[00:20.900 --> 00:23.940]  Okay, this is the author seminar.
[00:24.400 --> 00:32.160]  People who have written or are writing about hackers in various manners, or hacking, or technology, or various things like that.
[00:34.960 --> 00:35.900]  Program update.
[00:36.260 --> 00:39.240]  The cellular conference is in jeopardy right now.
[00:39.460 --> 00:42.920]  It seems that a hard drive is missing that has the vital program on it.
[00:42.920 --> 00:47.520]  So, if anybody knows anything about that, please get in touch with Bernie S.
[00:48.400 --> 00:50.120]  He's carrying his hair out of the room right now.
[00:53.000 --> 00:54.220]  Looks like we have the band here.
[00:54.520 --> 00:57.640]  We're going to get things started and cruise around the city.
[00:58.780 --> 01:01.720]  And show people what a hacker band looks like.
[01:04.960 --> 01:07.020]  It's raining really hard in Woodstock, from what I hear.
[01:15.120 --> 01:16.840]  It's also raining pretty hard here.
[01:20.520 --> 01:35.200]  Alright, we have with us today, from my left to right, Julian Dibbel, author, renowned author for Village Voice, Spin Magazine, and I'm sure many of the things in the future.
[01:36.140 --> 01:39.060]  Paul Tough, who is grateful for Harper's Esquire.
[01:40.400 --> 01:43.560]  Winn Schwartau, author of Terminal Compromise.
[01:44.240 --> 01:44.940]  And who's this one?
[01:46.280 --> 01:49.400]  I do not do cheap ass commercials, but I love to buy it.
[01:51.120 --> 01:52.020]  Information check.
[01:52.700 --> 01:53.340]  Okay.
[01:53.780 --> 01:55.760]  We have Rafael Moreau
[01:57.180 --> 01:57.820]  Okay.
[01:58.740 --> 02:04.700]  He is the writer of a brand new film, which is being filmed in New York City this summer.
[02:05.680 --> 02:07.020]  It's called Hackers.
[02:07.200 --> 02:08.380]  And guess what it's about?
[02:09.860 --> 02:23.880]  It's going to be quite an interesting experience, and this is a good opportunity for some of you to give feedback to the people making those films before they actually made it.
[02:24.180 --> 02:26.820]  And also for them to hear from you guys various things.
[02:27.560 --> 02:36.320]  We also have Michael Peyser, the producer of that film, and if I'm not mistaken, you're also the executive producer of Desperate Sequel Season.
[02:36.760 --> 02:44.600]  Yeah, which film on the 17th floor, the first scenes of that movie, we shot in this hotel, the last time I was here.
[02:44.600 --> 02:45.460]  It's a horror film.
[02:50.180 --> 02:55.560]  And speeding by cab on his way over here right now is Iain Softley, who is the director of this film.
[02:55.800 --> 03:00.100]  You may know Iain Softley as the director, writer, and producer of Backbeat.
[03:00.600 --> 03:03.860]  So, he will be here fairly soon, I guess.
[03:04.380 --> 03:11.520]  So, basically, what we're going to be doing here is talking about the experience of writing about hackers.
[03:11.520 --> 03:22.720]  We'll start with Julian, who has written in the past articles about various New York City-based hackers, and then we'll move on to everybody else who has touched upon the subject in various ways.
[03:22.880 --> 03:27.680]  Basically, what are the challenges dealing with people like us?
[03:27.680 --> 03:29.640]  Are we easy to talk to?
[03:29.780 --> 03:32.120]  Are we hard to put into words?
[03:32.440 --> 03:39.680]  What kind of adventures and things have you guys been through putting our antics to paper?
[03:40.480 --> 03:45.580]  And, of course, we open up the doors to any questions that the people out there will have for these people.
[03:45.760 --> 03:47.380]  And take the way to Julian.
[03:51.780 --> 03:59.780]  Eric sent all of us a list of questions we might want to be dealing with here over the net a few days ago.
[04:05.580 --> 04:10.120]  What we're going to be talking about is, A, how writers such as yourself perceive hackers.
[04:10.360 --> 04:11.620]  What is unique about them?
[04:12.220 --> 04:15.000]  C, what makes writing about them especially challenging?
[04:15.340 --> 04:21.180]  And, also, how do you respond to those critics who claim that writers are just cashing in on hackers?
[04:21.180 --> 04:22.720]  And stuff like that.
[04:23.440 --> 04:26.400]  I'll start with the last question first.
[04:27.640 --> 04:37.900]  Just to point out that anybody here thinks that we're getting rich writing on the backwoods has been smoking some of our fine crack here in that new city.
[04:40.060 --> 04:49.400]  It's, you know, cashing in is what you do when you write about, you know, going on in Woodstock.
[04:51.240 --> 05:01.520]  But, anyway, the question about what is challenging about writing about hackers, and let me be specific.
[05:01.660 --> 05:14.060]  What I've written about, in terms of hackers, is not so much technological stuff, but what's interested me about hackers and phreakers is hacking and freaking as a subculture.
[05:14.180 --> 05:15.020]  That's where I came from.
[05:15.020 --> 05:18.240]  You know, I started out writing about...
[05:18.240 --> 05:39.260]  I started out writing music criticism, and I became increasingly disinterested with that, and convinced that what was really exciting in terms of subcultural activity in my generation was cultures that were being created around technology, and specifically around hacking and freaking.
[05:47.680 --> 06:12.760]  And so, but once I got to know the culture a little better, the problematic that I dealt with in writing about hackers was walking that fine line between making a case for the right of this subculture to exist, and presenting the subculture as it really is.
[06:16.580 --> 06:34.100]  Now, you know, I would like to, you know, you all know that hackers are all love their mothers and are wonderful people, and, you know, but that's not really the case.
[06:34.100 --> 06:45.020]  I mean, hackers are human beings like everybody else, but the problem is writing about them takes place within a general atmosphere of total, you know, misunderstanding and fear and terror.
[06:47.960 --> 07:01.320]  So, to write the subculture as it really is, is problematic because you'll just be feeding into these prejudices against them, and you won't really make the case for this subculture to exist.
[07:01.460 --> 07:19.060]  Now, I believe that this subculture has a right to exist and needs to exist because I'm interested in, for one thing, some of the political implications of the subculture, the desire to break through corporate barriers and through information hierarchies,
[07:19.300 --> 07:30.540]  and, you know, and sort of loosen up the controls on information that are being implemented in this increasingly information-based society and economy.
[07:31.020 --> 07:42.900]  But, you know, hackers aren't generally as interested in these political questions as some of the subculture as some of us journalists are, as some of you are here tonight.
[07:46.240 --> 07:51.820]  But, you know, nonetheless, for those reasons, I think it's important for this subculture to exist.
[07:52.100 --> 07:59.060]  So, you know, what I do is a kind of advocacy journalism for the hacker subculture.
[07:59.260 --> 08:14.220]  I try to present it, you know, as accurately as possible, but when it comes down to it, I'm making a choice to be hacker-sympathetic, or not necessarily pro-hacker, but at least to present them in the best light that I can.
[08:15.900 --> 08:26.460]  I make this point just because I hear a lot, you know, there's a lot of suspicion of the media in the hack-free community, and rightfully so.
[08:28.560 --> 08:34.380]  But there is a kind of attitude that, like, you know, why don't they just present us the way we are, man?
[08:36.460 --> 08:39.600]  And it's not, you know, it's difficult.
[08:39.860 --> 08:53.120]  I mean, if we present you warts and all, you know, and just do a straight presentation, people are going to, people are out there with all these prejudices against hacking and free, and they're just going to read into that what their prejudices are already.
[08:53.320 --> 08:55.220]  So we have to make a case for that.
[08:55.380 --> 09:11.820]  And, and, and that also puts a burden on, on you all to also make the case for yourself, and not just sit there and, and just, just spew out information to, on the one hand, just spew out information to any, you know, media rep that comes along, or, on the other hand,
[09:11.940 --> 09:14.260]  totally not talk to any media rep that comes along.
[09:14.360 --> 09:15.520]  There's a kind of dichotomy.
[09:16.140 --> 09:17.620]  We were just talking about this now.
[09:18.700 --> 09:22.980]  On the one hand, there's this real dogmatic, oh, the media are all liars and scumbags.
[09:23.500 --> 09:38.980]  And on the other hand, you know, there's the case of, you know, hackers who will just, who will just spew out all kinds of incriminating information to, you know, reporters they've never talked to, they've never seen before.
[09:39.120 --> 09:41.200]  They don't even necessarily know that they're really reporters.
[09:41.280 --> 09:44.380]  And they'll just spew for hours, you know, well, I did this, and this, and that, and that.
[09:44.780 --> 09:51.280]  And, you know, you have to develop a more savvy attitude towards, towards dealing with the press.
[09:51.280 --> 09:56.580]  Not just, on the one hand, that they're all, uh, creeps and trying to cash in.
[09:56.720 --> 09:57.200]  Ha, ha, ha.
[09:57.740 --> 10:13.920]  And, or, on the other hand, that, you know, you can just present the information, and once the information gets out there, then everybody will know what a wonderful thing hacking and freaking is, and how wonderful all you people are, and, you know, your right to exist will be guaranteed for life.
[10:14.280 --> 10:24.700]  Um, you gotta develop a kind of savvy, and you gotta develop a kind of political attitude about it, making, making, you know, making a case for yourselves.
[10:25.380 --> 10:31.240]  Um, I don't wanna go on too long, uh, well, I'll pass the mic, and, uh, you know, and then we'll have questions afterwards.
[10:33.420 --> 10:34.760]  Um, do you guys hear me?
[10:35.380 --> 10:35.740]  Good.
[10:36.360 --> 10:44.840]  Um, I, uh, despite, despite Emmanuel's helpful questions, I'm not sure exactly, um, uh, what kind of questions you guys want me to answer.
[10:44.980 --> 10:55.080]  So, I just wanna tell you a bit about what my experiences were, um, reporting on and with hackers, and then, um, give you more time to ask me questions if you've got any.
[10:55.680 --> 10:56.240]  Um, I first...
[10:57.460 --> 11:01.460]  Well, one thing that's different between me and some other hacker journalists is that I'm sort of retired.
[11:01.560 --> 11:04.100]  I haven't really done much in the last, um, three or four years.
[11:05.140 --> 11:07.720]  Partly that's because I, you know, I'm not really a computer reporter.
[11:08.160 --> 11:14.300]  Um, sort of like Julian, I look at myself when I am a reporter much more as a reporter on cultures, on groups.
[11:15.680 --> 11:31.380]  Um, and the way I first became interested in, um, in hackers was in 1989 when I picked up, uh, about the same time picked up an issue of 2600 and, uh, got signed onto the well, and started exploring both of those worlds.
[11:31.620 --> 11:50.140]  The first thing that I did was, I'm an editor at Harper's Magazine, and we did a forum, um, in, I think it was February 1990, in which we got a lot of, largely with Emmanuel's help, we got a lot of, um, people on the well and hackers here in New York together to discuss what we,
[11:50.260 --> 11:52.920]  the headline we gave it was, is computer hacking at Cronut?
[11:52.980 --> 12:07.240]  And it was a 10-day forum online in which another editor and I sort of tried to direct the, the discussion, tried to ask questions, tried to see if there was such a thing as a hacker manifesto, tried to see where different people drew the line between legal and illegal.
[12:07.240 --> 12:24.220]  Um, this, this, uh, this forum was mostly famous for a run in between, um, two people who would go on to be even bigger figures in the hacker world, fiber optic and John Perry Barlow, who, uh, sort of had a generational, uh, war going on.
[12:24.220 --> 12:30.780]  Um, and it led to Barlow claiming that Optic was basically no different from a, uh, a skateboarder.
[12:31.000 --> 12:42.080]  And immediately after that, Optic, um, grabbed his credit rating from TRW and downloaded it into the forum, thus proving that there was a bit of a difference between him and the skateboarder.
[12:42.640 --> 12:51.420]  Um, so, I mean, in, in, that sort of answered, answered, I mean, that, that was a very different way to, um, present hackers.
[12:51.420 --> 12:59.400]  And, um, it's a way that, um, I think worked just because we let hackers talk in their own words.
[12:59.560 --> 13:04.040]  I mean, we, we, we interfered very, we interfered as little as possible as we could in the conversation.
[13:04.260 --> 13:08.980]  That most of the words that ended up in that article were the participants and not ours.
[13:09.360 --> 13:15.400]  Um, so in that way, it was easy to put you guys into words because we just let you use your own words.
[13:15.920 --> 13:19.800]  Um, but from that, I met a couple of, um, teenage computer hackers.
[13:19.800 --> 13:29.800]  And, uh, started hanging out with them and, and, and trying to figure out more about what led someone at a young age to want to hack.
[13:30.120 --> 13:35.660]  Um, and started writing this article for Esquire magazine with, um, a friend of mine, Jack Hitt.
[13:36.340 --> 13:47.340]  Um, and basically what we did was sort of apprentice ourselves to these two guys and got them to teach us everything that, that we could possibly understand about hacking.
[13:48.320 --> 14:00.600]  Uh, that, the main barrier there was that they, uh, were miles ahead of us and, and most of the time we just, we're trying to get them to slow down enough that we could, we could keep track of what they were saying.
[14:00.600 --> 14:05.020]  Um, but we hung out with them for a really long time.
[14:05.200 --> 14:06.420]  I hung out with them for like three months.
[14:06.780 --> 14:09.260]  And, uh, most of the time we were hacking when we were with them.
[14:09.440 --> 14:11.260]  They were getting into various systems.
[14:11.520 --> 14:13.680]  They were especially interested in the phone system in NYNEX.
[14:13.920 --> 14:17.220]  Um, and they would sort of explain to us what they were doing and why they were doing it.
[14:17.520 --> 14:25.940]  Um, and over the course of that period, we sort of learned, and we, we came to some conclusions about why, why they were doing things.
[14:26.060 --> 14:28.320]  Some conclusions that they sort of hadn't come to themselves.
[14:28.720 --> 14:33.940]  Um, and were able maybe to, to psychoanalyze them a bit in ways that, that they hadn't done.
[14:34.720 --> 14:39.820]  Um, and that's about it for me and, for me and, and, and hackers.
[14:40.060 --> 14:42.380]  Those are my main two, uh, two contributions to the debate.
[14:42.880 --> 14:48.480]  Um, the only, the only thing that, that I would add is, is basically to, to, um, to say what Julian said.
[14:48.480 --> 14:54.540]  But the, the, the thing, the thing that, I mean, I would, I'm here with a national public radio reporter, and we were talking to a few people yesterday.
[14:55.100 --> 15:02.160]  Um, and the thing that still strikes me, you know, watching people, there were a couple of photographers, I guess newspaper photographers, and WINS reporters, and people like that going around.
[15:02.760 --> 15:05.420]  And, um, and interviewing people and taking pictures.
[15:06.300 --> 15:14.820]  And there really seemed to be a, you know, despite, despite the fact, as Julian said, that, that there's this kind of anti-media rhetoric among a lot of hackers.
[15:15.600 --> 15:23.340]  There was a real feeling of, like, when the photographer showed up, a lot of people just kind of smiled and rolled over and hoped that their bellies would get scratched by the media.
[15:23.720 --> 15:30.120]  Um, and, and I think there's a real, there, there's, there's a real distinction between different types of reporters.
[15:30.560 --> 15:36.720]  Um, there are people that are going to really listen to what people have to say and really try and understand the technology and try and understand the sociology.
[15:44.200 --> 15:52.080]  A young... a 16-year-old guy here yesterday told me that he'd read my article and it got him more interested in hacking.
[15:52.520 --> 15:54.100]  He got it in his high school library.
[15:54.280 --> 15:57.200]  And that's the best thing that anyone's ever said to me about my article.
[15:57.380 --> 15:59.240]  And that was sort of what I was hoping would happen.
[15:59.540 --> 16:02.740]  So good things can come from talking to journalists.
[16:02.960 --> 16:06.700]  But when you get the Geraldo show showing up and...
[16:06.720 --> 16:13.500]  you know, asking if you could break into Defense Department computers and launch ICBMs and things like that.
[16:15.760 --> 16:19.940]  You've got to figure out pretty early that there is no way that anything good is going to come of this interview.
[16:20.860 --> 16:25.480]  You've got to... you know, you've got to learn how to distinguish and you've got to learn how to just say no.
[16:25.660 --> 16:27.120]  You know, just say, no, I don't want to talk to you.
[16:27.300 --> 16:32.680]  And it really seems like that's something that a lot of hackers have not developed that skill.
[16:33.200 --> 16:38.340]  That they... they're just going to participate in anything that's going to get their name or photo in the media.
[16:38.920 --> 16:44.400]  And that can be, as some people have learned, that can be really dangerous.
[16:45.700 --> 16:46.140]  Point.
[16:50.640 --> 16:54.960]  Unlike my esteemed colleagues on my left... left, your right, my left.
[16:55.500 --> 16:58.620]  I don't consider myself to be a journalist, per se.
[16:58.900 --> 17:09.700]  I consider myself to be a writer, a commentator, an editorial big mouth, hopefully somewhat entertaining with what I do, to cross over some barriers.
[17:09.700 --> 17:17.980]  The barriers being the suits, being the phone companies, being the Pentagon, down to whatever social subcultures happen to exist.
[17:18.140 --> 17:25.940]  And try to make some sort of transitions or provide some material for people to be able to understand what's going on the other side.
[17:26.080 --> 17:28.680]  There's an awful lot of misunderstandings that are certainly going on.
[17:29.140 --> 17:35.000]  And I think also in this field that we also see is a great deal of boring, boring writing going on.
[17:35.600 --> 17:36.400]  And entertaining.
[17:36.620 --> 17:37.380]  We need some fun.
[17:37.560 --> 17:40.880]  And you guys provide an awful lot of fodder for that, as far as I'm concerned.
[17:41.820 --> 17:46.400]  If you've read the latest piece I did on CyberChrist, then you'll have some idea of what we're doing.
[17:46.560 --> 17:52.020]  And on this particular one, we're going to do a review of this conference called CyberChrist Gets Nailed to the Cross.
[17:52.880 --> 17:55.880]  So hopefully it'll be as entertaining as some of the others have been.
[17:56.180 --> 17:58.020]  But you guys are not the bad guys.
[17:58.300 --> 18:00.020]  The media sometimes doesn't quite get that.
[18:00.160 --> 18:02.220]  Certainly corporate America doesn't entirely get that.
[18:02.320 --> 18:05.520]  They do tend to peg you as the bad guys.
[18:05.540 --> 18:10.820]  And that contributes certainly to some of the feelings and the anti-media rhetoric that we hear going on.
[18:13.160 --> 18:18.360]  Probably the closest example that I saw is some of the hackers not understanding exactly what to do.
[18:18.360 --> 18:22.300]  It occurred with fiber optic a couple of days after he got busted on the latest round.
[18:23.220 --> 18:25.960]  And I wanted to talk to him, so I called him up at home.
[18:27.100 --> 18:29.180]  And I said, this is William Schwartz, I want to chat with you.
[18:29.260 --> 18:31.100]  He goes, how'd you get my phone number?
[18:32.020 --> 18:33.180]  I said, from information.
[18:35.140 --> 18:36.700]  And he was a little stunned at that.
[18:36.800 --> 18:38.140]  So we chatted for a couple of minutes.
[18:38.320 --> 18:41.300]  And he said, you know, my lawyer says I can't talk to you.
[18:41.680 --> 18:42.840]  And I said, no, I understand.
[18:43.040 --> 18:46.700]  You know, with the case going down, you're not supposed to get yourself in any more trouble.
[18:46.700 --> 18:47.240]  He goes, yeah.
[18:47.460 --> 18:50.160]  And I said, well, before we go, let me just ask you one question.
[18:50.280 --> 18:50.820]  And he goes, what?
[18:50.980 --> 18:52.620]  I said, why did you do it?
[18:53.980 --> 18:57.580]  Four hours of on-the-record conversation that thoroughly indicted him.
[18:57.800 --> 19:06.460]  He did not understand, and a lot of this culture does not understand, that when people go on the record, they're on the record.
[19:06.480 --> 19:08.540]  They don't understand what off the record is.
[19:08.620 --> 19:13.060]  They don't, you don't understand often what background is, how to use things anonymously.
[19:13.060 --> 19:18.460]  Like when you read the New York Times, you see things according to a source who doesn't want to be identified because he blew his job at the White House.
[19:18.700 --> 19:19.860]  The same kind of thing.
[19:19.940 --> 19:29.680]  You have the same privileges and rules, and quality journalists, quality writers will adhere to those types of rules, regardless of what side of the fence you may or may not be on.
[19:30.340 --> 19:40.160]  And the better writers will keep confidential your secrets, and they'll keep confidential the secrets of the Pentagon and all the other suit-level people as well.
[19:40.360 --> 19:45.000]  So the rules are the same for everybody, but you've got to become aware of what all the rules really are.
[19:47.220 --> 20:04.580]  And the issue about hacking, somehow there's this impression that hacking is new, that it's something that's come out in the last four years or ten years or what have you, but I don't know who created that image, but technology's been around for a long time.
[20:05.220 --> 20:09.640]  And people have always tried to stretch technology and push the edge of it.
[20:09.740 --> 20:16.000]  The difference that we have today, versus the other types of hacking in prior technological societies, is the connectivity.
[20:16.260 --> 20:17.260]  That's really the only difference.
[20:17.520 --> 20:23.580]  And when you have the kind of connectivity we have today, the presence, the awareness, is the main difference.
[20:23.980 --> 20:33.160]  People have always pushed the edge, and when they're pushing the edge they're generally doing it for social good, And this has not been something that the media, in my opinion, has really gotten right.
[20:33.360 --> 20:40.160]  Because the majority of the media, when I read the stories on you guys and the various factions of the security industry, they get it wrong.
[20:40.300 --> 20:43.640]  The journalists do not have the technological basis, generally.
[20:43.800 --> 20:50.360]  No offense to the gentleman on my left here, they generally do not have the technological basis to understand when somebody's bullshitting them or not.
[20:50.440 --> 20:51.160]  Is it possible?
[20:51.280 --> 20:52.180]  Is it not possible?
[20:52.420 --> 20:55.620]  And I'll give you the most classic example, and then I'll pass the mic on.
[20:55.620 --> 21:03.780]  On January 10th, 1992, Ted Koppel was posting Nightline.
[21:03.920 --> 21:05.420]  And I was sitting there with my wife.
[21:05.580 --> 21:06.960]  I have a life and kids and all that.
[21:07.020 --> 21:08.320]  We were sitting at home at 11.30.
[21:09.160 --> 21:18.020]  And he came on to announce that the United States had won the war against Iraq using a computer virus.
[21:19.480 --> 21:22.520]  Well, I looked at my wife and I said, there's something wrong with this picture.
[21:23.380 --> 21:25.820]  And they proceeded to describe how it worked.
[21:26.160 --> 21:37.520]  And what it was, the National Security Agency, in its infinite wisdom, designed a computer virus to go inside of a chip, which they then gave to the CIA.
[21:37.520 --> 21:43.760]  So the CIA now has this little computer chip designed to take down Iraq.
[21:44.120 --> 21:49.120]  They fly over to France and they find a French printer company and they say, oh, this fits into that.
[21:49.220 --> 21:52.360]  And they put this chip with the virus into a French printer.
[21:53.540 --> 21:58.060]  The French printer is apparently bound for Iraq one way or another.
[21:59.520 --> 22:02.800]  And this is, again, this is Nightline telling this story with U.S.
[22:02.900 --> 22:06.260]  News & World Report providing all of the accurate information.
[22:08.160 --> 22:11.200]  And they got the printer to Amman, Jordan.
[22:12.180 --> 22:16.080]  And since there was an embargo, they only wanted to let the printers with the viruses through.
[22:17.120 --> 22:23.600]  And they somehow got this printer into an Iraqi air defense installation down near Kuwait.
[22:24.380 --> 22:35.960]  So, a couple of minutes before we decide to send in the cruise missiles to make right turns at the El Rashid Hotel, Well, we decide it's time to launch the virus.
[22:36.620 --> 22:39.440]  So, a couple of minutes before we say go.
[22:39.860 --> 22:55.040]  The virus, this is Nightline, not me now, jumps out of the printer into the air defense radar systems, which are running Windows 3.0
[23:02.520 --> 23:06.100]  And subsequently ate up all of their air defense capabilities.
[23:08.620 --> 23:10.920]  I was bothered by this story.
[23:14.040 --> 23:16.440]  And I said to my wife, go to bed.
[23:16.440 --> 23:17.640]  I got some homework to do.
[23:17.720 --> 23:19.060]  And I went through some files.
[23:19.220 --> 23:21.720]  Something really just gnawed at the back of my mind.
[23:22.780 --> 23:28.340]  And subsequently I wrote an article called The Iraqi Virus Hoax.
[23:29.480 --> 23:45.520]  This story, word for word, point for point, issue for issue, there's 14 of them, fully documented, and I put it all over the net, was written originally by John Gantz, an InfoWorld columnist, on April 1st, 1991.
[23:47.640 --> 23:49.440]  It was an April Fool's joke.
[23:51.680 --> 23:53.240]  Upon who becomes the question?
[23:53.400 --> 23:59.020]  So I called up the following Monday morning after talking to the copless people who disavowed any knowledge of it.
[23:59.780 --> 24:01.160]  That's why they were reporting it.
[24:03.060 --> 24:06.080]  And I talked to the author, Brian Duffy, at U.S.
[24:06.160 --> 24:07.000]  News & World Report.
[24:07.060 --> 24:09.040]  And I said, Brian, this thing is a crock.
[24:09.140 --> 24:09.660]  What happened?
[24:09.820 --> 24:10.560]  What's wrong here?
[24:11.400 --> 24:13.820]  And apparently I sent them something of a panic.
[24:13.960 --> 24:17.260]  And he called me back two days later, and he says, we're sticking by the story.
[24:17.480 --> 24:18.160]  It's accurate.
[24:19.880 --> 24:22.720]  I said, where is your source?
[24:22.860 --> 24:25.720]  He goes, to knowledgeable generals.
[24:28.360 --> 24:32.440]  So, so much for knowledgeable generals, so much for knowledgeable media.
[24:32.660 --> 24:35.540]  Point is, be careful who you're talking to, the gentleman on the left or right.
[24:35.640 --> 24:36.640]  Be aware of the rules.
[24:36.800 --> 24:39.520]  Be aware of your rights that good journalists will give you.
[24:39.520 --> 24:43.540]  And then you can start talking about getting some stories and your viewpoints put across right.
[24:43.800 --> 24:44.220]  Thanks.
[24:51.100 --> 24:55.980]  I came to the project Hackers relatively late in its development.
[24:59.000 --> 25:04.560]  After I was over here for the release of Backbeat last year, I was looking at a number of scripts.
[25:04.560 --> 25:06.800]  I didn't think I was going to make a film over here.
[25:07.620 --> 25:14.280]  I had some more pet projects in my top drawer that I was hoping to get off the ground.
[25:15.200 --> 25:32.220]  But the thing that appealed to me about this script and made it stand out really from all the others I was being offered, a script written by Raphael, was the fact that it had a sense of humor that was based on a kind of delinquency.
[25:34.760 --> 25:39.780]  It had many similar themes to the movie Backbeat that I just made.
[25:41.160 --> 25:58.380]  And the thing that really appealed to me was that here was a subculture bursting through and really threatening the established culture in a way that the established culture was not going to be able to ignore it anymore and was going to subsume it but also be influenced by it.
[25:59.240 --> 26:22.640]  I think that for each generation, what is discovering things anew, what is working out the world for your own, working out the rules that you want to live it by, the established culture always sees that as delinquency, whether it's drug experimentation or riding motorbikes in the 1950s or whatever.
[26:22.640 --> 26:30.240]  So, it was really from that broad cultural point of view that I hooked into the script.
[26:30.400 --> 26:38.300]  But I also just like the sense of famine and disrespect that I think is very healthy.
[26:38.520 --> 26:49.880]  And the more I got to know about hacking culture, the more I realized that that sort of absurdist view of the world, you know, isn't it ridiculous that everybody trusts all of this stuff?
[26:49.880 --> 27:01.200]  Everybody trusts that the computers are going to allow them to lead their life in a well-ordered way and that the money that you say you have in your account is the money you have in your account.
[27:01.320 --> 27:08.720]  When somebody says you have this, you committed this crime or you haven't paid that parking ticket or you've got this grade in school, nobody questions it.
[27:08.720 --> 27:20.300]  And I think the mirror that hacking has held up to society is not only amusing, but has got a serious point to it as well.
[27:22.860 --> 27:42.440]  Having really got hooked on the subject from the point of view of making a movie, the question then arises as to how do you treat a real-life situation, a script that obviously borrows on a lot of real issues and real people?
[27:43.640 --> 27:54.780]  In order that it's an enjoyable, entertaining movie that people are going to go and see, but also that it's going to be true in some way to its subject matter.
[27:54.780 --> 28:08.240]  And that's the big question that approaches and faces people like, like me, who want to make movies based on, in some way, real life.
[28:09.040 --> 28:12.380]  And it's a question that there isn't really any right answer to.
[28:13.800 --> 28:21.840]  And I know that when I was making Backbeat, a lot of people were nervous when I was trying to get the film off the ground.
[28:22.420 --> 28:28.760]  For those of you that don't know, it's the story of the fifth Beatles, Stuart Sutcliffe, and his relationship with John Lennon.
[28:29.060 --> 28:34.920]  It's a very sacred story, in a sense, and a very well-documented one.
[28:35.320 --> 28:37.820]  The real people were... all the real people were alive.
[28:38.100 --> 28:41.560]  A lot of the story had been documented.
[28:41.860 --> 28:44.800]  But I had to take liberties with the facts.
[28:44.800 --> 29:03.060]  And I think one of the things that I was approaching, first of all, when I came to New York and started to think about researching this movie with Rafael, was really to do what I did on Backbeat, which was to absorb myself as much as I could in a relatively short time,
[29:03.060 --> 29:23.160]  knowing that Raphael had spent, I think, a good two years meeting hackers, and really trying to use that knowledge to get the spirit of the movie right, bearing in mind that at times we were going to have to adapt things for the big screen.
[29:23.160 --> 29:28.360]  So those are really the two ways that I approach the material.
[29:28.520 --> 29:41.540]  Trying to find out what's really out there, and then find another way in which it can be presented for the screen that is true to that essence, but at the same time takes on a life of its own.
[29:48.300 --> 29:52.380]  I guess everybody would be curious to say how a hacker script gets off the ground or originally gets started.
[29:52.380 --> 29:58.260]  I would say that one of the things that this movie has very much in its paper is that it was not originally developed at a studio.
[29:58.500 --> 30:01.520]  It wasn't somebody saying, kind of like, oh, cool, let's do a rollerblade movie.
[30:01.640 --> 30:03.880]  Kids are really into that and that sort of thing.
[30:04.040 --> 30:16.320]  It came about as a result, really, if I trace it all the way back to its real origins, it was before war games or anything, when a very good friend of mine in high school who was studying mathematics our first year of college took me into a room where there were a lot of computers,
[30:16.420 --> 30:23.540]  and it was about 10 o'clock in the evening, and every computer was built, and people were working obsessively.
[30:24.120 --> 30:26.800]  And my first reaction was, wow, these people love their major.
[30:30.400 --> 30:33.680]  And I said to him, this is cool, what are they doing?
[30:33.780 --> 30:34.140]  I have no idea.
[30:34.300 --> 30:36.940]  And he said, well, they're all cracking software.
[30:37.080 --> 30:41.060]  They're all getting into these games, and they're breaking the codes to all of them, everybody.
[30:41.340 --> 30:43.900]  And there was a big sign on the wall that said, no cracking or hacking.
[30:44.840 --> 30:47.320]  And I was like, this is pretty obvious.
[30:47.540 --> 30:49.060]  Everybody at every monitor is doing this.
[30:49.240 --> 30:50.920]  Isn't there some sort of a monitor or something?
[30:51.020 --> 30:53.080]  He was like, yeah, he's over there trying to crack into...
[30:55.680 --> 31:02.280]  And that was really sort of, in a serious way, looking at how everybody...
[31:02.280 --> 31:17.780]  I mean, there's a level of concentration that I think is a level of concentration that great athletes get into, and it's a level of concentration that, you know, dancing to some really great music, or having great sex, or having...it was just a flow state in that.
[31:17.940 --> 31:21.300]  That is what I...I didn't even realize at the time that's what I saw in that room.
[31:21.500 --> 31:27.540]  And it was just...that's when the germ of wanting to write about this.
[31:27.740 --> 31:33.820]  Because I think that any fun script really starts from character rather than, oh, let's make a movie about rollerbladers, you know.
[31:34.600 --> 31:45.700]  As time went on, and then War Games came out, and I moved to New York, and was always tracking stories about hackers, and what happened with Robert Morris, and just on and on and on.
[31:45.900 --> 31:53.020]  And influential articles like the guys that...the ones that you guys wrote that were very influential for me in terms of looking at it as a subculture.
[31:55.340 --> 32:01.240]  And then wrote the script, and the script was what's called a spec script, which means nobody paid me to write it.
[32:01.320 --> 32:16.900]  I took two months off, and my wife worked extra shifts as a bartender, and I hung out with Phiber Optik, and Acid Phreak, and Emmanuel, and a whole lot of people for a large period of time were very generous with their ideas and the things that they'd been through.
[32:19.840 --> 32:26.320]  And during that time, we started to feel a growing sense of responsibility towards the ideas, the political ideas and things that they'd said.
[32:26.600 --> 32:31.700]  I do think that, as you guys said, a kind of advocacy journalism.
[32:31.700 --> 32:42.920]  There was very much of an advocacy screenwriting in this sense, because I was just so won over by everybody's sense of humor and the politics and the things that they were trying to say and do.
[32:43.260 --> 32:52.400]  I very much agree with the idea that there's a responsibility on you as hackers in how you present yourself.
[32:53.480 --> 33:04.200]  And when questions are asked to you by journalists during the long period of time and I was with the people I was working with, I saw them get sandbagged several times by Forbes magazine.
[33:04.920 --> 33:06.120]  I shouldn't name any names.
[33:06.220 --> 33:08.140]  I don't know if there's anybody here from Forbes, but I saw that happen.
[33:09.440 --> 33:12.660]  And the Veraldo stuff and just everything.
[33:15.440 --> 33:22.080]  And you have to understand that these people that come to you are, in some cases, they're just trying to make a buck.
[33:22.680 --> 33:26.240]  And they're going to try to come up with the most dramatic thing that they can come up with.
[33:26.380 --> 33:29.800]  You know, hacker takes over satellite and stuff like that.
[33:30.040 --> 33:34.020]  Because that's them going back to their editor and saying, oh, I have a new angle on this story.
[33:34.320 --> 33:37.500]  And your new angle in your life is their new angle.
[33:39.080 --> 33:40.320]  So it's a two-way street.
[33:40.440 --> 33:41.120]  There is a responsibility.
[33:41.300 --> 33:45.580]  You can't just point the finger and say, oh, these people don't know anything about what the hell they're talking about.
[33:49.800 --> 34:00.800]  One thing I would say about this particular script, which to me was a very good sign that happened with Michael as well, was that when we finally started to get...
[34:00.800 --> 34:08.200]  First off, this piece when it first went out was several years ago and hacking was not exactly on the cutting edge of, like, culture that it is now.
[34:08.340 --> 34:10.120]  And mass culture has just sort of been working its way in.
[34:10.120 --> 34:12.640]  So most of the reactions we got from people were kind of like, eh.
[34:14.300 --> 34:20.320]  And the interesting thing was that we got really strong, very visceral political reactions from people.
[34:21.560 --> 34:29.600]  In fact, the studio that's now making the film under a previous regime had the piece covered by what's called a story analyst or a reader.
[34:30.040 --> 34:37.320]  And one of the people who's working with us managed to social engineer a copy of that coverage, what's called coverage, sort of somebody's opinion of the script.
[34:37.320 --> 34:56.860]  And this guy must have been a young Republican because he really just did not like the whole idea of having hackers as protagonists and sort of introducing their view of the world and how it works and why, in a sense, if we don't all become hackers, we're shirking our responsibility as individuals and citizens.
[34:58.580 --> 35:09.900]  Some time later, Michael gave the script to a particular studio head who responded with the quote, I am uncomfortable with its anti-establishment attitude.
[35:12.120 --> 35:16.840]  And even though we were being turned down by a studio, my reaction was like, it works!
[35:19.900 --> 35:23.500]  And other than that, any questions that anybody would take?
[35:23.580 --> 35:25.440]  I do want to... one last thing.
[35:26.140 --> 35:29.680]  I read a great quote the other day, and I don't quite know who...
[35:29.680 --> 35:36.640]  I don't remember who wrote it, but it's in terms of what Paul and Julian are talking about.
[35:36.640 --> 35:45.780]  Your responsibilities as hackers in talking to the media is that if you're not very careful, the quote was, you'll be paved over by the information superhighway.
[35:46.780 --> 35:48.200]  And I think that's quite true.
[35:48.300 --> 35:59.420]  I think that as people are finding a way to make money out of the internet and people finding a way, you know, the whole home shopping thing and everything, there is what they perceive as a cancer, and hackers are that cancer.
[35:59.420 --> 36:13.140]  And unless you find a way to present yourselves and take that on as part of your responsibility, as people that... I'm not saying everybody should be political, but you should be aware when you're talking to people what you're doing in terms of the information you're giving them.
[36:14.740 --> 36:18.740]  Because, let's face it, it's like I said, corporate America is not quite enamored of you.
[36:27.800 --> 36:44.700]  I don't have much, really, to add, except that when I first became aware of this world was 20-some years ago, and I worked on a thing called the Network Project that came out of the SDS in Columbia in 68.
[36:45.840 --> 36:56.480]  And it studied how information corporations were structured, basically in a form of monopoly capitalization.
[36:58.180 --> 37:05.520]  And then I went off and made a lot of good comedies, which were about as subversive as I could be in that period.
[37:08.120 --> 37:28.680]  Now, what's quite unique about this activity in the information world and the facility that, I guess, the group that is called hackers has, and quite frankly, the whole younger generation, which is facile with the computer technology, way beyond any of their seniors,
[37:28.980 --> 37:42.580]  be it their teachers or their parents, is that the context of society has become information-based, as opposed to, you know, oil and gold and whatever else.
[37:42.840 --> 37:59.700]  So, finally, you have the potential for a new frontier, which in the American spirit of storytelling and the great American myths has always been about some guy going out there onto the frontier.
[38:00.420 --> 38:15.900]  And what's happening here, what I've been watching the last day or so, is that same kind of spirit, which has been missing somewhat culturally for the last 20 years, until things got caught up with themselves to give this, you know, internet.
[38:15.900 --> 38:39.860]  I remember also sitting a few months ago at UCLA at the Super Highway Conference, where I was sitting, I just sort of wandered in and sat and watched all the heads of the major companies blab about what a great thing this was and how they could all be connected and subverted.
[38:41.800 --> 38:43.580]  And they didn't have a clue, really.
[38:44.680 --> 38:48.600]  And what's fun to see here is that people really do have a clue if they understand how to use it.
[38:49.120 --> 39:03.940]  The thing that's been raised, which is about journalism too, which is about responsibility, but it's the responsibility for everybody who talks to journalists, who makes films, who creates any kind of cultural activity, is to have some sense of their own responsibility.
[39:04.140 --> 39:06.120]  If everybody carries their own weight, it's going to be cool.
[39:06.780 --> 39:16.200]  The problem is there's some people who want to carry more than their own weight, and there are people who just are sort of irresponsible.
[39:17.260 --> 39:21.220]  We're trying to be hip and aware of what's going down.
[39:21.420 --> 39:26.060]  We're also trying to make a movie that's going to be a lot of fun to go through.
[39:26.300 --> 39:27.540]  But we'll see.
[39:27.720 --> 39:28.640]  We think we can do it.
[39:31.260 --> 39:34.560]  I guess this means it's questions time, if anybody has a clue.
[39:40.560 --> 39:40.580]  Who?
[39:40.580 --> 39:40.860]  You!
[39:42.400 --> 39:44.020]  Can we all have a big party?
[39:44.260 --> 39:45.120]  Can we give you a crowd seat?
[39:45.360 --> 39:46.860]  A couple of things we should go out of time.
[39:47.120 --> 39:48.440]  Please make a good crowd seat.
[39:48.680 --> 39:49.220]  Come, please!
[39:49.660 --> 39:50.620]  Thank you, our nation!
[39:52.780 --> 39:54.160]  I think you already did.
[39:54.320 --> 39:54.740]  Thank you.
[40:08.010 --> 40:09.130]  We're making it.
[40:09.230 --> 40:11.970]  United Artists is distributing it, and it will come out next year.
[40:14.270 --> 40:17.710]  There are no characters, per se.
[40:17.950 --> 40:19.230]  They're all creations.
[40:20.990 --> 40:21.450]  Robert.
[40:22.330 --> 40:29.770]  You could perhaps give this group intelligence about how corporate America perceives and how the government perceives them.
[40:29.810 --> 40:33.910]  In your respective endeavors, could you tell us a little bit more?
[40:34.050 --> 40:35.770]  You say they're now starting to get an income.
