There was so much to do before that trip, so many things to organise. The house, the life insurance paperwork, the will, the funeral, the instructions for the family friend who promised to watch over both children when he was gone. And, of course, the children themselves.
He looked at his two children and worried. Despite their ages of 21 and 19, they were in many ways still very sheltered. He realised that Electron's anti-establishment attitude and his sister's emotional remoteness would remain unresolved difficulties at the time of his death. As the cancer progressed, Electron's father tried to tell both children how much he cared for them. He might have been somewhat emotionally remote himself in the past, but with so little time left, he wanted to set the record straight.
On the issue of Electron's problems with the police, however, Electron's father maintained a hands-off approach. Electron had only talked to his father about his hacking exploits occasionally, usually when he had achieved what he considered to be a very noteworthy hack. His father's view was always the same. Hacking is illegal, he told his son, and the police will probably eventually catch you. Then you will have to deal with the problem yourself. He didn't lecture his son, or forbid Electron from hacking. On this issue he considered his son old enough to make his own choices and live with the consequences.
True to his word, Electron's father had shown little sympathy for his son's legal predicament after the police raid. He remained neutral on the subject, saying only, `I told you something like this would happen and now it is your responsibility'.
Electron's hacking case progressed slowly over the year, as did his university accounting studies. In March 1991, he faced committal proceedings and had to decide whether to fight his committal.
He faced fifteen charges, most of which were for obtaining unauthorised access to computers in the US and Australia. A few were aggravated offences, for obtaining access to data of a commercial nature. On one count each, the DPP (the Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions) said he altered and erased data. Those two counts were the result of his inserting backdoors for himself, not because he did damage to any files. The evidence was reasonably strong: telephone intercepts and datataps on Phoenix's phone which showed him talking to Electron about hacking; logs of Electron's own sessions in Melbourne University's systems which were traced back to his home phone; and Electron's own confession to the police.
This was the first major computer hacking case in Australia under the new legislation. It was a test case—the test case for computer hacking in Australia—and the DPP was going in hard. The case had generated seventeen volumes of evidence, totalling some 25000 pages, and Crown prosecutor Lisa West planned to call up to twenty expert witnesses from Australia, Europe and the US.
Those witnesses had some tales to tell about the Australian hackers, who had caused havoc in systems around the world. Phoenix had accidentally deleted a Texas-based company's inventory of assets—the only copy in existence according to Execucom Systems Corporation. The hackers had also baffled security personnel at the US Naval Research Labs. They had bragged to the New York Times. And they forced NASA to cut off its computer network for 24 hours.
AFP Detective Sergeant Ken Day had flown halfway around the world to obtain a witness statement from none other than NASA Langley computer manager Sharon Beskenis—the admin Phoenix had accidentally kicked off her own system when he was trying to get Deszip. Beskenis had been more than happy to oblige and on 24 July 1990 she signed a statement in Virginia, witnessed by Day. Her statement said that, as a result of the hackers' intrusion, `the entire NASA computer system was disconnected from any external communications with the rest of the world' for about 24 hours on 22 February 1990.
In short, Electron thought, there didn't seem to be much chance of winning at the committal hearing. Nom seemed to feel the same way. He faced two counts, both `knowingly concerned' with Phoenix obtaining unauthorised access. One was for NASA Langley, the other for CSIRO—the Zardoz file. Nom didn't fight his committal either, although Legal Aid's refusal to fund a lawyer for the procedure no doubt weighed in his decision.