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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #83 |
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DON'T FUCK WITH MISOGYNIST UNIX HACKERS
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by Frank Oz
The following is not entirely fictional... it just goes to show that
not all hackers are `Q00l elEEt d00dz'. If you don't find it
interesting because it doesn't feature beleagured hackers fighting
against the injustice of the System... too bad. Life isn't like that
all the time.
THERE'S THIS guy... let's call him Alvin. He's your standard Unix
hacker; tall, gangly, socially retarded, lives for his machines; very
intelligent. Still, as Larry Niven said: `Intelligence is a
goal-seeking tool, and goals aren't always chosen intelligently'.
Heh.
Alvin had a goal: he wanted to propagate his genetic pattern. He
wanted to reproduce himself. Since humanity's cloning facilities
aren't exactly set up for `The Boys From Brazil'-style replication,
this procedure would require the cooperation of a female. We'll call
her Jenny.
Alvin seduced Jenny away from her previous attachment (who wasn't too
pleased about it, i can tell you) and got her pregnant, despite the
fact that she was only sixteen years old at the time. So, come her
seventeenth birthday, she had an extra present; a baby boy. We'll
call him Max.
Alvin was still hacking, full time; he'd spend all night breaking
into American computer systems, and all day sleeping. It was up to
Jenny to keep them fed, wash the clothes, make sure that their
AusStudy money kept coming in, AND take care of the baby all along.
Not much fun, but who cares what she thinks? She's only a girl, after
all. It's her place. It should seem natural.
She's concerned that Alvin's late-night hacking activities will bring
down the wrath of the Federal Police. Alvin denies this vigorously;
he's far too smart to get caught, isn't he? Damn straight. She wants
to leave and take Max with her, but there's no way in hell he's going
to allow that. In fact, he's so paranoid that she's going to run out
on him, he stops her from going out alone. He stops her from talking
to other people on the phone. One day - when he'd decided to drop
into the TAFE campus and put in an appearance - he'd rung home and
the phone had been engaged. When he got home, he picked up the phone,
pressed `redial' and found that she'd been talking to a friend. He
had to slap her around with a telephone book (doesn't leave marks,
you know) a bit, just so she wouldn't get any ideas. Now, don't get
him wrong; he wasn't keeping her as a slave because of who she was;
she was only there to take care of his son.
Still, a short time later, she managed to get away,and, surprise,
surprise! The federal police raided his house! They took EVERYTHING
(except the floppy disks hidden up the chimney)... he had to do a lot
of fast talking, had to cut some pretty hairy deals with the Feds
before they'd let him go. He didn't mind that; he had no intention of
complying with them. He was willing to say, sign or do anything
required to get away from them.
So, he was free again. Where was that bitch, Jenny? After shopping
him to the Feds (it had to have been her, obviously; he never would
have been caught otherwise), she'd run off with Max and was living
with some sleazy bastard (we'll call him Emerson). How dare she? Just
who did she think she was? Alvin believed himself quite within his
rights to break into her house when they were out and hide in the
closet with a knife, waiting for them to come back. Boy, would they
be surprised. And they were. He sure as hell put the fear of God into
her that evening. So what if she'd got a restraining order from the
Family Court to keep him away? Those laws didn't apply to him;
anyway, he knew what was right and wrong.
She had his son. His offspring, the living embodiment of his DNA. His
PROPERTY. Alvin began his carefully plotted campaign of harassment;
he'd need evidence if he was going to sucessfully regain custody of
what was rightfully his. He broke into Jenny's unit on several
occasions; he'd sift through the garbage for pieces of paper she
might have thrown out, collected poetry, diaries, anything which
could be used to prove her `instability'.
After a few weeks of this kind of treatment, Emerson had had enough.
He left, and Jenny took up with a strange guy we'll call Frank. Now,
Frank was what you'd call `unorthodox'; he was into submissive s&m
for one thing, and boy, was Alvin pleased when he found this out!
That sort of thing would look great in the Family Court when it came
to proving what a `terrible mother' Jenny was, and Alvin made the
most of it; breaking into the unit when they were out, breaking open
their `toy-box', spreading their s&m `toys' out on the bed. It made a
wonderful photograph.
