Forget the loony on the loose
Easy listening Rising crime and child abuse
lgnore the poisoned atmosphere
Open up another beer
The media feeds you every day what to think and say
We went back...
...to a familiar place.
Everything was just as we left it...
only it was about 90 degrees warmer.
But you could still feel the chill after four-and-a-half years.
lt was surprising how nobody tried to stop us from filming.
So we filmed everything. The medium-security facility...
the minimum-security prison camp...
the sign that lets minimum-security prisoners know when they've escaped...
and Unicor, the slave-labor office...
where prisoners make furniture for the government for pennies a day.
We almost made it out.
lt was the first time we had ever gotten pulled over by prison cops.
How could we not drop in on our friends at CERT...
the Computer Emergency Response Team?
They tell the world when there's a threat to computer networks.
They'd back us up and tell the world...
that Kevin Mitnick posed no threat at all to NORAD...
Kristy McNichol, or theAmerican way of life.
We thought computer people worked odd hours...
but these guys apparently took Saturdays off.
We asked the security guard to come down and let us leave a pamphlet or two.
Something must get triggered whenever you say Mitnick's name.
We were meeting far too many cops in so brief a period of time.
But at least Pennsylvania was living up to its name.
We explained why we were there but got the message we expected.
You're not welcome.
We're used to that.
ln the event that you should maybe happen to come again...
if you are not welcome...
and l find out that you are not welcome...
you will be exactly where Kevin is...
and then you'd be defeating your purpose.
l'm here to do the job and my job right now is...
-to get you out of here. -l understand that.
l know a lot of people who are in prison who probably shouldn't be there.
But that's our judicial system.
You know what l mean?
Sometimes it works and sometimes it don't.
Believe me, l've seen it not work in the favor of my people many times.
l'm gonna parlay the rest of this...
my tedious job is to run you for wants and warrants and all that kind of stuff...
if you would expedite your leaving.
We'll get out of here, we'll head for the border right away
19 radio.
The gentleman has been given a standard warning.
l'll give you his name and stuf.
Before we left, we decided to check the mood of the street.
He told me not to mess with her.
She did everybody she could in the weeds...
and then she moved to the projects.
lt's not Kevin's fault.
Free Kevin. Kevin has nothing to do with it.
The broad quit me 'cause l was an alcoholic...
and l wasn't making no money.
l was broke, that's why she quit me.
The reason l don't have a girlfriend is l don't have no money.
Oh, wow.
He seems like a nice guy. Why would you want to do anything to him?
You think his girlfriend's gonna quit him or something?
lt was time to go.
We was peeling potatoes
Back in World War Two
And we was playing that rock and roll After school for you know who
Hidden from the public
lt was behind the scenes
There was a relic They called the purple hair
With Kevin Mitnick locked away...
the phone companies of the world felt safe from intruders.
But the fact remained, many people were exploring all the time...
online and off.
Allied SignalAerospace...
Sprint PCS up there...
lnformix, Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems....
You're scaring me.
lt's like this flat area where there's no trees or anything, just industry
Oklahoma, the state that created Hanson.
People kept telling us our sound guy looked like one of the Hanson brothers.
Since we were going through their hometown, Tulsa...
we figured we'd go to one of Tulsa's bustling malls...
and turn the Free Kevin campaign into a Hanson campaign.
We could use the publicity..
and if we could confuse some Tulsans in the process...
all the better.
And it sure wasn't hard to do that.
Once we'd confused people at the mall, we headed over to Oral Roberts University...
in the hopes that the Religious Right would climb on board.
When the vice president of the university, a former federal agent...
came down the stairs with a golf club, we took the hint.
There wasn't a golf course for miles.
Hellflower, Satan's power
You grow more beautiful by the hour
You feed our hearts And you free our minds
With the essence of the souls that you devour
Shrinking violet makes the scene
ln the formal garden of the queen
Bloody Mary, so contrary
They had a hard time getting into my place.
l had the bedroom door closed, so l didn't hear the pounding on the door
They were pounding on the door out there for a good 10 minutes.
They actually started calling on the cellular phone...
and leaving messages on my answering machine.
''This is the FBl. We're at your door. Open up.''
l wasn't there when they searched my home. My mom had to get me from school.
My dad was the only one home. They thought...
that he was me.
They were looking for somebody that was an adult.
When they found out that l was like, 13...
they didn't know what to do.
l think when they walk in and want to take things...
they should be told to go to hell...
take what they want, we'll see you in court, don't even talk to me.
The problem, of course, is that hackers don't have the resources to do this.
They want to try to get off cheap...
so they cooperate and they plea bargain...
and they end up pleading guilty to something they didn't do.
And that sets the record bad for them going forward.
l think if people had the resources, or if there were an organization...
dedicated to helping people, to providing the resources....
You know, something that's much more than just a dummy front...
such as the EFF.
An organization that's actually truly willing to help in those matters...
that we'd see a lot more progress along those lines.
The government, for once...
would have to start conforming to the same laws...
that they're supposedly enforcing.
We were detained for two hours in the parking lot.
There were 13 police officers and l think five or six police cars.
l told them what was going on...
but they seemed to think there was more going on than there was.
Without my consent they took my box of crystals...
even though they admitted they didn't know what they were.
They took anything and everything that had magnetic media on it...
or had an electrical plug on it.
They took other unrelated items such as a woman's purse.
l'm not quite sure howthat fits into the scope of their investigation.
Every business card l had.
They took everything just to make life difficult on me.
They told me they're not trying to chastise me...
and then one of them said...
he used to play with baseball cards when he was a kid.
They would be searching my wardrobe.
l'd be standing there with the guy he's asking questions...
and he's going through every pocket in my wardrobe.
Then it suddenly dawned on me...
l don't have to stand there. So l walked out of the room.
He stopped searching the wardrobe and walked out with me.
lt was very obvious.
Their tactics weren't meant to actually accomplish something.
Searching every pocket of every shirt in my closet...
that tactic wasn't meant to do anything except intimidate me.
They showed up at my friend's house...
where a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old had just been put to bed.
They came storming into the house with guns drawn...
ran up the steps...
and said, ''Freeze! Secret Service! Don't move!''
l was sitting at the keyboard of a computer, so l looked extremely dangerous.
l was thrown to the floor, handcuffed, and hogtied, and all that...
and dragged out. l told my..
friend Ellen Fisher, who was there, to call my lawyer, which she did.
