By JIM VERTUNO (Associated Press)

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas A&M University on Friday announced the resignation of its president in the fallout over a Black journalist who said her celebrated hiring at one of the nation’s largest campuses quickly unraveled due to pushback over her past work promoting diversity.

President Katherine Banks said in a resignation letter that she was retiring immediately because “negative press has become a distraction” at the nearly 70,000-student campus in College Station.

Her departure after two years as president followed weeks of turmoil at Texas A&M, which only last month had welcomed professor Kathleen McElroy with great fanfare to revive the school’s journalism department. McElroy is a former New York Times editor and had overseen the journalism school at the more liberal University of Texas at Austin campus.

But McElroy said soon after her hiring — which included a June ceremony with balloons — she learned of emerging pushback because of her past work to improve diversity and inclusion in newsrooms.

Her exit comes as Republican lawmakers across the U.S. are targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses. That includes Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill in June that dismantles program offices at public colleges.

The A&M System said in a statement that Banks told faculty leaders this week that she took responsibility for the “flawed hiring process.” The statement said “a wave of national publicity” suggested McElroy “was a victim of ‘anti-woke’ hysteria and outside interference in the faculty hiring process.”

McElroy has not responded to an Associated Press request for comment Friday.

American Association of University Professors President Irene Mulvey criticized Texas A&M’s handling of McElroy’s hiring, and called efforts against diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education a “misguided culture war.”

“Texas A&M should be celebrating an exciting revival and expansion of its journalism program under the impeccably credentialed and experienced Dr. McElroy,” said Mulvey, a mathematics professor at Fairfield University.

“Instead, Dr. McElroy has been forced into a harsh spotlight as Texas A&M has announced to the academic community that they are more than willing to capitulate to inappropriate political interference in the governance of higher education. This will surely result in chilled conditions for academic freedom in teaching and research,” Mulvey said.

McElroy previously told The Texas Tribune that she had been “damaged by this entire process” and that she believed she was “being judged by race, maybe gender. And I don’t think other folks would face the same bars or challenges.”

Her work at the New York Times included research into the relationship between news media and race, notably in newsroom practices, Pulitzers, obituaries and sports.

Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP, called Banks’ resignation a “wakeup call for all of us” and that Texas A&M’s reputation had been damaged.

“Let’s face it, education of students is no longer a primary consideration,” Bledsoe said. “That lofty goal has been replaced by a political, anti-Black, anti-Brown and anti-education agenda.”

McElroy said the initial offer of a tenure-track position had been reduced to a five-year post, then again to a one-year job from which she could be fired at any time. The 1981 Texas A&M graduate rejected that offer and chose to stay at the University of Texas as a journalism professor.

In an interview with NPR in 2021, McElroy said journalists should be pushed to find information from beyond what she called traditional sources that “skewed white patriarchy.”

“We can’t just give people a set of facts anymore,” she said. “I think we know that and we have to tell our students that. This is not about getting two sides of a story or three sides of a story, if one side is illegitimate. I think now you cannot cover education, you cannot cover criminal justice, you can’t cover all of these institutions without realizing how all these institutions were built.”

A right-leaning outlet in Texas highlighted those comments in a story after McElroy’s hiring and the publisher Friday said it helped expose a “woke agenda” at Texas A&M.

“Just as a little sunlight sends the cockroaches scurrying, exposing the statements and writings of these #HigherEd propagandists sends them into fits of hysteria,” tweeted Michael Quinn Sullivan, the publisher of Texas Scorecard and previous head of a conservative group backed by wealthy GOP donors.

The Rudder Association, which describes itself as a collection of Texas A&M students, former students, faculty and staff who are “dedicated Aggies committed to preserving and perpetuating the core values and unique spirit of Texas A&M,” also has acknowledged complaining to school administrators about McElroy’s hiring.

“TRA believes that a department head should embrace the egalitarian and merit-based traditions that characterize Texas A&M’s values, rather than the divisive ideology of identity politics,” the group wrote last week.

