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.

It is by far one of the top movies in my list. It was informative and eye opening. Big brother is always watching... sometimes for their own behalf.

A must see, the truth must be told. god bless the internet

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

One has to wonder, after seeing a documentary such as this, if the ideas in the film were more important than its quality. The thing is every movie is propaganda: if they were artistic expression of creative people they wouldn't all look the same. Most people are not actually paying for truth and they are not paying for art, instead they are only looking for validation of their own concepts and ideas.

That is why I find it difficult to comment on a film like Freedom Downtime. On one hand I totally believe Kevin Mitnick and a lot of hackers to have been mistreated and witch hunted by governments and the American one in particular. On the other hand it is hard to take seriously a documentary that is almost completely one-sided, like Michael Moore's stuff.

The entire premise of the film is that Kevin's friends talk freely to Emmanuel Goldstein, while corporations, government agencies and hostile witnesses and agitators in the Mitnick case refuse to cooperate. But I can't possibly buy that. They accidentally met two friendly lawyers during the making of the film; I am sure they could have made a whole lot more trying to tackle the problem legally and diplomatically. A high profile case like that should have attracted a lot of legal vultures. But instead the makers of the film went out of their way to show how unfair they were treated and thrown out from every place they were trying to get to. So did Moore, if you remember his movies, and they were of the same format: sticking it to people and then complaining they were not taken seriously, then showing only the producer's point of view.

I have read Mitnick's book, which is much more open and moderate, and it had a whole lot much of an effect on me. This film is two hours long and it very rarely actually discloses facts. Probably Wikipedia's page is more informative than this documentary. I had the impression it told more about Bernie S. than about Kevin Mitnick, so clearly something was off. There is an interview with Mitnick bundled with the film, but it is so badly made that I have to ask myself if Goldstein wanted to discredit Kevin. They feed him energizers and then let him blow off steam on record. The poor guy is so enraged and traumatized by his experience that he can barely express himself.

Anyway, to summarize: I really empathize with Mitnick's plight and the point of view of the authors of the film, but I don't think the film was very good. The purpose of such a production is to show a point of view in a way that brings more people to it, in a way that makes people believe the point. People that are in the field and have every reason to already believe what is in the film have no need to see it, while people who don't have very little chance to connect to anything Freedom Downtime has to offer. As such, it failed and was probably more of an ego trip for Goldstein and his crew.

I can't stop fearing, though, that I am having the same reaction the legal system in the US had about Mitnick: if the defense lawyer is not highly skilled and highly paid, probably Kevin is guilty; if the film is low budget and made by amateurs, then its message is probably not good.

Of course, the film is very opinionated in the first place, but as a documentary it shows how Mitnick was made victim of a public mud slinging campaign, how hackers (geeks!) were thrown into prison with violent maniacs, how prison authorities and the justice system abused them.

The film is a bit Michael Mooreish in style, quite entertaining if you know anything about the world of computers and does highlight some important facts, such as that many of the crimes Mitnick was accused of in the press were never proven, that the people who destroyed his reputation had never even met him and were in it simply for the money.