Before reading this, I suggest you watch the documentary Freedom Downtime, made by the folks at 2600. Go ahead, the whole thing is on Google Video.
Kevin Mitnick has signed a book deal with Little, Brown and Company, giving him the opportunity to refute the outrageous claims made against him—really, he could start a nuclear war by whistling into a telephone?—while making a few dollars in the process. A tell-all, if you will.
Mitnick, if you don’t already know and didn’t bother to watch the movie, is probably the most famous “hacker” out there, imprisoned in 1999 for destroy the Western World for all time. So we were led to believe, that is.
Hooray, for sure.
Mitnick was a bully – no more, no less – who abused people who tried to stop him from stealing. He’s no better than the thug who threatens to (and then follows up on) beat up somebody who saw him carrying a TV out of a broken storefront window.
Yeah – stories abound of his being able to do tons of very nasty stuff – but they should be given the same weight as the threats of the thug (assuming the thug was convicted) who could shoot the Mayor. That thug would be forbidden to carry a gun. Mitnick should be forbidden from going near his weapon.
There are lots of jobs that one can do that do net entail using a computer, and Mitnick should be limited to those jobs, many of which can pay well for the highly skilled. Have you hired a skilled mason recently? They are paid well, and good ones are very skilled.
Just as the convicted thug would not be allowed to be a police officer (or do any other job that requires carrying a gun), Mitnick should be kept away from his weapon of choice.
Well!
I never said Mitnick was an angel, and to be honest that whole “free Kevin” movement was before my time, but if Freedom Downtime is to be believed then the media portrayed him as being able to steal everyone’s first born son a la The Penguin in Batman Returns by having access to a scientific calculator.
Any books or Web sites or whatever with your point of view (“Mitnick is a thug”) you care to mention I’d be glad to read.
-na
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Great, he’s going to write another terrible book. Ever talk to anyone that actually read his other two? They’re just abominable to read. And Freedom Downtime being close to truth? As close the The Matrix is. Once you’re inside the “hacker community” you quickly learn that Kevin couldn’t do much of anything he was touted as being able to do and all he really could do was social engineer.
Wow you n00bs are really misinformed
” Tom Woolf – July 20th, 2008 at 11:42 am PDT
Mitnick was a bully – no more, no less – who abused people who tried to stop him from stealing. He’s no better than the thug who threatens to (and then follows up on) beat up somebody who saw him carrying a TV out of a broken storefront window.
Yeah – stories abound of his being able to do tons of very nasty stuff – but they should be given the same weight as the threats of the thug (assuming the thug was convicted) who could shoot the Mayor. That thug would be forbidden to carry a gun. Mitnick should be forbidden from going near his weapon.
There are lots of jobs that one can do that do net entail using a computer, and Mitnick should be limited to those jobs, many of which can pay well for the highly skilled. Have you hired a skilled mason recently? They are paid well, and good ones are very skilled.
Just as the convicted thug would not be allowed to be a police officer (or do any other job that requires carrying a gun), Mitnick should be kept away from his weapon of choice.
”
mitnick was never as dangerous as they claimed him to be. the information he ’stole’ was available to the public.
they broke more laws catching mitnick than he actually broke.
you are very misinformed. kevin mitnick was just all hype