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... and speaking of WiReD...
Given the recent discussion on WireD, I thought some of you
might enjoy this editorial (read: rant) authored by Erik Bloodaxe.
Enjoy.
- paul
Forwarded message:
> Date: Sun, 15 Jan 1995 20:34:00 CST
> Reply-To: [email protected]
> Sender: CU-DIGEST list <[email protected]>
> From: "Cu Digest ([email protected])" <[email protected]>
> Subject: Cu Digest, #7.03
> To: Multiple recipients of list CUDIGEST <[email protected]>
>
> Computer underground Digest Sun Jan 15, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 03
> ISSN 1004-042X
>
> Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer ([email protected])
> Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
> Retiring Shadow Archivist: Stanton McCandlish
> Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
> Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
> Ian Dickinson
> Copy Reader: Laslo Toth
>
> CONTENTS, #7.03 (Sun, Jan 15, 1995)
>
> File 1--Open Letter to Wired Magazine (fwd)
> File 2--More Legal Analysis of Steve Jackson Games (Legal Bytes)
> File 3--The Stupid Net.Coverage News Awards -- 1994 and 1995
> File 4--Alliance for Community Media -- Call for Workshops
> File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Nov 1994)
>
> CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
> THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 20:08:38 -0600 (CST)
> From: David Smith <[email protected]>
> Subject: File 1--Open Letter to Wired Magazine (fwd)
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> >[email protected] (Chris Goggans)
> >Subject--Open Letter to Wired Magazine
> >Date--13 Jan 1995 00:51:09 GMT
>
> To Whom It May Concern:
>
> I am writing this under the assumption that the editorial staff at
> Wired will "forget" to print it in the upcoming issue, so I am also
> posting it on every relevant newsgroup and online discussion forum
> that I can think of.
>
> When I first read your piece "Gang War In Cyberspace" I nearly choked
> on my own stomach bile. The whole tone of this piece was so far
> removed from reality that I found myself questioning what color the
> sky must be in Wired's universe. Not that I've come to expect any
> better from Wired. Your magazine, which could have had the potential
> to actually do something, has become a parody...a politically correct
> art-school project that consistently falls short of telling the whole
> story or making a solid point. (Just another example of Kapor-Kash
> that ends up letting everyone down.)
>
> I did however expect more from Josh Quittner.
>
> I find it interesting that so much emphasis can be placed on an issue
> of supposed racial slurs as the focus of an imaginary "gang war,"
> especially so many years after the fact.
>
> It's also interesting to me that people keep overlooking the fact that
> one of the first few members of our own little Legion of Doom was
> black (Paul Muad'dib.) Maybe if he had not died a few years back that
> wouldn't be so quickly forgotten. (Not that it makes a BIT of
> difference what color a hacker is as long as he or she has a brain and
> a modem, or these days at least a modem.)
>
> I also find it interesting that a magazine can so easily implicate
> someone as the originator of the so-called "fighting words" that
> allegedly sparked this online-battle, without even giving a second
> thought as to the damage that this may do to the person so named. One
> would think that a magazine would have more journalistic integrity
> than that (but then again, this IS Wired, and political correctness
> sells magazines and satisfies advertisers.) Thankfully, I'll only have
> to endure one moth of the "Gee Chris, did you know you were a racist
> redneck?" phone calls.
>
> It's further odd that someone characterized as so sensitive to insults
> allegedly uttered on a party-line could have kept the company he did.
> Strangely enough, Quittner left out all mention of the MOD member who
> called himself "SuperNigger." Surely, John Lee must have taken
> umbrage to an upper-middle class man of Hebrew descent so shamefully
> mocking him and his entire race, wouldn't he? Certainly he wouldn't
> associate in any way with someone like that...especially be in the
> same group with, hang out with, and work on hacking projects with,
> would he?
>
> Please, of course he would, and he did. (And perhaps he still
> does...)
>
> The whole "racial issue" was a NON-ISSUE. However, such things make
> exciting copy and garner many column inches so keep being rehashed.
> In fact, several years back when the issue first came up, the
> statement was cited as being either "Hang up, you nigger," or "Hey,
> SuperNigger," but no one was sure which was actually said. Funny how
> the wording changes to fit the slant of the "journalist" over time,
> isn't it?
>
> I wish I could say for certain which was actually spoken, but alas, I
> was not privy to such things. Despite the hobby I supposedly so
> enjoyed according to Quittner, "doing conference bridges," I abhorred
> the things. We used to refer to them as "Multi-Loser Youps"
> (multi-user loops) and called their denizens "Bridge Bunnies." The
> bridge referred to in the story was popularzed by the callers of the
> 5A BBS in Houston, Texas. (A bulletin board, that I never even got
> the chance to call, as I had recently been raided by the Secret
> Service and had no computer.) Many people from Texas did call the
> BBS, however, and subsequently used the bridge, but so did people from
> Florida, Arizona, Michigan, New York and Louisiana. And as numbers do
> in the underground, word of a new place to hang out caused it to
> propagate rapidly.