They kept telling me to shut up.
l was taken back to the police station in Havertown, Pennsylvania...
and locked in a cell for about three hours while my car was searched.
Then a Secret Service agent interviewed me...
or interrogated me, wanted to know what l was doing with the crystals.
And l said l was making them available to people.
He tried to get me to say l was committing fraud with them which l was not.
He gotvery irate that l wasn't telling him what he wanted to hear.
Eventually they locked me back in the cell again.
They refused to let me call my lawyer.
ln fact, my rights weren't read to me.
There were many instances in which l told them...
l wanted to consult with my attorney...
and they said, ''That's not a good idea.'' They wouldn't let me get an attorney
So finally, when...
they all shifted from my apartment to searching my office, actually at work...
l got to drive down in my own car.
l called an attorney...
and by the time they were at my work, so was an attorney.
The agent in charge, Ken McGuire, in particular...
gave me a very nasty and disappointed look...
at the fact that l was willing to protect my rights.
lt's really amazing.
He really gave me one of these:
''You shouldn't have done that'' looks. ''Now you're really in for it.''
NASA people told my parents l was cocky...
because l told them to choose harder passwords.
l had cops tell me pretty well straight out:
''We really didn't want to harm Junior..
''so we took his computer and gave it to the boys...
''over in traffic management, and it was just really groovy.''
Wait a minute. You're like, ''You took this kid's equipment?''
They were like, ''lt was his dad's, but he was using it.
''Dad should have known better.''
So this is $4,000 worth of equipment full of heaven only knows what content...
and you just pocketed it, basically?
Now you're going to charge him? They said, ''lf we charge him...
''we've got to bring him up under 14 different interstate laws...
''he's gonna be a felon and be ruined.''
''We explained this to them and they said, 'Take the machine, please.'''
But that's not legal.
That's nothing like legality
lt's blackmail, basically.
lt's like with anyone else. Simply because you have a badge...
doesn't give you the right to be an asshole.
Unless you'd like me to be an asshole back to you.
l don't care who you are.
You will obtain the respect from me that you earn. Period.
l may have hacked NASA, but who doesn't?
They say they clocked us at just under 100 miles per hour...
on the lnterstate in New Mexico.
And the cop wouldn't let us go until l gave him my Social Security number.
To make matters worse, he told us we were still 11 hours away from Vegas.
Things seemed pretty bleak.
But, then, a miracle happened.
All right!
He said 11 hours and we made it in two and a half.
These highway patrol people don't know what they're talking about.
All right, Las Vegas, let's do it!
Twilight City gonna set my soul lt's gonna set my soul on fire
Got a whole lot of money that's ready to burn
So get those stakes up high
There's a thousand pretty women waiting out there
They're all waiting, they're devil-may-care
And l'm just the devil with love to spare, so
Viva Las Vegas
How l wish that there were more Than the 24 hours in the day
Even if l ran out of speed, boy
We're looking for the Defcon conference.
We're supposed to be filming here.
Defcon conference?
lt's like computer hackers....
Not that l know of.
Were they gonna start inside the computer and work their way out?
lt's about a thousand computer hackers coming here.
l've never heard of it.
They must've done a good job keeping this quiet.
They even got me going.
Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas?
New Mexico.
lt was a mistake anybody could have made...
except nobody else seems to have made it.
At least if we were in New Mexico...
we could stop by LosAlamos National Labs, home of well-guarded nuclear secrets...
and one of the many places Shimomura had mysterious connections to.
lf we could get the word to the people here, we just might turn some heads.
ln those few places where we actually did get in...
we always seemed to stay a bit too long looking at the things...
we weren't supposed to be looking at.
This guy was mean, and told us to get the hell out.
As we left, we noticed more of these weird guys in fatigues...
all around the building.
That's when we got lost on a dark road with no name in New Mexico...
with a bunch of military zealots surrounding us.
We got the message.
Twilight City gonna set my soul
lt's gonna set my soul on fire
Got a whole lotta money that's ready to burn
So get those stakes up high
There's a thousand pretty women waiting out there
They're all waiting, they're devil-may-care
And l'm just the devil with love to spare, so
Viva Las Vegas
How l wish that there were more Than the 24 hours in the day
Even if l ran out of speed, boy
When l started, l never intended it to last this long.
l thought it was going to be a party and that's it.A one-time deal.
When we left, everybody said, ''Are you going to do it again?''
And l said, ''l guess l could do this again.''
Since then, more people get involved, more people say:
''We could probably have some music.''
Next thing you know, we've got a live laser light system...
with LCD wall projectors and DJs coming in from the United Kingdom to spin.
lt has taken on this life of its own.
We are the Ghetto Hackers.
Low-class, low-budget, high-octane.
-Dead! -Cow!
When l say rock, you say ass!
-Rock! -Ass!
Thank you very much. Good night.
l have in my hand proof positive...
that NTis not the solution to your computing problems.
l have captured earlier today on film...
the blue screen of death...
at Las Vegas' own MGM Grand Hotel and Casino!
Thousands showed up.
Even though the Free Kevin stickers turned into toys...
at least everybody here knew his name.
You have to go to www.kevinmitnick.com. Look it up for yourself.
''And it doesn't matter what he says about us.''
''What matters is us.
''What matters is....''
We were hot on the trail.
l don't want to get into Shimomura.
l think he has a very large ego.
He's a very bright person and very smart...
but l think his social skills are lacking.
For years, Shimomura had been eluding me.
l couldn't even get on the same TV shows.
He'd pop up over on CNN...
while l was stuck over on a broadcast network.
While he was getting all cozy with Tom Brokaw...
l was being interrogated by Mike Wallace.
2600: The Hacker Quarterly?
Tsutomu wasn't even answering my e-mail.
But nowthere would be no escape.
The San Diego Supercomputer Center, the place where he worked.
We were closing in.
You notice how quiet it is?
Like when a deer is about to be killed by a lion?
-You're here to see him? -Yes.
-You're looking for Tsutomu? -Yes.
-l haven't seen him in three months. -Really?
Do you know where he is?
He's not here.
Let me check with....
Did you make arrangements to meet him here?
They weren'tvery firm but he knew we were coming.
-You can try his office. -Did you have an appointment with him?
-lt was very informal. -l'm sorry.
You can try the extension, but l haven't seen him.
Do l know him?
Just from interacting on....
But l'm not.... l can't....
Definitely should have called first, l guess.
lt's just he likes surprises so much.
This sheet of paper that we wanted him to have.
He'll know what it's about. He wanted a couple of these stickers as well.
