It used to be so cute. A little snooping here…a smidge of copyright infringement there; most of us didn’t even notice. Things went on that way for a number of years. I’m too lazy to pin down exactly when hacking came to the attention of the populace, but I’d guess it was sometime around the release of The Matrix. I mean, Neo saved Morpheus, hacked Agent Smith, presumably boned Trinity and freed himself from the Matrix, all in about 90 minutes! The nerds of the world saw that shit and caught hacker fever.

So while most of us continued to waste countless Internet hours on AOL, Friendster, MySpace and eventually Facebook, hackers built a culture complete with its own beliefs, desires and language. Then they started picking targets.

In the last few years, the world saw a glut of once private information taken by hackers from companies and individuals alike. It’s been a liberating, informative, entertaining, painful, damaging and eye-opening run. Through it all, hackers have garnered fans and enemies.

For those who hate them, there are plenty of reasons to complain. Getting your credit card number jacked and posted on some hacker forum is not cool, and having your identity stolen can be a nightmare. While I can think of a few people who wouldn’t have a problem sending e-mails about Viagra and other dick-enhancing drugs, most people would prefer if those kinds of e-mails didn’t go out with their names on them.

Like the subject matter of their spam e-mails, hackers can be dicks. Reporters from an English newspaper owned by News Corp. (the parent company of Fox) hacked the cell phones of a kidnapped teen and the victim of a terrorist bombing. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the reporters even deleted messages to make room once the voice mail inbox was full. Police have a hard enough time finding the right people to punish; do we really need someone to make matters worse?

Of course, it’s not all bad; there are also good hackers. Some of these good hackers are called “white hats.” White hats use their knowledge and skills to improve the security of governments and businesses. They design programs to prevent hacking attacks or to stop them once they have been launched. These people are the reason why your computer works (most of the time) and why you have been getting away with using the same Hotmail password since 1998. These are all great things, but the white hats aren’t the only hackers doing good out there. Take Wikileaks, for example.

The information released by Wikileaks changed the world. Documents obtained by hackers and given to Wikileaks confirm our suspicions that the world is truly a fucked up place. We’ve learned that government leaders will say anything to appease the populace, even if they have no intention of following through with it. Their release has caused massive uprisings in Africa and the Middle East, toppling power structures that the west thought could not be moved.

When not talking politics, hackers are often delving into their other favorite areas: porn and music. The amount of free, hacked porn and music on the Internet is mind/ear/load blowing. When was the last time you bought a physical CD? Are you really buying every album on iTunes? Aren’t you glad you don’t have to go through the embarrassment of renting porn at a video store? Before free, hacked porn, I was forced to watch porn between the squiggles of cable channels to which I hadn’t subscribed. It was ridiculous; tits and elbows were virtually identical. I still mix them up. The elbow is the one with the nipple right?

Hackers have brought the ultimate elbow-nipple-twister to pinch us out of our long techno-slumber. Our eyes are finally open and we have questions…questions like: “Can you please not hack me?” “Is it cool if I blame you for my accidentally released dick pic?” “Why did you have to send my grandma that penis pump e-mail?” and “If you happen to hack Citibank again, will you please delete my student loan?” You know, the important stuff.

By Bocephus Chigger
bocephus@submergemag.com

So this Australian dude published hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables on his website WikiLeaks last week. More than 250,000 classified dispatches to U.S. embassies around the world revealed the United States’ positions on numerous world leaders, instructions to diplomats to spy on UN leaders and calls from Saudi Arabia for U.S. air strikes on Iran. Is it me, or is Saudi Arabia somehow involved every time some country pulls a dick move? Anyway, from what I can tell, this means two things: more egg on the face of the United States, who just seemed to regain a little respect once the last asshole was replaced as president; and also, a whole lot of reading.

That’s a lot of “cables” to pore through. When I first read the term “cables,” I immediately thought of an old man reading the feed from a telegraph machine. “President of Pakistan is a complete douchebag. Stop.” You know, something like that.

I haven’t been to the WikiLeaks website. Mostly because I don’t want my IP address to get flagged, or wake up one morning to find a “surprise” cache of child pornography on my hard drive and vanloads of feds at my door. I mean, it’s a free country, so that couldn’t happen, right? I’m not a character in The Bourne Identity. I’m not that good-looking.

I figured the best course of action was to just get a rundown on the WikiLeaks debacle by perusing real news sites and seeing what they had to say about it. Should be easy enough. If these cables were so damaging, the Internet should be abuzz with facts and punditry. But my first cursory search only revealed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was in deep shit–and not just for posting U.S. government secrets on his fancy blog. Apparently, he’s under suspicion for raping a couple of Swedish women–just like the last time he took a leak on the Internet.

That’s a bit of an exaggeration. He supposedly raped one of them and only molested the other, but serial rapist is so much more exciting.

Currently, Assange’s whereabouts are unknown, but the most recent article I could find at the time of this writing on Reuters mentioned that he’s likely in the United Kingdom “but [British authorities] have refrained so far from acting on an international warrant for his arrest, a British newspaper said on Thursday [Dec. 2].” Earlier in the same week, Interpol (not that Interpol) issued a “red alert” to authorities to aid in Assange’s arrest. He is wanted under suspicion of sexual crimes, but no charges have been filed at this time. The alleged incident took place in August 2010 when Assange was visiting in Sweden, and he, of course, denies the allegations.

I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories. I didn’t like the man, but I don’t think President Bush was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or that he knew about them in advance. I have a hard time believing Mr. Bush “knows” anything, but that’s another matter. And yes, I saw Loose Change, and yes, I did think it was fucked up. But it still wasn’t enough to make me barricade myself in an attic wearing a tinfoil hat.

However, am I the only one who finds the timing of this Interpol arrest warrant a little convenient? It doesn’t exactly take WikiLeaks out of the headlines, but it does deflect the focus of the reporting a little bit. If this isn’t merely coincidence (and what a coincidence!), I have to say rape charges are the way to go. Even murder–at times–can be rationalized. You could say, “Oh, but it was self defense,” or, “He slept with my wife, and I just snapped.” These murders may still be crimes, but fair-minded people could say, “Well, he was pushed to the breaking point. Who knows how any of us would react to that?” You can’t really go that way with rape. You can’t say, “Well, I raped her for her own good,” or, “There was no way to defend myself other than to rape her.” You could, I guess, but you wouldn’t find many sympathetic ears–except from other rapists.

Assange’s arrest warrant nabbed the top spot on Google News Wednesday, Dec. 1 as of this writing with upward of 4,000 related articles. Good thing for Assange (and the United States) that no one’s actually going to take the time to read all that.