Relaxinbc.com

The fact he keeps doing it suggests he's beyond redemption."Mitnick is said to have had a bleak childhood. He grew up in an impoverished area of the San Fernando Valley in California; his parents divorced when he was three, leaving him with his mother, who had to work long hours in a restaurant.He was a shy, overweight adolescent, but he got his first taste of beating the system at 13 when he worked out how to punch his bus tickets for free trips. "Arguably, he is or was one of the best hackers in the world," he said. "But he's been caught red-handed three times, and a leopard doesn't change its spots.

I have two choices: go to trial with an attorney who isn't prepared enough to competently represent me, or waive my right to a speedy trial."Mr Gold feels Mitnick is being made an example, to show other hackers what they may face if they follow in his footsteps. In computer format, the case against Mitnick amounts to 1,400 pages of witness statements and nearly 10 gigabytes - 10,000 megabytes - of electronic evidence."Nobody understands," he told an American reporter last December in one of his first interviews since the arrest "I'm basically being forced to do it. Mitnick, through his lawyer, has gently suggested they stop hacking.Last June he waived his right to a speedy trial, to have his trial date delayed again, because his attorney said that the US government had been slow in "discovery", making prosecution evidence available.Mitnick and his lawyer, Don Randolph, have a mountain to climb. "Mitnick's problem was that he didn't change with the times."Yet Mitnick, now 35, has not had much chance to change, inside the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center.From time to time he has been consigned to solitary confinement; he spent New Year's Eve (and the following two nights) sleeping on the floor because he was being shifted between areas of the prison for "security reasons" but there was no bed prepared in his new cell.He is barred from a computer or a telephone - and certainly never allowed to put both together.His supporters in cyberspace have begun a "Free Kevin" campaign, setting up a website ( www.kevinmitnick ) and by hacking into other sites to publicise the message. Whatever the crime might have been, it's inappropriate."Mr Gold has a special perspective.

He and Robert Schiffreen were the first people in Britain to bring the word "hacker" to public attention in the 1980s, when they accessed the Duke of Edinburgh's e-mail letterbox on British Telecom's Prestel system."When we did that, it wasn't illegal," said Mr Gold. The trial for those 1994 events is not even due to start until April."The US legal system is very different, but I don't believe he's such a menace that he should be held without trial," said Steve Gold, news editor of Secure Computing magazine "It's inexcusable I'm a member of Liberty and Amnesty. He still awaits a trial that has been delayed, and delayed, and delayed again. He is believed to be the longest-serving remand prisoner in the US.While on remand he has been sentenced once for other crimes (including a 1992 violation of probation), but he was adjudged to have already served the 22-month sentence. Shimomura pitted his skills against Mitnick to track him to his lair.Mitnick was taken to jail to await trial for his alleged deeds; pictures from the time show a chubby, sallow man looking shyly at the press cameras.Four years later, Mitnick is still in prison But he has not been tried for those crimes. To judge by reports at the time, he had been on a spree that should have made him as rich as Bill Gates.

It was said he had stolen details of 120,000 credit cards from an internet company, plus $80m (pounds 47m) in software from companies including Motorola, Sun Microsystems, Nokia and Fujitsu. His downfall began - so the story goes - at Christmas 1994, when he used telephone lines to break into the home computer of Tsutomu Shimomura, a supercomputer expert based in San Diego, California. Their target was Kevin Mitnick, then the country's - perhaps the world's - most wanted computer hacker. IN FEBRUARY 1995, FBI agents and US marshals arrested a bespectacled, plump, white male without a fight, in an apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina. "I don't know the exact circumstances of the case, but you do wonder whether the solicitors could have put up more of a fight," he said.The Kent Refugee League, a network of volunteers who help refugees with casework and appeals, is also unhappy.A spokesman said: "I hear about this sort of thing all the time."A lot of solicitors do a good job but some give the person something to sign and they never hear from them again."All these people want is some reassurance and to know things are okay.".

Last week, news arrived at her bedsit in Folkestone that her mother and brother had been sent back to Slovakia.When she contacted her solicitors they said there was nothing they could do.Gordon White, a local pastor who works closely with Slovakian Romanies, was sympathetic. I withdrew it and put in a serious statement."The victims of the legal predators are not confined to Kosovan refugees.Katerina Valickova, a Romany woman from Slovakia who has claimed asylum, gave birth to a daughter three weeks ago. "I realised the statement was insufficient to put my case across properly It was just one sheet of paper. "I don't how the system works and I need help to claim asylum."Others have been hindered rather than helped by their lawyers. A Kosovan woman, Samije Berisha, signed a statement provided to her by a solicitor the day after she arrived in Britain.Six months later, when she had picked up a little English, she discovered she had come to Britain ostensibly because her husband had been killed in Kosovo."My husband was actually with me in England," said Samije. When we entered England I banged on the side of the lorry to make it stop. The immigration people gave me some food and fetched a doctor because I had been sick." Agron, 21, declared that he wanted to seek asylum after he entered the country, so he is in urgent need of a reliable solicitor."I know I have to get a solicitor," he said.