He wanted these?
l just wanted to make sure he got them. Great. Thanks so much for your help.
lt wasn't much better than the reception we got at Miramax.
But we left our calling card in a place where we knew he'd see it.
l think it's absurd when l find out that Shimomura, in addition...
is giving instructions to Skeet Ulrich...
on howto act more like Kevin.
Here's someone instructing him howto act more like Kevin...
and it's a person that met Kevin only once...
in court, under circumstances of duress.
From there how he can ascertain how Kevin acts, l don't know.
When l step on this curb we're officially on his property.
Sorry to bother you. We're looking for somebody next door.
We're not sure if we have the right neighborhood.
-Tsutomu Shimomura. -He moved. He's long gone.
How long ago did he move?
-Seven, eight months? -Really?
Do you have any idea where he went?
No, he was renting, and the people who own it moved back in.
He's in the national news. Are you aware of that?
-He's what? -There's a movie that they're making.
-You can see, l'm on the phone. -l'm sorry.
-They're making a movie about him. -They're making a movie?
-lt's all about-- -l read his book.
They're making a big Hollywood blockbuster about it.
They may film around here because this is one of the places he lived.
-So l could be a star? -You could be a star.
l've been waiting to be discovered for a long time.
He could be anywhere.
Man, that's scary.
We had one last address to try inside a gated community.
But this was getting frustrating.
We have another lead here.
We're certainly seeing a lot of the nicer places of this neighborhood.
''Out of order, please use other door.''
You know, if that was a computer, we'd be facing 50 years in jail.
They think we're the Publisher's Clearinghouse.
lt was like he was a step ahead of us.
Japanese? Long hair?
For some reason, people think it's a good idea...
to have a full directory of every tenant in an apartment complex...
available to anyone in the world.
But it gave us the definitive proof we needed:
Shimomura wasn't here either.
lt's a pretty cool system, though.
Let's try a couple of other things.
We're going to enter the room number this time.
Now it's dialing.
That's their whole phone number being broadcast!
See if we get an answering machine.
You've reached Amy. l'm sorry l'm unavailable to take your call.
Please leave a message. l'll get back to you as soon....
We've gotten everything we can out of this place...
and made ourselves look suspicious at the same time so we'd better get out of here.
On the way out of San Diego, our rental car broke.
The trunk wouldn't close.
We should get this tape of the trunk, too.
Holy fuck! Oh, my God! Shit!
We're right underneath the flight path!
We had to clean everything out so we could exchange it...
including the disgusting piece of gum that somehow got stuck to the door.
You know what, l'll use their own key to scrape it off.
Okay, l'm down.
This is the most disgusting thing l've ever had to do in my life.
You know it's still soft. Oh, God!
Want some gum?
This is a scary neighborhood.
We made it to LosAngeles in a brand-new rental car.
Our first stop, the University of Southern California...
where Kevin had been accused of storing software from cellular phone companies.
USC claimed that somehow caused over $1,000 in damage.
l wanted to know what computer system gets damaged...
by having files stored on it!
l'm Brian Johnson. l'm theAssociate Director of Customer Support.
Yeah, we're not allowed to comment on any of the security.
At least we finally managed to find someone...
who'd say they weren't allowed to say anything.
That was progress, right?
The Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles...
where Kevin had been held for three-and-a-half years.
lt was his 35th birthday and we wanted to say hi.
The closest we could come was the Mobil station across the street.
lt was a popular place for all the people who couldn'tvisit their friends.
l know he's looking at me, so l can wave hi.
And he gives me a call and he says, ''lt's cool, you went to see me.''
-He's comfortable with that. -How often do you come by?
Like, almost once a week.
When l drop off my sister that goes to see him.
-How come you can't go in there and visit? -lt's too strict.
l wouldn't know why the reason they don't let us go in.
-You're his brother? -He's my brother-in-law.
Married to my sister.
-So it's only immediate family? -Yeah, immediate family. So l can't see him.
He talks to me through the phone and letters.
-l just come and say hi. -What's he in for?
l don't know what the reason why he's in, but he's just in.
And you bring your friends with you? Are they part of the family, too?
Yeah, they know my brother-in-law
We grew up together so....
Have you heard of Kevin Mitnick, the person we're here for?
-l never heard of him. -He's a computer hacker.
-You know what computer hackers are? -Yeah.
He's been in there for three-and-a-half years...
-and he hasn't had a trial yet. -He should get a trial, you know?
He's working on it, he's trying, but the wheels of justice move very slowly.
That's something true.
They're not the ones that--
Sure.
There's so many people, l think. lt's overcrowded.
l wouldn't even know what to tell you, l've never been in that system.
He must've went in somebody's government--
He must've pissed somebody off.
Pissed somebody off in the government pretty good.
They probably laughed and said, ''You have to stay there a while.''
That's not fair but that's the way it is.
When the windows are only a couple of inches wide...
it's hard to find the person you're looking for...
even if you know exactly what time to look.
And then we heard it.
Yeah, what was that?
l heard a pounding on the window
1,2,3,4,5.
He's shining a light or something.
l can see him now.
Was that you?That was you.
You were pounding on the glass, right? We heard that across the street.
We were looking at the wrong window. Then we heard this pounding noise.
Come back to the window and wave some more.
Can you do that?
We'll put a sticker up, we just don't want the sticker to come back to haunt you.
He wants us to put a sticker.
-He wants a sticker? -A sticker would be cool.
We can see your hand.
l doubt you can stick your whole head through the window
Splotch your face up against the window
Nowthat we know it's the right one, we can zoom in on it.
All right, cool. We'll see you in two minutes?
Okay, great. See you then. Bye.
He's going to be up there in two minutes. That was definitely him.
l wish we could go in there and see him without having to do this.
But, hell, l'll take it.
We found out that our filming the prison had caused such a stir..
that every single prisoner was locked down...
confined to their cell for the rest of the day
And Kevin told us it was the best time he had had in years.
Like this.
That's cool.
Even the manager of the station said it was all right.
This guy in the blue car just gave me $6 for the defense fund.
No kidding.Thanks!That's great. That's amazing.
Look where l put the sticker. l got permission from the owner.
lt'll be gone tomorrow.
-That's great. -lt'll be there for a while.
-He let you do that? -Yeah, l asked him.
Randolph's gonna get gas and he's gonna fucking shit a brick.
He was never served...
with a warrant for his arrest...
for the supervised release violations during the period of his supervised release.
