Cracking Hacking

Right. So there is a bit of debate on the internet at the moment over the term 'hacking'. All the papers are calling it 'hacking', but right wing bloggers like Iain Dale and Dizzy are saying that it's not. It is, apparently, 'cracking'. This is because hacking involves getting around security and breaking it, and cracking involves going through it by guessing a password or, in this case, a voicemail pin.

The problem here is clear. By semantically challenging the term hacking right wing bloggers are seeking to influence public opinion and suggest what happened wasn't as bad. They might protest that they are just seeking to uphold the technical definition of the word - Dizzy, in particular, argues strongly for this - but in reality they are seeking to chip away at the consensus that something bad has happened. This is why left wingers like Alan Rusbridger are so determined to keep the word hacking, because to change it disrupts the narrative and makes it seem less illegal. This is true even if, as Dizzy does, they acknowledge that cracking is still illegal and immoral.

So what is it? Cracking or Hacking? Well, to me it's pretty simple: HACKING. Frankly, no-one gives a stuff what the technical definition is. Dizzy's argument that Rusbridger et al have "used their position in the media to weirdly create and morph the use of a term in popular culture inaccurately" takes no account of the wonderful flexibility of English.

If everyone in the country believes that guessing a password and getting into a private account is hacking, then the small community of hackers is just going to have to live with it. The fact is that in English, hacking means to get into someone's account without permission - that's what people think when they see that word. Anyway, there is nothing to say that cracking can not be a subdivision or form of hacking, meaning that hackers can continue to use the word to be more specific about what type of hacking they mean, while the rest of us can go on calling this hacking.