Freedom Downtime Page #3

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 f***er'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.

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.

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.

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