The trial of notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick has been delayed again by US District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer, to April 20 1999 from January 19 1999, having already delayed it from its original April 14 1998 start date (04/02/98). Mitnick has been imprisoned without trial since 1995, when he was arrested for violating the terns of his probation from an earlier conviction. However, Mitnick’s court-assigned lawyer Donald Randolph told Reuters that Mitnick would actually like the trial to start later still in 1999 because of the massive amount of evidence he has to plow through as part of his defense. The judge in Los Angeles says she may also seek a separate trial for Mitnick’s co- defendant, Lewis DePayne. Meanwhile in the People’s Republic of China, 30-year-old Lin Hai is being tried for jeopardizing state security after he allegedly handed 30,000 Chinese email addresses to the publishers of US- based pro-democracy journal Dan Cankao (VIP Reference). Lin, who was arrested earlier this year (CI No 3,464), is the founder and manager of the Shanghai Zheng Fang Software Company. New York-based Human Rights in China has demanded his release and has called his trial a blatant violation of the right to freedom of expression. á
