H4ck3rs are people too: Film review

A refreshing look at these intelligent, healthy, original people

My friend and colleague Alan Freedman, author of the distinguished Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, defines hacker as follows in Version 22.4:

"Hacker: A person who writes programs in assembly language or in system-level languages, such as C. The term often refers to any programmer, but its true meaning is someone with a strong technical background who is "hacking away" at the bits and bytes.

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My friend and colleague Alan Freedman, author of the distinguished Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, defines hacker as follows in Version 22.4:

"Hacker: A person who writes programs in assembly language or in system-level languages, such as C. The term often refers to any programmer, but its true meaning is someone with a strong technical background who is "hacking away" at the bits and bytes.

Hackers have a bad name

During the 1990s, the term "hacker" became synonymous with "cracker," which is a person who performs some form of computer sabotage. The association is understandable. In order to be an effective cracker, you had to be a good hacker, thus the terms got intertwined, and hacker won out in the popular press.

Why criminal hackers must not be rewarded

However, sometimes, hackers are not even worthy of the original meaning of the term. Today, a lot of malicious acts are performed by people with limited knowledge who gain unauthorized entrance into computers to steal data or perform mischief (see script kiddie)."

"HACKERS ARE PEOPLE TOO," a 2008 documentary directed by Ashley Schwartau and produced by Winn Schwartau, is a refreshing look at intelligent, healthy, original people who are far from the twisted misfits portrayed in the notorious 1992 propaganda film "Unauthorized Access" by Annaliza Savage. It's a counterblow against the unfortunate hijacking of the term "hacker" by an uninformed press over the last 30 years. Steven Levy tried his best to fight the misuse of the term in his entertaining and informative book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Penguin, Updated edition, Jan. 2, 2001; ISBN 978-0141000510; AMAZON).

The film opens with some authentic perspectives from several simpatico non-criminal hackers on their enthusiasm for learning and tinkering:

"When you think of hackers, forget the criminal aspect of it. Yes, that exists, and yes, it's out there, but people in this community who call themselves hackers are incredibly talented people who are independent thinkers, who come up with incredibly creative and innovative ways of solving problems that other people just don't think of solving in a certain way. We are an incredibly creative… intuitive bunch; we latch onto technology and find new ways of using it and have been doing this … for fifty years." – Nick Farr, Co-Founder, Hacker Foundation.

"A hacker is someone who wants to know how things work, take them apart, look at the components, see if there's a way to make them better, and put it back together and share that information openly without motivation of profit or fame or anything like that." – Scott Davidson, security professional

"For any individual item… [or] raw material that can be forged into a product, there is the expected uses of it and then there is other. Most people look at the expected uses. They see a fork and they go, 'Aha! This is an object that has one purpose: to eat food.' And a hacker looks at the fork and says, 'Aha! This is metal: it will conduct electricity. Aha! This has sharp points: it can make holes in clay for … making a sculpture." – Dan Kaminsky, penetration tester.