UNDERGROUND

Another policeman opened Pad’s wardrobe and peered inside. ‘Anything in here of interest?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Pad answered. ‘It’s all over here.’ He pointed to the box of computer disks.

Pad didn’t think there was much point in the police tearing the place to pieces, when they would ultimately find everything they wanted anyway. Nothing was hidden. Unlike the Australian hackers, Pad hadn’t been expecting the police at all. Although part of the data on his hard drive was encrypted, there was plenty of incriminating evidence in the unencrypted files.

Pad couldn’t hear exactly what his parents were talking about with the police in the other room, but he could tell they were calm. Why shouldn’t they be? It wasn’t as if their son had done anything terrible. He hadn’t beaten someone up in a fist fight at a pub, or robbed anyone. He hadn’t hit someone while drunk driving. No, they thought, he had just been fiddling around with computers. Maybe poking around where he shouldn’t have been, but that was hardly a serious crime. They needn’t worry. It wasn’t as if he was going to prison or anything. The police would sort it all out. Maybe some sort of citation, and the matter would be over and done. Pad’s mother even offered to make cups of tea for the police.

One of the police struck up a conversation with Pad off to the side as he paused to drink his tea. He seemed to know that Pad was on the dole, and with a completely straight face, he said, ‘If you wanted a job, why didn’t you just join the police?’

Pad paused for a reality check. Here he was being raided by nearly a dozen law enforcement officers – including represent- atives from BT and Scotland Yard’s computer crimes unit – for hacking hundreds of computers and this fellow wanted to know why he hadn’t just become a copper?

He tried not to laugh. Even if he hadn’t been busted, there is no way he would ever have contemplated joining the police. Never in a million years. His family and friends, while showing a pleasant veneer of middle-class orderliness, were fundamen- tally anti-establishment. Many knew that Pad had been hacking,