The Utilitarian: Kevin Mitnick

My hacker of choice, Kevin Mitnick, was one of the most successful and well known hackers ever. Some of you may consider my choice a no brainer considering his notoriety and the wealth of information available. It’s also possible you were expecting me to condemn the man because he had his way with telecomm networks, hacked numerous corporations, and socially engineered his way to reams of private information. At the height of his notoriety a New York Times article claimed he, “allegedly had access to trade secrets worth billions of dollars. He was a very big threat.” After some basic research it would be easy to form an opinion that Kevin Mitnick was an enemy of privacy; a digital pirate of the worst kind.

                I believe however that Mr. Mitnick’s actions were moral and largely ethical. After reading his book Ghost in in the Wires, it is evident that Mr. Mitnick is a prime example of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism doctrine. He didn’t hack for personal gain (money, notoriety, etc), but because it gave him pleasure. According to Bentham, this is referred to as “maximizing utility”, something our subject did from an early age. We are talking about a young man who tested for his GED so that he could leave high school behind and have more time for his hacking endeavors.  This same ethos, not academic goals, led him to college; to get access to mainframe computers.

                My use of the word “success” in the first sentence must be clarified:  not one of fast cars, wads of cash, or throngs of beautiful woman. This was the thrill of the hunt. Mitnick himself says of his beginnings, “The truth was, I broke into the phone system for the same reason another kid might break into an abandoned house down the block. The temptation to explore and find out what’s in there was too great.” In Bentham’s mind, hacking was just another way for this man to serve his “sovereign masters” of pleasure and pain.

                The doctrine of Utilitarianism doesn’t quite fit perfectly here because the pleasure vs. pain struggle is usually looked at from a large group standpoint (pleasure of many vs. the suffering of a few). How can we examine this hacker maximizing his utility vs. society as a whole? An excerpt of Michael Sandel’s book Justice provides us with a great starting point, “consider the way utilitarianism logic is applied in cost benefit analysis, a form of decision making that is widely used by governments and corporations.”

                What was the cost? Some would argue that hacking itself is “bad” or “not doing the right thing”. This is the virtue argument: stealing is a bad thing to do to others. Thievery exploits others and does not contribute to a societies greater good. This would be a credible argument, but despite the assertion by government prosecutors that he caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, there is no evidence of personal gain or profit from his activities.  No secrets were sold, money stolen, or lives ruined.  The man himself states, “Of course, the Feds had also found Netcom’s customer database that contained more than 20,000 credit card numbers on my computer, but I never attempted to use any of them; no prosecutor would ever be able to make a case against me on that score. I have to admit, I had liked the idea that I could use a different credit card every day for the rest of my life with ever running out. But I never had any intention of running up charges on them, and never did. That would be wrong.”

                What was the benefit? The wide spread attention this one man garnered woke the country and the world up to the need for greater digital security. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why your online accounts ask, “What is your favorite color?” or the representative on the phone asks fifteen questions to verify your identity. Ghost in the Wires is choc-a-block with humorous stories of a society unprepared to deal with digital threats. On such story involves cops frantically searching our subject’s car for a logic bomb. I want to believe that as a population we have moved forward; have met at least some of the threats that the digital world throws at us. Hacking offenses still occur every day, but not everyone is totally oblivious any longer.