From: William Knowles (wkC4I.ORG)
Date: Fri May 05 2000 - 00:30:00 CDT

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/05/04/BU71498.DTL

DAN FOST
Thursday, May 4, 2000

It was a glitzy party for a cheesy movie.

Tina Brown, the editor of Talk magazine, came to San Francisco last
week, unveiling for a tech and media crowd the Miramax movie
``Takedown,'' the hyped-up story of notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick and
the effort to send him to prison.

The reason why the magazine was promoting the movie was never exactly
made clear to the 150 or so people sipping wine and munching on
asparagus spears, Chinese dumplings and chocolate truffles at the
Delancey Street screening room on the Embarcadero. I suppose the folks
at Miramax -- a partner in Talk -- were letting the magazine use the
flick to promote itself, and to show how cybersavvy it is.

But never mind the movie. The really good story is in the fallout the
film has engendered.

The film is based on a book, also titled ``Takedown,'' that John
Markoff, a New York Times reporter and one of Silicon Valley's leading
journalists, co-wrote with computer security expert Tsutomu Shimomura,
who helped catch Mitnick in 1995.

The film stars Russell Wong as Shimomura and Skeet Ulrich as Mitnick.
The real Shimomura even has a brief cameo in the film.

Marin County author Jonathan Littman, who also wrote a book about
Mitnick (``The Fugitive Game,'' published the same day as
``Takedown''), believes that many passages from his book were plugged
into the movie.

While Markoff and Shimomura received six-figure sums for the rights to
their book, Littman hasn't received a cent -- and last month he filed
a suit charging Miramax with copyright infringement. Miramax is
contesting the suit.

Mitnick, who was released from prison earlier this year, says he
settled a lawsuit with Miramax in which he claimed the movie defamed
him. He wouldn't reveal details of the settlement.

Even Markoff, on whose book the movie was based, expressed disdain for
what the filmmakers did to the story.

``I thought it was a fundamentally dishonest movie,'' he said the day
after the screening, which he attended. ``This is every reporter's
nightmare, to see the truth get trampled.''

While Markoff wouldn't pass judgment on the merits of Littman's suit,
his comments may have the ironic effect of supporting his
onetime-ally-turned-rival. The two talked regularly and met for lunch
while they were each following the dramatic story of Mitnick's life
underground, but they each gave the other an unflattering portrayal in
their books.

Markoff's book told the story of Shimomura's pursuit and capture of
Mitnick, while Littman's book was based on extensive conversations
with Mitnick and was far more sympathetic to the hacker.

The movie contains many scenes of Mitnick in his fugitive days, and
Markoff admits that neither he nor Shimomura ``knew anything about
Kevin's activities except for the two or three weeks that Tsutomu was
chasing him.

``Markoff noted that the screenwriters didn't necessarily have to rely
on Littman's book; they could have dug for information on their own
from some of the voluminous public records in the case.

The movie has been shown in France, and plans for American
distribution -- whether in theaters or on television -- are unclear.

Littman wouldn't comment on the lawsuit, or on anything Mitnick-
related; his attorney, Bill Edlund of the San Francisco firm Barko,
Zankel, Tarrant & Miller, handled all comments.

But the complaint filed in Littman's case, which was e-mailed to me by
his public relations firm, makes a compelling argument for copyright
infringement. Miramax representatives would not discuss any specific
points raised in Littman's suit.

The complaint details several scenes from the movie that appear to
come directly from Littman's book, including virtually the first 20
minutes of the film.

Scenes with eerie similarity include those depicting Mitnick meeting
in a strip club with another hacker who is an undercover government
agent, Mitnick conning Pac Bell employees into giving him information
about security software and Mitnick using that software to eavesdrop
on phone calls by FBI agents.

A particularly damning comparison involves a page from Littman's book
in which he writes that Markoff sensationalized Mitnick's story in a
front-page article in the Times.

Littman writes, ``There are plenty of allegations, but the only solid
charge against Mitnick appears to be a probation violation, generally
not the sort of stuff that lands a year- and-a-half-old fugitive case
on the front page of the New York Times.''

In the movie, an FBI agent reads that same story, and gripes, ``Even
the article says there's no proof. Nothing connects Mitnick to any of
these allegations. It's a reporter hyping a story.''

You can bet that in Markoff's book, he didn't accuse himself of hyping
the story.

``I learned about the story from an FBI source,'' Markoff said,
countering the movie's claim that his article spurred the FBI to
investigate Mitnick. (The hype charge has dogged Markoff for years,
with hackers and some journalists contending that he puffed up
Mitnick's misdeeds and Shimomura's heroics in the Times for the
purposes of getting a book and movie deal. Markoff said that he had
written about Mitnick since 1981, when he was a reporter at Infoworld,
and that he had no way of knowing his articles would become a book
when he was writing them.)

Littman's complaint also includes e-mails he and Mitnick received from
one of the scriptwriters for ``Takedown,'' John Danza. To Littman, he
wrote that, ``I'd really like to write a film that doesn't rely so
heavily on Tsutomu's book.''

To Mitnick, Danza said he read ``50 pages or so'' of Littman's book,
``and find it much more interesting than Shimomura's book.''

In both e-mails, Danza notes that his attorneys advised him not to
read Littman's book for fear of opening him up to copyright
violations.

Littman is seeking an unspecified sum, and his suit claims that while
Markoff and Shimomura received $750,000 for their book rights and
$650,000 for the film rights, he received nothing. Markoff said the
numbers were wrong, but he added, ``They're not off by an order of
magnitude, but I still have my day job.''

Even without the alleged copyright violations, the movie is a deeply
flawed telling of the Mitnick story.

Some scenes were invented out of whole cloth, including confrontations
between Mitnick and Shimomura on the streets of Seattle and in a
federal prison. It showed Mitnick hacking into Shimomura's computer,
which even Markoff said was unlikely, and it also portrayed Shimomura
as admitting wrongdoing in creating anti-hacking tools that ultimately
fell into Mitnick's hands.

``It's a very sensationalized and fictionalized depiction,'' Mitnick
said in an interview from his home in Thousand Oaks. Mitnick also said
the book ``Takedown'' was false and defamatory, although he never sued
the authors. He also said Littman's book contained inaccuracies,
because he lied to Littman in interviews conducted while he was on the
lam.

Mitnick, 36, remains on probation until 2003, and he's now fighting
his own First Amendment battle. He said his parole officer won't let
him speak or write on computer-related topics for money, even though
this is his area of expertise. ``The U.S. government is abridging my
First Amendment rights,'' he said. ``They don't want me to talk.''

Much of Mitnick's perspective on the case can be gleaned at a Web
site, www.kevinmitnick.com, which is maintained by friends of his,
because he is not allowed access to the Web or computers of any sort.

*-------------------------------------------------*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
Intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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