There are those among us who love technology, who dream in full colour about expanding our laptops’ RAM and living in a world without download limits. But eight years ago, the majority of people in North America didn’t have a high-speed Internet connection, let alone a computer. Now most of us see today’s rapid technological advances as part of our everyday lives – and expect continued progress.

"The fact is that for some reason, we constantly release new technology while predecessor technology is not completely secure – we create new things while things are still broken," says Michael Calce, once known as Mafiaboy, the 15-year-old Montrealer who in early 2000 hacked the websites of CNN, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay, halting their activity for several hours while panic erupted around the world. Two months after his online attacks, a team of FBI and RCMP agents arrested Calce and charged him with close to 70 counts of computer crime. In Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It’s Still Broken, co-written with Hour’s Craig Silverman, Calce tells his story – including his regrets for the damage he caused – but also asks some big questions, such as: Is our drive to create newer, better technology really moving us forward? Is it in the spirit of discovery, or plain old greed?

"Eight years ago, the majority of hackers were testing to explore, testing the status quo. Today everything eventually has a monetary influence – hacking is an industry now – and it’s a lot easier to not get caught," says Calce. More than a play-by-play of one hacker’s high-profile story, Mafiaboy is firmly focused on illuminating the state of the Internet today – and how people use it.

"When I got into it, hacking meant that you loved programming," says Calce. "We didn’t know what was out there and we wanted to find out." When Calce was Mafiaboy, the online criminal element was hardly evident – he competed against a thousands-strong community of programmers hell bent on beating each other in an ever-increasing game of wit, ego and emotion. Few were monitored or investigated for their activities, that is until those activities interfered in issues of individual and international security.

Things are different now. "Technology is integrated into everybody’s life… and this opens a whole world to criminals," says Calce. "Online crime is a serious growing issue and networks of criminals are being created. I’m making this issue public to make people more aware of this so we can prevent it."

Government and law enforcement see all-out surveillance as the answer. The book’s co-author Craig Silverman explains: "Because the Internet is fundamentally insecure and people do things that are fundamentally insecure online, the solution suggested by law enforcement and by governments is that we need to build wiretapping into the infrastructure of the Internet, so we can see what everyone is doing at all times to create security – basically demolish privacy to give security. Government and law enforcement are pressuring companies like Bell and Vidéotron to install wiretapping on their networks, and it’s a huge struggle right now."

Adds Calce: "They want to use technology to monitor everybody but that isn’t what technology is for – it’s to enable us to do things we couldn’t do before. If they put half the resources they spend monitoring people into educating people, we’d be 20 times better off."

Yet that doesn’t stop Silverman from laying down this kicker: "If people understood how the Internet works and doesn’t work, then people would run screaming from the Internet." It’s likely the answer, but oh how we love our wireless ways.

Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It’s Still Broken
by Michael Calce with Craig Silverman (Penguin), 276 pp.