In a small town, where people never locked their doors, would we praise the first burglar for showing the townspeople how foolish it was to leave their houses open? After it happened, the town couldn’t ever go back to open doors. Hacking may mean that computer networks will have to have elaborate locks and checkpoints. Legitimate users will find it harder to communicate freely, sharing less information with each other. To use the network, we all might have to identify ourselves and state our purpose—no more logging on casually just to gossip, doodle around, see who else is on the net.