So by the time that he was done and went on his way...
there's no indication that he was aware that such a warrant existed.
Damn! You know, Sprint really sucks.
We wanted the entire city of Los Angeles to know about Kevin.
And what better way than to put the message...
on the most famous billboard in town?
lt took us hours to climb that thing.
We honestly didn't knowthere was a road that went straight up the back.
But we made it.
Funny thing, though.
We couldn't find anybody who saw our Free Kevin banner.
Later, we went to the most famous movie theater in town...
to try and spread the word from up close.
Here, Free Kevin! Free Kevin Mitnick.
lt won't bite you. Speak English?
We're trying to get the message across to Miramax...
that it's wrong to release a movie that's supposed to be factual...
that's based on real events....
People will see this movie and think this is a true story...
when so much of it has been completely fabricated.
-l've heard about this guy. -Really?
Here, help stop a movie about a computer hacker?
-You got a problem? -l got a problem.
Come back and tell me about it.
Pussy!
lt's hard to believe someone in this country...
could be in jail for three-and-a-half years, held in a maximum-security facility...
no bail, no trial.
l don't find thatvery hard to believe.
-l read a book, Takedown. -Takedown, that's right.
l read like half of it.
He gets out of jail, he'll probably take over everything.
That's the problem. People think that, but it's not true.
You don't think he could hack anything if he just gets online?
He can't hack anything just by getting online.
l mean, you gotta have a program and whatever....
Why are you recording this?
Hey, read about Kevin Mitnick? They're making a movie about this guy.
He's the best guy ever! l know him since l was, like day one.
Yeah, me too, yo!
He's never done anything wrong, he's never hurt anyone...
and he's being treated like that in this country.
That is theAmerican way. Wake up.
Kevin was denied bail. Even a bail hearing.
lf you recall, even Ted Kaczynski got a bail hearing.
His bail was turned down. You're entitled to a bail hearing.
On the other hand, Kevin...
is getting treatment that is outside the law
And that's what makes itvery difficult for him to mount a legal defense.
He's not being treated in a legal manner
l've never heard of anything even approaching this level of...
...confinement prior to a trial.
Murderers get bail.
Armed robbers get bail.
The fear of what he's going to do...
from a push-button telephone in the general population of a cell...
shows again a lack of technical understanding on the part of the prison...
and judicial system.And l think that's sad.
And he is right nowthe victim of that.
On our way up the coast, we dropped in on Sun.
According to a letter we got our hands on...
they said Kevin's acquisition of their source code...
represented hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Nowthey give the source code away for free.
Something wasn't right.
So we're right here.
On the other side of the freeway there's the other Sun.
And then further up is their big campus.
Basically, all of this blank area...
is actually Sun buildings and Sun streets.
We knew where we were, now we just needed someone to talk to.
What number do we call and who do we speak to?
1-800-USA4SUN.
They can direct you to whoever you need.
USA4SUN?
Can you remember or do you want me to write it down?
The receptionist wouldn't let us talk to anyone unless we called.
But we slipped a few leaflets onto their coffee table.
l thought she was being kind of patronizing.
''Do you want me to write that down or can you remember it?''
l can remember it.
USA4SUN, right?
-Was that it? Or was it SUN4USA? Fuck! -Yeah.
You sure?
Should l run in and ask her again?
''Thank you for calling Sun.''
l have a rotary phone. l'm not going to press any buttons.
l'm pressing zero.
l'm probably going to get her,too.
My call ''may be monitored.''
Another machine.
They want my eight-digit lD number!
This is bullshit, man.
They've got me waiting for a customer service representative.
lt's not exactly what l had in mind.
But let's see what happens.
My call is ''very important to them.''
He hung up!
He hung up on me!
Maybe he didn't hang up on me but he hung up all the same.
Fuck!All right.
l think on their web page there's a direct public relations number
But we're not on their web page, we're in their parking lot.
Wait a minute. You don't have your Ricochet modem?
-Not today. -You're not prepared!
Shit. We can't access the web from here...
we're outside Sun and we can't get on the net...
to find out what their phone number is!
l'm gonna try this number one more time.
l'm gonna be a little patient here. Assume maybe they made a little mistake.
Okay, now l am waiting for the corporate switchboard.
Hi, Pete, my name is Emmanuel.
l'm trying to reach somebody in Public Relations.
l'm hoping somebody can contact me concerning the Kevin Mitnick case...
and how it involved Sun. We're doing a documentary.
We came to the corporate headquarters hoping to get an appointment...
and they gave us a phone number and we're trying to do just that...
so if you could get back to me....
They have a fortress here.
They have that mighty guard there at the front that won't let anybody by
And then the voice mail guard here...
that won't let anybody actually call and speak to a person.
Maybe they'll call back, maybe they won't.
This is the red hotline. lf that rings, we'll know
We have GPS, good.
GPS but no modem. Man, that sucks.
l was using it last night and it was gone in the morning which means....
Sorry, no cameras in front of the building.
How about if we film in that direction?
We can't have the cameras filming.
Okay, 'cause we were just filming us.
No, l can understand that, but unfortunately...
Wow, this was a new one.
We couldn't even film ourselves in Sun's parking lot.
Corporate paranoia was at an all-time high.
And, needless to say, Pete never called us back.
Meanwhile, John Markoff had agreed to talk to us.
Maybe now we'd finally get some answers.
We made it to San Francisco on the exact same day...
that psychologists from around the world gathered for a convention.
Maybe because so many people in that area were depressed.
They have counseling phones on the bridges...
because so many people are jumping off them.
But San Francisco was a friendly town...
where people felt safe leaving their trash unattended.
But more importantly...
the psychologists wound up taking almost every hotel room in the entire city...
even the old-fashioned ones.
We were beginning to get desperate.
Then we found a hotel that was almost completely deserted.
We never did find out why.
Markoff mentions certain stories.
He'll say, ''lt's been said that....'' or ''Other people have said that....''
And he'll come up with these stories like he shut down judges'TRW ratings...
shut off power.... lt's bullshit.
l don't think John Markoff did it because he wanted to destroy Kevin.
But l think he did it to keep Kevin's evil image.
Maybe he believed some of the things himself.
Okay, isn't a newspaperman...
supposed to investigate something before they publish it...
before they put it in the newspaper as fact?
l know Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable always did.
We didn't know what we were walking into. Would Markoff tell us things about Mitnick...
that would shock and horrify us? Or would he realize...
how much his front-page stories and books had demonized Kevin...
helping to put him in the lousy place he was still in?
