Date: 18 Jun 97 17:25 From: P.A.Taylor@sociology.salford.ac.uk Subject: File 1--Paul Taylor's Forthcoming "Hacker" Book ((MODERATORS' NOTE: A few years ago, Paul Taylor solicited information on "hackers" in a CuD post for his Phd dissertation. He completed it, and it will soon be published by Routledge and Kegan Paul. The publication date is anticipated to be in early 1998, and the tentative title: HACKERS: A STUDY OF A TECHNOCULTURE, although Paul is still searching for (and is open to) suggestions. Sadly, though, publishers usually suggest the final title and their choice usually prevails. The estimated price for the paperback version should be about 15 pounds, which would make the US version about $20. CuD will run a chapter, which will be divided into two sections of this CuD issue because of length)). ------------------ Jim has kindly agreed to put up on CuD an excerpt from my forthcoming book on hackers. Its present form is straight from my PhD thesis but I would like to use peoples' feedback to help me up-date my work prior and to make it more accessible to a non-academic audience. If you have any comments or views on my portrayal of hacking then please contact me - p.a.taylor@sociology.salford.ac.uk. The reason for putting up the posting is a) to thank and give something back to the original people who contributed. b) to stimulate further interest that will help in the up-dating of the original work - specifically ... i) what do people think are the major developments in the CU over the last 3/4 years? ii) what do people think are the major differences (if any) between the CU scene in the US as compared to Europe/rest of the world? There's an open invite for people to contact me and discuss the above and/or anything else that they think is relevant/important. Below is a brief overview of the eventual book's rationale and proposed structure. Hackers: a study of a technoculture Background "Hackers" is based upon 4 years PhD research conducted from 1989-1993 at the University of Edinburgh. The research focussed upon 3 main groups: the Computer Underground (CU); the Computer Security Industry (CSI); and the academic community. Additional information was obtained from government officials, journalists etc. The face-to-face interview work was conducted in the UK and the Netherlands. It included figures such as Rop Gongrijp of Hack-Tic magazine, Prof Hirschberg of Delft University, and Robert Schifreen. E-mail/phone interviews were conducted in Europe and the US with figures such as Prof Eugene Spafford of Purdue Technical University, Kevin Mitnick, Chris Goggans and John Draper. Rationale This book sets out to be an academic study of the social processes behind hacking that is nevertheless accessible to a general audience. It seeks to compensate for the "Gee-whiz" approach of many of the journalistic accounts of hacking. The tone of these books tends to be set by their titles: The Fugitive Game; Takedown; The Cyberthief and the Samurai; Masters of Deception - and so on ... The basic argument in this book is that, despite the media portrayal, hacking is not, and never has been, a simple case of "electronic vandals" versus the good guys: the truth is much more complex. The boundaries between hacking, the security industry and academia, for example, are often relatively fluid. In addition, hacking has a significance outside of its immediate environment: the disputes that surround it symbolise society's attempts to shape the values of the informational environments we will inhabit tomorrow. Book Outline Introduction - the background of the study and the range of contributors Chapter 1 - The cultural significance of hacking: non-fiction and fictional portrayals of hacking. Chapter 2 - Hacking the system: hackers and theories of technological change. Chapter 3 - Hackers: their culture. Chapter 4 - Hackers: their motivations Chapter 5 - The State of the (Cyber)Nation: computer security weaknesses. Chapter 6- Them and Us: boundary formation and constructing "the other". Chapter 7 - Hacking and Legislation. Conclusion Paul Taylor ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:05:55 +0100 From: P.A.Taylor@sociology.salford.ac.uk Subject: Preview of "Hacker" book: THEM AND US (Part 1 of 2) Chapter 6 - 'Them and us' 6.1 INTRODUCTION 6.2 BOUNDARY FORMATION - 'THEM AND US' 6.2.1 The evidence - Hawkish strength of feeling 6.3 REASONS FOR 'THEM AND US' 6.3.1 Ethical differences between the CSI and CU 6.3.2 The fear of anonymity 6.4 THE ETHICAL BASIS OF THE 'THEM AND US' SCENARIO 6.4.1 Blurred and vestigial ethics 6.4.2 Industry examples of blurred ethics 6.4.3 Technology and ethics 6.5 BOUNDARY FORMATION - ROLE OF THE MEDIA 6.6 BOUNDARY FORMATION PROCESS AND THE USE OF ANALOGIES 6.7 THE PROJECT OF PROFESSIONALISATION 6.7.1 Creation of the computer security market and professional ethos 6.7.2 Witch-hunts and hackers 6.7.3 Closure - the evolution of attitudes 6.8 CONCLUSION 6.1 INTRODUCTION Hackers are like kids putting a 10 pence piece on a railway line to see if the train can bend it, not realising that they risk de-railing the whole train (Mike Jones: London interview). The technical objections of the hawks to hacking, which reject the argument advocating cooperation with hackers, are supplemented by their ethical objections to the activity, explored in this chapter. Previous chapters have shown that there is some interplay and contact between the hacker community and the computer security industry, as well as the more subsidiary group: the academics1. The much more common relationship between hackers and the computer security industry, however, is the thinly-veiled or open hostility evident in the opinions of the hawks. This chapter examines the basis of this hostility. The groups' contrasting ethical stances are highlighted, and their origins explained. The technical evolution of computing is shown as creating new conditions that demand ethical judgements to be made with respect to what constitutes ethical use of computer resources. The CU and the CSI have different ethical interpretations that are expressed in a process of debate. This debate then becomes part of a boundary forming process between the two groups. Two identifiable influences upon such ethical judgements are the age of the person making the judgement, and the extent to which technology plays a part in the situation about which an ethical judgement has to be made. Elements of the CSI and the CU stand in identifiable opposition to each other. This chapter shows how this opposition is maintained and exacerbated as part of a boundary forming process. Ethical differences between the two groups are espoused, but examples are given of the extent to such differences are still in a process of formation within computing's nascent environment. Thus the type of mentality within the CU that fails to accept any ethical implications from phone-phreaking or hacking is sharply opposed by the CSI, whose typical sentiment is that computer users such as hackers have forgotten "that sometimes they must leave the playpen and accept the notion that computing is more than just a game" (Bloombecker 1990: 41). This contention that hackers have failed to psychologically "come out of the playpen" is illustrative of some of the marked ethical differences between the two groups. This chapter, however, draws attention to examples of the more ambiguous and blurred ethical situations within computing, and how an on-going process of negotiation, group differentiation and boundary formation, is required to maintain such differences between the groups. The ethical complexities surrounding computing are becoming increasingly important as it becomes a more prevalent aspect of everyday life. The CSI, as a part of a dominant social constituency of business and political interests, is involved in a process of attempting to impose its interpretation of such ethical issues upon computing. Advocates of different ethical approaches find themselves increasingly separated by moral boundaries that have become codified into professional regulations and government legislation. The "them and us" scenario caused by the contrasting ethical stances is fuelled by the media's portrayal of hackers as unethical outsiders. The most obvious manifestation of this is the evolution of attitudes held towards hackers by the dominant social constituency. The 'true hackers' of MIT were active from the late 1950's and were instrumental in the development of both hardware and software, whereas hackers are now largely perceived as a problem to be legislated away. This evolution in perceptions is simultaneously a result of the emergence of the CSI as a constituency, and a causal factor in that development. To illustrate the process of boundary formation we note comparisons of the debate surrounding Robert Morris Jr's intrusion into the internet system with the language and attitudes displayed during the Salem Witch trials (Dougan and Gieryn 1988). The press, in particular, has been particularly active in the process of stereotyping and sensationalising hacking incidents, the process helping to produce a deviant group status for hackers. The chapter also includes analysis of one of the most interesting aspects of the boundary forming process between the CSI and the CU, namely, the way in which physical comparisons are made between situations that arise in computing and the real world. These metaphors are used as explanatory tools and also in the production and maintenance of the value systems that separate the two groups. The physical analogies used seem to fulfil both of these functions. They allow what would otherwise be potentially complicated technical and ethical questions to be approached in a more manageable and everyday manner, yet they also contribute directly to the formation of ethical boundaries due to their particular suitability as a means of sensationalising hacking issues. Public commentators such as Gene Spafford have made various polemical statements of what hacking and its implications are: employing a hacker, is like making 'an arsonist your fire chief, or a paedophile a school teacher.' The actions of hackers are thus forcefully taken out of the realms of 'cyberspace' and reintroduced into the concrete realm of threatening real world situations. If the comparison is accepted, then the danger and harm to be suffered from such actions are more readily understood and feared, and hackers as a group may then be effectively viewed as moral pariahs. With reference to Woolgar's (1990) attempt to link computer virus stories with the prevalence of 'urban/contemporary legends', it can be pointed out that the physical analogies used by the CSI in discussions of computer ethics emphasise the transgressive 'breaking and entering' qualities of hacking2. In contrast, the CU reject such dramatic analogies and prefer to emphasise the intellectual and pioneering qualities of hacking which we will subsequently analyse with respect to their chosen analogies: comparisons of hacking's intellectual nature and frontier ethos to a game of chess and the Wild West, respectively. 6.2 BOUNDARY FORMATION - 'THEM AND US' Dougan and Gieryn (1988), like Meyer and Thomas (1990), have compared the process of boundary formation within computing with the historical examples of formalised witch trials. This is an extreme process of 'boundary formation' whereby groups differentiate themselves by marginalising other groups thereby establishing their own identity. "Witch hunts" occur in periods of social transition and we have seen in Chapter 3 that IT is undergoing a period of social change. The economic order is attempting to impose property relations upon information, yet its changing nature undermines its properties as a commodity. Computer counter-cultures are increasingly perceived as a threat to the establishment's ability to control technology for its own purposes. The initial awe and even respect with which hackers were originally viewed as 'technological wizards' has given way to the more frequent hawkish perception that they are 'electronic vandals'. Dominant social groups initially mythologise and then stigmatise peripheral groups that do not share their value-structure. In the case of hackers, this tendency has been exacerbated by the fear and ignorance encouraged as a result of hacking's covert nature and the difficulties of documenting the activity. Dougan and Gieryn (1988), amongst others, point out that such concepts of deviancy have a function. Put simply, a community only has a sense of its community status by knowing what it is not. Distancing themselves from outsiders helps members within that group feel a sense of togetherness. Furthermore, cultures that emphasise certain values over others will tend to label as deviant those activities which threaten its most prized value. In the particular case of hackers, their stigmatisation and marginalisation has occurred because they have threatened, with their information-sharing culture, one of the basic crutches of the capitalist order: property rights. The facilitating feature of the boundary forming process between the CU and the CSI is the sense of otherness and lack of affinity with which they confront each other: the "them and us" scenario. 