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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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