Lies (Summer, 1998)
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We've gotten pretty used to people getting it wrong. The authorities, the
media, the clueless wannabe idiots, who never quite get just what it is that
hackers are all about. At times the distance they ve achieved between
themselves and the truth has been humorous. But mostly it's depressing, because
when the dust clears, theirs are the perceptions the populace will accept as
gospel.

But how far can this go? In recent weeks, a number of us have had to wonder
this. Stories and "facts" so bizarre as to be unbelievable even by those people
who believe whatever they're told have been surfacing and circulating. And they
have brought us to a turning point. Either things are about to get a whole lot
worse or maybe, just maybe, people will finally begin to wake up. We'll know
soon enough.

It all started with a rather strange article in a magazine called Signal. They
bill themselves as the "International Armed Forces Communications & Electronics
Association's (AFCEA) premiere, award winning magazine for communications and
electronics professionals throughout government and industry." In an article
entitled  Make-My-Day Server Throws Gauntlet to Network Hackers,  Signal's
Editor-In-Chief, Clarence A. Robinson, Jr., rambles on at great length about
something called the "Blitzkrieg server," which is able to magically
"self-organize and self-heal, recognize an infiltration, isolate it, adapt to
it, and create a totally different networking route to overcome an invasion."
It also supposedly has all kinds of offensive options just waiting to be used.
These options could eventually end in the destruction of an attacker's network
resources.  Yeah, right, whatever.

According to the article, the server predicted that "a hacker attack would be
targeted at specific U.S. corporations and California state government
installations" and that the "attack would be from Japanese nationals with the
help of U.S. collaborators affiliated with the 2600 international hacker group."

We found that interesting. Especially since this is the first time that a
machine has slandered us and our intentions. Since we're relatively sure a
human was involved at some stage, we haven't determined who is to blame for
this just yet, or even whether the entire story was a piece of fiction created
by Signal to get attention. That kind of thing doesn't happen very often.
However...

Mere days after the Signal absurdity, another story appeared in a
well-respected journal: The New Republic. In their "Washington Scene" section
was a story entitled "Hack Heaven." It told the tale of Ian Restil, a
15-year-old computer hacker who was terrorizing corporate America. A first-hand
account of Restil's demands for large amounts of money from Jukt Micronics
grabs the reader s attention as the story opens. As we read on, we see that the
company is tripping over itself to give this brat whatever he wants because,
quite frankly, they're terrified of what he can do if he hacks into their
databases again. And hackers know this. "Indeed, deals like Ian's are becoming
common - so common, in fact, that hacker agents now advertise their commissions
on web sites. Computer Insider, a newsletter for hackers, estimates that about
900 recreational hackers were hired in the last four years by companies they
once targeted. Ian's agent, whose business card is emblazoned with the slogan
'super-agent to super-nerds,' claims to represent nearly 300 of them, ages 9 to
68."

The article goes on to point out how such deals make it virtually impossible
for the police to arrest or prosecute "most hackers" since corporations are so
reluctant to come forward and so afraid of what the hackers will do. It's
become such a problem that legislation has been brought forward to criminalize
such immunity deals between hackers and corporations. But the all-powerful
hackers have their own lobbying group - the National Assembly of Hackers who are
vowing to keep the legislation from passing.

We found that impressive. We had no idea that hackers were this powerful.
Somehow we had managed to miss this hacker lobbying group, we didn't know this
Ian kid at all, and we had never heard of the Computer Insider hacker
newsletter. But before we could feel the frustration of our ignorance, the
world found out something about the article's author, Stephen Glass.

It seems he was a liar. He had made the whole thing up! There was no Ian
Restil, no Jukt Micronics, no Computer Insider, and no National Assembly of
Hackers. And this time, the deceit actually got some attention. The story of
the lying journalist was picked up nationwide and reputations were forever
tarnished. But in all of the media coverage, we found one thing to be missing.
Nobody seemed to care about how the hacker community had been unfairly
portrayed. Yes, we know that truth, integrity, and journalism all suffered a
black eye because of this pitiful display, but digging a little deeper would
have quickly shown how there were human victims as well. The American public
believes this kind of trash because this view of hackers is constantly
reinforced by all of the stories that stop just short of blatant lying. It's
not at all uncommon for multinational corporations to be portrayed as helpless
victims forever being preyed upon by ruthless hackers. Reality paints a very
different picture, as in the case of Kevin Mitnick, a hacker imprisoned for
three and a half years with no trial, no bail, and no visitors while his
alleged attacks on multinational corporations are questionable at best and,
even if proven, trivial and insignificant. Figures given by these corporations
on hacker "damages" are believed without question by the authorities while
individuals are imprisoned without the opportunity to counter the charges. It
may seem incomprehensible that such points are constantly being missed by the
media. But, once you do a little digging of your own and see how much of the
media these same corporations own, it all becomes painfully clear.

