Introduction
Cyberspace, the realm of computer networks, voice mail and long
distance telephone calls, is increasingly important in our lives.
Unfortunately, morally immature phreaks, cyberpunks and criminal
hackers are spoiling it for everyone. Security professionals must
speak out in the wider community and change the moral universe
to include cyberspace.
We are seeing today a period of exploration and development in
a new realm reminiscent of the colonization of North America by
Europeans. As in the American experience of the frontier, there
are colonists and Amerinds, soldiers and outlaws, priests and
thieves. The frontier is cyberspace: that immaterial world where
we have phone conversations; where credit card information travels
while we wait for approval of a purchase; where our medical records
and sometimes our credit records paint a picture of our pains.
For an increasing number of us, cyberspace is also the place we
meet new friends and keep in touch with old ones, learn more about
our hobbies and our professions, and work for social and environmental
change. Electronic bulletin board systems have mushroomed throughout
the world, ranging from country clubs like CompuServe and Prodigy
through the grungy cafés of the hacker underground and
on into the pullulating bazaar of the great Internet, where philosophers
rub shoulders with dropouts and where age, gender and race are
only as visible as you want them to be.
Unfortunately, the spectacular growth of cyberspace has not been
accompanied by rules for civilized behavior. Cyberspace at the
end of the twentieth century resembles the frontier at the beginning
of the eighteenth: bullies and criminals swagger electronically
through the commons, stealing what they want, breaking what they
don’t, and interfering with decent people’s
activities. Far from helping to set standards of mutual respect,
some government agencies have been acting like totalitarians rather
than democrats. For all these reasons, we citizens of cyberspace
must evolve guidelines for civilizing our new frontier.
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