THE BAUDY WORLD OF THE BYTE BANDIT:             A POSTMODERNIST INTERPRETATION OF THE COMPUTER UNDERGROUND                                 Gordon Meyer and Jim Thomas                               Department of Sociology                            Northern Illinois University                                  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   (10 June, 1990)                Forthcoming in In F.  Schmalleger (ed.),  Computers in Criminal          Justice, Bristol (Ind.):  Wyndham Hall.   An earlier version of          this paper was presented at  the American Society of Criminology          annual meetings, Reno (November 9, 1989).   Authors are listed in          alphabetical order.  Address correspondence to Jim Thomas.          We are indebted  to the numerous anonymous  computer underground          participants who provided  information.  Special acknowledgement          goes to Hatchet Molly, Jedi, The Mentor,  Knight Lightning,  and          Taran King.                             THE BAUDY WORLD OF THE BYTE BANDIT:             A POSTMODERNIST INTERPRETATION OF THE COMPUTER UNDERGROUND               Hackers are "nothing more  than high-tech street gangs"               (Federal Prosecutor, Chicago).                Transgression is not immoral. Quite to the contrary, it               reconciles the law with what it forbids; it is the dia-               lectical game of good and evil (Baudrillard, 1987: 81).               There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue.  There's               just stuff people do.   It's all part of the nice, but               that's as far as any man got a right to say (Steinbeck,               1939:31-32).                The criminalization of "deviant acts" transforms and reduces          broader social meanings to legal ones.  Once a category of behav-          iors has become defined by statute as sanctionably deviant,  the          behaviors so-defined assume  a new set of meanings  that may ob-          scure ones  possessed by those  who engage in  such behaviors.          "Computer deviants" provide one example.               The proliferation of computer  technology has been accompa-          nied by the growth of a computer underground (CU),  often mistak-          enly labeled "hackers," that is  perceived as criminally deviant          by the media, law enforcement officials, and researchers.   Draw-          ing from ethnographic data,  we offer  a cultural rather than a          criminological analysis of the underground by suggesting that the          CU reflects an attempt to recast, re-appropriate, and reconstruct          the power-knowledge relationship that  increasingly dominates the                                         - 1 -            ideology and actions of modern society.  Our data reveal the com-          puter underground as  an invisible community with  a complex and          interconnected cultural lifestyle, an inchoate anti-authoritarian          political consciousness,  and dependent on norms of reciprocity,          sophisticated socialization  rituals,  networks  of information          sharing, and an explicit value system.   We interpret the CU cul-          ture as a challenge to and parody of conventional culture,  as a          playful attempt to reject the seriousness of technocracy,  and as          an ironic substitution of rational  technological control of the          present for an anarchic and playful future.                        Stigmatizing the Computer Underground               The computer underground refers to persons engaged in one or          more of several activities, including pirating, anarchy, hacking,          and phreaking[1].    Because computer  underground participants          freely share information and often are involved collectively in a          single incident,  media definitions invoke the generalized meta-          phors of  "conspiracies" and "criminal rings,"  (e.g.,  Camper,          1989;  Computer Hacker Ring, 1990;  Zablit, 1989), "modem macho"          evil-doers (Bloombecker, 1988),  moral bankruptcy (E.  Schwartz,          1988), "electronic trespassers" (Parker: 1983), "crazy kids dedi-          cated to making mischief" (Sandza, 1984a:  17), "electronic van-          dals" (Bequai:  1987), a new or global "threat" (Markoff, 1990a;          Van,  1989),  saboteurs ("Computer Sabateur," 1988),  monsters          (Stoll, 1989:  323), secret societies of criminals (WMAQ, 1990),          "'malevolent, nasty, evil-doers' who 'fill the screens of amateur          {computer} users with pornography'"  (Minister of Parliament Emma                                         - 2 -            Nicholson, cited in "Civil Liberties," 1990:  27), "varmints" and          "bastards" (Stoll,  1989:  257),  and "high-tech street gangs"          ("Hacker, 18," 1989).  Stoll (cited in J. Schwartz, 1990: 50) has          even compared them to persons who  put razorblades in the sand at          beaches, a bloody, but hardly accurate, analogy.   Most dramatic          is Rosenblatt's (1990:  37) attempt to link hackers to pedophilia          and "snuff films," a ploy clearly designed to inflame rather than          educate.               These images have prompted calls  for community and law en-          forcement vigilance (Conly and McEwen, 1990:  2;  Conly,  1989;          McEwen, 1989).   and for application of the Racketeer Influenced          and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to prosecute and control the          "criminals" (Cooley, 1984),  which have created considerable con-          cern for civil liberties (Markoff, 1990b;  J.  Schwartz, 1990).          Such exaggerated discourse also fails  to distinguish between un-          derground "hobbyists," who may infringe  on legal norms but have          no intention of pillaging,  from  felonious predators,  who use          technology to loot[2].   Such terminology creates a common stock          of public knowledge that formats  interpretations of CU activity          in ways pre-patterned as requiring  social control to protect the          commonweal (e.g., Altheide, 1985).               As Hollinger and Lanza-Kaduce (1988:  119), Kane (1989), and          Pfuhl (1987) observed,  the stigmatization of hackers has emerged          primarily through value-laden media depictions.   