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- From: Zhahai.Stewart@f93.n104.z1.fidonet.org (Zhahai Stewart)
- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
- Subject: Media hype - again
- Message-ID: <18688.2B02FE9D@puddle.fidonet.org>
- Date: 10 Nov 92 22:34:28 GMT
- Article-I.D.: puddle.18688.2B02FE9D
- Sender: ufgate@puddle.fidonet.org (newsout1.26)
- Organization: FidoNet node 1:104/93 - Adelante, Boulder CO
- Lines: 48
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-
- FR> "Three high school honor students have been accused of stealing tens of
- FR> thousands of dollars worth of long-distance calls as computer hackers."
- FR> "...allegedly tapped private telephone systems and
- FR> dialed into an international
- FR> hacking network. One company's loss was $36,000."
- FR> "Some calls were made to computer bulletin boards in the United Kingdom,
- FR> Germany, and Canada, where a loose network of hackers allegedly shared
- FR> information about how to obtain computer access information."
-
- Sounds like they were probably mostly involved with telephone fraud, with
- icing. It's getting all too common, and in many cases is just basic crime.
- Somebody breaks the tone codes for a corporate PBX with outdial (the telco
- is getting much harder, so they move to easier targets), then goes wild.
- Nowadays, it's much more often commercial than in the early days, selling
- the codes and/or the calls. Ordinary street criminals are getting into it.
-
- FR> I suppose this isn't the worst example, but it does continue the
- FR> trend of identifying "hackers" as criminals.
-
- Sigh. I think this is mostly a lost cause. I fear that the negative
- usage of "hacker" has become too endemic to reclaim. Oh, well, in the
- larger perspective, that isn't by any means the worst thing to disturb
- my sleep. The main remaining problem in this regard is to try to educate
- law enforcement and media folks that note everybody uses "hacker" in the
- now most common sense. For example, they should NOT assume that the
- "hackers conference" is about phone phreaking, system cracking, and
- credit card fraud; a few of them think that anyone who calls themselves
- a hacker is a self-admitted criminal. (In fairness, there are also
- quite a number of law enforcement or media folks who know and respect
- the difference).
-
- I share your concerns about media created stereotypes driving legislators
- into taking some "showy" action to demonstrate to their panic stricken
- consitituents that they are cracking down on hacker crime. Education.
- Letters. Articles. We *are* getting somewhere. There are a lot more
- intelligently aware media and law enforcement types than there used to
- be. There can be more.
-
- But I think it's way to late to keep the term "hacker" out of the
- negative stereotype circuit.
-
- ~z~
-
-
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