hacker != cracker (Re: Swartz, Weev & radical libertarian lexicon)

[Adam Back]

On Tue, Jan 07, 2014 at 01:48:59PM -0800, coderman wrote:
>> Yes, annoying though that may be to those of us who were called hackers
>> before that became a bad thing. But we're outnumbered thousands-to-one, and
>> we're just not going to win that language war.
>
>use the term "independent security researcher",
>  your legal counsel will thank you!

A cryptographically secure pseudonym would probably work even better.  Weev
didnt actually do anything wrong that I could see, by any sane
interpretation of even something as egregious as CFAA and he's serving 41
months.  A lawyer is a last resort, step #1 is not identifying yourself even
for non-malicous research I suspect.  

Probably the biggest risk is the incompatibility of real-space bragging
rights to the discovery for people who like to speak at conferences.

Adam