| ==Phrack Inc.== | |
| Issue XIV, File 3 of 9 | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| The following file is being reprinted in honor and sympathy for the many | |
| phreaks and hackers that have been busted recently by the Secret Service. -KL | |
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | |
| \/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/ | |
| by | |
| +++The Mentor+++ | |
| Written on January 8, 1986 | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager | |
| Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal," "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"... | |
| Damn kids. They're all alike. | |
| But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, | |
| ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what | |
| made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? | |
| I am a hacker, enter my world... | |
| Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of | |
| the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... | |
| Damn underachievers. They're all alike. | |
| I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain | |
| for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. | |
| Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." | |
| Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. | |
| I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is | |
| cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I | |
| screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... | |
| Or feels threatened by me... | |
| Or thinks I'm a smart ass... | |
| Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... | |
| Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. | |
| And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through | |
| the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is | |
| sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is | |
| found. | |
| "This is it... this is where I belong..." | |
| I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to | |
| them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... | |
| Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... | |
| You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at | |
| school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip | |
| through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or | |
| ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will- | |
| ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. | |
| This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the | |
| beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying | |
| for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and | |
| you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek | |
| after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, | |
| without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. | |
| You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us | |
| and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. | |
| Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is | |
| that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. | |
| My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me | |
| for. | |
| I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this | |
| individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike. | |
| +++The Mentor+++ | |
| [May the members of the phreak community never forget his words -KL] | |
| ______________________________________________________________________________ | |