UNDERGROUND
NASA Langley computer manager Sharon Beskenis – the admin Phoenix had accidentally kicked off her own system when he was trying to get Deszip. Beskenis had been more than happy to oblige and on 24 July 1990 she signed a statement in Virginia, witnessed by Day. Her statement said that, as a result of the hackers’ intrusion, ‘the entire NASA computer system was disconnected from any external communications with the rest of the world’ for about 24 hours on 22 February 1990.
In short, Electron thought, there didn’t seem to be much chance of winning at the committal hearing. Nom seemed to feel the same way. He faced two counts, both ‘knowingly con- cerned’ with Phoenix obtaining unauthorised access. One was for NASA Langley, the other for CSIRO – the Zardoz file. Nom didn’t fight his committal either, although Legal Aid’s refusal to fund a lawyer for the procedure no doubt weighed in his decision.
On 6 March 1991, Magistrate Robert Langton committed Electron and Nom to stand trial in the Victorian County Court.
Phoenix, however, didn’t agree with his fellow hackers’ point of view. With financial help from his family, he had decided to fight his committal. He wasn’t going to hand this case to the prosecution on a silver platter, and they would have to fight him every step of the way, dragging him forward from pro- ceeding to proceeding. His barrister, Felicity Hampel, argued the court should throw out 47 of the 48 charges against her client on jurisdictional grounds. All but one charge – breaking into the CSIRO machine in order to steal Zardoz – related to hacking activities outside Australia. How could an Australian court claim jurisdiction over a hacked computer in Texas?
Privately, Phoenix worried more about being extradited to the US than dealing with the Australian courts, but publicly he was going into the committal with all guns blazing. It was a test case in many ways; not only the first major hacking case in Australia but also the first time a hacker had fought Australian committal proceedings for computer crimes.