Fritz
"You should be careful," Ted says, "Breaking into Soviet
computers. Even though they're on a different continent."
"Hey, you know me. Do you think I'm going to fuck this up?" I
ask, irritated.
"No," he replies, as if he believes it.
I'm a good hacker and a total paranoid, which is a useful
attribute in this business. If anyone could get away with it, I
can.
"So what do you know about this machine you got on to?" he asks.
"As far as we can tell, it is a University machine of some sort, but a
lot of the stuff on it has a very military sound to it. If they do
defense contracting or something then it could be a springboard to
even more sensitive things.
"All the same, there is something strange about the way the
whole thing is set up, but I can't quite put my finger on it."
Ted
We walk over to Battery Kimball park. It's the sort of park that
families would bring their kids and their dogs in their Volvo station
wagons, not the kind of park where drug dealer hang out. I remember
my parents bringing me here when I was little. The hill was always
the focus of activity. During the summer we would roll down the
grassy slop until our necks got itchy, and in the winter we would sled
down it in our saucer sleds.
We sit down and I quiz Fritz a bit about his whole hacking endeavor,
and succeed in getting him pissed at me. Things degenerate into a
discussion of hacking ethics, with Lindsay participating heavily.
After a while, we start to wonder where Gil and Leisl have gone off
to. They should have been back while ago.
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Lindsay
I like arguing with Fritz. He puts up a good fight. After a little
while sitting around on the grass with Fritz and Ted squabbling over
this or that, I accidentally get Fritz started on "hacker ethics,"
about how real hackers don't try to damage systems, and on and on.
I bring up a few points about privacy and the law, but they don't seem
to make much of a dent. He has a lot more experience talking about
this stuff, so I have a hard time coming up with arguments he hasn't
heard before. He really is a smart guy, and not just in the techie
kind of way.`
I guess the main point I have to make about hacking and "phreaking" is
that, the payoffs seem low and the potential to get in trouble is
really high. I mean, aren't there fun but legitimate things you can
do with a computer?
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