A Hacker Goes to Iraq (Spring, 2003)
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By Chris McKinstry

On the face of it, it seems rather odd. Why on earth would a hacker go to live
in Iraq, the most isolated country in the world? Internet connections certainly
must be hard to come by in a country where there are no ISPs and the sole
provider of Internet services is the Ministry of Culture and Information. In
fact, until halfway through the year 2000 the Ministry restricted Internet use
to the government itself. In July of 2000, according to CNN and the BBC, there
was at least one Internet cafe in the center of Baghdad, but today I can find
no evidence of this; backpackers.com lists zero as the count of Internet cafes
in Iraq and Google turns up zilch as well. Antarctica has better connectivity.

How can a modern hacker live without an Internet connection? And why would I go
anyway?

The key to the answer to the first question is the word "modern" and the key to
the answer of the second question is more complex but can be summarized with
the words "teach" and "protest."

I am a modern hacker, but I've been interested in computers since I was a child
in the early 1970s when "hack" meant "create" and not the current media
corruption, which essentially translates to "destroy."

This was a time when there were no visible computers and the government still
decided who had ARPANET access. Around then, the first ads started appearing
for Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's Apple II a useful configuration cost the
same as taking a family to Europe (or the United States if you're European).

A real physical computer like the ones I saw in the magazines that taught me to
program were simply out of the question. My only computer was imaginary. It
existed only as a simulation in my head and in my notebook the old fashioned
paper kind.

My computer programs were just lists of commands and parameters on paper, much
like those programs of the first hacker Alan Turing, who hand simulated the
world's first chess program in the 1940s before the computers he fathered
existed. Of course I gleaned my commands and parameters from magazines and
trash cans while Turing seems to have gotten them from God.

The situation is much the same for Iraqi children today as it was for me in the
1970s, except the children of Iraq have no computer magazines to teach them to
program and U.N./U.S. sanctions are killing them at the rate of 5,000 to 6,000
per month.

My plan of teaching and protest begins with a flight to Amman, Jordan sometime
early in 2003, from where I will drive overland to Iraq even if bombs are
falling. I will take no electronics. No computer. Not even a camera. Just pen
and paper and my 1976 copy of David Ahl's The Best of Creative Computing. I
will go from town to town and school to school teaching about programming and
Alan Turing's imaginary computer and how to teach the same. If there is war, I
will stand by my fellow pacifists at hospitals and water treatment plants,
willing to die with Iraq's innocent citizens. If I live through a day's
bombing, I will write to the world about it at night.

In a land where medicine and toys are blocked by U.N./U.S. sanctions and those
who take it upon themselves to bring them in either risk 12 years in prison, a
$1,000,000 fine, and a $250,000 administrative fine, I think even an imaginary
computer will make a difference.

It is simply true that one day Iraq will return to the world, and if we do
nothing now, an entire generation will be completely dysfunctional in this
computer dominated world. As an individual person, I can't possibly smuggle in
enough medicine or toys to make but the tiniest of difference. But as a hacker,
I can smuggle in an idea the idea of Alan Turing's imaginary computer and try
to infect a people's children with skill and hope.