EXTRA: Now an exclusive jailhouse interview with one of the most dangerous computer criminals in the world. This guy is such a threat that the courts won't let him use the Internet. It's a final desperate attempt to stop a high tech outlaw. (Camera shows man with face partially covered with a bandanna at keyboard.) You're watching a crime in progress. Extra has obtained this exclusive underground footage of computer hackers stealing phone services.

MASKED MAN: I'm gonna give my friends Caller ID, Call Forwarding, Call Return, and Call Queue.

EXTRA: That masked man isn't just any hacker. His nickname is Minor Threat and he's become a legend in cyberspace.

LAMPRECHT: It was kind of a rush to get in the system. I guess being somewhere you're not supposed to be.

EXTRA: This is Minor Threat unmasked -- 24 year old Chris Lamprecht -- an unlikely anti-hero who's now serving a near six-year sentence at a federal penitentiary in Texas. He has the unfortunate distinction of being the first person ever banned from the Internet.

LAMPRECHT: Being banned from the Internet is kinda like being banned from the telephone, you know, it's at least as important as a phone nowadays.

EXTRA: According to his sentence, Lamprecht cannot use the Internet or any computer with a modem until the year 2003 when his probation expires. The judge says it's necessary because of Lamprecht's long history of hacking. But Lamprecht claims it's a cruel and unusual punishment that will prevent him from getting a job when he's released.

LAMPRECHT: In my field, maybe, you know, everybody's going to ask me about Internet use and if I tell them I can't use the Internet then I probably can't work there.

EXTRA: Judges normally have a lot of leeway in declaring probation conditions. For example. Michael Milken was barred from Wall Street after his securities fraud conviction. It's unclear how the Internet restriction will be enforced, but Lamprecht may be subject to random checks.

LAMPRECHT: They'd have to follow me around everywhere I go to do that.

EXTRA: Computers have been Lamprecht's world since he was 9 years old. By the time he was in his late teens, he was hacking into phone lines and breaking into businesses to steal passwords. He made this video with a friend a sort of training film for aspiring cyber thieves. Finally in 1995 he was nabbed.

PRISON GUARD (taking ID photo): Chris, go ahead and look straight at the camera.

EXTRA: Today the closest Lamprecht gets to a computer is when he poses for his prison id card.

PRISON GUARD: It'll come up in just a second, it needs to warm up. You know about computers. (laughter) You could probably make this thing yourself.

EXTRA: But prison is no laughing matter. Lamprecht was so depressed when he arrived he tried to kill himself by swallowing 99 sleeping pills.

LAMPRECHT: Luckily it didn't work, and after that I realized it's not what I want to do.

EXTRA: What he really wants to do is to return to the world of computers, but he says he won't break the law to do it.

LAMPRECHT: Oh sure, I'll be tempted. But I'll just have to remember the 5 years I did here. It won't take long to make up my mind.

EXTRA: Well, Chris is scheduled to get out of prison in the year 2000. He's also launched an appeal of his ban from the Internet.