Freedom Downtime Page #6

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

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.

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