Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.

Dark Reading will be taking a break from publication on Monday, Jan. 21, in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We hope many of our readers also have the day off -- if not, we hope you'll bear with us for today and come back and visit tomorrow.

It seems incumbent upon us to say a few words of admiration for Dr. King, who was so instrumental in helping the civil rights movement to succeed in the United States. Certainly his gifts and sacrifices in that regard are immeasurable, and as an IT security publication, it's difficult to think of any words that we could offer that would really add to his legacy.

Perhaps, however, we should also offer some thanks to Dr. King for his leadership in the realm of "civil disobedience" -- which, in some ways, is an ethical hacker's creed as well. Much of the advancement in security comes at the hands of researchers who routinely break the rules -- or at least bend them -- to help find the vulnerabilities in users' systems before the bad guys do.

Many of Dark Reading's readers practice a bit of civil disobedience every day, and they are occasionally chastised, reviled, or even jailed for it. Like many of the civil rights leaders of the '60s, today's researchers sometimes face the harsh scrutiny of law enforcement or hard-line moralists.

Now, we're not comparing ethical hackers with the great civil rights leaders or saying that their cause is as great. But on a day when we honor Dr. King, it's nice to know that his example has spread to other communities and pursuits, proving once again that it's worth bending the rules in order to do something that's in the public interest. It shows that Dr. King's impact is felt in ways that he never imagined, in industries that he had never conceived of.

Here's hoping that impact continues to be felt for many years to come.

— Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading