“The Greatest Crime Syndicate since the Gambinos”: A Hacker Critique of Government, Law, and Law Enforcement

Abstract

The current study presents a content analysis of articles, editorials, short stories, and book reviews from the widely read and disseminated hacker zine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, which were examined for author discussions of governments, law, law enforcement, and government officials. A total of five themes were uncovered. The first three themes are part of a hacker critique of governments that describe these institutions as controlling, as incompetent or inadequate, and as creators of collateral damage. Then, exceptions to the hacker critique are presented and their significance assessed. Finally, solutions to the problems the authors discuss are presented.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Graduate Standards and Admissions Committee for the fellowship opportunity that permitted this research to take place. The authors also thank Melissa Petkovsek and Carl Root for their invaluable comments and criticisms.

Notes

¹The authors of articles within 2600 are largely assumed to be hackers. It is entirely possible, however, that articles may be written by those who may not necessarily be considered hackers either by themselves or the hacker community at large. This analysis, to avoid confusing terminology and unnecessary ambiguity, treats all of the authors as if they are hackers.

²A “zine” is a self-published magazine with a typically small circulation among a niche population.

³Because pseudonyms are often used to provide some level of anonymity for the writers, it is impossible to provide a breakdown of demographic characteristics of the authors. Identifying characteristics like gender, race, age, and geographic location would be an act of speculation at best. The reader should be aware that while the zine has a global reach, the audience largely seems to be U.S.-centric.

*Some authors were included that may be duplicates with slight variations on names like kaige and kaigeX. Omitting duplicates bringing the number to 608.

⁴Of course, a distinction made by the authors of 2600 is that exchange of information should occur freely except that the government should act to protect private or personal information. This is an interesting contradiction which should be explored in subsequent research.

⁵For greater explications of and debate over contradictions in belief systems, refer to Franks (2003) and Samson (2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin F. Steinmetz

KEVIN F. STEINMETZ is a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University. His research interests include critical theory, computer-mediated deviance, political resistance, and field research.

Jurg Gerber

JURG GERBER is a Professor of criminal justice and Director of International Initiatives in the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University. For the last twelve years he has also served as Professeur Invité at the University of Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland) and he spent academic year 2000/01 as a Fulbright Scholar at Kaliningrad State University, in Kaliningrad, Russia. His research interests include white-collar crime, criminology, drug control policy, and international criminal justice issues. He has co-edited two books on drug policy, one on white-collar crime, and he has published extensively in all of the above areas.