bzs@MULTIMAX.ENCORE.COM (Barry Shein) (10/31/88)
Below is the complete CBS Hacker's Convention transcript for the
curious, it's not very long (fits on one page.)
Note that I'm not calling for any direct action although
letter-writing might be worthwhile. Certainly actions like ringing
their phones in an annoying manner should be treated as humor and
nothing more.
By and large unless one can find discussion aimed towards the
relationship of the computing community and the media as a futures
issue (eg. how can we get the uninvolved to better understand the zeal
many of us bring to our profession?) I think this can end this topic
and we can go onto other issues.
I do think it had direct value to this list to show how much one is
misunderstood (and feared, and exploited) when they live on the
forefront of a technology. Remember the smug self-satisfied portrayal
of the physicists of the last generation as air-headed intellectuals
who couldn't match their socks? Or worse? (eg. Oppenheimer went
through political hell for reasons which are still unclear.) It's
interesting how uninterested the media ever was in Jon Von Neumann
who, according to accounts, was a cosmopolitan, cultured, well-spoken
man who was often described as being just as much at home at the
gaming tables at Monte Carlo as he was in his physics labs.
-Barry Shein, ||Encore||
P.S. "Narr" == Narrator in the text.
--------------------
Transcript of CBS News segment on the Hackers Conference
filmed 7 Oct 88, aired 8 Oct 88.
Anchorman ("High Technology" logo and drawing of chip): An unusual
conference is under way near San Francisco. The people attending it
are experts on a technology that intimidates most of us, but has changed
the way we live. John Blackstone reports.
Narrator (trees and outdoor scenes at conference): A small revolutionary
army is meeting in the hills above California's Silicon Valley this
weekend, plotting their next attacks on the valley below, the heart
of the nation's computer industry. They call themselves computer hackers.
Jonathan Post: "The people who are gathered here changed the world
once; if we can agree on where to go next, we're gonna change it again."
Narr (conference scenes, blinking lights): What hackers have learned
to do with computers has changed the world, for both good and bad.
They're the people who dreamed of and built the personal computer industry.
But the same kind of talent is creating never before dreamed-of crime.
Because for a computer, the only difference between a hundred and a
million is a few zeros.
Donn Parker, (SRI International, in office): "And so, in fact, criminals
today I think have a new problem to deal with: and that is how much
should I take. They can take any amount they want."
Narr (phone central office): Telephone companies are the most victimized
because those who break into phone company computers can link up for
free to computers around the world.
Richard Fitzmaurice (Pacific Bell, in office): "You'll hear the term
computer hacker, computer cracker; we call them computer criminals."
Narr (blinking lights): But much more frightening are the hackers
who crack American military computers. Earlier this year in a lab that
does some classified research, astronomer Clifford Stoll discovered
someone had broken into his computer. He says it was like finding a
mouse running across the floor.
Stoll (in office): "You watch and you see, he's going in that hole
over there, and you say, ooh, he's going in that hole; that connects
to a network that goes to a military computer, in Okinawa."
Narr (Stoll playing with a yo-yo in a machine room): The breakins
to American military computers went on for several months. Eventually
Stoll traced them to a hacker in West Germany.
Donn (in office): "A hacker today is an extremely potentially dangerous
person. He can do almost anything he wants to do in your computer."
Narr (at conference, video games, stabbing and fighting on screen):
But at the hackers' camp in the hills, there's recognition that in any
revolutionary army there will be a few rogues and criminals. But that's
no reason, they say, to slow down the revolution. John Blackstone,
CBS News, in the hills above Silicon Valleygoldfain@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu (11/03/88)
I'll bet this whole thing occurred primarily because someone at CBS who was not fully computer literate wanted to cover a "hacker's convention" and looked up in a CBS handy computer-terms reference to find out that "hacker" meant that German who cracked into some military computing. I agree that this is unfortunate and that CBS did an unprofessional job. One of the things *you* can do about it is to find a way of clearly distinguishing your activities from those in the report, so the poor public will not remain confused. I think the best approach is to see to it that another term is coined for the "cracker/mugger/virus-writer", or that another term is coined for your activities. But what exactly are those? From what I can tell, the convention was actually an "anything-goes-computing-in-life-smorgasbord".