What is the information panopticon? Discussion with reference to the use of ICT in organization of work

The information panopticon represents a form of centralized power that uses information and communication technology (ICT) as observational tools and control mechanisms. English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham developed the original architecture of the panopitcon as a prison. The structure consisted of a centralized tower surrounded by a circular building divided into prison cells. Benthams concept was to maximize the number of prisoners that can be observed by one individual within the tower. Within The Information Panopticon, Zuboff uses the architectural strategies of the panopticon as a metaphor to describe how information systems translate, record, and display human behaviorwith a degree of illumation that would have exceeded even Benthams most outlandish fantasies (Zuboff 322). The information panopticon critiques how technological systems use transparency to assert power, control, and authority over users.

Inherent within many new technological and informational devices is the ability to network. Whether it is a personal computer or database systems, these applications often promote forms of interconnectivity that require a centralized control center (Zuboff 328). In early telecommunication experiments by inventors like Alexander Bell and Samuel Morse, the idea of transmission was essentially linear. A message was sent from one location to another, traveling down a wire. As innovation progressed, communication began to operate through various access nodes within a network. The physical locations of the switching and control centers began to operate in very similar ways to the central surveillance tower of the panopticon.

As these ICTs are introduced into the workplace, managers and employees are discovering the hierarchical risks within information authority. Zuboff explains that these information centers help managers in a workplace to revamp their methods of communication, invite feedback, listen, coach, facilitate, manage many objectives, encourage autonomy, provide vision (Zuboff 232). The engagements a manager previously dealt with in a face-to-face setting can now be administered through a system that operates in a ubiquitous way. In other words, technology can be used as a form of power that displays itself automatically and continuously.

In a work setting, this method of control is different to that of the original panopticon because many ICT systems function as transparent architectures. The technological knowledge needed to understand how one is being surveyed is not as apparent as in Benthams prison. The techniques of control within informational and networked systems often appear pragmatic, immediate, and technical (Zuboff 324). This places the employees in a position of passive and obedient, where they no longer know or understand exactly how panoptic power is being enforced. Consequently, the administrative actions within the workplace can appear paranoid and non-specified approaches to security.

The responsibility of this technical authority does begin to question what ethical, social, and professional surveillance is acceptable in response to ICT technology in the workplace. Surveillance in the work place is not necessarily new; it has long been around in the form of corporate policy, collective behavior and social traditions. Zuboff describes how maintaining faith that undergirds imperative control is hard work psychologically demanding, time-consuming, and inevitably prone to ambiguity (Zuboff 360). The capacity of these surveillance systems will accomplish some goals, and create entirely new unresolved problems: what to do with all of this personal data? Similar to the Panoptic prison, the information panopticon does focus on creating a vulnerable, defenseless user. However, the employees are not prisoners, they are not without some sense of control, and certainly should question the business practices. The fight remains within the users, the employees, to not passively participate in surveillance but rather to actively place responsibility on management and administration to effectively organize. As ICTs continue to act as control mechanisms within the workplace, management should tirelessly redevelop systems that respond not only to power but also the emotional, the personal, and complexity of human behaviors.

References,

business-usual-information-panopticon-workplace

By,

A.Praveen Kumar,

CH09B003.

Who is Hacker..??? & Hacker Ethic...

A hacker is a person who breaks into computers and computer networks, either for profit or motivated by the challenge or for the purpose of getting illegitimate access to resources.
Hacker ethic is the generic phrase which describes the values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community

Hacker Ethic was a “new way of life, with a philosophy, an ethic and a dream”. However, the elements of the Hacker Ethic were not openly debated and discussed; rather they were accepted and silently agreed upon.
The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.

2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.
Both of these normative ethical principles are wide but by no means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers act on it by writing and giving away open-source software. A few go further and assert that all information should be free and any proprietary control of it is bad.

Some people consider the act of cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But the belief that ‘ethical’ cracking excludes destruction at least moderates.
The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing resources with other hackers.

According to Pfaffenberger, Technology leads a double life, one which conforms to the intentions of designers and interests of power and another which contradicts them — proceeding behind the backs of their architects to yield unintended consequences and unintended possibilities… technologies rarely fulfil the fantasies of their creators.
But, as Pfaffenberger points out, hackers’ ‘outlaw’ or ‘electronic terrorist’ status may be overdrawn; hackers are often hired by the very companies they have sought to electronically break into; many if not most of them are already on a university-paved road to computer science success (though this ethnic and gender profile is slowly changing, along with the penalties for hacking).

