mation
Security and CFCA Telecom Security '90.

The phone rings every ten minutes; colleagues show up at the door to
chat about new developments in locksmithing or to shake their heads
over the latest dismal developments in the BCCI global banking scandal.

Carlton Fitzpatrick is a fount of computer-crime war-stories, related
in an acerbic drawl. He tells me the colorful tale of a hacker caught
in California some years back. He'd been raiding systems, typing code
without a detectable break, for twenty, twenty-four, thirty-six hours
straight. Not just logged on--TYPING. Investigators were baffled.
Nobody could do that. Didn't he have to go to the bathroom? Was it
some kind of automatic keyboard-whacking device that could actually
type code?

A raid on the suspect's home revealed a situation of astonishing
squalor. The hacker turned out to be a Pakistani computer-science
student who had flunked out of a California university. He'd gone
completely underground as an illegal electronic immigrant, and was
selling stolen phone-service to stay alive. The place was not merely
messy and dirty, but in a state of psychotic disorder. Powered by some
weird mix of culture shock, computer addiction, and amphetamines, the
suspect had in fact been sitting in front of his computer for a day and
a half straight, with snacks and drugs at hand on the edge of his desk
and a chamber-pot under his chair.

Word about stuff like this gets around in the hacker-tracker community.

Carlton Fitzpatrick takes me for a guided tour by car around the FLETC
grounds. One of our first sights is the biggest indoor firing range in
the world. There are federal trainees in there, Fitzpatrick assures me
politely, blasting away with a wide variety of automatic weapons: Uzis,
Glocks, AK-47s.... He's willing to take me inside. I tell him I'm
sure that's really interesting, but I'd rather see his computers.
Carlton Fitzpatrick seems quite surprised and pleased. I'm apparently
the first journalist he's ever seen who has turned down the shooting
gallery in favor of microchips.

Our next stop is a favorite with touring Congressmen: the three-mile
long FLETC driving range. Here trainees of the Driver & Marine
Division are taught high-speed pursuit skills, setting and breaking
road-blocks, diplomatic security driving for VIP limousines.... A
favorite FLETC pastime is to strap a passing Senator into the passenger
seat beside a Driver & Marine trai