Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontierDreyfus, Suelette
Science
Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier
Dreyfus, Suelette
Computer crimes -- Australia; Computer hackers -- Australia -- Biography; Computer security -- Australia
The view from any reasonably high floor of the World Trade Center is
breathtaking, but Par never got a chance to enjoy the vista. He was
hustled into a windowless room and handcuffed to a chair. The agents
moved in and out, sorting out paperwork details. They uncuffed him
briefly while they inked his fingers and rolled them across sheets of
paper. Then they made him give handwriting samples, first his right
hand then his left.
Par didn't mind being cuffed to the chair so much, but he found the
giant metal cage in the middle of the fingerprinting room deeply
disturbing. It reminded him of an animal cage, the kind used in old
zoos.
The two agents who arrested him left the room, but another one came
in. And the third agent was far from friendly. He began playing the
bad cop, railing at Par, shouting at him, trying to unnerve him. But
no amount of yelling from the agent could rile Par as much as the
nature of the questions he asked.
The agent didn't ask a single question about Citibank. Instead, he
demanded to hear everything Par knew about TRW.
All Par's worst nightmares about the killer spy satellite, about
becoming the man who knew too much, rushed through his mind.
Par refused to answer. He just sat silently, staring at the agent.
Eventually, the older agent came back into the room, dragged the
pitbull agent away and took him outside for a whispered chat. After
that, the pitbull agent was all sweetness and light with Par. Not
another word about TRW.
Par wondered why a senior guy from the Secret Service would tell his
minion to clam up about the defence contractor? What was behind the
sudden silence? The abrupt shift alarmed Par almost as much as the
questions had in the first place.
The agent told Par he would be remanded in custody while awaiting
extradition to California. After all the paperwork had been completed,
they released him from the handcuffs and let him stand to stretch. Par
asked for a cigarette and one of the agents gave him one. Then a
couple of other agents--junior guys--came in.
The junior agents were very friendly. One of them even shook Par's
hand and introduced himself. They knew all about the hacker. They knew
his voice from outgoing messages on voicemail boxes he had created for
himself. They knew what he looked like from his California police
file, and maybe even surveillance photos. They knew his personality
from telephone bridge conversations which had been recorded and from
the details of his Secret Service file. Perhaps they had even tracked
him around the country, following a trail of clues left in his
flightpath. Whatever research they had done, one thing was clear.
These agents felt like they knew him intimately--Par the person, not
just Par the hacker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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