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Underground

S >> Suelette Dreyfus >> Underground




`Well, what do you reckon?' Phoenix asked impatiently.

`No,' Electron answered.

`No? You don't think we will?' Phoenix sounded disappointed.

`No.'

`Well, I'll demand it!' Phoenix said laughing, `Fuck it, we want the
cover of Newsweek, nothing less.' Then, more seriously, `I'm trying to
work out what really big target would clinch it for us.'

`Yeah, OK, whatever,' Electron replied, distancing himself again.

But Electron was thinking, Phoenix, you are a fool. Didn't he see the
warning signs? Pad's warning, all the busts in the US, reports that
the Americans were hunting down the Brits. As a result of these news
reports of which Phoenix was so proud, bosses across the world would
be calling their computer managers into their offices and breathing
down their necks about their own computer security.

The brazen hackers had deeply offended the computer security industry,
spurring it into action. In the process, some in the industry had also
seen an opportunity to raise its own public profile. The security
experts had talked to the law enforcement agencies, who were now
clearly sharing information across national borders and closing in
fast. The conspirators in
the global electronic village were at the point of maximum
overreach.

`We could hack Spaf again,' Phoenix volunteered.

`The general public couldn't give a fuck about Eugene Spafford,'
Electron said, trying to dampen Phoenix's bizarre enthusiasm. He was
all for thumbing one's nose at authority, but this was not the way to
do it.

`It'd be so funny in court, though. The lawyer would call Spaf and
say, "So, Mr Spafford, is it true that you are a world-renowned
computer security expert?" When he said, "Yes" I'd jump up and go, "I
object, your honour, this guy doesn't know jackshit, 'cause I hacked
his machine and it was a breeze!"'

`Mmm.'

`Hey, if we don't get busted in the next two weeks, it will be a
miracle,' Phoenix continued happily.

`I hope not.'

`This is a lot of fun!' Phoenix shouted sarcastically. `We're gonna
get busted! We're gonna get busted!'

Electron's jaw fell to the ground. Phoenix was mad. Only a lunatic
would behave this way. Mumbling something about how tired he was,
Electron said goodbye and hung up.

At 5.50 a.m. on 2 April 1990, Electron dragged himself out of bed and
made his way to the bathroom. Part way through his visit, the light
suddenly went out.

How strange. Electron opened his eyes wide in the early morning
dimness. He returned to his bedroom and began putting on some jeans
before going to investigate the problem.

Suddenly, two men in street clothes yanked his window open and jumped
through into the room shouting, `GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!'

Who were these people? Half-naked, Electron stood in the middle of his
room, stunned and immobile. He had suspected the police might pay him
a visit, but didn't they normally wear uniforms? Didn't they announce
themselves?

The two men grabbed Electron, threw him face down onto the floor and
pulled his arms behind his back. They jammed handcuffs on his
wrists--hard--cutting his skin. Then someone kicked him in the
stomach.

`Are there any firearms in the house?' one of the men asked.

Electron couldn't answer because he couldn't breathe. The kick had
winded him. He felt someone pull him up from the floor and prop him in
a chair. Lights went on everywhere and he could see six or seven
people moving around in the hallway. They must have come into the
house another way. The ones in the hallway were all wearing bibs with
three large letters emblazoned across the front: AFP.

As Electron slowly gathered his wits, he realised why the cops had
asked about firearms. He had once joked to Phoenix on the phone about
how he was practising with his dad's .22 for when the feds came
around. Obviously the feds had been tapping his phone.

While his father talked with one of the officers in the other room and
read the warrant, Electron saw the police pack up his computer
gear--worth some $3000--and carry it out of the house. The only thing
they didn't discover was the modem. His father had become so expert at
hiding it that not even the Australian Federal Police could find it.

Several other officers began searching Electron's bedroom, which was
no small feat, given the state it was in. The floor was covered in a
thick layer of junk. Half crumpled music band posters, lots of
scribbled notes with passwords and NUAs, pens, T-shirts both clean and
dirty, jeans, sneakers, accounting books, cassettes, magazines, the
occasional dirty cup. By the time the police had sifted through it all
the room was tidier than when they started.

