Ex-Hacker to Challenge Ban on Web Job
Former hacker Kevin Mitnick, who spent four years behind bars for stealing computer secrets from some of America’s top companies, is returning to court next week to challenge a probation officer’s ruling barring him from becoming a columnist for a Web-based business.
Mitnick, freed earlier this year from federal custody, has been offered a job writing a monthly column for Contentville, the brainchild of magazine publisher and media critic Steven Brill.
Contentville, to be launched next month, will sell books, magazines and other publications over the Internet and offer a wide range of expert analysis, commentary and product reviews.
Mitnick, who once claimed that hacking was an addiction, would critique the plethora of computer magazines that can be found these days on most news racks.
But federal probation officials have advised him to look for work elsewhere.
“In regards to the numerous requests you have received concerning writing and critiquing articles and speaking at conferences, we find it necessary to deny your participation and recommend that you pursue employment in a non-related field,” wrote Mitnick’s probation officer, Larry Hawley.
Under terms of his supervised release, Mitnick cannot use a computer or many other high-tech devices for three years. Nor can he work as a “consultant or advisor” to any computer-related business. Hawley cited that restriction in denying him permission for the job with Brill.
But Mitnick’s lawyers say that can’t be what the judge intended.
“This court’s order cannot be read to impose so sweeping--and unconstitutional--a restriction,” said a friend-of-the-court brief written by 1st Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams of New York.
“Surely, Mr. Mitnick can be prohibited from teaching others how to hack,” Abrams wrote, “but that condition should not be so broadly read as to prohibit him from speaking or writing on any topic related to computers.”
Chris Painter, deputy chief of the Justice Department’s computer crimes section, said in a reply brief that the government does not categorically object to Mitnick speaking and writing about computer-related matters. But that, he added, should be left to his probation officer to decide on a case-by-case basis.
Painter, who helped prosecute Mitnick, expressed considerable annoyance with the former hacker’s public comments since his release from Lompoc federal prison.
When he walked out of prison, the prosecutor said, Mitnick delivered a stinging rebuke of the court, the prosecution and the media, “blaming everyone but himself for his plight.”
Painter also accused Mitnick of minimizing his crime by telling reporters that it was simple trespassing and that “I never deprived the companies involved in this case of anything. I never committed fraud against these companies.”
Mitnick, accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of software, pleaded guilty to seven computer crime and fraud charges.
U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer, who sentenced Mitnick to 54 months in prison, is scheduled to hear his challenge to the probation officer’s ruling Monday.
