Hacker Perspectives on Privacy

     For this blog I have chosen to discuss a research article titled "It Doesn't Have to Be This Way" Hacker Perspectives on Privacy. The goal of this research was to determine how hackers generally feel about privacy and surveillance. It begins by giving information on public perception of hackers and how they are viewed as internet addicted, information junkies, who do not care about privacy in their obsessive thirst for knowledge. The point of the research is to find out how true that belief really is. In order to find this out, the researchers performed a content analysis of the US-based magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. This is a publication that features articles written by hackers and is well recognized and even considered historically significant by the hacker community. The researchers studied the perceptions of privacy that was expressed in the writings found in 41 issues of this journal, spanning a period of just over 10 years, from 2002 to 2012.  They used a theory-based analytical approach to sift through the data and analyze their results.

       They found many themes in their analysis and chose to focus on the four most significant as their results. These themes are dualisms, responsibility to protect privacy, ubiquity of threats to privacy, and the role hackers play to protect privacy. Dualism, being the most prevalent, is about how people or organizations can be seen both as a protector and a threat. This conception is especially regarded toward the government and law enforcement. The government has the responsibility of protecting us, but many hackers show concern about “Big Brother” watching and gathering up information on its citizens.  Next is responsibility, which reflects the attitude of how those who possess data are responsible for this protection. This view also states that if you work somewhere where privacy is being invaded, you are supposed to refuse to take part in it and report on them. The next theme is about the idea that threats to privacy are ubiquitous, or found everywhere. It has been found that many hackers believe that privacy threats are not only abundant, but increasing at an alarming rate. The last theme is about the role hacker’s play in discovering vulnerabilities. This is the idea that hackers make privacy safer by exploiting weaknesses and making them known so they can be fixed. Several other smaller, less significant themes have also been found, but for the purpose of trimming down my blog, I will not mention them.

       Based off the most prevalent themes I would say that hackers view themselves as altruistic protectors and champions of privacy. They all seem to value their own privacy and will protest any invasion they come across. But what is most interesting to me is how they justify their breaches of privacy against others. They do this by saying that you would not have known about the weakness if they had not found it for you and that somebody else would have stumbled across it anyways. This rationalization is strengthened by the belief that attacks are coming nonstop and sooner or later somebody will find your weak spot. I do find myself agreeing with that philosophy myself, given my focus on information security and I do feel that those skilled in the field have an obligation to used their abilities responsibly. But I also feel that if they are intruding on anybody’s privacy without consent, then they are committing a crime and I would not be able to take seriously any claims they might make about doing it as a champion of privacy.

References:
Steinmetz, K. (2015). "It Doesn't Have to Be This Way": Hacker Perspectives on Privacy. Social Justice, 41(3), 29-51.