The Conscience of a Hacker

Written By : >>>The Mentor<<<  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 underachiever.  They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school.  I've listened to teachers
explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction.
I understand it. "No Ms.Smith, I didn't show my work.
I did it in my head..."

     Damn kid.  Probably copied it.  They're all alike.

I made a discovery today.  I found a computer.
Wait a second, this is cool.  It does what I want it to. 
If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed 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 lines like heroin through an addict's veins,
an electric 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...

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]