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Mitnick Charges Dropped
Keefesis (the first of many who wrote in with the news) writes "The L.A. District Attorney dropped the case against Mitnick according to this article by MSNBC. Nice birthday present I guess :) " I wonder what this will do the movie Takedown (based on the book) that is currently in post-production, and stars Tom Berenger as John Markoff, and Skeet Ulrich as Kevin Mitnick. No joke. Update: 08/07 01:43 by J : To clarify, he is not out of the woods yet. The federal charges against him have not been dropped.
I'm submitting this in response to several comments posted to this thread, and elsewhere under this article...
There have been a number of comments about how Mitnick is a criminal, how he deserves what he got, how his rights weren't violated. There have even been a few posts to the effect of "love it or leave it" politics. Our government is great, and how dare you.. blah blah blah.
My response to all of you will be the same: Get the facts. The reason these people continue to believe the lies despite ready access to the truth is because they are afraid of the responsibility that knowing the truth bestows on people. The moral responsibility to DO something. When you know what's really going on, when you have all the facts laid out in front of you and can see for yourself what these gross injustices will do to our country, you have the responsibility to say something, to get other people to listen, and to take action. Not a responsibility many people want to take on.
Ever wondered why nobody believes somebody when they say they were raped? "They must be lying - so and so could never have done that!" The parents search the kids house for drugs, submit them to psychological counseling, etc. Why they would make up something like that is beyond me - and it's fairly easy to see when somebody is going through emotional trama. The reason people ignore the obvious is because they don't want to believe that it could happen to anyone... or themselves. So they ignore the truth, they may even ignore the victim, because they don't want to accept the responsibility for making sure it doesn't happen to anybody else. And you know what - for their apathy, these crimes continue.
You're welcome to ignore the truth. Online, nobody knows where you've been, or what you've read. Your secret is safe with your computer. But when you come out and post publically, in places like Slashdot, it's expected that you've done your homework. We have a special account reserved for people who haven't - Anonymous Coward. Please use it, so we can save ourselves the trouble of skipping over your posts.
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Instead of freeing Kevin, how about we free *all* political prisoners, him included. Free Kevin can wait if the time is used to Free Everybody.
An excellent point. I would counter though by saying that you should "pick things big enough to matter, and small enough to win."
It's a noble goal, but I'm abit more practical - I can't stop world hunger by myself, but maybe I can get enough people together to get Mitnick sprung from jail. And that would be a small, but significant victory. Situational morality, I guess.
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For the full scoop, check out freekevin
Kevin Mitnick was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This story has been going on for longer than slashdot has been in existance. This story was going on before Linux was more than a twinkle in somebody's eye, and before the Web was anything more than the province of colleges.
So you'll forgive me if I am alittle irate at the idea of people comparing him to a "script kiddie", because not only don't they know the story, but they are doing a grave dis-service to the community by saying something like that.
Kevin Mitnick, in short, is a political prisoner. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and has paid for it with over four years in jail without a trial. That's what makes this story significant to the community - that our government was, and still is, so ignorant of how computers and networks work, that they will imprison people for years and years without a trial because they don't understand. Kevin is in jail because of political posturing - the SS and FBI needed to make an example, and that came in the form of one Kevin Mitnick, a petty thief with just enough knowledge of computers to fool the public into thinking he was some super-terrorist.
And that, fellow slashdotters, is why this story is important. Somebody's right to due process was stripped away; Because of ignorance, apathy, and political posturing, a man has been sitting in jail for four years, unable to contribute anything to society. Rapists spend less time in jail than this person has.
Keep that in mind before you try to dismiss this as just another script kiddie who got caught...
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You're both wrong. See freekevin.com
HNN debunked the story about how he "cost" the company millions with an internal memo requesting that companies up the amount as high as possible.
And the "love it or leave it attitude" for America is no longer in vogue. All progress depends on unreasonable men. And change is the only way to improve matters - go back to despotism if you want to "love it or leave it".
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Sure. So I guess Solaris source code came preinstalled on his hard disk then, along with other software from Motorola, and with passwords for dozens of computers of Sun Microsystems, Novell, Motorola, Fujitsu. Sure. And he just broke into Shimomura by mistake, sure, everyone believes this one. Check his feats here
My comment was about the California charges - he did not break into the computers they had charged him with. I was not asserting that he didn't break into the computers covered by the federal charges - that's a separate matter entirely, and those charges haven't been dropped.
Yes. But he is also an associal nerd that cracked for more than 15 years, was arrested more than 5 times, spent one year in jail, and commited further offense repeatidly. The truth is that the justice doesn't know what to do with him: he can't learn his lesson, is a real threat to the society (the moment he decides to do harm, real harm will be done).
Being an "asocial nerd" is not illegal in the United States. He's not a danger to society, since none of his crimes have been violent in any way whatsoever. He broke into some computers, and caused no real damage. As you mentioned, he's been doing this on and off for 15 years, and has not maliciously caused any damage during that entire period. I think it's safe to assume he's not going to cause any damage any time soon. He's not any more of a danger to society than your average script kiddie is.
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I personally couldn't care less about what he did at this point. If it was wrong, he should have been in jail years ago. If it wasn't wrong, he should have been free, years ago.