As they moved into another room at the end of the raid, Electron bent
down to pick up one of his posters which had fallen onto the floor. It
was a Police Drug Identification Chart--a gift from a friend's
father--and there, smack dab in the middle, was a genuine AFP
footprint. Now it was a collector's item. Electron smiled to himself
and carefully tucked the poster away.

When he went out to the living room, he saw a policemen holding a
couple of shovels and he wanted to laugh again. Electron had also once
told Phoenix that all his sensitive hacking disks were buried in the
backyard. Now the police were going to dig it up in search of
something which had been destroyed a few days before. It was too
funny.

The police found little evidence of Electron's hacking at his house,
but that didn't really matter. They already had almost everything they
needed.

Later that morning, the police put the 20-year-old Electron into an
unmarked car and drove him to the AFP's imposing-looking headquarters
at 383 Latrobe Street for questioning.

In the afternoon, when Electron had a break from the endless
questions, he walked out to the hallway. The boyish-faced Phoenix,
aged eighteen, and fellow Realm member Nom, 21, were walking with
police at the other end of the hall. They were too far apart to talk,
but Electron smiled. Nom looked worried. Phoenix looked annoyed.

Electron was too intimidated to insist on having a lawyer. What was
the point in asking for one anyway? It was clear the police had
information they could only have obtained from
tapping his phone. They also showed him logs taken from Melbourne
University, which had been traced back to his phone. Electron figured
the game was up, so he might as well tell them the whole story--or at
least as much of it as he had told Phoenix on the phone.

Two officers conducted the interview. The lead interviewer was
Detective Constable Glenn Proebstl, which seemed to be pronounced
`probe stool'--an unfortunate name, Electron thought. Proebstl was
accompanied by Constable Natasha Elliott, who occasionally added a few
questions at the end of various interview topics but otherwise kept to
herself. Although he had decided to answer their questions truthfully,
Electron thought that neither of them knew much about computers and
found himself struggling to understand what they were trying to ask.

Electron had to begin with the basics. He explained what the FINGER
command was--how you could type `finger' followed by a username, and
then the computer would provide basic information about the user's
name and other details.

`So, what is the methodology behind it ... finger ... then, it's
normally ... what is the normal command after that to try and get the
password out?' Constable Elliott finally completed her convoluted
attempt at a question.

The only problem was that Electron had no idea what she was talking
about.

`Well, um, I mean there is none. I mean you don't use finger like that
...'

`Right. OK,' Constable Elliott got down to business. `Well, have you
ever used that system before?'

`Uhm, which system?' Electron had been explaining commands for so long
he had forgotten if they were still talking about how he hacked the
Lawrence Livermore computer or some other site.

`The finger ... The finger system?'

Huh? Electron wasn't quite sure how to answer that question. There was
no such thing. Finger was a command, not a computer.

`Uh, yes,' he said.

The interview went the same way, jolting awkwardly through computer
technology which he understood far better than either officer.
Finally, at the end of a long day, Detective Constable Proebstl asked
Electron:

`In your own words, tell me what fascination you find with accessing
computers overseas?'

`Well, basically, it's not for any kind of personal gain or anything,'
Electron said slowly. It was a surprisingly difficult question to
answer. Not because he didn't know the answer, but because it was a
difficult answer to describe to someone who had never hacked a
computer. `It's just the kick of getting in to a system. I mean, once
you are in, you very often get bored and even though you can still
access the system, you may never call back.

`Because once you've gotten in, it's a challenge over and you don't
really care much about it,' Electron continued, struggling. `It's a
hot challenge thing, trying to do things that other people are also
trying to do but can't.

`So, I mean, I guess it is a sort of ego thing. It's knowing that you
can do stuff that other people cannot, and well, it is the
challenge and the ego boost you get from doing something well ...
where other people try and fail.'

A few more questions and the day-long interview finally
finished. The police then took Electron to the Fitzroy police
station. He guessed it was the nearest location with a JP they could
find willing to process a bail application at that hour.

In front of the ugly brick building, Electron noticed a small group of
people gathered on the footpath in the dusky light. As the police car
pulled up, the group swung into a frenzy of activity, fidgeting in
over-the-shoulder briefcases, pulling out notebooks and pens, scooping
up big microphones with fuzzy shag covers, turning on TV camera
lights.

Oh NO! Electron wasn't prepared for this at all.

