Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier (18 page)

‘Hold tight and lay low,’ Chris told Par.

‘I’m on my way over to pick you up and take you to a lawyer’s office where you can get some sort of protection.’

A specialist in criminal law, Richard Rosen was born in New York but raised in his later childhood in California. He had a personality which reflected the steely stubbornness of a New Yorker, tempered with the laid-back friendliness of the west coast. Rosen also harboured a strong anti-authoritarian streak. He represented the local chapter of Hell’s Angels in the middle-class County of Monterey. He also caused a splash representing the growing midwifery movement, which promoted home-births. The doctors of California didn’t like him much as a result.

Par’s room-mates met with Rosen after the raid to set things up for Par’s return. They told him about the terrifying ordeal of the Secret Service raid, and how they were interrogated for an hour and a half before being pressured to give statements. Scott, in particular, felt that he had been forced to give a statement against Par under duress.

While Par talked to Chris on the phone, he noticed a man standing at the end of the row of pay phones. This man was also wearing a walkman.

He didn’t look Par in the eye. Instead, he faced the wall, glancing furtively off to the side toward where Par was standing. Who was that guy? Fear welled up inside Par and all sorts of doubts flooded his mind. Who could he trust?

Scott hadn’t told him about the raid. Were his room-mates in cahoots the Secret Service? Were they just buying time so they could turn him in? There was no-one else Par could turn to. His mother wouldn’t understand. Besides, she had problems of her own. And he didn’t have a father. As far as Par was concerned, his father was as good as dead.

He had never met the man, but he heard he was a prison officer in Florida. Not a likely candidate for helping Par in this situation. He was close to his grandparents--they had bought his computer for him as a present--but they lived in a tiny Mid-Western town and they simply wouldn’t understand either.

Par didn’t know what to do, but he didn’t seem to have many options at the moment, so he told Chris he would wait at the station for him.

Then he ducked around a corner and tried to hide.

A few minutes later, Chris pulled into the depot. Par dove into the Toyota Landcruiser and Chris tore out of the station toward Rosen’s office. They noticed a white car race out of the bus station after them.

While they drove, Par pieced together the story from Chris. No-one had warned him about the raid because everyone in the house believed the phone line was tapped. Telling Par while he was in Chicago might have meant another visit from the Secret Service. All they had been able to do was line up Rosen to help him.

Par checked the rear-view mirror. The white car was still following them. Chris made a hard turn at the next intersection and accelerated down the California speedway. The white car tore around the corner in pursuit. No matter what Chris did, he couldn’t shake the tail. Par sat in the seat next to Chris, quietly freaking out.

Just 24 hours before, he had been safe and sound in Chicago. How did he end up back here in California being chased by a mysterious driver in a white car?

Chris tried his best to break free, swerving and racing. The white car wouldn’t budge. But Chris and Par had one advantage over the white car; they were in a four-wheel drive. In a split-second decision, Chris jerked the steering wheel to one side. The Landcruiser veered off the road onto a lettuce field. Par gripped the inside of the door as the 4WD bounced through the dirt over the neat crop rows. Near-ripe heads of lettuce went flying out from under the tires. Half-shredded lettuce leaves filled the air. A cloud of dirt enveloped the car. The vehicle skidded and jerked, but finally made its way to a highway at the far end of the field. Chris hit the highway running, swerving into the lane at high speed.

When Par looked back, the white car had disappeared. Chris kept his foot on the accelerator and Par barely breathed until the Landcruiser pulled up in front of Richard Rosen’s building.

Par leaped out, the red bag still clutched tightly under his arm, and high-tailed it into the lawyer’s office. The receptionist looked a bit shocked when he said his name. Someone must have filled her in on the details.

Rosen quickly ushered him into his office. Introductions were brief and Par cut to the story of the chase. Rosen listened intently, occasionally asking a well-pointed question, and then took control of the situation.

The first thing they needed to do was call off the Secret Service chase, Rosen said, so Par didn’t have to spend any more time ducking around corners and hiding in bus depots. He called the Secret Service’s San Francisco office and asked Special Agent Thomas J.

