Let Us Remember The 5th Of November

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

1. Introduction

Digital disobedience

" We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught. He can be killed and forgotten. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world[...] you cannot kill an idea, cannot touch it or hold it. Ideas do not bleed, it cannot feel pain, and it does not love."

(V for Vendetta)

It is said that we are the vehicles of ideas, not their owners and even past many generation, an idea can still change the world. There are many definitions, but in a nutshell, an idea is a new combination of old elements.An idea attempts to change the way a person acts or perceives things. It brings about change. An idea rests upon the ability to see relationships.

The concept of hacktivism refers to the merging of political activism and computer hacking. It is the end product of a meeting between hackers and political or social activists. In very basic terms, the hackers provided the weaponry and the activists located the target.

Social movement theory defines social movements in terms of their common cause, and treats movements methods as purely instrumental. Hacktivism has emerged as a movement that is defined by its methods, such as Denial of Service attacks1 , web site defacements, computer viruses, and other electronically enabled disruption.

Hacktivists use their knowledge of computer programming, network design and Internet traffic to stage politically motivated disruptions on the Internet. Hacktivists‘ political agendas are even more diverse than their messages, including campaigns against globalization, encryption regulations, government political repression, abortion, and electronic surveillance. They are arrayed across a political spectrum that is far broader than the techno-libertarian agenda with which Internet users are often identified.

Although financial gain remains the primary motivation behind some of these actions, some groups of computer hackers have other motivation. They are guided by economic, political, or religious interests that generally go beyond their nation‗s borders. Yet despite the political and geographical diversity of individual hacktivists,

1 Denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users.

they define themselves as part of a common community. They have their own web sites, discussion groups , magazines, and even conferences.

In other words, hactivism is a new social movements: a ‖ collective challenge by people with….solidarity in sustained interaction with opponents and authorities.‖

(Tarrow 1994). This poses a challenge to social movement scholarship and philosophy, which has yet to confront a movements defined by its common method rather than its common purpose. In particular, it challenges the way that social movement theory understands the relationship between three core facets of any movement: method, process and identity.

They refer to themselves as their own movements and they are outside the world of institutionalized politics. Hacktivism conforms to the social movements as

―unconventional collective behavior‖. They are outside the ―system‖ and their movement is a response to collective action problems. To date, hacktivism as a concept has not truly entered the public arena.

However, early public coverage seems to suggest that hacktivists are an idealized faceless enemy. They seem capable of threatening security and stability of the average citizen, and they seem to have an almost mythic ability to destroy a computer-dominated lifestyle. And as we shall see in the next chapters, these attitudes are reinterpreted, challenged and in some cases appropriated by the hacktivists themselves.

2. The Uprising

They cannot kill an idea

Revolving from the past, through present and right into the future the concepts of anarchy as well as conspiracy seem to be an oasis of hope for those who can not see freedom otherwise. In a protest against religious intolerance, a group of provincial English Catholics planned to assassinate King James I of England and VI of Scotland by blowing up the House of Lords. Guy Fawkes was discovered - before he could carry out the plan - with 36 barrels of gunpowder, more than enough to reduce it to rubble. He was hanged, drawn and quartered for attempting to blow up England's parliament. But his attempt was not in vain. Remembered as the first act of ‘terrorism‘, it has inspired many generation not for its objective but for its means of act. But for the

‘Gunpowder plot‘, we would not have today the perspective of anarchy, of a distopic future as it can be seen in the graphical book of Alan Moore: ‘V for Vendetta‘.

How it was stated in the last chapter, the hackers provided the weaponry and the activists located the target. In 1946 is founded at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology The Tech Model Railroad Club. The word ―hack‖ was originally used at

MIT to describe elaborate college pranks. As used by the TMRC, the word was also understood to mean a feat ―imbued with innovation, style, and technical virtuosity.‖2

This was only the beggining. In 1971, a journalist called Ron Rosebaum publishes in the Enquire an article called „Secrets of the Little Blue Box‖. Here he coins the term „phreaker‖ to describe the technologist manipulating the phone system. It was only after when a couple of blue boxes were built. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built these illegal electronic devices and used them to generate the tones telephone network and switch the long distance calls. The two sell the boxes to students eager to get free long distance calls. Ten years late in Berlin is formed the Chaos Computer Club.

