The Hacker Image

If there is one theme that we seem to have been locked into from the very beginning, it's that of preserving, correcting, and maintaining the image of hackers.  To say it's a frustrating task would be a monumental understatement.  But it's one that we should never give up on.

The media is by far the biggest culprit in sullying the name of hackers.  They do this simply for their own benefit - to sell papers, get website views, achieve higher ratings.  They need a demon and we happen to be it.  Others base their perception on what they see in the media and it becomes an avalanche of misinformation and unwarranted fear.  But there's one often forgotten fact that happens to be on our side.  It isn't working.

Look at the villains you see portrayed in a normal half hour of fear mongering: killers, terrorists, rapists, and all of the assorted white collar criminals.  For the most part, nobody aspires to be like any of these people.  But while hackers are also injected into the mix as miscreants who cause great disruption and are capable of far more, so many people continue to want to become hackers.  That's not exactly the kind of cause and effect you might expect from such a negative portrayal.

Why is this?  Put simply, what hackers do is interesting and also extremely valuable.  We maintain that hackers are, in fact, essential to a healthy society.  Our image among the enlightened happens to be just fine.  Anyone who doesn't automatically buy into the mass media portrayal likely already knows there's a lot more to the story than what they're being told.  So we're far from alone in our perceptions.

But let's not underestimate the damage that such inaccurate portrayals can cause.  Any individual suspected of being a hacker faces persecution in school, at home, and in the workplace, not to mention unwelcome attention from true criminals.  The suspicion oftentimes never goes away.  The mental effects this can have on a bright and impressionable individual cannot be emphasized enough.  Sure, it's great that kids everywhere still want to be hackers.  But if the hackers themselves are being treated like criminals and otherwise made miserable, what exactly are we gaining?

Like we said, we've been struggling with this from our very first days.  And all that has really changed is the sheer amount of bullshit in the media that needs to be dispelled.  Let's look at a bit of it from the present:

Hackers can take over airplanes.  The jury is still out on the amount of access anyone could conceivably gain either as a passenger or as an interested party on the ground.  One thing is for certain: a hacker will be the one to reveal this and share it with the world.  And, if true, anyone would be able to take over a plane, including some very nasty people who know nothing of hackers.  Who would you prefer to hear it from first?

Hackers can crash your car.  If cars are actually being designed in such a moronic way that they can be controlled remotely, then you can bet the people who would want to take over a vehicle would mostly be police, carjackers, terrorists, and angry spouses.  Again, you will likely learn of this from a hacker because they will be the ones to figure it out.  As for who will abuse it the most, that's really anyone's guess.

Hackers want to invade your privacy.  The thing everyone seems to forget is that hackers are human beings, no more or less perfect than anyone else.  It's certainly possible for a hacker to violate trust and cause mayhem, and that can be for a good cause or merely for personal gain.  Something like the recent Ashley Madison data dump or last year's Sony incident doesn't necessarily have anything to do with hacking in the first place.  If a master password was all that was needed, where is the hacking if that was simply found or revealed by a disgruntled employee?  Once more, anyone could get this info with the right amount of access.  And if a decent hacker was running their site, there likely would have been better safeguards in place from the start.

Education is key in correcting all of this or at least attempting to.  Let's not ever accept negative connotations attached to the word "hacker."  Let's not be intimidated into playing down our hacker connections.  We've seen some hackerspaces do precisely that and stop using the word "hacker" to avoid scaring people, which is about as wrong an attitude as is imaginable.  And creating new words to separate good from bad is worthless, as the values that mean so much to us are often seen as a threat to those in control and we wind up being labeled negatively with some new and absurd designation like "cracker" or "black hat."  Only this time, the label has no positive interpretation in any way and we're all simply seen as criminals and not much else.  Accepting these terms is a fast track towards the overall demonization of hackers and that hurts not only our community, but anyone interested in freedom and access.

Hackers have helped to build Apple, Google, and even the Internet.  There's good and bad in all of that, but we maintain it would be a far more negative world had the skill of hackers not been appreciated and put to good use.  Working for a giant corporation is not what makes a hacker "good," no more so than working against a government makes one "bad."  It's far more complex than that and the media tends to want things to be as simple - and as scary - as possible.  We don't have to play that game.

What we can do instead is continue teaching the world what hacking really means.  It's about preserving privacy, revealing the truth, constantly testing security, figuring out better ways of doing things, and explaining how systems work to anyone who's interested.  Preserving anonymity and protecting our identities using encryption are both basic values that hackers tend to believe in rather strongly.  Interestingly, those at the forefront of the witch-hunt against the hacker world subscribe to neither.  And that speaks volumes about motivation and goals.

Never be afraid to celebrate who you are as a hacker.  But always be open to changing your perspective, your opinions, and your direction.  That, after all, is how progress is made.