I'm going to be honest straight away, I'm not 100% if I actually stand by anything that I say in this post. Maybe I was just in one of those moods when I wrote it, idk. But, ultimately I have decided to post it. Better to have made something that I'm not 100% satisfied with, than not have made this post at all.
Now that I'm rewatching SAC, and have been contemplating my life choices, I think that I might actually be (have been?) in a Stand Alone Complex.
Since I was young, I've wanted to be a hacker. One of the cool ones like in the movies. One who goes: "Click, Clack, Hack - I'm in!"
For a while I did try to achieve that. But I've given up. For now at least. But it'll probably be forever, now that AI automation has taken over the industry.
I'm still active in some cybersecurity places though. I like hearing all the crazy things that people get up to at DEFCON.
The tales I hear now though, aren't anything like what I heard when I was younger. And from what I heard from when I was younger, I now know that a lot of it was greatly embellished or had the bad parts omitted when the tale was told.
This brings me to the whole SAC thing.
For those who don't know, a stand alone complex is a series of copycat actors, without there ever being an original to copy from.
Those hackers in the movies? They're portrayed as being a sort of based on reality figures. But they're not connected to reality at all.
By wanting to be a real-life, meatspace hacker, inspired by those in the movies, I'm unwittingly copying something that never existed.
The hackers that I look up to, like those in the movie "Hackers" (greatest film of all time btw), are just folks who mess around with computers because they like to mess around with computers, and at the same time are anti authority because authority doesn't like it when you mess around. But these guys aren't causing a fuss. They don't go out of their way to hurt people. They don't steal steam accounts of regular guys.
I haven't heard of someone like that in a while. I don't know if it's just because those people no longer hit the news feeds because of all the crazy stuff going on in the world at the moment, but I've heard an uncomfortable number of tales of people going to work for the corps and the feds.
The corps and the feds are the ones going after you because of your desire to retain your privacy.
Because they don't want you to be able to repair and modify your computer because they get less money out of your wallet.
Why work for them, when they stand opposed to everything a hacker stands for?
I was listening to a podcast the other day. It was a woman who was investigating badboxes and discovered they were exfiltrating data to China. She then turned everything over to the feds and worked with them for ages. They're just going to do the same, unethical and shitty things but to some other country and people for some made up reason.
Also, she worked in the oil and gas industry. 70% percent of the worlds CO2 emissions come from just 100 companies, and they're mostly oil and gas. (Last time I checked at least) So yeah, she's working with and for the bad guys alright.
Like, the stuff she was doing with her networking skills was super interesting. So was the investigation into the badboxes and what they were potentially capable of.
But it just seems like all the people behind these cool things don't carry with them the strong ethics and morals that they should be.
And so, that's how I'm in a SAC.
I'm a copy of a thing that never existed. A hacker with morals. Idk. That doesn't sound very good. I do know other hackers who are cool. But yeah, they're not really public with anything. Their hacking is using linux and making homelabs and self hosting. And I'm all for it. Go for it.
If you want to see a hacker who actually does still fight for justice, may I recommend you look into Maia Arson Crimew.
It currently has an arrest warrant out for it from the FBI/CIA (can't remember which), for releasing the no-fly list, and works to expose spyware companies through investigative journalism.