Police photographers moved in to record the computer screen, keyboard, and modem. Every inch of the room was photographed: Nick's files, the books on his bookshelf, the posters on the wall. The police stayed until midnight: they confiscated Nick's Commodore and all the other equipment, loading the evidence into bags; they removed from Nick's room books, blank paper, empty folders, even the posters; and they interviewed Nick's older brother, Christopher. Nick's mother, who was out when the raid began, came home to find the team searching Nick's car.
Nick was still stunned: he was convinced it was all a mistake and that soon the police would apologize and go away. He presumed that he had never been locked out of the QMC mainframe because the systems manager wanted him to test the security, that , he was playing the game too. Nick was the stereotypical hacker: a kid who wanted to play a big-time computer game to demonstrate how clever he was. He didn't want to damage anything, although he did enjoy playing a few malicious pranks from time to time. When he was busted, Nick had only been hacking for six months.
Two days after the raid, he was taken to Bow Street magistrate's court and charged with having caused a total of $115,000 damage to computer hardware and disks. But what concerned the authorities the most were the suggestions that Nick had been hacking into MoD and MI5; in his room they found a little red notebook with dial-ups for ICLs operated by government agencies. They also wanted to know about the messages that had been left by Nick on the QMC computer alleging that he had knowledge of "surveillance" of the Labor party, CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and the Cabinet.
Nick told the police, and later two agents he presumed to be from the MoD and MI5, that he had never used the numbers in his book; they were for future reference. As for the messages about surveillance, they were fantasy, part of the games he was playing with the sysman at QMC.
The police were unimpressed. Nick was released on bail, but only after promising not to continue hacking. In May 1990, almost two years after the incidents took place, he was tried for criminal damage at London's Southwark crown court. The defense accepted the prosecution's charges, but argued that there had been no real criminal damage. Nick's lawyers were confident of getting him off, but it's said that he made a bad impression as a witness in his own defense: he was too sure of himself, too clever. Bob Jones later described him as "flippant and sneering." Nick himself thinks he was destined for a harsh sentence from the start.
"They wanted to make an example of me," he said. "They'd have sent me to jail for a parking ticket."
In the end, amid a flurry of national publicity, he was cleared of causing criminal damage to computer hardware, but convicted on four counts of damaging disks. After the verdict, defense counsel asked for but were refused bail. Whiteley was sentenced to a year's imprisonment, but eight months were suspended, and with good behavior in jail, he was paroled after serving only two months. He was released in March 1991.
Nick was the first person in Britain to be convicted of offenses relating to hacking. The overtones in his case--and the allegations of MI5 snooping and break-ins at the MoD--were enough to bring pressure on Parliament to propose a new computer crime law. The Computer Misuse Act came into effect in 1990: it made any attempt, successful or otherwise, to alter computer data with criminal intent an offense punishable by up to five years in jail. It could be called Nick Whiteley's legacy.
The contrast between Nick--generally polite, easygoing, and articulate--and his alter ego, the Mad Hacker, impressed everyone who met him. Nick Whiteley would never leave messages redolent with sexual aggression for Marlyn: that was the Mad Hacker, or Alan Dolby. Nick Whiteley wouldn't cause damage to an ICL: again, that was the Mad Hacker. Like so many hackers, Nick played out his fantasies on the computer keyboard. He was no longer Nick Whiteley from Enfield when he was hacking, he was the Mad Hacker, the Mr. Hyde of QMC, Hull, Glasgow, and JANET. With a computer he could become anyone he wanted to be; without it he was just Nick Whiteley.
Even when the computer underground was in its infancy, in the United States back in the early sixties, the use of aliases was symbolic of the growing subculture. Early phreakers had names such as Cheshire Catalyst, Dr. No, Midnight Skulker, and of course Captain Crunch. Hackers continued to use aliases to hide their identities--and more often than not to disguise their real selves behind a fearsome mask. Later, aliases became known as handles, after CB slang.
