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
Yeah. Right. If Anthrax did have a hidden computer at uni, revealing
its location wasn't top of the must-do list.
The police pawed through his personal letters, quizzed Anthrax about
them. Who wrote this letter? Is he in the computer underground? What's
his address?
Anthrax said `no comment' more times than he could count. He saw a few
police moving into his bedroom and decided it was time to watch them
closely, make sure nothing was planted. He stood up to follow them in
and observe the search when one of the cops stopped him. Anthrax told
them he wanted a lawyer. One of the police looked on with disapproval.
`You must be guilty,' he told Anthrax. `Only guilty people ask for
lawyers. And here I was feeling sorry for you.'
Then one of the other officers dropped the bomb. `You know,' he began
casually, `we're also raiding your parents' house ...'
Anthrax freaked out. His mum would be hysterical. He asked to call his
mother on his mobile, the only phone then working in the apartment.
The police refused to let him touch his mobile. Then he asked to call
her from the pay phone across the street. The police refused again.
One of the officers, a tall, lanky cop, recognised a leverage point if
ever he saw one. He spread the guilt on thick.
`Your poor sick mum. How could you do this to your poor sick mum?
We're going to have to take her to Melbourne for questioning, maybe
even to charge her, arrest her, take her to jail. You make me sick. I
feel sorry for a mother having a son like you who is going to cause
her all this trouble.'
From that moment on, the tall officer took every opportunity to talk
about Anthrax's `poor sick mum'. He wouldn't let up. Not that he
probably knew the first thing about scleroderma, the creeping fatal
disease which affected her. Anthrax often thought about the pain his
mother was in as the disease worked its way from her extremities to
her internal organs. Scleroderma toughened the skin on the fingers and
feet, but made them overly sensitive, particularly to changes in
weather. It typically affected women native to hot climates who moved
to colder environments.
Anthrax's mobile rang. His mother. It had to be. The police wouldn't
let him answer it.
The tall officer picked up the call, then turned to the stocky cop and
said in a mocking Indian accent, `It is some woman with an Indian
accent'. Anthrax felt like jumping out of his chair and grabbing the
phone. He felt like doing some other things too, things that would
have undoubtedly landed him in prison then and there.
The stocky cop nodded to the tall one, who handed the mobile to
Anthrax.
At first, he couldn't make sense of what his mother was saying. She
was a terrified mess. Anthrax tried to calm her down. Then she tried
to comfort him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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