The Hacker Crackdown Part 14

The NATO a.s.sociation.

Neon Knights.

Nihilist Order.

Order Of The Rose.

OSS.

Pacific Pirates Guild.

Phantom Access a.s.sociates.

PHido PHreaks.

The Phirm.

Phlash.

PhoneLine Phantoms.

Phone Phreakers Of America.

Phortune 500.

Phreak Hack Delinquents.

Phreak Hack Destroyers.

Phreakers, Hackers, And Laundromat Employees Gang (PHALSE Gang).

Phreaks Against Geeks.

Phreaks Against Phreaks Against Geeks.

Phreaks and Hackers of America.

Phreaks Anonymous World Wide.

Project Genesis.

The Punk Mafia.

The Racketeers.

Red Dawn Text Files.

Roscoe Gang.

SABRE.

Secret Circle of Pirates.

Secret Service.

707 Club.

Shadow Brotherhood.

Sharp Inc.

65C02 Elite.

Spectral Force.

Star League.

Stowaways.

Strata-Crackers.

Team Hackers '86.

Team Hackers '87.

TeleComputist Newsletter Staff.

Tribunal Of Knowledge.

Triple Entente.

Turn Over And Die Syndrome (TOADS).

300 Club.

1200 Club.

2300 Club.

2600 Club.

2601 Club.

2AF.

The United Soft WareZ Force.

United Technical Underground.

Ware Brigade.

The Warelords.

WASP.

Contemplating this list is an impressive, almost humbling business.

As a cultural artifact, the thing approaches poetry.

Underground groups--subcultures--can be distinguished from independent cultures by their habit of referring constantly to the parent society. Undergrounds by their nature constantly must maintain a membrane of differentiation.

Funny/distinctive clothes and hair, specialized jargon, specialized ghettoized areas in cities, different hours of rising, working, sleeping. . . . The digital underground, which specializes in information, relies very heavily on language to distinguish itself. As can be seen from this list, they make heavy use of parody and mockery.

It's revealing to see who they choose to mock.

First, large corporations. We have the Phortune 500, The Chief Executive Officers, Bellcore, IBM Syndicate, SABRE (a computerized reservation service maintained by airlines). The common use of "Inc." is telling-- none of these groups are actual corporations, but take clear delight in mimicking them.

Second, governments and police. NASA Elite, NATO a.s.sociation.

"Feds R Us" and "Secret Service" are fine bits of fleering boldness.

OSS--the Office of Strategic Services was the forerunner of the CIA.

Third, criminals. Using stigmatizing pejoratives as a perverse badge of honor is a time-honored tactic for subcultures: punks, gangs, delinquents, mafias, pirates, bandits, racketeers.

Specialized orthography, especially the use of "ph" for "f"

and "z" for the plural "s," are instant recognition symbols.

So is the use of the numeral "0" for the letter "O"

--computer-software orthography generally features a slash through the zero, making the distinction obvious.

Some terms are poetically descriptive of computer intrusion: the Stowaways, the Hitchhikers, the PhoneLine Phantoms, Coast-to-Coast.

Others are simple bravado and vainglorious puffery.

(Note the insistent use of the terms "elite" and "master.") Some terms are blasphemous, some obscene, others merely cryptic-- anything to puzzle, offend, confuse, and keep the straights at bay.

Many hacker groups further re-encrypt their names by the use of acronyms: United Technical Underground becomes UTU, Farmers of Doom become FoD, the United SoftWareZ Force becomes, at its own insistence, "TuSwF," and woe to the ignorant rodent who capitalizes the wrong letters.

It should be further recognized that the members of these groups are themselves pseudonymous. If you did, in fact, run across the "PhoneLine Phantoms," you would find them to consist of "Carrier Culprit," "The Executioner," "Black Majik,"

"Egyptian Lover," "Solid State," and "Mr Icom."

"Carrier Culprit" will likely be referred to by his friends as "CC," as in, "I got these dialups from CC of PLP."