RAY Chen could be the archetypal computer nerd. Young, bespectacled and an expert on mainframes and megabytes, he speaks quickly in the language of techno-babble understood only by members of his tribe. He appears harmless.
But in the eyes of hacker-busting Hong Kong police and the magistrate who ruled on his crimes, Chen, 26, is a danger. His nom de plume is 'Buster Bunny', but he's been likened to something more akin to a reckless marauder of stored information. Logging himself into a computer is his favourite pastime, his life.
'I don't go out much,' said Chen, who studied computer science in the United States.
'Hackers are only computer network enthusiasts. They have no criminal intent. They just get into a system for the fun of it.' His view sums up the classic hacker ethic, that any computer intrusion is justified as long as the motive is pure.
But Magistrate Alan Wright came to a different conclusion. The conviction of Chen last week has sent a warning to Hong Kong computer users - their private data may not be as secure as they thought.
Mr Wright's ruling makes Chen only the second person in the territory to be convicted of computer hacking, an offence in the territory according to 27A of the Telecommunications Ordinance introduced last April.
Chen was found guilty of obtaining unauthorised access to computer systems using the name 'Buster Bunny' three times between last August and October.