U.S. Admits Convicted Man Is No Hacker
Federal prosecutors this week abruptly changed the label they had hung next to Bret McDanel's name, turning him from criminal hacker into innocent whistle-blower.
In an extraordinary reversal approved by top Justice Department officials, the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to strike down a conviction it won last year against McDanel.
McDanel's crime: warning customers of an e-mail company he once worked for about a flaw that could let other people read their messages.
Online rights activists hailed the Justice Department move as a rare piece of good news in the escalating fight between free speech and technological security.
McDanel, 30, said Wednesday that he wished the about-face had come earlier.
He spent 16 months behind bars before and during his trial. His fiancee left him, his two cats had to be boarded with his parents and his reputation was trashed.
Even now, McDanel said his future was uncertain.
"I don't think my name can ever truly be cleared. If you type my name into Google, you will come up with tons of articles about what a bad person I am," McDanel said from his parents' house in rural Fiddletown, Calif., east of Sacramento. "If an employer were to search for my name, they're going to find a bunch of other people who know nothing about the case commenting on it."
McDanel's journey from computer guru to Metropolitan Detention Center inmate and back started with his amateur interest in security issues. Like many a young hacker, he began investigating holes in software and posting his findings to online discussion groups in 1994.
After attending community college in New Jersey, McDanel held a series of technology jobs. His wanderings took him to El Segundo-based Tornado Development Inc., where he headed security efforts. The firm, now defunct, offered a service that let customers retrieve their e-mail, voicemail and faxes through a Web site.
McDanel quit to go into business with his fiancee in 2000. Eight months later, he discovered that a security problem he had complained about while at Tornado had never been fixed. The bug could have allowed any of Tornado's users to view each other's mail.
After checking with Tornado and learning that the company had no plans to correct the situation, McDanel warned his old friends there that he would take matters into his own hands.
