February 11, 2000

I suppose you've heard by now that Kevin Mitnick has been released from jail.

Then again, maybe you haven't. Maybe you don't even know who Kevin Mitnick is. Keith didn't. For the uninformed: Kevin Mitnick is a big name in the hacker world, and got in trouble for some of his more illegal exploits. He was thrown into prison, and a "Free Kevin" hacker subculture immediately sprung up. At any rate, he was released yesterday, to the unabated joy of many hackers, I'm sure. In fact, I wonder if this has somethin to do with all those denial-of-service attacks that have been going on lately.

The "Free Kevin" folks have raised about $3,000 to "help Kevin get on his feet." Well, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than three thousand bucks to get Kevin on his feet again. Somebody's going to have to totally support the guy. He's been forbidden to use any type of computer -- networked or not -- for three years.

Three years! Jesus Christ, I can't even live without a computer for three hours! I can't even think of a job that you could get these days that doesn't require you to use a computer sometimes. Even the manual labor stuff requires a computer, these days. Gas stations have them at the counters sometimes. Mechanics DEFINITELY use them. Maybe telephone line repairmen don't, I'm not too sure about that. Somehow I have a feeling that Kevin Mitnick isn't trained as a line repairman, though. Or in any other non-computer-related field, for that matter.

Personally, I feel that in today's society (American society, anyway, I can only speak for what I know) if the government is going to pronounce a sentence like that on someone, then the government has the responsibility to provide for that person's livelihood. It is unrealistic to expect someone who is trained only in the field of computers to be able to support himself by working at a job that does not require computers. Those jobs are few and far between, and I bet most of them require highly skilled labor.

I actually read a science fiction story about this once. I don't remember who wrote it, or the title, or when it was written (gee, aren't I helpful?), but the gist of it was that in a futuristic society where computers were necessary even to eat, a man committed some type of computer-related crime, and his sentence was to be implanted with a device that made him physically ill when he came within 10 feet of a computer. This forced him to rely on the help of society to accomplish the most ordinary, everyday tasks. I remember reading this as a kid and thinking how far-out that sounded, but you know, we're not too far from it today.

Then again, maybe I'm just biased, living in Seattle and all. When I was in high school, five short years ago, the only thing I used a computer for was to play Solitaire on in typing class. We even did the student newspaper by physically cutting and pasting the layout. So, maybe in some parts of the country Kevin Mitnick won't have trouble finding something to do with himself. Of course, I strongly suspect that he'll be violating the terms of his sentence within .5 minutes of leaving prison, but that's just me being cynical.

Politics, schmolitics. I think that one of the reasons I like "West Wing" so much is that it's a TV show, so I can suspend my disbelief that politicians would really be sincere. For an hour, I can really BELIEVE that the president would feel moral trauma over not pardoning a man on death row, and that his advisors really CARED about the issues in some kind of meaningful way. I have trouble believing that of our real government. I don't even watch speeches anymore, because I get so disgusted at the false emotion that I can't even listen to what they're saying. So later on I download the text of the speech to find out what their stance is on the issues. I actually have a huge stack of printouts that I still have to read from Bill Bradley and Al Gore's sites. They both have a bunch of position papers and speeches online, and I figure that it's my duty as a citizen to be as informed a voter as I possibly can be. People who aren't informed simply shouldn't vote, and that's all there is to it.

THE FORUM: Do you vote?

MORE FORUM: It's Leo-bashin' time!

EVEN MORE FORUM: Carolyn knows some really gross jokes.

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