Recognizing „currently energing electronic data networks‖, the CCC wants to use them creatively with a belief that government should operate transparently and that information should be free; statements that are going to establish the hackers manifesto later. The CCC has become one of the biggest hacker organisation in the world.

2 (Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.) - Levy describes the people, the machines, and the events that defined the Hacker Culture and the Hacker Ethic, from the early mainframe hackers at MIT, to the self-made hardware hackers and game hackers.

From 1984 to 1995 a series of events will occur that will strenghten the hacker culture. In 1989 it is created the Political Computer Worm; WANK, a computer worm allegedly created by two hackers from the USA to attack a computer network shared by NASA and US Department of Energy in order to protest agaisnt the nuclear policies. The EFF is formed consisting of lawyers, policy analysts, activists and technologists and it calls itself the first line of defence when their freedoms in the networked world come under attack.

The Hacker Manifesto (1986)

„The Consciense of a Hacker‖ or „The Hacker Manifesto‖ is a small essay written in January 8, 1986 by a computer hacker who went by the pseudonym of the Mentor. Written after his arrest, it was published in an underground hacker magazine , „The Phrack‖. It is considered a cornerstone of hacker culture, and it gives some insight into the psychology of early hackers. It is said to have shaped the hacker community's view of itself and its motivations. The Manifesto states that hackers choose to hack because it is a way for them to learn, and because they are often frustrated and bored by the limitations of standard society. It also expresses the story of a hacker realizing his potential in the realm of computers.

Founded in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas, The Cult of the Dead Cow ( known as cDc or cDc Communications) will come against the Church of Scientology in 1995 (war which lasts until the present) and will establish in 1999 the programme article called „Hacktivismo‖ as a second known manifest to hacker culture.

Hacktivismo (1999)

The group's beliefs are described fully in The Hacktivismo Declaration, which seeks to apply the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to the Internet. Oxblood Ruffin, the director of Hacktivismo, has argued forcefully against definitions of hacktivism that include web defacements

or denial-of-service

attacks.

Hacktivismo

has

also

authored

its

own software

license agreement,

the Hacktivismo

Enhanced-Source

Software

License

Agreement (HESSLA). The HESSLA prohibits use or modification that would violate human rights or introduce features that spy on the user.

The Hacktivismo Declaration states:

"...such member states continue to willfully suppress wide-ranging access to lawfully published information on the Internet, despite the clear language of the ICCPR that freedom of expression exists in all media,"

"...that transnational corporations continue to sell information technologies to the world's most repressive regimes knowing full well that they will be used to track and control an already harried citizenry,"

"...that the Internet is fast becoming a method of repression rather than an instrument of liberation,"

"...that in some countries it is a crime to demand the right to access lawfully published information, and of other basic human rights,"

"...that denying access to information could lead to spiritual, intellectual, and economic decline, the promotion of xenophobia and destabilization of international order."

The Hacktivismo Declaration recognizes "the importance to fight against human rights abuses with respect to reasonable access to information on the Internet" and calls upon the hacker community to "study ways and means of circumventing state sponsored censorship of the internet" and "implement technologies to challenge information rights violations". The Hacktivismo Declaration does however recognize that the right to freedom of expression is subject to limitations, stating "we recognized the right of governments to forbid the publication of properly categorized state secrets, child pornography, and matters related to personal privacy and privilege, among other accepted restrictions." However, the Hacktivismo Declaration states "but we oppose the use of state power to control access to the works of critics, intellectuals, artists, or religious figures."

4chan

4chan.org ( http://www.4chan.org//) is a site of multiple paradoxes. It uses a simple, seemingly outdated, message board design. Yet, its daily traffic is immense and its memes continue to spill over and multiply in broad popular culture. It is a discordant bricolage of humour, geek cultures, fierce debates, hyperbolic opinions and general offensiveness. However, this same haphazard stream of images and comments is the origin point for the highly active, organized and ever–changing group of Internet activists known as Anonymous. Given its contemporaneous tensions, it is little surprise that media outlets have labeled 4chan and Anonymous everything from cyber–vigilantes who are at once brilliant, ridiculous and alarming‖3 to the lawless Wild West of the Web, a place of uninhibited bawdiness and verbal violence‖. It is widely known to be the place of birth of the Anonymous group.

