Freedom Downtime (2001)

A feature length documentary about the Free Kevin movement and the hacker world.

Director:

Emmanuel Goldstein

Stars:

Mark Abene, Ed Cummings, Robert Darlington

1 win.

Cast

Credited cast:
Mark Abene	...	Himself (as Phiber Optik)
Ed Cummings	...	Himself (as Bernie S.)
Robert Darlington	...	Professor
Emmanuel Goldstein	...	Himself
Sean Gullette	...	Himself
Lazlow Jones	...	Himself
Alexis Kasperavicius	...	Himself (as Alex Kasper)
John Markoff	...	Himself
Kevin Mitnick	...	Himself
Tsutomu Shimomura	...	Himself (archive footage)
Jeffrey Stanton	...	Himself (as Cellularguy)
Bruce Sterling	...	Himself
Deth Veggie	...	Himself

Storyline

Computer hackers are being portrayed as the newest brand of terrorists. This is a story of a hacker named Kevin Mitnick, imprisoned without bail for nearly five years. Freedom Downtime tries to uncover the reasons why the authorities are so scared of Mitnick as well as define what exactly he did. Surprisingly, no real evidence is ever presented by the authorities to back up the sensationalist claims in mass media. But when a Hollywood studio decides to make a movie about Mitnick's life through the eyes of one of his accusers, hackers turn to activism to get their message out. Through interviews with relatives, friends, lawyers, and experts in the computer and civil liberties arena, a picture of a great injustice becomes apparent. A cross-country journey uncovers some realities of the hacker culture as well as the sobering fact that so many technically young adept people are being imprisoned.

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Plot Keywords:

freedom | prisoner | two word title | technology | computer | 

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Genres:

Documentary | Adventure

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Official Sites:

2600 Productions [us]

Country:

USA

Language:

English French German Italian Spanish

Release Date:

22 September 2001 (USA)

Filming Locations:

30th Street Station - 3001 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$25,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

2600 Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

121 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

All throughout filming, Emmanuel Goldstein and the crew continued the weekly radio show "Off The Hook"...calling in to the radio station from a payphone wherever they happened to be that week.

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Quotes

Goldstein, Emmanuel: ...We knew it wouldn't work. We always knew it wouldn't work. But that's what hacking has always been about since the beginning - doing things you knew wouldn't just because you had to.

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Connections

References Takedown (2000)

User Reviews

What a documentary should be and what every American should see

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