Don’t Shoot, They Are Your Children!

Abstract

Hacker, as computing rather than golfing or riding slang, now has a permanent place in the public consciousness (although the French, as yet, have no official word for it). It is used pejoratively, as defined in the panel at right, in the public press, on the nightly TV news, in movies, and in the halls of Congress. Hacking is the theme of frequent weekend feature articles, the basis for periodic panicking of the public and industry by opportunistic security merchants, the permanent object of state and federal legislation, and the repeated subject of thoughtful discussion panels, like a recent one reported on in the April 1986 Communications of the ACM.