This was our one chance to make a difference.
And, more than anything, we wanted to be fair.
So we came up with the Markoff Meter. We set a bar on his left and right side...
and resolved not to judge him badly until he said six bad or inaccurate things.
And if he said six good things...
well, then, the hacker world would just have to deal with it.
Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.
Nowthere's an easy point for common courtesy.
l wanted to get to the heart of the matter
Like howthey knew it was Kevin they were chasing in the first place?
When l called the Qualcomm guys, they had been talking to the FBl.
And the FBl believed that it was Kevin who had social engineered them.
Why?
l don't know enough about what was going on...
inside the FBl investigation.
That's a good question. l don't know why
But the FBl told the Qualcomm people that it was Kevin.
And, to my mind, as a reporter, it fit Kevin's M.O.
-Which is what? -Social engineering.
Really good social engineering.
But there are thousands of hackers out there--
That's true.
l'm not saying it's proof.
l'm simply saying the FBl believed it was Kevin.
Did they hear a voice or did they have a voice recording?
Did they have a voice recording? That's a good question. What did they have?
This we couldn't forgive.
Before you print front-page stories about people eluding the authorities...
shouldn't you have some real conclusive evidence?
What did Kevin do that was diferent?
He had a reputation as being a very good social engineer.
l've heard some tapes, l've heard some people assert this.
lf he in fact was the person who was at Qualcomm...
then he was a good social engineer.
Nowthat's better. No need to be stingy with the compliments, after all.
One thing that's been following Kevin Mitnick...
since the first story Markoff wrote about him is this myth about breaking into NORAD.
When you say something like that enough times, people start to believe it.
And in Kevin's case, it really made him into a villain.
So where did the NORAD stuff come from?
The NORAD stuff...
is stuff that l got from someone...
who was in legal trouble with Kevin early on.
So l have not been able to interview Kevin face to face.
l've heard he said that it's inaccurate but l haven't been able to ask him.
The story did come from a friend of his.
l knowthere are lots of stories and you gotta sort through them.
But what stories have stuck?
l remember the Kristy McNichol thing. That didn't stick. NORAD didn't stick.
Security Pacific l think is probably one that stuck, that probably should stick.
-You know about that? -The bank that he got a job at--
That's right. And then there was a press release...
that suggested that the bank was in financial trouble...
though they managed to keep it of the wire, it almost went on.
But what links that to Kevin?
The police investigators that we interviewed believed it was Kevin.
Based on what?
Based on what....
Just coincidence of things. Who else would do something like that?
You've got to be kidding!
You used ''who else'' to pin a crime on the guy...
on the front page of the NewYork Times...
without even using the word ''allegedly'' anywhere?
This was reported as fact but it was never backed up.
Just like NORAD, just like Kristy McNichol...
just like everything that made them want to catch Kevin so badly.
Let's look at the issue of solitary confinement.
lt wasn't mentioned in the front-page article...
that Kevin was in solitary for 8 months and was desperate not to go back...
and that this above all was what made him run.
l mean, he didn't want to go back to jail.
Not just jail, solitary confinement. Eight months.
Was he in solitary before? This was his first time.
1989.
He spent 8 months in solitary in 1989? l didn't realize.
Wait. He didn't spend 8 months in prison. He was only in prison for six months in '89.
You've written two books on the guy as well as countless articles.
You're somewhat of an expert on Kevin Mitnick...
and you didn't know he was in solitary confinement?
Or even how long his sentence was?
For the record, Mitnick spent a year in prison in 1988...
eight months of which was in solitary confinement...
plus another six months in a halfway house.
With the psychologists in town we could confirm...
locking Kevin in solitary was a fucked-up thing to do.
l think it's inhumane, and l think there are better ways to handle our problems.
Obviously if this person has been able to do some of the things...
that they think he was doing with a computer, he's very bright.
That's a real talent that's being wasted.
And, to lock him up, especially in solitary confinement for 8 months....
We wouldn't treat an animal that way
And yet, this is a talented individual? Excuse me.
-lt's not right.Thank you. -Thanks very much.
Wait, he was in solitary the entire time he was at Lompoc?
A large amount of the time. Eight months.
Yeah, that's pretty hard.
Okay. Markoff gains a point for that show of humanity.
Now, here's something interesting. When Kevin was on the run...
he communicated with an lsraeli hacker known as jsz...
who's believed to be the mastermind behind the hacking that Kevin was blamed for.
Yet Markoff never wrote a story about him...
and didn't even followthrough when jsz moved to New York.
ln fact, none of the authorities seemed to care either...
almost as if these crimes were really trivial.
Nowthat would be a great story, wouldn't it, John?
l thought a lot about that.
l just haven't had time to do the reporting. l've got a day-to-day beat out here.
You're right. lt's probably a great story l would love to talk to jsz.
-l should come to New York-- -That story was going on back then.
Jsz was supposedly the mastermind behind everything.
l never knew what the relations were.
The only thing l could say that l knew..
was that jsz and Kevin...
were actively trading information and software.
That's what l knew. l knew nothing about masterminding.
lf you asked me to reconstruct just from what l knew..
it was jsz provided the tools and Kevin made the attack.
But l have no idea if that's true.
No idea?
lsn't this what the book, series of articles, and nowthe film are supposedly based on...
what Kevin actually did?
l was amazed by what he didn't know
But there was more that he did know and had never talked about before.
But one interesting thing that hasn't been made public.
You know, so much was made of the fact that the credit cards were never used.
They were used.
An American Express card, part of the Netcom collection...
was used in Raleigh within two days after Kevin was arrested.
So who used it?
-How did you find this out? -l've just known it for a long time.
You're saying the credit card was used in Raleigh...
and it was used after he was arrested?
There are indications that there was someone Kevin was in contact with...
who knewthis and may have been active in the Raleigh area.
All l'm saying is there's some evidence.
How come this wasn't in the book?
How come it wasn't in the book. Good question.
l don't know why we didn't put it in the book.
This was really getting annoying.
He didn't follow up on the most interesting part of the story..
and he didn't mention the fact about the credit cards until now?
One more remark like that and it's all over for Markoff.
Look how many people are standing here and not one person took my brochure.
Look at all these people. Not one of them took this.
Valuable coupons!
What are they doing now?
Oh, Kevin Mitnick! He's the computer wizard.
The way that the Japanese wizard found him was very interesting.
Mitnick respected the Japanese wizard for tracking him.
