The Hackers BBC Radio 4

In the past, it was natural to open your phone and pop in a new battery. Today, to do that you may have to be a hacker. Biella speaks to representatives from the EU Right to Repair Movement, and farmers Nebraska to talk about this new, and unexpected frontier in hacker culture we may all soon belong to - the Right to Repair Movement.

In the past, state sponsored hacking focused on espionage, stealing sensitive information and disrupting technological system. Nowadays, the focus has shifted. Rather than hacking technology, state sponsored hackers are targeting people. Biella speaks with Darren Linvill about a new kind of malevolent hacking, and how by playing to the algorithms on various social networks, these professional agents can sow chaos, and rope lay users into spreading rage and misinformation across societies.

Biella and technology journalist Frank Bajak discuss how two teenage hackers, calling themselves Lulzsec Peru, managed to expose corruption and shook the Peruvian government to the core with a massive leak of documents - and in doing so become some of the most impactful hacktivists of the early 2000s.

One of the core beliefs in the many subsets of hacker culture is that information should be freely accessible and shared. But there are two distinct ways of achieving this freedom of information - Piracy, and The Open Source.
Biella talks to Peter Sunde, co-founder of the Pirate bay, and Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Conservancy, to discover how both movements have become entwined with the hacker community over the years, and which has the most potential to disrupt the increasingly monopolised world of tech development.

Biella explores biohacking - the hacking of the human body - and the different reasons why people are becoming cyborgs.
She speaks with artist Moon Ribas about how tech can be used to push the boundaries of creative expression while putting humans in touch with the earth, and even the cosmos, and Winter Mraz an engineer who in the aftermath of a horrific car crash, used various implants to improve her body, and hack her way to an easier way to live with mental and physical disabilities.

Biella explores the legacy of Aaron Swartz. From the age of 14, Aaron was a prolific hacker, inventor and activist. He was integral in the creation of Creative Commons and the Internet Archive, co-founder social media site Reddit, and was passionate in his activism work that culminated in the dismissal of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the USA. But Aaron took his own life at the age of 26 when he was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, facing decades in prison and millions of dollars in fines - a court case that many at the time felt was completely unjustified.
Biella speaks with Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig who worked with Aaron on the Creative Commons project, and a Lisa Rein, co-founder of ‘Aaron Swartz Day’ that works to carry on projects started or inspired by Aaron’s work, and discusses why it’s important to remember Aaron’s story, the legacy of his work, and to find out if a recent Supreme Court ruling on the CFAA means that people like Aaron may be safer in the future.