Holy cow, we're digital!
Introduction
It's a dark room, the only light comes from a huge computer screen on a desk. Some stereotype nerd guy is sitting behind his pc. But this is not your average-bill midnight-hack, this guy is serious. Oh heck, is he serious! Just look at all the dark-green colored lines on that screen. It's as though he hooked a darn Commodore 64 to his TV-card for kicks and fun. But then again, this guy is serious: he's hacking into a government database! Dear mother, surely that mischief will be caught? Why, of course not, because this guy is a member of a super-secret-not-officially-existing (pant, pant) organisation with a ridiculous level of authority. So ridiculous, I'm even writing an article about it.
Wait, what?
Maybe you've recognized the scene. Almost every self-respecting entertainment broadcast company has a show that features these symptoms: A high-authority body which is so secret, that nobody except the members and their superiors are ought to know about it. They solve the stuff that nobody else can solve, because the other people are unbelievably stupid compared to them. They are the real deal. Take for instance, bombs or alien diseases. Inevitably, these people have to deal with computers, intercepting e-mails, monitoring criminals et cetera. And who do they hire for it? But of course, stereotype mister-nerdy-guy is perfect for the job! You know the type, glasses, messed-up hair, maybe even suffering dwarfism. In short terms: the underdog (Little people, please don't take offence).
The pattern
Half-way through the episode our good friend Mr. Hacker - let's call him Tim - gets ordered to either hack into some superduper secret database, crack some incomprehensive code or get into a back account. Naturally, Tim is an uberhacker and tells his boss in the next scene that he cracked the website. And if we are really lucky, we get to see how Tim does this, oh joy! Let's have a look. He fires up some window in a window-manager I have never seen, typically with a dark background and a huge red sign stating "ACCESS DENIED", and there is an entry field asking for a password. For the convenience of the viewer, the password is not masked by the ubiqious asterixes, but shown. In a matter of mere seconds, Tim whips up another program that magically starts filling in passwords. Slowly, from left to right, the digits stop bouncing. The last digit takes a while, but then it's there too. A green ACCESS GRANTED-screen pops up. Well done Tim, now you can get back to character development. Our should I say: trying to get a date with the only female member on the team?
The effect
Meanwhile, some kid in Whateverville has been watching this show. He is fascinated by the way Tim pops up all the interfaces on his gloomy desktop. There is no doubt about it. He does not want to be a pilot anymore, he wants to be a computer hacker! Without the nerdy glasses, obviously. He runs to the family computer, pokes the ON button with greater enthousiasm than ever. Hey, these bootup screens do look a lot like on the telly! But then the blue (and unbelievably ugly) Windows login-screen pops up and the dream is shattered. Because to be a computer hero, one must have a shady dark-toned desktop and not the happy-colored thing in front of him
The flaws
- Either the interface is nonexistent, as in command-line, and with a green font on a black background, or the interface is overloaded with so much eye-candy it makes the Compiz-Fusion lads either pee their pants with amazement or just drool.
- The hack is done in mere seconds. Now either the FBI or whatever Tim is hacking has worse security than my made-in-Pakistan router, or the director didn't bother to actually research computer hacking. Because let me tell you this kids, hacking is not an art and has almost nothing to do with math. It consists mostly out of finding that one opening that is not closed or exploiting some binary-level backdoor, which is far from beautiful or easy.
- When tracing some activity back to a name, certainly more than one law is broken (though I haven't read the Patriot Act lately). Needless to say, a real criminal with only the surrogate of IT-knowledge would have masked his IP-address via a proxy.
Conclusion
First of all, excuse my cynism. I have watched a lot of TV lately and I just kept being annoyed by the way shows tried to feign a reality-like world, but still have methods that are unseen, save for the show. There's nothing wrong with a little fiction! Heck, I was fascinated by the green kanji-ish characters scrolling down that made The Matrix (kudo's to them for using nmap, and the same to you, Bourne Ultimatum). But there is a difference between well-written, original fiction, and stereotyped, unrealistic rubbish, and I hope there will be some change in that. Then I will be able to watch a good show without being annoyed by the pseudotechnical baloney. Because whether it be media law, view ratings or sheer stupidity that prevents these directors from showing something that doesn't make the people with the actual know-how frown.
