Kevin Mitnick, who spent five years is prison for alleged computer crime offences, is to play a CIA computer expert in an episode of an American TV series to be aired next Sunday.

Bringing a touch of credibility into the TV Haxploitation genre, Mitnick will plays the agent in an episode of new ABC series Alias called "Doppelganger", Wiredreports.

Mitnick's terms of probation since his release in January 2000 ban him from using computers without the permission of his parole officer, so the show's production team had to set up a dummy computer for him to use during filming.

Sounds interesting, and we're sure it'll play better than the much derided Takedown, the "dramatisation" of the pursuit and capture of Mitnick.

After an extended spell on the run, Mitnick was arrested in February 1995 for hacking into the systems of firms like Sun Microsystems, MCI and Motorola, and obtaining copies of proprietary mobile phone code. He was held without bail for four and a half years, before he pleaded guilty to the unauthorised entry of computer systems, which earned him another eight months in the can.

Brit newspaper The Guardian gave Alias the thumbs up at the weekend in its roundup of US TV programmes. The show is about a woman who's college kid by day, spy by night. However the Guardian thinks the production team behind the show blew its wad on the opening episode. This was so good, apparently, that Alias has nowhere left to go. ®

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External links

ABC's Alias home page