Flanked by police, Electron stepped out of the police car and blinked
in the glare of photographers' camera flashes and TV camera
searchlights. The hacker tried to ignore them, walking as briskly as
his captors would allow. Sound recordists and reporters tagged beside
him, keeping pace, while the TV cameramen and photographers weaved in
front of him. Finally he escaped into the safety of the watchhouse.

First there was paperwork, followed by the visit to the JP. While
shuffling through his papers, the JP gave Electron a big speech about
how defendants often claimed to have been beaten by the police.
Sitting in the dingy meeting room, Electron felt somewhat confused by
the purpose of this tangential commentary. However, the JP's next
question cleared things up: `Have you had any problems with your
treatment by the police which you would like to record at this time?'

Electron thought about the brutal kick he had suffered while lying on
his bedroom floor, then he looked up and found Detective Constable
Proebstl staring him in the eye. A slight smile passed across the
detective's face.

`No,' Electron answered.

The JP proceeded to launch into another speech which Electron found
even stranger. There was another defendant in the lock-up at the
moment, a dangerous criminal who had a disease the JP knew about, and
the JP could decide to lock Electron up with that criminal instead of
granting him bail.

Was this meant to be helpful warning, or just the gratification of
some kind of sadistic tendency? Electron was baffled but he didn't
have to consider the situation for long. The JP granted bail.
Electron's father came to the watchhouse, collected his son and signed
the papers for a $1000 surety--to be paid if Electron skipped town.
That night Electron watched as his name appeared on the late night
news.

At home over the next few weeks, Electron struggled to come to terms
with the fact that he would have to give up hacking forever. He still
had his modem, but no computer. Even if he had a machine, he realised
it was far too dangerous to even contemplate hacking again.

So he took up drugs instead.


Electron's father waited until the very last days of his illness, in
March 1991, before he went into hospital. He knew that once he went
in, he would not be coming out again.

There was so much to do before that trip, so many things to organise.
The house, the life insurance paperwork, the will, the funeral, the
instructions for the family friend who promised to watch over both
children when he was gone. And, of course, the children themselves.

He looked at his two children and worried. Despite their ages of 21
and 19, they were in many ways still very sheltered. He realised that
Electron's anti-establishment attitude and his sister's emotional
remoteness would remain unresolved difficulties at the time of his
death. As the cancer progressed, Electron's father tried to tell both
children how much he cared for them. He might have been somewhat
emotionally remote himself in the past, but with so little time left,
he wanted to set the record straight.

On the issue of Electron's problems with the police, however,
Electron's father maintained a hands-off approach. Electron had only
talked to his father about his hacking exploits occasionally, usually
when he had achieved what he considered to be a very noteworthy hack.
His father's view was always the same. Hacking is illegal, he told his
son, and the police will probably eventually catch you. Then you will
have to deal with the problem yourself. He didn't lecture his son, or
forbid Electron from hacking. On this issue he considered his son old
enough to make his own choices and live with the consequences.

True to his word, Electron's father had shown little sympathy for his
son's legal predicament after the police raid. He remained neutral on
the subject, saying only, `I told you something like this would happen
and now it is your responsibility'.

Electron's hacking case progressed slowly over the year, as did his
university accounting studies. In March 1991, he faced committal
proceedings and had to decide whether to fight his committal.

He faced fifteen charges, most of which were for obtaining
unauthorised access to computers in the US and Australia. A few were
aggravated offences, for obtaining access to data of a commercial
nature. On one count each, the DPP (the Office of the Commonwealth
Director of Public Prosecutions) said he altered and erased data.
Those two counts were the result of his inserting backdoors for
himself, not because he did damage to any files. The evidence was
reasonably strong: telephone intercepts and datataps on Phoenix's
phone which showed him talking to Electron about hacking; logs of
Electron's own sessions in Melbourne University's systems which were
traced back to his home phone; and Electron's own confession to the
police.

This was the first major computer hacking case in Australia under the
new legislation. It was a test case--the test case for computer
hacking in Australia--and the DPP was going in hard. The case had
generated seventeen volumes of evidence, totalling some 25000 pages,
and Crown prosecutor Lisa West planned to call up to twenty expert
witnesses from Australia, Europe and the US.

