Never been one to let the carrier drop

So I was reading the Seattle Times today, and there’s a article on The Art Of Deception in which the author is whining about how Kevin doesn’t talk in the book about feeling any remorse for what he did.

And I’m thinking, here is someone who has completely missed the point. Kevin did NO damage, to anyone. He stole some credit card numbers, yes, but he never made a purchase. He stole some source code for some sensative parts of the cellular phone system, yes, but as far as I know he never made a phone call. And this person is complaining that – in the process of doing no damage, and increasing public awareness of the insecurity of systems all around us, Kevin has done something truly evil and should feel immense amounts of remorse.

I’ll tell you who should be feeling remorse. The CEOs of Enron, Worldcom, AOL/Time Warner, Qwest, and a half a dozen other large publicly traded companies. People who stole millions of dollars, often from their own employees. Bush, who’s trying very hard to start world war three. Other people of similar minds everywhere. The rich who got that way by robbing and exploiting the poor. The man who drives alone to work every day in his SUV, bringing WWIII [which will be fought over oil] that much closer.

Not Kevin Mitnik.

Feel guilty for figuring out how the system is broken? That doesn’t make any sense at all. You should feel guilty for abusing the ways the system is broken to get what you want, without any regards for how it hurts other people.

I could have just as easily been Kevin. Qaz could have just as easily been Kevin. I could make a long list of my friends who could have been Kevin. None of them are evil. You want to know where evil is? Look to the people running our country. Look to the police, incarcerating people for inhaling the smoke of a plant. Look to the automakers building ICE-powered cars when they know perfectly well how to make cars powered by more efficient means. Look to anyone who puts a fast buck now over bigger profits in the future.. or even having a future at all.

but don’t look at Kevin. Kevin has no reason to feel remorse. He’s paid dearly for his non-crimes, and the non-crimes of all of us who dare to look for holes, or dare to think outside the box.

tear it down!

S.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 11th, 2002 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.