It's outrageous that he was held without trial, for what? Three years??? Simply because the justice system is inadequate to handle computer crime. His trespass was too sophisticated to prosecute. So while the D.A. tried to study the issue, Mitnick was sitting in a cell, wasting years of time. Damn! He could have been making $100k for each of those years, honestly..
It is shameful that there probably wasn't a law against what he did, when he did it. But now, I'm sure there is. This is a constitutional matter at this point. Where is the speedy trial? What about HIS RIGHTS? What about the precedent this is setting?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Bernie S was the one that was beaten up in prison, after being "accidentally" sent to a maximum security prison.
info.
As far as I know, his lawsuit against the Pennsylvania prison system is still pending, but I haven't been able to find much information on it.
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That's the funny part - he didn't break into the database. He called up the desk clerk and pretended to be somebody else, and they just gave him the information. Of course the charges were dropped, since they were completely false charges.
It's pretty pathetic that it took the California prosecutors nearly five years to realize that he didn't break into their computers.
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Well, as several others have pointed out already, these were the California state charges that were dropped. He was charged with breaking into the DMV computers, and it took them five years to realize that he didn't break into the computers after all (which is why they have no evidence to use in a trial and have to drop the charges). He just called up the front desk, pretended to be somebody else, and obtained the information over the phone.
As for the federal charges, he was scheduled to be sentenced last week. However, the sentencing hearing was delayed again, despite the fact that neither Mitnick's lawyers nor the prosecution had asked for a delay, and the fact that the judge had previously promised that there would be no more delays in the hearing (it has already been delayed several times). It's now scheduled for August 9th.
As for the speedy trial, Mitnick did indeed waive his right to a speedy trial, but only because the court refused to let him spend more than a few hours a week in the legal library, refused to allow him to use a computer to review analyze computer disks that were to be used as evidence, and refused to pay his court-appointed lawyer for more than the standard number of hours, despite the fact that there were millions of pages of evidence to go through. Since the court purposely made his defence's evidence review so slow, he had no choice but to waive his right to a speedy trial, in the hopes that he could at least get a fair one. The trial was delayed even more by various unexplained administrative snafus such as the sentencing hearing delay mentioned above.
Throughout the case, the FBI, Secret Service, and corporations have been unreasonable and just plain stupid. The Secret Service initially argued against bail, saying that he could possibly interfere with the 1996 presidential election. They refused to let him have a walkman in the cell, fearing that his super-hacker skills could lead him to make a tape recorder out of it (despite the fact that it had no recording head). Sun Microsystems claimed that by viewing some of their proprietary source code, Mitnick caused them $80 million in damage. Now they give that source code away for free, so obviously their damage claims are frivolous. Sun isn't the only guilty corporation either. When the letters discussing these ludicrous damages were made public, the corporations and government became upset at being exposed.
All in all, Kevin Mitnick is a petty thief who has been set up as an example by an incompetent group of corporations and beaurocracies as some sort of super-hacker-terrorist who must be shut away.
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It's obvious that it was a vendetta. They charged him with breaking into the DMV database, something which he had clearly not done. They had no evidence of him breaking into the database beyond the fact that he had some of the information it contained. All he did was call up the DMV and ask for the information ("social engineering"), not break into anything.
The "vendetta theory" is backed up by the fact that the charges were dropped by the new prosecutor almost as soon as the previous one was removed from the case.
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It's interesting that slashdotters manage to work Microsoft into every article, no matter how unrelated it is. it seems the "community" is somewhat obsessed with that particular company.
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Sounds like France. (* ducks *)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As far as the other stuff is concerned, it is interesting that the LA guys claim that the prosecutor was out to get Mitnick. It made it sound like it was a kind of vendetta, though I'm not overly clear what it was a vendetta over.
Mitnick is clearly very talented and very intelligent. I can easily see him ending up doing computer security work for a major company. If, as others have claimed, he's over the hill, let him do QA work! Someone needs to, given the crud that commercial companies produce.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yes, he was. He also butchered alot of people. Why do you bring this up, troll?
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Well, the United States government comes to mind...
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First off, Mitnick isnt a cracker/hacker/whatever... he was a petty theif/Script kiddy.
What he did was wrong and he did deserve going to jail.....
But.... he did not deserve anything that he got, he did not deserve the government stomping on his civil rights at every, EVERY turn. It saddens me that my country gladly violated every one of his rights. The judges took great enjoyment in blocking justice,and corrupting our system.. I saw nothing but complete corruption in the entire judicial/FBI/NSA/whatever system from this and yet the american public and representatives just sit by saying "oh well, he was a baddie!"
but it is our fault anyways... every one of you out there caused this. did you write several letters to your congressman,senator,president, local law, state law, and others? did you make ONE phone call or donate even ONE dollar to mitnick's defense fund? did you stand up and let others know that even though he is a criminal the government is abusing this person? did you do everything in your power to help? I'll be a big fat NO... americans are very lazy (I know this.. I am one) we sit on our couches, watching tv, horrified with the wars of the world. We sit in front of our computers and "speak out" agains tyranny and opression, and do nothing but "speak out"..
this country is becoming a horrible place.. and we are to blame... 100% to blame...
Shame on you, and shame on me....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.