Those witnesses had some tales to tell about the Australian hackers,
who had caused havoc in systems around the world. Phoenix had
accidentally deleted a Texas-based company's inventory of assets--the
only copy in existence according to Execucom Systems Corporation. The
hackers had also baffled security personnel at the US Naval Research
Labs. They had bragged to the New York Times. And they forced NASA to
cut off its computer network for 24 hours.

AFP Detective Sergeant Ken Day had flown halfway around the world to
obtain a witness statement from none other than NASA Langley computer
manager Sharon Beskenis--the admin Phoenix had accidentally kicked off
her own system when he was trying to get Deszip. Beskenis had been
more than happy to oblige and on 24 July 1990 she signed a statement
in Virginia, witnessed by Day. Her statement said that, as a result of
the hackers' intrusion, `the entire NASA computer system was
disconnected from any external communications with the rest of the
world' for about 24 hours on 22 February 1990.

In short, Electron thought, there didn't seem to be much chance of
winning at the committal hearing. Nom seemed to feel the same way. He
faced two counts, both `knowingly concerned' with Phoenix obtaining
unauthorised access. One was for NASA Langley, the other for
CSIRO--the Zardoz file. Nom didn't fight his committal either,
although Legal Aid's refusal
to fund a lawyer for the procedure no doubt weighed in his
decision.

On 6 March 1991, Magistrate Robert Langton committed Electron and Nom
to stand trial in the Victorian County Court.

Phoenix, however, didn't agree with his fellow hackers' point of view.
With financial help from his family, he had decided to fight his
committal. He wasn't going to hand this case to the prosecution on a
silver platter, and they would have to fight him every step of the
way, dragging him forward from proceeding to proceeding. His
barrister, Felicity Hampel, argued the court should throw out 47 of
the 48 charges against her client on jurisdictional grounds. All but
one charge--breaking into the CSIRO machine in order to steal
Zardoz--related to hacking activities outside Australia. How could an
Australian court claim jurisdiction over a hacked computer in Texas?

Privately, Phoenix worried more about being extradited to the US than
dealing with the Australian courts, but publicly he was going into the
committal with all guns blazing. It was a test case in many ways; not
only the first major hacking case in Australia but also the first time
a hacker had fought Australian committal proceedings for computer
crimes.

The prosecution agreed to drop one of the 48 counts, noting it was a
duplicate charge, but the backdown was a pyrrhic victory for Phoenix.
After a two-day committal hearing, Magistrate John Wilkinson decided
Hampel's jurisdictional argument didn't hold water and on 14 August
1991 he committed Phoenix to stand trial in the County Court.

By the day of Electron's committal, in March, Electron's father had
begun his final decline. The bowel cancer created a roller-coaster of
good and bad days, but soon there were only bad days, and they were
getting worse. On the last day of March, the doctors told him that it
was finally time to make the trip to hospital. He stubbornly refused
to go, fighting their advice, questioning their authority. They
quietly urged him again. He protested. Finally, they insisted.

Electron and his sister stayed with their father for hours that day,
and the following one. Their father had other visitors to keep his
spirits up, including his brother who fervently beseeched him to
accept Jesus Christ as his personal saviour before he died. That way,
he wouldn't burn in hell. Electron looked at his uncle, disbelieving.
He couldn't believe his father was having to put up with such crap on
his deathbed. Still, Electron chose to be discreet. Apart from an
occasional rolling of the eyes, he kept his peace at his father's
bedside.

Perhaps, however, the fervent words did some good, for as Electron's
father spoke about the funeral arrangements, he made a strange slip of
the tongue. He said `wedding' instead of funeral, then paused,
realising his mistake. Glancing slowly down at the intricate braided
silver wedding band still on his finger, he smiled frailly and said,
`I suppose, in a way, it will be like a wedding'.

Electron and his sister went to hospital every day for four days, to
sit by their father's bed.

At 6 a.m. on the fifth day, the telephone rang. It was the family
friend their father had asked to watch over them. Their father's life
signs were very, very weak, fluttering on the edge of death.

When Electron and his sister arrived at the hospital, the nurse's face
said everything. They were too late. Their father had died ten minutes
before they arrived. Electron broke down and wept. He hugged his
sister, who, for a brief moment, seemed almost reachable. Driving them
back to the house, the family friend stopped and bought them an
answering machine.

