hacker-manifesto.txt - bitreich-documents - The repository to track the core bitreich documents.
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hacker-manifesto.txt (3415B)
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1 The following was written shortly after my arrest. I am currently
2 groupless, having resigned from the Racketeers, so ignore the signoff...
3
4
5 The Consience of a Hacker... by The Mentor 1/8/86
6
7
8 Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
9 Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank
10 Tampering"...
11
12 Damn kids. They're all alike.
13
14 But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
15 ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
16 made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
17
18 I am a hacker, enter my world...
19
20 Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
21 the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
22
23 Damn underachiever. they're all alike.
24
25 I'm a junior in High School. I've listened to teachers explain for
26 the 15th time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No Ms. Smith, I
27 didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
28
29 Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
30
31 I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this
32 is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
33 screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
34
35 Or feels threatened by me...
36
37 Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
38
39 Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
40
41 Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
42
43 And then it happened... A door opened to a world... rushing through
44 the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse
45 is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... A
46 board is found.
47
48 "This is it... This is where I belong..."
49
50 I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked
51 to them, may never hear from them again... I know them all...
52
53 Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...
54
55 You bet you're ass we're all alike... We've been spoon-fed baby
56 food when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
57 through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists,
58 or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us
59 willing pupils, but those are like drops of water in the desert.
60
61 This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch,
62 the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without
63 paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering
64 gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us
65 criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist
66 without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and
67 you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder,
68 cheat, and lie to use and try to make us believe it's for our own good,
69 yet we're the criminals.
70
71 Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
72 that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look
73 like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something you will never
74 forgive me for.
75
76 I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this
77 individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
78
79 +++The Mentor+++
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81