Please tell me that someone else sees the irony in this NY Times piece: At a Hacker Conference, Plenty of Friendly Feds. If you’ve been reading some of my posts, then you already know that I have been keenly watching the latest happenings in the hacking world.
As a newcomer to computers and technologies in the mid-80’s, I started out with a love-hate relationship for coding. I started programming in BASIC, and let me tell you that it was excruciating. Hundreds of lines of code, and you have to find that one stupid input that is causing your program to resemble a doorstop. I quickly started to hate computers, though I persevered (outside of BASIC) because I had a feeling that it would be important to my future. And boy was I right. Now many years later, the future is already zipping along in the ether as I work to keep up.
I’m not a proficient coder like many out there, but I know enough to get by and will learn more when needed. I don’t intend to give up learning anytime soon. I think that some of the elegant coding and ideas that come from hackers can be truly inspiring and creative. They make music with their code. They make computers dance to their commands. It’s actually a sight to behold at times. I know this is going to be cheesy, but the movie Hackers really appealed to me. I thought that world was magical. And I’m sure that the hackers would mock me for it.
Of course, any logical person understands the repercussions of uncontrolled anarchy. But there is simply more than that in hacking. Hacking is like a Shakespearean story with death, destruction, passion, hate, and so many other human emotions, simply because these hackers are ultimately human. The hackers of yesteryear and now put a personality to their causes. While some of those causes may be destructive at times, we have to consider the sources before passing judgment. As we grow older, our causes alter with our growing perceptions. That is the one good thing that age gives us: the ability to learn from the past and make new perceptions that drive us into the future. And so it goes with hackers and their activities. Idealism drives many to do what they do. Not all, but many.
And this seems to be what our governmental institutions are counting on. After all of the much-publicized arrests by our FBI, they actually set up a booth at the DEFCON19 conference. As did every branch of the military and the Pentagon. An NSA agent is even scheduled to speak to the DefCon Kids (that’s their image above) to talk to the next generation of hackers at this conference branch for kids from the age of 8 – 16. I really can’t wait to see the pictures of official-looking guys in black suits and glasses (think MIB) milling around kids with spiked hair and spiked dog collars who will be asking those same agents if they want to know how to break into their own backdoor. Priceless, I’m sure!
I thought that you could use a giggle about now. This is how we operate in the real world. I guess that it’s no wonder that reality tv is surviving? You just can’t make this kind of stuff up.
Absolutely ironic, if it wasn’t so sad!!!
