Old Friends
As I was making an attempt to track down one old friend (so far unsuccessful, but I appreciate the people who gave me pointers), another one found me.
Twenty years ago, I was a kid with a modem who knew just enough to get into trouble. Inspired by the movie WarGames , I wrote a little program on my Apple II which would wardial for other computers: dial thousands of phone numbers looking for another modem. I had this program pretty well tweaked, and it could pulse-dial almost as fast as most modems would tone-dial. My dad, you see, wanted to save a few bucks and didn't order touch-tone service on our second phone line.
I would start the program running before school in the morning, and come home in the evening to look at the results. I can't recall ever actually doing anything with the other computers I discovered, but it was a thrill to know I had actually discovered them.
My little exploits ended with a visit from the Minneapolis police, including the person who was the closest they had to a computer crime specialist at the time, call him Sgt. Bob. With my mother looking on very disapprovingly, they explained that some suspect calls had been traced back to our house, and could they please have a copy of my dialer program and a list of the numbers I had found. They had no search warrant (probably because back then they were just as confused about this "computer crime" stuff as I was), and I made them copies of my floppy disks. My mother made them coffee.
A week or two later, I was invited to City Hall to be interviewed by Sgt. Bob. I was taken to a conference room with Sgt. Bob, mom (who had to drive me), and a couple other official-types. They read me my rights, and asked me if I wanted to waive my Miranda rights for the interview. This sounded pretty scary to me, so I said "No."
Sgt. Bob patiently explained that I didn't have to waive my rights, but if I didn't, that meant I wanted to have a lawyer present. That was my right, of course, but it would mean coming back another day. He also pointed out that I was not, at that time, being arrested or charged with any crime. So, with a nod from mom, I agreed, and we went ahead with the interview. They asked a lot of questions about my dialer program, what I was looking for, and what I did with the numbers I found.
After the interview was over, Sgt. Bob took me on a tour of the police headquarters, including their state-of-the-art crime tracking system. As near as I could tell, it mostly put colored dots on a map corresponding to reported crimes. He confided that three of the phone numbers I had called were for the computer of a big local bank, and when they recorded mysterious calls to all three of their top-secret phone numbers, the bank had panicked. What I had done didn't seem to be illegal, and the bank would be relieved to know that their mystery intruder was just some kid from the suburbs with a modem and no malicious intent.
Fast forward a few months, and I got another call from Sgt. Bob. They had recently taken a serial pedophile into custody, and had seized a box of floppy discs. The FBI had told them that this guy sometimes kept his diaries on his computer, but the files on the discs were all locked and nobody could figure out how to get at them. Any chance I could help?
I hadn't ever tried to do something like this before, and it was on a computer I wasn't terribly familiar with (the TRS-80), but I agreed to do what I could. We agreed to meet that Saturday at a local Radio Shack, which had offered to let us use its computers for this purpose.
The evening before, I got another call, this time from a reporter from a local TV station. They had been following the case of this serial pedophile, and did I mind if they filmed while I worked on the computers? I agreed, but pointed out that it could take me a long time to get anywhere, if I had any success at all.
The day arrived, and we all congregated at the Radio Shack. Despite not being familiar with the TRS-80, I quickly found a bug in the operating system which let me remove the passwords from the files. Within 45 minutes, I had unlocked and printed several of the mystery files. They were, in fact, what the police had thought they might be: explicit diaries of this persons exploits (real or imagined, I never knew) with young boys. Compared to the garbage which clogs my E-mail inbox every day, it was relatively tame. To my innocent (but curious) 14-year-old self, however, it was quite an eye-opener.
The reporter asked a few questions, and did a very brief interview with both Sgt. Bob and me, and we all went home.
That evening, we made sure to watch the news. We figured they might run a story in the human-interest section right after the sports: "14 Year Old Computer Whiz Solves Crime" right before "Cute Lost Puppies Need A Home."
To our surprise, they ran the story. Not only did they run the story, but they ran it as the lead. The lead as in "14 Year Old Computer Whiz Solves Crime" came before "President Gives State Of The Union Speech" or "Three Jumbo Jets Collide Killing Thousands" or whatever the other news that night was.
Within days, I had been interviewed for several TV shows, newspapers, and magazines. There was even a single-column story (with photo! of me!) in Time Magazine, back when everybody read Time. The worst, however, was the magazine article someone posted on the school bulletin board, with enthusiastic notes from some of the girls in my class ("You're our hero!"). When you're a socially awkward fourteen year old, standing out in the crowd is not a high priority.
Frankly, the whole thing was really overblown. I still don't understand what all the fuss was about, except perhaps that my story resonated in a certain way. Since then, I have been relatively media-shy, even at times when I could have been interviewed or seen my name in print. I overdosed at a young age, and see no reason to get high on fame again.
Last week, twenty years after our last contact, I ran into Sgt. Bob again, now just Bob. He retired from the police force after they tried to put him back in a squad car (this shows you how important the police thought a computer crime expert was in those days). He is now working as an independent consultant helping big companies develop disaster recovery plans.
A nicer guy you could not meet, but I will admit to being a little overwhelmed by this reunion. Apparently, this incident had quite an impact on Bob, since he kept describing it as the high point of his career in the Minneapolis police. He uses the story of the 14-year-old computer whiz to illustrate the point with clients that not all computer hacking is malicious. I suspect it was a bit of a shock for him to see the 14-year-old boy now a 34-year-old entrepreneur with three kids, an advanced degree in physics, and on his third career.
I shudder to think what would have happened had I been involved with this level of mischief today. Rather than a scary interview at the police station, followed by a neato tour by Sgt. Bob, today I think I would have been arrested, all my computer hardware taken, and I would be treated as a potential terrorist. Sadly, such are the times we live in.