They were, all of them, active in the BBS world; after hacking Unix
boxes, BBSes were a piece of cake. Alvin captured some very
interesting conversations on the local chat boards, and if they
weren't exactly what he wanted, well, he could always edit them. The
Family Court judges wouldn't know, would they? Most of them were so
computer-illiterate, they wouldn't know a capture-file from a
CAT-scan. The piece de resistance was when he broke into Jenny's unit
and made a copy of the phonebook file from Frank's terminal program.
Among other things, it had all of his passwords; this allowed Alvin
to call the systems Frank frequented and read his mail. Some of it
was quite interesting...
All this s&m stuff was fine, but he needed something more. Alvin
looked around... what was the current media whipping-boy? Child
sexual assault, of course! Frank was into s&m, he's probably into
child abuse as well! Little Max is only two years old, so he can't
tell anyone the -terrible- things they're doing to him, can he?
Step one: Frank has a job, which could present a problem... he might
be able to afford decent legal representation. Easy, ring up his
boss, good morning, sir, yes, were you aware, sir, that an employee
of yours is a paedophile? Yes, and he's into intravenous drugs, too.
And I have it on good authority that he has AIDS. Yep. Scratch one
employee. Frank, this is the dole queue. Dole queue, this is Frank.
The plan proceeds. Next, Alvin has to isolate Jenny.
Alvin still has access to little Max one day out of seven... well,
Max is obviously in danger here, so one day, Alvin simply waltzes off
with him and refuses to return the child until Jenny gets a family
court order keeping that dangerous pervert Frank away from His Son.
What can she do? Max needs her, he's still breast-feeding. The order
is signed. Bye, bye, Frank. He still tries to see Jenny, although he
isn't allowed to be there when she has Max, and if he's there too
often, the police receive a phone call from some concerned soul and
they zip around there to make sure the court order is being enforced.
Git along, Frank, and don't come back or Alvin will go to Community
Services and play those tapes of little Max describing the awful
things Frank did to him. Never mind that the kid's two and a half
years old and has half the vocabulary of the Cookie Monster.
There's an interesting point that Alvin was well aware of; the Family
Court don't care how evidence was obtained. It doesn't matter if it
was obtained illegally; it's all admissible. Obviously, if Jenny and
Frank had known this, they would have been a bit more careful about
the things they did in bed...
Anyway, Frank's out of the way now. Time passes; the case comes to
the Family Court. Jenny, being the sort of girl who can be brow-
beaten into having this guy's baby in the first place, is a pushover
for Alvin's wolverine-like lawyer. He takes her to pieces, and when
the dust settles, she's lucky if she gets to see Max at all.
Supervised access once a week.
Still, this isn't enough. The NERVE of this woman! She goes back to
court, trying to get some access back (after all, Max is her child as
well!)! Can't have any of that. Let's see what else we can dig up,
thinks Alvin.
That child pornography bit was a good scam, wasn't it? Well, let's
track down Frank and see if we can't implicate him again, and, by
association, Jenny. He owns a VCR and lots of tapes... a few words in
the right ears, and the police pay Frank a visit, turn his flat
upside down, take his VCR and all of his tapes. Frank is
bewildered... he hasn't seen Jenny for well over a year! Why now?
Six months later, the police have finished going through the tapes.
They didn't find anything untoward, just your standard porn and lots
of Star Trek and Red Dwarf. Still, if it comes down to it, Alvin can
point out that Frank was under -suspicion- of owning child
pornography, can't he? I mean, there must have been something in the
accusation, or the police wouldn't have bothered searching the guy's
place, right? Right. And in the Family Court, that's just as good as
saying the guy was guilty.
Meanwhile, Jenny has met another guy. Let's call him Simon. Together,
they move from house to house, and Alvin finds them each time,
breaking in and stealing anything that looks like a diary. Finally,
she manages to escape him and find a place where she and Simon can
raise their own child.
This story isn't over yet, people. We'll keep you posted.