On the other hand...
since the whole computer business is stupid and ridiculous to begin with...
why should Mitnick suffer for a ridiculous assault on the culture...
namely the computer. So that's it.
-What do you think of computers? -l hate them.
Why?
Because they're not like feeling skin, and they're not like walking in the forest.
And one can get lost deeply in them.
My son, of course, is in that world.
These people are computerphiles and he's a computerphobe.
Hackers are all right because they're anarchists, that's fine.
But the rest of it....
-This is bullshit. -lt's pornography!
This is such bullshit!
l like Chaos Computer Club, l like anarchy.
-You know Chaos Computer Club? -No, but l like the whole idea.
He's never heard of it. He's saying this because--
No, it's great. But Mitnick, it's ridiculous.
Look, an activist.
Look, a bag of artificial intelligence.
They're from the '80s but l still bought them. Just to get back to my roots.
lt's like the government's making him look like....
lt's to create a hacker mythology so they can deprive other people of privacy...
and other stuff like that.
He hasn't done anything wrong. He hasn't done any financial damage to anybody
He's basically just like a scapegoat.
l think most of the kids that l hang out with are cool, geeky, hacker types.
They understand. Then there's my mom and everybody else.
Why would they have any reason to believe anything...
other than he's a total scumbag who....
You know, like WarGames, the hacking.
That guy! Didn't he break into massive computer systems?
He's not accused of selling information, of destroying computers...
he's just accused of copying files.
Three-and-a-half years in prison for that. How does that sound?
Yeah, cool, wow, all right, great. Register to vote?
You're an activist, too?
lmagine if somebody made a film about you...
and they get this totally evil kind of guy to play you...
and take everything that you ever did and make you look like you're really terrible?
Look, there he is cheating on a crossword puzzle, too!That guy!
Many interesting items relating to Telegraph Street.
Street scene, one of the best places for street scene material!
Here on the street scene...
we've got newspapers, we got novels...
we got documentary calendars, nine calendars for nine years, man.
What sysadmin is gonna have dot slash in their path before usr/local/bin?
lt was cool. lt's about using SUlD and making a script called ls...
and keeping it in your home directory and creating a file with escape characters...
pretending to be a lamer, ''l need help deleting this.''
And then they go and do an ls....
But what sysadmin is gonna have dot slash in their path before usr/local/bin?
l don't know man, some of those hackers...
when l'm on my computer send me all this shit all at once.
-Like what? -l don't know.
All these messages. Makes my computer--
-Are you onAOL by any chance? -No. Prodigy.
We've been bending over backwards to help this guy..
and he's only one point away from disqualification.
Let's do an easy one, the film.
Everyone hates the film, right?
When l read the screenplay...
l was mostly just disappointed because it seemed like a crummy screenplay.
There we go. He's back in the running.
With one clip to go, the best Markoff could hope for was a tie.
So l gave him a chance to show some humanity.
l asked him to help us help Kevin and sign a petition...
to get him released from prison and end the nightmare.
He didn't want to sign the petition but he had a better idea.
lf you could pass a message to Kevin...
and say if he'd be willing to sit down and talk to me before his trial...
l would love to do a piece. And l think that's perfectly fair.
lf nothing else, you gotta give the guy credit for trying.
More than a decade of writing about Kevin and he still had yet to talk to him.
lt was time for our last corporate visit.
Novell, who claimed Kevin cost them more than $75 million.
We went to their corporate headquarters in Provo, Utah.
Okay, nowthe road says ''180 East.''
All right, we want 122 East, 1700 South.
lt's like some locker combination.
Okay, here we are.
ls there somebody in charge of security maybe?
The person in charge of security is....
He's just brand-new
Check that out.This guy is so worried about us seeing his nametag...
that he went through this acrobatic act to turn it over nice and casual-like.
But in the end, it was just like everywhere else.
Nobody was allowed to say anything.
But, at least, we tried.
Hey, pal, look down. Whoops!
So the last corporate door had been closed on us.
And now we had one last task...
to head across the country and stop the film.
We knew it wouldn't work. We always knew it wouldn't work.
That's what hacking's been about from the beginning.
Doing things that you knew wouldn't work, just because you had to.
And trying to ignore the shit happening to your friends...
and trying not to feel bad when you couldn't change a thing.
As we drove from state to state...
l thought of how bad it could get, how bad it had already gotten.
l remembered what they do to people who piss them off.
l remembered what they did to Bernie.
The Bernie S. case, as far as l'm concerned...
got blown out of proportion by a lot of things.
lt got blown out of proportion by the prosecution...
who knew what exactly he had done and their representation of it...
was almost to make him look like the guy who blew up the Murrah Federal Building.
To do that was an incredible leap. But they managed to pass that of.
They made Bernie S. look like an absolute terrorist.
The new statute that my attorney had never heard of and neither had l...
that, in fact, wasn't even in the law books yet...
makes it a federal felony to possess...
hardware or software...
for the modification of telecommunications instruments...
for the unauthorized access to telecommunications services.
l wasn't accused or alleged to have done anything with software...
or ever cloned a cellular phone or anything of that nature.
Just the mere possession of these things...
now constituted a federal felony according to this new statute.
The judge ordered me held without bail...
based on the fact that books...
in fact, l think l had two books in my home...
on howfireworks, explosives are made. That stuff has fascinated me.
l had about 2,000 books in my personal library.
What little media attention the case got made Bernie look like a dangerous maniac.
He had never stolen anything, not even a phone call.
Everything used to make him look like a terrorist, he had legitimately obtained.
When the Secret Service wants you in prison, nobody asks them why
Not even a judge.
''Your Honor, when we initially searched Mr. Cummings' house...
''federal agents discovered a substance...
''they believed to be C4 plastic explosives.
''While upon later analysis...
''it turned out not to be C4...
''the fact that it might have been concerned us greatly.
''And, based on that, we'd recommend for a stronger sentence.''
The judge didn't even blink at that sort of a thing.
Then the prosecutor made a startling revelation to Bernie's lawyer.
She told him she was under a lot of pressure...
to prosecute this case by the Secret Service...
and that, in fact, the real reason, and that's a quote:
''the real reason'' Ed is in jail...
was not because of crystals or software or anything like that.
lt was because of other things that they found in my house.
Namely:
surveillance photographs of undercover Secret Service agents.
So l made these photos available at the 2600 meeting...
and it apparently was a coincidence because l didn't call them...
but the local Fox television affiliate...