At a meeting with university faculty on Wednesday, Banks said she was not involved in the changes to McElroy’s contract offer. The faculty then voted to set up a panel to investigate the matter.

According to the university, of its 4,062 faculty members, 2,156, or 53%, are white, and 139, or 3%, are Black. Asians made up 8% of faculty, and Hispanics or Latinos 5%. In fall 2022 student enrollment, 51% were white, 23% were Hispanic, 10% were Asian and 3% were Black.

On Monday, José Luis Bermúdez, interim dean of the Texas A&M College of Arts and Sciences, also announced he would leave that job and return to his faculty position. McElroy said Bemudez had warned her about mounting “hysteria” about diversity, equity and inclusion at Texas A&M and advised her to stay on at Texas.

Banks is the second major university president to resign this week amid turmoil. Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne said Wednesday he would resign Aug. 31, citing an independent review that cleared him of research misconduct but found “serious flaws” in five scientific papers on subjects such as brain development in which he was the principal author.

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Associated Press reporter Acacia Coronado contributed to this report.

A Virginia Beach couple who had been married seven years were in the midst of a divorce when the husband was found dead Monday at Lake Smith Condominiums near Northampton Boulevard, court documents say.

On July 15, Navy sailor Calvin Wang, 37, was shot and killed in the 5000 block of Bardith Circle, and police were called to the scene two days later. Police have since charged his wife, Christina Wang, 30, with second-degree murder and use of a firearm in commission of a felony. Calvin Wang had been serving as a Chief Fire Controlman assigned to the Surface Combat Systems Training Command Detachment Middle Atlantic, according to a Navy spokesperson.

In Circuit Court documents dated July 29, 2022, Calvin Wang had initiated a divorce, alleging “adultery” by Christina Wang. At the time of the filings, the documents say, the two were in marriage counseling. The documents allege Christina Wang had extramarital affairs with a man in their home in April 2021, and a few weeks later, Calvin Wang had found a pregnancy test in the trash. The filings claim the Wangs had not had sex “in several months,” and after Calvin confronted Christina about an affair, she confessed.

In the days after the shooting, online videos about the case garnered thousands of views online. Screenshots from a Facebook group called “Are We Dating The Same Guy? | Virginia Beach / Norfolk / Newport News,” where women post photos or names of men they are dating to find “toxic behavior,” show a woman named Christina Wang posting about her husband Calvin Wang. In the post, a screenshot of a Bumble dating app profile of Calvin Wang is attached, along with emojis of red flags. The post was made July 15, the same day as the shooting.

“This is my husband Calvin,” a comment on the post reads. “If you see him on this app or any of the others, please know that he is MARRIED (sic). And please let me know if he matches/chats with you.”

According to Christina Wang’s checklist for bail determination, the two “got into an argument.” The documents say Christina slapped Calvin, and he told her to leave. That’s when Christina “pulled out a (firearm)” and shot him in the stomach, then shot him in the head, the documents read. The weight of evidence is supported by law enforcement statements, Christina’s statements and video evidence, according to the checklist.

Christina Wang’s bond hearing has been continued to July 26. She is being represented by a public defender.

Staff writers Gavin Stone and Caitlyn Burchett contributed to this report.

Eliza Noe, [email protected]

The Fort Monroe Authority and the Pack Brothers are planning to redevelop the Old Point Comfort Marina in Hampton, Va. and surrounding area within the next few years. The docks and buildings will be completely renovated, and a restaurant area will be added. Photos were taken at Old Point Comfort Marina on Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va. on Thursday, July 20, 2023.

By MATT O’BRIEN and ZEKE MILLER (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies that are leading the development of artificial intelligence technology have agreed to meet a set of AI safeguards brokered by President Joe Biden’s administration.

The White House said Friday that it has secured voluntary commitments from seven U.S. companies meant to ensure their AI products are safe before they release them. Some of the commitments call for third-party oversight of the workings of commercial AI systems, though they don’t detail who will audit the technology or hold the companies accountable.

