A computer hacker Loyd Blankenship with the handle “The Mentor” wrote an essay after his arrest. Now that essay is called “The Hacker Manifesto” or The Conscience of a Hacker .
It was first published in Phrack (an underground hacker magazine). The essay is now considered as a cornerstone of hacker culture. It serves as an ethical foundation for hacking, and asserts that there is a point to hacking that supersedes selfish desires to exploit or harm other people, and that technology should be used to expand our horizons and try to keep the world free.
The Hacker’s Manifesto
Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers.
“Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after
Bank Tampering”…
Damn kids. They’re all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s
technobrain ever take a look behind the eyes of the Hacker? Did you ever
wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded
him?
I am a Hacker, enter my world….
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most
of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…
Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a comupter. Wait a second,
this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake it’s
because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me…
Or feels threatened by me…
Or thinks I’m a smart ass…
Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.
And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing
through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an
electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencys
is sought… a bored is found.
“This is it… this is where I belong…”
I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked
to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…
You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby
food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you
did let slip were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by
sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had somthing to
teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in
the desert.
This is our world now… the world of the electron and the
switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of the service already
existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by
profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you
call us criminals. We seek after knowledge, and you call us criminals.
We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religous
bias… and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and
lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the
criminals.
Yes, I am a crimial. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look
like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something you will never
forgive me for.
I am a Hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this
individual, but you can’t stop us all. After all… we’re all alike.