[40:35.910 --> 40:43.270]  I, frankly, take those corporations, still don't get it, and they don't realize that they don't have a house that's being thrown into.
[40:43.390 --> 40:47.250]  They have an undeveloped lot that the dogs are under the cross.
[40:47.750 --> 40:50.890]  Could you tell us, what is the perception?
[40:51.070 --> 40:51.670]  Very smart.
[40:51.930 --> 40:53.270]  Well, you know, no one says anything.
[40:55.990 --> 41:08.830]  But, could you tell us your perception of the political environment as it now stands, and what kinds of changes do you see developing in terms of getting ourselves healthy, so that we're then packing a healthy system?
[41:17.250 --> 41:17.430]  Yes.
[41:20.150 --> 41:21.910]  Well, it's Robert's deal.
[41:24.910 --> 41:31.710]  Inside of corporations, you will find the occasional person or two who does have a clue, who does really understand.
[41:32.850 --> 41:35.130]  But, I've got to go back to the point I made earlier.
[41:35.130 --> 41:39.130]  By and large, they think that you guys are the problem.
[41:39.430 --> 41:45.230]  And at least I believe, and I don't think I'm alone here, I don't believe you're the problem.
[41:45.370 --> 41:46.910]  I think you're part of the solution.
[41:48.090 --> 41:50.430]  And you offer an awareness.
[41:50.630 --> 41:56.490]  You offer what the capabilities are by the real bad guys.
[41:57.030 --> 42:02.270]  You guys are about technology abuse, use, extension, and how do I use them.
[42:02.370 --> 42:06.510]  And by and large, the hacker community is not super malicious.
[42:07.150 --> 42:14.350]  You don't, by and large, have these grandiose political, financial, economic, or environmental agendas.
[42:14.510 --> 42:16.070]  You guys are into it and you like the technology.
[42:16.070 --> 42:16.770]  You want to tweak.
[42:16.890 --> 42:18.070]  You want to have some fun with it.
[42:18.130 --> 42:20.850]  And occasionally, something you get in, you crack your hat, you okay.
[42:21.170 --> 42:25.370]  It may not be right, but that is not the fundamental problem that corporate America faces.
[42:25.370 --> 42:33.010]  And they find it very easy and convenient to blame something that is fairly high-profile, and that's you guys.
[42:33.470 --> 42:36.010]  So there's certainly a problem there.
[42:36.110 --> 42:38.250]  But the awareness is increasing.
[42:38.250 --> 42:56.410]  And I think that we're going to see the change occur through the legal system, unfortunately, because the lawyers in the corporations are beginning to realize that in an information asset-intensive world that they have to get on the shtick because there's going to be some major fiduciary responsibilities,
[42:56.970 --> 43:08.930]  whether it's you guys breaking in or the bad guys stealing money for the Federal Reserve, or whatever it happens to be, privacy issues, corporate espionage, the real issues that are going on out there that you're so well demonstrating.
[43:10.710 --> 43:11.990]  The lawyers are going to help us.
[43:12.070 --> 43:13.090]  They're going to start some lawsuits.
[43:13.290 --> 43:13.990]  The lawyers are coming.
[43:14.070 --> 43:14.810]  The lawyers are coming.
[43:14.930 --> 43:17.550]  And whether that's going to be a good thing or not, I don't know.
[43:18.050 --> 43:21.630]  Given the lawyers that I know, no, but I think it's going to be happening anyway.
[43:21.910 --> 43:23.090]  Does that answer your question, Robert?
[43:23.090 --> 43:26.030]  I could just add something to that very briefly.
[43:26.250 --> 43:29.930]  I mean, I think that it's quite precariously poised at the moment.
[43:30.170 --> 43:40.230]  I think that certainly the law enforcement agencies and corporate America and corporate UK, corporate Europe, basically think that hacking is a crime.
[43:40.610 --> 43:42.030]  And they're frightened of it.
[43:42.110 --> 43:43.930]  And they see it purely in terms of property.
[43:44.270 --> 43:50.250]  And so they use the forces of law and order to protect property, which they have always done.
[43:50.250 --> 44:00.370]  And I think that the issues of access and trespass and freedom that were certainly very important in my country in the 19th century.
[44:01.030 --> 44:07.530]  Because what happened in the 18th century was that the industrial conglomerates actually took all of the land that was common land.
[44:08.610 --> 44:14.510]  And all the laws of the UK, basically, have been formulated to protect those property interests.
[44:14.710 --> 44:16.710]  I think that it is a precarious time.
[44:16.810 --> 44:29.070]  I think that's why it's important for journalists and people like ourselves who are borrowing your culture, if you like, that it is presented in a positive way.
[44:29.270 --> 44:34.930]  Because I think that it's not the culture that is criminal or legal or straight or whatever.
[44:35.510 --> 44:39.750]  I think that it's just the place that's inhabited by people and people are people.
[44:39.750 --> 44:41.350]  Yeah, I wanted to add one thing.
[44:41.890 --> 44:51.490]  I believe that, by and large, everybody with some degree of intelligence, with an IQ, something above that of a rock or something, are basically hackers.
[44:51.750 --> 44:53.250]  And I went out to try to prove this.
[44:53.430 --> 44:54.430]  I just made a note on it.
[44:54.430 --> 44:59.930]  I give a lot of seminars and conferences for corporations that can afford all the, you know, ridiculous amounts of money.
[45:00.190 --> 45:02.790]  And at one point, I sat down at a computer.
[45:02.950 --> 45:04.590]  It was about 20 or 30 people around the room.
[45:04.810 --> 45:06.650]  And we were having a coffee break or something.
[45:07.130 --> 45:09.870]  And I sat down where they could not see the computer screen.
[45:09.870 --> 45:11.750]  And I start playing, doing something.
[45:11.950 --> 45:13.510]  I was not even hooked up to a motor.
[45:14.430 --> 45:18.190]  And I said, holy shit, I just broke into the White House computers.
[45:19.410 --> 45:23.070]  Every single person in that room who was a suit came behind that computer to look.
[45:23.650 --> 45:25.330]  They all wanted to know.
[45:25.410 --> 45:33.290]  And it was the first time in their mind that they realized that they had a certain amount of a hacker essence within them in its human nature.
[45:33.450 --> 45:35.450]  And I think that we need to help educate them on that as well.
[45:35.450 --> 45:38.050]  Yeah, I just want to add to that.
[45:38.210 --> 45:41.750]  That, I mean, that is one thing that you can do.
[45:41.930 --> 45:50.150]  I mean, it is simple, but it is one thing you can do sort of on a political level is to give the suits a taste, you know.
[45:50.550 --> 46:00.130]  Because anybody who's, you know, anybody can recognize the appeal of this once they're put face to face with it.
[46:00.210 --> 46:02.550]  And then it sort of changes the whole perspective, you know.
[46:03.510 --> 46:06.510]  Again, you have to be very careful about the context in which you do that.
[46:06.810 --> 46:11.830]  And not, like, you know, have a current affair of shooting you, you know, over your shoulder.
[46:12.410 --> 46:18.570]  But, you know, if you can, if you are, you know, in a face to face situation with somebody from the media.
[46:18.730 --> 46:20.630]  If you can get them, you know, somehow...
[46:21.290 --> 46:28.530]  You know, if it's a matter of just somehow surreptitiously getting them, you know, a password to a hacked system or something.
[46:29.290 --> 46:31.910]  So that they can, you know, see what it's like.
[46:32.690 --> 46:35.070]  And understand what the buzz is about.
[46:35.770 --> 46:37.450]  You know, it can be a cheap buzz.
[46:39.270 --> 46:42.810]  But it's just for them to get a sense of what it's all about.
[46:43.010 --> 46:44.730]  And that can kind of turn people around.
[46:44.850 --> 46:50.790]  Even, I think, you know, real sort of up in the corporate levels of things.
[46:54.990 --> 46:58.410]  Yeah, I've been around hacking probably since about 1979.
[46:59.670 --> 47:04.710]  And, you know, I read Steve Levy, I guess this is here, his book not so long ago.
[47:05.050 --> 47:07.190]  And when I finished the book, I was kind of depressed.
[47:07.270 --> 47:11.850]  Because I felt like things were so much different than the way I remember them when I was in college.
[47:11.850 --> 47:13.830]  Yeah, come to this conference, I look around.
[47:14.270 --> 47:19.170]  And somehow, I feel things really aren't that much different than they were in, say, the early 80s.
[47:19.350 --> 47:31.630]  And, I mean, looking at hackardom as a general subculture, how do you guys, if you have a fair amount of experience yourselves, how do you see things as being different or the same as they were several years ago?
[47:32.550 --> 47:34.050]  So, I'm going to start on that.
[47:35.070 --> 47:48.610]  During the time period that I was working on the script, one of the things that became very evidently, was I went to, I thought I knew all the hackers in the corporate, seen them at meetings and stuff like that.
[47:48.670 --> 47:50.930]  And I went in to do some laser copies at this place.
[47:51.170 --> 47:59.210]  And the kid who was doing laser copies, very, very young, looked at him and said, Oh, yeah, cool, you're doing, you know, look at all this stuff on hackers.
[47:59.390 --> 48:01.290]  And he's like, I'll do it for you.
[48:01.290 --> 48:03.450]  And he ran back and he gave them to me for free and he came back.
[48:03.590 --> 48:05.690]  And I hadn't seen him around in any meetings.
[48:05.770 --> 48:06.790]  And I said, well, are you a hacker?
[48:06.870 --> 48:07.330]  And he's like, yeah.
[48:07.490 --> 48:09.390]  And he told me about a bunch of his friends and everything.
[48:09.590 --> 48:12.790]  But they were not, they were hacking, but they weren't plugged into it.
[48:12.810 --> 48:13.970]  I mean, maybe they're here.
[48:14.030 --> 48:14.550]  I doubt it.
[48:15.230 --> 48:18.810]  I think that the technology itself is democratizing things.
[48:19.550 --> 48:31.590]  If you look at Stephen Levy and one of the things he talked about in that book is how it went from being this kind of elitist, you know, the monks who were writing on the tablet kind of thing and had the cards and how slowly things are spreading out more and more and more.
[48:33.830 --> 48:48.270]  That's a big difference that I could see is that generationally, in terms of how young hackers are now, how there are a lot of people out there who consider themselves hackers who are not plugged into any political movement or coming to conventions or even reading magazines,
[48:48.430 --> 48:49.270]  but they're doing it.
[48:49.270 --> 48:52.370]  The technology is making it simpler and simpler just on a user level.
