"Go ahead Jason. Let me have it."
"Frank Haggerty was not a doctoral student of mine, although he was a student. He worked in academic computing and took some of my classes in computer security. He was very bright and probably could have been a doctoral student, but he got on the bad side of some of the powers here and was forced to leave the university."
"How did that happen?"
"Well, he was really interested in hackers and how the operate. He felt that the best way to protect against hacking was to understand it first hand. So he got together with a few other like minded students and formed a hacking group. They got plugged into some hacker networks and began breaking into a wide variety of corporate computers accessible via the Internet. They kept copious notes on their activities, trying to document all of the trick and techniques known to hackers. I think their original intent was sincere, but it eventually turned sour on them."
"How so?"
"They broke into the university's main computer and changed a few grades to demonstrate how vulnerable the system was. The administration was furious and attempted to expel them. Haggerty's group brought out their journals and tried to show that the break-in was a legitimate activity done with the intent of better understanding security and showing a weakness in the university's system. The university was not impressed. They used the journals against the group citing them as documentation proving the break in. The administration claimed that the security hole could have been demonstrated without actually changing any data, but since data was actually changed, it crossed the line from an academic exercise to a crime."
"That's a pretty weak argument," I observed. "It sounds like the administration was being vindictive."
"That's what most of us here think," Jason continued, "but the administration won and the group was expelled. It was really a shame. They were a very bright and talented group."
"What did this group call themselves?" I asked with apprehension, thinking that I probably already knew the answer.
"These guys were clever on many levels." Jason replied. "There was a group of phone system hackers back in the 1980's that called themselves the Masters of Deception. Frank's group set themselves up in opposition to this kind of hacking and called themselves the Masters of Veracity."
So Frank was connected to the Masters of Veracity. My mind raced as pieces began fitting together. "But how did Frank manage to get his Ph.D.?" I asked, again thinking that I knew the answer. "We always check transcripts and your registrar certainly believes that Frank got a Ph.D. from you guys. So do a lot of other people for that matter."
"Well, that was what I needed to check on." Jason went on. "I checked the university's database and found that it has a record of Frank getting his Ph.D. from us and listed me as his advisor. Yet there is no paper work to back up the entry. Frank or one of his buddies must have hacked into the system and given Frank a doctoral degree. It certainly is a lot easier than doing a dissertation."
My mind drifted for a moment to my discussion of Margaret and how difficult it was today to verify an identity since so much of it relied on electronic information. We are who databases say we are. If the database says you are something else you can become something else. At one level Frank Haggerty was an illusion, a construct. At another level he was the Frank Haggerty that I had shared many pitchers of beer with. Which one was the real Frank Haggerty. Did a question like that even make any sense?
Jason interrupted my thoughts. "Tad, one thing that I am curious about. You said that Frank's name was Franklin V. Haggerty. His transcripts also had him listed that way. But Frank didn't have a middle name. I remember because on one of his applications he put down 'NMI' for his middle name. NMI stands for no middle initial, but we teased him like it was really a name and we were always trying to pronounce it.
"His middle name is Verus." I said. "In fact when I first met him, he introduced himself as Franklin Verus Haggerty, emphasizing his middle name."
Apparently there was some sort of inside joke that Jason was privy too, but I was not. He was laughing convulsively at the other end of the phone. I found it a little annoying but decided that I would have to wait it out if I were going to be let in on it.
"What's so funny, Jason?" I inquired, trying not to sound aggravated.
"You gotta love that Frank." He said, trying to suppress his laughter. "His mind is always working overtime." I could almost see Jason wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
"When Frank went up before the committee that expelled him, he was outraged and indignant that they questioned his integrity. They handed him the expulsion sentence and in an uncharacteristic outburst of anger he turned on the committee and said - 'I told you that I did not do this break-in with a malicious intent. I told you the truth, and truth is my middle name. You obviously don't know that now. But when you do know, it will be too late.' The committee dismissed him as just another weird computer person. But Verus is Greek for truth. I guess truth is his middle name."