Unauthorised Access UK 0636-708063 10pm-7am 12oo/24oo X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X X/\/ \/\X X\/X - Digital Underground - X\/X X/\X Story by Mark Bennett. Published in i-D Technology Issue X/\X X\/X X\/X X/\X Transcribed by Phantasm. 12th September 1992 X/\X X\/X X\/X X/\X Unauthorised Access UK. Online 10.00pm-7.00am. +44-636-708063 X/\X X\/\ /\/X X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X They've got a file on you. It's on computer. And that computer is connected to a global network. Who's going to stand up for our civil liberties in the digital era? Can the anarchic activities of hackers and cyberpunks make them freedom fighters for the information age? CYBERPUNK TECHNOLOGY Cyberspace, the Net, Non-Space, or the Electronic Frontier call it what you will, but it's out there now, spread across the world like an opulent immaterial spider's web, growing as each new computer, telephone or fax machine is plugged in, as satellites close continental divides, hooking independent phone systems together. It's almost a living entity - the backbone is the various telephone exchanges, the limbs the copper and fibre- optic links. Increasingly the world is shifting to this unseen plane. Your earnings, your purchasing patterns and your poll tax records are processed there. You may not realise it exists, but it's part of everyday life. As John Barlow, writer and electronic activist puts it, "Cyberspace is the place you are when you're on the telephone." As life moves to this electronic frontier, politicians and corporations are starting to exert increasing control over the new digital realm, policing information highways with growing strictness. Before we even realise we're there, we may find ourselves boxed into a digital ghetto, denied simple rights of access, while corporations and governments agencies make out their territory and roam free. So who will oppose the big guys? Who's going to stand up for our digital civil liberties? Who has the techno-literacy necessary to ask a few pertinent questions about what's going down in cyberspace? Perhaps the people who have been living there the longest might have a few answers. You could argue that hackers have been the most misrepresented of all sub- cultures. In the mainstream press they've been cast as full-blown electronic folk devils, either dangerous adolescents and electronic vandals or malevolent masterminds in the pay of organised crime or evil foreign powers. Others have tried to put forward a rather romantic view of hackers as freedom fighters for the information age. And the cyberpunk media industry that grew from William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's science fiction has mytholised them as digital rebels, computer cowboys. The truthis more complex. As more and more people explore cyberspace, it's becoming harder than ever to make generalisations about a hacker ethic, to even figure out what hackers are doing and why. All you can say is that between them they have created a genuine digital underground, an electronic bohemia where diverse subcultures can take root, where new ideas, dodgy tech and weird science can flourish. In Europe, the centres for hacking activity are Germany, Holland and Italy. UK hacking remains relatively stagnant and disorganised. In part it's down to the relatively high cost of computers and telephone calls. In part it's down to a difference in attitude. It seems typical that the most famous hack in Britain came when two hackers broke into Prince Philip's electronic mailbox. As Andrew Ross points out in an essay on the subject in Strange Weather, hacking in the UK has a quaint, 'Little England' air about it. Hugo Cornwall, author of The Hacker's Handbook, has compared hacking to electronic rambling and has suggested developing a kind of Country Code for computer ramblers. It's all very benign, a matter of closing gates behind you, respecting the lands you cross and never ignoring the 'No Trespassing' signs you might encounter. As Ross says, this amounts to a kind of electronic feudalism, with digital peasants respecting the inherited land rights of information barons and never asking bigger questions about property, state surveillance and the activity of corporations and governments. The Europeans tend to take a more politicised, sceptical stance. The focus for most hacking activity on the continent is the Hamburg-based Chaos Computer Club, which organises meetings, lectures, publishes magazines and books on the politics of information and holds an annual conference which usually draws hackers from around Europe. The club, who's motto is "access public data freely while protecting private data firmly", was formed by Wau Holland after the publication of the A5 hacking magazine Datenschleuder in 1982. An article in the mainstream press stimulated interest and subscribers decided to set up the club. With home computing a minority hobby in Germany during the mid-'80s, the club couldn't really limit itself to one type of computer as a similar club in the States might do. Instead it cut across product loyalties and hobbyist pettines and brought together all computer users. Similarly, the club aimed to be as open-minded about their activites. They weren't just interested in swapping access codes and passwords. Instead Datenschleuder published informed speculation about the way information technology might develop. Realising that the majority