JUDGE DENIES HACKER ACCESS TO COMPUTER


San Fernando Valley hacker Kevin Mitnick wants to log on while in the lock
up, but a judge said Monday she doesn't think that's such a good idea.

"I have real apprehension about any situation where Mr. Mitnick is near a
computer," U.S. District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer told the 33-year-old
and his attorney.

After all, Mitnick was in court Monday for sentencing on digital crimes he
committed while leading the FBI on a manhunt through cyberspace and the
nation.

While Pfaelzer refused Mitnick access to a computer, she said she is going
to give him something else - 22 months behind bars for violating his
supervised release from prison on an earlier computer hacking conviction
and illegally possessing telephone access codes. Mitnick is expected to be
sentenced formally Monday, after the judge considers the terms of his
supervised release.

In custody since February 1995, Mitnick now faces a 25-count indictment
charging him with a 2-1/2-year hacking spree from June 1992 to February
1995.

Speaking Monday through his attorney in court, Mitnick said he now needs
access to a computer for strictly legitimate reasons - helping to prepare
his defense for the upcoming trial.

Donald Randolph said the government's case against his client includes
more than 200 million pages of discovery - "enough to fill a library" -
and that the only way that Mitnick can get a look at the alleged goods
against him is by scanning them on a computer.

Pfaelzer "didn't seem to want to hear computer and Mitnick in the same
sentence," Randolph said. "I'm going to have to be imaginative in trying
to figure out how my client is going to participate in his defense."

Randolph said there was no way that Mitnick could have used the computer
for nefarious purposes because it would not be equipped with a modem. Only
with that device could he connect to computers outside of the Metropolitan
Detention Center.

But Pfaelzer - who has a long history with Mitnick - noted at Monday's
hearing that she doesn't even trust him with a telephone anymore. In 1989,
Mitnick was 25 and in Pfaelzer's court for a bail hearing on his first
brush with the law in a hacking case. The judge denied bail and ordered
him held in a high-security cell, with no unsupervised access to
telephones.

That time, the former Pierce College student was accused of using a
computer to steal MCI's long-distance telephone codes and Digital
Equipment Corp. computer software. He was sentenced to a year in prison
and ordered to undergo counseling.

Released in 1992, but still on supervised release, Mitnick soon turned to
his old tricks, prosecutors say. He is accused of breaking into more
computers and telecommunications networks while on the lam. Mitnick was
captured 2-1/2 years later in North Carolina.

"He basically thumbed his nose at the court," said Mitnick's prosecutor,
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Painter.

Randolph said Mitnick is not a thief, but rather an electronic
eavesdropper. The difference is that Mitnick never tries to profit, the
attorney said.

At Monday's sentencing, Mitnick got 14 months for violating his supervised
release by breaking into Pacific Bell's  computers and associating with an
old buddy named Lewis De Payne, his co-defendant in the coming federal
trial. He received eight more months for the cellular telephone fraud in
North Carolina.