References,
Wikipedia,
Google.


By,
A.Praveen Kumar,
CH09B003.

Who is a hacker? Explain what is meant by “the hacker ethic” with the help of a contemporary example.

Hacker is a term used by some to mean "a clever programmer" and by others, especially those in popular media, to mean "someone who tries to break into computer systems.The idea of hacking emerged in 1960's at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The primitive form of hacking , phone phreaking started during the late 60's .In the 1970s the cyber frontier was wide open. Hacking was all about exploring and figuring out how the wired world worked. John Draper, a Vietnam vet, makes a long-distance call for free by blowing a precise tone into a telephone that tells the phone system to open a line. Draper discovered the whistle as a give-away in a box of children's cereal. Draper, who later earns the handle "Captain Crunch," is arrested repeatedly for phone tampering throughout the 1970s.Hacking and phone phreaking may well have been founded in the attempt by marginal persons to gain entry to a world that had been denied to them, but once they made it their own, they re- produced its features more or less intact.
Steven Levy, in the book Hackers, talks at length about what he calls the ``hacker ethic.'' This phrase is very misleading. What he has discovered is the Hacker Aesthetic, the standards for art criticism of hacks. For example, when Richard Stallman says that information should be given out freely, his opinion is not based on a notion of property as theft, which (right or wrong) would be an ethical position. His argument is that keeping information secret is inefficient; it leads to anaesthetic duplication of effort.The objective of hackers were not merely to win access to computer systems for themselves, but to make them available to the wider public.Sherry Turkle in her article says that the only art a hacker embraces is music.The hacker listens , not to its sound of music, but to its structure.She also notices that majority of hackers are young men, mostly teenagers, who have found a world within the computer in which they can mold their desires.






Kevin Mitnick is a self-proclaimed "hacker poster boy,"Mitnickwent through a highly publicized pursuit by authorities. His mischief was hyped by the media but his actual offenses may be less notable than his notoriety suggests. The Department of Justice describes him as "the most wanted computer criminal in United States history." His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom Downtime and Takedown.
Mitnick had a bit of hacking experience before committing the offenses that made him famous. He started out exploiting the Los Angeles bus punch card system to get free rides. Then, like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, dabbled in phone phreaking. Although there were numerous offenses, Mitnick was ultimately convicted for breaking into the Digital Equipment Corporation's computer network and stealing software.
Mitnick's mischief got serious when he went on a two and a half year "coast-to-coast hacking spree." The CNN article, "Legendary computer hacker released from prison," explains that "he hacked into computers, stole corporate secrets, scrambled phone networks and broke into the national defense warning system." He then hacked into computer expert and fellow hacker Tsutomu Shimomura's home computer, which led to his undoing.
Today, Mitnick has been able to move past his role as a black hat hacker and become a productive member of society. He served five years, about 8 months of it in solitary confinement, and is now a computer security consultant, author and speaker.


YASIR CM
CS09B035

The information panopticon

             The information panopticon represents a form of centralized power that uses information and communication technology (ICT) as observational tools and control mechanisms.The idea of information panopticon came from the structure used in prisons to maximize the number of prisoners that can be observed by a single officer.

             In order to maximize the profit computer technologies are introduced in various industries during 1980's. The banking industry is the first major non-militory sector of the world economy to computerize.Shoshana Zuboff examined the data based environment at the brazilian branch of a US bank.On the introduction of computer technology the whole banking system changed.In the words of one manager”Service , excellence and innovation are the only buzz words now. As we push th technology ,people will realize that they have a really valuable tool on the other on their hands .They will be forced to use it.Then we can change the way they think and do their work”.But due to the resistance from senior managers the database environment system did not cause any revolution .

             As these ICTs are introduced into the workplace, managers and employees are discovering the hierarchical risks within information authority. Zuboff explains that these information centers help managers in a workplace to revamp their methods of communication, invite feedback, listen, coach, facilitate, manage many objectives, encourage autonomy, provide vision. The engagements a manager previously dealt with in a face-to-face setting can now be administered through a system that operates in a ubiquitous way. In other words, technology can be used as a form of power that displays itself automatically and continuously.

            In a work setting, this method of control is different to that of the original panopticon because many ICT systems function as transparent architectures. The technological knowledge needed to understand how one is being surveyed is not as apparent as in Benthams prison. The techniques of control within informational and networked systems often appear pragmatic, immediate, and technical. This places the employees in a position of passive and obedient, where they no longer know or understand exactly how panoptic power is being enforced. Consequently, the administrative actions within the workplace can appear paranoid and non-specified approaches to security.

