On hearing about these offers, however, my Probation Officer, Larry Hawley, informed me that I could not write articles about computer technology or participate in any other kind of work in which the topic was even discussed. He insisted that the Probation Office considered all such work to be "computer consulting," which I was not allowed to do without his express permission. I countered that writing about a subject didn’t mean I was a consultant. The articles were intended for the general public. I was doing essentially the same type of work that former hacker Kevin Poulsen had done while he was on supervised release.