A surge of commercial investment in generative AI tools that can write convincingly human-like text and churn out new images and other media has brought public fascination as well as concern about their ability to trick people and spread disinformation, among other dangers.

The four tech giants, along with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and startups Anthropic and Inflection, have committed to security testing “carried out in part by independent experts” to guard against major risks, such as to biosecurity and cybersecurity, the White House said in a statement.

That testing will also examine the potential for societal harms, such as bias and discrimination, and more theoretical dangers about advanced AI systems that could gain control of physical systems or “self-replicate” by making copies of themselves.

The companies have also committed to methods for reporting vulnerabilities to their systems and to using digital watermarking to help distinguish between real and AI-generated images known as deepfakes.

They will also publicly report flaws and risks in their technology, including effects on fairness and bias, the White House said.

The voluntary commitments are meant to be an immediate way of addressing risks ahead of a longer-term push to get Congress to pass laws regulating the technology. Company executives plan to gather with Biden at the White House on Friday as they pledge to follow the standards.

Some advocates for AI regulations said Biden’s move is a start but more needs to be done to hold the companies and their products accountable.

“A closed-door deliberation with corporate actors resulting in voluntary safeguards isn’t enough,” said Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute. “We need a much more wide-ranging public deliberation, and that’s going to bring up issues that companies almost certainly won’t voluntarily commit to because it would lead to substantively different results, ones that may more directly impact their business models.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has said he will introduce legislation to regulate AI. He said in a statement that he will work closely with the Biden administration “and our bipartisan colleagues” to build upon the pledges made Friday.

A number of technology executives have called for regulation, and several went to the White House in May to speak with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other officials.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post Friday that his company is making some commitments that go beyond the White House pledge, including support for regulation that would create a “licensing regime for highly capable models.”

But some experts and upstart competitors worry that the type of regulation being floated could be a boon for deep-pocketed first-movers led by OpenAI, Google and Microsoft as smaller players are elbowed out by the high cost of making their AI systems known as large language models adhere to regulatory strictures.

The White House pledge notes that it mostly only applies to models that “are overall more powerful than the current industry frontier,” set by currently available models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and image generator DALL-E 2 and similar releases from Anthropic, Google and Amazon.

A number of countries have been looking at ways to regulate AI, including European Union lawmakers who have been negotiating sweeping AI rules for the 27-nation bloc that could restrict applications deemed to have the highest risks.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently said the United Nations is “the ideal place” to adopt global standards and appointed a board that will report back on options for global AI governance by the end of the year.

Guterres also said he welcomed calls from some countries for the creation of a new U.N. body to support global efforts to govern AI, inspired by such models as the International Atomic Energy Agency or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The White House said Friday that it has already consulted on the voluntary commitments with a number of countries.

The pledge is heavily focused on safety risks but doesn’t address other worries about the latest AI technology, including the effect on jobs and market competition, the environmental resources required to build the models, and copyright concerns about the writings, art and other human handiwork being used to teach AI systems how to produce human-like content.

Last week, OpenAI and The Associated Press announced a deal for the AI company to license AP’s archive of news stories. The amount it will pay for that content was not disclosed.

—

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

By KRYSTA FAURIA and JILL LAWLESS (Associated Press)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The combined strike by Hollywood actors and screenwriters is entering its second week with no sign that a swift ending will be achieved.

For a week, actors including household names like Tina Fey, Kevin Bacon and wife Kyra Sedgwick, Rosario Dawson, David Duchovny and other stars have joined working class performers and writers on picket lines outside studios and corporate offices of streaming giants Amazon, MAX and Netflix.

The actors’ regular appearance on picket lines has provided additional starpower and voices on issues that are key to both groups — better pay and preserving established practices like residual payments, as well as protection from the use of artificial intelligence. Roughly 65,000 actors — the vast majority of whom don’t make enough from acting to qualify for health benefits through their guild — along with 11,500 screenwriters, are on strike.

While many of the picket lines are in Los Angeles and New York, film and television production happens throughout the country. Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago were among the the major cities with strike events Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, actors in London held an event in solidarity with their Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists brethren.