6.2.1 The evidence - hawkish strength of feeling Direct access to the debate between the CSI and CU can be obtained by looking at examples of e-mail correspondence known as 'flames'. These are strongly worded, and often insulting electronic mail messages. They serve to illustrate the antagonism that exists between the CSI and CU. The following are examples of the expressions used on e-mail to describe hackers and hacking: I am for making the penalties for computer trespass extremely painful to the perpetrator ... Most administrators who've had to clean up and audit a system of this size probably think that a felony rap is too light a sentence. At times like that, we tend to think in terms of boiling in oil, being drawn and quartered, or maybe burying the intruder up to his neck in an anthill (Bob Johnson: RISKS electronic digest, 11:32). electronic vandalism (Warman: e-mail interview). Somewhere near vermin i.e. possibly unavoidable, maybe even necessary pests that can be destructive and disruptive if not monitored (Zmudsinki e-mail interview). Mostly they seem to be kids with a dramatically underdeveloped sense of community and society (Bernie Cosell: e-mail interview). Opposition to hacking practices has become increasingly non-specific and moralistic, an example being Spafford's argument that using hackers' knowledge on a regular basis within the computer security industry is equivalent to employing a known arsonist as your fire-chief, a fraudster as your accountant, or a paedophile as your child-minder. The technical insights that they could provide or could be derived as a by-product of their activities become subordinate to the need to express opprobrium against the morality of the actions themselves. The language of blame and morality is consistently used by hawkish members of the CSI to refer to hackers in what they would argue is a process of 'blame displacement'. The CSI are accused of using moral condemnation as a means of deflecting any responsibility and blame for security breaches that might be attached, not just to the perpetrators of intrusions, but also their victims. As Herschberg said: The pseudo-moral arguments and the moralistic language certainly cloud the issue in my view. I think it obscures the fact that system owners or system administrators have a moral duty to do at least their level best to stop penetrations. They are very remiss in their duty, they couldn't care less and therefore at least, there is quite an understandable tendency to blame the penetrator rather than blaming themselves for not having taken at least adequate counter measures, in fact in some cases counter measures have not been taken at all ... if it is proved to you that you haven't done your homework, then you almost automatically go into a defensive attitude which in this case, simply amounts to attacking the hacker, blaming him morally, heaping opprobrium on his head ... yes, the fear factor is involved (Herschberg: Delft interview). This undercurrent of moral censure was a recurrent quality of the field-work interviews with members of the CSI, for example: I've been in this game ... this is my 36th year, in the interests of hacking as a whole I think hacking is something which is derogatory; to be played down, to possibly in fact, be treated as a minor form of criminal activity ... the last thing you want to do is to make hackers into public figures; give them publicity. I think it needs to be played down when it occurs, but it shouldn't occur ... I wouldn't have them, no, under any circumstances (Taylor: Knutsford interview). Dr Taylor and others interviewees, involved in the provision of computer security, had had surprisingly little direct contact with hackers. I asked him about this lack of direct contact/interplay and his perceptions of the motivations of hackers: Well, there shouldn't be [any interplay] because the industry doesn't want to hear about hackers and certainly doesn't want to see the effects of what they do ... To me I'm not concerned with what the hacker does, I'm more concerned with keeping him out to start with ... You've talked to what are called the more ethical members of the hacking community for whom it's an intellectual challenge, but there are in fact people who are psychopaths, and Doctor Popp3 is one of these, where they just want to level a score with society which they feel has been unfair to them ... A chap called Whitely has just gone to prison for four years for destroying medical data at Queen Mary's hospital, London. He just destroyed utterly and he wasn't just a hacker that was browsing, he was a psychopath almost certainly (Taylor: Knutsford interview). In contrast, and as an illustration of the negative perceptions each groups has of the other, a hacker, Mofo, argues that psychotic tendencies are not the sole preserve of the hacking community: my experience has shown me that the actions of 'those in charge' of computer systems and networks have similar 'power trips' which need be fulfilled. Whether this psychotic need is developed or entrenched before one's association with computers is irrelevant. Individuals bearing such faulty mental health are present in all walks of life. I believe it is just a matter of probability that many such individuals are somewhat associated with the management of computers and networks [as well as intrusion into computer systems] (Mofo: e-mail interview). Taylor is wary of the damage to computing that greater publicisation of hacking could cause, yet as the above reference to Dr Popp and Nicholas Whitley shows, ironically, he seemed to be dependent upon the most publicised cases of hacking for his perceptions of hackers. A further argument that prevents the CSI accepting hackers as potentially useful fault-finders in systems is the simple charge that without the existence of hackers in the first place, there would be very little need for extensive security measures. Even if hackers are of some use in pointing out various bugs in systems, such a benefit is outweighed by the fact that a large amount of computing resources are 'wasted' on what would otherwise be unnecessary security measures. For example, Dr Taylor's view is that: hacking is a menace that stops people doing constructive work ... A lot of money get's spent today on providing quite complex solutions to keep ahead of hackers, which in my view should not be spent ... They're challenging the researchers to produce better technical solutions and they're stimulating the software service industry which provides these solutions and makes money out of it. But you answer the question for me, what's that doing for society? (Taylor: Knutsford interview). Thus one reason for the use of moral language is in order to displace blame from those in charge of the systems where security is lax, to those who have broken that lax security. Irrespective of the state of security of systems, there is a project of group formation whereby those who implement computer security wish to isolate and differentiate themselves from the CU, in a process that highlights the inherent differences that exist between the two groups. This project is vividly illustrated in the following excerpt from the keynote Turing Award acceptance speech given by Ken Thompson: I have watched kids testifying before Congress. It is clear that they are completely unaware of the seriousness of their acts. There is obviously a cultural gap. The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house. It should not matter that the neighbour's door is unlocked. The press must learn that misguided use of a computer is no more amazing than drunk driving of an automobile (Thompson 1984: 763). This degree of sentiment was consistently expressed amongst some of the most prominent and accomplished of those figures from the computer security industry who were generally opposed to hackers: Unfortunately ... it is tempting to view the hacker as something of a folk hero - a lone individual who, armed with only his own ingenuity, is able to thwart the system. Not enough attention is paid to the real damage that such people can do...when somebody tampers with someone else's data or programs, however clever the method, we all need to recognise that such an act is at best irresponsible and very likely criminal. That the offender feels no remorse, or that the virus had unintended consequences does not change the essential lawlessness of the act, which is in effect breaking-and-entering. And asserting that the act had a salutary outcome, since it led to stronger safeguards, has no more validity than if the same argument were advanced in defense of any crime. If after experiencing a burglary I purchase a burglar alarm for my house, does that excuse the burglar? Of course not. Any such act should be vigorously prosecuted (Parrish 1989). Several of the above quotations are notable for their heavy reliance upon the visual imagery of metaphors comparing the ethical issues arising from computing with real-world situations, a topic that will be looked at shortly. 6.3 REASONS FOR 'THEM AND US' 6.3.1 Ethical differences between the CSI and CU Having identified the strength of feeling of hawkish views of hacking, this section explores the ethical basis of that antagonism. The following quotation from a member of the CSI illustrates the stark difference between the ethical outlooks of certain members of the computing constituency. Elements of the CSI vehemently oppose the "playpen attitude" advocated by elements of the CU. Presupposing that no harm is done, hackers tend to believe that it is not wrong to explore systems without prior permission, whilst those concerned with the security of those systems would characterise such a belief as offensive: Just because YOU have such a totally bankrupt sense of ethics and propriety, that shouldn't put a burden on *me* to have to waste my time dealing with it. Life is short enough to not have it gratuitously wasted on self-righteous, immature fools...If you want to 'play' on my system, you can ASK me, try to convince me *a priori* of the innocence of your intent, and if I say "no" you should just go away. And playing without asking is, and should be criminal; I have no obligation, nor any interest, in being compelled to provide a playpen for bozos who are so jaded that they cannot amuse themselves in some non-offensive way (Cosell CUD 3:12). When we examine the factors underpinning the CSI's and CU's contrasting ethical interpretations we find an important feature is the tendency of the CSI to denigrate, or devalue the ethics articulated by hackers. Bob Johnson, a Senior Systems analyst and Unix System Administrator at a US military installation criticises the justifications used by hackers as an example of the modern tendency to indulge in "positional ethics". Referring to the Internet worm case he states: The majority of people refuse to judge on the basis of "right and wrong". Instead, they judge the actions in terms of result, or based on actual damages, or incidental damages or their own personal ideas. In my mind, Morris was WRONG in what he did, regardless of damages, and should therefore be prepared to pay for his deeds. Many others do not suffer from this "narrow frame of mind". By the way, positional ethics is the same line of reasoning which asks, "When would it be right to steal a loaf of bread?" I believe that the answer is "It may someday be necessary, but it's never right" (Bob Johnson: e-mail interview). The "hawkish" elements of the CSI are unequivocal in their condemnation of hacking and its lack of ethics. They argue that the lack of ethics shown by hackers is indicative of a wider societal decline. Thus Smb characterises the alleged degeneration of the average persons ethics, not as a breakdown in morality, but rather as a spread of amorality: "I'm far from convinced that the lack of ethics is unique to hackers. I think it's a societal problem, which in this business we see manifested as hacking. Amorality rather than immorality is the problem" (Smb: E-mail interview). Similarly, Bob Johnson argues that: In a larger sense, I view them [hacking and viruses] as part of the same problem, which is a degeneration of the average persons ethics - i.e. integrity and honesty. There's a popular saying in America - 'You're not really breaking the speed limit unless you get caught. I believe an ethical person would neither break into systems, nor write viruses (Bob Johnson: e-mail interview). Cosell takes this argument further, the "degeneration of