Who is a hacker? Explain what is meant by “the hacker ethic” with the help of a contemporary example.

A hacker is a person who breaks into computers and computer networks, either for profit or motivated by the challenge. The term "hacker" originally meant someone messing about with something in a positive sense, that is, using playful cleverness to achieve a goal. But the meaning of the term shifted over the decades since it first came into use in a computer context and became to refer to computer criminals.

In early 1970s hacker culture can be traced towards more beneficial forms of hacking, including MIT labs or the Home-brew Computer Club, which later resulted in such things as early personal computers or the open source movement. With the emergence personal computer and networking, formed a new subculture in computer underground called computer hackers. The computer hackers no longer did beneficial developments to the technology, but they instead started cracking into unauthorised systems, accessing unauthorised data and creating computer virus. They gave rise to so called the 'black hat hackers' who is like the bad person, and was no way beneficial in making computers better. While the 'white hat hackers' are those who stick to so called the hackers ethic and use hacking techniques to make computers better and useful.

A good example of a hacker can be Adrian Lamo. He is a 'Gray hat' hacker as in a mixture white and black hat hackers. He broke into several high-profile computer networks, including those of The New York Times, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, after which he was arrested. His family constantly kept shifting so he did not make many close friends in his childhood. He was tested out of high school an year early. Like any other hacker he had a poor social life in high school. He is also called 'homeless hacker', as he spends all the time couch surfing, travelling to internet cafés, squatting in abandoned buildings, one can say he felt his home in the machine he is using. For hackers, their relationship with computers can be described in on of their phrase

“I control you You're inside me.”

This attitude of hackers are reflected in their real life relationships also, Lamo was no exception. An ex-girlfriend of Lamo's described him as "very controlling," stating, "He carried a stun gun, which he used on me.".

Hacker ethic is the generic phrase which describes the values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community. Steven Levy as describes hacker ethic in his book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, written in 1984. According to which a hacker people should have total access to the computers and all information is free. It also asks to mistrust authority and promote decentralization. It considers a hack an art and speaks about how a computer can change your life to make it better. Adrine Lamo was no exception to following these ethics, Lamo hacked into The New York Times to research on high profile subjects. He has been constantly funding and supporting Wikileakes. This expresses his lack of trust in authority and how he wants to access information for free. When he was questioned about his actions, he glamorizing crime by stating,

“Anything I could say about my person or my actions would only cheapen what they have to say for themselves.”

It is also interesting to note that he Lamo informed US Army authorities that Bradley Manning confessed to leaking the video footage of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike incident in Iraq to Wikileaks.

Regarding this he said:

"I wouldn’t have done this if lives weren’t in danger... [Manning] was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air."

Eventually he broke the hackers ethic by reporting to authorities. Hence there was an upper limit for him beyond which the Hackers ethics were void.

- G Sujan Kumar

References:

Wikipedia: Adrian Lamo

Wikipedia: Hacker ethics

The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit by Sherry Turkle

Information Panopticon

Jermey Bentham an English philosopher in 1791, proposed an architecture designed for a safe, humane prison called the panopticon. The design consists of a centralized tower surrounded by a circular building divided into prison cells. The idea was to provide complete observational power to the observer in the tower over the prisoners and at the same time not being watched at by the prisoners. Hence establishing a control through isolation and constant surveillance.

The new information and communication technology (ICT) promote interconnectivity that require a centralized control centre. From the very beginning of communication technology like the telephone, it was always through a centralized control the information is passed. Increased centralization used in these communication technologies gives a power of unprecedented monitoring and observation creating a so called an 'Information Panopticon' . Like a prisoner on Bentham's Panopticon the user of the 'space' is observed , held in darkness and prevented from observing their observers, establishing a hierarchy with respect to position and access. An information Panopticon is everywhere and as anything , it can be traffic monitoring systems, or data monitoring of credit card and insurance agencies.

With the introduction of these ICTs into workplaces, managers and employees are discovering the hierarchical risks within information technologies. Certain information about the worker is accessible to manager but not the vice versa . The access to information in a workplace enables managers to establish new methods of monitoring work and workers. These technologies are used as a power that displays itself automatically and continuously.

In Foucault's words, panopticon is "a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers" . The difference in right to access information made the very design of ICTs 'panoptic'.

Though of ICTs being very similar to the original Bentham's panopticon the mode of control is different from that of the original panopticon. The technology used in monitoring is not as apparent as in Bentham's prison. The employees do not even know how the panoptic superiority is being enforced. Generally the administrative action in a workplace tend to be pragmatic and paranoid. Every node is observable by the person hierarchically above him. It created a systematic oppression rooted to the highest authority of the organization. Charles Babbage thought that by introducing machine into the factory system would help in keeping the factory workers in check. Similarly introducing an information control in modern day workplace they are able to keeps the workers in check.

