Academic Freedom And The Hacker Ethic By Tom Cross

Hacking has historically been associated with shady behavior or criminal connotations. It is very rare that a person condones hacking or thinks of it as anything other than a crime. However, in his article “Academic Freedom and the Hacker Ethic”, Tom Cross challenges us to redefine a hacker and what they actually do. He forces the audience to think as he states that “knowing how to do something that might be harmful is not the same as causing harm” (Cross, 38). Using this powerful statement, Cross uses his article to give the reader a new take on hacking. He proceeds to explain that often times, the information that we receive as a public is a result of hacking into government systems. He provides us with a new perspective as he divulges the

Cross encourages his audience to reject the notion that ignorance is bliss, that it makes you safer. He argues against the stereotype that hackers are criminals accessing information that does not belong to them by sharing the fact that “in the 1980’s, as computer networks grew and computer security problems grew with them, vendors, government agencies, and university labs kept software vulnerabilities secret from the general public, even as they quietly shared information with one another” (Cross, 39). Higher up agencies have always kept information from the general public. Why should we be denied the right to access knowledge that is directly relevant to us? Allowing these agencies to have power over what we can and cannot know is “threatening to produce regulations that deeply our personal and professional academic freedom” (Cross, 38) which impedes on our

I always believed that hacking was a bad thing done by malicious people. I now realize that thought there are bad hackers, many hackers follow an ethical code when acquiring information and deciding what to make of it. I have been able to pursue a lot of information largely in part because of hackers. As Cross says, “academic freedom should be restricted only as an absolute last resort, not as the fundamental basis of our national strategies for security and technological development in the 21st century” (Cross, 40) and after reading this article, I have both a new definition and appreciation for the term