Walter O'brien

I am a filmmaker, consultant, and recruiter currently living in Los Angeles, California. My interests range from technology to entrepreneurship. I am also interested in web development, innovation, and programming.

He recalls the hacking occurrence that caused his infamous brush with the NSA.

" I got my hands on a phone coupler. Compuserve had simply started in the UK and it was possible to make a phonecall to Compuserve utilizing long-distance calls utilizing the phone coupler at 400 baud. Primarily the internet at the time was bulletin boards and I nosed around and discovered a DWG file, a drawing apply for Autocad, and it was a 2Mb file, which was massive for the time.

" I didn't know exactly what it was till I opened it and I found it was a drawing of the space shuttle then I understood 'I probably should not have this'. At the time I understood a couple of hackers and we were all writing shareware code for each other and they said that since I remained in Ireland I was outside of US jurisdiction but that I must have an extradition waiver prepared for them to sign if I 'd agree to do an offer."

' It wasn't SWAT teams with machine guns, but it was scary grown-ups in fits who were really stern and official. My dad was p **** d off however didn't comprehend why and my mommy was worried about me going to jail and was extremely psychological'

O'Brien, who was studying at the local CBS secondary school in Kilkenny, arrived home one day to find cars and trucks outside his home.

" It was the NSA by means of Interpol, not Homeland Security as the TV show provides it. At the time NASA didn't do its own IT, that was dealt with by the NSA.

" I agreed to explain exactly what I did and how they might stop people like me entering their systems."

In the years that followed Walter O'Brien began supplying computer services in the Kilkenny location, fixing computer systems for spending money with good friends who likewise had the same fascination with technology.

" I wasn't out to be the next Expense Gates or anything, to me fixing computers was much like mowing yards."

Making it through the smarts

He said it was while completing in the 1993 International Olympiad in Informatics that he understood a quirk in comparable people with high IQs. "The higher their IQs the lower their EQs.