446 DEAR HACKER
446 DEAR HACKER
I am still a hacker in its pure sense: being curious, trying new ap- proaches to problems, expanding the envelope, etc. The hacker in the darker sense is dead. Partly due to fear, partly due to necessity, partly due to self preservation, partly due to the realization that the ends do not justify the means.
As for where has this hacker gone, I have a four year engineering degree which took a bit more than four years partly due to all that time spent on computers which should have been spent studying. Today, I spend time hacking engineering design problems. Still fearful of persecution and prosecution, I am prevented from saying anything more. Perhaps
I have said too much already. (I used to be) Lex Luthor
Dear 2600: In response to the “Why Won’t They Listen” article, I have this to
offer. I think we all know why the establishment will not listen. We have them scared senseless. Not scared in a physical sense, but a deeper sense. In a way, we should congratulate ourselves. We demand change and people see us as a force with which they should reckon.
Unfortunately, the problem is that the establishment fears we are ter- rorists out to destroy all their possessions. They all sit around watching Geraldo and think we’re launching missiles at the nearest hospital or shopping mall. In reality, the average 16-year-old hacker’s main interest is figuring out a way to change his grades and finding 800 back doors to 900 numbers. They think we work for some leader of a third world country or that we’re child pornographers. Again, we all know what the reality is. We are interested in technology and would like to remove the greedy people from power who hoard it all.
The fear of the establishment is this (obviously); they are afraid of losing their control. Maybe they are afraid of another revolution. Who
A C U LT U R E O F R E B E L S
better to crush the system than people that understand the ways that the system imposes itself upon us and pries into every nook and cranny of our private lives? We all know that 80 percent of the people don’t support George Bush. We can all see the lies the straight corporate media tries to feed us. Things are screwed up right now and people could get irate and change them, if they knew how. Who would be most adept at this? Who has the smarts enough to outsmart the system? Hackers and phreaks!
The other people that fear us are those who refuse to cut the umbilical cord of their MTV long enough to take a look at the world around them and be forced to think for five minutes.
People who are afraid of free speech and free thought like the CIA, and its previous leader George Bush, have learned well from Hitler’s reign. They have learned to control what people say in the media and attempt to control what we say to each other. The Dutch resistance knew that in World War II and thus were probably the first “phreaks” by today’s standards. They rerouted calls as to avoid being monitored by the Nazis. Do you think the Dutch would have survived if they sat around all day watching soap operas?
Maybe that’s not what most of the computer underground is interested in, but it’s why the establishment is afraid. Most of us don’t like many of the bums that have power over us and they know it. Maybe today is not the day for a sudden change, but when it needs to come, we will have archived a wealth of information when it is needed the most!
Dispater And hopefully we’ll be able to find it.
Dear 2600: To the Fed: I read your article in the Summer 1992 2600 on how you
say you work for the federal government (Treasury Department, to be exact) and how you got on hack/phreak boards because you told the truth and the sysops just let you on.