http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47099,00.html A TV Plea for Patriot Hackers By Brian McWilliams 2:00 a.m. Sep. 26, 2001 PDT A new TV public service announcement targets U.S. computer hacktivists with a blunt message: Uncle Sam wants you to help fight the war on terrorism. But the spot, which organizers hope to begin airing nationwide next week on major networks, will warn that misguided patriotic efforts from software experts can hurt the cause. [...] The first of its kind to address the issue of hacking, the "Hackers Against Terrorism" spot will attempt to channel U.S. computer security gurus into productive rather than destructive action, said Parry Aftab, executive director of Cyberangels, an Internet safety and help organization that is sponsoring the ads. "The hacker community is very important in the fight against terrorism. But we want to get the message out that if they want to get busy doing good stuff, they should come to us and not try to take action on their own," said Aftab. [...] -------------------------------- A couple points: 1. Is this really the first anti-hacking PSA? I don't think so - I definitely remember anti piracy PSAs from the BSA. Have there been others? 2. 'Cyberangels' is (I think) the same group which a few years ago tried to claim to be leaders in the fight against online child porn. As desirable as protecting actual children may be, the group seemed astonishingly ignorant of the online world - one spokesman claiming that *.gif and *.jpg file extensions were codes which indicates hetero and homo kp respectively. I hope they've cleaned up their act since then. [I will note that their site SSL certificate for reporting online kp fails checking, since it's issued to 'stores.mindspring.com, not www.cyberangels.com]