the average person's ethics" is applied to a loss of respect by hackers for property rights: The issue here is one of ethics, not damages. I'll avoid the "today's children are terrors" argument, but some parts of that cannot be avoided: the hackers take the point of view that the world at large OWES them amusement, and that anything they can manage to break into is fair game [an astonishing step beyond an already reprehensible position, that anything not completely nailed down is fair game] (Cosell: e-mail interview). A study into social and business ethical questions was carried out by Johnston and Wood (1985, cited by Vinten 1990) for the British Social Attitudes Survey. Apart from their major conclusion that the single most important factor influencing the strength of people's ethical judgements was age, it seems difficult to point to clear ethical boundaries and guide-lines in relation to many of the situations that arise in the modern world, especially in the realms of business. Thus in his summary of the report Vinten describes how: "In situations ranging widely from illegitimate tipping of dustmen to serious corruption, no clear-cut boundaries emerged as between 'right' and 'wrong' ... Sub-group variation was greatest where situations were complicated by motivation questions, and by being remote from everyday experience" (Vinten 1990: 3). Hacking fulfils both of these criteria. The advent of "virtual reality" or "cyberspace" tends to divorce computing from "everyday experience". This leads directly to an ambiguous ethical status for many computing situations and a concomitant need to assert ethical standards by the dominant social constituency if it is to succeed in exerting control over computing. Vinten's study of computer ethics (1990) points out that ethical judgements tend to be harsher, the older the person making the judgements. Members of the CSI consistently have strongly critical views of the ethical stance taken by hackers. They tend to be older than hackers, having been involved with computers, as a career, for many years. Hackers, in contrast, tend to use computers more as a hobby and may hack in order to gain access to systems which their youth precludes them from obtaining access to by legitimate means. This age difference is perhaps one reason why there are such fundamental differences in the ethical outlook of members of the CSI and CU4. 6.3.2 Fear of Anonymity One of the common themes that stems from the CSI's perception of hackers is their tendency to assume the worst intent behind the actions of intruders, a tendency encouraged by the fact that hacking is intrinsically anonymous: There is a great difference between trespassing on my property and breaking into my computer. A better analogy might be finding a trespasser in your high-rise office building at 3 AM, and learning that his back-pack contained some tools, some wire, a timer and a couple of detonation caps. He could claim that he wasn't planting a bomb, but how can you be sure? (Cosell: e-mail interview). Another vivid example of the doubt caused by the anonymity of hackers is the comparison below made by Mike Jones of the DTI's security awareness division. I pointed out that many hackers feel victimised by the establishment because they believe it is more interested in prosecuting them than patching up the holes they are pointing out with their activity. Jones accepted that there was prejudice in the views of the CSI towards the CU. That prejudice, however, is based upon the potential damage that hackers can cause. Even if there is no malicious intention from the hacker, suspicion and doubt as to what harm has been done exists: Say you came out to your car and your bonnet was slightly up and you looked under the bonnet and somebody was tampering with the leads or there looked like there were marks on the brake-pipe. Would you just put the bonnet down and say "oh, they've probably done no harm" and drive off, or would you suspect that they've done something wrong and they've sawn through a brake-pipe or whatever... say a maintenance crew arrived at a hanger one morning and found that somebody had broken in and there were screw-driver marks on the outside casing of one of the engines, now would they look inside and say "nothing really wrong here" or would they say, "hey, we've got to take this engine apart or at least look at it so closely that we can verify that whatever has been done hasn't harmed the engine" (Jones: London interview). These two quotations proffer an important explanation of the alleged paranoid and knee-jerk reactions to hacking activity from the computing establishment. The general prejudice held by the CSI towards the CU is heightened by the anonymous quality of hacking. The anonymity encourages doubts and paranoia as a result of being unable to assess the motivation of intruders and the likelihood that any harm that has been committed will be difficult to uncover. In addition to these points, the anonymity afforded by Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) encourages hackers to project exaggeratedly threatening personalities to the outside world and media. Barlow (1990) describes meeting some hackers who had previously frightened him with their aggressive e-mail posturing. When Barlow actually came face to face with two of the hackers they: were well scrubbed and fashionably clad. They looked to be as dangerous as ducks. But ... as ... the media have discovered to their delight, the boys had developed distinctly showier personae for their rambles through the howling wilderness of Cyberspace. Glittering with spikes of binary chrome, they strode past the klieg lights and into the digital distance. There they would be outlaws. It was only a matter of time before they started to believe themselves as bad as they sounded. And no time at all before everyone else did (Barlow 1990: 48). The anonymity afforded by CMC thus allows hacking culture to indulge in extravagant role-playing which enhances the perception of it in the eyes of outsiders as being a potentially dangerous underground movement. Hacking groups generally choose colourful names such as "Bad Ass Mother Fuckers, Chaos Computer Club, Circle of Death, Farmers of Doom"5, and so on. 6.4 THE ETHICAL BASIS OF THE 'THEM AND US' SCENARIO 6.4.1 Blurred and vestigial ethics Cracking, virus writing, and all the rest, fall into the realm of possibility when dealing with intelligent, curious minds. The ethics of such things come later. Until then, users of computers remain in this infancy of cracking, etc. (Kerchen: e-mail interview). The ethical edges demarcating legal and illicit acts have a higher tendency to be blurred whenever technology has a significant presence in the context of the act. The acts of such figures as Captain Crunch have been received with a combination of admiration and condemnation. Opposition to attempts to commodify and institutionalise informational property relations can exist in such rebellious manipulations of technology; but also more 'respectably' in the intellectual and political platforms of such figures as Richard Stallman and the League for Programming Freedom. Activities involving the use of computers have given rise to a number of qualitatively new situations in which there is a debate as to whether the act in question is ethical or not. These activities tend to centre upon such questions as whether the unauthorised access to and/or use of somebody's computer, system, or data can be adequately compared to more traditional crimes involving the physical access or manipulation of material objects or property. An example of such ambiguity is the fact that whereas the idiosyncratic behaviour of the early hackers of MIT was benignly tolerated now hacking is portrayed in the press as having evil associations and is subject to legal prosecution. This apparent change in social values has occurred despite the fact that the motivations and lack of regard for property rights associated with hacking have remained constant over time. Examples of the previously ad hoc morality with respect to computers abound. The first generation MIT hackers engaged in such illicit activity as using equipment without authorisation (Levy 1984: 20), phone phreaking (pg 92), unauthorised modification of equipment (pg 96) and the circumvention of password controls (Pg 417)6. Bloombecker gives the example of how authority's reaction to the behaviour of small school children may represent society's ambivalent response to the computing activities it originally encourages. Definitive ethical judgements can prove difficult to make in certain situations: Think of the dilemma expressed unknowingly by the mathematics teacher who spoke of the enthusiasm her 9 and 10-year-old students exhibited when she allowed them to use the school's computers. "They are so excited" she said, "that they fight to get onto the system. Some of them even erase others' names from the sign-up lists altogether". The idea that this was not good preparation for the students' moral lives seemed never to have occurred to her ... Unfortunately, both for society and for those that need the guidance, there is no standard within the computer community to define precisely when the playing has got out of hand. If a student uses an hour of computer time without permission, one university computer department may consider it criminal theft of service, while another views it as an exercise of commendable ingenuity (Bloombecker 1990: 42). This ambiguous ethical status of some computing activities is due to the relatively recent advent of computing as an area of human endeavour; this has led to a lack of readily agreed-upon computing mores: "Indeed, if we were to devise a personality test designed to spot the computer criminal, the first and most difficult task would be to create a task that did not also eliminate most of the best minds who have made computing what it is" (Bloombecker 1990: 39). There is the further complicating factor, that to some extent at least, society encourages "getting hooked" upon computing, since it is perceived as representing a beneficial outlet for intellectual endeavour. We now turn to more specific examples of computing's ethical complexity. 6.4.2 Industry examples of blurred ethics There is often a lack of agreement even amongst computer professionals as to what constitutes the correct procedures with which to confront certain research and educational issues within computing. A specific example of this lack of agreement is the debate caused by the publication of an article by Cohen, entitled "Friendly contagion: Harnessing the Subtle Power of Computer Viruses" (1991). In the article, Cohen suggests that the vendor of a computer virus prevention product should sponsor a contest encouraging the development of new viruses, with the provisos that the spreading ability of the viruses should be inherently limited, and that they should only be tested on systems with the informed consent of the systems owners. Spafford responded with the charge that: "For someone of Dr Cohen's reputation within the field to actually promote the uncontrolled writing of any virus, even with his stated stipulations, is to act irresponsibly and immorally. To act in such a manner is likely to encourage the development of yet more viruses "in the wild" by muddling the ethics and dangers involved" (Spafford 1991: 3). Furthermore, even the publication of "fixes" can be viewed in certain instances as an unethical act, leading to what has been previously described as the phenomenon of "security through obscurity". Spafford argues that: "We should realize that widespread publication of details will imperil sites were users are unwilling or unable to install updates and fixes. Publication should serve a useful purpose; endangering the security of other people's machines or attempting to force them into making changes they are unable to make or afford is not ethical" (Spafford 1990:12). The disagreement over some of the ethical questions thrown up by hacking was also in evidence in the aftermath of the Internet Worm when a debate raged amongst computer professionals as to the ethical and technical implications of the event. The debate tending to support the above argument positing ethical sub-group variation and a general lack of clear-cut moral boundaries as typical of the modern ethical environment, especially when there are contrasting opinions as to the originating motivations behind specific acts. Such a debate was reflected in the "Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)" Forum of Letters, where even the ACM's president received quite strident criticism for his position indicated in the title of his letter: "A Hygiene Lesson", that the Internet Worm could be viewed as beneficial in so far as it increased awareness of security practices. The president's view was described by one contributor to the forum as, "a massive error in judgement which sends the wrong message to the world on the matters of individual responsibility and ethical behaviour ... [it] is inexcusable and an exercise in moral relativism" (Denning, Peter 1990: 523). Similarly, another writer illustrates the disparate nature of the feelings produced by the Internet Worm incident when he pointedly remarks: while Spafford praises the efficacy of the ''UNIX 'old boy' network" in fighting the worm, he does not explain how these self-appointed fire marshals allowed such known hazards to exist for so long ... If people like Morris and people like him are the greatest threat to the proper working of the Internet then we face no threat at all. If, on the other hand, our preoccupation with moralizing over this incident blinds us to serious security threats and lowers the standards of civility in our community, then we will have lost a great deal indeed (Denning, Peter 1990: pp 526 +7). 