The Conscience of a Hacker

The Conscience of a Hacker by The Mentor in 1986 is the hardest hitting, true-to-form piece of writing to describe the hacker mindset. I remember reading it for the first time when it came out in Phrack and putting a dot matrix print-out of it on my wall to remind me that there were others just like me. I felt deeply connected to a community mostly comprised of people I'd never met in person (and many to this day I never have). This single work helped shape my life and, more than 20 years later, still gives me goosebumps when I read it.

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The following was written shortly after my arrest...

              \/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/

                             by

                      +++The Mentor+++

                 Written on January 8, 1986
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    Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers.
"Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker
Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
    Damn kids.  They're all alike.

    But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's
technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker?
Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped
him, what may have molded him?
    I am a hacker, enter my world...
    Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter
than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores
me...
    Damn underachiever.  They're all alike.

    I'm in junior high or high school.  I've listened to
teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a
fraction. I understand it.  "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show
my work.  I did it in my head..."
    Damn kid.  Probably copied it.  They're all alike.

    I made a discovery today.  I found a computer.  Wait a
second, this is cool.  It does what I want it to.  If it
makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up.  Not because
it doesn't like me...
        Or feels threatened by me...
        Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
        Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
    Damn kid.  All he does is play games.  They're all alike.

    And then it happened... a door opened to a world...
rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's
veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the
day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.
    "This is it... this is where I belong..."
    I know everyone here... even if I've never met them,
never talked to them, may never hear from them again...
I know you all...
    Damn kid.  Tying up the phone line again.  They're all alike...

    You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed
baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits
of  meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and
tasteless.  We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by
the apathetic.  The few that had something to teach found us
willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in
the desert.

    This is our world now... the world of the electron and
the switch, the beauty of the baud.  We make use of a service
already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap
if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us
criminals.  We explore... and you call us criminals.  We
seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals.  We exist
without skin color, without nationality, without religious
bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs,
you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to
make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

    Yes, I am a criminal.  My crime is that of curiosity.
My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think,
not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you,
something that you will never forgive me for.

    I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.  You may stop
this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all,
we're all alike.

                      +++The Mentor+++