336 DEAR HACKER

336 DEAR HACKER

puzzling and quite disturbing that the United States government wouldn’t want this evidence to be known. But what’s even worse is when people close their eyes to the mere possibility that the facts don’t add up.

Dear 2600: This article is about what waht kinda peoplw the hackers often are!!

Im just ordaniray guy surfing suddeny get a nice little present one of your hackers which you gladly call freedom fighters. Whoops suddenly his present destroy all my music files and pictures!! What a nice guy true liberator! hm and he informs me that in colombia the goverment is cruel hm! Nice kinda fought of him and kinda thought who good theyre cruel to him! i kinda start to like CIA FBI and the colom- bian for treating the bottom scum succing aude eater of this planet some what productive fair way! MY feeling aBOUT YOU HACKERS IS THAT YOUR BUNCH OF IMATURE BASTARDS TALKING ABOUT RIGHTS WHILE VIOLITING OTHERS RIGHTS ! yOU ARE THE TRUE OPPRESSERES AND ERODING FORCE OF THIS PLANET!! yOUKNOW WHAT I WOLUD FOR cia CAMPAIGN FIND HACKERS PROCECUTE THE M FUCKEM FOR LIFE!”!

sINCERLY THE COMMON SENCE !! Well you certainly told us.

Dear 2600:

I don’t pay money for a magazine when I can get the same info for free online: http://www.elfqrin.com/hack/index.html . That appears to

be the same article that appeared in the latest (19:1) 2600.

Mike K You are living proof that no matter what we do, people will find something to bitch

about. When articles aren’t available online, people want us to make them avail- able. When we tell people how to find the articles we print online, we get letters

OUR BIGGEST FANS

like the above. Would you have really found the article in the first place if we hadn’t printed the address of that website when we printed the article?

Dear 2600: It’s hardly any wonder the general public doesn’t like the hacker com-

munity. I mean, yeah, I know most of it comes from mainstream society’s overall ignorance about many of the details of what we do and don’t do and various other things having to do with the hacker community. But I also know that all one has to do to find so much of the lowlife trash that, unfortunately, seems to wind up more or less representing all of us somehow is to go into any conference bridge, IRC channel, BBS, or basically any place large groups of hackers or phreakers congregate. You’re always guaranteed to find at least one or two idiots (if you’re lucky). If you’re unlucky, the better portion of the people on that given thing will be total assholes. I realize that your av- erage hacker or phreaker isn’t particularly old. In fact, most are under

18. But the fact of the matter remains that these wing nuts don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about treating anyone with common courtesy and respect. Not to mention the fact that they don’t seem to know or care anything about how their actions reflect on us all as a culture.

These self-righteous, holier than thou, “1337” types are poor represen- tatives of the community and reflect badly on all of us. I only wish there was a way to do something about it once and for all! But, in closing, let me just thank you for doing such a good job of casting us in a bit of

a better light than the general public seems to prefer to see us all in.

captain _ b You touch upon a problem that has plagued the hacker community from the very

beginning. Much of it is directly related to the ignorance of the mainstream, par- ticularly the media. Look at it this way: Can you go up to a major network and claim to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a carpenter? Odds are they will want some sort of evidence before they do a story on you, that is, assuming they were interested enough to do a story in the first place. But in the case of hackers, all one has to do is tell the media that they’re a hacker and, without any sort of proof or display of