hackers, missunderstood?

Ok so last week we looked at hackers and hacktivism and after completing the reading i realise there is a huge amount of politics surrounding these terms. As my mind is all over the place at the moment my points may be a bit disjointed so i have decided to do my blog this week in bullet point form with nuggets of what i have come to understand about this topic

• I am not pleased to admit it but I had fallen prey to the mass media's portrayal of hackers as socially inept "computer geeks" who can manipulate the net to break into bank accounts to steal money or even steal and destroy our identities like they did to Sandra Bullocks character in The Net . After finishing the readings however I have found some respect for the art of hacking and am once again left questioning the reasons behind the media framing hackers as purely criminal. Is it simply because they make the better news stories?.. Well as most of us are Comms students we know that the mass media companies are predominantly only out for themselves. By only broadcasting news stories portraying hackers as criminals the more the public becomes "afraid" (insert better word) of them and the easier it is for the companies to persecute them when it is their websites that are interfered with.
  "We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons... My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for" -Lloyd Bankenship (1985).

• From the readings it seems that there are 3 main categories that a hacker can fall into.

1. Those who enjoy to test the system and "explore" the net and abide by unspoken rules to "never act maliciously" and "never hack for financial gain" this type of hacking is usually associated with old school hackers.
2. Those who hack with criminal or harmful intent such as Robert Morris who used a self-replicating virus to ring a whole network down. This type of hackers were referred to as crackers

• Hackivism is the convergence of hackers and activist, due to the far reaching scope of the Internet it seems like the perfect marriage. Hacktivists use electronic civil disobedience to raise awareness of unethical acts by individuals, organizations and governments. This could involve sending out emails of even breaking into a website and rearranging the page and posting social and political messages.

• Although hacktivist are acting non-violently out of ethical concern they too are starting to be associated as criminals and even worse; cyberterrorists. Since 9 11 we all know how much power the word terrorist holds and so do the governments who are using it. Because it is largely government websites that the hacktivist are targeting they need to find a way to discredit what they are saying... what better way than to label them as something the public fear most.. the most evil of all evils. a TERRORIST!

I wonder if somewhere in the states my blog has blinked up on some governmental screen just for typing that word and government in the same paragraph...

off to class .. see you next week