6.4.3 Technology and ethics Underlying some of these problems with ethics has been the tendency identified by Spafford (1990) to "view computers simply as machines and algorithims, and ... not perceive the serious ethical questions inherent in their use" (Spafford 1990: 12). Spafford points to the failure to address the end result of computing decisions upon people's lives, and hence the accompanying failure to recognise the ethical component of computing. As a result, he argues, there is a subsequent general failure to teach the proper ethical use of computers: Computing has historically been divorced from social values, from human values, computing has been viewed as something numeric and that there is no ethical concern with numbers, that we simply calculate values of 0 and 1, and that there are no grey areas, no impact areas, and that leads to more problems than simply theft of information, it also leads to problems of producing software that is also responsible for loss and damage and hurt because we fail to understand that computers are tools whose products ... involve human beings and that humans are affected at the other end (Spafford US interview). This is due to the fact that often the staff of computer faculties are uncomfortable with the subject, or don't believe it's important. Their backgrounds are predominantly in mathematics or scientific theory and hence they don't adequately understand how practical issues of use may apply to computing. Spafford suggests that engineering provides a more appropriate model of computing than science in so far as it addresses the human as well as the scientific dimensions. Computer science is really, in large part an engineering discipline and that some of the difficulties that arise in defining the field are because the people who are involved in computing, believe it's a science and don't understand the engineering aspects of it. Engineers, for a very long time, have been taught issues of appropriateness and ethics and legality and it's very often a required part of engineering curricula ... computing is more than just dealing with numbers and abstractions, it does in fact have very strong applications behind it, a very strong real-world component (Spafford US interview). The extent to which computing has a non-material dimension, however, constantly mitigates against Spafford's desire for computing to be ethically approached in a similar manner to an engineering discipline. There is a fundamental difference between the 'real world' and the 'virtual world' of computing, and it is this difference which makes the literal transposing of ethical judgements from the former to the latter, difficult, if not untenable. The correct balance with which to transpose ethical judgements from one realm to another is debateable. 6.5 BOUNDARY FORMATION - ROLE OF THE MEDIA This section debunks some of the sensationalising, demonising, and mythologising of hacking that has occurred with the recent spate of books, articles and television programmes dealing with the issue. It also corrects the overwhelming tendency of most of the writings on the subject of hacking to concentrate on the minutiae of the activities and life histories of hackers or their adversaries. Frequently, but superficially, deep-rooted psychological abnormalities are offered as explanations for hacking activity, whilst ignoring the ethical and political implications of those acts. The overall effect of the media portrayal of hacking, it could be suggested, is a continuation by other means of the CSI's project of stigmatisation and closure. (i) 'Hacker best-sellers' Two examples of the tendency towards sensationalism are The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll and Cyberpunk by Hafner and Markoff. An example of the many uses of hyperbole in their choice and tone of language is their consideration of the issues at stake in the hiring of a hacker for security work. "But hire such a mean-spirited person? That would be like giving the Boston Strangler a maintenance job in a nursing-school dormitory" (Hafner and Markoff, 1991: 40). Both of these books made a large impact on the computing public and yet both seem self-indulgent in their reliance upon trivial and tangential details in the narration of different hacking episodes. In The Cuckoo's Egg, for example, we are given various descriptions of the author's girlfriend and seemingly irrelevant details of their shared Californian lifestyle. In Cyberpunk, many unsubstantiated conjectures are made as to the state of mind of the hacker. Thus the authors write about Kevin Mitnick: When Kevin was three, his parents separated. His mother, Shelly got a job as a waitress at a local delicatessen and embarked upon a series of new relationships. Every time Kevin started to get close to a new father, the man disappeared. Kevin's real father was seldom in touch; he remarried and had another son, athletic and good-looking. During Kevin's high school years, just as he was getting settled into a new school, the family moved. It wasn't surprising that Kevin looked to the telephone for solace (Haffner and Markoff 1991: 26). This somewhat arbitrary assignation of motivation leads the authors to label Kevin Mitnick as the "dark-side" hacker, whereas their analysis of Robert Morris, author of the Internet Worm, is much less condemning despite the fact the latter was responsible for much more damage and man-hours of data-recovery time. (ii) Press and Television The media faces, in its reporting of computer security issues, the perennial problem of how to report technical issues in a both accurate and entertaining manner. Generally, the media has tended towards reporting those stories that contain the highest degree of 'electronic lethality' and it has exaggerated the 'darkness' of hacking motives. For example, a Channel Four television documentary "Dispatches" entitled its investigation of hacking "The day of the Technopath", whilst the February 1991 edition of GQ magazine concerned the growth of virus writers in Bulgaria and was called "Satanic Viruses". Along with the above two treatments of the computer security issue I will also look at a Sunday Correspondent article of the 17th December 1989 entitled "A Bug in the Machine" and part of the transcript of an episode of the U.S. current affairs/chat-show programme, "Geraldo", for a sample of media treatments of the hacking issue. The television portrayals of the problem of computer security seem to be the most superficial and dependent upon sensationalising techniques. Newspaper and magazine articles to give relatively thorough and accurate technical descriptions of what it is to hack/write viruses but still make disproportionate use of 'dark-side' imagery7. "A Bug in the Machine" This article is an example of the tendency of the press to concentrate upon the "sexy" elements of computer security stories. It contains a cynical description of Emma Nicholson M.P.'s unsubstantiated claims that hacking techniques are used for terrorist purposes by the European Green movement amongst others and her emotive description of hackers as: " ... malevolent, nasty evil-doers who fill the screens of amateur users with pornography" (Matthews 1989: 39). Yet whilst dispelling some of the alarmist tendencies of such claims, the example of a hacker chosen by the journalists is that of the "computer anarchist Mack Plug". Apart from making their own unsubstantiated claim that "Nearly all hackers are loners" (a contention refuted by my interviews with groups of Dutch hackers), their description of his hacking activity seems to deliberately over-emphasise the more "glamorous" type of hacking at the expense of describing the more mundane realities and implications of everyday hacking: At the moment he is hacking electronic leg tags. "I've got it down to 27 seconds" he says, "All you have to do is put a microset recorder next to the tag and when the police call to check you're there, you tape the tones transmitted by the tag and feed them on to your answering machine. When the cops call back again, my machine will play back those tones. I'll have a fail-safe alibi and I can get back to hacking into MI5 (Matthews 1989: 39). Geraldo Programme8 On September 30th 1991, the Geraldo chat-show focused on hacking. It involved a presentation of various hacking cameo shots, one of which showed Dutch hackers accessing US Department of Defense computers with super-user status. The studio section of the show involved an interview with Craig Neidorf (alias Knight Lightning), who underwent a court case in the U.S. for having allegedly received the source code of the emergency services telephone computer programs. Also interviewed was Don Ingraham the prosecuting attorney in Neidorf's case. Below I include excerpts from the dialogue that ensued as an example of the extent to which hacking is presented in the media in a superficial, trivialised and hyperbolic manner. In the introductory part of the show, excerpts from the film "Die Hard II" are shown in which terrorists take over the computers of an airport. The general tone of the show was sensationalistic with one of the guest hackers Craig Neidorf being repeatedly called the "Mad Hacker" by Geraldo and Don Ingraham consistently choosing emotive and alarmist language as shown in the following examples: Geraldo: Don, how do you respond to the feeling common among so many hackers that what they're doing is a public service; they're exposing the flaws in our security systems? Don: Right, and just like the people who rape a co-ed on campus are exposing the flaws in our nation's higher education security. It's absolute nonsense. They are doing nothing more than showing off to each other, and satisfying their own appetite to know something that is not theirs to know. And on the question of th give, in 30 seconds, a worst case scenario of what could result from the activities of hackers. To which he replies: "They wipe out our communications system. Rather easily done. Nobody talks to anyone else, nothing moves, patients don't get their medicine. We're on our knees." Dispatches - "the day of the technopath"9 Emma Nicholson M.P. interviewed in the Dispatches programme, states, "A really good hacker could beat the Lockerbie bomber any day, hands down" and, "Perhaps only a small fraction of the population dislikes the human race, but they do, and some of them are highly computer-skilled". The following is another example taken from the programme's voiced-over commentary: Until now the computer hacker has been seen affectionately as a skilled technocrat, beavering away obsessively in his den, a harmless crank exploring the international computer networks for fun. But today it's clear that any computer, anywhere, can be broken into and interfered with for ulterior motives. The technocrat has mutated to the technopath ... government and business are reluctant to admit that they're fragile and vulnerable to such threats, frightened of either the loss of public confidence or of setting themselves up as targets for the technopaths who stalk their electronic alleyways. (End of Part one of Chapter 6; Part II follows) ------------------------------ End of Part 1 (of 2) Computer Underground Digest #9.59 ************************************ Date: 18 Jun 97 17:25 From: P.A.Taylor@sociology.salford.ac.uk Subject: File 1--Preview of "Hacker" book: THEM AND US (part 2 of 2) ((MODERATORS' NOTE: This is Part two (of 2) of CuD 9.59, the conclusion of Paul Taylor's chapter from his forthcoming hacker book)). ------ 6.6 BOUNDARY FORMATION PROCESS AND THE USE OF ANALOGIES The previous sections of this chapter have established that the ethical issues surrounding computer usage are both complex and liable to fundamentally contrasting interpretations by the members of the CSI and the CU. The debate that subsequently occurs between the two groups has been shown as part of a boundary