PHIBER OPTIK GOES TO JAIL....
PART 2
Phiber Optik is a very well known hacker who lives in New York. Phiber has been on the hack/phreak scene for many years. He started hacking young, when there was no Information Superhighway, there was no World Wide Web, and the Internet was in its infancy. Hacking did not have the outlaw image that it has now, in fact most people had never even heard of hacking..
When I met Phiber Optik aka Mark Abene he was just about to start a prison sentence in US Federal Prison in Pennsylvania. The judge had sentenced him to a year and a day. The judge had told Phiber that he was not being sentenced him for his crimes, but he was being made an example of, for other would be computer hackers. Phiber Optik is young, intelligent, witty, and articulate. He has a passion for knowledge. He thrives on information, especially when that information pertains to computers or phone systems.
Phiber is one of America's most notorious computer hackers. He is very open and very public about what he does. Phiber knows more about computers than most computer system administrators and more about the phone system than most telephone employees. Once a member of the US hacker group the LOD (Legion of Doom) and later affiliated with the New York city hacker group the MOD (Masters of Deception/Destruction), Phiber Optik has been a part of the computer hacker and telephone phreaker underground for a long time.
Until his incarceration on the 7th of January, 1994, Phiber worked at echo.com in NYC, an on-line computer service that offers internet access. He also co-hosts a local radio show in New York called "Off the Hook" with Emmanuel Goldstein [editor of 2600 Magazine - the hacker quarterly]. Once a week Phiber answers questions from callers regarding computers, computer security and the telephone system. While this might make him popular with the listeners, I am sure it doesn't do much to endear him with the local telephone company [NYNEX] and the authorities.
"We talk about [on WBAI] how corporations and big business and the phone company often take advantage of the average consumer. It might be something low key and ridiculous such as charging for touch tone...just to show how ridiculous that is I might go so far as to explain the commands that might be entered on to a telephone companies switching system to give someone touch tone service. And to drive the point home I might do something like take each character in the command and divide that into the amount being billed, so you are basically being charged for keystrokes, so that you can have that service. I mean its 100% profit..it isn't costing them anything."
Phiber Optik's attitude on freedom of information, and his non-corporate views definitely played a major part in his extended prison stay. Perhaps Phiber never thought it would go that far. "When I was 13 or 14 years old and things were alot different, people more or less just did this stuff because it was interesting, it was challenging and it was a great way to learn about technology, that you normally wouldn't have access to , being a 14 year old kid, or even a 21 year old kid. So I can't say that I ever thought that I'd wind up in prison. I don't think that I ever gave that much thought at all until I guess the past 3 or 4 years when I was lets say, visited by the Secret Service."
Phiber Optik has been raided by the Secret Service on more than one occasion. The first time was in conjunction with the AT&T crash of 1990. The Secret Service, Bell Communications, NY Telephone Security and some assorted treasury agents raided Phiber's home when he was out and confiscated all of his equipment. At first they tried to blame Phiber for causing millions of dollars worth of damage when the AT&T phone system went down all across America. It turned out that it was computer error and that it was not the fault of a hacker, which AT&T eventually admitted. But early on there were all sort of suspicions and the media spread rumours that the crash was caused by a hacker. Raids followed soon after.
Phiber was raided again in Dec 1991. This time it was more dramatic, "basically I was awoken by 2 strangers in my bedroom who were pretty much waving guns in my face and telling me to freeze and not to move."
Phiber Optik has always been very high profile, he has always shared his knowledge with others. He has many friends as well as enemies. The American Government and the Telephone companies were very glad to see Phiber put behind bars for 10 months. They see Phiber as well as other hackers as an immense threat. Perhaps they think that Phiber will stop hacking for good if they put him away for awhile. If they do they obviously don't understand the hacker mentality.
"A major factor was because I know how to do these things and I think they fear the fact that they don't understand why someone would want to do something just for the sake of doing it, for the sake of learning about it. They don't really comprehend why, and I guess that instills some kind of fear in them."
Many believe that it was the phone companies that put pressure on the judge in Phiber's case to give him a tough sentence. Knowledge is power and Phiber knows too much about gaining access to various computer systems and taking over phone systems. Though Phiber Optik is not the first hacker to be sent to prison for breaking into computers, the severity of his sentence came as a shock to the computer community. Phiber Optiks prison sentence also raised questions in the computer community about the laws pertaining to hacking and the "electronic frontier".
Phiber was the last of a group of five men to be sentenced. Phiber Optik pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of unlawful access to computers. What the conspiracy was and which computers he had broken into were never actually specified by the prosecution. "I think its rather entertaining if not pathetic to see how they formulated our indictment. That MOD was an organization or society whose plot was to control the computers of the world. Sort of like Chaos from `Get Smart'." Out of the 5 people involved, Phiber was charged with the least but was given the most time in prison. Some of the others had even been charged with Credit Card Fraud, though Phiber was not. Phiber was the most high profile in the group.
"I am a relatively public figure when it comes to talking about things. I have appeared at Conferences and in newspaper articles and on radio and TV and in numerous other places and I more or less stand as a public figure who wants to dispel the negative connotations that the government and the mass media are giving to hackers." I went to Phiber's last radio show in New York before he went to prison at WBAI. It was a pretty somber occasion. Phiber chain smoked the whole time and understandably looked really stressed and like he hadn't slept for days.
Many people called in to the radio show to say goodbye and offer their support, some called from as far away as Berkeley, California and Washington DC where the show isn't even transmitted. A federal officer rang in, "You guys know what I do for a living, being a former federal officer, I can honestly say that Phiber is the only guy that I have ever felt sorry for going to prison. Including alot of the people that I sent up personally". An unidentified individual with a heavy NY accent called up offering advice, "just try and read alot, and work out alot, and get the number for that computer so we can hack into it..and you know maybe REDUCE the amount of DAYS."
An American Solicitor and computer programmer rang in "many of my co-workers who are computer people have read partially accurate accounts of what you pleaded to that you were charged with, and they've been scratching their heads and saying, I've done that, and I've done this and maybe they didn't have names like Phiber Optik or were members of groups or whatever that had suspicious sounding names. But they started asking me, gee could i really go to jail if i were found out for doing this, or could I really be prosecuted if it were found out that I did that? And I have to tell them yes...And i thinks its got them doing more than just getting scared and saying, well i better follow the law, its got them saying well we better CHANGE the law."
The radio show continued with many other people phoning in their support. The general consensus seemed to be that it just didn't make any sense putting Phiber behind bars in a Federal prison. The judge was sent numerous recommendations for probation by various computer professionals as well as many references attesting to Marks character by those who had known Phiber over the years. A former CIA agent in Washington even offered to personally supervise Phiber by offering him a job in Washington rather than having Phiber sent to prison. He is of the opinion that hackers are a wasted resource for US intelligence and the fact that the US government is throwing them in jail is ludicrous.
The judge did not take any of these recommendations, but instead sentenced him to a year and a day. Phiber was stunned, "and I'll never forget the fact that he said that [the judge] he wanted to give me more time. But that this was sufficient to send the appropriate message."
As computers become more widespread, more and more hackers like Phiber will be facing long prison sentences for something that may someday seem absurd, like the days of the McCarthy witch-hunts in America, or the cold war. Regardless of the laws and the morality of hacking it was tragic that Phiber Optik was sent to a federal prison for 10 months. Phiber was released in November of 94, he went back to work at echo.com, but I have heard that he is no longer there. I am not sure how his experience in prison has changed him or what he plans to do now or in the future....