Format

The 2002 cover formats were a wide variety of styles, all quite relevant to what was going on in the hacker world at the time.

The Autumn issue was again labeled as "Fall" in 2002.  The page length remained at 60 pages.  The contents had the following unique titles:

Little messages were once again found on Page 3 starting with the Summer issue, hidden in tiny print within the contents.

The messages were as follows:

Letters titles continued to be unique with each issue:

Covers

Cover Concept and Photo credits were as follows:

Mike Essl was credited for Cover Design for each issue.

Inside

The staff section had credits for Editor-In-Chief, Layout and Design, Cover Concept and Photo (just Cover Photo for Winter), Cover Design, Office Manager, Writers, Webmaster (plural beginning in Fall), Web Assistance (only in Spring and Summer), Network Operations (not in Fall), Special Projects (only in Spring), Broadcast Coordinators, and IRC Admins.

A "Reinforcement" credit was added for Spring, probably as a sequel to the previous issue's "Enforcement" credit.  

The staff section remained on Page 2 throughout the year except for Spring when it appeared on Page 4.

The Statement of Ownership was printed on Page 5 in the Fall edition.

We continued to have fun with Page 33, a Y2K leftover.

Spring had the page number in the Wingdings font, Summer was Roman numerals for 33, Fall simply had 33 dots, and Winter had an upside down and faded image of "Winter 2002-2003."

Unique quotes continued to be printed in the staffbox of each issue:

Spring:  "I realize that this bill basically says you can tap someone's phone for jaywalking, and normally I would say, 'No way.'  But after what happened on September 11th, I say screw 'em." - Dana Lee Dembrow, Democratic member of the Maryland House of Delegates explaining her approval of a new bill that would greatly expand the ability of authorities to monitor e-mail and telephone traffic.  Jaywalkers beware.

Summer:  "People who go to places of worship, people who go to libraries, people who are in chat rooms, are going to have 'Big Brother' listening in even though there's no evidence that they are involved in anything illegal whatsoever." - Laura Murphy, spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union on the new surveillance powers given to the FBI.

Fall:  "What amazes me is that there are thousands of people who could have been whistle-blowers, from the boards of directors to corporate insiders to the accounting firms to the lawyers working for these firms to the credit-rating agencies.  All these people!  Would a despotic dictatorship have been more efficient in silencing them and producing the perverse incentives for them all to keep quiet?  The system is so efficient that there's total silence.  I mean, the Soviet Union had enough dissidents to fill Gulags." - Ralph Nader on the continuing corporate crime wave in the United States.

Winter:  "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.  That is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.  It works the same in any country." - Hermann Göering, Hitler's designated successor, before being sentenced to death at the (((Nuremberg trials))).

2002 was the year we saw our fights expand on a global scale.  The concerns that once seemed to only affect the hacker world were now of concern to everyone.  "Our rights as individuals are either being wiped away to benefit some corporate interest or being severely compromised in the name of September 11."  It was no longer just our worst nightmare.  It was now everyone's.  "With each passing day it seems there's some other horrendous piece of legislation on its way to becoming law."

The USA PATRIOT Act was reality.  Our government had seemingly gone mad with crackdowns and restrictions.  We knew that "...we can't let the bad guys win and change the way we live.  but in the next breath, we're being told to change everything about the way we live."  Our long held suspicions helped to prepare us for this, but for many others, it was new territory.  Hackers found themselves being thought of as both targets and advisors.  With that, we saw an opportunity.  "Unlike legislators and unlike those who have become swallowed up by the 'industry,' we have an understanding of the technology and the ability and desire to communicate with others outside our world.  What better way to translate the evils of these new laws into terms that even one's grandmother could understand?"

And the bad ideas and horrible legislation continued: "The PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security color scheme, Operation TIPS, Total Information Awareness, etc."  It seemed unending at times.  "While public pressure has yet to kill [Total Information Awareness], it's probably one of the few things that can.  Public ridicule has already put an end to the TIA logo - a pyramid with an all seeing eye within it, apparently looking out over the globe."