[48:52.570 --> 48:53.990]  And it's spreading out more and more.
[48:55.370 --> 48:57.190]  That's the biggest difference that I've been able to see.
[48:57.370 --> 48:58.650]  It's just catching up.
[48:58.850 --> 49:01.750]  I'm too old to speak about being young in the 80s.
[49:03.050 --> 49:17.310]  But I can step back certainly 25 years and make a very simple statement that if my generation in those heady years of the late 60s and early 70s had the technology that you guys had, we never would have had Reagan or the 80s.
[49:27.210 --> 49:28.730]  I'm still holding my breath.
[49:30.870 --> 49:44.210]  One of the things that I've noticed a big difference in, we hear this ex-generation stuff, and I don't want to get into all of that, but the democratization process that he's referring to I think carries a little bit further than that.
[49:44.410 --> 49:47.890]  And I'm working on some stuff now called cyber-civil disobedience.
[49:49.930 --> 49:59.510]  And what I believe is that this current generation, it may be so apolitical that they really don't know the amount of power that they have.
[49:59.930 --> 50:09.750]  That to make political statements 25 years ago, we had to amass 500,000 people in the streets of Washington and then get gassed in order to make the headlines.
[50:09.750 --> 50:18.110]  And it required massive amounts of organization and transportation and police permits and everything else to be able to make a political statement.
[50:18.330 --> 50:20.110]  That is no longer true.
[50:20.590 --> 50:29.170]  Today, the technology exists to be able to have massive, massive systemic shutdowns that are legal.
[50:30.270 --> 50:36.010]  If done one by one, if done on mass, then the lawyers may say, no, that's conspiracy, that's something else.
[50:36.490 --> 50:46.630]  But the ability to have electronic demonstrations in cyberspace that effectively are cyber-civil disobedience is a political force that has not yet taken hold.
[50:46.810 --> 50:49.030]  And I don't know what the future is going to bring on that one.
[50:49.030 --> 50:54.030]  Can I answer that original question or take a crack at it?
[50:54.650 --> 51:09.190]  In terms of what's changed from as long as 20 years ago, I think that the way that the technology has changed may be leading to a real change in the way that people get interested in hacking.
[51:09.470 --> 51:26.330]  I think that 20 years ago, because computers tended not to be linked together, the people that got interested in computers were the people who were interested in getting inside the machine people who were basically the same types of people who would take apart a car or take apart a radio,
[51:26.490 --> 51:29.730]  people who just wanted to get inside a machine and mess around with it.
[51:30.030 --> 51:36.390]  Now I think that the way that people are getting involved with computers, young people are getting involved with computers, tends to be more through communications.
[51:36.930 --> 51:54.190]  I was having a conversation with Bill SF yesterday, actually, in which I explained my theory, which I'm not quite sure I actually believe, that America Online is actually the most important thing out there in terms of the next five years of the hacker community,
[51:54.370 --> 51:57.970]  that you've got the situation where there are...
[51:59.990 --> 52:13.750]  I mean, I understand why that bothers you guys, because it goes against a lot of what this conference is about, which is that you guys are a lot smarter than most people on America Online, and you like that fact.
[52:17.310 --> 52:31.630]  But nonetheless, America Online is giving access to the concept of computers and the concept of communicating with computers to people who, one year ago, five years ago, twenty years ago, would have had absolutely nothing to do with it.
[52:31.630 --> 52:37.490]  And that is a kind of democratization, which, you know, the...
[52:41.780 --> 52:45.120]  Well, I mean, hacking has always...
[52:45.980 --> 53:00.500]  I mean, I think that hacking has always been, in some ways, connected more with people who are willing to pay than people who weren't willing to pay, because a lot of the people that, you know, in the 80s had the computers that they could hack on for people who could afford computers.
[53:00.740 --> 53:08.340]  I think that as computers get cheaper and as online connections get cheaper, you're going to have people who are involved in this who wouldn't have been otherwise.
[53:08.440 --> 53:12.080]  And you're going to have people who are different than you guys.
[53:12.240 --> 53:13.400]  So you're going to have people...
[53:13.400 --> 53:21.520]  You know, just from the looking around I've done on America Online, I think you're going to have more women and girls than you do now.
[53:21.520 --> 53:28.080]  It seems that that's a community that's much more comfortable on America Online than they are at a conference like this.
[53:28.140 --> 53:29.600]  Or electronic transvestites.
[53:31.980 --> 53:33.080]  That may also be true.
[53:33.620 --> 53:35.220]  Like I say, it's just a theory.
[53:35.380 --> 53:40.180]  But I do believe that people are going to...
[53:40.180 --> 53:45.020]  People's first connection with computers now is not about getting inside a machine.
[53:45.140 --> 53:46.760]  It's about connecting to other people.
[53:46.880 --> 53:48.260]  That's one of the first things that they do.
[53:48.500 --> 53:50.100]  And I think that that's going to change.
[53:51.060 --> 53:52.880]  That's going to change hacking in the next five years.
[53:53.220 --> 53:54.360]  Just to add a point.
[53:54.760 --> 53:56.720]  You mentioned Steve Levy's book.
[53:56.840 --> 53:58.140]  I mean, it's a wonderful book.
[53:58.280 --> 54:02.380]  But there's also like a kind of paradise lost narrative to it.
[54:02.480 --> 54:05.880]  You know, which I think he probably picked up from the hackers that he was talking to.
[54:06.160 --> 54:14.180]  And this is just something you have to take into account anytime anyone is telling you, you know, well, you know, things are not what they used to be.
[54:14.320 --> 54:24.220]  I mean, when I wrote the piece for The Village Voice, there were people, you know, saying, well, you know, after Operation Sun Devil, you know, we're not going to get a fresh crop of hackers in here.
[54:24.420 --> 54:29.180]  Because kids today, they just want to play with their Mutant Ninja Turtles and hack Nintendo games.
[54:30.340 --> 54:36.020]  Well, you know, four years later, Mutant Ninja Turtles are gone.
[54:36.240 --> 54:38.100]  And, you know, you guys are all still here.
[54:38.260 --> 54:40.360]  And fresh crops are coming in all the time.
[54:40.360 --> 54:40.920]  So...
[54:45.100 --> 54:45.540]  So...
[54:46.280 --> 54:48.980]  There's a shoot-the-messenger mentality that exists.
[54:49.460 --> 54:53.880]  I guess about a year ago, I did a demonstration and I hacked my bank's computer.
[54:54.740 --> 54:55.800]  It took about two minutes.
[54:56.120 --> 54:57.800]  And it was a real simple demonstration.
[54:57.800 --> 55:02.400]  I was the top security officer in the entire machine for a rather large bank.
[55:02.540 --> 55:04.140]  And I used to keep a lot of money there.
[55:04.260 --> 55:05.200]  They don't pay more.
[55:05.360 --> 55:08.400]  But, you know, they have this tendency to shoot the messenger.
[55:08.400 --> 55:10.060]  So you show them this.
[55:10.180 --> 55:11.400]  And they may fix it.
[55:11.460 --> 55:13.760]  But then again, they look upon you as a bad guy.
[55:13.980 --> 55:20.520]  And how would you propose writing in order to demonstrate a bunch more positive light as far as hackers?
[55:20.720 --> 55:24.520]  Because I still see this sort of mentality of the shoot-the-messies.
[55:29.560 --> 55:34.520]  Well, I mean, I think that that's something that savvy use of media can't do.
[55:34.700 --> 55:40.000]  I mean, I think that as long as it's just you and the corporation, they have nothing to gain by it.
[55:40.000 --> 55:44.040]  saying, hey, you know, thanks for exposing that hole in our security.
[55:44.580 --> 55:53.120]  But instead of exposing the hole just to that corporation, if you're doing that in a way that's, you know, this is, I think, one of the things that Emmanuel does really well with 2600.
[55:53.260 --> 56:03.520]  If you're exposing that to a large group of people and making it impossible for them to just shoot you the messenger and keep them, keep the holes in their system.
[56:04.600 --> 56:05.840]  Something might happen to get out.
[56:05.960 --> 56:06.040]  Okay.
[56:09.040 --> 56:13.460]  How about for the legislation you did about the sugar flips?
[56:13.940 --> 56:16.000]  Sugar flips, I like that one, yes.
[56:16.640 --> 56:17.200]  I think that's all.
[56:18.160 --> 56:25.020]  It's been a skill that is that this pressure is similar to some of the responses in public media.
[56:26.460 --> 56:30.460]  There are horror stories and the mis-innovation and some of the actors.
[56:32.400 --> 56:34.340]  Don't you feel responsible in some way?
[56:35.280 --> 56:36.420]  For the clipper chip?
[56:45.780 --> 56:48.040]  Let me address that.
[56:49.800 --> 56:53.740]  I think the clipper chip is a bureaucratic admission of failure.
[56:53.980 --> 56:58.020]  It is a bureaucratic admission of terror that they've lost the bubble.
[56:58.980 --> 57:00.720]  And I think it's plain and simple.
[57:01.000 --> 57:05.220]  And they also seriously underestimated your ability to get it through.
[57:05.220 --> 57:06.940]  And the public outcry.
[57:07.180 --> 57:12.220]  I also tell you that I think clipper chip would have made it if the FBI hadn't put telephony on the street first.
[57:12.740 --> 57:15.480]  And gotten all the civil libertarians and everybody organized.
[57:16.140 --> 57:19.560]  So from my point of view, clipper chip is not about you guys.
[57:20.260 --> 57:25.680]  Clipper chip is about having lost the ability to follow digital technology in intrusive ways.
[57:25.940 --> 57:30.440]  Do you think that the government would know that they've really lost unless it was due to many years?
[57:31.020 --> 57:34.160]  You have a very... I mean, there are elements of your government that are very capable.
[57:34.620 --> 57:36.040]  And don't misunderstand me.
[57:36.100 --> 57:37.400]  I admire the intelligence community.
[57:37.580 --> 57:41.500]  I just think that they need to address their mission in a different way.
[57:42.000 --> 57:43.700]  Not to legislate backdoors.
[57:44.880 --> 57:50.140]  My concern is that you guys are doing a great job of showing holes in the systems.
[57:50.140 --> 57:52.780]  And this shoot the messenger thing is absolutely critical.
[57:53.500 --> 58:01.080]  And one of the reasons I'm concerned about legislation, the marketing bill and all this stuff, is it's creating bigger pipes with more holes.
[58:02.120 --> 58:08.640]  And it's not addressing the fundamental problem in this country, which we have a cesspool that is leaking heavily.
