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
They did find a young man in the bedroom, with a computer. But it was
the wrong one, and for all intents and purposes the wrong computer. It
took the police almost ten minutes of quizzing Pad's brother to work
out their mistake.
Hearing a commotion, Pad's parents had rushed into the hallway while
Pad peered from the doorway of the front sitting room. A uniformed
police officer ushered everyone back into the room, and began asking
Pad questions.
`Do you use computers? Do you use the name Pad on computers?' they
asked.
Pad concluded the game was up. He answered their questions truthfully.
Hacking was not such a serious crime after all, he thought. It wasn't
as if he had stolen money or anything. This would be a drama, but he
was easy-going. He would roll with the punches, cop a slap on the
wrist and soon the whole thing would be over and done with.
The police took Pad to his bedroom and asked him questions as they
searched the room. The bedroom had a comfortably lived-in look, with a
few small piles of clothes in the corner, some shoes scattered across
the floor, the curtains hanging crooked, and a collection of music
posters--Jimi Hendrix and The Smiths--taped to the wall.
A group of police hovered around his computer. One of them began to
search through Pad's books on the shelves above the PC, checking each
one as he pulled it down. A few well-loved Spike Milligan works. Some
old chess books from when he was captain of the local chess team.
Chemistry books, purchased by Pad long before he took any classes in
the subject, just to satisfy his curiosity. Physics books. An
oceanography textbook. A geology book bought after a visit to a cave
excited his interest in the formation of rocks. Pad's mother, a
nursing sister, and his father, an electronics engineer who tested
gyros on aircraft, had always encouraged their children's interest in
the sciences.
The policeman returned those books to the shelves, only picking out
the computer books, textbooks from programming and maths classes Pad
had taken at a Manchester university. The officer carefully slid them
inside plastic bags to be taken away as
evidence.
Then the police picked through Pad's music tapes--The Stone Roses,
Pixies, New Order, The Smiths and lots of indie music from the
flourishing Manchester music scene. No evidence of anything but an
eclectic taste in music there.
Another policeman opened Pad's wardrobe and peered inside. `Anything
in here of interest?' he asked.
`No,' Pad answered. `It's all over here.' He pointed to the box of
computer disks.
Pad didn't think there was much point in the police tearing the place
to pieces, when they would ultimately find everything they wanted
anyway. Nothing was hidden. Unlike the Australian hackers, Pad hadn't
been expecting the police at all. Although part of the data on his
hard drive was encrypted, there was plenty of incriminating evidence
in the un-encrypted files.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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