             
            The responsibility of this technical authority does begin to question what ethical, social, and professional surveillance is acceptable in response to ICT technology in the workplace. Surveillance in the work place is not necessarily new; it has long been around in the form of corporate policy, collective behavior and social traditions. Zuboff describes how maintaining faith that undergirds imperative control is hard work psychologically demanding, time-consuming, and inevitably prone to ambiguity. The capacity of these surveillance systems will accomplish some goals, and create entirely new unresolved problems: what to do with all of this personal data? Similar to the Panoptic prison, the information panopticon does focus on creating a vulnerable, defenseless user. However, the employees are not prisoners, they are not without some sense of control, and certainly should question the business practices. The fight remains within the users, the employees, to not passively participate in surveillance but rather to actively place responsibility on management and administration to effectively organize. As ICTs continue to act as control mechanisms within the workplace, management should tirelessly redevelop systems that respond not only to power but also the emotional, the personal, and complexity of human behaviors.

YASIR CM
CS09B035

The supersonic Tupolev TU-144 “Concordski” disaster

             A result of the cold war's technology rivalry when the Soviet Union copied many things the west made including the Concorde and Space Shuttle. The Tupolev TU-144 was one of the Soviets least successful project. Built as a competitor to the Anglo-French Concorde from modified plans stolen from the French it was the first supersonic commercial aircraft beating Concorde by two months.

            In a story leaden with political intrigue, the French did their utmost to wrong-foot the Russians at the Paris Airshow of 1973, including halving the time alloted to them for the demonstration flight of the Tupolev TU-144, otherwise known as “Concordski” over here in the west.

             A name derived in no small part from the fact that the designs for the Tupolev were taken directly from French designs of the real Concorde, as well as the striking similarities between the two aeroplanes.

            Matters worsened when the: “French sent up a Mirage III jet to photograph the TU-144 in flight, but did not tell the Russians.” And it is here that our story of death, destruction and rather a lot of finger-pointing begins.

          Since the two aircraft were in such ridiculously close proximity to each other while in the air, problems were bound to arise. And as the Tupolev and the Mirage both realized that they were on a collision course, the crew of the Tupolev took evasive action, but: “the plane stalled and then when they tried to recover from the stall they overstressed the air frame causing the plane to break-up and crash,…”

            It is speculated that the pilot of the Tupolev pushed the aircraft too hard, which is a reasonable assumption since the whole thing snapped in two. The resulting tangle of airframe, engines and fuselage was hurled into the ground in a searing fireball, obliterating the six people aboard the Tupolev and slaughtering eight people on the ground.

            In total, sixty more people were injured and fifteen houses were utterly destroyed in the carnage and mayhem that ensued this deliciously flame-fueled aeronautical armageddon.

          The civilian duties of the Tupolev TU-144 were forever left like those lives touched by those survivors and relatives of those injured and killed at the Paris Airshow of 1973 - shattered and broken into innumerable shards, never to be a reassembled.

         The sad and miserable moral of this story is that one man’s technology is another man’s poison. Had the Russians stood more closely by one of their own proverbs “keep friends close and enemies closer”, they might have spotted the devil in the details they were stealing from the British and the French engineers…

         The TU-144 flew again in the mid-1990s, when Boeing and  NASA partnered with Tupolev to test supersonic flight. using a heavily modified TU-144D was renamed TU-144LL and set up as a flying test laboratory for future supersonic development. Developed for NASA's High-Speed Civil Transport program it made 32 flights up to 1999 near Moscow. Since then Boeing has shelved plans for a supersonic plane deciding to continue improvements on their 777 series jets. NASA's part in the project has also stopped as their hopes for large scale use of supersonic aircraft had proven too costly.


YASIR CM
CS09B035

The Information Panopticon

The information panopticon represents a form of centralized power that uses information and communication technology (ICT) as observational tools and control mechanisms. English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham developed the original architecture of the panopitcon as a prison. The structure consisted of a centralized tower surrounded by a circular building divided into prison cells. Benthams concept was to maximize the number of prisoners that can be observed by one individual within the tower. Within The Information Panopticon, Zuboff uses the architectural strategies of the panopticon as a metaphor to describe how information systems translate, record, and display human behavior with a degree of illumation that would have exceeded even Benthams most outlandish fantasies (Zuboff 322). The information panopticon critiques how technological systems use transparency to assert power, control, and authority over users.