Then there was the troubling "reorganization" of the FBI.  "Agents may now attempt to infiltrate organizations even when there is no sign of any criminal activity - just to keep an eye on things.'  And we were right in the crosshairs: "According to a Fox News report on May 30, 2002: 'The FBI's top new marching orders will focus on terrorists, spies, and hackers, in that order.'"  (In a humorous aside, we had actually been contacted by the FBI earlier in the year after our website was rerouted to cybercrime.gov.  They wanted to help us find out who did it.  Of course, we already knew, seeing that the date was April 1st.)

In addition to the threats to our basic freedoms that had names like Carnivore and Magic Lantern, we also saw challenges to online broadcasters, digital technology, file sharing, and indecency.  "It's easy to become completely overwhelmed by all of this and, as a defense mechanism, to simply shut down and stop paying attention."  Fortunately, we had some experience defying the authorities and challenging injustice in recent years: "The secret that is being kept from most is that people power does work, that activism is effective, and that 'eternal vigilance' means continuous action, not simply quoted words."

We made plans to cover much of this at our newest upcoming conference in July called H2K2, the sequel to 2000's H2K.

But it wasn't all about fighting for our survival.  We continued to cover developments in the hacker world, running articles on such things as hacking Switchboard.com, AppleTalk security, the takeover of @Home by Comcast, and holes in the CampusWide access system.

Freedom Downtime, our documentary on the plight of Kevin Mitnick, was finally available on videotape.  "We needed to make sure we covered the legal bases with regards to the music we used since suing us has become corporate America's latest sport."  We also announced plans to make a DVD version in the future and issued a call for translators so we could also provide captions in foreign languages.  We planned for it to be released in 2003.

In legal matters, Dmitry Sklyarov won his case against the DMCA as the jury found there was no intent.  This was a much needed shot in the arm and "proof that determination and standing by one's convictions can ultimately lead to victory."  It reaffirmed our faith in humanity.  "The general public can get it, they do tend to value the things that we do, and they are most definitely not the enemy."

We also celebrated the recent victory in our Ford lawsuit and addressed the repercussions and importance of that.  And, even though we were no longer the target, we felt compelled to take a stand against developments like the war on music sharing that corporate America was leading.  We noted that the movie industry managed to have record profits, despite their claims that piracy was running rampant.  It really felt like the gloves were off in the battle between individuals and corporations.  We even came up with a t-shirt to go along with all of the lawsuits and legal threats we were the subject of recently.  We called it our corporate lawsuit t-shirt.

Of course, in addition to the legal threats against us and people like us, there was plenty of wrongdoing we were able to point to that also incurred the wrath of our adversaries.  We debated methods of fighting advertising companies that tracked movements of individuals on the net.  We uncovered a sleazy marketing ploy by MCI.  We expressed our concern over ISPs apparently monitoring what users downloaded.  This tied into one of our basic philosophies: "Individuals need to have some control over their private data - and some choice in how it's made available."

Telecommunications surveillance was a recurring concern.  Spam was a growing problem.  But the one thing we wanted to avoid was more government regulation of the Internet, even if it was designed to reduce spam.  We simply didn't want - or need - their help: "Spam does need to be fought but we believe it can be done using available technical means."  The same was true for telemarketers.

Throughout it all, we called for company leaks in order to expose what was really going on in various places, believing that "openness is a more powerful force than control."  We tried to balance the need for privacy with the need to expose security holes.  And we acknowledged the risk involved with revealing this kind of info: "Looking back in history, it was always a relatively small group of people who brought about change and they never had a pleasant time doing it."

