1874 lines
106 KiB
Plaintext
1874 lines
106 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
Computer underground Digest Sun July 27, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 59
|
|
ISSN 1004-042X
|
|
|
|
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
|
|
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
|
|
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
|
|
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
|
|
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
|
|
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
|
|
Ian Dickinson
|
|
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
|
|
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
|
|
|
|
CONTENTS, #9.59 (Sun, July 27, 1997)
|
|
|
|
File 1--Paul Taylor's Forthcoming "Hacker" Book (excerpt)
|
|
File 2--Chapter 6 of P. Taylor's book - "Them and Us"
|
|
File 3--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
|
|
|
|
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
|
|
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: 18 Jun 97 17:25
|
|
From: P.A.Taylor@sociology.salford.ac.uk
|
|
Subject: File 1--Paul Taylor's Forthcoming "Hacker" Book (excerpt)
|
|
|
|
((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: 18 Jun 97 17:25
|
|
From: P.A.Taylor@sociology.salford.ac.uk
|
|
Subject: File 2--Chapter 6 of P. Taylor's book - "Them and Us"
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
|
|
Subject: File 3--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 (815-753-6302)
|
|
or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL
|
|
60115, USA.
|
|
|
|
To UNSUB, send a one-line message: UNSUB CU-DIGEST
|
|
Send it to CU-DIGEST-REQUEST@WEBER.UCSD.EDU
|
|
(NOTE: The address you unsub must correspond to your From: line)
|
|
|
|
Issues of CuD can also be found in the Usenet comp.society.cu-digest
|
|
news group; on CompuServe in DL0 and DL4 of the IBMBBS SIG, DL1 of
|
|
LAWSIG, and DL1 of TELECOM; on GEnie in the PF*NPC RT
|
|
libraries and in the VIRUS/SECURITY library; from America Online in
|
|
the PC Telecom forum under "computing newsletters;"
|
|
On Delphi in the General Discussion database of the Internet SIG;
|
|
on RIPCO BBS (312) 528-5020 (and via Ripco on internet);
|
|
CuD is also available via Fidonet File Request from
|
|
1:11/70; unlisted nodes and points welcome.
|
|
|
|
In ITALY: ZERO! BBS: +39-11-6507540
|
|
|
|
UNITED STATES: ftp.etext.org (206.252.8.100) in /pub/CuD/CuD
|
|
Web-accessible from: http://www.etext.org/CuD/CuD/
|
|
ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4) in /pub/Publications/CuD/
|
|
aql.gatech.edu (128.61.10.53) in /pub/eff/cud/
|
|
world.std.com in /src/wuarchive/doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
|
|
wuarchive.wustl.edu in /doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
|
|
EUROPE: nic.funet.fi in pub/doc/CuD/CuD/ (Finland)
|
|
ftp.warwick.ac.uk in pub/cud/ (United Kingdom)
|
|
|
|
|
|
The most recent issues of CuD can be obtained from the
|
|
Cu Digest WWW site at:
|
|
URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/
|
|
|
|
COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST is an open forum dedicated to sharing
|
|
information among computerists and to the presentation and debate of
|
|
diverse views. CuD material may be reprinted for non-profit as long
|
|
as the source is cited. Authors hold a presumptive copyright, and
|
|
they should be contacted for reprint permission. It is assumed that
|
|
non-personal mail to the moderators may be reprinted unless otherwise
|
|
specified. Readers are encouraged to submit reasoned articles
|
|
relating to computer culture and communication. Articles are
|
|
preferred to short responses. Please avoid quoting previous posts
|
|
unless absolutely necessary.
|
|
|
|
DISCLAIMER: The views represented herein do not necessarily represent
|
|
the views of the moderators. Digest contributors assume all
|
|
responsibility for ensuring that articles submitted do not
|
|
violate copyright protections.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
End of Computer Underground Digest #9.59
|
|
************************************
|
|
|