Format

The 2005 covers all shared a common photographic theme that told a story.

The Autumn issue was no longer labeled as "Fall," returning to the naming tradition not seen since 1997.

The page length increased to 64 pages from 60.

The contents had the following unique titles:

Little messages continued to be 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

The Cover credit for Spring and Summer went to Arseny and Dabu Ch'wald while the Autumn and Winter credit went to Dabu Ch'wald and Saldb

The 2005 covers all were part of a continuing story.  Each issue had a photo that followed the journey of a strange metallic case through various modes of transportation.

Inside

There were a number of formatting changes this year.

In addition to the four new pages, the staff section was redesigned and moved to Page 6, and the payphone photos now appeared on the two inside covers.  This opened up room on the back page for a new feature: The Back Cover Photo.

Another new feature, a puzzle, appeared on Page 60.  It looked like a crossword puzzle but didn't follow all of the rules required so we never actually used that word.  It was labeled "Puzzle" for Spring, "Casse-Tête" for Summer (French for "brain teaser"), the Chinese symbol for "Riddle" for Autumn, and "Rompecabezas" for Winter (Spanish for "puzzle").

The staff section had credits for Editor-In-Chief, Layout and Design, Cover, Office Manager, Writers, Webmasters, Network Operations, Broadcast Coordinators, and IRC Admins.  The position of Quality Degradation was added beginning in Summer.  The Statement of Ownership was printed on Page 5 in the Autumn edition.

2005 saw a continued determination to preserve our privacy and fight against the many injustices we were witnessing.  "Fighting is good.  It keeps you awake and redefines what it is you stand for."

But we were also wary of becoming a "constant victim" in all of these battles.  We saw how easy it could be to fall into this trap of always feeling like we were under attack and losing something because "...with that, we lose our outrage and replace it with resignation."

We certainly had no shortage of material to focus upon.  There was a seemingly non-ending supply of bad laws and legislation all around the world.  And we saw a connection.  "The element of fear that is constantly bombarding us is the best thing that could have happened to those who want more control, more surveillance, and a crackdown on dissent."

Since 2001, we had been very aware of these ominous developments.  "When you look closely at these trends and those that we have been covering over the years, it becomes clear that most of them have nothing to do with September 11, threats of attack, wars and invasions, or anything else that we've lately become obsessed with."

Despite all of this gloom and doom, we always tried to make time for a bit of humor, such as when we were describing some disturbing actions from the FCC in light of "the events of February 1, 2004 (when part of Janet Jackson's breast was momentarily exposed to a nationwide audience)."  It was never that hard to find the absurdity in any of the stories we reported on.  And oftentimes, those pushing for some of the most draconian laws and changing of the rules didn't have a clue because "the realities of the net simply aren't considered in the face of religious and/or totalitarian zealotry."

We continued to have a wide variety of content for our readers, including a brand new exposé on New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority with all sorts of technical information they probably wish we hadn't published.  We revealed a bug involving Verizon's wireless prepaid data plan that was not to their advantage, along with some info on their new Fios service.  We found ourselves in the position of having to calm readers who were concerned about their new cable boxes rebooting on their own.  We printed exposés on Google, Home Depot, AIM, and Yahoo!, along with articles on KODAK, Walmart, T-Mobile, and NCR.  There was a focus on new developments in technologies like the Asterisk PBX, Skype, PHP exploits, and GSM.  We printed a guide on ways to get out of the military, studied the (new in the U.S.) concept of chips on cash cards, the idea of implants, and ways of defeating GPS spying on company drivers.

Cellular phones were advancing faster than ever.  It was the early days of GPS receivers in cell phones and people were naturally both curious and concerned.  It was far from the only advancement in these devices.  Soon, we noted, "...you may also have the equivalent of a small camcorder traveling around with you."  Meanwhile, mobile data was becoming much more of a thing.  "The speed continues to increase and soon will be indistinguishable from a home or office connection."  Ironically "...voice quality appears to have been the one thing left behind."  Still, we saw these developments as part of a tremendous advance.  "It would appear that the cheap and global connectivity we once fantasized about has become reality."  But that didn't mean that we'd all be reveling in this forever.  We'd seen enthusiasm over technology diminish with an abundance of rules and regulations.  "Nothing can deflate the sense of magic quicker than conformity."

We found ourselves revealed as an evil entity in a company's advertising campaign that they clearly didn't expect us to find out about.  "While most other organizations would contemplate legal action, we'll simply issue a standard Level One electronic jihad."  We liked to think that that was enough to put them on Red Alert for a while.

We also discovered a Microsoft guide to "leetspeak," which was a source of great amusement to the hacker community.  And we discussed the concept of Google-bombing and why George W. Bush showed up as a search result whenever "miserable failure" was entered.

Of course, voting machines continued to be in the news, and their role in the 2000 election was questioned more and more.  "As for the Diebold issue, there are simply too many weird things going on to be ignored."  We issued a challenge to Diebold to "let us hack your machines at the next HOPE conference in 2006."  We naturally heard nothing back.  "What possible reason could there be for not accepting such a challenge?"  There were plenty of theories.

Interactions with our readers continued to be the high points of our existence.  "The only reason we've survived this long is because our readers have been there to encourage us and to prove that what we say and what we do actually counts for something."  It was a two-way street.  Hearing feedback to our Winter editorial claiming: "What you said was just what I needed to hear" was exactly the kind of thing we needed to continue pushing forward.  We always encouraged readers to express themselves.  "Hackers come from all kinds of different political backgrounds and ideologies so please don't assume that they all believe the same thing."