Stars including Brian Cox, Andy Serkis, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg and Imelda Staunton gathered with other performers and production crew in London’s Leicester Square for the demonstration organized by British actors’ union Equity.

They chanted “One struggle, one fight, we support SAG-AFTRA fight” and “The luvvies, united, will never be defeated,” using a British slang term for actors.

Cox, who played media mogul Logan Roy in “Succession,” said “I think we are at the thin end of a horrible wedge,” with artificial intelligence shaking the foundations of actors’ work.

“The wages are one thing, but the worst aspect is the whole idea of AI and what AI can do to us,” he said. “AI is the really, really serious thing. And it’s the thing where we’re most vulnerable.”

Cox said it was important actors showed solidarity with striking screenwriters in the Writers Guild of America.

“We’re just like pieces of furniture without writers,” he said. Cox said he was “extremely annoyed with the (directors’ union) DGA for not coming out in support” of colleagues in the industry.

Serkis, who has become a specialist in playing digitally created characters since he first played Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” saga two decades ago, said “I’m probably one of the most scanned actors on the planet.”

“I know that my image can be used, or my library of movements, can be used or my voice,” he said, adding that it “is wrong that that is easily accessed and used without remunerating the artist.”

There’s no indication when negotiations with studios and streaming companies, which are represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, will resume. The group has said they’ve offered both writers and actors substantial pay increases and have tried to meet other demands.

“Please come back to the table, please be realistic, please have a little bit more socialism in your heart and think of the people who make the money for you,” “Mission Impossible” star Pegg urged studios and streaming services.

Many on the picket lines in the U.S. have seized upon comments by their corporate bosses like Disney CEO Bob Iger, who last week called the unions’ demands “not realistic.”

During an earnings event Wednesday, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said grew up in a union household and knew the strike was painful on workers and their families.

“We’re super committed to getting to an agreement as soon as possible. One that’s equitable and one that enables the unions, the industry and everybody in it to move forward into the future,” he said.

Actor-writer Seth Green said streaming, which became a dominant entertainment outlet during the pandemic, has upended the livelihoods of those striking.

“It all got broken. I mean, it sounds silly to say, but it’s really as simple as that,” Green said speaking outside Paramount Studios in Hollywood on Thursday. Traditional entertainment contracts used to compensate actors and writers throughout the long lifespan of successful shows and movies. But no longer, he said.

“If the company that owned the thing made a billion dollars, you’d get like a little bit of money from that. All of that is gone,” Green said.

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Lawless reported from London.

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For more on the writers and actors strike, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/hollywood-strikes/

Less than two years after winning the Hampton Heat 200 at Langley Speedway driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Late Model team, Josh Berry achieved a feat increasingly rare in NASCAR. He signed to race full-time in the Cup Series, with Stewart-Haas in 2024, based strictly on ability.

Berry displayed his talent most notably in finishing second second in the Cup race at Richmond Raceway in April as a substitute driver for injured Chase Elliott. It often helps nowadays for a driver to pair his talent with sponsorship money to get to the upper echelons of NASCAR.

In bypassing that route, Berry sparks hope in the hearts of every Saturday night driver with dreams of trading paint on a weekly basis with Elliott, Kyle Busch et al. One of them is the guy who succeed him in Berry’s Chevrolet at JR Motorsports, Carson Kvapil.

Kvapil, 20, the son of former Cup Series regular Travis Kvapil, will be one of 30 or so drivers on the starting grid Saturday for the 15th annual Hampton Heat 200. The defending champion in the prestigious CARS Tour Late Model Division, and its current points leader, Kvapil brings lots of talent to the 4/10-of-a-mile Langley Speedway asphalt oval.

Berry is an inspiration.

“It’s huge watching him come from where I am now,” Kvapil said. “He was at the same point I am, so to see him get the Xfinity (Series) ride (full-time with JR Motorsports in 2022) and then get the Cup ride shows that local guys like me and him can make it.