When in 1988 a          Cornell University graduate student inadvertently infected an in-          ternational computer network by  planting a self-reproducing "vi-                                         - 3 -            rus," or "rogue program," the news  media followed the story with          considerable detail about  the dangers of computer  abuse (e.g.,          Allman, 1990; Winter, 1988).  Five years earlier, in May of 1983,          a group of hackers known as  "The 414's" received equal media at-          tention when they  broke into the computer system  of the Sloan          Kettering Cancer research center.   Between these dramatic and a-          typical events, the media have dramatized the dangers of computer          renegades,  and media anecdotes  presented during Congressional          legislative debates  to curtail "computer abuse"  dramatized the          "computer hacking problem" (Hollinger  and Lanza-Kaduce,  1988:          107).   Although the accuracy and objectivity of the evidence has          since been challenged (Hollinger and Lanza-Kaduce 1988: 105), the          media continue to format CU activity  by suggesting that any com-          puter-related felony can be attributed to hacking.  Additionally,          media stories are taken from the accounts of police blotters, se-          curity personnel, and apprehended hackers, each of whom have dif-          ferent perspectives and definitions.   This creates a self-rein-          forcing  imagery in  which  extreme  examples and  cursively          circulated data are discretely adduced  to substantiate the claim          of criminality by  those with a vested interest  in creating and          maintaining such definitions.   For  example,  Conly and McEwen          (1990)  list examples of law  enforcement jurisdictions in which          special units to  fight "computer crime," very  broadly defined,          have been created.  These broad  definitions serve to expand the          scope of authority and resources of the units.   Nonetheless, de-          spite criminalization,  there is little  evidence to support the                                         - 4 -            contention that computer hacking has been sufficiently abusive or          pervasive to warrant zealous  prosecution (Michalowski and Pfuhl,          forthcoming).               As an antidote to the  conventional meanings of CU activity          as simply one of deviance,  we shift the social meaning of CU be-          havior from one of stigma to one of culture creation and meaning.          Our work is tentative,  in part  because of the lack of previous          substantive literature and in part  because of the complexity of          the data, which indicate a multiplicity of subcultures within the          CU.  This paper examines two distinct CU subcultures, phreaks and          hackers,  and challenges the Manichean  view that hackers can be          understood simply as profaners of a sacred moral and economic or-          der.                     The Computer Underground and Postmodernism               The computer underground  is a culture of  persons who call          computer bulletin board systems (BBSs,  or just "boards"),  and          share the interests fostered by the BBS.   In conceptualizing the          computer underground as a distinct culture, we draw from Geertz's          (1973: 5) definition of culture as a system of meanings that give          significance to shared  behaviors that must be  interpreted from          the perspective of those engaged in them.  A culture provides not          only the "systems of standards for perceiving, believing,  evalu-          ating, and acting" (Goodenough,  1981:  110),  but includes the          rules and symbols  of interpretation and discourse  for partici-          pants:               In crude relief,  culture can be understood as a set of               solutions devised by a group of people to meet specific               problems  posed by  situations  they  face in  com-                                        - 5 -                 mon. . . This notion of culture as a living, historical               product of group problem solving  allows an approach to               cultural study that is applicable to any group, be it a               society, a neighborhood, a family, a dance band,  or an               organization and its segments  (Van Maanen and Barley,               1985: 33).               Creating and maintaining a culture requires continuous indi-          vidual or group processes of  sustaining an identity through the          coherence gained by a consistent aesthetic point of view, a moral          conception of self,  and a lifestyle that expresses those concep-          tions in one's immediate existence and tastes (Bell, 1976:  36).          These behavioral expressions signify a variety of meanings,  and          as signifiers they reflect a type of code that can be interpreted          semiotically,  or as a sign system amenable to readings indepen-          dent of either participants or of  those imposed by the super-or-          dinate culture:               All aspects of culture possess  a semiotic value,  and               the most  taken-for-granted phenomena can  function as               signs:   as elements in communication systems governed               by semantic rules  and codes which are  not themselves               directly apprehended in experience.   These signs are,               then,  as opaque as the social relations which produce               them and which they re-present (Hebdige, 1982: 13).               It is this symbolic cultural ethos,   by which we mean the          style, world view, and mood (Hebdige,  1979),  that reflects the          postmodernist elements of the CU and separates it from modernism.          Modernist culture  is characterized especially  by rationality,          technological enhancement, deference to centralized control,  and          mass communication.   The emergence  of computer technology has          created dramatic changes in social communication, economic trans-          actions, and information processing and sharing, while simultane-          ously introducing new forms of surveillance, social control,  and                                         - 6 -