Networks of Trust and Distrust

Clifford Stole's The Cuckoo's Egg left me with a lot to contemplate. Stole's conclusion that hacking in all forms is bad and that trust is sufficient raises the question if this really is a viable option for today's internet. Looking at the recent events with the NSA, the use of private data by corporations, and the massive growth of the internet, I think not. In fact, I believe the scrutiny that hackers apply to the system is crucial to helping ensure that consumers are protected and power is not being abused.

The leaked NSA files by Edward Snowden are still slowly trickling out and each revelation exposes just how deep the intrusion of NSA programs is into the personal lives of both American citizens and non-citizens. From email metadata to tracking people in online games, the NSA has shown that there is little respect for privacy when it comes to internet surveillance. The ability of hackers and info-sec researchers to explore, discover, and even counteract these surveillance mechanism seems like a worthy, perhaps even necessary, practice in the modern age.  Much of the same applies for corporations who may abuse data without knowledge of the consumer. A recent episode that comes to mind is the social network Path who unknowingly uploaded the address book of iPhone users when installing their app. The abuse was discovered by a "hacker", who was trying to reverse engineer their API.

As the internet has grown, it is not enough to just "trust" that the network is safe, secure, or even protected by the organizations that created it. If anything, the government has proven to be the least trustworthy entity through the systematic destruction of privacy on the internet. Certainly, hackers who exist purely to annoy, pester, and scam entities on the internet are a scourge to the system. However, there are many positive aspects to the hacker culture. The pursuit of transparency, knowledge, and discovery have resulted in (arguably) positive results, helping systems become more secure, exposing corruption, and supporting worthy causes.