Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 64

'It is your best interest to cooperate,' one of the cops told him. 'It would be in your best interest to come with us now.'

Anthrax pondered that line for a moment, considered how ludicrous it sounded coming from a cop. Such a bald-faced lie told so matter-of-factly. It would have been humorous if the situation with his mother hadn't been so awful. He agreed to an interview with the police, but it would have to be done on another day.

The cops wanted to search his car. Anthrax didn't like it, but there was nothing incriminating in the car anyway. As he walked outside in the winter morning, one of the cops looked down at Anthrax's feet, which were bare in accordance with the Muslim custom of removing shoes in the house. The cop asked if he was cold.

The other cop answered for Anthrax. 'No. The fungus keeps them warm.'

Anthrax swallowed his anger. He was used to racism, and plenty of it, especially from cops. But this was over the top.

In the town where he attended uni, everyone thought he was Aboriginal.

There were only two races in that country town--white and Aboriginal.

Indian, Pakistani, Malay, Burmese, Sri Lankan--it didn't matter. They were all Aboriginal, and were treated accordingly.

Once when he was talking on the pay phone across from his house, the police pulled up and asked him what he was doing there. Talking on the phone, he told them. It was pretty obvious. They asked for identification, made him empty his pockets, which contained his small mobile phone. They told him his mobile must be stolen, took it from him and ran a check on the serial number. Fifteen minutes and many more accusations later, they finally let him go with the flimsiest of apologies. 'Well, you understand,' one cop said. 'We don't see many of your type around here.'

Yeah. Anthrax understood. It looked pretty suspicious, a dark-skinned boy using a public telephone. Very suss indeed.

In fact, Anthrax had the last laugh. He had been on a phreaked call to Canada at the time and he hadn't bothered to hang up when the cops arrived. Just told the other phreakers to hang on. After the police left, he picked up the conversation where he left off.

Incidents like that taught him that sometimes the better path was to toy with the cops. Let them play their little games. Pretend to be manipulated by them. Laugh at them silently and give them nothing. So he appeared to ignore the fungus comment and led the cops to his car.

They found nothing.

When the police finally packed up to leave, one of them handed Anthrax a business card with the AFP's phone number.

'Call us to arrange an interview time,' he said.

'Sure,' Anthrax replied as he shut the door.

Anthrax keep putting the police off. Every time they called ha.s.sling him for an interview, he said he was busy. But when they began ringing up his mum, he found himself in a quandary. They were threatening and yet rea.s.suring to his mother all at the same time and spoke politely to her, even apologetically.

'As bad as it sounds,' one of them said, 'we're going to have to charge you with things Anthrax has done, hacking, phreaking, etc. if he doesn't cooperate with us. We know it sounds funny, but we're within our rights to do that. In fact that is what the law dictates because the phone is in your name.'

He followed this with the well-worn 'it's in your son's best interest to cooperate' line, delivered with cooing persuasion.

Anthrax wondered why there was no mention of charging his father, whose name appeared on the house's main telephone number. That line also carried some illegal calls.

His mother worried. She asked her son to cooperate with the police.

Anthrax felt he had to protect his mother and finally agreed to a police interview after his uni exams. The only reason he did so was because of the police threat to charge his mother. He was sure that if they dragged his mother through court, her health would deteriorate and lead to an early death.

Anthrax's father picked him up from uni on a fine November day and drove down to Melbourne. His mother had insisted that he attend the interview, since he knew all about the law and police. Anthrax didn't mind having him along: he figured a witness might prevent any use of police muscle.

During the ride to the city, Anthrax talked about how he would handle the interview. The good news was that the AFP had said they wanted to interview him about his phreaking, not his hacking. He went to the interview understanding they would only be discussing his 'recent stuff'--the phreaking. He had two possible approaches to the interview. He could come clean and admit everything, as his first lawyer had advised. Or he could pretend to cooperate and be evasive, which was what his instincts told him to do.

