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APPROACHING ZERO

Gliss they had arrested Steffen - unnecessarily, as it happens, because Gliss could hear him being questioned in a nearby cell.

Gliss was interrogated for two and a half hours before his passport was returned. Half an hour later he was set free. On his return to the hotel, Ursula told him she had phoned their friends in Paris, who had contacted the German police, who had in turn called the secret service. The agency, it was presumed, had prevailed on the French authorities to release Gliss.

Steffen wasn't so lucky. He was held in the police cells for two days, under continuous interrogation. He says he was allowed to sleep for only three to four hours each day. Steffen told them all he knew, including the fact that a full list of computers penetrated by the VAXbusters had been presented to the German authorities, and didn't include the two French sites. He also insisted that all Chaos members had stopped hacking.

While Steffen was being interrogated, Gliss told the 500 delegates at SECURICOM of his experience and of Steffen's incarceration. He also read Steffen's paper, which had been written to help the French improve their computer security. Later he contacted the German authorities on Steffen's behalf, but they were powerless to intervene: the French were holding Steffen as an 'accessory' to the break-ins at Philips-France and SGS-Thomson.

Three times Steffen was brought before a judge, and each time he was remanded in custody for further questioning. The German foreign office discreetly pressured the French government over the case, until finally Steffen's dossier reached the desk of the French President.

Mitterrand presumably had enough problems: he ordered the German hacker's release. On 20 May, at five minutes past midnight, Steffen was driven to the airport and unceremoniously bundled aboard the night plane to Hamburg. He had spent over two months in a French jail.

While Steffen was incarcerated in Paris, the real culprits remained in Germany, safely beyond French jurisdiction.

Despite the French authorities' suspicions about Chaos and the VAXbusters, despite the raids in Hamburg, it was in reality the Soviet

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