Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 67

'No, that is not the case. I'm sorry for ...' Be humble. Get out of that room faster.

'No, that is OK. If that is what you believe, say it. I have no problems with that. I just like to have it clarified. Remember, other people might listen to this tape and they will draw inferences and opinions from it. At any point where I think there is an ambiguity, I will ask for clarification. Do you understand that?'

'Yes. I understand.' Anthrax couldn't really focus on what Day was saying. He was feeling very distressed and just wanted to finish the interview.

The cops finally moved on, but the new topic was almost as unpleasant.

Day began probing about Anthrax's earlier hacking career--the one he had no intention of talking about. Anthrax began to feel a bit better.

He agreed to talk to the police about recent phreaking activities, not hacking matters. Indeed, he had repeatedly told them that topic was not on his agenda. He felt like he was standing on firmer ground.

After being politely stonewalled, Day circled around and tried again.

'OK. I will give you another allegation; that you have unlawfully accessed computer systems in Australia and the United States. In the US, you specifically targeted military computer systems. Do you understand that allegation?'

'I understand that. I wouldn't like to comment on it.' No, sir. No way.

Day tried a new tack. 'I will further allege that you did work with a person known as Mendax.'

What on earth was Day talking about? Anthrax had heard of Mendax, but they had never worked together. He thought the cops must not have very good informants.

'No. That is not true. I know no-one of that name.' Not strictly true, but true enough.

'Well, if he was to turn around to me and say that you were doing all this hacking, he would be lying, would he?'

Oh wonderful. Some other hacker was c.r.a.pping on to the cops with lies about how he and Anthrax had worked together. That was exactly why Anthrax didn't work in a group. He had plenty of real allegations to fend off. He didn't need imaginary ones too.

'Most certainly would. Unless he goes by some other name, I know no-one by that name, Mendax.' Kill that off quick.

In fact Mendax had not ratted on Anthrax at all. That was just a technique the police used.

'You don't wish to comment on the fact that you have hacked into other computer systems and military systems?' If there was one thing Anthrax could say for Day, it was that he was persistent.

'No. I would prefer not to comment on any of that. This is the advice I have received: not to comment on anything unrelated to the topic that I was told I would be talking about when I came down here.'

'All right, well are you going to answer any questions in relation to unlawfully accessing any computer systems?'

'Based upon the legal advice that I received, I choose not to.'

Day pursed his lips. 'All right. If that is your att.i.tude and you don't wish to answer any of those questions, we won't pursue the matter. However, I will inform you now that the matter may be reported and you may receive a summons to answer the questions or face charges in relation to those allegations, and, at any time that you so choose, you can come forward and tell us the truth.'

Woah. Anthrax took a deep breath. Could the cops make him come answer questions with a summons? They were changing the game midway through.

Anthrax felt as though the carpet had been pulled out from beneath his feet. He needed a few minutes to clear his head.

'Is it something I can think over and discuss?' Anthrax asked.

'Yes. Do you want to have a pause and a talk with your father? The constable and I can step out of the room, or offer you another room.

You may wish to have a break and think about it if you like. I think it might be a good idea. I think we might have a ten-minute break and put you in another room and let you two have a chat about it. There is no pressure.'

Day and the s.e.xton stopped the interview and guided father and son into another room. Once they were alone, Anthrax looked to his father for support. This voice inside him still cried out to keep away from his earlier hacking journeys. He needed someone to tell him the same thing.

His father was definitely not that someone. He railed against Anthrax with considerable vehemence. Stop holding back. You have to tell everything. How could you be so stupid? You can't fool the police.

They know. Confess it all before it's too late. At the end of the ten-minute tirade, Anthrax felt worse than he had at the beginning.

When the two returned to the interview room, Anthrax's father turned to the police and said suddenly, 'He has decided to confess'.

That was not true. Anthrax hadn't decided anything of the sort. His father was full of surprises. It seemed every time he opened his mouth, an ugly surprise came out.

