Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers.
"Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after
Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your
three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind
the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what
forces shaped him, what may have molded him?.
I am a hacker, enter my
world...Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than
most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn
underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school.
I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a
fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it
in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. I made a
discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does
what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up.
Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm
a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid.
All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... a door
opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an
addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day
incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I
belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked
to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid.
Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You bet your ass we're
all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for
steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and
tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic.
The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few
are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world
of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a
service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it
wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore...
and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us
criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without
religious bias...and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage
wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for
our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, "I am a criminal". My crime is
that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and
think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you,
something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my
manifesto. You may stop ME, but you can't stop US ALL!!!, after
all, we're all alike.
+++ M�T�rM�n� � +++
[May the members of the phreak community never forget his words -JR]
