Porn Case Hinges on Hacker

A mysterious Canadian computer hacker who allegedly stole an electronic diary purporting to detail the sexual fantasies of an Orange County judge admitted to authorities that he’s hacked into thousands of other computers, according to a police affidavit made public this week.

The hacker’s credibility--and whether he worked on behalf of authorities--is emerging as a central question in the case against Judge Ronald C. Kline, who stands accused of downloading child pornography to his home and courthouse computers.

The hacker worked with Canadian police on at least one high-profile child porn case, the police affidavits said, but he was also suspected of possessing pornography and under investigation by the U.S. Customs Bureau.

The hacker, who was not named in the affidavit, describes himself as a “predator hunter” who accessed a diary and pornographic images on Kline’s computer, which was eventually turned over to authorities last summer, the affidavit states.

Irvine detectives and federal agents used the hacker’s evidence to obtain a search warrant of Kline’s home and courthouse computers.

The search unearthed more than 100 images of photographs showing young boys engaged in sex acts.

But in their latest court filings, Kline’s defense attorneys attacked the hacker’s credibility, saying that taking the judge’s diary was illegal and suggesting that the hacker was working on behalf of law enforcement at the time.

If a judge agrees that the hacker was indeed a police agent, the computer evidence could well be thrown out of court.

Defense attorneys also raised the possibility that the hacker could have doctored the diary and computer images that form the bedrock of federal prosecutors’ case against Kline.

“A person who can” hack, wrote attorney Paul S. Meyer in the court papers filed last week, “can also enter a personal computer secretly and alter its contents and add materials not previously present.”

The latest filings offer the best portrait yet of the shadowy figure whose computer work ultimately led to last November’s federal grand jury indictment of Kline, who also faces separate state child molestation charges. Kline has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and is running for reelection on the March 5 ballot.

Irvine police learned about the hacker’s infiltration of the judge’s computer from Julie Posey, founder of the Colorado-based Internet watchdog group, Pedowatch, which received an anonymous tip along with Kline’s diary from the hacker.

The hacker, the affidavit says, told Posey he was working as an informant for customs agents.

The computer diary detailed intimate thoughts that the author described about boys he met at an Orange County Little League baseball club, particularly about one 13-year-old player.

“I gave a lot of thought today about this business of approaching these kids too fast,” the diary says, according to the affidavit. “You have to make them come to you or it doesn’t work.”

After receiving the diary, Irvine detectives were left with the task of trying to track down the hacker, documents show. They finally found him, even though the anonymous tipster did his best to hide his tracks.

Hacker Said to Be on Both Sides of Law

The hacker did not return e-mails from investigators. Customs officials served a summons for information from the company that provided the hacker with an e-mail account. But the address turned out to be phony.

Irvine Det. Ron Carr eventually discovered a Web site the hacker was operating. He called Vancouver police to help contact the company that owned the site.

But the Canadian police said they actually knew all about the operator of the site, who turned out to be the hacker Carr was searching for.

The hacker, the Royal Canadian Mountain Police told Carr, was “essential in the apprehension” two years ago of a father suspected of offering his 8-year-old daughter for sex over the Internet.

Canadian authorities told Carr that the hacker, who allegedly possessed “large quantities of child pornography,” was no longer working as an informant, according to the court documents.

But the hacker had recently been on the other end of an investigation. Customs agents told Carr that the hacker was considered a suspect in at least one federal child pornography investigation last year, the records state, though they provide no other details about the case.

In August, Carr and a customs agent flew to Langley, British Columbia--a small town just outside Vancouver--to interview the hacker.

There, he told the officers how he created a virus to infect the computers of suspected traders in kiddie porn. The virus allowed him to examine the contents of each machine he infected.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 computers worldwide had been infiltrated by the virus, he told the officers.

The hacker described his virus as “the Trojan Horse” because it is attached to an Internet file that is downloaded onto the computer.