            Inherent within many new technological and informational devices is the ability to network. Whether it is a personal computer or database systems, these applications often promote forms of inter connectivity that require a centralized control center (Zuboff 328). In early telecommunication experiments by inventors like Alexander Bell and Samuel Morse, the idea of transmission was essentially linear. A message was sent from one location to another, traveling down a wire. As innovation progressed, communication began to operate through various access nodes within a network. The physical locations of the switching and control centers began to operate in very similar ways to the central surveillance tower of the panopticon.

            As these ICTs are introduced into the workplace, managers and employees are discovering the hierarchical risks within information authority. Zuboff explains that these information centers help managers in a workplace to revamp their methods of communication, invite feedback, listen, coach, facilitate, manage many objectives, encourage autonomy, provide vision (Zuboff 232). The engagements a manager previously dealt with in a face-to-face setting can now be administered through a system that operates in a ubiquitous way. In other words, technology can be used as a form of power that displays itself automatically and continuously

            In a work setting, this method of control is different to that of the original panopticon because many ICT systems function as transparent architectures. The technological knowledge needed to understand how one is being surveyed is not as apparent as in Benthams prison. The techniques of control within informational and networked systems often appear pragmatic, immediate, and technical (Zuboff 324). This places the employees in a position of passive and obedient, where they no longer know or understand exactly how panoptic power is being enforced. Consequently, the administrative actions within the workplace can appear paranoid and non-specified approaches to security.

            The responsibility of this technical authority does begin to question what ethical, social, and professional surveillance is acceptable in response to ICT technology in the workplace. Surveillance in the work place is not necessarily new; it has long been around in the form of corporate policy, collective behavior and social traditions. Zuboff describes how maintaining faith that under girds imperative control is hard work psychologically demanding, time-consuming, and inevitably prone to ambiguity (Zuboff 360). The capacity of these surveillance systems will accomplish some goals, and create entirely new unresolved problems: what to do with all of this personal data? Similar to the Panoptic prison, the information panopticon does focus on creating a vulnerable, defenseless user. However, the employees are not prisoners, they are not without some sense of control, and certainly should question the business practices. The fight remains within the users, the employees, to not passively participate in surveillance but rather to actively place responsibility on management and administration to effectively organize. As ICTs continue to act as control mechanisms within the workplace, management should tirelessly redevelop systems that respond not only to power but also the emotional, the personal, and complexity of human behaviors.

References:

http://www.hastac.org/blogs/jeffkolar/business-usual-information-panopticon-and-workplace

Zuboff S., In the Age of the Smart Machine : The Future of Work and Power, BasicBooks, 1988, pp. 315-361

D Sai Prashanth Reddy

CH09B015

Information panaopticon

INFORMATION PANOPTICON

The information panopticon represents a form of centralized power that uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) as observational tools and control mechanisms. Jeremy Bentham developed the original architecture of the panopticon as a prison. The structure consisted of a centralized tower surrounded by a circular building divided into prison cells. The concept was to maximize the number of prisoners that can be observed by one individual within the tower. Within The Information Panopticon, the  architectural strategies of the panopticon is used as a metaphor to describe how information systems translate, record, and display human behaviour with a degree of illumation that would have exceeded even Benthams most outlandish fantasies . The information panopticon critiques how technological systems use transparency to assert power, control, and authority over users.

           Be it a personal computer or a database system, both promote forms of interconnectivity that require a centralized control centre. The physical location of this centre is analogous to the central surveillance tower of the panopticon .

            As these ICTs are introduced into the workplace, these information centers help managers to revamp their methods of communication, invite feedback, listen, coach, facilitate, manage many objectives, encourage autonomy, provide vision. In other words, technology can be used as a form of power that displays itself automatically and continuously.

The technological knowledge needed to understand how one is being surveyed is not as apparent as in Benthams prison. The techniques of control within informational and networked systems often appear pragmatic, immediate, and technical . This places the employees in a position of passive and obedient, where they no longer know or understand exactly how panoptic power is being enforced. Consequently, the administrative actions within the workplace can appear paranoid and non-specified approaches to security.

