I think it’s less the what and more the why. Kevin Mitnick was, by a lot of accounts, not even a very skilled “hacker”. But his high profile arrest and sentencing highlighted the issues of a developing internet and the immediate backlash of institutional forces, both government and corporate, quickly rushing to shut down any and all discourse around information and knowledge being “free”.

This created an equal but opposite backlash AGAINST the perceived ignorance of the government at what the internet actually was, and the corporations that wanted to control and monetize it. (In hindsight, we can see who won that one)

This helped propel an entire “hacker” subculture into pop culture and modern life.

“Free Kevin” became a common sticker or t-shirt at local 2600 meetings, or other hacking groups all over the U.S. and you’d see it left on defaced websites from young groups testing out their skills or latest exploits on poorly configured servers.

Even as quite a bit of these hackers would ridicule and deride Kevin for being bad, the saying continued because, in the end it wasn’t about Kevin. It was any or all of us. Doing things made illegal by legislators that didn’t even understand what was in the laws they were signing could have put any of us in jail. So “Free Kevin” became kind of synonymous for “Free Information”.

Through all of this was Kevin, just trying to live his life. He got out of jail, settled down and went on living. His passing was a lot like his life after prison, quiet and uneventful. Like a lot of people, I didn’t even know he was battling cancer.

So my comment below that Kevin is free is just, to me, one final call out into the dark for an idea, and a person, that helped me get to where I am today.