Ken Day and Andrew s.e.xton warmed up a shaky Anthrax by showing him various doc.u.ments, pieces of paper with Anthrax's scribbles seized during the raid, telephone taps. At one stage, Day pointed to some handwritten notes which read 'KDAY'. He looked at Anthrax.

'What's that? That's me.'

Anthrax smiled for the first time in a long while. It was something to be happy about. The head of the AFP's Computer Crime Unit in Melbourne sat there, so sure he was onto something big. There was his name, bold as day, in the hacker's handwriting on a bit of paper seized in a raid. Day seemed to be expecting something good.

Anthrax said, 'If you ring that up you will find it is a radio station.' An American radio station. Written on the same bit of paper were the names of an American clothing store, another US-based radio station, and a few records he wanted to order.

'There you go,' Day laughed at his own hasty conclusions. 'I've got a radio station named after me.'

Day asked Anthrax why he wrote down all sorts of things, directory paths, codes, error messages.

'Just part of the record-keeping. I think I wrote this down when I had first been given this dial-up and I was just feeling my way around, taking notes of what different things did.'

'What were your intentions at the time with these computer networks?'

'At this stage, I was just having a look, just a matter of curiosity.'

'Was it a matter of curiosity--"Gee, this is interesting" or was it more like "I would like to get into them" at this stage?'

'I couldn't say what was going through my mind at the time. But initially once I got into the first system--I'm sure you have heard this a lot--but once you get into the first system, it's like you get into the next one and the next one and the next one, after a while it doesn't ...' Anthrax couldn't find the right words to finish the explanation.

'Once you have tasted the forbidden fruit?'

'Exactly. It's a good a.n.a.logy.'

Day pressed on with questions about Anthrax's hacking. He successfully elicited admissions from the hacker. Anthrax gave Day more than the police officer had before, but probably not as much as he would have liked.

It was, however, enough. Enough to keep the police from charging Anthrax's mother. And enough for them to charge him.

Anthrax didn't see his final list of charges until the day he appeared in court on 28 August 1995. The whole case seemed to be a bit disorganised. His Legal Aid lawyer had little knowledge of computers, let alone computer crime. He told Anthrax he could ask for an adjournment because he hadn't seen the final charges until so late, but Anthrax wanted to get the thing over and done with. They had agreed that Anthrax would plead guilty to the charges and hope for a reasonable magistrate.

Anthrax looked through the hand-up brief provided by the prosecution, which included a heavily edited transcript of his interview with the police. It was labelled as a 'summary', but it certainly didn't summarise everything important in that interview. Either the prosecution or the police had cut out all references to the fact that the police had threatened to charge Anthrax's mother if he didn't agree to be interviewed.

Anthrax pondered the matter. Wasn't everything relevant to his case supposed to be covered in a hand-up brief? This seemed very relevant to his case, yet there wasn't a mention of it anywhere in the doc.u.ment. He began to wonder if the police had edited down the transcript just so they could cut out that portion of the interview.

Perhaps the judge wouldn't be too happy about it. He thought that maybe the police didn't want to be held accountable for how they had dealt with his mother.

The rest of the hand-up brief wasn't much better. The only statement by an actual 'witness' to Anthrax's hacking was from his former room-mate, who claimed that he had watched Anthrax break into a NASA computer and access an 'area of the computer system which showed the lat.i.tude/longitude of ships'.

Did s.p.a.ce ships even have longitudes and lat.i.tudes? Anthrax didn't know. And he had certainly never broken into a NASA computer in front of the room-mate. It was absurd. This guy is lying, Anthrax thought, and five minutes under cross-examination by a reasonable lawyer would ill.u.s.trate as much. Anthrax's instincts told him the prosecution had a flimsy case for some of the charges, but he felt overwhelmed by pressure from all sides--his family, the bustle in the courtroom, even the officiousness of his own lawyer quickly rustling through his papers.

Anthrax looked around the room. His eyes fell on his father, who sat waiting on the public benches. Anthrax's lawyer wanted him there to give evidence during sentencing. He thought it would look good to show there was a family presence. Anthrax gave the suggestion a cool reception. But he didn't understand how courts worked, so he followed his lawyer's advice.