In Time magazine’s issue of January 9, 1989, an item under the heading of "Technology" noted: "Even the most dangerous criminal suspects are usually allowed access to a telephone, but not Kevin Mitnick—or at least not without being under a guard’s eye. And then he is permitted to call only his wife, mother and lawyer. The reason is that putting a phone in Mitnick’s hands is like giving a gun to a hit man. The twenty-five-year-old sometime college student is accused by Federal officials of using the phone system to become one of the most formidable computer break-in artists of all time."