The Birth of Computer Security and Espionage: The Cuckoo's Egg

Computer security has been a rising concern since the sixties.  There appears to be two sides on the information, or computer security, debate.  Governments wish to hold back information from other countries so that they have an advantage.  They argue that this makes their citizens and governing bodies safer.  It also protects their interests.  Hacktivists on the other hand, want to give this information for all to see and study.  Hacktivists hold that this is what actually promotes citizen's interests and will level the playing field for all people in the world.  After reading the Cuckoo's Egg, I was able to see the frustrating bureaucracy that one needs to go through to track down unethical programmers.  With all the privacy protections, the person tracking hackers has a much less chance of actually nailing the perpetrator.  For the case in the Cuckoo's Egg, the hackers were doing bad things like selling secrets to another country.  This action is even against the Hacker Manifesto where they are to give their findings to everyone, not just one or two entities.  I can now see why the government wanted to give the NSA more rights to find criminals. It is a difficult job and makes it harder to track down a hacker than to be one.  One important thing that was discussed in the Cuckoo's Egg is that people need to be able to trust that their information is safe.  It is a sad thing that some unethical programmers spend their whole lives learning how to break into systems when they could be benefitting everyone in the world with new computing technologies.  Some people have paranoia because their information may not be safe and it is hard to tell if it is safe.  The sad thing about this is that the government doesn't trust its citizens and the citizens don't trust their government.