Wau Holland

Wau Holland

Wau Holland, ca. 2000, in Löhrbach, Germany
Born Herwart Holland-Moritz
(1951-12-20)20 December 1951
Kassel, Germany
Died 29 July 2001(2001-07-29) (aged 49)
Bielefeld, Germany
Known for Cofounder of the Chaos Computer Club

Herwart Holland-Moritz, known as Wau Holland, (20 December 1951 – 29 July 2001) was a German computer security activist and journalist who in 1981 cofounded the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), one of the world's oldest hacking clubs.

Career

In 1981, Holland cofounded the Chaos Computer Club. The CCC became world-famous when its members exposed security flaws in Germany's "Bildschirmtext" (Btx) online television service by getting a bank to send them DM 134,000 for accessing its Btx page many times. They returned the money the following day.

From 1983 he was a columnist for the Berlin-based Die Tageszeitung, often reporting on the BBS scene and the computer underground.

Holland also co-founded the CCC's hacker magazine Datenschleuder in 1984, which praised the possibilities of global information networks and powerful computers, and included detailed wiring diagrams for building modems cheaply. The then-monopolist telephone company of Germany's Deutsche Bundespost had to approve modems and sold expensive, slow modems of their own. The telecommunications branch of Deutsche Bundespost was privatized and is now Deutsche Telekom.

Because of Holland's continuing participation in the club, the CCC gained popularity and credibility. He gave speeches on information control for the government and the private sector. Holland fought against copy protection and all forms of censorship and for an open information infrastructure. He compared the censorship demands by some governments to those of the Christian church in the Middle Ages and regarded copy protection as a product defect. In his last years, he spent a lot of his time at a youth centre teaching children both the ethics and the technology of hacking.[1]

Personal life

Holland was born in Kassel, and grew up in Marburg, Hesse. He graduated from the Gymnasium Philippinum secondary school and attended the University of Marburg, though he did not graduate.[2]

Holland was an amateur radio operator and held the call sign DB4FA.[3]

Holland died in Bielefeld on 29 July 2001 of complications caused by a brain stem stroke from which he suffered in May.[1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Hacken als Form der Gesellschaftskritik - Telepolis
  2. ↑ http://planatscher.net/wau/wau.html
  3. ↑ Funkamateure im CCC jetzt auch im DARC - Chaos Computer Club
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