[58:09.560 --> 58:09.880]  What?
[58:10.560 --> 58:11.060]  No.
[58:12.280 --> 58:12.920]  Offline.
[58:14.920 --> 58:17.640]  I've been getting back to the political aspect.
[58:17.920 --> 58:21.760]  You had opened up a number of questions that were smashing in on hackers.
[58:22.580 --> 58:27.300]  And it seems like a lot of the people I see on the panel here are anti-establishment.
[58:28.300 --> 58:29.580]  Any subculturally.
[58:30.160 --> 58:34.700]  What's your opinion of this so-called anti-establishment administration?
[58:35.780 --> 58:40.800]  Hitching their balloon and trying to put their name on this information superhighway.
[58:40.980 --> 58:45.080]  But the simple fact of the matter is that Ronald Reagan gave you family.
[58:46.820 --> 58:48.220]  I've got a comment on that.
[58:48.380 --> 58:48.920]  I'll be back.
[58:49.580 --> 59:01.380]  When Senator Gore first introduced the National Information Highway Bill, he did it at a press conference in Nashville, Tennessee in January of 1990.
[59:01.880 --> 59:05.320]  And I was living in the great state of the legally stupid at the time.
[59:05.900 --> 59:07.260]  So I attended it.
[59:08.840 --> 59:11.420]  And I wore my suit and I did my thing.
[59:11.600 --> 59:16.620]  He gave a very nice high bandwidth speech, if you will, about all of this.
[59:16.960 --> 59:18.860]  And I had the chance to ask him a question.
[59:19.000 --> 59:24.300]  I said, Mr. Gore, this is all wonderful and dandy, but what you're talking about doing is connecting everybody to everything.
[59:24.760 --> 59:25.740]  Where are the fixes?
[59:25.960 --> 59:26.800]  What about the risks?
[59:26.860 --> 59:28.760]  We've already got problems enough.
[59:28.760 --> 59:33.500]  You're going to compound the problems a hundred or a thousand or a million fold by the superhighway thing.
[59:33.680 --> 59:36.000]  Where are we going to offer the protections?
[59:36.380 --> 59:39.820]  And whatever those were, from a privacy standpoint or an industrial espionage standpoint.
[59:40.340 --> 59:42.640]  And Gore at that point totally blew me off.
[59:42.820 --> 59:44.520]  He blew the question off his aide.
[59:44.660 --> 59:46.240]  Next one says, who the hell is this?
[59:46.720 --> 59:52.800]  Because the question that I was addressing was politically derailing to his efforts to try to get something done.
[59:53.260 --> 59:56.320]  He had a piece of the puzzle, but he didn't have the whole thing.
[59:56.320 --> 01:00:02.220]  Over the next three, three and a half years, I subsequently tried to work with Gore prior to him becoming vice president.
[01:00:03.240 --> 01:00:05.220]  And we were blown out totally.
[01:00:05.360 --> 01:00:07.560]  His office did not want to know about it.
[01:00:07.660 --> 01:00:17.320]  And as Robert's been saying, this is part of the problem that we're facing up in government is the issues that we all care about are very, very fundamental.
[01:00:17.320 --> 01:00:19.680]  They're very, very high level issues.
[01:00:19.920 --> 01:00:28.340]  And unless they are built in to some sort of solution base for us as a country, as a whole, I think we're going to be really missing the mark.
[01:00:33.410 --> 01:00:36.930]  We can do it and money's going to drive it anyway basis.
[01:00:37.250 --> 01:00:40.270]  But then Gore says, no, we've got to give it to everybody for free.
[01:00:40.370 --> 01:00:41.570]  And that causes problems.
[01:00:41.770 --> 01:00:43.630]  That spells for too many people of socialism.
[01:00:43.910 --> 01:00:45.470]  And what's the incentive to do it?
[01:00:46.790 --> 01:00:49.330]  So there's a lot of activity going on.
[01:00:49.490 --> 01:00:57.670]  If you get on to Dave's boards, service services, the EFF, that would give you a pretty good idea of what's going on in government.
[01:00:57.670 --> 01:00:59.310]  That's not a problem.
[01:01:25.700 --> 01:01:26.320]  Is that a problem?
[01:01:26.320 --> 01:01:27.440]  Excuse me, I'm just surprised.
[01:01:30.620 --> 01:01:31.820]  Or a...
[01:02:22.380 --> 01:02:23.180]  I...
[01:02:23.180 --> 01:02:24.340]  I...
[01:02:24.340 --> 01:02:26.880]  To respond, okay.
[01:02:29.420 --> 01:02:35.020]  Democracies have always been led by enlightened elitists.
[01:02:35.400 --> 01:02:36.480]  That's the problem.
[01:02:37.740 --> 01:02:38.900]  We've been...
[01:02:38.900 --> 01:02:51.380]  And historically, what I think is happening to this whole gore and superhighway thing is that they're, by government, taking the lead in trying to be populist.
[01:02:51.780 --> 01:02:57.100]  They're provoking industries by taking the appropriate response so that they can fund their markets.
[01:02:57.880 --> 01:03:06.700]  And the other reason I think it really looks like they're just setting it up, packaging it, so that industry can then take it on.
[01:03:06.700 --> 01:03:16.200]  So it ends up being an alliance, and it's an economic plan based on, in some ways, Japanese government from the 60s.
[01:03:18.520 --> 01:03:23.400]  But there is such a difference now in that they really cannot control it.
[01:03:23.660 --> 01:03:46.240]  It really looks like the networks of information will allow there to be the big difference, which is that information and solutions can be broadened, and postulations of different ways of organizing things, how to structure things, how to deliver goods,
[01:03:46.360 --> 01:03:54.500]  how to be amused, and have the access in different, and therefore much more intrinsically democratic ways.
[01:03:54.760 --> 01:03:57.060]  And that is what I think the difference is.
[01:03:58.560 --> 01:04:03.200]  You can see,
[01:04:12.200 --> 01:04:21.400]  once you see the facts, and there is no precedent at all for this invasion of privacy or just annoying you about it.
[01:04:30.170 --> 01:04:31.290]  Yeah, all right.
[01:04:31.410 --> 01:04:32.530]  You're absolutely right.
[01:04:32.730 --> 01:04:37.970]  That is one aspect of what I call information warfare, It's a violation of personal privacy.
[01:04:38.250 --> 01:04:41.810]  We have to go back to the progress of a high level perspective.
[01:04:42.170 --> 01:04:53.950]  Two hundred years ago, the issue of public records, shall we say, meant that you hopped on your forest down a tree covered dirt lane to the little wooden courthouse and opened up the pulp to see who bought the back 40.
[01:04:54.410 --> 01:04:58.830]  And in those days, the issue of public records meant something and it was a worthwhile concept.
[01:04:59.070 --> 01:05:07.610]  But today, when public records show the driving license records of too many people from the state of Oregon, on Booth Lake CD-ROM, I think we've gone too far.
[01:05:07.770 --> 01:05:08.610]  We need to contain it.
[01:05:08.710 --> 01:05:12.470]  But we're not going to contain Ed Martin-style anti-virus legislation.
[01:05:12.550 --> 01:05:14.590]  We have to do it at a very, very high level.
[01:05:14.830 --> 01:05:17.510]  And that's what a number of us are working on.
[01:05:17.550 --> 01:05:18.450]  You're absolutely right.
[01:05:18.670 --> 01:05:33.690]  I think one case that's actually almost amusing is with Procter & Gamble in mid-1992, as I remember, the reporter in Pittsburgh was leaking out and receiving information that was specifically prized there to Procter & Gamble.
[01:05:33.690 --> 01:05:36.190]  And the Department of Health was shipping and fixed it.
[01:05:36.330 --> 01:05:39.410]  So they go out and hire a private eye who happens to be an ex-detective.
[01:05:39.570 --> 01:05:41.330]  And they can't find out what's going on.
[01:05:41.490 --> 01:05:48.570]  So they decide to do the next best thing and go in and get 1 million phone records to sort through and see who's calling this reporter in Pittsburgh.
[01:05:49.210 --> 01:05:50.750]  It was obviously illegal.
[01:05:50.750 --> 01:05:54.430]  It was also major, major, major privacy violations that occurred.
[01:05:55.130 --> 01:06:00.590]  But with Procter & Gamble, it operates the city in Cincinnati, so they merely receive an embarrassing slap on the wrist.
[01:06:00.970 --> 01:06:05.330]  But these things do go on very regularly and we do need to take some steps over.
[01:06:20.620 --> 01:06:29.500]  You've also hit on an interesting point, which is that, um, equating, you know, hacking, individual hacking, but corporate hacking.
[01:06:29.500 --> 01:06:44.780]  And this is an issue that comes up a lot, because, you know, a lot of these questions, um, you have to look at with a kind of political eye, because, you know, when an individual person is doing it against a corporation, uh, that takes on one political meaning,
[01:06:44.960 --> 01:06:48.260]  and when it's done the other way, it takes on an entirely different meaning.
[01:06:48.260 --> 01:06:56.120]  So, you know, again, you can't just say, you can't just equate all these things to get all the same, like, different frameworks.
[01:06:58.420 --> 01:07:07.560]  But, for example, being off the superhighways, it seems an excuse to force everyone to use one big road to gradually maintain a lot of political problems.
[01:07:07.880 --> 01:07:16.360]  So, which, I want to know, sort of, who's planning on making them all those, who's planning on owning them, and then sort of, who should really float the weight for the cost of the information.
[01:07:19.380 --> 01:07:20.920]  Are you going to understand?
[01:07:22.360 --> 01:07:25.100]  So, if you're a hacker, you won't need to pay the tolls!
[01:07:28.980 --> 01:07:31.380]  I don't... I personally don't believe it's going to end up like that.
[01:07:31.520 --> 01:07:38.620]  I think that we're going to have a hype fan with the Internet, we're going to have one-store stuff, we're going to have a box on top of your TV, this is great.
[01:07:38.840 --> 01:07:42.340]  I mean, all the stuff we have got time to do, so, this stuff is coming, Some of them are going to be free.
[01:07:42.620 --> 01:07:46.520]  I think it's going to be what we have today, five to eight years.
[01:07:46.980 --> 01:07:54.140]  Beyond that, there's a lot of privatization going on.
[01:07:54.260 --> 01:07:57.580]  I'm personally against a socialization from a government standpoint.
[01:07:57.800 --> 01:07:59.080]  I don't think that's the right way to go.
[01:07:59.740 --> 01:08:02.540]  A lot of people say we're going to get it from poor people.