Fox 29 in Philadelphia, their news division, showed up at the meeting.
Most are between their mid-teens to late 20s.
They gather every Friday night at 30th Street Station for all to see.
lt's called the 2600 meeting, named after a telephone frequency...
and meetings like these are advertised...
in a hi-tech magazine you can buy at a bookstore.
Some hackers call themselves ''fighters for the freedom of information.''
The US Secret Service monitors some hackers.
But hackers say it should be the other way around.
ln this photograph the Secret Service agent is picking his nose.
The Secret Service didn't find it humorous.
Not only did they have some of their agents' covers blown...
but they were picking their noses on a major market television news station.
We all thought that was amusing...
until l was in federal prison...
and l found out that the real reason l was locked up was because of that.
For a year-and-a-half...
Bernie was bounced around maximum security prisons throughout Pennsylvania.
l think they got tired of me filing these appeals...
because l found myself in handcufs and shackles and taken up to...
Lehigh County Prison which had a reputation...
amongst prisoners l had talked to over the past year...
as probably one of the roughest prisons in Pennsylvania.
Within a day, Bernie was attacked.
He punched me in the mouth and l went down.
He was a big guy, probably weighed like 220 pounds...
and l think it turned out later he was on drugs...
coming down off crack or something.
l went down and he started to kick me in the head...
and l put my arm up to block his kick and it broke my arm also.
After bleeding for hours, Bernie was finally taken to the hospital...
but the authorities refused to let him contact his relatives.
The hospital wanted me to sign this waiver.
Whenever you go into surgery you have to sign this thing saying...
that you understand all the risks involved. l refused to sign the paper.
l said, not until l get a hold of my uncle...
or at least let somebody in my family know what's going on.
The prison officials went bananas that l wouldn't sign this waiver.
lt was a liability for them that l wasn't getting medical treatment.
l was severely injured and they needed to operate on me right away.
lt got all the way up to the warden at this place.
My uncle was a known person in the community.
He'd been the president of the city council. They knew who he was.
He wasn't someone who'd run down there and try to spring me out of the hospital.
Meanwhile, l was handcuffed and shackled...
to the hospital bed, which was ridiculous. l didn't feel like going anywhere.
l was in bad shape.
With a guard sitting there with a gun...
making sure that l didn't break the handcuffs and run away.
l was denied antibiotics for two days.
l was denied any painkillers at all...
not even aspirin which l couldn't take because my teeth were wired shut...
and l was probably in the most excruciating pain...
that l've ever had, which was more than l could ever imagine...
having multiple fractures.
lt was like being in an altered state of consciousness, this much pain.
They weren't bringing me food l could eat.
They brought solid food which l couldn't eat because my jaw was wired shut!
l was getting to the point where....
l was starting to feel like, ''l don't care anymore.''
l was really feeling like, ''l give up.''
l was losing my will to go ahead.
l was able to get a phone call out the next day...
tell people where l was, what was going on.
And that was when a major telephone campaign...
and lnternet crusade started...
gaining momentum.
We had state representatives getting called. l mean, like major politicians got calls...
and they called saying, ''What's with this? What's this generating all the publicity for?''
Finally, the prison and the judge realized they didn't need this publicity
They wanted to get this thing over with and wash their hands of it. So the judge...
signed an order to have me released on a medical furlough...
which the guards had never even heard of before.
They said, ''What is that? People die here. We don't even let them out!''
So this was an unusual thing. l'm convinced...
that all the publicity generated by 2600 Magazine...
the lnternet, their website...
radio interviews, l even forgot to mention that.
l'd been repeatedly interviewed on WBAl's Off The Hook show...
with Emmanuel Goldstein...
and people were following this case from the beginning...
and it was generating a lot of attention that way as well.
l got letters, l got hundreds of letters.
We had gotten him out but it sure didn't feel like a victory
And the scars were permanent.
They had to put a....
The surgeons mounted...
a titanium bar in my arm.
l don't know if you can see it or not.
A nice scar from here to here where they put this titanium bar in...
and seven stainless-steel screws. This is how much my arm opens now.
That's it. That's my full range of motion in my left arm.
Unlike my good arm which straightens out. Anyway, that's what l got.
My jaw doesn't open as much as it used to.
lf l'm trying to bite an apple, l can't get it in like l used to.
But l live with it.
We crossed the entire country and were finally closing in on the Takedown set.
But there was a problem.
lt seems that the hurricane...
is making a beeline for the set at this point in time.
ln fact, it's estimated that it will reach and destroy the set by sometime tomorrow.
And, that's something that causes me concern...
because it's not like that's something we wanted to have happen.
l fear that one of the listeners or one of the subscribers or somebody...
may have called upon almightyAllah...
or Christ or whatever...
to rain forth upon these people with all kinds of venom.
l'd like to stress at this point that that's not what we meant to do.
That's not exactly how l want things to turn out.
l fear that the Takedown people aren't taking this seriously.
lf you look at the map, if you look at the news reports...
you will see the eye of the hurricane, you will see the direction it's heading for...
you will see a little dot that indicates Takedown being produced there.
That is where it's heading. This is like the scene in Twister...
where the rival gangs of twister watchers are trying to warn each other:
''This is the big one!'' Well, this is the big one.
They were looking at this thing...
and they saw another hurricane contained within this hurricane.
And they say they've never seen that before.
And, if that's not enough for you, Hurricane Bonnie.
Bonnie is the name of Kevin Mitnick's ex-wife.
Nowthe metaphor just could not be more perfect for me.
Of course, we didn't take our own advice and drove straight into the storm.
We thought we might be able to get a lot closer to the set if nobody was around.
We were right.
They seemed to have a real fixation on gun safety in this place.
You had to wonder what had happened.
We took a little tour of the restricted area past the unguarded guardhouse.
The storm passed.
And while we were exploring the next day...
we made a discovery.
And they all want Free Kevin stickers. The whole crew.
lf you give me some, l will send it to them. They will put them on their cars.
Was it really this easy?
Had we discovered where the Takedown people were...
through our own bumper sticker?
-l have Mr. Wong in Number 9. -Russell Wong.
Yeah. He's in Number 9.
-ls he still here? -l think he is.
The receptionist went out of her way to tell us where everyone was staying.
And while the guy playing Shimomura wasn't in...
we found the producer who promised us an interviewthat coming Sunday.
The place was swarming with celebrities...
like cast members from Dawson's Creek engaging in decadent behavior.
We wandered around town, taking in the carnage from Bonnie...
seeing the desperate people.