3 The Guardian

3. Anonymous

We are the legion!

In late 2003 Anonymous emerged, still dripping, from the primordial soup of the Internet. A faceless and chaotic horde of subversive youth, Anonymous was fueled by remarkable creativity, untapped talent and a perpetual state of boredom. They lurked in the obscure depths of what was, at the time, a niche online subculture. Their early exploits ranged from harmless to cruel, hilarious to creepy — but they were for the most part restricted to a tightly knit realm of online forums and imageboards. In those early days one would be hard-pressed to associate Anonymous with activism, or any other kind of coherent positive social action.

The 21st century saw the emergence of new forms of human interaction on a scale unlike anything we‘ve ever encountered before. As of 2011 there are almost two billion people online. The globalization of information via the Internet has enabled like-minded individuals nearly anywhere on the planet to come together and share opinions and form bonds. Whether their opinions are on politics, world news, religion, sports, anime, video games or anything else, the connections established by these people have the potential to become as meaningful and substantial as those formed in real life.

Anonymous is a strong example of what happens when an online community of like-minded individuals decides to take up a cause and run with it. What‘s especially intriguing in this case is that at some point between Chocolate Rain and the global financial crisis, Anonymous decided to throw off its ill-fitting black hat and step into the ring on the side of the ―good guys.‖ That‘s not to say they‘ve completely abandoned some of their more questionable practices, but for the most part Anonymous has become a benevolent entity.

They first entered the public eye in 2008 during ―Project Chanology,‖ which spawned global protests against Scientology followed by a number of web-based attacks that brought down Scientology websites. Since then Anonymous has moved on to a number of arguably well-intentioned causes, from supporting the file-sharing

movement to the 2009 Iranian election. But it wasn‘t until 2010 and the rise of Wikileaks that the full scope of Anonymous‘ influence was recognized.

In a response to a number of large organizations severing their financial ties with Wikileaks — PayPal, Amazon, MasterCard and Visa, among others — Anonymous launched attacks on their websites, ultimately bringing down the homepages of both MasterCard and Visa. Recently, during the ongoing crises and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, Anonymous has declared its support of the Egyptian, Tunisian and Libyan people, taking down websites and propaganda portals run by those governments.

And already Anonymous has been engaged with the insidious Westboro Baptist Church (although there is a reason to believe that the initial reports of aggression toward the WBC by Anonymous were fabricated by the church itself) as well as the technology security firm HBGary, who foolishly challenged Anonymous on their own turf. Now, through ―AnonNews,‖ Anonymous regularly publishes press releases and open letters addressed to potential targets.

This level of hacktivism is a significant departure from Anonymous‘s cruder, more humble beginnings. Keep in mind that they began as unregistered members of a community designed to facilitate an unstructured discussion of video games, anime and porn (and all the bizarre combinations of the three).

While they have retained much of what they stood for seven years ago, the current public face of Anonymous is a product of the massive influx of mainstream exposure experienced by many online communities and social networks over the latter half of the last decade.

Major news networks worldwide now integrate Twitter feeds, Facebook comments and YouTube videos into their daily news cycles. As Anonymous grew more ambitious, its influence permeated these other social networks. Inevitably, like other elements of formerly underground online subculture, the faceless horde found itself in the spotlight of the mainstream media. If the spotlight has had any effect on

Anonymous, aside from swelling their ranks, it‘s that they seem to be holding themselves to a higher moral standard — at least in the public eye.

It‘s their potent ability to influence real world events that has changed the way people view Anonymous. Now that the public has had a taste of what an organized online community is capable of when it materializes in the real world, the landscape of social media has been irrevocably changed. Gone are the days of dismissing online entities as insubstantial or unimportant.

Anonymous has set an important precedent by actively engaging real issues on a global scale. They have repeatedly demonstrated that a formidable contingent of the world‘s youth can coalesce into a cohesive and subversive international entity, by harnessing the combined strengths of the Internet and social media. Because of this, future online communities will face fewer boundaries when establishing a more tangible and legitimate real-world presence.

As we move further into the 21st century it will be interesting to see how Anonymous and other online communities will evolve, and how they will integrate themselves even more into the fabric of our digital age.

WikiLeaks

We open governments!

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