BANTOWN PRESENTS: Eleatic thought and hacker ethics

[posted to the ‘full-disclosure’ list]

Because of my philosophical leanings, I have made the assumption that freedom of speech and expression is an inalienable right granted by nature’s God. I have made the extension to this statement that the freedom to write code and execute your code is an extension to free speech. Fascists that may disagree with my statements may go ahead and skip this post.

Now, let us say you have a machine connected to the Internet. It is impossible, by this computer’s very nature, for it to do anything that is was not programmed to do. It takes in the data that it is given, processes it according to deterministic rules, and returns output that it could not possibly have deviated from. This process may be so complex that it appears to be stochastic, but it is nonetheless deterministic and we should not pretend it is anything but. This deterministic sequencing extends far beyond just your computer. If every element in a system is deterministic, then the whole system itself is deterministic. The entire Internet is a single, uninterrupted deterministic state machine.

I present to you the Eleatic school of hacker ethics.

The Internet is public property. No establishment has a right to own it, subvert it, subject it, or rule over it. It extends beyond race, nationality, religion, or geopolitical agreement. Now that we understand that the Internet is a single deterministic machine, we may approach this situation with logic and reason as opposed to knee-jerk reactionary idiocy. When connected to the Internet, your computer becomes a part of this deterministic machine. It is impossible for your computer to execute any code which it has not been programmed to execute. If your computer has been programmed to accept my arbitrary code, then there is no moral or ethical violation committed when I introduce my code to yours.

If you download and execute my code, you have done so willingly.

If your daemon executes my code after I introduce it in a manner that is innovative and unique, then your daemon has done exactly what it has been programmed to do.

You don’t want me to execute my code inside your code? Then keep your machine out of OUR deterministic state machine. Keep it on your own private network, so that someone will have to commit a real honest-to-God crime like breaking and entering to have access to it. The minute you connect it to a public network, it becomes connected to all of us through the 0 and 1.

Whitehats will try to play games and act like they’re the good guys. They will tell you that people who commit “computer crimes” are organized crime types who are out to empty your grandma’s bank account. Their arguments are bullshit. No doubt that emptying someone’s bank account is a serious crime, but we have real laws to punish this. The laws that we have made to punish “information crimes” are merely laws against thoughtcrime. It is impossible to commit crimes that extend solely in the wired.

Take a look at what your governments are doing. The majority of whitehats are employed in the US, where they have a leader that willingly and openly defies the fourth amendment of their constitution. They have a corporate oligarchy where a select few families get to control ninety-nine percent of the public funds and purposefully impoverish the working and intellectual classes. Things are only marginally brighter in the rest of the first world. This is your idea of a utopia, the system that you want to perpetuate indefinitely? Do you really want the tyrants in this new Rome to reign a thousand years like the last one did? I sure don’t, so stop preaching to me a bunch of bullshit about rule of law.

Wake up.

Stop working for these oligarchs that despise you. Band together, because at this point all that keeps the oligarchs in power is control over the ones and zeros. We have a power to change them for the better, a chance to make a lasting contribution to humanity.

You can be a hero in the manner of Plato, of Socrates, of Pappus, Pascal, Parmenides and Zeno. You can change the world. All you need is to cast off the shackles that your masters have put on you!

Be fearless.
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