contributed by evenprime and turtlex
The Los Angels District Attorney has given Kevin a surprise but welcome birthday present by dropping the state charges against him. Last Friday, Kevin's fifth birthday behind bars, the LA DA claimed that the six-year old case had been mischarged. Kevin had been charged with one count of illegally accessing a Department of Motor Vehicles computer and retrieving confidential information. (Which means he (or someone else) tricked a DMV employee over the phone into faxing him information) This action clears the way for Kevin to be released to a halfway house after his federal sentencing.

ZD Net
News.com
MSNBC
Yahoo News

Federal Sentencing Hearing Set For Today
Once again Kevin Mitnick is scheduled to be sentenced for his federal charges. While he has already pleaded guilty and has accepted time served plus probation as punishment the issue of restitution still needs to be decided. The hearing will be held today (Monday) at 1:30 pm in Courtroom 12 at the LA Federal Courthouse, 312 N. Spring Street.

FREE KEVIN

contributed by staff
There have been a few articles floating around the web that attempt to describe what Kevin is going through and the experiences he must endure. This one appears to be the most accurate and is based off only the third Mitnick interview granted to a media organization.

Aviary Mag

contributed by km
Sony Computer Entertainment America and Electronic Arts have recently filed suit against alleged members of the warez group Paradigm in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The suit alleges that members of the group infringed on the copyrights and trademarks by distributing unauthorized copies of software from the two companies. United States Marshals recently conducted a court-sanctioned seizure and impounded evidence at the location of a participant of the group. SCEA and EA plan to continue the civil case against the pirates, they will also cooperate with law enforcement in the United States and will be turning over evidence to authorities in several other countries for possible criminal action against other group members.

Yahoo Biz News

contributed by bluesky
With $600,000 provided by two federal grants officials have set up the San Diego Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory with the support of 32 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The lab will be manned by 14 FBI trained specialists from local police agencies, including the San Diego Police Department and the Sheriff's Department. The lab will conduct court-approved wiretap operations that call for intercepting Internet communications as well as data recovery and analysis from seized computer systems.

San Diego Union Tribune

contributed by evenprime
A former University of Oklahoma systems administrator has been charged with using too much bandwidth. He faces a single count of disrupting the universities internet service after he allegedly set up a warez site on the University owned servers. While not charged with piracy or copyright infringement the local DA decided to prosecute under the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act of 1984 which states that it is a felony to "willfully and without authorization disrupt or cause the disruption of computer services or deny or cause the denial of access or other computer services to an authorized user of a computer, computer system or computer network." He faces up to 10 years in the state penitentiary and up to $100,000 in fines. (So now it is a crime to have a popular site? This article fails to mention if this person was a legitimate user of the network to begin with.)

ZD Net

contributed by turtlex
A computer, some beer, cyber friends, warm grass and a new moon, what more could you ask for? Chaos Computer Club Camp wrapped up over the weekend, people are saying it was the most fun they have had since HIP.

Wired

contributed by Elin
We have received a couple of unconfirmed reports of weird happenings on some government networks. One report says that many federal web servers are unusually slow and are missing large chunks of previously available information. Another report says that the entire US Coast Guard network was unavailable do to "hacker" activity. We really aren't sure what to make of these reports but any pointers to official information would be appreciated.