His father jumped all over the second option. 'You have to cooperate fully. They will know if you are lying. They are trained to pick out lies. Tell them everything and they will go easier on you.' Law and order all the way.

'Who do they think they are anyway? The pigs.' Anthrax looked away, disgusted at the thought of police hara.s.sing people like his mother.

'Don't call them pigs,' his father snapped. 'They are police officers.

If you are ever in trouble, they are the first people you are ever going to call.'

'Oh yeah. What kind of trouble am I going to be in that the first people I call are the AFP?' Anthrax replied.

Anthrax would put up with his father coming along so long as he kept his mouth shut during the interview. He certainly wasn't there for personal support. They had a distant relations.h.i.+p at best. When his father began working in the town where Anthrax now lived and studied, his mother had tried to patch things between them. She suggested his father take Anthrax out for dinner once a week, to smooth things over.

Develop a relations.h.i.+p. They had dinner a handful of times and Anthrax listened to his father's lectures. Admit you were wrong. Cooperate with the police. Get your life together. Own up to it all. Grow up. Be responsible. Stop being so useless. Stop being so stupid.

The lectures were a bit rich, Anthrax thought, considering that his father had benefited from Anthrax's hacking skills. When he discovered Anthrax had got into a huge news clipping database, he asked the boy to pull up every article containing the word 'prison'. Then he had him search for articles on discipline. The searches should have cost a fortune, probably thousands of dollars. But his father didn't pay a cent, thanks to Anthrax. And he didn't spend much time lecturing Anthrax on the evils of hacking then.

When they arrived at AFP headquarters, Anthrax made a point of putting his feet up on the leather couch in the reception area and opened a can of c.o.ke he had brought along. His father got upset.

'Get your feet off that seat. You shouldn't have brought that can of c.o.ke. It doesn't look very professional.'

'Hey, I'm not going for a job interview here,' Anthrax responded.

Constable Andrew s.e.xton, a redhead sporting two earrings, came up to Anthrax and his father and took them upstairs for coffee. Detective Sergeant Ken Day, head of the Computer Crime Unit, was in a meeting, s.e.xton said, so the interview would be delayed a little.

Anthrax's father and s.e.xton found they shared some interests in law enforcement. They discussed the problems a.s.sociated with rehabilitation and prisoner discipline. Joked with each other.

Laughed. Talked about 'young Anthrax'. Young Anthrax did this. Young Anthrax did that.

Young Anthrax felt sick. Watching his own father cosying up to the enemy, talking as if he wasn't even there.

When s.e.xton went to check on whether Day had finished his meeting, Anthrax's father growled, 'Wipe that look of contempt off your face, young man. You are going to get nowhere in this world if you show that kind of att.i.tude, they are going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.'

Anthrax didn't know what to say. Why should he treat these people with any respect after the way they threatened his mother?

The interview room was small but very full. A dozen or more boxes, all filled with labelled print-outs.

s.e.xton began the interview. 'Taped record of interview conducted at Australian Federal Police Headquarters, 383 Latrobe Street Melbourne on 29 November 1994.' He reeled off the names of the people present and asked each to introduce himself for voice recognition.

'As I have already stated, Detective Sergeant Day and I are making enquiries into your alleged involvement into the manipulation of private automated branch exchanges [PABXes] via Telecom 008 numbers in order to obtain free phone calls nationally and internationally. Do you clearly understand this allegation?'

'Yes.'

s.e.xton continued with the necessary, and important, preliminaries. Did Anthrax understand that he was not obliged to answer any questions?

That he had the right to communicate with a lawyer? That he had attended the interview of his own free will? That he was free to leave at any time?

Yes, Anthrax said in answer to each question.

s.e.xton then ploughed through a few more standard procedures before he finally got to the meat of the issue--telephones. He fished around in one of the many boxes and pulled out a mobile phone. Anthrax confirmed that it was his phone.

'Was that the phone that you used to call the 008 numbers and subsequent connections?' s.e.xton asked.

'Yes.'

'Contained in that phone is a number of pre-set numbers. Do you agree?'

'Yes.'