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+ OP WOCKLY | SIWSCKIY.WULL | IYO Wo . DUatULY 2 a ULy ey Batwanye enscamian romney ‘@ increasingly bitter. Letters "Malicious hackers like to illustrate Letters to the Editor the impact of what happens when Week of April 16, 2003 they're ignored," says Douglas Thomas, an associate professor at the University of Southern California and the author of Hacker Culture, which explores the history and psychology of the movement. "The benevolent hacker says, ‘Your fly's open, here’s how to close it.' The thing I find interesting [about Adrian] is the idea of a hacker as a kind of consumer reporter on the world. He's doing a public service, finding these holes, and that seems to have a noble spirit to it.” But it's still a felony under several federal laws, most notably the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was passed in 1984 and has been amended several times since. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Attorney General! John Ashcroft strengthened that law, and others, through the Patriot Act, which expanded the government's powers to pursue alleged criminals online, listen to wiretaps, and monitor Internet usage. Although many in government and industry have downplayed the threat of cyberattacks from terrorist groups like al Qaeda, regular hackers do plenty of damage. According to the San Francisco-based Computer Security Institute's seventh annual Computer Crime and Security Survey -- which polis more than 500 U.S. corporations, government agencies, financial and medical institutions, and universities -- 90 percent of the respondents reported computer security breaches in 2002, and 80 percent said they suffered financial losses. The 223 respondents who were willing or able to quantify the damage done by hackers reported a grand total of $455 million in losses; the institute estimates that hackers did weil more than $1 billion of damage in the United States last year. "T'm not a jurist, but I recognize that what I'm doing is illegal, and T don't think the way I'm doing it makes it any righter than how anyone else would do it," Lamo says. “I'm sure someone somewhere has gotten fired because of what I do. These things happen. I've run networks myself and I've been intruded upon, so no one can say t don't know how it is. But as long as I'm doing it, I feel it's important to set a precedent so companies say, "You know, everything didn't go to hell after we let him go.’* Although Lamo seeks a cordial relationship with the companies he hacks -- some have even offered him a job, though he turns them down because he doesn't want peopie to think he's profiting from his expioits -- and takes pride in showing corporations his points of access, he's not naive enough to think his relative benevoience will get him off the hook. In fact, Lamo -- whe says with absolute sincerity, "I never assume I'm not being surveilied" -- even posted an anonymopis screed to an Internet discussion board in defense of the Patriot Act. "Many of you armchair attorneys genera! out there might not be so quick to fault the measures being taken now if you suddenly found yourseif saddled with the responsibility of securing the lives of millions of your fellow citizens,” he wrote. "As someone who does things that are illegal, I'd rather not have increased scrutiny. ... However, it's a no-win for a decision maker like Ashcroft. I don't know what I'd do if l were him. Neither do any of you. You FBI(19-€v-1495)-182 http://www .sfweekly.com/issues/2003-04-16/feature.html/2/index html 6/20/2003