of the public were unaccustomed to, and in some cases frightened of, the new technology, they attempted to open up and demystify thre computerised landscape. Alongside the regular magazine, they have published four books on computers and hacking, including the essential Die Hacker Bible One which reprints back copies of Datenschleuder and the first 50 issues of TAP (aka Technological Assistance Program), a magazine put together back in the '70s by phone phreakers (early tech-pranksters who gained free phonecalls with gadgets like Blue Boxes and touch pads). Like most hackers, the Chaos Club takes a critical stance towards the phone companies of the world. As in the UK, the Germans have to live with high prices for their phone services, something which has prevented the growth of a network of computerised bulletin boards as in the US. In general, communications regulations are very restrictive in Germany. Something as simple as acquiring an extension telephone requires applications for permission, excessive paperwork and extra charges. In this area the club acts rather like a technoliterate consumer group, fighting to loosen the phone company's monopoly and open up the system's potential to ordinary punters. In many ways, the Chaos Club is determinedly respectable, at times more like a special interest pressure group than a hacking club. These days they're particularly concerned to distance themselves from what they see as irresponsible elements within the digital underground, perhaps because some of their members have performed some of the most notorious hacks in the past. Hackers from the Chaos Club bust into NASA's system in the mid-'80s. In addition, three years ago, it became apparent that some of the club's members had hacked into Western military computers and tried to sell what they found to the KGB. This somewhat sullied the carefully cultivated image of openness and responsibility and the club has been through something of a crisis. More recently, confidence has picked up and the last two annual conferences have attracted around 500 hackers and other interested parties. These annual get-togethers have become much more than just illicit swap meets for Europe's computer intruders. They're part digital be-in, part electronic think tank, part R&D lab, part informal high-tech trade fair. The centrepiece is still usually the hacking rooms. Hooked into the phone system by means of bundles of illegal extension cords, these feature rows of terminals on which visitors could access networks around the world, call up the club's various databases or tele-conference with members who couldn't make the event. The 1991 event featured a room housing various rudimentary explorations into the world of 'brain hacking'. Here people were swapping ideas about the possibilities of making a real life version of the electrodes which feature in William Gibson's cyberpunk novels and which allow users to jack into a network and move from computer to computer purely by thought. The technology that was actually up and running was little more than a biofeedback system (basically an EEG machine which displays a user's brain waves in order to help them to achieve particular frequencies and corresponding mental states). Some present were talking about actually developing a brain- controlled system, in which information could be moved around the screen via something like ESP or telekinesis. More functional future tech was demonstrated at the same conference by John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, one of the first phone phreakers and a legend in hacking circles, who had been flown in by the Virtual Travel Project, an organisation designed to bring East and West together via technology. He brought along an old Panasonic videophone which comes complete with a two inch square display lens and a small camera. When hooked up to standard telephone lines, the videophone can transmit still images taken by the built in camera and transmit them to a similar telephone or computer equipped with the right software. Draper was able to visually connect with the US in a conference call that hooked up Hamburg, New York, the Electronic Cafe in Santa Cruz in California and San Francisco. Although the Chaos Club is the best-known European hacking group, others are beginning to achieve a higher profile, particularly the self-styled Italian Cyberpunks, who are based in Milan and produce the magazine Decoder, which reads like a politically tougher version of Mondo 2000 and mixes hacker info and socio-political opinion pieces on information technology with interviews with the likes of William Gibson, underground comics and scratchy DIY graphics. With its roots in Italian anarchist traditions and connections to the free radio movement of the '70's, the Cyberpunks have tried to theorise hacker activity and present it as a coherent form of political protest. They're taken relatively seriously by Italian society at large and their recently published Cyberpunk Anthology managed to make it onto the bestseller list for several weeks. They are currently working on an English translation which they hope to publish here (in the UK) by the Summer. Like the Chaos Club, the Cyberpunks are less hung up on getting hold of the latest technology and more interested in educating the public and spreading information. Invited to participate in the Santarcangelo Arts Festival, held in Rimini last Summer, they