Freedom Downtime

I was fortunate enough to see this film at its first screening at HOPE2000 in New York City. The first release was not the final and it had some minor problems. I watched the finished version at the NY Film and Video Festival at the Sutton Theatre. There were many interesting changes, mostly for the better.

The movie is about the life of "SUPER HACKER" Kevin Mitnick. It explains why his case was flawed and the propaganda the media released about the trials. The narrator, Emmanuel Goldstein, goes on an adventure with some of his friends from NYC to various places relating to Kevin or the Hacker world.

There are scenes thrown in just for fun and also very serious messages about the government's misuse of power. An X-Con, Bernie S, explains his chilling experience in jail and how it nearly cost him his life. All of this over a box of crystals that could be used to steal telephone service.

The movie is funny and educational. It should appeal to all members of the hacking community and those who wish to become informed.

The film doesn't end at the credits.

This is an interesting documentary about a subject that is often ignored - the court's and police's lack of knowledge about anything connected to a network, and medias habit of twisting or ignoring facts when they see they can make more money. As a non-American, there are some things that I don't get, but over all the film is very good at telling us how things work, and in my country (Sweden), the events in this film might get another point of view, since the police raid on the pirate bay in April 2006, where many things got eerily similar to what happened to Mitnick.

In a film making point of view Freedom Downtime is lacking though, the editing could be better, and the sound mixing got some flaws (but I must say it was a long time since I saw the film, so I could remember incorrectly). Still, this is a must see for anyone interested in the hacker community, or the odd behaviour of the "justice".

The simple truth is that the American justice and prison system are run by private corporation and if the government wants to get rid of someone they just hand them over to this system. This movie is about just one person that this has happened too. Unfortunately for Mitnick he was the scapegoat used to pass a lot of laws to protect corporations and allow them to right off a lot of expenses and steal a lot of money by blaming hackers. This is the real message of the movie. Just a simple wake up call to the people.

This movie is much more then the story of Mitnick, a computer user at a time when very few people knew how to turn them on. He was used and abused, his life destroyed and his freedom taken away. And the scary truth is most people really didn't care because it was happening to someone else.

This is a great movie, funny beyond what you would expect. Informative beyond what it seems, all you have to do is listen to what the "geeks" are saying. It's filled with great REAL characters that will make you laugh out loud.

Watch this movie if you want to have a great time and learn more then you would watching a year of Hollywood movies Great job to the cast and crew and the hackers and the geeks ... I loved it

The documentary centers on the fate of Mitnick, who is claimed to have been misrepresented in the feature film Takedown (2000) produced by Miramax and adapted from the book by the same name by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff, which is based on disputed events. The film also documents a number of computer enthusiasts who drive across the United States searching for Miramax representatives and demonstrating their discontent with certain aspects of the bootleg script of Takedown they had acquired. Several notable and iconic figures from the hacking community appear in the movie, including Phiber Optik (Mark Abene), Bernie S (Ed Cummings), Alex Kasper, and (director) Emmanuel Goldstein (Eric Corley). Freedom Downtime tries to communicate a different view of the hacker community from that usually shown by the mainstream media, with hackers being depicted as curious people who rarely intend to cause damage, driven by a desire to explore and conduct pranks.

Freedom Downtime is basically a personal video record of the "Free Kevin" campaign to free notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick. It's not really about hacking at all and the comparisons to Michael Moore are only appropriate in that the filmmaker confronts those who have been deemed as bad guys. Other than that, Freedom Downtime shares nothing in common with Michael Moore films and is an interesting, albeit scary, look at the justice system in the USA.

It should be an interesting film for anyone who remembers the "Free Kevin" campaign that was once so prevalent on the internet. It's full of that dry humor so appreciated by hacker culture, which adds a little hacker flavor to an otherwise serious subject. Those not familiar with Mitnick may not appreciate the film as much, but they'll still come away with an inside glimpse into serious problems with the justice system and the corporate media's willingness to ignore the truth when it wishes to do so. Of course, this won't come as a big surprise today, when trust in the corporate media is at an all-time low and people have turned to the internet as a result.