Freedom Downtime 2001 - The New York Times online -
‘All we can do is try to publicize the facts. Not what the government is saying but the facts.’ Freedom Downtime, opening comments, 2001
He called himself Phiber Optik, and you’d have to look pretty hard to find somebody who didn’t think he was brilliant … Phiber learnt by exploring … They got him for conspiracy. ibid.
Phiber came out ten months later a hero. ibid.
Kevin Mitnick, the world’s most dangerous computer hacker. ibid.
Kevin’s name was enough to convict him regardless of the actual evidence. ibid.
It was mostly about fun and exploration. ibid.
Eight months of solitary confinement. ibid.
‘Part hype, part hysteria, part lack of understanding, part fear.’ ibid. Jennifer Granick
‘Miramax have decided to make a movie about him. The script is false. It makes him out to be a violent racist …’ ibid. supporter
‘Kevin is getting treatment that’s outside the law.’ ibid.
Kevin Mitnick, who at the dawn of widespread internet usage in the mid-1990s became the nation’s archetypal computer hacker — obsessive but clever, shy but mischievous and threatening to an uncertain degree — and who later used his skills to become ‘chief hacking officer’ of a cybersecurity firm, died on Sunday in Pittsburgh. He was 59.
Kathy Wattman, a spokeswoman for the cybersecurity company he partly owned, KnowBe4, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.
Described by The New York Times in 1995 as ‘the nation’s most wanted computer outlaw’, Mr Mitnick was a fugitive for more than two years.
He was sought for gaining illegal access to about 20,000 credit card numbers, including some belonging to Silicon Valley moguls; causing millions of dollars in damage to corporate computer operations; and stealing software used for maintaining the privacy of wireless calls and handling billing information.
Ultimately, he was caught and spent five years in prison. Yet no evidence emerged that Mr Mitnick used the files he had stolen for financial gain. He would later defend his activities as a high stakes but, in the end, harmless form of play. The New York Times online article 20th July 2023, ‘Kevin Mitnick, Once the Most Wanted Computer Outlaw, Dies at 59’