ICTs in workspace are just the small section of a panoptic design of the modern day technology. With mobile technologies, GPS technologies and various other monitoring technologies one can monitor and observe every single movement and action of a person. This panoptic design has given the developers and owners an ability to penetrate into the society's behaviour enforcing social discipline. Panoptic design is everywhere now and we are already prisoners of these panopticon.

-G Sujan Kumar

Risk and Responsibility

The Cold War was a period after the second world war during which the USA and USSR competed to dominate international affairs. This time in history marked unprecedented race for military domination. Both the participating countries stocked up nuclear warheads in the name of national security. Military research was heavily funded during this time, which resulted in computers. ENIAC and Mark I are the examples of early computers built for military calculations. This was justified as better national security, that leads to passivity , deterrence between the competing countries. The risk involved with such justification was never calculated.  Information technology also flourished during this period. Today, its benefits are well understood. What are not as well understood are some of the risks associated with this new technology.

A more contemporary example in such risks can be seen with electronic voting systems in India. Electronic voting system was introduced to make toe voting fast and more accurate. But they did not look the risk involved in the introduction of this electronic voting system. The introduction of electronic voting system introduced an unverifiable machine between the voter and  the authorities responsible for counting.  The machine once made is virtually impossible to verify all the possible basis.  The machines are found easy to be tampered with to change the results in favour of someone. It is also important to note that there is no monitoring of the input and a process verification possible , hence there is no possible way in which one can verify the validity of the result. In USA, 2000 presidential elections a punched card systems was adapted in Florida which allegedly affected the outcome of US presidential elections. These machines used have been found to have innumerable errors.

Though there is risk associated with the electronic voting machines, there is a question of responsibility of the engineers and manufacturers in making the machines through which one can 'hack democracy'. It is no different to the lack of responsibility among engineers during the cold war. There was lack of transparency in the design of this machine , as one can not verify the program that has been written into the machine. The manufacturers must be guilty of violating their personal ethics by hiding the program to the public.

The race in research during the cold war lead to several advancements in information and computing technology. But there was a lack of ethics among the engineers who made machine that leads to mass destruction in their cybernetic world, creating a sense of global threat. The Electronic voting machines are no different as elections are the key in the functioning of a healthy democracy. 

References:

1. The Risks Digest

2. Wikipedia: Electronic voting

-Sujan

Hackers and their Way of Life

Introduction:
Before engaging on a discussion on the social construction of a hacker, the first question we must ask ourselves is, what exactly is a hacker? The Jargon file, a collection of hacker slang derived from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, defines a hacker as 'A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.' We shall see that a hacker as several other distinguishing qualities in addition to these. We explore the hacker ethic through a view of the life of Adrian Lamo, listed second in the top 10 hackers of all time by the CIA.

The Homeless Hacker:
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Lamo gained widespread notoriety after breaking into the internal computer network of The New York Times, adding his name to the internal database of known sources and conducting research on its high profile subjects. Two years and a lawsuit later, he was convicted and sentenced to two years of probation along with a large amount of money in damages. Within this time, he had already gained popularity in hacker circles for gaining access to restricted areas in the Microsoft, Yahoo and WorldCom servers. Dubbed the 'homeless hacker', he used Internet connections at hotels, coffee shops and libraries to perform his intrusions. Lamo is a typical example of a hacker, someone who tries to stretch the limits and explore the capabilites of a computer system. He would fall into the black hat category - someone who uses his knowledge for nefarious and destrucive purposes. Nowadays, hackers tend to disassociate themselves from these people, instead referring to them as 'crackers'. So what do hackers gain from their exploitation and breaking in to computer systems?

Social Construction of the hacker:
Accorinding to Bryan Pfaffenberger in his article on the 'Social Meaning of the Personal Computer' tries to explain the strange motives in the new subculture emergent in the 60s. He says that hackers experience a feeling of technically induced ecstasy. Such a feeling can only be experienced an expert programmer and someone who has complete mastery of the system they are working on, as Sherry Turkle maintains after her experiences with the game of 'Adventure'. Hackers try to improve the system in order to gain its acknowledgement and approval.
Another aspect of hackers is their desire to be in control. Lamo's ex-girlfriend has descibed him as 'very-controlling', saying he had once used a stun gun on her. Sherry Turkle explains this by asserting that hackers, being able to predict correctlty the actions of a computer through their mastery over it, are at a loss while facing the real and unpredictable world. This leads them to leading lonely and isolated lives with their computer, resulting in their anti-social image.