“Hopefully that gives me the same opportunity in the future, but even if it doesn’t, (Berry) shows that local guys can get it done. I’m super-excited that the Cup ride came together for him.”

Kvapil is plenty familiar with Cup and Craftsman Truck Series garages. His dad started 271 Cup races, finishing in the top 10 eight times, and ran 197 Truck races — winning nine of them and one series title.

Kvapil began racing when he was 10 and working in garages for his dad’s teams at 11, so he’s spent half of his life turning wrenches and steering wheels.

“Growing up around it makes it a lot easier when you decide to race,” Kvapil said. “It gives me a jump on some other guys who got into it on their own.

“I’m glad I grew up working on race cars because I think it does help me when it comes down to driving them.”

Defending Hampton Heat winner Jared Fryar and 2020 winner Brenden “Butterbean” Queen — both of whom also compete in the CARS Tour — say driving is something Kvapil does well.

“He always seems to find a way to find speed and always seems to be around when it matters at the end of the race,” said Queen, who is second in the CARS Tour Late Model Division standings, 19 points behind Kvapil. “He puts himself in a position to have a shot to win almost every week and that makes him hard to beat.”

Added Fryar, “He’s a great driver with a great team behind him. When all of those things come together you have the kind of season he’s having.”

Kvapil, whose three victories lead the CARS Tour this season, doesn’t dispute that racing for legendary Dale Earnhardt Jr. has its advantages.

“That’s every Late Model guy’s dream,” Kvapil said. “Everybody wants to drive for him, so to get the opportunity to be in the JR Motorsports Chevy (Camaro) is a huge deal to me.

“I still can’t believe it happened.”

Kvapil adds that it helps a lot that crew chief Bryan Shaffer comes as part of the package. In addition to guiding Berry to his ’21 Hampton Heat triumph, then leading Kvapil to his CARS Tour title a year ago, Shaffer has been the crew chief for victorious drivers in the big Late Model races at Martinsville and now-shuttered Myrtle Beach.

Those races are on the same caliber as the Hampton Heat, the kind of prestigious Late Model trophies every weekly driver longs for. Kvapil, who was third in the Heat a year ago, knows he will have his work cut out for him against Langley Speedway veterans Queen and Connor Hall, who is third in the CARS Tour standings and 11 for 11 in wins at Langley this season.

“Langley Speedway alone is one of the toughest places to show up and win, and the Hampton Heat is the hardest race to win there,” Kvapil said. “Those guys have shown they’re not just good there, but they have so much experience at Langley, so a win in the Hampton Heat would be huge.”

15th Annual Hampton Heat 200

What: 200-lap Late Model race paying $10,000 to the winner.

Where: Larry King’s Law’s Langley Speedway, 11 Dale Lemonds Dr., Hampton, Va.

When: Saturday. Grandstands open at 12:30 p.m., Hampton Heat qualifying at 4:30 p.m., racing (Legends 25, Super Street 40), UCAR 25) begins at 6:30 p.m.. Hampton Heat 200 at 8:45 p.m

Note: Parking will be on a first-come first-serve basis. Newton Bus Service will provide a free shuttle beginning at 2 p.m. on Saturday from Virginia Peninsula Community College (525 Butler Farm Road, Hampton VA).

About 100 Virginia Beach middle-school students took to the stage at Tallwood High School on Tuesday to show off their new language skills with song, dance and poetry. They had just spent the past couple of weeks learning Chinese, Arabic and Russian at the STARTALK program hosted by Virginia Beach Public Schools.

The goal, Kelly Arble, the division’s world languages coordinator and STARTALK program director, is to allow students, no matter their skill level, to get exposed to these languages and urge them to continue learning.

“After the program, students want to keep learning their new language and are looking for opportunities to keep learning,” Arble said.

The 12-day program immersed the middle schoolers in language with native-language instructors. They played games, tried new foods from the various cultures they were learning about and came together at the end in a performance for their friends and family.

STARTALK is a federal grant program sponsored by the National Security Agency. The three languages students were able to choose from for their target language were identified as critical languages.

