Plot: In 1969, the idealistic hackers Martin Brice and Cosmos use the computer to transfer funds from conservative politicians to liberal causes. Martin goes out of the building to buy a pizza for them and Cosmos is arrested. Twenty years later, Cosmos has died in prison and Brice uses the alias Martin "Marty" Bishop to run a company that tests security systems with the specialists Donald Crease, a former CIA agent; the blind Irwin 'Whistler' Emery, a specialist in sounds; Darren 'Mother' Roskow, an awesome technician who believes in theories of conspiracy; and Carl Arbogast, a young genius. One day, the NSA agents Dick Gordon and Buddy Wallace, who know his real identity, visit Martin's office and blackmail him. They want Martin and his crew to retrieve a black box from Dr. Gunter Janek, a mathematician who developed a cryptographic system for the Russian government in a project called Setec Astronomy. In return, they would clear his name and pay Martin and his team US$175,000.00. Martin asks his former girlfriend Liz to help him and soon they recover the box and deliver it to the NSA agents. Soon Martin learns that he was lured by Dick and Wallace, and Janek, who was murdered, was indeed working for the National Security Agency on a system capable of breaking any computer encryption. Further, he has been incriminated in the murder of Janek and two other men and his only way out of the trap is once again recovering the black box.
Alternative Plot: Computer hacker Martin (Robert Redford) heads a group of specialists who test the security of various San Francisco companies. Martin is approached by two National Security Agency officers who ask him to steal a newly invented decoder. Martin and his team discover that the black box can crack any encryption code, posing a huge threat if it lands in the wrong hands. When Martin realizes the NSA men who approached him are rogue agents, they frame him for the murder of the device's inventor.
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