We witnessed civilization brought to a standstill.
Roads were closed...
power was out...
trees were knocked down.
But it didn't matter.
We were going to finally talk to the Takedown people!
There was nothing to do, the computer store was closed.
We had four days to kill so we drove all the way to Raleigh...
to see the town where Kevin Mitnick was captured.
The cellular towers where Markoff and Shimomura tracked Kevin's signal.
And this was the apartment complex it led them to.
And this was Kevin's actual apartment.
-You have a computer yourself? -Yeah.
Be careful.
l'll keep that in mind.
We foundTakedown crew members in Wilmington where the power was restored.
You have to remember that film is usually for fourth-grade mentalities.
Skeet is definitely.... He's a great actor.
He's the most natural actor, so Kevin's lucky.
He's very charismatic.
There's nothing you can do to Skeet Ulrich that makes him uncharismatic.
So that's kind of, l mean, from your side, it's kind of...
he's lucky, you know?
l promised to tell Kevin how lucky he was next time l talked to him.
But now it was time for our interview.
We had been in North Carolina for five days.
But something was wrong.
Miramax had changed their mind and nowthey didn't want to talk to us.
So we staged an impromptu protest outside the studio.
And as we were leaving, destiny hit us again.
This time we wouldn't let them escape.
We drove next door and waited for them to leave.
There he goes. Yeah.
And off he goes into the wild blue yonder
This is the realTakedown!
We had two cars on our side...
we would outflank them, chase them, ambush them, whatever it took.
-l wish l didn't have these running lights. -Close enough. Go.
For six weeks we'd been trying to talk to these people...
and we hadn't even gotten a phone call back.
So this is what it came down to:
A cat-and-mouse game in the streets of Wilmington.
They didn't know who they were dealing with.
He's making a U-turn.
He's making a U-turn, that motherfucker
-Oh, God. -No, he's getting gas.
-Man, there's a boat in the way. -And only eight minutes left on this tape.
What do we do now?This is just great.
This is just so typical North Carolina-ish.
Fucking boat blocking us on the street.
-He's not there. -Oh, man!
This guy's good.This guy's real good.
They took off that way. l think they know we're behind them.
They made a U-turn and went into the gas station.
Really? That's why.
-Did they then go that way? -They did go that way.
After they made the U-turn?
They left the gas station and went that way?
-They went that way. -When? After the gas station?
A few minutes ago. l waited.
l thought maybe you'd come by
So they're headed that way and l don't know where.
So let's go.
-Where are we gonna go? -Forward.
Even if we go forward at maximum warp...
we can't catch them because they're doing the same thing.
Let's face it guys, we lost.They beat us.
-Shakes? -Yeah.
Shakes.
There's always the outside chance they'll get a shake too.
We had failed.
We never found Shimomura...
we never got to talk to the Takedown people...
and we never got past the lobby in any of the corporations we visited.
Worst of all, Kevin was still in prison.
1999 sawthe Free Kevin Movement reach a fever pitch.
The media wouldn't cover it, so the message went on hacked web pages.
And for the first time...
hackers marched in the streets in 15 cities all over the world...
even overseas in England and Russia.
lt was an amazing spectacle...
and more people learned about Kevin's plight than ever before.
Even though Kevin Mitnick saw his fourth year behind bars come and go...
we felt like we were getting somewhere.
Excuse me? What are you doing?
And in the end, Kevin did what he had to do...
to avoid spending the next 10 years behind bars.
You're watching Southern California's CBS 2 News at 6:30.
Good evening. l'm Gretchen Carr. Ann Martin is off tonight.
And l'm Michael Tuck. Up front at 6:30...
a guilty plea by notorious computer hacker Kevin David Mitnick.
Juan Fernandez joins us live...
from the Federal Courthouse in downtown LosAngeles.
He was the first computer hacker...
to make it to the FBl's Most Wanted List.
And after a long battle with the federal government...
the 35-year-old man from the San Fernando Valley comes clean.
His computer crimes apparently cost companies millions of dollars...
although Kevin Mitnick never admitted to them until today..
ending a four-year battle with the federal government.
This is a very serious crime.
The federal government takes this crime seriously.
We will prosecute hackers...
particularly when they cause significant amounts of damage.
Mitnick nowfaces 46 months in jail.
He's already served eight months, and according to his attorney...
with good behavior, Mitnick might only have to serve one more year.
Mitnick will pay for his crimes for the rest of his life.
Although his attorneys say he has no money...
to pay restitution to the companies that he hacked...
that doesn't mean that they won't go after him later.
lt was as if we hadn't said a word.
l pray that they never wind up in the legal system.
l pray that nobody does.
But the thing is that if they do...
right nowthe way it stands, the cards are stacked against them.
lt's not about fairness.
lt's just about the way the legal game is played.
lt's crazy to bring up the O.J. Simpson case...
because there's no comparison here...
but here's a case where a defendant had basically an unlimited budget...
and look what that legal team accomplished.
l'm not saying you need a lot of money to get off for something you did.
l'm saying it doesn't matter whether you did it or not.
The case, the legal system...
the justice system isn't about what you did or what you didn't do.
lt's about either the government is going to win the case...
or you'll win the case.
That's all that matters in the case. lt isn't all that matters morally
l'm just saying in the court system, that's all that matters.
The prosecution will do whatever they can do...
spend whatever money they can to win a case...
and you have to do the same thing or you will lose.
You know, this is no longer about what the law allows or doesn't allow
This is about how do you make it as difficult as possible for the defendants...
to get them to roll over or cop a plea.
lt has nothing to do with justice anymore.
God help you if you get stuck in that system...
because it's very easy to get in...
and it's almost impossible to get out unscathed...
because you're up against an adversary...
that has everything going for it except maybe the truth.
And, unfortunately, that doesn't count for much.
So, that's the way it is.
lf the legal community doesn't wake up shortly...
we're gonna have more people locked up...
than we know what to do with.
A lot of them are going to be kids. Unfortunately.
l don't think it ended.
lt turned into this huge controversy that went on until now
But there weren't any more stories in the New York Times about it.
What would you think that we should have reported? l mean....
l appreciate everybody taking the time to viewthis film...
which was a tremendous effort on the part of Emmanuel Goldstein...
and everyone on the 2600 staff.
And l want to offer...
my sincere appreciation and gratitude...
for the tremendous moral support that everyone has given me...
throughout this five year ordeal.
Subtitles by SOFTlTLER