forming process by means of which both groups reinforce their own identities. This section analyses the way in which analogies are used within this process as both explanatory tools with which to examine some of the issues in the ethical debate over hacking, and also as a method of conveying the strength of opinion that is held. The role of physical analogies in the ethical debate over security issues has already been illustrated with the CSI's use of them to express fears of the anonymous nature of the threat hackers pose. The general ease with which physical analogies are used and the strength of feeling behind them is vividly illustrated by Jerry Carlin's response to the question, ''Have system breakers become the 'whipping boys' for general commercial irresponsibility with regard to data security?" He replied, "It's fashionable to blame the victim for the crime but if someone is raped it is not OK to blame that person for not doing a better job in fending off the attack!" (Carlin: e-mail interview) Sherizen was one of the few interviewees to refrain from using analogies in his discussion of hacking, contending that: Usually, arguing by analogy is a very weak argument. When it comes to discussing the law, non-lawyers often try to approach arguments this way. I don't think that we can go very far to determine appropriate behaviours if we rely upon analogies. What we need to develop are some social definitions of acceptable behaviour and then to structure "old law for new technologies." The physical analogies may help to score points in a debate but they are not helpful here at all (Sherizen e-mail interview). The grey and indeterminate ethical quality of computing makes it difficult to establish such a code of 'acceptable behaviour', and it is in an attempt to do so that physical analogies are used. Goldstein (editor of Hacking magazine 'Phrack') explores the ethical implications of hacking by questioning the use of an analogy that likens hacking to trespass: Some will say ... 'accessing a computer is far more sensitive than walking into an unlocked office building.' If that is the case, why is it still so easy to do? If it's possible for somebody to easily gain unauthorised access to a computer that has information about me, I would like to know about it. But somehow I don't think the company or agency running the system would tell me that they have gaping security holes. Hackers, on the other hand, are very open about what they discover which is why large corporations hate them so much (Goldstein 1993). The moral debate about hacking makes frequent use of such physical analogies of 'theft' and 'trespass'. The choice of the physical analogy reflecting the initial ethical position of the discussant and will be biased towards the point that the discussant is attempting to establish, and hence certain emotive images such as rape and burglary are repeatedly used. (i) Property issues Members of the CSI tend to emphasise the authorisation and access rights criteria relating to information. Such criteria are held to be fundamental to an ethical outlook on computing issues because of they stem from the basic belief that information and computer systems are the sole property of their owners, in the same way that property rights exist in material objects. Physical analogies become a means to restrict the computer security debate: "to questions about privacy, property, possessive individualism, and at best, the excesses of state surveillance, while it closes off any examination of the activities of the corporate owners and institutional sponsors of information technology (the most prized 'target' of most hackers)." (Ross 1990: 83). This is a rather partisan interpretation of the role analogies play in the socially shaping boundary formation occurring within computing. A less controversial assessment, would be that in contrast to the CU, the CSI emphasises the property rights of system owners with its use of analogies that are often dramatic and vivid: "As far as the raison d'=88tre for attackers, it is no more a valid justification to attack systems because they are vulnerable than it is valid to beat up babies because they can't defend themselves. If you are going to demonstrate a weakness, you must do it with the permission of the systems administrators and with a great deal of care" (Cohen: e-mail interview). The difficulty faced with analogies that seek to emphasise the way in which hacking tends to transgress property rights, centres upon what we have already seen as the increasingly immaterial aspects of information and which is also shown in Chapter 7 to create various problems for drafting effective computer misuse legislation: "copyability is INHERENT in electronic media. You can xerox a book but not very well and you don't get a nice binding and cover. Electronic media, video tape, computer discs etc., do not have this limitation. Since the ability to copy is within the nature of the media, it seems silly to try to prevent it" (Mercury: e-mail interview). Software copying is an example of how duplication within computing is inherently more easy than with physical commodities: copyability is intrinsic to the medium itself. For example, Maelstrom contends that he: "can't remember a single analogy that works. Theft is taking something else that belongs to someone without his/her permission. When you pirate you don't steal, you copy" (Maelstrom: e-mail interview). Similarly, in the case of cracking: In absolutely no case can the physical analogies of 'theft' and 'trespassing' be applied in the matter of computer system 'cracking'. Computers are a reservoir for information expressed in bits of zeroes and ones. Homes and property have things far more intrinsically valuable to harbour. Information protected properly whilst residing on a system is not at issue for 'theft'. Encryption should have been a standard feature to begin with and truly confidential information should not be accessible in any manner via a remote means (Tester: e-mail interview). (ii) Analogies - breaking and entering In order to emphasise the potential harm threatened to systems by anonymous intruders the physical analogies used tend to concentrate upon the fear and sense of violation that tend to accompany burglaries. The dispute between the CSI and the CU as to whether it is ethical to break into systems is most often conducted with reference to the analogy of breaking and entering into a building. Because of the divergence between the real world and cyberspace, however, even such a simple analogy is open to varying interpretations: "My analogy is walking into an office building, asking a secretary which way it is to the records room, and making some Xerox copies of them. Far different than breaking and entering someone's home" (Cohen: e-mail interview). Cosell presents the following scenario with which he attempts to frame the ethical issues surrounding hacking: Consider: it is the middle of summer and you happen to be climbing in the mountains and see a pack of teenagers roaming around an abandoned-until-snow ski resort. There is no question of physical harm to a person, since there will be no people around for months. They are methodically searching EVERY truck, building, outbuilding, shed etc., trying EVERY window, trying to pick EVERY lock. When they find something they can open, they wander into it, and emerge a while later. From your vantage point, you can see no actual evidence of any theft or vandalism, but then you can't actually see what they're doing while they're inside whatever-it-is (Cosell: CuD 3:12 April 1991). From this scenario, various questions arise, such as: do you call the Police? what would the intruders be charged with? and would your response be different if you were the owner of the resort? Someone more sympathetic to the hacker point of view illustrated the fundamentally different way in which the two groups, CSI and CU, conceptualise the ethical issues and the corresponding use of physical analogies. He responded that: Of course you should call the cops. Unless they are authorised to be on the property, (by the owner) they are trespassing, and in the case of picking locks, breaking and entering. However, you're trying to equate breaking into a ski resort with breaking into a computer system. The difference being: 99 times out of 100, the people breaking into a computer system only want to learn, have forgotten a password, etc. ... 99 times out of 100, the people breaking into the ski resort are out for free shit (Rob Heins CuD 3:13). The CU accuse the CSI of preferring to use physical analogies in order to marginalise a group, rather than make use of their information for improving the security of systems: When you refer to hacking as 'burglary and theft' ... it becomes easy to think of these people as hardened criminals. But it's just not the case. I don't know any burglars or thieves, yet I hang out with an awful lot of hackers. It serves a definite purpose to blur the distinction, just as pro-democracy demonstrators are referred to as rioters by nervous political leaders. Those who have staked a claim in the industry fear that the hackers will reveal vulnerabilities in their systems that they would just as soon forget about (Emmanuel Goldstein: CuD 1:13). This is one explanation of why, if physical analogies are inevitably only crude analytical approximations and rhetorical devices with which to conceptualise computing issues, they are frequently used by the CSI in their discourse. Johnson argues in response to the claim that hackers serve a useful purpose by pointing out security faults that: If a policeman walks down the street testing doors to see if they are locked, that's within his 'charter'- both ethically and legally. If one is open, he is within the same 'charter' to investigate - to see if someone else is trespassing. However, it's not in his 'charter' to go inside and snoop through my personal belongings, nor to hunt for illegal materials such as firearms or drugs ... If I come home and find the policeman in my house, I can pretty well assume he's doing me a favour because he found my door unlocked. However, if a self-appointed 'neighbourhood watch' monitor decides to walk down the street checking doorknobs, he's probably overstepped his 'charter'. If he finds my door unlocked and enters the house, he's trespassing ... Life is complicated enough without self-appointed watchdogs and messiahs trying to 'make my life safe (Bob Johnson: e-mail interview). Thus, hackers are seen to have no 'charter' which justifies their incursions into other peoples' systems, such incursions being labelled as trespass. Even comparisons to trespass, however, tend to be too limited for those wishing to identify and label hacking as an immoral act. Trespass is a civil and not a criminal offence. Onderwater, makes this distinction with his particular use of analogies: "Trespassing means in Holland if somebody leaves the door open and the guy goes in, stands in the living room, crosses his arms and doesn't do anything." In contrast, hacking involves the active overcoming of any security measures put before hackers, Onderwater sees it as more analagous to the situation whereby: you find somebody in your house and he is looking through your clothes in your sleeping room, and you say 'what are you doing?' and he says 'well, I was walking at the back of the garden and I saw that if I could get onto the shed of your neighbour, there was a possibility to get onto the gutter, and could get to your bathroom window, get it open, that was a mistake from you, so I'd like to warn you ... You wouldn't see that as trespassing, you would see that as breaking and entering, which it is and I think it's the same with hacking (Onderwater: Hague interview). (iii) Rejection of breaking and entering analogies - hackers use of physical analogies: chess vs breaking and entering Gongrijp's description of the motives lying behind hacking was typical of the hackers I met. He concentrated on the intellectual stimulation it affords as opposed to any desire just to trespass onto computer systems . He emphasised the chess-like qualities of computer security, and was at pains to reject any analogies that might compare hacking to physical breaking and entering. Gongrijp contended that: Computer security is like a chess-game, and all these people that say breaking into my computer systems is like breaking into my house: bull-shit, because securing your house is a very simple thing, you just put locks on the doors and bars on the windows and then only brute force can get into your house, like smashing a window. But a computer has a hundred thousand intricate ways to get in, and it's a chess game with the people that secure a computer... it's their job to make the new release of their Unix system more secure, and it's the job of the hackers to break in (Gongrijp: