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Nobody wants to get involved in a criminal case and I've yet to meet a
hacker who was fully prepared for it happening to them. There are thousands
of paper and electronic magazines, CD-ROMS, web pages and text files about
hackers and hacking available, yet there is nothing in print until now that
specifically covers what to do when an arrest actually happens to you. Most
hackers do not plan for an arrest by hiding their notes or encrypting their
data, and most of them have some sort of address book seized from them too
(the most famous of which still remains the one seized from The Not So
Humble Babe). Most of them aren't told the full scope of the investigation
up front, and as the case goes on more comes to light, often only at the
last minute. Invariably, the hacker in question was wiretapped and/or
narced on by someone previously raided who covered up their own raid or
minimized it in order to get off by implicating others. Once one person
goes down it always affects many others later. My own
experience comes from living with a retired hacker arrested ten months after
he had stopped hacking for old crimes because another hacker informed on
him in exchange for being let go himself. What goes around, comes around.
It's food for thought that the hacker you taunt today will be able to cut a
deal for himself by informing on you later. From what I've seen on the
criminal justice system as it relates to hackers, the less enemies you pick
on the better and the less groups you join and people who you i nteract
with the better as well. There's a lot to be said for being considered a
lamer and having no one really have anything to pin on you when the feds
ask around.
I met Agent Steal, ironically, as a result of the hackers who had fun
picking on me at Defcon. I posted the speech I gave there on the Gray Areas
web page (which I had not originally intended to post, but decided to after
it was literally stolen out of my hands so I could not finish it) and
someone sent Agent Steal a copy while he was incarcerated. He wrote me a
letter of support, and while several hackers taunted me that I had no
friends in the community and was not wanted, and one even mailbombed our
CompuServe account causing us to lose the account and our email there, I
laughed knowing that this article was in progress and that of all of the
publications it could have been given to first it was Gray Areas that was
chosen.
This article marks the first important attempt at cooperation to inform the
community as a whole (even our individual enemies) about how best to
protect themselves. I know there will be many more hacker cases until
hackers work together instead of attacking each other and making it so easy
for the government to divide them. It's a sad reality that NAMBLA,
deadheads, adult film stars and bookstores, marijuana users and other
deviant groups are so much more organized than hackers who claim to be so
adept at, and involved with, gathering and using information. Hackers are
simply the easiest targets of any criminal subculture. While Hackerz.org
makes nice T-shirts (which they don't give free or even discount to hackers
in jail, btw), they simply don't have the resources to help hackers in
trouble. Neither does the EFF, which lacks lawyers willing to work pro bono
(free) in most of the 50 states. Knight Lightning still owes his attorney
money. So does Bernie S. This is not something that disappears from your
life the day the case is over. 80% or more of prisoners lose their lovers
and/or their families after the arrest. While there are notable exceptions,
this has been true for more hackers than I care to think about. The FBI or
Secret Service will likely visit your lovers and try to turn them against
you. The mainstream media will lie about your charges, the facts of your
case and the outcome. If you're lucky they'll remember to use the word
"allegedly." While most hackers probably think Emmanuel Goldstein and 2600
will help them, I know of many hackers whose cases he ignored totally when
contacted. Although he's credited for helping Phiber Optik, in reality
Phiber got more jail time for going to trial on Emmanuel's advice than his
co-defendants who didn't have Emmanuel help them and pled instead. Bernie
S. got his jaw broken perhaps in part from the government's anger at
Emmanuel's publicizing of the case, and despite all the attention Emmanuel
has gotten for Kevin Mitnick it didn't stop Mitnick's being put in
solitary confinement or speed up his trial date any. One thing is clear
though. Emmanuel's sales of 2600 dramatically increased as a result of
covering the above cases to the tune of over 25,000 copies per issue. It
does give pause for thought, if he cares so much about the hackers and not
his own sales and fame, as to why he has no ties to the Hackerz.org defense
fund or why he has not started something useful of his own. Phrack and
other zines historically have merely reposted incorrect newspaper reports
which can cause the hackers covered even more damage. Most of your hacker
friends who you now talk to daily will run from you after your arrest and
will tell other people all sorts of stories to cover up the fact they don't
know a thing. Remember too that your "friends" are the people most likely
to get you arrested too, as even if your phone isn't wiretapped now theirs
may be, and the popular voice bridges and conference calls you talk to them
on surely are.
They say information wants to be free, and so here is a gift to the
community (also quite applicable to anyone accused of any federal crime if
one substitutes another crime for the word hacking). Next time you put down
a hacker in jail and laugh about how they are getting raped while you're on
IRC, remember that someone is probably logging you and if you stay active
it's a good bet your day will come too. You won't be laughing then, and I
hope you'll have paid good attention when you're suddenly in jai l with no
bail granted and every last word you read here turns out to be true. Those
of us who have been there before wish you good luck in advance. Remember
the next time you put them down that ironically it's them you'll have to
turn to for advice shoul d it happen to you. Your lawyer isn't likely to
know a thing about computer crimes and it's the cases of the hackers who
were arrested before you which, like it or not, will provide the legal
precedents for your own conviction. |
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| Scott Adams |
The best plan now is to have as many bosses as possible. I call it boss diversity. If you work for a company and you have one boss and that boss doesn't like you or wants to get rid of you, you're in trouble. But if you work for yourself, you have lots of bosses, who are your customers, and if a few of them decide they don't like you, that's okay. |
| Guillermo Cabrera Infante |
If you look closely, there is no book more visual than Three Trapped Tigers, in that it is filled with blank pages, dark pages, it has stars made of words, the famous magical cube made of numbers, and there is even a page which is a mirror. |