http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48928,00.html
Guess Who's Hacking to Dinner?
By Declan McCullagh (declan_at_wired.com)
2:00 a.m. Dec. 8, 2001 PST
WASHINGTON -- Kevin Mitnick says he never intended to spend part of an
evening chatting pleasantly with the federal prosecutor who put him
behind bars.
The 38-year-old convicted cracker (turned cause celebre, turned
conference pundit) showed up at the National Press Club on Thursday to
hear a scheduled presentation by Richard Clarke, President Bush's new
cyber-security czar.
But Clarke had bowed out of participating in the event, and
Christopher Painter, now deputy chief of the Justice Department's
computer crime section, took his place.
"I was shocked to see him here," Mitnick says of Painter, who had been
a lead attorney in his prosecution. "If I knew he was going to be
here, I wouldn't have come."
At first, Painter seemed reluctant to speak with the world's most
infamous hacker-defendant. After all, Painter had included the U.S. v.
Mitnick case on the bio distributed to the roughly 60 attendees. But
after half an hour or so -- the open bar may have helped -- prosecutor
and ex-hacker were chatting amiably enough about old times.
"I told him that my case was over," Mitnick says. "Let bygones be
bygones. He said he had no animosity toward me."
Painter phoned us Friday to set the record straight.
"My problem with Mitnick these days is that he's never really accepted
responsibility for his conduct," Painter said.
Painter added: "I hope he gets his life together, and I bear him no
ill-will, but I think if you don't accept responsibility and you
glamorize hacking and you get attention based on your former exploits,
that sends the wrong message to people."
Also on the panel was Mark Rasch, yet another Justice Department
attorney -- albeit one now in private practice -- who had helped with
Mitnick's prosecution.
Rasch greeted his old adversary -- who didn't recognize him -- warmly
enough. "I knew more about you than you knew about me," said Rasch,
who's now vice president of Predictive Systems.
[...]
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Received on Dec 08 2001
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