>On his LinkedIn page, Mr. Milner lists his occupation as “hacker,” and under the category called “Specialties,” his entry reads, “I know more than I want to about Wi-Fi.”
I am more than moderately offended/troubled/irked by this excerpt, as it appears to deliberately depict the engineer as a "hacker" in the sense of Hollywood culture, rather than "hacker" as we know it in makers' terms.
In the wrong hands, the English language is much more potent and destructive than any programming language. An English Specialist can often cause more harm than a Wi-Fi Specialist.
I've long thought that trying to adopt "hacker" as a professional term was a bad idea. I told friends that I was going to a government hackathon once, and they thought I was going to be arrested.
Why do we have to be hackers? What was wrong with being developers?
Because society took both hacker and developer and changed their meaning.
But the article (and my anecdotal experiences) are proof that this hasn't actually happened. We decided to call ourselves 'hackers', but society as a whole doesn't.
given a choice criminal sounds cooler then wage slave.
I think that's my main problem with "hacker". It's an attempt to be cool.
In the wrong hands, deep knowledge of Wi-Fi can be far more destructive than the conventional methods of a non-technical journalist. It's a new level of power in snooping.
It's a good thing journalists generally do no have Milner's level of knowledge, as surely they too would abuse it. Maybe even worse than Google. Milner's comment reflects the power of the knowledge he has. He has to take some responsibility for it.
Both Google engineers and NYT journalists do snooping on others for a living.
They are just at odds with each other, for various reasons; engineers for companies like Google generally do not like journalists and generally the same is true vice versa.
Google has a genuine PR problem. And journalists are watching their careers disintegrate with the advance of communications technology. It's an amusing little spat to watch.
Given that he developed a "wardriving" application, black hat connotations are not entirely unreasonable. The use of his talents to hoover up data without permission certainly doesn't offer much in the way of defense, either.
Ha, your parent post could almost have been written about your post too.
Looking past the scare quotes, according to the FCC report it was just Kismet, and the problem basically just came down to deciding to write the non encrypted payloads to disk. He might know too much about wifi, but probably half the regular HN posters could have implemented the same system, if they chose to.
I know Kismet exists. I know I can install and run it. I know I can even break wi-fi encryption in some cases. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do this, for commercial purposes, for a company like Google.
Comments
>On his LinkedIn page, Mr. Milner lists his occupation as “hacker,” and under the category called “Specialties,” his entry reads, “I know more than I want to about Wi-Fi.”
I am more than moderately offended/troubled/irked by this excerpt, as it appears to deliberately depict the engineer as a "hacker" in the sense of Hollywood culture, rather than "hacker" as we know it in makers' terms.
In the wrong hands, the English language is much more potent and destructive than any programming language. An English Specialist can often cause more harm than a Wi-Fi Specialist.
I've long thought that trying to adopt "hacker" as a professional term was a bad idea. I told friends that I was going to a government hackathon once, and they thought I was going to be arrested.
Why do we have to be hackers? What was wrong with being developers?
I think it's almost like a secret handshake. If someone understands what I mean when I say "hacker" I respect them a little more.
Because society took both hacker and developer and changed their meaning.
Hackers became criminals and developers were Javabean coding wage slaves... given a choice criminal sounds cooler then wage slave.
Because society took both hacker and developer and changed their meaning.
But the article (and my anecdotal experiences) are proof that this hasn't actually happened. We decided to call ourselves 'hackers', but society as a whole doesn't.
given a choice criminal sounds cooler then wage slave.
I think that's my main problem with "hacker". It's an attempt to be cool.
Developer !== Hacker
Developer != Hacker
!== == Javascript programmer
In the wrong hands, deep knowledge of Wi-Fi can be far more destructive than the conventional methods of a non-technical journalist. It's a new level of power in snooping.
It's a good thing journalists generally do no have Milner's level of knowledge, as surely they too would abuse it. Maybe even worse than Google. Milner's comment reflects the power of the knowledge he has. He has to take some responsibility for it.
Both Google engineers and NYT journalists do snooping on others for a living.
They are just at odds with each other, for various reasons; engineers for companies like Google generally do not like journalists and generally the same is true vice versa.
Google has a genuine PR problem. And journalists are watching their careers disintegrate with the advance of communications technology. It's an amusing little spat to watch.
Given that he developed a "wardriving" application, black hat connotations are not entirely unreasonable. The use of his talents to hoover up data without permission certainly doesn't offer much in the way of defense, either.
Ha, your parent post could almost have been written about your post too.
Looking past the scare quotes, according to the FCC report it was just Kismet, and the problem basically just came down to deciding to write the non encrypted payloads to disk. He might know too much about wifi, but probably half the regular HN posters could have implemented the same system, if they chose to.
"if they chose to"
Precisely.
I know Kismet exists. I know I can install and run it. I know I can even break wi-fi encryption in some cases. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do this, for commercial purposes, for a company like Google.
Yes, it comes down to a choice, not scary hackers. That's what I wrote. Maybe I'm not understanding your point?
My point was that I agree with what you said. Nothing more.
Quotation marks indicate my skepticism of the term due to its use by DOJ in building their case.
Engaging in questionable behavior which others with similar skills forgo is what distinguishes black hat from white hat hacking.