The capacity of these surveillance systems will accomplish some goals, and create entirely new unresolved problems: what to do with all of this personal data? Similar to the Panoptic prison, the information panopticon does focus on creating a vulnerable, defenseless user. However, the employees are not prisoners, they are not without some sense of control, and certainly should question the business practices. As ICTs continue to act as control mechanisms within the workplace, management should tirelessly redevelop systems that respond not only to power but also the emotional, the personal, and complexity of human behaviours .

Submitted by ,

Prajul Bagri

Who is a hacker

Hacker  is someone who  seeks to understand computer, phone or other systems strictly for the satisfaction of having that knowledge, who  wonders how things work, and have an incredible curiosity. They will sometimes do questionable legal things, such as breaking into systems, but they generally will not cause harm once they break in. They enjoy  learning details of a programming language or system and actually doing the programming rather than theorizing it .Hackers appreciate someone else’s hacking .

Hacker ethic is the generic phrase which describes the values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community. The early hacker culture and resulting philosophy originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1950s and 1960s. The term 'hacker ethic' is attributed to journalist Steven Levy as described in his book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, written in 1984. The guidelines of the hacker ethic make it easy to see how computers have evolved into the personal devices we know and rely upon today.

Free and open source software is the descendant of the hacker ethics that Levy described. The hackers who hold true to this hacker ethics—especially the Hands-On Imperative—are usually supporters of free software and/or open source software. This is because free and open source software allows hackers to access the code used to create the software to improve or reuse it. In effect the free and open source software movements embody all of the hacker ethics.

Some of the ethics and beliefs are as follows :

• Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!  
  Levy believes that access gives hackers the opportunity to take things apart,
   fix, or improve upon them and to learn and understand how they work. This gives
  them the knowledge to create new and even more interesting things Access helps  the expansion of technology.
• All information should be free. 
  In the hacker viewpoint, any system could benefit from an easy flow of information, a concept known as transparency in the social sciences. Information needs to be free for hackers to fix, improve, and reinvent systems. A free exchange of information allows for greater overall creativity.
• Mistrust authority—promote decentralization.
    The best way to promote the free exchange of information is to have an open system that presents no boundaries between a hacker and a piece of information or an item of equipment that he needs in his quest for knowledge, improvement, and time on-line. Hackers believe that bureaucracies, whether corporate, government, or university, are flawed systems.
  
  
  
• Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position.
  Inherent in the hacker ethic is a meritocratic system where superficiality is disregarded in esteem of skill. Levy articulates that criteria such as age, sex, race, position, and qualification are deemed irrelevant within the hacker community. Hacker skill is the ultimate determinant of acceptance. Such a code within the hacker community fosters the advance of hacking and software development.
  Testament to the hacker ethic of equal opportunity, L. Peter Deutsch, a twelve-year-old hacker, was accepted in the TX-0 community, though was not recognized by non-hacker graduate students.
• You can create art and beauty on a computer.          
  Hackers deeply appreciate innovative techniques which allow programs to perform complicated tasks with few instructions. A program's code was considered to hold a beauty of its own, having been carefully composed and artfully arranged. Learning to create programs which used the least amount of space almost became a game between the early hackers.
• Computers can change your life for the better.
  Hackers felt that computers had enriched their lives, given their lives focus, and made their lives adventurous. Hackers regarded computers as Aladdin's lamps that they could control. They believed that everyone in society could benefit from experiencing such power and that if everyone could interact with computers in the way that hackers did, then the Hacker Ethic might spread through society and computers would improve the world. The hacker succeeded in turning dreams of endless possibilities into realities. The hacker's primary object was to teach society that "the world opened up by the computer was a limitless one" 

Submitted by ,

Prajul Bagri 

CH09B045

Risks and responsibilities

Risks and Responsibilities

After the end of World War II, the involvement of scientific research in military purposes increased substantially . as the Nuclear era emerged from WWII all the nations started developing systems for the security purposes .One such example is the missile warning systems

The Cold war saw the development of faster and advance systems to make the country stronger and thus security wise stable . the development of Whirlwind system and SAGE missile warning systems were the forerunner in the development . all the countries starting building up weapons , defense  systems and so on for the purpose of National security . lots of funds were allotted top the scientific development for military purpose .

In the contemporary context  , the alarm warning systems for missile poses a lot of risks for the world . the greatest risk is when the system gives false alarm and thus may lead to more misunderstanding and war . In 1983 ,Lt. Colenel Stanislav Petrov was the officer incharge of the warning system monitoring station outside Moscow for Soviet Union . One fine warning he got signals indicating 5 ballistic missiles have been launched by US .The tensions between the states was already present and this false alarm could have resulted in a war .Petrov thought that had America launched a nuclear attack against Russia ,missiles would have been raining down not just 5 thus considered that it is a false signal ,thus saving the world of another devastating war .

