The elusive Jeffrey Parson

Considering all the readers who say that hackers, and not software companies, should be held most accountable for computer security problems, I figured it was my obligation to go to U.S. District Court in Seattle yesterday to try to question Jeffrey Lee Parson, the 18-year-old from Hopkins, Minn., accused of releasing a variant of the Blaster worm last month.

I had my question all prepared. "Mr. Parson," I planned to say, "36 percent of people who read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Microsoft Weblog blame people (allegedly) like you, and not software companies like Microsoft, for the types of problems so many computer users suffered last month. How do you respond?"

OK, to come clean, I was actually assigned to cover his arraignment, and the questions I planned to ask were much more simple and less self-serving, as in, "What do you have to say about the allegations against you?" and "Dude, what's up with the hair?"

But you'll notice I say "planned to ask," because, in a sleight-of-hand befitting David Copperfield, Parson came into the courthouse through the back entrance, deftly bypassing all the Seattle TV, radio and newspaper reporters and photographers who were camped out at the front entrance -- thinking that he, not being from this area, wouldn't know about the back entrance. Clearly we were being naive about the ways of (alleged) hackers. Inside, he was hustled by us in the hallway too quickly to get a question out. He said very little during the arraignment. And afterward, with us media types learning from our mistake and staking out both the front and back exits, he evidently was allowed to leave via the side exit, typically used only for people in custody, which he wasn't.

So that's how a 6-foot-4, 320-pound teenager with a bleached mohawk slipped unnoticed past a pack of professional journalists.

I guess we'll have to wait until his trial to get answers to the questions I posed above. In the meantime, you can read our story today about the arraignment, our original story about his arrest, an interview of him by NBC's Today Show, and a story that recaps KING/5's enterprising effort to confront him when he arrived Tuesday night at SeaTac Airport.

Posted by Todd Bishop at September 18, 2003 09:30 AM