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threats to computer security in lurid terms. The sense of impending technological apocalypse was heightened by a number of well-publicized hacking cases during the 1980s, of which the best known was probably the Kevin Mitnick affair.

Mitnick was said to be obsessed with computers. In 1979 he and a friend hacked into the NORAD (North American Air Defense command) mainframe in Colorado Springs. Mitnick has since said they didn't tamper with anything, but just got in, looked around and got out. Mitnick first ran foul of the law in 1981, when he and three friends were arrested for stealing technical manuals from the Pacific Telephone Company. He was convicted and served six months. In 1983 he was caught by the University of Southern California trying to hack one of their computers. Later he was accused of breaking into a TRW computer. In 1987 he was arrested for stealing software from a Southern California company and was sentenced to thirty-six months' probation.

Mitnick belonged to a group of Los Angeles area hackers called the Roscoe Gang. He and the gang allegedly used PCs to harass their opponents, to break into Defense Department computers and to sabotage businesses. He was also accused of breaking into a National Security Agency computer and downloading information on the agency and several of its employees. More seriously, he was charged with defrauding the computer company Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and MCI - the long-distance phone company - and with transporting proprietary software across state lines. The software was alleged to be a copy of DEC's Security Software System, which made it possible for Mitnick to break into DEC's computers and cause $4 million worth of damage.

Mitnick was arrested in late 1988. He was refused bail by several federal judges, who said there would be no way to protect society if he were freed. He was also denied access to a phone while in jail, for fear that he may have pre-programmed a computer to trigger off damaging programs by remote control. In 1989 Mitnick was sentenced to two years in prison.

The decision to deny Mitnick access to a phone was greeted with alarm by an increasingly nervous hacker community. 'We must rise to defend those endangered by the hacker witch-hunts,' wrote an

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