Holman to kill the Secret Service pursuit in exchange for an agreement that Par would turn himself in to be formally charged.

Holman insisted that they had to talk to Par.

No, Rosen said. There would be no interviews for Par by law enforcement agents until a deal had been worked out.

But the Secret Service needed to talk to Par, Holman insisted. They could only discuss all the other matters after the Secret Service had had a chance to talk with Par.

Rosen politely warned Holman not to attempt to contact his client. You have something to say to Par, you go through me, he said. Holman did not like that at all. When the Secret Service wanted to talk to someone, they were used to getting their way. He pushed Rosen, but the answer was still no. No no no and no again. Holman had made a mistake.

He had assumed that everyone wanted to do business with the United States Secret Service.

When he finally realised Rosen wouldn’t budge, Holman gave up. Rosen then negotiated with the federal prosecutor, US Attorney Joe Burton, who was effectively Holman’s boss in the case, to call off the pursuit in exchange for Par handing himself in to be formally charged.

Then Par gave Rosen his red bag, for safekeeping.

At about the same time, Citibank investigator Wallace and Detective Porter of the Salinas Police interviewed Par’s mother as she returned home from the bus depot. She said that her son had moved out of her home some six months before, leaving her with a $2000 phone bill she couldn’t pay. They asked if they could search her home. Privately, she worried about what would happen if she refused. Would they tell the office where she worked as a clerk? Could they get her fired? A simple woman who had little experience dealing with law enforcement agents, Par’s mother agreed. The investigators took Par’s disks and papers.

Par turned himself in to the Salinas Police in the early afternoon of 12 December. The police photographed and fingerprinted him before handing him a citation--a small yellow slip headed ‘502 (c) (1) PC’.

It looked like a traffic ticket, but the two charges Par faced were felonies, and each carried a maximum term of three years for a minor.

Count 1, for hacking into Citicorp Credit Services, also carried a fine of up to $10000. Count 2, for ‘defrauding a telephone service’, had no fine: the charges were for a continuing course of conduct, meaning that they applied to the same activity over an extended period of time.

Federal investigators had been astonished to find Par was so young.

Dealing with a minor in the federal court system was a big hassle, so the prosecutor decided to ask the state authorities to prosecute the case. Par was ordered to appear in Monterey County Juvenile Court on 10 July 1989.

Over the next few months, Par worked closely with Rosen. Though Rosen was a very adept lawyer, the situation looked pretty depressing.

Citibank claimed it had spent $30000 on securing its systems and Par believed that the corporation might be looking for up to $3 million in total damages. While they couldn’t prove Par had made any money from the cards himself, the prosecution would argue that his generous distribution of them had led to serious financial losses. And that was just the financial institutions.

Much more worrying was what might come out about Par’s visits to TRW’s computers. The Secret Service had seized at least one disk with TRW

material on it.

TRW was a large, diverse company, with assets of $2.1 billion and sales of almost $7 billion in 1989, nearly half of which came from the US government. It employed more than 73000 people, many of who worked with the company’s credit ratings business. TRW’s vast databases held private details of millions of people--addresses, phone numbers, financial data.

That, however, was just one of the company’s many businesses. TRW also did defence work--very secret defence work. Its Space and Defense division, based in Redondo Beach, California, was widely believed to be a major beneficiary of the Reagan Government’s Star Wars budget.

More than 10 per cent of the company’s employees worked in this division, designing spacecraft systems, communications systems, satellites and other, unspecified, space ‘instruments’.

The siezed disk had some mail from the company’s TRWMAIL systems. It wasn’t particularly sensitive, mostly just company propaganda sent to employees, but the Secret Service might think that where there was smoke, there was bound to be fire. TRW did the kind of work that makes governments very nervous when it comes to unauthorised access. And Par had visited certain TRW machines; he knew that company had a missiles research section, and even a space weapons section.