Amsterdam interview). Goggans turns the burglar analogy on its head when he argues that: People just can't seem to grasp the fact that a group of 20 year old kids just might know a little more than they do, and rather than make good use of us, they would rather just lock us away and keep on letting things pass them by ... you can't stop burglars from robbing you when you leave the doors open, but lock up the people who can close them for you, another burglar will just walk right in (Goggans 1990). The implication of these combined views, is that the analogy comparing hacking with burglary fails because the real world barriers employed to deter burglars are not used in the virtual world of computing. Such preventative measures are either not used at all, or are of a qualitatively different kind to the 'doors' and 'locks' that can be used in computing. Such barriers can be overcome by technologically knowledgeable young people, without violence or physical force of any kind. The overcoming of such barriers, has a non-violent and intellectual quality that is not apparent in more conventional forms of burglary, and which therefore throws into question the whole suitability of such analogies. (iv) Problems of using physical analogies as explanatory tools The following excerpt is a newspaper editorial response to the acquittal of Paul Bedworth case. It compares computer addiction to a physical addiction for drugs: This must surely be a perverse verdict ... Far from being unusual in staying up half the night, Mr Bedworth was just doing what his fellows have done for years. Scores of universities and private companies could each produce a dozen software nerds as dedicated as he ... Few juries in drug cases look so indulgently on the mixture of youth and addiction (Ind 18.3.93: editorial p. 25). This editorial emphasises how such analogies are utilised in an attempt to formulate ethical responses to an activity of ambiguous ethical content. As Goldstein pointed out, it becomes easier to attribute malign intent, if using such analogies succeeds in making a convincing comparison between hacking and an activity the public are more readily inclined to construe as a malicious activity. The adaptability of this technique is shown by the way the editorial continues to utilise a physical analogy in order to elicit critical responses, this time against the victims of the previously maligned hacker: "Leaving those passwords unchanged is like leaving the chief executive's filing cabinet un-locked. Organisations that do so can expect little public sympathy when their innermost secrets are brought into public view." The main reason why physical analogies tend not to succeed in any attempted project of stigmatisation/'ethicalisation' of hacking events is the difficulty of convincing people that events that transpire in virtual reality are in fact comparable and equivalent to criminal acts in the physical world. We have seen for example the weaknesses of breaking and entering analogies. They flounder upon the fact that hacking intrusions do not contain the same threats of transgression of personal physical space and therefore a direct and actual physical threat to an individual. With the complete absence of such a threat, hacking activity will primarily remain viewed as an intellectual exercise and show of bravado rather than a criminal act, even if, on occasion, direct physical harm may be an indirect result of the technical interference caused by hacking. Thus the use of analogies is fraught with problems of equivalence. Whilst they may be useful as a rough comparison between the real and virtual worlds, the innate but sometimes subtle, practical and ethical differences between the two worlds mean that analogies cannot be relied upon as a complete explanatory tool in seeking to understand the practical and ethical implications of computing: They simply don't map well and can create models which are subtly and profoundly misleading. For example, when we think of theft in the physical world, we are thinking of an act in which I might achieve possession of an object only by removing it from yours. If I steal your horse, you can't ride. With information, I can copy your software or data and leave the copy in your possession entirely unaltered (Barlow: e-mail interview). Information processed by computers is such that previous concepts of scarcity break down when correspondence is sought between the real and virtual worlds. It is not just conceptions of scarcity that are affected, however, the extent to which information correlates with the real world is questionable at the most fundamental levels: Physical (and biological) analogies often are misleading as they appeal to an understanding from an area in which different laws hold. Informatics has often mislead naive people by choosing terms such as 'intelligent' or 'virus' though IT systems may not be compared to the human brain ... Many users (and even 'experts') think of a password as a 'key' despite the fact that you can easily 'guess' the password while it is difficult to do the equivalent for a key (Brunnstein: e-mail interview). Physical analogies are inevitably flawed in the respect that they can only ever be used as an approximation of what occurs in 'cyberspace' in order to relate it to the everyday physical world. Thus they attempt to evaluate and understand computing activities using a more natural and comfortable frame of reference. Hence the language is often used by the CSI to describe computer attacks, and a security breach of the academic network with the acronym JANET, was referred to as the 'rape of JANET'. Spafford admitted to having one of his systems hacked into at least three times, he argued that he: "didn't learn anything in particular that I didn't know before. I felt quite violated by the whole thing, and did not view anything positive from it."(Spafford US interview [Emphasis mine]). The CU stresses the differences between the virtual and real worlds and contends that the use of physical language in such a situation is not warranted. For example, despite such use of the language of physicality, it is difficult to conceive of a computer intrusion that could be as traumatising as the actual bodily violation of a rape. A second, diametrically opposed, reason for questioning the validity of physical analogies would be that instead of overstating situations within computing, analogies used to describe a computer intrusion actually understate the harm caused by the intrusion due to the generic aspects of hacking identified earlier. In John Perry Barlow's "Crime and Puzzlement" recourse is made to the metaphors comparing hackers with cowboys from the nineteenth century USA. This specific comparison of hackers with cowboys illustrates some of the problems associated with the use of metaphors. The basis of this metaphor rests upon the view of hackers as pioneers in the new field of computing, just as cowboys were portrayed as pioneers of the 'Wild West'. Such a metaphor, in addition to the above discussion of the applicability of the concepts of trespass and theft to the world of computing, provides a useful example of both the suitability and limitations of analogies in discussions of hacking. Commentators tend to 'customise' common metaphors used in the computer security debate, in order to derive from the metaphor the particular emphasis desired to further the point being argued: Much of what we 'know' about cowboys is a mixture of myth, unsubstantiated glorification of 'independent he-men', Hollywood creations, and story elements that contain many racist and sexist perspectives. I doubt that cracker/hackers are either like the mythic cowboy or the 'true' cowboy ... I think we should move away from the easy-but-inadequate analogy of the cowboy to other, more experienced-based discussions (Sherizen: e-mail interview). The tendency to use the 'easy-but-inadequate analogy' applies significantly to the orginator of the cowboy metaphor himself. Thus, when I asked John Perry Barlow his views as to the accuracy of the metaphor, he replied: "Given that I was the first person to use that metaphor, you're probably asking the wrong guy. Or maybe not, inasmuch as I'm now more inclined to view crackers as aboriginal natives rather than cowboys. Certainly, they have an Indian view of property" (Barlow: e-mail interview). More negative responses to the comparison of hackers with cowboys came from the hackers themselves: WHO is the electronic cowboy ... the electronic farmer, the electronic saloon keeper? ... I am not sold. I offer no alternative, either. I wait for hacking to evolve its own culture, its own stereotypes. There was a T.V. show long ago, 'Have Gun Will Travel' about a gunslinger called 'Palladin'. The knightly metaphor ... but not one that was widely accepted. Cowboys acted like cowboys, not knights, or Greeks, or cavemen. Hackers are hackers not cowboys (Marotta: e-mail interview). 6.7 THE PROJECT OF PROFESSIONALISATION 6.7.1 Creation of the computer security market and professional ethos The creation of the 'them and us' situation forms part of the process whereby a professional status opposed to the hacking culture and ethic is established. Examples have already been seen of the lack of cooperation that exists between the CSI and the CU in Chapter 5, it gave various reasons for the CSI not being able to trust hackers sufficiently enough for cooperation to be feasible. The antagonism that exists between the CSI and the CU contributes to a process of boundary formation, but there is also the widely-held belief that, along with legitimate reasons for differentiation between the two groups, there is also an element of manufactured difference. Below are two examples, one from the commercial sector, and one from the CU, of people who believe parts of the CSI are involved in creating a market niche for themselves from which it then becomes necessary to exclude hackers: Computer security industry' sounds like some high-priced consultants to me. Most of what they do could be summarised in a two-page leaflet - and its common sense anyway. A consultant - particularly in the U.S. - spends 3/4ths of his or her effort justifying the fee (Barrie Bates: e-mail interview). These virus programs are about to make me sick! In two years of heavily downloading from BBSs, I've yet to catch a virus from one. Peter Norton should be drug to a field and shot! McAffe too (Eric Hunt: e-mail interview). The veracity of opinions such as those above may be difficult to separate from their origin in the antagonism that exists between the CSI and the CU, but allegations that 'viral hype' has been used as a means of helping to create a computer security market come from security practitioners themselves: It's very hard getting facts on this because the media hype is used as a trigger by people who are trying to sell anti-virus devices, programs, scanners, whatever. This is put about very largely by companies who are interested in the market and they try to stimulate the market by putting the fear of God into people in order to sell their products, but selling them on the back of fear rather than constructive benefits, because most of the products in the industry are sold on constructive benefits. You always sell the benefit first, this is selling it on the back of fear which is rather different, "you'd better use our products or else" (Taylor: Knutsford interview). The whole process of enforcing and furthering the proprietary attitude to information outlined in Chapter 3 is further strengthened by a new language of physicality resulting from the advent of computer viruses10. Software is infected, and systems are spoken of in terms of being repeatedly 'raped'. Computer viruses are described in terms similar to those employed in discussions of the dangers of promiscuous sex. Prophylactic safety measures are seen to be necessary to protect the moral majority from 'unprotected contact' with the degeneracy of a minority group. Ross argues that 'viral hysteria' has been deliberately used by the software industry to increase its market sales: software vendors are now profiting from the new public distrust of program copies ... the effects of the viruses have been to profitably clamp down on copyright delinquency, and to generate the need for entirely new industrial production of viral suppressors to contain the fallout. In this respect it is hard to see how viruses could hardly, in the long run, have benefited industry producers more (Ross 1990: 80). In addition to the practical benefits the CSI has derived from the concerns associated with viruses, the threat they pose to systems' security has been used to reinforce ideological opposition to hackers and their anti-proprietary attitudes: Virus-conscious fear and loathing have clearly fed into the paranoid climate of privatization that increasingly defines