Time for a Redefinition of Terms
                                 By AmadEUS


	I think it is time for a redefinition of our terms.  We have seen the many horror stories 
about hackers who have been jailed for being where they should not be...so they say, listening in 
on phone conversations...so they say,  being in possession of information...naughty, naughty.  I 
have two words.  1) Kevin and 2) Mitnick.  If you don't know this name, look it up on the 
Internet.  You will see a great deal of verbage about this person.  Some of says he is guilty, some 
says he is not guilty, and some says that he is both.  Who is to say which is right.  I guess only 
Kevin will truly know.
	There are some out there in CyberLand who take pleasure in destroying property which is 
not their own,  being where they should not be,  searching and learning,  exploring and growing.  
I do not deny that there are vicious people out there who know how to do vicious things with 
their knowledge and display destructive behavior.  Many people forget, however, that there are 
also people who want to learn from the information they find and are able to do this without 
destruction.  I am not proposing that sides be chosen.  I propose that we redefine ourselves.  
Those of us who are not destructive or malicious are often considered to be destructive and 
malicious because of ambiguous terminology.  What do you think of when you hear the word 
"hacker"?  Different people think different things.  Some people do not know enough to think 
anything.  Today we do not have just one word to describe persons of the digital-information 
persuasion. There are quite a few.  We have names like: hacker, cracker, cyperpunk, and phreak, 
but what do these mean.  Just as I indicated above, these are somewhat ambiguous.  So, I 
reiterate... what do you think of when you hear these terms?  Generally, those who do not know 
much about these types of people are incline to believe that a hacker, cracker, or phreak is a 
person with criminal or malicious intent.  Those who are in the know, realize that there are good 
hacker, cracker, phreak, etc. people and bad hacker, cracker, phreak, etc. people.  It seems that a 
large part of the world has not yet learned that bad people will tend to do bad things and good 
people will tend to do good things.  
	In the pursuit of knowledge and information, we must be careful.  It would be better if 
information was freely accessible and no one owned anything and we could get along with our 
neighbors foreign and domestic.  Unfortunately, that is a luxury we do not possess.  What do we 
have?  To answer that question, I will use a message from the movie "Sneakers" to illustrate my 
point.  We have too many secrets.  There is tons of information out there.  There are lots of 
people who are hungry for that information.  The problem is that some of the information is 
hidden away and some is guarded.  Is this fair?  I happen to believe that there are some things that 
should be kept secret.  If you stop and think about it, there is not too much that needs to be 
secret.  There is some information that is useless to most people.  There is some information that 
is personal private that you do not need to know.  There is information that would allow us to 
evolve faster if more people new about it.  I am sure you have heard the phrase, "knowledge is 
power".  If you do not believe that this is true, you probably do not have a lot of knowledge.  Let 
me give you an example of the power of knowledge.  A man goes to a car dealer to buy a new car.  
The sales person gives him bits and pieces of information about the car.  He tells the man how 
great the engine sounds.  He tells the man that the convertible top can be closed by pushing a 
button.  The sales person tells all about the bells and whistles of the car and say that the 
dealership even waxes the car with state of the art car polish and he will see that water bead up to 
prove how great the car polish is.  The sales person says that he will even throw in a bottle or two 
of the car polish if the man buys the car today.  They start talking about price.  The man realizes 
that the price seems barely within what he can afford.  The man thinks about all of the wonderful 
things that were mentioned about the car and considers that he is getting a couple of bottles of 
great car polish in the deal and decides to go for it.  What the man did not realize was that the 
convertible top has to be put down manually.  The alternator has been changed three times.  There 
is a small crack in the radiator at the bottom that has been sealed twice.  There are other engine 
parts that have been put in the car that do not match factory specification.  If the dealer had told 
the man about these things,  the man would not have purchased the car especially at the price he 
paid.  If the man had read about car polishes, he would also have realized that a polish that causes 
the water to bead also causes damage to the car's finish because the beads focus the sunlight and 
will erode the finish.  Without the knowledge of these things, the man got a bad deal.  People 
who have more knowledge about cars, usually get better deals.  This type of situation pops up in 
a lot of places.  Who Shot Kennedy?  What is at Area 51?  How can you get free email?  How do 
you send someone fake email?  The answers are out there.  Somebody knows.  What if we knew 
what was at Area 51 or who shot Kennedy?  If everybody knew, there would be consequences.  
There could be people who do not want to face the consequences, so they keep this information 
private.  Some information is stumbled onto like how to send fake email.  Someone somewhere 
figured out how to do it.  Maybe it was by design or maybe it was a flaw in the program, but the 
fact remains that it is possible to do.  Knowledge is power, but it comes with a price for many of 
us.  If you figure out how to send fake emails to people, just knowing is not necessarily a bad 
thing.  If you wrote death threats to the president, that would be very bad.  If you found out what 
was at Area 51, do you think it would be safe if the government knew that you knew?  This is 
why I say, "In the pursuit of knowledge and information, we must be careful".
	We are all information seekers.  Whether it be a reporter trying to get pictures of a 
celebrity, a hacker trying new or different things with a computer, or anyone who is just curious.  
We should be categorized by what we do with information and how we get the information.  I am 
a hacker.  If I attain knowledge and learn new things without destroying anything, I don't want to 
be thought of as a criminal just because another hacker decided to use his or her knowledge to 
hang someone's computer or interfere in someone's life.  We are hackers.  We are crackers.  We 
are phreaks.  We are information seekers.  Do not hate us for what we are.  Do not lock us up 
because of what others do.  People kill people.  Do we hate all people?