[01:08:03.360 --> 01:08:06.100]  What, for $9 a month at the time you have internet access?
[01:08:06.820 --> 01:08:08.160]  $9 a month is not a whole lot.
[01:08:08.280 --> 01:08:10.860]  I don't think that we're going to end up with the baddest scenario.
[01:08:10.860 --> 01:08:12.820]  What is outworking now?
[01:08:12.880 --> 01:08:13.300]  I'm sorry?
[01:08:13.560 --> 01:08:14.980]  What is outworking now?
[01:08:15.280 --> 01:08:16.280]  What is the legislation?
[01:08:18.500 --> 01:08:25.760]  Once again, you see bits and pieces of it, some of it through the FCC, talking about new licensing bandwidths, even some of the settlers stuff.
[01:08:25.920 --> 01:08:30.320]  The PDA is a whole part of cyberspace and the information highway.
[01:08:30.480 --> 01:08:33.380]  The information highway does not have to be a hump of fiber running down the road.
[01:08:33.580 --> 01:08:36.040]  It has to be a hump of management going onto a satellite.
[01:08:37.240 --> 01:08:42.060]  Again, go back to EPIC and CPSR and CPSR.
[01:08:42.600 --> 01:08:45.380]  I'm not sure Judy's still there.
[01:08:45.480 --> 01:08:47.120]  Okay, CPSR and EFF.
[01:08:47.440 --> 01:08:50.800]  All the governmental stuff that's going on, you'll find them there.
[01:08:51.040 --> 01:08:52.480]  You can just keep up with it very easily.
[01:09:03.930 --> 01:09:04.990]  You can tell us.
[01:09:05.250 --> 01:09:07.450]  I mean, seriously.
[01:09:10.670 --> 01:09:12.530]  We're just trying to keep up.
[01:09:13.750 --> 01:09:18.190]  That's a question that I would like to know from everybody.
[01:09:19.250 --> 01:09:21.730]  Partly, what do people see?
[01:09:22.850 --> 01:09:25.250]  What's the self-image that a hacker has for themselves?
[01:09:25.250 --> 01:09:36.750]  Is a hacker somebody who gets some kind of confidence from the fact that it's a minority activity, that it's a subversive activity, that it's kind of an alter ego thing?
[01:09:36.830 --> 01:09:43.030]  Or is there a sense in which this is a new frontier, this is a new territory?
[01:09:43.030 --> 01:09:47.310]  I think that... I was talking earlier about how I think things are very poised.
[01:09:47.430 --> 01:09:49.370]  I think that it could go either way.
[01:09:50.170 --> 01:09:57.450]  I think the biggest weapon people have is, as we mentioned before, is awareness that everybody else has.
[01:09:57.530 --> 01:09:58.830]  Getting everybody a little bit pregnant.
[01:09:59.770 --> 01:10:07.950]  I think that when I've gone to companies, they tend to be media and show business related companies.
[01:10:08.930 --> 01:10:14.470]  But what's interesting is that, as Michael said, that is a new commerce.
[01:10:14.750 --> 01:10:16.110]  Information is a new commerce.
[01:10:16.250 --> 01:10:28.450]  If you have a company like Sony, they are an entertainment company, but they're also as important as a company that might have been making automobiles or railroads in the past.
[01:10:28.570 --> 01:10:36.390]  And what you see on the boards, or very high up in those companies, are people who are very sympathetic to the idea of hacking, if not actual hackers.
[01:10:37.130 --> 01:10:47.150]  There's always a twinkle in the eye when we go trying to flag some free computer gear or trying to get some time on an SGI machine.
[01:10:47.310 --> 01:10:48.410]  It's one of these big companies.
[01:10:48.530 --> 01:10:49.490]  We talk to these people.
[01:10:49.990 --> 01:10:52.210]  And it's like, you know, they're almost kind of winking at us.
[01:10:52.350 --> 01:10:55.330]  Saying, yeah, we will kind of do that because we sympathise.
[01:10:55.670 --> 01:10:59.050]  Now, I don't know whether it's just companies like that that we tend to deal with.
[01:10:59.050 --> 01:11:04.530]  Or whether it's also if you went to all the other industrial accountants.
[01:11:04.650 --> 01:11:13.670]  I suspect that people need people that are effectively, from the hacking mentality, they need people that have a facility with technology.
[01:11:13.670 --> 01:11:21.350]  And that's, that's, that's, that's an advantage of this counterculture, if you like, over all the previous countercultures.
[01:11:21.490 --> 01:11:28.490]  I mean, it wasn't exactly a requirement to be, uh, experienced in, uh, dropping LSD to, uh, to work, you know, for a bank.
[01:11:28.850 --> 01:11:34.350]  Whereas, if you're working for a big company, uh, having facility with computers, it's very useful.
[01:11:34.350 --> 01:11:36.450]  So, I think that's, that's, that's great.
[01:11:36.610 --> 01:11:37.550]  Kind of feels a stretch.
[01:11:40.610 --> 01:11:43.850]  In answer to a question like, where, where is it going to be in five to ten years?
[01:11:44.010 --> 01:11:46.070]  That, that's, that's largely going to be determined by you.
[01:11:46.270 --> 01:11:49.870]  I would find two kind of interesting undercurrents to a lot of the questions.
[01:11:50.110 --> 01:11:54.950]  One, one of which was, I've addressed before, the idea of, well, you know, what, what is the media doing?
[01:11:55.130 --> 01:11:58.930]  Giving this kind of, uh, negative view of hackers.
[01:11:59.210 --> 01:12:03.470]  And then, as members of the media, you know, they don't make a lot of you guys given to us.
[01:12:03.470 --> 01:12:15.850]  Um, and, and also just this, they're, they're kind of the attitude, it's almost like a, I don't know if you can kind of settle with this, but this hypeful mentality as far as American online, when, when you bring up the idea that's actually a very influential,
[01:12:15.950 --> 01:12:19.070]  um, uh, constituency.
[01:12:19.630 --> 01:12:22.930]  I mean, that's a huge constituency that's coming in, and it's going to be very influential.
[01:12:23.170 --> 01:12:34.810]  And, three years down the line, just, is, you, you can fool America online and the people who are committed that it's not being very quick, not being very bright, not being very with it, in order to make you seem a lot more, you know, all of the above.
[01:12:35.070 --> 01:12:38.410]  Um, but a few years from now, those are the people who could be your political allies.
[01:12:39.110 --> 01:12:46.590]  And, and spreading this awareness, both in terms of the corporate culture and everything, and in terms of these new people that come in, they're fertile ground.
[01:12:46.850 --> 01:12:50.810]  And, like Ian said, get everybody a little bit pregnant, because you're going to need allies.
[01:12:50.810 --> 01:12:53.430]  Because there aren't forces, and how am I against you?
[01:12:54.730 --> 01:13:04.810]  And just to maybe attempt to seriously answer the question, I would say that there's two, as Paul pointed out, um, a lot more emphasis on communications, um, as, as things get more networked.
[01:13:05.330 --> 01:13:12.930]  Um, so that hacking, I mean, as a general tendency, I would imagine more emphasis on kinds of social engineering types of things.
[01:13:12.930 --> 01:13:15.030]  that would be a more important thing.
[01:13:15.590 --> 01:13:24.470]  I, I, just as a, as a, also a hypothetical idea, I mean, I've noticed that the virus spreading, uh, scene has actually been heating up a lot lately.
[01:13:25.190 --> 01:13:34.350]  Um, I don't know if that has to do with increased connectivity, but I would imagine that, that virus spreading can get to begin to be an exciting field.
[01:13:45.190 --> 01:13:46.730]  Um, it's quite accurate.
[01:13:46.870 --> 01:13:49.810]  They said there are more people out there sympathetic to hacking.
[01:13:50.310 --> 01:13:53.050]  Then, the grassroots hackers would imagine.
[01:13:53.230 --> 01:13:54.090]  I'm weird of those people.
[01:13:54.630 --> 01:14:04.450]  How about is, middle America has to get into my 50s, I am perhaps the most computer illiterate person in this room.
[01:14:04.450 --> 01:14:11.150]  So, a year from now, I'm going to have some friends who are driving me in September when I get the IRS to do stuff with some money at the LB.
[01:14:13.970 --> 01:14:21.090]  But what they show me and what they do, the activities that they do, they're very sympathetic to me, okay?
[01:14:21.590 --> 01:14:24.990]  And so, I agree with you.
[01:14:25.070 --> 01:14:31.090]  There are some people who don't look upon hacking as, you know, all night bad.
[01:14:31.090 --> 01:14:46.090]  But, what I'm beginning to suspect in a room full of people like this, is that the hackers, the great school hackers now, feel that they want to become a chemical to the extent that they want to be another group of the United States that tries victim.
[01:14:46.350 --> 01:14:47.750]  They're a victim of something.
[01:14:47.870 --> 01:14:50.090]  They're a victim of big brother or big government.
[01:14:50.290 --> 01:14:54.310]  And the last thing we need in this country is another victimhood society.
[01:14:54.310 --> 01:14:58.870]  So, hack is, back off a little bit on that victimhood stuff.
[01:14:59.150 --> 01:15:00.750]  Government's not coming after you.
[01:15:00.930 --> 01:15:02.830]  And by the way, the gentleman over here.
[01:15:03.530 --> 01:15:06.010]  The gentleman over here who said, what can we do?
[01:15:06.210 --> 01:15:10.610]  So that corporate America will look at us for our favor of this.
[01:15:10.750 --> 01:15:18.410]  Well, I would say, when I came here today, I see Fabian up here teaching a bunch of people in here who are hanging on his every word.
[01:15:18.410 --> 01:15:22.190]  I keep the statement of the unified force field theory, all right?
[01:15:22.310 --> 01:15:23.090]  He just broke the code.
[01:15:23.970 --> 01:15:27.430]  His Fabian is teaching people how to create blocks, okay?
[01:15:27.530 --> 01:15:27.990]  Pick blocks.
[01:15:28.610 --> 01:15:38.810]  Now, you know, I'm here with a little suspect of anyone who was doing that at this kind of conference, where this gentleman expresses concern over the credibility of the grassroots hacker.
[01:15:39.290 --> 01:15:39.730]  I have spoken.
[01:15:42.450 --> 01:15:43.950]  Thank you all very much.
[01:15:44.090 --> 01:15:45.750]  I'm going to get to move on to the next session.
[01:15:45.750 --> 01:15:47.770]  Thank you very much.
[01:15:47.790 --> 01:15:51.850]  Thank you.