The Computer Underground Essays (9957 words) - Hacker Culture

The Computer Underground THE BAUDY WORLD OF THE BYTE BANDIT: A POSTMODERNIST INTERPRETATION OF THE COMPUTER UNDERGROUND Gordon Meyer and Jim Thomas Department of Sociology Northern Illinois University DeKalb, IL 60115 (5 March, 1990) An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Society of Criminology annual meetings, Reno (November 9, 1989). Authors are listed in alphabetical order. Address correspondence to Jim Thomas. We are indebted to the numerous anonymous computer underground participants who provided information. Special acknowledgement goes to Hatchet Molly, Jedi, The Mentor, Knight Lightning, and Taran King. ABSTRACT The criminalization of "deviant acts" transforms social meanings into legal ones. Yet, legal meanings are not necessari- ly social meanings. The legitimacy of statutory social control generally requires that one accept the realist textual readings of those with the power to interpret and stigmatize behaviors as inappropriate. "Moral crusades" that lead to definitions of criminalized deviance tend to reduce the meanings of polysemic acts to unidimensional ones that limit understanding of both the nature of the acts and their broader relationship to the culture in which they occur. This has occured with the criminalization of computer phreaking and hacking. In this paper, we examine the computer underground as a cultural, rather than a deviant, phe- nomenon. Our data reveal the computer underground as an invisi- ble community with a complex and interconnected culture, depen- dent for survival on information sharing, norms of reciprocity, sophisticated socialization rituals, and an explicit value sys- tem. We suggest that the dominant image of the computer under- ground as one of criminal deviance results in a failure to appre- ciate cultural meaning. We conclude by arguing that there are characteristics of underground activity that embrace a postmoder- nist rejection of conventional culture. - ii - THE BAUDY WORLD OF THE BYTE BANDIT: A POSTMODERNIST INTERPRETATION OF THE COMPUTER UNDERGROUND Hackers are "nothing more than high-tech street gangs" (Federal Prosecutor, Chicago). Transgression is not immoral. Quite to the contrary, it reconciles the law with what it forbids; it is the dia- lectical game of good and evil (Baudrillard, 1987: 81). There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say (Steinbeck, 1939:31-32). The criminalization of "deviant acts" transforms and reduces social meanings to legal ones. Legal meanings are not necessari- ly social meanings. Most deviancy research tends to reproduce conventional social ideology and operative definitions of normal- ity within its concepts and theories. On occasion, these mean- ings represent a form of "class politics" that protect the power and privilege of one group from the challenge of another: Divorcing moral crusades from status group competition while denying that cultures are linked to social class- es has undermined attempts to link lifestyle politics to group struggles (Beisel, 1990: 45). Once a category of behaviors has become defined by statute as sanctionably deviant, the behaviors so-defined assume a new set of meanings that may obscure ones possessed by those who en- gage in such behaviors. "Computer deviants" provide one example of a criminalized type of "lifestyle politics." The proliferation of computer technology has been accompa- nied by the growth of a computer underground (CU), often mistak- enly labeled "hackers," that is perceived as criminally deviant by the media, law enforcement officials, and researchers. Draw- ing from ethnographic data, we offer a cultural rather than a criminological analysis of the underground by suggesting that it reflects an attempt to recast, re-appropriate, and reconstruct the power-knowledge relationship that increasingly dominates the ideology and actions of modern society. Our data reveal the com- puter underground as an invisible community with a complex and interconnected cultural lifestyle, an inchoate anti-authoritarian political consciousness, and dependent on norms of reciprocity, sophisticated socialization rituals, networks of information sharing, and an explicit value system. We interpret the CU cul- ture as a challenge to and parody of conventional culture, as a playful attempt to reject the seriousness of technocracy, and as an ironic substitution of rational technological control of the present for an anarchic and playful future. Stigmatizing the Computer Underground The computer underground refers to persons engaged in one or more of several activities, including pirating, anarchy, hacking, and phreaking[1]. Because computer underground participants freely share information and often are involved collectively in a single incident, media definitions invoke the generalized meta- phors of "conspiracies" and "criminal rings," (e.g., Camper, 1989; Zablit, 1989), "modem macho" evil-doers (Bloombecker, 1988), moral bankruptcy (Schwartz, 1988), "electronic trespas- sers" (Parker: 1983), "crazy kids dedicated to making mischief"