A former Intel contractor has had his conviction for hacking into the company's systems overturned more than a decade after he was found guilty.

Randall Schwartz was arrested in 1993 after using a program to find out the passwords of various former colleagues in the Intel Supercomputer Systems Division (SSD).

Schwartz told the court he decided to crack the Intel passwords to show that SSD's security had gone downhill since he had left.

In 1995, Schwartz was convicted of three counts of computer crime and ordered to pay Intel $68,000 (£35,300).

His sentence also included five years of probation, 480 hours of community service and 90 days of deferred jail time. His legal bill exceeded $170,000 (£88,275) by the end of 1995.

Schwartz argued that his conviction was unfair because he had not intended to cause any malicious damage. After an appeal, the restitution was dropped in 1999.

In October 2006, Schwartz appealed for clemency from a Democratic governor who 'had already granted a few pardons', Schwartz explained on the Yahoo! Tech Groups site. At the beginning of February 2007, an Oregon court ordered an expungement of his conviction.

Schwartz says it will take a while for him to absorb the result.

'It probably won't fully sink in until the first time I travel freely into Canada, or fill out a contractor form that asks the question about criminal history, or apply for a Small Business Administration program that was formerly unavailable to me,' he said.