SommyIn
another thread, I made reference to
the "Sommy" piece from
PLA #46. In retrospect I think this is a hilarious tale, definitely worth discussing.
What I like most about the Sommy story is that it nicely points up how at that particular time, any occurrence possibly involving hackers and privacy invasion (no matter how silly) could get blown completely out of proportion, with quick media attention and exhaustive coverage. Didn't matter if the story was complete bullshit, the wire services would pick it up and it would be broadcast everywhere.
The "Sommy" tale not only illustrates the misconceptions that average people have about the capabilities of so-called "hackers," "crackers," etc. but it also shows the extent of the 'techno-fear' that was so pervasive at that time. Yeah, it happened in Canada, but the attitude in the US was the same. It's apparent now that that anxiety was merely one of the growing pains associated with the expansion of the Internet, and digital technology rapidly overwhelming our lives and businesses. The story is so funny because it started out as just a teenaged kid pranking his own family, but the prank played right into the contemporary atmosphere of paranoia, so it ended up being a joke on the news media system, the police, so-called "experts," and by extension, the general public as well. A great metaphor for the entire "script kiddie" generation.
Today, tech crimes seem to be percieved in the public mind as little more than an annoyance when compared with the imagined danger of terrorist attacks. Our government has been passing laws that are far more invasive and restrictive to individual rights than crackers ever threatened to be, but few people seem to care. Even when it comes to the Internet, people are now much more concerned with online perverts and sex predators than some kid stealing their credit card information or bringing down the public utilities.
Hackers are 'old-hat.' A story like the Sommy one would hardly register a blip on the news today, like that
story of the cell phone hack. Unless it involves terrorist plots, the military, high-level finance or celebrities, nobody really pays attention to hacker stories anymore. I think it's a good thing that that particular innocence has been lost over the last 10 years. Now it's easy to look back and laugh at how scared people used to be of the potential represented by the computers sitting on their very own desktops.