Articles were published on cable modem hacking, methods of destroying CDs safely and effectively, and right-click suppression.  We outlined the latest Windows NT bugs, discussed security issues with Cisco routers, focused on the threat posed by KaZaA clients, and printed a comprehensive guide to the Afghan phone system.  We also had tips on how to send anonymous faxes, as well as how to set up a web server at home and get away with it.  This was necessary because web servers were prohibited for many consumers, including customers of Rogers, leading us to conclude that "Internet access via a cable modem is not true Internet access."  Rather than sign up with big and increasingly restrictive companies that didn't really care about privacy and only were in it to make a buck, we encouraged people to sign up with something closer to home.  "This is yet another reason to support your local Internet Service Provider who will generally not get in your way as to how you choose to use the net."  Whenever possible, we believed people should run their own sites.

We also printed a really complete guide to 802.11b wireless networks and had it become part of our Summer cover, which mapped out the area of the upcoming H2K2 conference.  Once again, our HOPE conference proved to be inspirational and demonstrated how important it was to "find and link up with people outside our immediate sphere of interest."  We planned to post audio online after going through all of the talks that were given.  We took special pride in being inclusive enough to welcome people who had previously thought of themselves as outsiders.  "So many people - attendees and speakers alike - didn't initially consider themselves to be part of the hacker world and yet they meshed so perfectly."

We shared info on how to get around website blockers, which were increasingly being used against us.  And we even defiantly printed an article on how to make a DVD backup, demonstrating how the DMCA lawsuit against us for publishing DeCSS code was never about copying, but always about control.

On the subject of that lawsuit, we had to make the painful decision to not appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court due to the bad precedent a loss there might have established.  Nevertheless, we felt victorious from helping to educate people on the risks of the DMCA.  And we had lots of others to thank: "We'd like to say that our early battle with the DMCA was what started to wake people up.  But it wouldn't be fair to those people who really did that job - the MPAA, the RIAA, and all of the other corporate and government colluders who joined forces to establish a stranglehold on the technology and dupe the public."  We may have lost in court, but in the streets we had opened up lots of eyes and people were now talking about something they had never even heard of before.  Surely, this was not the outcome our opponents had anticipated.  "The industries that embrace the DMCA have fallen into disrepute with the general public as their true motives of sheer greed become more and more obvious."

We gave advice to people with ruined credit reports and offered our opinion on a band that wanted to call itself "2600."  We revealed some of the hidden 2600 references in Hackers and a Free Kevin presence in Grand Theft Auto III, and confronted a continuing problem with blank pages appearing in our issues.  A reader reported on an eBay nightmare with no customer support and a compromised account.  We clarified our meeting guidelines to newcomers and got into raging discussions over libertarian principles and the electoral college.  We somehow got involved in campaigns to save Futurama and bring back Family Guy.  And we had positive reaction to an "invisible" peace sign that had been hidden in the Fall 2001 cover.

Letters from people dealing with injustices of one sort or another continued to pile in.  We learned of a passenger who was pulled off of a plane for reading our magazine, described as a "terrorist pamphlet."  We didn't take that lightly: "The idea that you can be taken off a plane because some dimwit doesn't understand your reading material should be considered an affront to every freethinking person alive."  A reader had his car searched by police after they saw copies of 2600 in his back seat.  High school kids continued to get persecuted in class for being too smart.  "The great offense is doing something that the people in charge didn't understand.  Unfortunately, in most high schools, that applies to almost anything that happens after the power is turned on."  One student was even disciplined for having a copy of WinZip in their directory.  And there was overall outrage over a new (((PBS))) kids' show called Cyberchase, which actually had a villain with the name of "Hacker."

Former Attorney General Janet Reno was caught making stupid remarks about hackers at a college event.  Meanwhile, the mass media continued spreading inaccurate characterizations of hackers, which wound up having an adverse effect on our community.  We noticed that media outlets "go on the air and print stories saying that hackers go around stealing things and then the people who go around stealing things see this and start calling themselves hackers."  It was turning into a real problem.  "The mass media is very capable and very good at creating images that aren't really there or that perhaps only exist in their own narrow eyes."

