`Oh,' Mendax paused. `What are their names?'
`John McLoughlin and Boris Kayser. They did Electron's case.'
Trax and Prime Suspect decided to plead guilty. Once they saw the overwhelming evidence—data taps, telephone voice taps, data seized during the raids, nearly a dozen statements by witnesses from the organisations they had hacked, the 300-page Telecom report—they figured they would be better off pleading. The legal brief ran to more than 7000 pages. At least they would get some kudos with the judge for cooperating in the police interviews and pleading early in the process, thus saving the court time and money.
Mendax, however, wanted to fight the charges. He knew about Pad and
Gandalf's case and the message from that seemed to be pretty clear:
Plead and you go to prison, fight and you might get off free.
The DPP shuffled the charges around so much between mid-1994 and 1995 that all the original charges against Trax, issued on 20 July 1994, were dropped in favour of six new charges filed on Valentines Day, 1995. At that time, new charges—largely for hacking a Telecom computer—were also laid against Mendax and Prime Suspect.
By May 1995, the three hackers faced 63 charges in all: 31 for Mendax, 26 for Prime Suspect and six for Trax. In addition, NorTel claimed the damages attributed to the hacker incident totalled about $160000—and the company was seeking compensation from the responsible parties. The Australian National University claimed another $4200 in damages.
Most of the charges related to obtaining illegal access to commercial or other information, and inserting and deleting data in numerous computers. The deleting of data was not malicious—it generally related to cleaning up evidence of the hackers' activities. However, all three hackers were also charged with some form of `incitement'. By writing articles for the IS magazine, the prosecution claimed the hackers had been involved in disseminating information which would encourage others to hack and phreak.
On 4 May 1995 Mendax sat in the office of his solicitor, Paul
Galbally, discussing the committal hearing scheduled for the next day.
Galbally was a young, well-respected member of Melbourne's most prestigious law family. His family tree read like a Who's Who of the law. Frank Galbally, his father, was one of Australia's most famous criminal barristers. His uncle, Jack Galbally, was a well-known lawyer, a minister in the State Labor government of John Cain Sr and, later, the Leader of the Opposition in the Victorian parliament. His maternal grandfather, Sir Norman O'Bryan, was a Supreme Court judge, as was his maternal uncle of the same name. The Galballys weren't so much a family of lawyers as a legal dynasty.
Rather than rest on his family's laurels, Paul Galbally worked out of a cramped, 1970s time-warped, windowless office in a William Street basement, where he was surrounded by defence briefs—the only briefs he accepted. He liked the idea of keeping people out of prison better than the idea of putting them in it. Working closely with a defendant, he inevitably found redeeming qualities which the prosecution would never see. Traces of humanity, no matter how small, made his choice seem worthwhile.