Kevin Mitnick hacker case drags on and on
By Kevin Poulsen, ZDTV
April 28, 1998 3:49 PM PDT
LOS ANGELES-- "Now, have we made any progress here?"
With those words, Judge Mariana Pfaelzer opened the latest hearing in the
Kevin Mitnick case in L.A.'s U.S. District Court Monday. She might as well
have said, "Let's get ready to rumble."
It's now been more than three years since a dramatic electronic manhunt
ended with Mitnick's arrest, national headlines, books and movie deals.
Since then, the excitement has faded. The books oversaturated the market;
the movies never got made. And the once fast-paced story of a compulsive
hacker with a goofy sense of humor is mired in its epilogue: the slow ride
to disposition over the speed-bumps of the federal justice system.
In Round One, you may recall, Judge Pfaelzer asked prosecutors to submit a
written proposal that would address the pre-trial concerns of Mitnick, his
co-defendant Lew DePayne and their attorneys. She urged the government to
be generous, and the defense attorneys to be reasonable.
So, how'd they do? Prosecutor Chris Painter made some serious concessions
to the defense, including an offer to provide government exhibits 60 days
before trial, instead of the usual 10. And after last-minute negotiations
with Mitnick attorney Don Randolph, Painter agreed to hand over electronic
copies of the computer-stored evidence.
But only some of it. The government wants to keep a tight lid on the
"proprietary" software in the case, and on what it calls "hacker tools."
The defense can review these files, but they can't have their own copies
for analysis.
"They feel they should get a copy of everything," Painter said. "We went
well beyond what we needed to do."
Ding, ding
Bring on Round Two.
"I think what the U.S. Attorney has done in this [proposal] is grossly
unfair and avoids the issues in this case," DePayne attorney Richard
Sherman told the court. "They've flicked this case to the side like a fly
on a sleeve."
The problem for the defense: How to investigate the "proprietary" nature
of files that you don't have. For that matter, what exactly is a "hacker
tool"?
"What we propose," offered Randolph, "is that it be given to us with a
protective order."
The issuance of such an order would prohibit the defense from releasing
the files, and is common practice in cases involving allegedly sensitive
data.
If the evidence was in paper form, the government would have probably
agreed. But Painter says that with electronic evidence, "it's too easy for
this to be disseminated by the defendants."
In other words, the government doesn't want the data to show up on a Web
site in Antigua.
Strange bedfellows
If Judge Pfaelzer had any hopes that the pre-trial issues would be settled
quickly, they were short-lived. The court asked the defense attorneys to
put their arguments in writing, and file them by Monday, May 11. She did
not set a date for Round Three.
After the hearing, I found myself in a courthouse conference room for an
impromptu press conference with defense attorneys Sherman and Randolph.
Sherman -- a tough, outspoken man who reminds me of James Caan -- thinks
the government is stalling for a settlement, and they haven't even
analyzed the evidence themselves. "They're trying to bluff their way
through it," he said. "I was three seconds away from saying to the Court,
'I want to show you the government doesn't know what it's doing: Let's go
to trial next week.'"
Randolph just wants the case to move forward. He wants to give the files
to a computer expert, find out what they mean, prepare his defense; and he
suspects the government of trying to carve out a new, more restrictive
standard of pre-trial procedure for hacker cases. At one stage he said to
Sherman: "Don't you think, Richard, that this is beyond just you and me
and Mitnick?"
Randolph has a point. In other hacker cases, "proprietary" information has
proven to be somewhat less than the secret, valuable crown jewels of
corporate prosperity -- and defense attorneys were only able to prove it
because they had a copy of the data to analyze.
Whether the government intends it or not, the resolutions made in the
Mitnick case will probably become the standard for future computer crime
prosecutions.
Prosecution moving forward
For his part, Painter insists the prosecution is trying to move the
Mitnick case forward.
"We're not trying to carve out a paradigm," he told me. "In this case
there's a lot of electronic evidence. We've made that available for them
to look at for about a year and a half, and with a few exceptions, they've
rarely done that.
"We don't view this case as some bizarre special case. We're trying to
move things forward."
And moving forward, the Mitnick case is -- very, very slowly.
-o-
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Received on Thu Apr 30 18:04:52 1998