Federal judge also rejects motion to set bail for Kevin Mitnick
By Mike Brunker
MSNBC
MARCH 31
In a ruling that highlights the changing role of technology in the court
of law, a federal judge Monday denied hacker Kevin Mitnick’s request
that he be allowed to use a jailhouse computer to review the vast amount
of electronic evidence the government has compiled in his case.
Denial of computer access impermissibly frustrated the defense's
ability to review the unfathomable volume of evidence in this case.
DEFENSE MOTION
RULING ON a motion filed by Mitnick's lawyers, U.S. District Judge
Mariana Pfaelzer instead endorsed an offer by prosecutors to provide
Mitnick, 34, with access to a computer at a secure location outside the
Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, where he is being held
pending trial. She asked lawyers from the U.S. Attorney's Office to
develop a plan for the review sessions and submit it for her approval.
Pfaelzer also pre-empted a defense motion asking her to set bail,
saying she would never agree to release Mitnick before his trial.
Mitnick’s attorney, Donald Randolph, said Tuesday he would appeal
the decision.
The government previously had offered to let Mitnick, who has been
held without bail since his arrest in February 1995, use a computer at the
FBI's offices to review the evidence.
But Randolph rejected that offer in his motion for computer access
at the jail, arguing that prosecutors could recover from the computer's
hard drive the exact sequence of keystrokes entered during the review of
the evidence and determine how long each file was studied.
There's a very simple reason why we have not pursued the
government's offer. ... The government has offered no acceptable plan for
security when we review evidence in their lair' Randolph told MSNBC.
Pfaelzer scheduled a hearing April 27 to hear the
government's proposal to allow Mitnick to review the evidence. She
indicated she would set a trial date at that time.
GUILTY PLEA TO LESSER CHARGES
Mitnick pleaded guilty in June 1997 to cellular phone fraud and
violation of probation stemming from a 1989 conviction for hacking and was
sentenced to 22 months in prison.
He faces far more serious charges in his coming trial, which could
put him in jail for many more years.
He is accused of invading the computer networks of such high-tech
giants as Motorola, Sun Microsystems, NEC and Novell, and is charged with
25 counts of wire and computer fraud, possession of illegal electronic
access devices and interception of electronic or wire communications.
Prosecutors had sought to prevent Mitnick from gaining access to a
computer & even one isolated from the outside world & arguing that he
could somehow use it to engineer an escape or otherwise compromise
security at the jail.
They also raised other concerns in opposing the "unprecedented and
unreasonable" request for computer access, arguing that by granting the
request the judge would essentially be turning over the copyright software
Mitnick and co-defendant Lewis De Payne allegedly stole from companies
whose computers were compromised.
"We're not trying to deny him access to the evidence," Assistant
U.S. Attorney Christopher Painter said Monday after the hearing. "We've
been doing everything we can do arrange that."
MASS OF ELECTRONIC EVIDENCE
But Mitnick's attorney said in his motion that denial of computer
access at the jail had "impermissibly frustrated the defense's ability to
review the unfathomable volume of evidence in this case."
Because of the nature of Mitnick&'s alleged crimes, much of the
evidence against him exists only in electronic form. By one estimate, the
U.S. Attorney's Office has assembled millions of individual computer
files, computer codes and phone and credit card numbers to enter into
evidence at Mitnick's trial. In addition to information stored on
Mitnick's computers, prosecutors are expected to introduce detailed
security logs from the companies that were allegedly targeted.
Mitnick has been propelled to near folk hero status on the
Internet, in large part because of the widespread belief that he has been
unfairly treated in an effort to send a strong warning to other would-be
hackers.
In addition to spending more than three years in jail without bail,
he was tossed into solitary confinement for four days last year for
reasons that have not been disclosed. His supporters, who operate dozens
of Web sites in several languages and post the latest developments in two
news groups devoted to his case, also are fond of pointing out that
Mitnick did not attempt to profit from his hacking and did not damage the
systems he penetrated, with one possible exception that is not explained
in the indictment.
He also has inspired other hackers to make public statements of
support, including the defacement of Yahoo! and UNICEF Web sites to demand
his freedom & acts that Mitnick termed unhelpful in a statement issued
through his attorney.
CAPTURE OF "CONDOR"
Mitnick's capture was aided by computer-security expert Tsutomu
Shimomura, who helped authorities track down the hacker known as "Condor."
The search for Mitnick and his capture were chronicled by New York Times
reporter John Markoff in "Takedown," one of at least three books on
Mitnick's exploits.
The publicity surrounding Mitnick makes him a particularly
appealing target for authorities hoping to strike fear into any who would
follow in his footsteps, his supporters say.
"What Kevin Mitnick is about is creating a mythology of a hacker
threat and using that threat to expand the government's statutory
authority and increase its wiretapping capability," said Mike Godwin,
staff counsel for the Electronic Freedom Foundation. "Find me an
individual who was hurt. Find me a company that was hurt. The most you can
say is that some companies had to close security holes; and arguably they
would have had to do that anyway."
-o-
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Received on Wed Apr 1 15:53:09 1998