Format

The 2003 cover formats were comprised of a variety of relevant photos, some manipulated and some not.

The Autumn issue was again labeled as "Fall" in 2003.

The page length remained at 60 pages.

The contents had the following unique titles:

Little messages were found on page 3, hidden in tiny print within the contents.

The messages were as follows:

Letters titles continued to be unique with each issue:

Covers

Cover Photo credits were as follows:

Mike Essl was credited for Cover Design for each issue, except for Winter, which was credited to Dabu Ch'wald.

Inside

The staff section had credits for Editor-In-Chief, Layout and Design, Cover Photo (plural in Winter), Cover Design, Office Manager, Writers, Webmasters, Network Operations, Broadcast Coordinators, and IRC Admins.

The staff section remained on page 2 throughout the year.  The Statement of Ownership was printed on page 5 in the Fall edition.

We continued having fun with page 33, as a remnant of our Y2K fun.

Spring had faded print that said "Nothing To See Here."

Summer had a Morse code printout that translated to "Page Thirty Three."

Fall had the following mathematical equation: "(752+11953+0749+3851+74470+83158-3333)/2600/2," which, of course resulted in 33.  It was an incredibly odd stroke of luck that we put together those numbers to get this, as all of them were significant in one way or another:

((752 + 11953 + 0749 + 3851 + 74470 + 83158) - 3333) ÷ 2600 = 66

66 ÷ 2 = 33

The 2 was really the only number that didn't have that much significance to us, but it all fit together so well that it was a little scary.

Winter said "Page Not 32" as page 32 was the page facing it.

One page issue that was not intentional involved page 53 in the Fall issue, which was misnamed as Summer 2003.

Unique quotes continued to be printed in the staffbox of each issue:

Spring: "...the essence of the evil government is that it anticipates bad conduct on the part of its citizens.  Any government which assumes that the population is going to do something evil has already lost its franchise to govern.  The tacit contract between a government and the people governed is that the government will trust the people and the people will trust the government.  But once the government begins to mistrust the people it is governing, it loses its mandate to rule because it is no longer acting as a spokesman for the people, but is acting as an agent of persecution." - Philip K. Dick

Summer: "Television taught people to watch 'Friends' rather than have friends.  Today, relatively little of our leisure time is spent interacting with other people.  Now we spend it observing machines." - Robert B. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone

Fall: "I do know I'm ready for the job.  And, if not, that's just the way it goes." - George W. Bush, August 21, 2000

Winter: "No one realized that the pumps that delivered fuel to the emergency generators were electric." - Angel Feliciano, representative of Verizon workers explaining why Verizon's backup power failed during the August 14 blackout causing disruption to the 911 service.

2003 saw the world get a little crazier.  The (((U.S. invasion of Iraq))) began, and the sense of imminent crisis loomed large.  As always, hackers were pulled into the fray.  "Whenever there are times of national crisis, particularly those involving intense bouts of nationalism, we can expect to have the image of hackers twisted and manipulated to suit various parties' aims."

And that is precisely what was happening.  Hackers were increasingly being seen as some kind of a weapon or a tool that could be shaped and manipulated to suit particular agendas.  As this looked to be the biggest war in our history, we wanted to make it clear that hackers should never be seen as a military resource.  It just wasn't right for the simple reason that "...due to our thoughtful nature and unending battle with the authorities for basic rights, hackers tend to be more cynical than most."

A massive denial-of-service attack against the Al Jazeera website was unleashed on the day they launched their English language version.  Much to our horror, we were inundated with letters of thanks from people who somehow reached the conclusion that hackers were responsible for this.  In actuality, such attacks flew in the face of everything we believed in, most notably the freedom of speech that allowed for a variety of opinions.  And the net was helping to make such speech accessible, in ways it hadn't been before.  "Unlike the Gulf War of 1991, there are now numerous voices and perspectives that the average person can get their hands on."

This just wasn't something that the hacker culture would embrace as a rule: "...one thing we feel pretty comfortable concluding is that most in the hacker world see such diversity of opinion and perspective as a good thing."  Not to mention the fact that anyone could have been responsible for these attacks since "...the nature of the exploits tells us it could have been a bored kid or an angry government.  The end result is the same."  Regardless of who was behind it, the hazards of being thought of as this kind of a tool were very real.  "If we are a resource when we do their bidding, then we are a major threat when we don't.  And it's in our nature not to be in a blind allegiance with any authority figure."

