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).
