UNDERGROUND

A handful of Prime Suspect’s friends – none of them from the computer underground – trickled in. The hacker’s mother chatted nervously with them.

Court was called into session and everyone settled into their seats. The first case, it turned out, was not Prime Suspect’s. A tall, silver-haired man in his mid-fifties, with eyes so blue they were almost demonic, stepped into the dock. As the reporters began taking notes, Prime Suspect tried to imagine what crime the polished, well-dressed man had committed.

Child molesting.

The man had not just molested children, he had molested his own son. In the parents’ bedroom. Repeatedly. On Easter Sunday. His son was less than ten years old at the time. The whole family had collapsed. Psychologically scarred, his son had been too traumatised even to give a victim impact statement.

For all of this, Judge Russell Lewis told the court, the man had shown no remorse. Grave-faced, the judge sentenced him to a minimum prison term of five years and nine months.

The court clerk then called Prime Suspect’s case.

At the back of the courtroom, Mendax wondered at the strange situation. How could the criminal justice system put a child molester in the same category as a hacker? Yet, here they both were being sentenced side by side in the same County Court room.

Boris Kayser had called a collection of witnesses, all of whom attested to Prime Suspect’s difficult life. One of these, the well- regarded psychologist Tim Watson-Munro, described Prime Suspect’s treatments at the Austin Hospital and raised the issue of reduced free-will. He had written a report for the court.

Judge Lewis was quick to respond to the suggestion that hacking was an addiction. At one point, he wondered aloud to the courtroom whether some of Prime Suspect’s hacking activi- ties were ‘like a shot of heroin’.

Before long, Kayser had launched into his usual style of courtroom address. First, he criticised the AFP for waiting so long to charge his client.