Perhaps you can see now why we find these things so depressing. But all of the
above pales in comparison to what we are currently facing.

In early June, it was announced that Dimension Films, in conjunction with
Miramax and Millennium, would be making a film version of Takedown.

Why is this important? Takedown was the first of the Kevin Mitnick books to be
released in 1996, less than a year after his capture in North Carolina. It was
also the most flawed, not so much because of the writing, although we could
certainly go on at length about the self-centered, egotistical prattling of
Tsutomu Shimomura. Rather, it was his and co-writer John Markoff's questionable
motives in bringing this story to the American public that have made an
increasing number of people take notice. Consider the facts. Markoff had
co-written a book called Cyberpunk a few years back that had a section devoted
to Mitnick, even though he had never interviewed him. Markoff, a reporter for
The New York Times, managed to somehow get a front page story about Kevin
Mitnick published on July 4, 1994. All the story really said was that Mitnick
was a fugitive being sought by the FBI. Hardly the kind of thing normally
printed on the front page. Even then suspicions were raised. Markoff, in
publishing such pieces, was becoming the "Mitnick expert," despite his lack of
firsthand knowledge. When Markoff published another front page story in January
of 1995 that detailed how the security on Shimomura's computer system had been
defeated (again, hardly a front page item), he neglected to mention that the
two of them were friends. When Mitnick was captured the following month,
Markoff published yet another front page story claiming that he was the prime
suspect in the Shimomura incident. Again, an important detail was omitted:
Markoff had played an active role in helping Shimomura track down Mitnick in
North Carolina. The two had even intercepted telephone traffic between Mitnick
and the 2600 offices! And when the book deal was complete less than a week
later, Markoff and Shimomura became very wealthy while Mitnick was all but
forgotten in prison.

So now there's a movie in the works. Apart from the indignation many of us will
feel over the fact that these people will make yet more money off of Mitnick
while exploiting a story they practically made up themselves, the real
injustice lies in the screenplay itself. While the book was bad and filled with
inaccuracies and omissions, the script (written by Howard Rodman), is far
worse, a concept admittedly hard to grasp but unfortunately quite true. For in
addition to all of the badness of Takedown, the film version adds dialogue and
situations that are complete fabrications, all in the interests of
entertainment.

Only one problem: Takedown is supposedly nonfiction. We obtained a copy of the
script and can confirm that there is more fantasy in the film version than in
the entire Star Wars trilogy. And when you consider that this is a film that
will be using real people's names and circumstances, the harm it will cause
becomes quite apparent.

The anti-Mitnick paranoia is well-established a mere 20 minutes into the film.
Shimomura, in a sobering tone, warns his girlfriend: "He could be... reading
your mail, listening to you when you talk on the phone, looking at your medical
records, what your shrink said when he sent in the forms to the insurance
company, what kind of gear you ordered from North Face, whether you like down,
or Thinsulate, your college transcript, your credit card statement, how many
times you went to the drugstore, and what you charged."  It's just like The Net
except Kevin Mitnick replaces today's society as the primary threat to privacy.
As we progress, concern over Mitnick s capabilities grows: "He could be going
into medical records, f*cking them up. He could be killing people, and we're
just standing here." In fact, as Mitnick suspects he is about to be caught, we
see him actually trying to change someone's medical records which is about the
dumbest thing anyone in such a situation could ever do. Then the FBI becomes
concerned over Mitnick's ability to wriggle out of the situation. "Every step
of what we do will be scrutinized. Did we have the warrant for this? Did we
have the right to do that? He won't be on trial. We will."  There is no mention
made of the fact that the feds have so far managed to lock him up without trial
for three and a half years. That's something the makers of this film clearly
don't think the American public needs to know.

From the opening scene where Mitnick is shown as a foul-mouthed, cheating
12-yearold to the end where he gets his just deserts in prison, we see Mitnick
lie, steal, and hack his way across America, stopping long enough to unleash
racial epithets toward the film's noble hero Shimomura. ("I think that man
needs a haircut. I mean, he can cover his ears, but I, for one... well, I still
remember Pearl Harbor."  Or, "I cannot f*cking believe what I hacked out of
Japboy.")

Not surprisingly, Markoff's involvement in the search and capture is erased
completely. And Shimomura is made into someone with compassion who actually
reaches out to Kevin while he's in prison, attempting to make peace and saying
he's sorry it had to be like this. In real life, Shimomura has never said a
word to him.

Mitnick, who will be played by Skeet Ulrich of Scream, is made out to be
nothing less than a demon, who doesn't care who he hurts and who will stop at
nothing to get what he wants. He equates his life to a video game, if you can
believe that: "It's like Pacman: There's food, you find it, you eat it, you
stay alive. Then there are a couple of ghosts chasing you. They find you, you
die. That's it." By the end of the film, you will be so happy he's behind bars
that you will start searching for "Free Kevin' stickers to rip down.