Several students already planned to attend the division’s Global Studies and World Languages Academy at Tallwood. Even if they were not planning to attend the academy, the program sparked an interest in going deeper into the languages and cultures they spent part of their summer learning about.

Hortatio Segalas, a rising eighth-grader at Great Neck Middle, studied Chinese this summer. The students in his class learned about calligraphy and the 13-year-old said that was his favorite part because it is “a special type of writing.”

Though he said getting up on stage with the entire Chinese class was a bit stressful, it was also fun. Dozens of students sang in Mandarin, danced with little drums, ribbons and fans.

The Arabic students read a poem, singing their new language skills, and the Russian students danced and sang as well. It was all a “snippet” of what they had learned over the summer, Arble said.

The program has grown in the last 13 years the division has hosted it. It started out with just a few Chinese classes, and this was the first year Russian was offered as well.

Jie Lian, one of the Chinese teachers, has participated in the program every summer since it began. She said she comes back each year to help the students “open the world” and expand their perspective.

She tried to have the students use Chinese the entire time they were in class and taught them different cultural concepts.

First-year instructor Maria Grise, who taught Russian, liked to call the students “zvezdochki,” or little stars, because each student was a “little shining, rising, speaking star” learning more about the world and its cultures.

Developer Gale Higgs, known for building The Marina at Marina Shores at Lynnhaven Inlet with her late husband more than 30 years ago, has had a variety of projects since then, including operating the Kane Marie Fine Arts Gallery, which closed in 2008.

Now, the Virginia Beach native and resident has her eyes set on a new industry: luxury jewelry.

“I looked around and said, ‘All right, well, I’m not going to build for the next few years, what am I going to do?’ And I thought about how much joy there was in that gallery, working with artists and clients and enjoying the works of art created by nature and man, which is really what fine art jewelry is,” Higgs said.

G Marie Luxuries, at 2861 Lynnhaven Drive not far from the renovated marina, is a jewelry store showcasing unique and often one-of-a-kind pieces. Higgs started thinking seriously about creating the store two years ago. After a series of opening setbacks due to supply issues, it finally made its debut in June.

The store is decorated with furniture from Paris, chandeliers from the 1950s and a carpet created from reclaimed fishing net with a satellite image of the ocean floor from space — personal touches all chosen by Higgs.

Just like the furniture, the jewelry is carefully selected by Higgs and comes from around the world.

Whether it’s a bracelet designed by a jeweler located in a small village off the coast of Alaska or a necklace created with materials found on the beaches of Costa Rica, Higgs said the beauty of a piece of luxury jewelry is not just about cost or value. Prices online range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.

“I know people who, unless it’s a precious stone, emerald, ruby, diamond, sapphire, don’t consider it luxury, while other people consider handmade wood art from Japan that you wear on your wrist an incredible luxury,” she said.

Higgs, who has been going to jewelry shows for decades, said the beauty of jewelry is its ability to bring someone confidence.

“When women wear jewelry, it empowers them. It enhances them. It enables them to see themselves in a more beautiful light. You put on a piece of jewelry, it’s like ‘there I am,’ or you remember who gave it to you, or the moment they gave it to you,” she said.

While the store focuses on jewelry, it also has art pieces for sale. Products are also available online.

“We are new. We are different,” Higgs said. “When you come in, you’re going to find things you haven’t seen before.”

For more information, visit gmarie.com.

Gabby Jimenez, [email protected]

By FRANK BAJAK (AP Technology Writer)

Kevin Mitnick, whose pioneering antics tricking employees in the 1980s and 1990s into helping him steal software and services from big phone and tech companies made him the most celebrated U.S. hacker, has died at age 59.

Mitnick died Sunday in Las Vegas after a 14-month battle with pancreatic cancer, said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of the security training firm KnowBe4, where Mitnick was chief hacking officer.

His colorful career — from student tinkerer to FBI-hunted fugitive, imprisoned felon and finally respected cybersecurity professional, public speaker and author tapped for advice by U.S. lawmakers and global corporations — mirrors the evolution of society’s grasp of the nuances of computer hacking.