social identities in the new post-Fordist order. The result -- a psycho-social closing of the ranks around fortified private spheres -- runs directly counter to the ethic that we might think of as residing at the architectural heart of information technology. In its basic assembly structure, information technology is a technology is a technology of processing, copying, replication, and simulation, and therefore does not recognise the concept of private information property (Ross 1990: 80). The boundary formation exercise necessitates the exclusion of hackers from influence within computing, whilst, at the same time, developing a consistent ethical value system for 'legitimate' security professionals. An example of boundary formation in action is the advent of computer viruses and worms and the particular case of Robert Morris and the Internet Worm. Cornell University published an official report into the Internet Worm incident, concluding that one of the causes of the act was Morris' lack of ethical awareness. The report censures the ambivalent ethical atmosphere of Harvard, Morris' alma mater, where he failed to develop in a computing context a clear ethical sense of right and wrong. Most significantly, the judgement made upon the Morris case was full of implicit assumptions that betrayed a boundary forming process in the way it stressed the need for professional ethics in opposition to those of hackers. Dougan and Gieryn (1988), sum up the boundary-forming aspects of responses to the Internet Worm in their analysis of the e-mail debate that occurred shortly after the incident. The computer community is characterised as falling into two schools of thought with regard to their response to the event. The first group is described as being organised around a principle of 'mechanic solidarity, the second, one of 'organic solidarity'. The mechanic solidarity group's binding principle is the emphasis they place upon the ethical aspect of the Morris case, his actions are seen as unequivocally wrong and the lesson to be learnt in order to prevent future possible incidents is that a professional code of ethics needs to be promulgated. These viewpoints have been illustrated in this study's depiction of the hawkish response to hacking. The second group advocates a policy more consistent with the dovish element of the CSI and those hackers that argue their expertise could be more effectively utilised. They criticise the first group for failing to prevent 'an accident waiting to happen' and expecting that the teaching of computing ethics will solve what they perceive as an essentially technical problem. The likelihood of eliminating the problem with the propagation of a suitable code of professional ethics seems to them remote: I would like to remind everyone that the real bad guys do not share our ethics and are thus not bound by them. We should make it as difficult as possible -- (while preserving an environment conducive to research) for this to happen again. The worm opened some eyes. Let's not close them again by saying 'Gentlemen don't release worms' (Dougan and Gieryn 1988: 12). The hacker Craig Neidorf known as 'Knight Lightning', in his report on a CSI conference, underlines the theory that the debate over hacking centres upon a project of professionalisation, with the argument that what mostly distinguishes the two groups is the form, rather than content of the knowledge they seek to utilise: Zenner and Denning11 alike discussed the nature of Phrack's12 articles. They found that the articles appearing in Phrack contained the same types of material found publicly in other computer and security magazines, but with one significant difference. The tone of the articles. An article named 'How to Hack Unix' in Phrack usually contained very similar information to an article you might see in Communications of the ACM only to be named 'Securing Unix Systems'. (Craig Neidorf: CuD 2.07). The implication is that hackers' security knowledge is not sought due to reasons other than its lack of technical value; instead the CSI fails to utilise such knowledge more fully because it interferes with their boundary-forming project that centres upon attempting to define the difference between a hacker and a 'computer professional': Ironically, these hackers are perhaps driven by the same need to explore, to test technical limits that motivates computer professionals; they decompose problems, develop an understanding of them and then overcome them. But apparently not all hackers recognise the difference between penetrating the technical secrets of their own computer and penetrating a network of computers that belong to others. And therein lies a key distinction between a computer professional and someone who knows a lot about computers. (Edward Parrish 1989). Another interesting example of the similar traits that the CSI and CU share in common, is the case of Clifford Stoll's investigation of an intrusion into the Berkeley University computer laboratories, which he subsequently wrote up in the form of a best-selling book, The Cuckoo's Egg. Thomas points out that: Any computer undergrounder can identify with and appreciate Stoll's obsession and patience in attempting to trace the hacker through a maze of international gateways and computer systems. But, Stoll apparently misses the obvious affinity he has with those he condemns. He simply dismisses hackers as 'monsters' and displays virtually no recognition of the similarities between his own activity and those of the computer underground. This is what makes Stoll's work so dangerous: His work is an unreflective exercise in self-promotion, a tome that divides the sacred world of technocrats from the profane activities of those who would challenge it; Stoll stigmatises without understanding (Thomas 1990). What makes Stoll's behaviour even less understandable is that throughout the book he recounts how he himself engages in the same kind of activities that he criticises others for indulging in. This fact that Stoll labels hackers as 'monsters' despite the fact he shares some of their qualities13 is indicative of the boundary forming process the CSI have entered upon. The process also involves other groups that are involved in the de facto marginalisation of hackers whilst not actually being directly involved in computing, examples of such groups are the various government agencies and politicians involved in the drafting of legislation about hacking. Combined together, these groups have contributed towards a response to hacking that has been labelled a 'witch-hunt' mentality by some observers. 6.7.2 Witch-hunts and hackers Part of the cause of the witch-hunt mentality, that has allegedly been applied to hackers, is the increasing tendency within society towards the privatisation of consumption examined in the early chapters. The pressures to commodify information can be seen as an extension of the decline of the public ethos in modern society which is accompanied by the search for scapegoats that will justify the retreat from communitarian spirit. The hacker is the latest such scapegoat of modern times in a series including Communism, terrorism, child abductors and AIDS: More and more of our neighbours live in armed compounds. Alarms blare continuously. Potentially happy people give their lives over to the corporate state as though the world were so dangerous outside its veil of collective immunity that they have no choice ... The perfect bogeyman for modern times is the Cyberpunk! He is so smart he makes you feel even more stupid than you usually do. He knows this complex country in which you're perpetually lost. He understands the value of things you can't conceptualize long enough to cash in on. He is the one-eyed man in the Country of the Blind (Barlow 1990: 56). This is the root of peoples' fear of hackers and the reason why they are labelled as deviant within society despite the fact that, as we have seen above, hackers share some of the same characteristics as their CSI counterparts. The simultaneous existence of shared characteristics and deviant status for hackers is a necessary result of the fact that: The kinds of practices labelled deviant correspond to those values on which the community places its highest premium. Materialist cultures are beset by theft (although that crime is meaningless in a utopian commune where all property is shared) ... The correspondence between kind of deviance and a community's salient values is no accident ... deviants and conformists both are shaped by the same cultural pressures -- and thus share some, if not all, common values -- though they may vary in their opportunities to pursue valued ends via legitimate means. Deviance ... emerges exactly where it is most feared, in part because every community encourages some of its members to become Darth Vader, taking 'the force' over to the 'dark side' (Dougan and Gieryn 1990: 4). The vocalised antagonism between the CSI and CU and the exaggerated portrayals of the media examined in this chapter are part of the process whereby hackers are marginalised and defined as deviant. In the quotation below Stoll is singled out to personify this process but the method he uses is held in common with all the other figures quoted in this chapter who contribute to the 'them and us' scenario by the strength of the views they express and the analogies they choose to express them with: Witch hunts begin when the targets are labelled as 'other', as something quite different from normal people. In Stoll's view, hackers, like witches, are creatures not quite like the rest of us, and his repetitious use of such pejorative terms as 'rats,' 'monsters,' 'vandals,' and 'bastard' transforms the hacker into something less than human ... In a classic example of a degradation ritual, Stoll -- through assertion and hyperbole rather than reasoned argument -- has redefined the moral status of hackers into something menacing (Thomas 1990). 6.7.3 Closure - the evolution of attitudes The witch hunt process is a device to facilitate what Bijker and Law (1992) have analysed as closure. The notion is usefully illustrated by examining the evolution of society's attitudes from the benign tolerance of the early MIT hackers to the present climate of anti-hacking legislation. In addition to Levy's identification of three generations of hackers14, Landreth suggests the arrival of a fourth generation of hackers when he talks of a major change occurring in the CU around about the time the elitist hacking group he joined known as the "Inner Circle" was set up. In addition to the effect of the increased dispersal of micro-computers, there was also the effect of the hacker movie Wargames.: "In a matter of months the number of self-proclaimed hackers tripled, then quadrupled. You couldn't get through to any of the old bulletin boards any more - the telephone numbers were busy all night long. Even worse, you could delicately work to gain entrance to a system, only to find dozens of novices blithely tromping around the files" (Landreth 1985 :18). These 'wannabe' hackers reflect the relative immaturity and absence of the original hacker ethic that characterises the latest manifestation of hacking. Chris Goggans from the Legion of Doom concurs with this identification of a change in the basic nature of the CU environment. In the early days: People were friendly, computer users were very social. Information was handed down freely, there was a true feeling of brotherhood in the underground. As the years went on people became more and more anti-social. As it became more and more difficult to blue-box the social feeling of the underground began to vanish. People began to hoard information and turn people in for revenge. The underground today is not fun. It is very power hungry, almost feral in its actions. People are grouped off: you like me or you like him, you cannot like both ... The subculture I grew up with , learned in, and contributed to, has decayed into something gross and twisted that I shamefully admit connection with. Everything changes and everything dies, and I am certain that within ten years there will be no such thing as a computer underground. I'm glad I saw it in its prime (Goggans: e-mail interview). Thus one reason for the changing nature of the computer underground is simply the fact that more would-be hackers arrived. 