3. Read the text and answer these questions.

1. Which hacking case inspired the film War Games?

2. When did Captain Zap hack into the Pentagon?

3. Why was Nicholas Whitely arrested in 1988?

4. How old was the hacker that broke into the US defense computer in 1989?

The History of Hacking

1971 - John Draper discovered that a whistle offered in boxes of Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal perfectly generated the 2,600Hz signal used by the AT&T phone company. He started to make free calls. He was arrested in I972 but wasn’t sent to prison.

1974 - Kevin Mitnick, a legend among hackers, began hacking into banking networks and altering the credit reports of his enemies. He didn’t expect that his most famous exploit – hacking into the North American Defense Command in Colorado Springs – would inspire the film War Games in 1983.

1981 - Ian Murphy, a 23-year-old known as Captain Zap on the networks, hacked into the White House and the Pentagon.

1987 - The IBM international network was paralyzed by a hacker’s Christmas message.

1988 - The Union Bank of Switzerland almost lost £32 million to hackers. Nicholas Whitely was arrested in connection with virus spreading.

1989 - A fifteen-year-old hacker cracked the US defense computer.

1991 - Kevin Poulsen, known as Dark Dante on the networks, was accused of stealing military files.

Speaking

4. In pairs, discuss which of the cases you had heard of. Which do you think is the most important?

5. In small groups, look at the list of cybercrimes and discuss these questions.

1. Which crimes are the most dangerous?

2. Is it fair or unfair to pay for the songs, videos, books or articles that you download? Should copyright infringement be allowed online?

3. What measures can be taken by governments to stop cybercrime?

4. Do you think governments have the right to censor material on the Internet?

5. Personal information such as our address, salary, and civil and criminal records is held in databases by marketing companies. Is our privacy in danger?

Cybercrimes

• Piracy – the illegal copy and distribution of copyrighted software, games or music;

• Plagiarism and theft of intellectual property – pretending that someone else’s work is your own;

• Spreading of malicious software;

• Phishing (password harvesting fishing) – getting passwords for online bank accounts or credit card numbers by using emails that look like they are from real organizations, but are in fact fake; people believe the message is from their bank and send their security details;

• IP spoofing – making one computer look like another in order to gain unauthorized access;

• Cyberstalking – online harassment or abuse, mainly in chat rooms or newsgroups;

• Distribution of indecent or offensive material.

Writing

6. Write a summary of your discussion on PowerPoint and present it to the rest of the group.

7. Render the text.

Data is by definition easy to copy. And the Internet makes copies easy to distribute. So it is no wonder companies are afraid. But, as so often happens, fear has clouded their judgement. The government has responded with draconian laws to protect intellectual property. They probably mean well. But they may not realize that such laws will do more harm than good.

Why are programmers so violently opposed to these laws? If I were a legislator, I’d be interested in this mystery—for the same reason that, if I were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of squawking coming from my hen house one night, I’d want to go out and investigate. Hackers are not stupid, and unanimity is very rare in this world. So if they’re all squawking, perhaps there is something amiss.

Could it be that such laws, though intended to protect America, will actually harm it? Think about it. There is something very American about Feynman breaking into safes during the Manhattan Project. It’s hard to imagine the authorities having a sense of humor about such things over in Germany at that time. Maybe it’s not a coincidence.

Hackers are unruly. That is the essence of hacking. And it is also the essence of Americanness. It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan.

I lived for a while in Florence. But after I’d been there a few months I realized that what I’d been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the place I’d just left. The reason Florence is famous is that in 1450, it was New York. In 1450 it was filled with the kind of turbulent and ambitious people you find now in America. (So I went back to America.)

It is greatly to America’s advantage that it is a congenial atmosphere for the right sort of unruliness—that it is a home not just for the smart, but for smart-alecks. And hackers are invariably smart-alecks. If we had a national holiday, it would be April 1st. It says a great deal about our work that we use the same word for a brilliant or a horribly cheesy solution. When we cook one up we’re not always 100% sure which kind it is. But as long as it has the right sort of wrongness, that’s a promising sign. It’s odd that people think of programming as precise and methodical. Computers are precise and methodical. Hacking is something you do with a gleeful laugh.

In our world some of the most characteristic solutions are not far removed from practical jokes.

Smart-alecks have to develop a keen sense of how much they can get away with. And lately hackers have sensed a change in the atmosphere. Lately hackerliness seems rather frowned upon.

To hackers the recent contraction in civil liberties seems especially ominous. That must also mystify outsiders. Why should we care especially about civil liberties? Why programmers, more than dentists or salesmen or landscapers?

Let me put the case in terms a government official would appreciate. Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American tradition. Civil liberties make countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. civil liberties, you’d notice a definite trend. Could civil liberties really be a cause, rather than just an effect? I think so. I think a society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people. Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor; and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a Laffer curve for government power, just as for tax revenues. At least, it seems likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Unlike high tax rates, you can’t repeal totalitarianism if it turns out to be a mistake.

This is why hackers worry. The government spying on people doesn’t literally make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad ideas win. And because this is so important to hackers, they’re especially sensitive to it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

It would be ironic if, as hackers fear, recent measures intended to protect national security and intellectual property turned out to be a missile aimed right at what makes America successful. But it would not be the first time that measures taken in an atmosphere of panic had the opposite of the intended effect.

There is such a thing as Americanness. There’s nothing like living abroad to teach you that. And if you want to know whether something will nurture or squash this quality, it would be hard to find a better focus group than hackers, because they come closest of any group I know to embodying it. Closer, probably, than the men running our government, who for all their talk of patriotism remind me more of Richelieu or Mazarin than Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.

When you read what the founding fathers had to say for themselves, they sound more like hackers. "The spirit of resistance to government," Jefferson wrote, "is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."

Imagine an American president saying that today. Like the remarks of an outspoken old grandmother, the sayings of the founding fathers have embarrassed generations of their less confident successors. They remind us where we come from. They remind us that it is the people who break rules that are the source of America’s wealth and power.

Those in a position to impose rules naturally want them to be obeyed. But be careful what you ask for. You might get it.