The Conscience of a Hacker - Hacker Manifesto

Read by my son, the inspiration for this channel. We're hackers, pirates in plain clothes.

The Mentor published "Hacker's Manifesto, or The Conscience of a Hacker," in the online hacker's
e-journal Phrack.1.7 (September 15, 1986): File 3 of 10, which is located at
http://www.fc.net/phrack/files/po7/po7-3.html. As the Mentor tells us, he wrote it shortly after his
arrest.
The following was written shortly after my arrest, January 8, 1986.
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime
Scandal," "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering". ..
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950s technobrain, ever take a look behind the
eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have
molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world ...
Mine is a world that begins with school ... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they
teach us bores me ...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to
reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head... "
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it
to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me ...
Or feels threatened by me ...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here ...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened ... a door opened to a world ... rushing through the phone line like heroin
through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is
sought ... a board is found.
"This is it ... this is where I belong. . . "
I know everyone here ... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from
them again ... I know you all ...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike ...
You bet your ass we're all alike ... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered
for steak ... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been
dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are
like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now ... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We
make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by
profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore ... and you call us criminals. We seek after
knowledge ... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without
religious bias ... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat,
and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what
they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will
never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all ...
after all, we're all alike.
-The Mentor