There were, of course, those who willingly engaged in these sorts of actions, and for them we had especially strong words: "How about providing some intelligent dialogue to back up your argument rather than merely attempting to silence different perspectives (through spam, harassment, denial-of-service, or whatever else you're willing to engage in)?"

We found that most people in our community believed individuals were capable of differentiating between right and wrong themselves.  The common theme seemed to be that "... we would never condone an attack that would silence those who disagree with our way of seeing things."

Such questions of free speech were coming up more than ever.  And we found ourselves in the position of offering advice to those who weren't sure how to handle these issues: "It's essential to not restrict expression and opinions in our society.  But that doesn't mean you have to allow others to destroy what you're trying to do."

We received support from a variety of sources, including a surprising amount from within the military itself.  There was even talk of having a 2600 meeting aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.  One letter from a former marine read: Keep up the good work, you're doing more to protect what our country is than people give you credit for."  Words like that really meant a lot.

But the threats went way beyond the wartime environment that was growing around us.  The reaction to the 9/11 attacks was continuing to cause great concern in our circle.  "What laws like the PATRIOT Act have done to our country is so frightening as to be almost unbelievable."  And much of the ensuing fervor had nothing at all to do with terrorism.  For instance, Senator Orrin Hatch "expressed his interest in 'destroying' the computers of those suspected of copyright violation."  It was the kind of insane overreaction that we were seeing more and more of.  "This isn't some drunkard in a bar offering a completely insane solution to a problem.  This is a United States Senator."

And he wasn't alone.  Much of corporate America was right on board with this sort of approach when it came to protecting their ever-expanding copyrights.  Under one proposal, the "MPAA and RIAA could completely disable, block, and even damage a publicly accessible network if they believed something they didn't like was going on there."  And they would be completely immune from prosecution.  Yet hackers were somehow the problem?

This wasn't exactly surprising, nor was it anything new.  "Individuals break laws for a variety of reasons, usually either to gain an advantage or to recover from a disadvantage.  But when governments break these laws, it's because they fear losing control."  Between the Senate and the corporate interests, that's exactly what we were seeing.

The debates on piracy continued to fill our pages.  Apart from evidence that most leaks of copyrighted movies and music came from within the industry itself, it seemed clear to us that they were just approaching the whole thing in the wrong way: "The industry needs to adapt to the times and change its attitude towards consumers."  Apart from making enemies out of their own customers and defining hackers as the root of all evil, they weren't doing their own image any favors: "Considering the RIAA is involved in marketing some of the biggest performers in the history of mankind, they certainly should be doing a better job marketing themselves."

Of course, not everyone agreed.  Some readers felt we were focusing too much on such issues and not enough on the actual technology.  In response to being accused of being too political: "If you can look around you and truly not see the dangers that threaten the future of anyone interested in 2600-related things, then we really envy you."  The truth was we always tried to avoid being affiliated with any particular political view.  In our eyes, there was always something to critique, regardless of who was running things.

A massive blackout hit the United States over the summer and hackers were immediately suspected of having caused it.  "The ignorance that we're all used to is that of blaming a hacker whenever something goes wrong with a computer or network simply because nobody has any idea what's really going on."  It fit into the entire narrative of suspicion, fear, and helplessness.  We emphasized that "... on the Internet, we're being encouraged to become paranoid about our safety, hostile to outsiders, and dependent on things we really don't need to survive."

As our 20th anniversary approached, we found ourselves reflecting on how far we had come - and how much further we needed to go.  "From Day One we've had to deal with morons who just don't understand what the hacker culture is all about and who have always seen us as a threat comparable to their worst nightmare."

Over the years, we had witnessed a steady progression in suspicion and hostility towards our community.  "In some cases hackers were viewed with more fear than violent criminals and even received greater sentences."  After all, we had cases like Kevin Mitnick, Bernie S., and Phiber Optik to point to as evidence of this.  And there were so many more that we didn't even have the resources to get involved with.  One of our greatest fears was that "...we are on the verge of getting used to it."  And that alone was reason enough for us to not let go of these issues.