Technical inaccuracies abound, like the typical Hollywood perception that
modems are always screeching in the background. Or this stage direction: "He
takes a long chug of his Big Gulp, wets his lips, licking them thoroughly. Then
picks up the phone, waits for the dial tone, and... whistles. It's not a tune.
It's the tones of the touch-tone system, and Mitnick is whistling in his own
code."

Most of the characters who are not named Shimomura are seen as bumbling idiots
or vindictive assholes who let their personal dislike of our hero get in the
way of the investigation. In a real stretch of the truth, the staff of San
Francisco's The Well, refuse to erase Shimomura's sensitive data that Mitnick
supposedly uploaded via a hacked account. They say, "It's the policy of The
Well not to change, censor, tamper with, or delete the work of our users. It's
not ours. It's theirs." Of course, anyone in their right mind would realize
that an unauthorized user would never be given the same rights as an authorized
one! This is clearly not the way it happened at all.

The only real dramatic tension comes from making Shimomura into someone with a
secret past who had files that could destroy the world or something, the details
are never gone into. And Mitnick is his evil counterpart who intends to spread
those files to the world: "Sooner or later, he's gonna upload. The OKI data,
the credit cards... my, ah, Los Alamos files."  Yeah, right, whatever.

But easily the most bizarre and offensive part of the film comes when Shimomura
and Mitnick come face to face in Seattle, an incident everyone admits is
completely fabricated. "Just as Shimomura relaxes... THWAACK! ...he's clubbed
on the side of the head. Mitnick, wielding the top of a metal garbage can like
a weapon, sees Shimomura drop into the muck. He staggers out of the alleyway.
Shimomura, dazed, blood flowing freely from a gash above his ear, raises
himself to his elbows...and watches Mitnick disappear, into the night." Mitnick
thus graduates from evil, destructive, racist hacker to violent criminal.

There is nothing and nobody to back up any of the absurd allegations in this
movie. From the people who know Mitnick to the news reports that did their best
to demonize him to the court records that document his repeated failure to be
treated fairly, even to the book that this film is based on, there is no
evidence whatsoever of the kind of despicable criminal behavior portrayed in
the script.

So how could such a libelous piece of trash even be attempted? This is the
interesting part. Since Mitnick is considered a "public figure," the Hollywood
people figure they can get away with bending the truth while using real names.
But, as indicated above, the only reason Mitnick is a public figure is because
of the antics of John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura. Without the two Markoff
books and all of those front page articles that wound up feeding hundreds of
other newspapers and magazines around the world, how much of a public figure
would Mitnick really be? For that matter, would the government have made such a
point of keeping him locked away for so long? These are most troubling
questions.

But even more troubling is the prospect of such a film being made without the
opportunity to set the record straight. Think of what it will mean. For the
millions of people who pay to see it, this will be the story of Kevin Mitnick.
Whenever his name comes up in conversation or in the news, the image from
Takedown is what people will remember. For that reason alone, action must be
taken to stop this.

We have absolutely no problem with bad films being made. And if this were a
work of fiction, we'd either trash it when it came out or ignore it completely.
But Takedown is purported to be documenting a true story and its distortion of
the truth will gravely hurt some very real people. How likely is it that
Mitnick will be able to get a fair trial (if he's ever allowed to have one at
all) once people have seen this film? Oddly enough, his trial has already
occurred at the end of the film, which only further confuses the issue.
Incidentally, legal experts tell us that the two charges he's convicted of in
the film (probation violation and "felony theft of intellectual and real
property in violation of Section 6 of the Penal Code" would never get him a
sentence approaching the amount of time he's already been in prison. But why
confuse the public with facts?

We find this outrageous. And so do a whole lot of other people who have been
getting involved in the "Free Kevin" campaign. The movement was already picking
up steam when this news hit. Now it's growing faster than we anticipated.

We intend to stop this production in its tracks and make damn sure everyone
involved is aware of the facts. And if we are unable to change this
reality-based story into something resembling reality, then we will use it as a
vehicle to get our own message out. This will include pickets, boycotts,
phone/letter/fax campaigns, whatever it takes. There is a story here, a really
good one. And while we may not be able to get someone to tell that story, we
can do something about the lies. We will either stop them or we will make the
world aware of what they really are.

We encourage you to continue showing support by spreading the "Free Kevin"
stickers around as much as you can. Remember, the money we raise through the
stickers goes straight to Mitnick's defense fund. The more of these we can get
in public view, the more people will become aware of the other side of this
story.

As always, we thank you for your support. This is going to be one interesting
summer.