The risk is in this system is that ,it may give wrong signals and this has happened many times till now , but for national security this is required .In this nuclear era , one needs to be quick and well prepared for any disaster .The responsibilities involved is that proper testing of these systems , so that the risks can be minimised .The Whirlwind computers developed during cold war is a classic example o risk involved in any systems The duplex computer enables us to keep the data safe even if one of the computers gets damaged or destroyed the other can take over . this kind of computer systems is used in banks all across the globe .Some of the extra risks involved in the alarm warning systems is the human error or any software failure which can lead to false signals or no signals at all  

references:

Risk Digest 

Wikipedia

Submitted By ,

Prajul Bagri 

CH09B045

The Hacker Ethic

Hackers

These are people who attempt to penetrate security systems on remote computers. This is the new sense of the term, whereas the old sense of the term simply referred to a person who was capable of creating hacks, or elegant, unusual, and unexpected uses of technology. A hacker is a person who breaks into computers and computer networks, either for profit or motivated by the challenge. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground but is now an open community. In the words of Brian Harvey, of UCL, Berkeley, “A ``computer hacker,'' then, is someone who lives and breathes computers, who knows all about computers, who can get a computer to do anything. Equally important, though, is the hacker's attitude. Computer programming must be a hobby, something done for fun, not out of a sense of duty or for the money. (It's okay to make money, but that can't be the reason for hacking.)”. There are specialties within computer hacking. An “algorithm hacker” knows all about the best algorithm for any problem. A “system hacker” knows about designing and maintaining operating systems. And a ``password hacker'' knows how to find out someone else's password.

The Hacker Ethic

Every profession or trade tends to have an ethical code which suggests that it is capable of self-regulation of its members. The code demonstrates the shared core values necessary for people to practice within the professional community. And it enables the public and the government to have some degree of trust for the profession. Hackers have their own ‘code of honour’- the ‘Hacker Ethic’. The original Hacker Ethic was sort of an impromptu, informal ethical code developed by the original hackers of MIT and Stanford (SAIL) in the 50s and 60s. These "hackers" were the first generation of programmers, employing time-sharing terminal access to 'dumb' mainframes, and they often confronted various sorts of bureaucratic interference that prevented them from exploring fully how technological systems worked. The ethic reflects their resistance to these obstacles, and their ideology of the libratory power of technology. The idea of a "hacker ethic" is perhaps best formulated in Steven Levy's 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Levy came up with six tenets:

1. Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative!
2. All information should be free.
3. Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as age, race, or position.
5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.
6. Computers can change your life for the better.

PHRACK, recognized as the "official" hacker newsletter, expanded on this creed with a rationale that can be summarized in three principles ("Doctor Crash," 1986). [1] First, hackers reject the notion that "businesses" are the only groups entitled to access and use of modern technology. [2] Second, hacking is a major weapon in the fight against encroaching computer technology. [3] Finally, the high cost of equipment is beyond the means of most hackers, which results in the perception that hacking is the only recourse to spreading computer literacy to the masses

Although hackers freely acknowledge that their activities may be occasionally illegal, considerable emphasis is placed on limiting violations only to those required to obtain access and learn a system, and they display hostility toward those who transgress beyond these limits.

The question of hacker ethics was brought to the fore during the trial of US Judge Ronald C Kline in 2002-2005. Kline stood accused of downloading child pornography to his home and courthouse computers. The evidence against him hinged on the credibility of a Canadian hacker named Bradley Willman, who claimed to have stolen an electronic diary from his computer. Kline's defence attorneys attacked the hacker's credibility, saying that taking the judge's diary was illegal and suggesting that the hacker was working on behalf of law enforcement at the time. Defence attorneys also raised the possibility that the hacker could have doctored the diary and computer images that form the bedrock of federal prosecutors' case against Kline. Finally, after a long drawn out legal battle that lasted 4 years, Kline was put behind bars in 2006, with Willman judged to have been acting independently of any government agency.

The case of the United States vs Kline is just one of many instances of hackers helping to put criminals behind bars, and it stands as a shining example of how hacking can be used to make the world a better place.

Govind Menon

CH09B022

References:

www.vachss.com

www.metnews.com

www.cs.berkeley.edu