The Abomination Read Online Free Page B
Author: Jonathan Holt
to Kat. âNow off you go.â
As she walked to the door she thought she was conscious of his eyes watching her, following those inappropriate bare legs of hers. But when she reached the doorway, and, without quite meaning to, glanced back to check, she saw he had returned to the corpse. He was leaning over the dead woman, her hand laid in his, examining it minutely. Like a manicurist, she thought; or someone extending an old-fashioned invitation to a lover at a dance.
Four
DANIELE BARBO SAT in a cell below the Verona courtroom, reading a book on mathematics while he waited for the jury to reach their verdict. A few feet away, his lawyer went through her notes, anxiously rehearsing the different arguments that might be required, depending on what combination of charges he was convicted of. She knew better than to involve her client in these deliberations. The same book that held his attention now had rarely left his hand during the trial, the proceedings of which he had deigned to notice only with the occasional disinterested glance, and she had learnt to her cost that any attempts at conversation would be rebuffed.
Eventually her client closed the book and stared into the corner of the room.
âIt wonât be long now,â she ventured hesitantly.
He looked at her, as if a little surprised to find her there, but said nothing. He already knew what the judge would decide. He knew it because, for the last five weeks, someone had been altering his Wikipedia profile, adding a new final section:
Conviction and subsequent life
In 2013 Daniele Barbo was found guilty of seven charges of computer hacking; failing to curtail trafficking of pornography, including underage pornography and sexual violence; facilitating criminal enterprise including identity theft and money laundering; and refusing to allow the authorities access to requested information. He was found âNot Guiltyâ on an eighth charge: living off immoral earnings. He was sentenced to nine months in prison, despite his lawyerâs pleas that her client was psychologically unfit for custody â a tactic that had worked at his previous trial.
Barbo committed suicide within a year of his release, drowning himself in the canal outside the Venetian palazzo his family had occupied since 1898. His family name died with him. The future of Carnivia, the website he created, remains uncertain.
The first time he was alerted â by an anonymous email â to the addition, Daniele simply erased it. Within seconds it was back. The same thing happened the next three times he wiped it. Someone had created a bot, a simple piece of software programmed to carry out this one task repetitively, rewriting Wikipediaâs page every time he corrected it. It was, on one level, a tiny, malicious little torture, of no real consequence, but it showed the lengths that those who wanted to attack him were prepared to go to.
Or, he reflected, it showed how much they wanted him to think that: to believe there was nothing they wouldnât do to destroy him.
He could easily have written a more powerful program of his own, to erase the final paragraphs forever and lock the page, but he had no pressing reason for doing so. There were only three or four people in the world whose opinion mattered to him, and he had little interest in what the other 6.9 billion might think. His entire Wikipedia entry, which he had never troubled to read before, was in any case littered with half-truths and distortions.
Daniele Marcantonio Barbo , b 1971, is an Italian mathematician and computer hacker. He is best known for founding Carnivia , a gossip- and information-sharing social network based in Venice, Italy, with over two million regular users. [1]
       1  Early life and kidnap
       2  Conviction for computer fraud
       3  Creation of Carnivia
      Â
As she walked to the door she thought she was conscious of his eyes watching her, following those inappropriate bare legs of hers. But when she reached the doorway, and, without quite meaning to, glanced back to check, she saw he had returned to the corpse. He was leaning over the dead woman, her hand laid in his, examining it minutely. Like a manicurist, she thought; or someone extending an old-fashioned invitation to a lover at a dance.
Four
DANIELE BARBO SAT in a cell below the Verona courtroom, reading a book on mathematics while he waited for the jury to reach their verdict. A few feet away, his lawyer went through her notes, anxiously rehearsing the different arguments that might be required, depending on what combination of charges he was convicted of. She knew better than to involve her client in these deliberations. The same book that held his attention now had rarely left his hand during the trial, the proceedings of which he had deigned to notice only with the occasional disinterested glance, and she had learnt to her cost that any attempts at conversation would be rebuffed.
Eventually her client closed the book and stared into the corner of the room.
âIt wonât be long now,â she ventured hesitantly.
He looked at her, as if a little surprised to find her there, but said nothing. He already knew what the judge would decide. He knew it because, for the last five weeks, someone had been altering his Wikipedia profile, adding a new final section:
Conviction and subsequent life
In 2013 Daniele Barbo was found guilty of seven charges of computer hacking; failing to curtail trafficking of pornography, including underage pornography and sexual violence; facilitating criminal enterprise including identity theft and money laundering; and refusing to allow the authorities access to requested information. He was found âNot Guiltyâ on an eighth charge: living off immoral earnings. He was sentenced to nine months in prison, despite his lawyerâs pleas that her client was psychologically unfit for custody â a tactic that had worked at his previous trial.
Barbo committed suicide within a year of his release, drowning himself in the canal outside the Venetian palazzo his family had occupied since 1898. His family name died with him. The future of Carnivia, the website he created, remains uncertain.
The first time he was alerted â by an anonymous email â to the addition, Daniele simply erased it. Within seconds it was back. The same thing happened the next three times he wiped it. Someone had created a bot, a simple piece of software programmed to carry out this one task repetitively, rewriting Wikipediaâs page every time he corrected it. It was, on one level, a tiny, malicious little torture, of no real consequence, but it showed the lengths that those who wanted to attack him were prepared to go to.
Or, he reflected, it showed how much they wanted him to think that: to believe there was nothing they wouldnât do to destroy him.
He could easily have written a more powerful program of his own, to erase the final paragraphs forever and lock the page, but he had no pressing reason for doing so. There were only three or four people in the world whose opinion mattered to him, and he had little interest in what the other 6.9 billion might think. His entire Wikipedia entry, which he had never troubled to read before, was in any case littered with half-truths and distortions.
Daniele Marcantonio Barbo , b 1971, is an Italian mathematician and computer hacker. He is best known for founding Carnivia , a gossip- and information-sharing social network based in Venice, Italy, with over two million regular users. [1]
       1  Early life and kidnap
       2  Conviction for computer fraud
       3  Creation of Carnivia
      Â
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