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
Anthrax's father picked him up from uni on a fine November day and
drove down to Melbourne. His mother had insisted that he attend the
interview, since he knew all about the law and police. Anthrax didn't
mind having him along: he figured a witness might prevent any use of
police muscle.
During the ride to the city, Anthrax talked about how he would handle
the interview. The good news was that the AFP had said they wanted to
interview him about his phreaking, not his hacking. He went to the
interview understanding they would only be discussing his `recent
stuff'--the phreaking. He had two possible approaches to the
interview. He could come clean and admit everything, as his first
lawyer had advised. Or he could pretend to cooperate and be evasive,
which was what his instincts told him to do.
His father jumped all over the second option. `You have to cooperate
fully. They will know if you are lying. They are trained to pick out
lies. Tell them everything and they will go easier on you.' Law and
order all the way.
`Who do they think they are anyway? The pigs.' Anthrax looked away,
disgusted at the thought of police harassing people like his mother.
`Don't call them pigs,' his father snapped. `They are police officers.
If you are ever in trouble, they are the first people you are ever
going to call.'
`Oh yeah. What kind of trouble am I going to be in that the first
people I call are the AFP?' Anthrax replied.
Anthrax would put up with his father coming along so long as he kept
his mouth shut during the interview. He certainly wasn't there for
personal support. They had a distant relationship at best. When his
father began working in the town where Anthrax now lived and studied,
his mother had tried to patch things between them. She suggested his
father take Anthrax out for dinner once a week, to smooth things over.
Develop a relationship. They had dinner a handful of times and Anthrax
listened to his father's lectures. Admit you were wrong. Cooperate
with the police. Get your life together. Own up to it all. Grow up. Be
responsible. Stop being so useless. Stop being so stupid.
The lectures were a bit rich, Anthrax thought, considering that his
father had benefited from Anthrax's hacking skills. When he discovered
Anthrax had got into a huge news clipping database, he asked the boy
to pull up every article containing the word `prison'. Then he had him
search for articles on discipline. The searches should have cost a
fortune, probably thousands of dollars. But his father didn't pay a
cent, thanks to Anthrax. And he didn't spend much time lecturing
Anthrax on the evils of hacking then.
When they arrived at AFP headquarters, Anthrax made a point of putting
his feet up on the leather couch in the reception area and opened a
can of Coke he had brought along. His father got upset.
`Get your feet off that seat. You shouldn't have brought that can of
Coke. It doesn't look very professional.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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