'Elite' hackers such as Goggans felt that this cheapened in some way the ethos and atmosphere of camaradarie that had previously existed within the CU. Feelings of superiority which help to fuel the motivation of a hacker had become undermined by the advent of too many 'wanna-be' young hackers. Sheer numbers alone would mean the demise of the previous emphasis hackers placed upon sharing knowledge and the importance of educating young hackers. The idiosyncratic actions of the first generation hackers, within the isolated academic context of MIT, were often praised for their inventiveness. Similar actions in the wider modern computing community tend to be automatically more disruptive and liable to censure. The reasons for this change in attitude are inextricably linked with the evolution of computing as a technology. Herschberg argues that computer security can be compared to the experiments of the Wright brothers, yet apart from such peripheral 'dovish' sentiments, the climate within the CSI and society as a whole is increasingly unsympathetic to the claims by hackers that they represent innocent intellectual explorers: closure in computer security has occurred. Leichter's perception of the evolution of hacking is at odds with that of Herschberg. He too uses an airplane analogy but prefers to emphasise that: When the first 'airplane hackers' began working on their devices, they were free to do essentially as they pleased. If they crashed and killed themselves well, that was too bad. If their planes worked - so much the better. After it became possible to build working airplanes , there followed a period in which anyone could build one and fly where he liked. But in the long run that became untenable ... If you want to fly today, you must get a license. You must work within a whole set of regulations (Jerry Leichter: CuD 4.18). Over time, technologies develop, and as a result, people's interactions with that technology, even if they remain unchanged, will be viewed differently as society adapts to the changing technology. An example of this is the changing role of system crashes. In the earliest days of computing, the computers functioned by means of large glass valves, which after relatively short periods of use were liable to over-heat, thus causing a system crash. Even if hackers were responsible for some of the system crashes that occurred, the fact that they were equally liable to be caused by other non-hacker means, led to a climate whereby hacker-induced crashes were accepted as a minor inconvenience even when they were extremely disruptive by today's standards. This is an example, therefore, of the importance of taking into account the societal context of an act involving technology before an evaluation of its ethical content is made. 6.8 CONCLUSION This chapter has traced the origin of the ethical debate between the CSI and the CU, showing how the novel nature of some of the situations thrown up by computing has resulted in a process of negotiation. This process takes the form of markedly different ethical responses to the novel situations being made and competing with each other. The contrasting interests and perspectives of the two groups is highlighted by the fact that whilst hackers see their activity as manifesting ethical concern over potential governmental and commercial abuses of privacy, the CSI prefers to see the activity as unethical or as evidence of a general decline in social values. There are two important elements of doubt regarding the view of the CSI. Firstly, the argument that hacking is intrinsically unethical is weakened by the fact that, as Levy documents, the same acts of hacking that are now criticised as immoral, were benignly tolerated in the days of the early MIT hackers. Bloombecker even goes so far as to claim that what would nowadays be labelled a computer criminal, helped to make computing what it is. Cohen also asserts, that unofficially, hackers are often used commercially to check the security of systems. Secondly, the chapter has shown, that an increasing aspect of computing is the way in which it produces novel situations where there seem to be no clear-cut boundaries between right and wrong. This is most noticeable in the situations produced by technology that are most divorced from everyday experience, typified by the notion of cyberspace. Ethical uncertainty concerning hacking is also exacerbated by the fact that the activity is often motivated by a series of complex factors. The fact that there is a keen debate, both within the CSI, and between the CSI and the CU, implies that any purported immorality of hacking is due to the social shaping of a perception that has evolved from the MIT days of benign tolerance to the present atmosphere of criminalisation. An important part of this process of social shaping is the way in which physical analogies are used in the formation of computer ethics. They are being increasingly used in professional discussions of the issues as part of the process of group delineation. Where previously there were only blurred or indefinite computer ethics, physical analogies are now used to establish clearer computing mores. The need to use physical analogies in the first place arises because hacking takes place in the qualitatively new realm of human experience: cyberspace. The fact that the real world and cyberspace are such different realms has led to a need to explain and make ethical judgements about hacking from a conventional frame of reference, that is, using analogies based upon the physical world. The constant use of physical analogies and metaphors in discussing the legal and ethical issues of hacking is thus an attempt to redefine, in a practical manner, the concept of informational property rights, as they are to be applied in the computer age. The use of analogies is much more common within the CSI than it is from hackers themselves. This is because the CSI have a general need to make comparisons between cyberspace and the real world in order to legitimate their role and to demonise the CU. Hackers do not have this need; their behaviour is based upon accepting computing as a realm of intellectual and social experimentation, and they find it attractive because of the very fact that it is different from the real world. In summary, there are perennial claims from each successive generation that the youth of the age are largely unethical, and that they are harbingers of a break-down in the general moral order. Such claims are perhaps an inevitable part of the human condition, and its inter-generational relations. This study, however, is more concerned with the specific aspects of computing that give rise to qualitatively new circumstances facing computer users, the ethics of which are indeterminate. These situations encourage behaviour, which, to be recognised as unethical, assumes that an adequate and convincing comparison can be made with non-computing situations. It is the difficulty of attempting to conceptualise the ethics of computer-induced scenarios that leads to attempts to translate them into a more easily understood and common-place experience. The chapter shows, however, that there is doubts as to whether 'real-world' ethics can be transposed in such a literal manner. This is illustrated by the various examples given of the CSI's alleged double standards. These examples imply that the vagueness of computing ethics is such that any professional code of ethics that is produced is likely to be more the result of one group enforcing its value system on another group, rather than one group having any inherently superior moral advantage in the ethical debate. The process whereby one group's value system can be imposed upon another has been analysed in a frame of reference that compares the increasing marginalisation of hackers from mainstream computer usage to the practice of witch-hunts. One analysis of the gradual stigmatisation of hackers is that they have been part of a degradation ritual whereby a more dominant social group has progressively alienated them from 'normal' society in order to promote its professional interest. The role of the media in this process has been shown by the way it projects hackers as stigmatised 'others', thus aiding the boundary forming professionalisation process of the CSI. Particular examples of the process of group differentiation and professionalisation have been given, relating to the advent of viruses and the specific case of the Internet Worm. The likelihood of eliminating threats to computer security with the propagation of a suitable code of professional ethics seems remote considering the extent of the CU's ethical disagreement with the CSI and the thrill obtained from the very fact that the CU is 'underground'. Despite this, once the process of professionalisation has been initiated, the temptation is to proceed to codify the nascent but dominant group's response to computing's ethical dilemmas, by means of legislation. The subsequent closure of computing technology has occurred to such an extent that the hippy-like ethos of the CU looks increasingly anachronistic in the 1980's and 90's. In so far as hackers have represented a force of anti-capitalistic information-sharing, their stance seems to have absorbed within the state's sponsorship of the development of computing technology. The second generation hard-ware hackers such as Steve Wozniak, have seen their 'wholesome and green' product (hence the name 'Apple') brought to the masses as indeed they wished, but significantly as a commodified product. This is perhaps a reflection of the market's ability to co-opt and absorb radical change. It threatens, in the case of hackers, to undermine their status as a group embodying alternative values. The new generation of 'wanna-be' hackers, is significant because it represents more than simply adolescent boys intrigued by the intellectual challenge and feelings of power of illicit computing. In addition, they also represent the increasing tendency of information to be viewed as a tradeable commodity in the form of 'Amiga kid'-type groups. Their illicit blackmarket activities and their seemingly amoral views regarding the ethical implications of accessing and manipulating other peoples' information represents the extreme end of a spectrum which also includes the activity of 'benign' hackers. It is a spectrum whose various points reflect some of the ethical issues that society still has to satisfactorily address regarding information and the implications of its changing properties. An example of the unsettled nature of society's response to information is the doubt that still remains regarding the effects of its policy of closure towards hackers. The question still arises from the above analysis of whether the evolution of attitudes towards the CU is in response to a change in its nature towards a more crime-orientated environment, or whether the increased tendency to perceive and portray hacking as a criminal and unethical activity has taken on the quality of a self-fulfilling prophecy, driving would-be 'pleasure hackers' into the arms of the criminal underground. The implications of this latter scenario are examined in the next chapter. 1 Thus Eric Goggans and Robert Schifreen (as well as several other hackers encountered in the fieldwork) have started their own computer firms; Professor Herschberg has contacts with and produces interaction between hackers and the security industry by means of his consultancy work, and the authorised and unauthorised (in the case of accepting a documented hack in lieu of a dissertation) use of students to test systems. 2 Fear of boundary transgression is vividly portrayed in such urban legends as 'The Mexican Dog' and 'The Choking Doberman', c.f. Woolgar (1990). 3 Joseph Lewis Popp: he was charged in January 1990 with using a trojan horse hidden within a diskette to extort money from recipients whose systems had subsequently become infected. The trial did not come to court, however, because his defence argued that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. They described how he had taken to putting hair curlers in his beard and wearing a cardboard box on his head in an apparent attempt to protect himself from radiation. 4 c.f. Appendix 1's summary of the fieldwork's statistical evidence of the age factor. 5 Sterling 1993: 95 6 references taken from CuD 4.11 7 As shown with the title of Paul Mungo's article: "Satanic Viruses" (c.f. bibliiography) 8 c.f. CuD 3:37 9 Channel 4 Television, November 1989 10 c.f Woolgar 1990. 11 The former was the defence lawyer for Craig Neidorf in the E911 trial of 1990, Dorothy Denning being a computer scientist from Georgetown University, Washington, with an academic interest in CU issues. 12 CU electronic magazine 13 Thomas' review of The Cuckoo's Egg includes numerous examples of Stoll indulging in such activities as borrowng other peoples' computers without permission and monitoring other peoples' electronic communications without authorisation. 14 c.f. Appendix 2 for a full account. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 2--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line: SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS. The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-6436), fax (815-753-6359) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. 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