SYNOPSIS

The Watchman is the true story of Kevin Poulsen, a Silicon Valley prodigy whose bold cybercrimes landed him on the front page of the New York Times and a charge of espionage. Last year, Littman's The Fugitive Game revealed surprising details about Kevin Mitnick's captor, Tsutomu Shimomura, sparking controversy and stories in publications from the New Yorker to Newsweek.

In The Watchman, Littman spins a high-tech thriller that skips between Silicon Valley and The Sunset Strip. A unique cyber thief, Poulsen bolstered his hacking skills with the craft of a master burglar: he could pick any lock, climb any building and dupe any security guard. He won Porsches on radio giveaways, ran a call girl operation by secretly activating the phone lines listed in defunct Yellow page escort ads, and broke into the heavily guarded offices of the Pacific Bell investigators pursuing them.

But Poulsen also believed he was faithful to the hacker ethic and unfairly targeted by the authorities. When the government charged he had cracked an FBI wiretap related to the investigation of Ferdinand Marcos and penetrated military computers, Poulsen decided to fight by going underground and becoming a fugitive.

The FBI seemed powerless against Poulsen. His phone calls were virtually untraceable and when the chase moved to the physical world, the Houdini-like hacker seemed equally at home. After countless high speed chases on the streets of Hollywood, the frustrated FBI featured the hacker on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries. Just before Poulsen's face was beamed to 14 million viewers, the show's 800-lines mysteriously crashed.

A portrait of a young man's search to discover himself in his illegal mastery of computers and the nation's phone network, The Watchman raises questions about how technology is granting individuals and the government tremendous power to invade privacy. The hacker uncovered FBI and national security wiretaps throughout California, including taps on the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles. His intrusions cost the FBI millions of dollars and forced it to move FBI secret communications and surveillance centers. His attacks also highlighted the risks inherent in the FBI's plans to expand its wiretapping powers in the face of technology. Did Poulsen become the hacker who knew too much?

Publisher: Little Brown & Co.
ISBN 0-316-52857-9.

Advance Reviews

"Littman combines neat development of technical detail, a neutral gaze on a criminal's motivation and an unfailing sense of adventure. From this expertly woven narrative emerges a wholly absorbing portrait of the obsessive, Robin Hood-inspired hacker culture."
-- Publisher's Weekly

Littman casts a cool, discerning eye on Kevin Poulsen, who led law enforcement agencies in a merry chase along the Information Highway...An arresting account of the career of a New Age intruder whose capacity to strike at will mocks the very notion of computer privacy and security."
--- Kirkus

"Computer hacking has become the revenge of the nerd, and Jonathan Littman is one of its best nonfiction chroniclers. In Kevin Poulsen, he's found a wonderful subject: one who's young, thin, asocial, weird, and far more at home in cyberspace than on earth.

Littman had great access to Poulsen, and The Watchman tells his story in considerable -- but never dull -- detail. Littman captures Poulsen's particular combination of self-righteousness and criminality remarkably well. It's all rather amazing..."
--- Men's Journal, April 1997.