270 DEAR HACKER

270 DEAR HACKER

letters making reference to a writer of ours named The Plague who claimed to have absolutely no morals whatsoever. Well, that character also made it into the film. So there’s a little history within history.)

There’s nothing we weren’t accused of at one point or another: being too left-wing, being too right-wing, selling out, acting like hypocrites, rejecting the commercial world, acting as puppets for the Chinese, insulting communism, helping criminals, helping corporations, supporting totalitarianism, talking too much about politics, avoiding politics, engaging in censorship, insulting Libertarians and gun owners... you name it, we eventually would be accused of it by somebody. And we thoroughly enjoyed it. I think my favorite was being called “snot-nose-right-wing-conservative- ditto-head-Republican vandals.” That just doesn’t happen every day.

Of course, writing the replies here was a great deal of fun and people always tell us how much they enjoy reading them, especially when they got somewhat contentious. I’ve always believed the best way to deal with issues is to confront them head-on and some of these collisions were pretty spectacular.

By far the biggest issue, where we were raked over the coals the most, was the whole Kevin Mitnick case. To sum it up in one sentence, we stood up for a hacker who had been imprisoned for many years without a trial, and led a campaign to get him released and to expose the facts of the case. The number of people who took great offense at this was a real eye-opener. I always wondered what it was they ultimately wanted. Five years in prison wasn’t enough? What would have satisfied them for this crime nobody was able to even clearly define? So many would keep falling back onto the mantra of “he broke the law!” as if that was somehow a license to take away someone’s freedom forever. Seeing that simplistic and rather ugly way of thinking did a lot toward strengthening my resolve. Of course, what really made me want to move ahead with this were the thousands of people showing their support in one way or another—so many more than the naysayers, in the end. But I’m happy to have been able to engage them, since being challenged is the best way of examining one’s true feelings and motivations.

Also in this chapter you’ll see system administrators angry at us for printing information that could be helpful to hackers. You’ll see hackers angry at us for print- ing information that could be helpful to system administrators. One reader was convinced that our long answering machine message was some sort of a plot to keep people on the phone longer. Various people got a lot more upset than anyone ever should at something that happened to them on our IRC channel. You’ll see some complaints about our customer service, back in the days before we actually got a system that worked. A company wrote to threaten us with legal action for printing

OUR BIGGEST FANS

their phone number—even though we never did. At least one person even objected to our using our own name. And of course, there were those people who just didn’t understand that certain bits of information could be used for something other than bad and nefarious purposes.

Sometimes the best thing to do was simply to let the more outrageous ones keep talking and eventually hang themselves with their own logic. Other times, a spirited debate was in order. And there were even those occasions where we wound up agree- ing. Those were nice, but not nearly as much fun.

Whichever way it winds up going, these are some of the most entertaining letters we’ve printed in our quarter century of publishing.

Dear 2600:

I have a few comments on your new format. First, I miss the large format. Its large pages were easier to read, and the page numbering made referencing simple. I also miss the loose-leaf holes. As stated in your first issue (I have them all), 2600 should be filed for reference purposes. The new format makes this very difficult.