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- Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10
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- The following was written shortly after my arrest...
- \/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
- by
- +++The Mentor+++
- Written on January 8, 1986
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- 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 will-
- ing 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 this individual,
- but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
- +++The Mentor+++
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