>
> To make any implications that such things were strictly a New York
> versus Texas issue is ludicrous, and again simply goes to show that a
> "journalist" was looking for more points to add to his (or her)
> particular angle.
>
> This is not to say that I did not have problems with any of the people
> who were in MOD. At the time I still harbored strong feelings towards
> Phiber Optik for the NYNEX-Infopath swindle, but that was about it.
> And that was YEARS ago. (Even I don't harbor a grudge that long.)
> Even the dozen or so annoying phone calls I receied in late 1990 and
> early 1991 did little to evoke "a declaration of war." Like many
> people, I know how to forward my calls, or unplug the phone. Amazing
> how technology works, isn't it?
>
> Those prank calls also had about as much to do with the formation of
> Comsec as bubble-gum had to do with the discovery of nuclear fission.
> (I'm sure if you really put some brain power to it, and consulted
> Robert Anton Wilson, you could find some relationships.) At the risk
> of sounding glib, we could have cared less about hackers at Comsec.
> If there were no hackers, or computer criminals, there would be no
> need for computer security consultants. Besides, hackers account for
> so little in the real picture of computer crime, that their existence
> is more annoyance than something to actually fear.
>
> However, when those same hackers crossed the line and began tapping
> our phone lines, we were more than glad to go after them. This is one
> of my only rules of action: do whatever you want to anyone else, but
> mess with me and my livelihood and I will devote every ounce of my
> being to paying you back. That is exactly what we did.
>
> This is not to say that we were the only people from the computer
> underground who went to various law enforcement agencies with
> information about MOD and their antics. In fact, the number of
> hackers who did was staggering, especially when you consider the usual
> anarchy of the underground. None of these other people ever get
> mentioned and those of us at Comsec always take the lead role as the
> "narks," but we were far from alone. MOD managed to alienate the vast
> majority of the computer underground, and people reacted.
>
> All in all, both in this piece, and in the book itself, "MOD, The Gang
> That Ruled Cyberspace," Quittner has managed to paint a far too
> apologetic piece about a group of people who cared so very little
> about the networks they played in and the people who live there. In
> the last 15 years that I've been skulking around online, people in the
> community have always tended to treat each other and the computers
> systems they voyeured with a great deal of care and respect. MOD was
> one of the first true examples of a groupthink exercise in hacker
> sociopathy. Selling long distance codes, selling credit card numbers,
> destroying systems and harassing innocent people is not acceptable
> behavior among ANY group, even the computer underground.
>
> There have always been ego flares and group rivalries in the
> underground, and there always will be. The Legion of Doom itself was
> FOUNDED because of a spat between its founder (Lex Luthor) and members
> of a group called The Knights of Shadow. These rivalries keep things
> interesting, and keep the community moving forward, always seeking the
> newest bit of information in a series of healthy one-upsmanship. MOD
> was different. They took things too far against everyone, not just
> against two people in Texas.
>
> I certainly don't condemn everyone in the group. I don't even know a
> number of them (electronically or otherwise.) I honestly believe that
> Mark Abene (Phiber) and Paul Stira (Scorpion) got royally screwed
> while the group's two biggest criminals, Julio Fernandez (Outlaw) and
> Allen Wilson (Wing), rolled over on everyone else and walked away free
> and clear. This is repulsive when you find out that Win in particular
> has gone on to be implicated in more damage to the Internet (as Posse
> and ILF) than anyone in the history of the computing. This I find
> truly disgusting, and hope that the Secret Service are proud of
> themselves.
>
> Imagine if I wrote a piece about the terrible treatment of a poor
> prisoner in Wisconsin who was bludgeoned to death by other inmates
> while guards looked away. Imagine if I tried to explain the fact that
> poor Jeff Dahmer was provoked to murder and cannibalism by the mocking
> of adolescent boys who teased and called him a faggot. How would you
> feel if I tried to convince you that we should look upon him with pity
> and think of him as a misunderstood political prisoner? You would
> probably feel about how I do about Quittner's story.
>
> 'Hacker' can just as easily be applied to "journalists" too, and with
> this piece Quittner has joined the Hack Journalist Hall of Fame,
> taking his place right next to Richard Sandza.
>
> Quittner did get a few things right. I do have a big cat named Spud,
> I do work at a computer company and I do sell fantastic t-shirts. Buy
> some.
>
> With Love,
>
> Chris Goggans
> aka Erik Bloodaxe
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
> http://fringeware.com/staff/jonl
>
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Paul Ferguson
US Sprint tel: 703.689.6828
Managed Network Engineering internet: [email protected]
Reston, Virginia USA http://www.sprintmrn.com