Hacker - a flawed personality?
Turkle maintains that writing off hackers as juvenile or childish destroys any attempt to understand them. To her and others, the hacker is not an inherently flawed personality. Many of us, in our desire to make knowledge free and our mistrust of authority have unknowingly associated with the hacker ethic. Hackers, in their own way, are human and just as romanticists escape into nature, hackers find soul in the machine. Many of the hackers are those who are aware of their bodily defects and have failed at establishing meaningful relationships. However, this is not always the case. In my opinion, hackers still lead content and fulfilled lives - both in their own world and those who even return to a normal life, wiser from their experiences. In my opinion, Steve Wozniak - phone phreaker, hacker and co-founder of Apple is a prime example that hackers are not so different from the rest of us and can find acceptance in our society.

Information Panopticon and its impact on ICT

Introduction:
A term coined by Jeremy Bentham over two centuries ago, the panopticon was a type of prison designed by Jeremy Bentham to allow the observer to watch over its prisoners without giving them the impression that they were being watched. Bentham's central goal of the panopticon was control through both isolation and the possibility of constant surveillance. Although the design was not completed in his time, the French philospher and historian Michel Foucault developed on this idea of controlling space and applied it as a metaphor for the oppressive use of information in a modern disciplinary society.

Foucault's vision and current relevance:
In modern society, quoting Foucault, our spaces are organized "like so many cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible". So, we are already living in a kind of panopticon where information about us is available without our knowledge. Also, Foucault realized that oppression in the information age is no longer about physical domination and control, but rather the potential for complete knowledge and observation. In such a society, physical intimidation is not relevant as people need to regulate their own behaviour to escape the constant threat of detection. In the current age, Foucault's vision of the panopticon is relevant in the context of surveilance and electronic monitoring of workers commonplace today. Thus the sentiment of an 'invisible omniscience' has persisted albeit in a different form. According to some, this is construcing a society where all behaviour is sharply regulated through the fear of observation.

In contemporary society:
Monitoring of data and profiling is now commonplace on the internet, wherever we go. From a simple search on Google to a credit card transaction, details of our browsing history, searches and bank details are stored in large databases and servers. In the age of ICT, such information has become increasingly public and privacy has become hard to find. Most people are unaware that they are being tracked and few of those who do can do anything about it. A case in point is the widespread use of wireless networks, most of which follow weak standards and unencrypted protocols from which data can easily be stolen. Here, we see the power of the panopticon - in the quest for making some information public and decentralised, we have unintentionally crossed the line somewhere and now almost nothing can remain hidden.

Conclusion:
The idea of the panopticon, initially conceived as a means to regulate, discipline and punish using all seeing gaze still exists today in a form that Bentham and Foucault did not imagine. We live in a world where we are constantly monitored, either by CCTV cameras at departmental stores to cookies and other details stored on our computer. On the occasions when we are aware of this, we behave differently because of this fear of being watched. Does this however ultimately help to regulate society and change our behaviour for the better? One may argue that we can only be judged when we do not know that we are being watched. As the world grows smaller, the information panopticon grows increasingly evident and our society heads towards a new and unexpected danger - the risk of too much information.

Hackers and hacker ethics

Introduction
      In this essay, I explore the questions - what is a hacker? what do we mean by hacker ethic? with reference to Bryan Pfaffenberger's article "The social meaning of the personal computer : or, why the personal computer revolution was no revolution", Sherry Turkle's book "The second self" and the Discovery channel documentary "The history of hacking". Various aspects of hacking are discussed through the example of one of the greatest ethical hackers of 20th century, Richard Stallman.


What is a hacker?
       The Jargon file, a collection of hacker slang derived from technical cultures like MIT AI lab, defines a hacker as "A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary."
       Hackers that use their skills for good are called as "white hat" hackers. these white hats often work as certified "Ethical hackers", hired by companies to test the integrity of their system.
       We explore the culture of these white hat hackers and their hacker ethic through a view of life of Richard Stallman, one of the top 5 biggest white hat hackers ever existed.

Motivation behind hacking
       Captain Crunch, arguably the first "hacker" summarizes his motives beautifully in the following statement

"It's (the phone network) a beautiful system, you know. I want to work for her. I want to help her get rid of her flaws and become perfect."

       The idea of looking at the machine not as a means to end, but the end itself, originated by phone phreaks, more or less remains the central idea for computer hackers too.
        Stallman's crusade for software liberation started  with a printer. At the MIT lab, he and other hackers were allowed to modify the code of printer so that they sent convenient alert messages. However, a new printer came along - one that they were not allowed to modify. It was located away from the lab and the absence of alerts was a huge inconvenience. It was the point that he was "convinced... of the ethical need to require free software."
       