We also made sure our readers knew their rights.  In response to a request to link to us, we advised that "no permission is necessary for you to link to anyone else on the net.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."  We were clear on how our writers' identities were protected - and how they weren't.  We warned potential submitters that their metadata could make encryption useless if they emailed us directly from a sensitive place.

There was pressure to shut down a neo-Nazi site, which we resisted as insufficient and ultimately causing more harm than good.  "You need to be attacking the cause of the problem, not just the symptoms."

We were called out for demonizing the Department of Homeland Security, leading to our clarification: "There are many good people working under the DHS umbrella but that doesn't alter the fact that many see Homeland Security as an overzealous organization determined to achieve its goals without giving much thought to the true cost of these goals."

Videos from The Fifth HOPE were made available as VCDs.  A Dutch hacker camp called "What The Hack" was announced for later in the summer.  And our next conference (HOPE Number Six) was officially announced at the end of the year, although the name could be found in a secret message in the Spring issue's table of contents.

We had one of the strongest reactions ever to a cover, specifically Winter 2004-2005, where there was a hidden image of George W. Bush.  It was revealed that the first letters of the text on each of last year's covers spelled out HOPE: "Honor," "Obey," "Protect," and "Erase."  The Freedom Downtime Easter Egg hunt continued from last year.  In the Autumn issue, it was revealed that not one person had submitted an entry.  This resulted in an outpouring of entries, and a winner plus the answers were revealed in the Winter issue.  And we had our first suggestion for 2600 polo shirts.

There were a number of rather surprising stories this year, such as a report of identity theft through police department websites.  Or a data collection company called ChoicePoint that mishandled the private data of 145,000 people.  "Here we have a company with ten billion records that is responsible for running background checks on just about every American citizen and somehow they weren't able to figure out that the company they were doing business with was fraudulent."  There seemed to be a rash of companies losing data on millions of customers.  It led us to conclude that it was all "...the normal course of business where our private records are open to unauthorized persons, bandied about, traded, sold, lost, and otherwise treated without the respect and care they deserve and in violation of the trust we have bestowed upon these entities."

Meanwhile, we discovered that "FedEx has been permitting federal authorities to peruse its databases and view all kinds of information on who's sending packages where, how they're paying for it, and more - all without those little things called warrants."  It was basically a sneaky way of achieving what the abandoned Operation TIPS program from three years ago would have.  "The sad fact remains that if we don't take action, our privacy will continue to mean less and less."

Another somewhat surprising story had to do with prospective students at Stanford and M.I.T., who found themselves disqualified from acceptance just because they looked at a misconfigured website to check their status.  And then there was Rockstar Games, who surprisingly blamed hackers for unexplained adult content in one of their games.

We found ourselves barraged with complaints about how people were treated on one of our IRC channels, leading to this advice: "We encourage all who attend to be open to newcomers and not form cliques.  And newcomers should avoid jumping to conclusions."  We felt it applied to the real world as well as to IRC.  "You have to learn to weed out the morons and listen to those individuals who actually have something to say."

We somehow got dragged into a debate between China and Taiwan over how the latter was represented in the foreign payphone section of the website.  The listing said "Taiwan, province of China," which was how it was phrased in the United Nations and the ISO 3166-1 standard that we applied to all countries.

And then there was our April 1st joke on our website where we announced that a dress code would be enforced at 2600 meetings, effective immediately.  "Dressing in this manner will convey the image that is necessary for us to be seen as rational, decent, and acceptable members of society.  There simply is no reason to convey another image."  We saw the whole thing as an obvious parallel to what was going on in the real world with freedom curtailment and suspicion of anything different.  "These are difficult times and we all must make sacrifices.  We ask that all meeting attendees, in addition to adhering to the dress code, keep an eye on fellow attendees and let us know of any attempts to disrupt the meetings through noncompliance or otherwise mocking or ridiculing these guidelines."  More than a few readers expressed their outrage.

There was at least one occasion where we missed the mark entirely, discounting the possibility of what would soon be known as ransomware: "The process of encrypting all of these files by simply having someone visit a website and then somehow coordinating both the decryption and the transfer of money without somehow being traced is pretty farfetched once you start to actually think about it."  Clearly, we hadn't thought about it enough.

"Those who ask questions are seen as troublemakers and even saboteurs."  That was something we'd been experiencing from the very beginning.  It was important for us to encourage people to do exactly that.  "You must understand why things are done in a particular way or else you're just mindlessly following commands without ever developing the capacity to come up with a better method.  You might just as well be a machine."

Based on what our readers were telling us through articles and letters, there continued to be much pushback and retribution for those who stepped out of line.  "Schools are where ignorance is taught and reinforced" was our cynical conclusion.  And it wasn't much better in the corporate world, where the levels of monitoring were going through the roof.  We were extremely concerned about this becoming the new normal.  "There are many corporations and institutions that think they can control their employees 24 hours a day.  Worse, there are so many people who just blindly buy into this, especially if the paycheck is large enough."

We knew if there was any hope at all, it was with our readership and our community.  It could be found in the very concept of hacking: "a state of mind that can be applied to virtually anything.  This is what the media and all the wannabes can never understand."

Spring:  The Spring cover showed a man getting onto a New York City subway car carrying a metallic case with a biohazard logo (this was added in later to avoid panic).

An insert reveals that the case is attached to the man with handcuffs.

The subway car has a sticker for the proposed hosting of the 2012 Summer Olympics, an idea which was wildly unpopular throughout the city at that time.  Also, the car is number 2600.

This actually was not altered, as there was indeed a subway car with that number on it running on the "D" line.

For the photo shoot, we waited at a subway station for that car to show up, having advance knowledge of approximately where and when it would appear.
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