And, of course, we were faced with constant pressure by those who thought of hackers as some kind of military force that could be used against any perceived enemy - and that it was our patriotic duty to turn them in that direction.  We resisted this with gusto and warned of the dangers of oversimplification.  "The real enemies are the ones who are trying to change the rules and wipe away any semblance of due process that hasn't already been destroyed - all in the name of their twisted definition of patriotism."  We maintained that hackers don't usually work out well in the military due to their fierce individualism and tendency to ask too many questions.

Naturally, there were plenty of instances where hacker ingenuity could shed light on mysteries.  For instance, we thought a digital timecode of a recently obtained Osama bin Laden tape might shed some light on its authenticity among other things.  Not surprisingly, the U.S. government refused to share that.  "In this age where the truth is fleeting and mass manipulation is common, the ability to detect when something doesn't make sense is a valuable one."  It was also rather revealing when certain entities didn't want the truth to come out.  "Almost every major conflict in the world can be traced to people who refuse to even entertain the possibility of seeing something they don't want to see."

We also took issue with readers who didn't seem to mind curtailments in freedom as long as it didn't affect their guns.  "If you behave like an idiot with deadly weapons, you should be prevented from continuing to do so.  It's amazing how many people see that as a violation of their rights yet will blindly support idiocy like the PATRIOT Act without a second thought."  And yet, the condemnation of our position was almost unanimous: "Never before have we been met with such hostility from so many angry people at even the mildest form of questions or criticism aimed at these topics.  It only makes us want to question them even more."

We found ourselves having to give lots of pep talks to keep our spirits going.  "Our victories may appear to be few and far between but they are quite significant.  As is the fact that none of them could have been accomplished without a degree of organization and activism."  We were forever discussing the definitions of destructive behavior and knowing where the line was.  And there was a good amount of positive feedback from people saying things like "You guys have helped me get through high school actually feeling intelligent while teaching my teachers things about computers."  In one case, a reader who happened to be a professional car racer announced in our letters section that he was going to be putting the 2600 logo on his car.  Our response: "We have a logo?"

We ran a review of a new Kevin Mitnick book called The Art of Deception and devoted special attention to the one chapter the publisher wouldn't allow to be printed.  The end of Kevin's ordeal was at last within sight, as his supervised release was set to end on January 20, 2003.  "In these past three years, Mitnick has become a model for someone who can overcome adversity and triumph in the end."  We noticed with surprise that Kevin hadn't had a truly "free" day since 1988.  "It would have been easy to dwell on the negative in this case" but, with the help of the community, something better was on the horizon.

On the subject of books, we entertained a suggestion for a "Best of 2600" volume that we hoped to one day publish.  There were continued reports of people having trouble finding the magazine in stores.  We also saw a flurry of testimonials defending bookstores that were accused of hiding 2600 and a bunch of reports of specific stores that were displaying us prominently.  "Most of the time the people who hide our magazines aren't affiliated with the stores.  We simply have a lot of enemies who don't want our views to be heard."

AT&T discontinued interstate coin service, which pretty much marked the end of Red Boxing as we knew it.  New 855 and 866 toll-free area codes were introduced.  And people like us started calling for "dozens, hundreds, even thousands" of new top-level domains, as the existing ones were proving to be more and more restrictive and unfair.


Spring:  The Spring 2002 cover was an image of Benjamin Franklin, in the style of what might appear on a form of currency.

His eyes are red and there's a teardrop in one of them.

It was a commentary on where we saw our democracy headed in the wake of ill-advised legislation and the curtailment of freedoms after September 11th.

There are all kinds of microscopic messages contained in this image, including "2600" microprint within our name on the masthead.

Other messages read "INFINITE JUSTICE", "WTO", "RIAA", "CYBERCRIME TREATY", "CODE YELLOW', "FCC", "CARP", "ENRON", "DNA", "CBDTPA", "MPAA", "DMCA", "AXIS OF EVIL", and "USA PATRIOT".

Every one of these items was something that was in the news at the time, each carrying its own threat and specter of doom.
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