That's exactly what George Hotz does. He breaks security. iPhone security, PS3 security, etc. He's not a hacker according to the RMS definition, the pg definition, or probably most of the classical definitions. He may fit the current journalist's definition of "hacker" which is much closer to RMS' cracker. Since the web site we are on is named hacker news after the original definition, I think we should probably go with cracker for the people that primarily break security.
However, he primarily breaks security on devices he purchased, so that he and others can repurpose them for their own needs and desires. That is a very "hacker" thing to do. "I have this device. Can I make it do something useful?"
If he were primarily breaking security on other people's computer systems, then the distinction would likely be merited.
I disagree with this, let's not forget RMS did a lot of "cracking" himself, like the ITS password hack and some shady things like reverse engineering code from Symbolics and gave it to Lisp Machine.
GeoHotz did a hard and ingenious hack to get his ps3 to do things it's not longer suposed to do. That's not cracking per se. I think cracking mostly happens with things like these folks did. Using a simple SQL injection (probably automated) to hack Sony's site.
It's all in the ingenuity level. That where the distinction should be.