`You'll need this when everyone starts calling in,' she told them.
`You might not want to talk to anyone for a while.'

In the months after his bust in 1990 Electron began smoking marijuana
regularly. At first, as with many other university students, it was a
social thing. Some friends dropped by, they happened to have a few
joints, and so everybody went out for a night on the town. When he was
in serious hacking mode, he never smoked. A clear head was much too
important. Besides, the high he got from hacking was a hundred times
better than anything dope could ever do for him.

When Phoenix appeared on the front page of the New York Times,
Electron gave up hacking. And even if he had been tempted to return to
it, he didn't have anything to hack with after the police took his
only computer. Electron found himself casting around for something to
distract him from his father's deteriorating condition and the void
left by giving up hacking. His accounting studies didn't quite fit the
bill. They had always seemed empty, but never more so than now.

Smoking pot filled the void. So did tripping. Filled it very nicely.
Besides, he told himself, it's harder to get caught smoking dope in
your friends' houses than hacking in your own. The habit grew
gradually. Soon, he was smoking dope at home. New friends began coming
around, and they seemed to have drugs with them all the time--not just
occasionally, and not just for fun.

Electron and his sister had been left the family home and enough money
to give them a modest income. Electron began spending this money on
his new-found hobby. A couple of Electron's new friends moved into the
house for a few months. His sister didn't like them dealing drugs out
of the place, but Electron didn't care what was happening around him.
He just sat in his room, listening to his stereo, smoking dope,
dropping acid and watching the walls.

The headphones blocked out everyone in the house, and, more
importantly, what was going on inside Electron's own head. Billy
Bragg. Faith No More. Cosmic Psychos. Celibate Rifles. Jane's
Addiction. The Sex Pistols. The Ramones. Music gave Electron a
pinpoint, a figurative dot of light on his forehead where he could
focus his mind. Blot out the increasingly strange thoughts creeping
through his consciousness.

His father was alive. He was sure of it. He knew it, like he knew the
sun would rise tomorrow. Yet he had seen his father lying, dead, in
the hospital bed. It didn't make sense.

So he took another hit from the bong, floated in slow motion to his
bed, lay down, carefully slid the earphones over his head, closed his
eyes and tried to concentrate on what the Red Hot Chilli Peppers were
saying instead. When that wasn't enough, he ventured down the hallway,
down to his new friends--the friends with the acid tabs. Then, eight
more hours without having to worry about the strange thoughts.

Soon people began acting strangely too. They would tell Electron
things, but he had trouble understanding them. Pulling a milk carton
from the fridge and sniffing it, Electron's sister might say, `Milk's
gone off'. But Electron wasn't sure what she meant. He would look at
her warily. Maybe she was trying to tell him something else, about
spiders. Milking spiders for venom.

When thoughts like these wafted through Electron's mind, they
disturbed him, lingering like a sour smell. So he floated back to the
safety of his room and listened to songs by Henry Rollins.

After several months in this cloudy state of limbo, Electron awoke one
day to find the Crisis Assessment Team--a mobile psychiatric team--in
his bedroom. They asked him questions, then they tried to feed him
little blue tablets. Electron didn't want to take the tablets. Were
little blue pills placebos? He was sure they were. Or maybe they were
something more sinister.

Finally, the CAT workers convinced Electron to take the Stelazine
tablet. But when they left, terrifying things began to happen.
Electron's eyes rolled uncontrollably to the back of his head. His
head twisted to the left. His mouth dropped open, very wide. Try as he
might, he couldn't shut it, any more than he could turn his head
straight. Electron saw himself in the mirror and he panicked. He
looked like a character out of a horror
picture.

His new house-mates reacted to this strange new behaviour by trying to
psychoanalyse Electron, which was less than helpful. They discussed
him as if he wasn't even present. He felt like a ghost and, agitated
and confused, he began telling his friends that he was going to kill
himself. Someone called the CAT team again. This time they refused to
leave unless he would guarantee not to attempt suicide.

Electron refused. So they had him committed.

Inside the locked psychiatric ward of Plenty Hospital (now known as
NEMPS), Electron believed that, although he had gone crazy, he wasn't
really in a hospital psychiatric ward. The place was just supposed to
look like one. His father had set it
all up.

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