organised lectures on virtual reality and multi- media, flying in speakers from Germany and Britain and running an 'information wall'. This comprised of a wall of old TVs playing feeds which were processed by an Amiga video editing system and mixed raw footage of the festival events, computer graphics and the Cyberpunks' own videos. There were also plans to set up a pirate TV station and broadcast in a narrow 2km band towards Rimini. Unfortunately, after technical problems and concern voiced by members of the Mutoid Waste Company (also present at the festival) that the material transmitted might be X rated, this had to be called off. Whilst groups in Europe seem to be gradually evolving into artful campaigners and consciousness-raising pranksters, the majority of US hackers have remained simple tech freaks. However, things may be changing. US hacker culture has been going through a crisis in the last two years. In a full- blown moral panic, they have been systematically hunted down by the Secret Service and have become the focus for hysteria reminiscent of the red scares of the '50s. (A time magazine cover from 1988 talked about "The Invasion Of The Data Snatchers".) Things began to happen in January 1990 as the Secret Service began to arrest members of The Legion Of Doom, one of the most celebrated US hacker groups, on suspicion of having entered the computer systems of the Bell South company. Although in many cases no charges were filed, electronic equipment and discs were confiscated. things came to a head with Operation Sun Devil in May 1990, which involved 28 raids in 14 days; 42 computers and 23,000 discs were confiscated, many of which have never been returned. Government agents carried out dawn raids on teenage bedrooms across the US, confiscating calculators and answerphones. All quite comical. Except things began to get more serious. Raids became like precision strikes on terrorists and teenagers found themselves threatened with jail sentences for accessing computer systems with no password, copying files or just being vaguely mischievous. Their offence might have been no more than the electronic equivalent of walking on the grass or breaking and entering, but the punishment they faced was ten times more severe. In addition, the authorities began to target and close down electronic bulletin boards. In the States, there are now boards for every obsession going, every hobby, belief, vice or fad. So many that regulation of the kind of information being circulated is increasingly difficult. For that reason, it has been argued that the powers that be don't like the idea of boards per se. Although a lot of the information that is circulated on some of the more underground boards (how to build bombs, for example) is available elsewhere, they feel spooked by the thougth that it can be accessed by anyone with a computer. They feel particularly spooked by the idea of hacker bulletin boards, and have begun to charge people merely for allowing 'dangerous information' to pass through their systems. The scapegoat for this anxiety was Craig Neidorf, aka Knight Lightning, who ran the electronic magazine Phrack which was circulated on a number of hacker boards. In February 1990, he was raided and charged with circulating a document about the workings of the 911 emergency number. His computers were confiscated and the magazine put out of business. When the case came to court in July, it was thrown out - the information Neidorf had published was available to consumers for less than $30. Nevertheless, Neidorf was wound up stuck with over $100,000 in legal expenses. Hacker reaction to all this has been varied. After receiving prison sentences for their activities, the majority of the Legion Of Doom have decided to go legit and have set up as Comsec Data Security Corporation, a computer protection consultancy. Others have taken a campaigning stance reminiscent of the Europeans. The East Coast hacker quarterly 2600, which published hardcore hacking info on phreaking and accessing computer networks, has tried to highlight the hypocrisy of the hacker busts. "An individual cannot take a big credit checking corporation like TRW to court because they collect personal data on them without his or her permission," 2600 editor Emmanuel Goldstein comments. "But TRW could claim its privacy was violated if a hacker figures out how to access their system." Other organisations have been set up to raise concern about civil liberties and freedom of speech, the most high profile being the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was set up by Mitch Kapor, a millionaire software pioneer, along with other big cheeses from the computer industry (including Steve Wozniak of Apple, an ex-phone phreaker), as a direct response to anti-hacking hysteria. A self-confessed hacker/software pirate in the '70s, Kapor is worried that the current panic may lead to the formation of restrictive regulations which may hamper the development of cyberspace in the future. However he isn't in favour of legalising hacking. He thinks hackers should still be punished. Although the EFF has had some success in its moves to end Secret Service excesses, not all hackers are happy with the way it draws a line between the old '60s hackers and modern computer intruders. "There are a lot of similarities between these 15-year-olds who are playing around in corporate computers and the 40-year-olds who played around