"Today, nearly 20 years to the day after 2600 printed its first issue, we live in a very different world."  But one constant that had managed to survive was the hacker spirit of curiosity, rebellion, and ingenuity, something we insisted on embracing rather than condemning.  "The danger lies in accepting what we're told without question along with the perception that anyone who stands up to the system is somehow a threat to all of us."

Our articles continued to tackle all kinds of interesting topics that centered on everything from mainstream uses of technology to more obscure applications.  We discussed spoofing ANI and Caller ID, as well as more Wi-Fi hacking.  Anonymity was on everyone's mind in this age of increased surveillance and suspicion.  XM radio was a new method of transmitting sound that was the focus of much discussion.  We continued to take issue with overly general labels like "white hat," "black hat," and "cracker."

Companies finding themselves in our crosshairs included Best Buy, Virgin Mobile, Kroger, Nokia, Optimum Online, Target, Blockbuster, Citibank, Verizon, and, of course, Microsoft, among many others.  We also took pride in helping to reveal the location of hidden DHS offices.  We applied our basic philosophy to it all.  "If a critical system is vulnerable, covering up that fact is every bit as bad as attacking it."  Nothing was off limits.  And in return for that attitude, we found our website blocked in many places.  Symantec blocked us by default.  As a result, we encouraged people worldwide to mirror our site so people could find ways around the blocking.

Cellular number portability was a hot topic.  We found that Red Boxing still worked in some unexpected ways.  We continued to discover magic in older technology: "It's amazing what you can still find on the telephone network just by dialing strange numbers."  And we had to deal with annoyances from a company called meetup.com, which was confusing 2600 meeting attendees with conflicting information and creating general mayhem.

Throughout the year, we continued work on a DVD version of our documentary Freedom Downtime.  We introduced hooded sweatshirts for the first time.  We promoted the 2600 IRC network, but also received a number of complaints from people upset at the way they or others were treated there when asking beginner questions or attempting to fit in.  "For the record, we are not implying that IRC is a substitute for real life nor do we encourage anyone to blindly accept anything anyone else says while using IRC."  We tried to focus on the positive elements of this form of communication: "One thing IRC still has is the ability to surprise us with its effective and often unintentional community building."

What was especially important to us was being inclusive.  "Hacking encompasses so many different elements in our world that to relegate it to merely programming, operating systems, IRC, or, for that matter, even computers only serves to limit the possibilities."  The last thing we wanted was to see people disqualified because they didn't memorize the right facts.  Hacking was so much more than that.  If the media couldn't grasp this, we had to make sure that at least our own community did.

We had a price change that adversely affected Canada, due to the lower value of their currency plus increased delivery charges.  There was a fairly strong reaction to the previous winter's cover featuring an image on a building in Paris that was made through the CCC's Project Blinkenlights.  Many were convinced that we had altered the picture in some way.  "We did absolutely no modification of the photo.  Sometimes reality is just stranger than fiction."

Our H2K2 videos finally became available more than a year after the conference, this time in VCD format.  And the next conference (The Fifth HOPE in July of 2004) was announced through a multi-page ad in the Winter issue.

Throughout it all, we continued to argue against criminalizing any type of information.  "There is a very great danger any time knowledge itself is restricted or forbidden."  The danger was more apparent than ever, as fear was truly taking over and freedoms were being sacrificed every day.  "We simply do not believe security through obscurity is an effective approach.  We will continue to expose security holes by discussing them and demonstrating them.  History has proven that this is often the only way to get them to be taken seriously."

The battle lines never seemed clearer.  And we appeared to be on a collision course with the law if the trends continued.  We were in for quite a ride.  "This clearly won't be a journey for the faint of heart."

Spring:   The Spring 2003 cover was yet another image of the Statue of Liberty, this time modified with a blood red sky and the arms of Lady Liberty held up in the air, holding a placard pointing to terrorists in all directions.

It summed up the mood of the time, when an invasion of Iraq was underway and paranoia in the States was at an all-time high.

The hacker community found itself, as usual, to be in the crosshairs of the latest bout of defining villains.
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