It would be great to think that the Mitnick-book overkill would teach the public more about the importance of online privacy and the nature of true computer security. More likely, it will simply cement some popular myths: there are some creepy, dangerous, overweight hackers out there -- and we'd better find some valiant code warriors to protect us from them.V. T h e B i g G a m e
Both "The Fugitive Game" and "Takedown," with its martial-arts-derived title, envision the Mitnick story as a gaming bout -- a kind of intellectual pro-wrestling event with the good and bad participants plainly marked. Mitnick himself put a seal on that image with his courtroom comment to Shimomura: "Tsutomu, I respect your skills."
Yet the story's final irony is that this game isn't the one that matters most. It's small potatoes next to the one the books themselves are playing: the public-relations game.
The fine suspense of computer-file reconstruction and cellular phone-line tracing pales next to the high drama of self-mythologizing and public-image manipulation. The competition online may have determined whether Mitnick could be found and captured (right now, he's awaiting trial in Los Angeles, after a plea-bargain settled charges in North Carolina, where he was caught). But the competition in the media will determine how the story is ultimately seen: hero slays monster? or the system catches up with romantic outlaw?
In this game, Shimomura's secret weapon isn't his Unix wizardry -- it's his relationship with a New York Times reporter, who snatched him from the obscurity of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and helped transform him into a digital superhero. Every superhero has a vulnerability, of course, and Shimomura's is his own arrogance. "Takedown" may alienate the public from him as efficiently as the original Times coverage endeared him. (Some of the early coverage of "Takedown" already shows signs of this.)
But this game has just begun, and its real showdown will only unfold should a Mitnick vs. Shimomura movie get made. In the forging of popular myth, Hollywood is always the final battleground.
Of course, given the mediocre box-office record of last year's "cyber"-movies, we may never see a "Catching Kevin." And even if we do, given the movie industry's dim record of faithfully representing the digital world on screen, the resulting film isn't likely to bear much resemblance to anyone's version of the story's reality -- Mitnick's or Shimomura's, Markoff's or Littman's or Goodell's, mine or yours.
Something tells me, though, that if Kevin Mitnick ever does make it to the big screen, that mugshot gargoyle is going to grimace at us yet again.
What kind of danger did Kevin Mitnick really pose? What do you think about "Takedown" and "The Fugitive Game"? And who's going to play Mitnick and Shimomura in the movie? Come visit Table Talk and click on the Digital Culture icon to join the discussion.