Pada 8 Januari 1986, seorang
hacker yang menggunakan nick name, "The Mentor", menulis sebuah
pernyataan sikap, yang hingga kini masih dikenal. Manifesto tersebut untuk kali
pertama dimuat oleh majalah Phrack, edisi 25 September 1986. Berikut adalah isi
dari manifesto tersebut.
"This is our world now...
the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use
of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if wasn't
run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you
call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We
exist without skin color, without nationality, without religios bias... and you
call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat,
and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the
criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My Crime
is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what say and think,
not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that
you will never forgive me for.
I
am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. Yoou may stop this individual, but you
can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.