with phones and are now writing software somewhere," comments Emmanuel Goldstein. "They may be legit now, but they weren't always legitimate". Goldstein is also sceptical of the 'cyberpunk' tag which hackers appropriated from the fiction of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, dismissing it as a fashion thing. Whilst it may have helped to give hackers a sense of identity, the image of leather-clad anti-social rebels backfired when the authorities started to take it seriosly. Something which places original cyberpunk writers like Bruce Sterling in a tricky position. "I've had law enforcement people tell me that if they see a copy of (William Gibson's) Neuromancer in a kid's bedroom when they're doing a raid, they know he's bad, he's gone," he observes. "There are people who use the word 'cyberpunk' as a synonym for computer criminal now. There's little that we can do about it really." Except write a book, something Sterling decided to do when anti-hacker hysteria reached his home town of Austin, Texas. The Chicago Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force seized hardware and software from a texas SF publisher and made statements to the local press that cyberpunks were dangerous. "Being quite well-known as a cyberpunk myself, I thought I'd better find out what was going on". The results of his investigations will be published as The Hacker Crackdown in October in the US. As an outsider, Sterling offers a refreshingly sceptical perspective on the scene. Of the 5,000 or so hackers currently practicing in the States, he says the majority are just mischievous teens, electronic joyriders who are more curious than malicious. Most of them don't hack beyond the age of 22. They get bored and get a life outside of cyberspace. He laughs off the idea that hackers might be seen as radicals. "The idea that these are like fresh-faced idealistic genius kids who are linked arm-in-arm to deal a telling blow to the establishment is just bullshit. They all hate each other's guts. They turn each other in at the drop of a hat." Far from being proto-political rebels, he argues that young US hackers are actually political footballs, part of a larger game which is about the future and management of cyberspace. Thats why the rich software entrepreneurs of the Electronic Frontier Foundation have become involved. "The EFF and their civil liberties fellow travellers are an interest group like any other. They shouldn't be shrouded in this air of 'Oh they're old '60s people, look how idealistic and non-materialistic they are. These guys are pretty sharp operators who've made a lot of money in the computer industry, and would now like to get their mouse gripping mitts on some lever of political power that is consonant with the amount of money they have and the influence they wield in the business world". A cynic might argue that the EFF aren't just concerned with the freedom of speech. They really want to make sure that in the heat of hacker hysteria, a set of excessive laws don't get passed which might restrict their business operations in the future. This kind of thing is only to be expected, since as Sterling says, the electronic community is expanding daily. In the rush to go digital, hackers may even find themselves sidelined. "Every aspect of society is moving into electronic networking and that includes hippies, criminals, lawyers, politicians, bikers, knitting societies, even cops. Cops have their own bulletin boards now. There are hacker cops. All these subcultures and sub-groups are moving in, and in a while what was once called hacker culture may get swamped by other kinds of electronic bohemia." US hackers may have acted as the pioneers of the new electronic landscape. But like the real pioneers who first explored the American West, they may find it difficult to find a foothold in the new communities they helped to create. The simple thing is to go in to business for the people they formerly thought of as the enemy. Alternatively they could band together in informal vaguely politicised pressure groups like the Europeans. But they need to update their act. Otherwise they could even wind up a dying breed. "In the end the thing about American hackers that'll kill them off is that they're dilettantes," Sterling concludes. "They're not getting any money for this. They're doing it for free, because it's like a cool subculture do. They're doing it for power and knowledge. But anything these jerk-offs can do for power and knowledge, a real operator can do for a lot of money." The pioneer age is over. The Net is here to grow. And as the digital community expands and corporate control of computerised data increases, hackers will have to raise their political consciousness if they intend to fulfil their mythical role as electronic watchmen. CONTACTS Italian Cyberpunk magazine and book: Dutch hacking magazine: Decoder Hack-Tic Shake Edizioni PO Box 22953 Via Cesare Balbo 10 1100 DL Amsterdam 20136 Milan, Italy The Netherlands 2600 Magazine - subscriptions, back issues and uncut NTSC video: 2600 Subscription Dept PO Box 752 Middle Island New York 11953-0752 USA Tel: 0101 516 751 2600 Back issues of TAP can be found in the classified section of 2600. Die Hacker Bible 1 is available in bookshops in Germany. Transcribed by Phantasm. 12th September 1992 X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X/\X X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X\/X