Random Movie Fact From The Movie Hackers (1995):
The "Hacker Manifesto" read by Agent Bob was actually written by a hacker of great renown in the 1980s named Loyd Blankenship, who went by the name of The Mentor. It was published in PHRACK magazine, issue 07, file 03 in 1986.It was written after the author's arrest, and first published in the underground hacker ezine Phrack and can be found on many websites, as well as on T-shirts and in films.
Considered a cornerstone of hacker culture, The Manifesto acts as a guideline to hackers across the globe, especially those new to the field. It serves as an ethical foundation for hacking, and asserts that there is a point to hacking that supersedes selfish desires to exploit or harm other people, and that technology should be used to expand our horizons and try to keep the world free.
When asked about his motivation for writing the article, Blankenship said,
I was going through hacking withdrawal, and Craig/Knight Lightning needed something for an upcoming issue of Phrack. I was reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and was very taken with the idea of revolution.At a more prominent public event, when asked about his arrest and motivation for writing the article, Blankenship said,
I was just in a computer I shouldn’t have been. And [had] a great deal of empathy for my friends around the nation that were also in the same situation. This was post-WarGames, the movie, so pretty much the only public perception of hackers at that time was ‘hey, we’re going to start a nuclear war, or play tic-tac-toe, one of the two,’ and so I decided I would try to write what I really felt was the essence of what we were doing and why we were doing it.
==Phrack Inc.==
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10
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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
will-ing 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+++