Through Mitnick’s professional trajectory, and what many consider the misplaced prosecutorial zeal that put him behind bars for nearly five years until 2000, the public has learned how to better distinguish serious computer crime from the mischievous troublemaking of youths hellbent on proving their hacking prowess.

“He never hacked for money,” said Sjouwerman, who became Mitnick’s business partner in 2011. He was mostly after trophies, chiefly cellphone code, he said.

Much fanfare accompanied Mitnick’s high-profile arrest in 1995, three years after he’d skipped probation on a previous computer break-in charge. The government accused him of causing millions of dollars in damages to companies including Motorola, Novell, Nokia and Sun Microsystems by stealing software and altering computer code.

But federal prosecutors had difficulty gathering evidence of major crimes, and after being jailed for nearly four years, Mitnick reached a plea agreement in 1999 that credited him for time served.

Upon his January 2000 release from prison, Mitnick told reporters his “were simple crimes of trespass.” He said ”I wanted to know as much as I could find out about how phone networks worked.”

He was initially barred for three years from using computers, modems, cell phones or anything else that could give him internet access, and from public speaking. Those requirements were gradually eased but he wasn’t allowed back online until December 2002.

Mitnick’s forte was social engineering. He would impersonate company employees to obtain passwords and data, a technique known as pretexting that remains among the most effective in hacking and which typically requires considerable research to pull off successfully.

“His ingenuity challenged systems, incited dialogues, and pushed boundaries in cybersecurity. He will remain a testament to the uncharted power of curiousity,” tweeted Chris Wysopal, who as a member of the white-hat hacking group L0pht testified before the U.S. Senate a few years before Mitnick did the same.

“My hacking activity actually was a quest for knowledge, the intellectual challenge, the thrill and the escape from reality,” Mitnick said during a March 2000 congressional hearing in response to a question by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., about what motivated him.

In his prepared testimony, Mitnick boasted that he had “successfully penetrated some of the most resilient computer systems ever developed.”

Mitnick had first been arrested for computer crimes at age 17 for brazenly walking into a Pacific Bell office and taking a handful of computer manuals and codes to digital door locks. For that, he served a year in a rehabilitation center, deemed by a federal judge as being addicted to computer tampering.

Mitnick had been raised in the bleak Los Angeles suburb of Panorama City by his mother, who divorced his father when he was 3. An overweight, lonely teenager, he dropped out of high school and found friends only when he stumbled into the world of phone phreaks – teens who used stolen phone codes to make free long-distance calls.

Phones led to computers, and Mitnick showed himself to be a persistent, if not stellar, hacker. Enthralled by the possibility of using computers to gain access and power, Mitnick began breaking into voice mail and computer systems, rifling through private files and taunting those who crossed him.

But another side of Mitnick became clear in his conversations with investigative journalist Jonathan Littman printed in in the mid-1990s in “The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick.” The hacker seems less a threat than a fearful, disturbed young man, more annoying than vindictive.

And though a computer file containing 20,000 credit card numbers copied from the internet service provider Netcom was found on Mitnick’s computer after a 1994 arrest, there is no evidence he ever used any of the accounts.

Mitnick became a cause celebre for hackers who considered his 5-year prison term excessive. Some defaced websites to post messages demanding his release. Among the targets was The New York Times — which some sympathizers accused of exaggerating the societal danger Mitnick posed.

Exaggerated stories of Mitnick’s exploits and abilities also made the rounds, sometimes fueling hysteria.

One led prison officials to put him in solitary confinement for nine months, said Sjouwerman, because they feared he could start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone, emulating a modem “to hack NORAD and trigger a ballistic missile.”

Mitnick is the author of “The Ghost in the Wires,” which recounts his adventures as a wanted hacker and three other books co-written with others including “The Art of Deception.”

In addition to his work at KnowBe4, where Mitnick was not involved in day-to-day operations, he ran a separate penetration-testing business with his wife, the former Kimberley Barry.

She is a native of Australia, where the two met.