With so many people out to get him--Citibank, the Secret Service, the local police, even his own mother had helped the other side--it was only a matter of time before they unearthed the really secret things he had seen while hacking. Par began to wonder if was such a good idea for him to stay around for the trial.

[ ]

In early 1989, when Theorem stepped off the plane which carried her from Switzerland to San Francisco, she was pleased that she had managed to keep a promise to herself. It wasn’t always an easy promise. There were times of intimacy, of perfect connection, between the two voices on opposite sides of the globe, when it seemed so breakable.

Meanwhile, Par braced himself. Theorem had described herself in such disparaging terms. He had even heard from others on Altos that she was homely. But that description had ultimately come from her anyway, so it didn’t really count.

Finally, as he watched the stream of passengers snake out to the waiting area, he told himself it didn’t matter anyway. After all, he had fallen in love with her--her being, her essence--not her image as it appeared in flesh. And he had told her so. She had said the same back to him.

Suddenly she was there, in front of him. Par had to look up slightly to reach her eyes, since she was a little more than an inch taller.

She was quite pretty, with straight, brown shoulder-length hair and brown eyes. He was just thinking how much more attractive she was than he had expected, when it happened.

Theorem smiled.

Par almost lost his balance. It was a devastating smile, big and toothy, warm and genuine. Her whole face lit up with a fire of animation. That smile sealed it.

She had kept her promise to herself. There was no clear image of Par in her mind before meeting him in person. After meeting a few people from Altos at a party in Munich the year before, she had tried not to create images of people based on their on-line personalities. That way she would never suffer disappointment.

Par and Theorem picked up her bags and got into Brian’s car. Brian, a friend who offered to play airport taxi because Par didn’t have a car, thought Theorem was pretty cool. A six-foot-tall French-speaking Swiss woman. It was definitely cool. They drove back to Par’s house. Then Brian came in for a chat.

Brian asked Theorem all sorts of questions. He was really curious, because he had never met anyone from Europe before. Par kept trying to encourage his friend to leave but Brian wanted to know all about life in Switzerland. What was the weather like? Did people ski all the time?

Par kept looking Brian in the eye and then staring hard at the door.

Did most Swiss speak English? What other languages did she know? A lot of people skied in California. It was so cool talking to someone from halfway around the world.

Par did the silent chin-nudge toward the door and, at last, Brian got the hint. Par ushered his friend out of the house. Brian was only there for about ten minutes, but it felt like a year. When Par and Theorem were alone, they talked a bit, then Par suggested they go for a walk.

Halfway down the block, Par tentatively reached for her hand and took it in his own. She seemed to like it. Her hand was warm. They talked a bit more, then Par stopped. He turned to face her. He paused, and then told her something he had told her before over the telephone, something they both knew already.

Theorem kissed him. It startled Par. He was completely unprepared.

Then Theorem said the same words back to him.

When they returned to the house, things progressed from there. They spent two and a half weeks in each other’s arms--and they were glorious, sun-drenched weeks. The relationship proved to be far, far better in person than it had ever been on-line or on the telephone.

Theorem had captivated Par, and Par, in turn, created a state of bliss in Theorem.

Par showed her around his little world in northern California. They visited a few tourist sites, but mostly they just spent a lot of time at home. They talked, day and night, about everything.

Then it was time for Theorem to leave, to return to her job and her life in Switzerland. Her departure was hard--driving to the airport, seeing her board the plane--it was heart-wrenching. Theorem looked very upset. Par just managed to hold it together until the plane took off.

For two and a half weeks, Theorem had blotted out Par’s approaching court case. As she flew away, the dark reality of the case descended on him.

[ ]

The fish liked to watch.

Par sat at the borrowed computer all night in the dark, with only the dull glow of his monitor lighting the room, and the fish would all swim over to the side of their tank and peer out at him. When things were quiet on-line, Par’s attention wandered to the eel and the lion fish. Maybe they were attracted to the phosphorescence of the computer screen. Whatever the reason, they certainly liked to hover there. It was eerie.