Hackers and the society
        As Sherry Turkle points out, hackers are closer to the computer than people. They are shy and inarticulate - trapped in the quest for control and mastery with the computers as their medium. Hackers tend to prefer relationships with computers than with humans. A major reason being computers can be "mold to their desires" - a world far less threatening and more rewarding than the world of conventional relations.
        Hackers find their true friend, soulmate in the computer. Computers provide refuce to their loneliness. Stallman is no exception. Text editor is program with which hackers spend most of their time. Stallman made a text editor which had a feature called "the doctor". The doctor was a program with which one could chat and the doctor would answer them intelligently. What a cure for loneliness!

Hacker ethics
         Hacker's obsession with computing leads to impatience and intolerance towards anything else that may come in the way. Following are some important beliefs in hacker ethics, as codified by Stephen  Levy.

1. Access to computers should be unlimited and free.
2. All information should be free.
3. Mistrust the authority - promote decentralization.

        Stallman is an example of a hacker int whom, these beliefs are hardwired. He is considered, and rightly so, the father of free and open source software. He was against restricted computer access in lab. When a password system was installed, Stallman broke it down, resetting all the passwords to empty. He then sent messages to users informing them of removal of the system and promoting freedom with computer access.
        Stallman dedicated his life for freedom of software and information. He came up with the revolutionary concept of "copyleft". IT ensures that information required to modify/improve the program is always freely available.


Conclusion
         Although hackers tend to be isolated, they have made a great impact on the society - a positive one in case of white hat hackers. Naming of an asteriod after Stallman testifies his impact on the society.

Referecnes 

1. The second self - Sherry Turkle
2. The social meaning of the personal computer - Bryan Pfaffenberger
3. Wikipedia
4. Richard Stallman biography
5. List of 10 greatest hackers : an article on www.itsecurity.com

Who is a Hacker?

Introduction

There is no one way to define a hacker. Hackers come in many varieties – Phone Phreakers, Network Hackers, Media Hackers, Hardware Hacker and so on. And while there is no one easy way to define a Hacker, one can observe, from their want for attention and their relentless disobedience of authority in their own pursuit of knowledge, that they are somewhat like a child – this analogy while not covering all the aspects of what it means to be a hacker, encompasses the essential aspects – Hackers ‘Do’ because they are curious, not for a cause, not for monetary gain and sometimes in this pursuit, they get caught as illustrated by Mitnick’s example. When Hackers do things, they bent the technology around them to achieve their goals, they never give into the constraints posed by the technology – infact one might go so far as to say that hackers really are just constraint benders and removers – and consequently are the Teasers at the Margin of technology. So while Hackers wield so much power in their hands (which arises from their juxtaposed tendencies to understand and control while also to be able to let loose and explore) , and when hacking culture gained momentum beginning with 1960s, a new set of ethical principles and a collective cultural view of society or at least how it should be arose in the eyes of the hacker leading to a established hacker subculture.

Ethics of the Hacker (?)

The Hacker ethic is essential to the idea of a Hacker Culture. It comprises of the set of rules and principles one must stick to in any situation, it is not a separate morality in itself but a product of the hacker’s world view. The product borne out of their mechanistic view of the universe and their thirst for understanding and conquering the “machine” - be it computer or telephone or in some cases even other people. 

Take for example Kevin Mitnick, one of the famous 20th century hackers, even though he was accessing proprietary information, he always claimed to do so for the joy of it - to know that he could do it, and when he kept this information, it was not for monetary gain but as a trophy to him, a proof of his abilities and the understanding he had in navigating the system. This highlights another important characteristic of the hacker, their need to feel that they can also influence control on the state of things - in Mitnick’s case, computer network technology, in other words, they feel a need for a decentralised scheme of things. Thus, Hacking is a means for them of ensuring that their world is not controlled solely by external factors. Another, major hacker is Richard Stallmanm, the founder of the free software movement, he became so engrossed with developing and making free the fruits of computer programming that he started the OpenSource movement which helped boost the hacker ideal of sharing and freeness of information. This too is another essential quality of hacker ethic - the idea of freeware and imbuing freedom of use to one’s creative products. 

In Conclusion

Often mistaken as hackers are the crackers who hack things not for the pleasure of understanding but maliciously with intent to injure and use the stolen information for illegitimate purposes, it must be noted that they are not operating in the true spirit of hacking as hacking seeks not to overthrow and control everyone but in it’s truest sense to try to embrace and understand technology and modify it for the better. The hacker is that mischievous and curious child near the sandbox in the playground not the Fist flinging bully near the swings.

Bibliography

1)     Wikipedia: Hacker Ethic, Hacker Culture, Richard Stallman, Kevin Mitnick

2)     Sherry Turkle, Hackers: Loving the Machine for Itself

3)     Pfaffenberger, The Social meaning of the Personal Computer

Barath