Slashdot Mirror
Is Hacktivism Robin Hood Politics?
deran9ed writes "After reading an article at Guardian Unlimited, I wondered what was Slashdot's viewers' thoughts on "Hacktivism", the act of hacking for a so called cause, according to a Guardian Unlimited article: Once hacking was regarded as the pastime of attention-grabbing nerds. But a meeting at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London will be told how credible an activity it has become in the era of direct action. Old-fashioned hacking, the meeting will hear, has given way to hacktivism: a highly politicised underground movement using direct action in cyberspace to attack globalisation and corporate domination of the internet. Either way you cut the cake its still illegal, but is it along the realms of say the Vietnam Era protests, or are hacktivist using this term to promote themselves." The vast majority of so called "Hactivism" just isn't. I think that in
most cases the intentions are good, but the folks capable of, say, defacing a website, usually aren't the same folks able to intelligently communicate a message. Instead of looking like political activists staging a sit-in, they look like angry teens spraying graffiti obscenities on a wall which does far more damage then good.
In the UK 'hacktivism' is the current media vogue. There was an hour long TV programme about it recently.
The most 'hacky' person they could find was someone that wrote a VB script that accessed a web site every 7 seconds... This 'notorious hacker' (:/) explained "we had thousands of people doing this to a website and we certainly made our point!". Well 7000 hits/second isn't a particularly huge load to a big commercial website (I'd bet microsoft.com gets a hell of a lot more than that in normal traffic). Also writing VB script to load a web page isn't 'hacking' it's called 'typing in the example program'.
I'd love to know why all the self-confessed 'geeks' on the programme seemed to have green hair????
As usual the media trying to create something that doesn't really exist, and missing the point entirely.
"When was the last time political assassination was called shootivism?"
Some assassinations are called "democratic revolutions". Some assassinations are called "sentences". Everything is not black and white.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Sheesh
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
A cracker is somebody who cracks warez, and/or a pejorative term for a white person. Any other meaning is never going to catch on in the media, nor with the old school. It's just too complicated to remember the distinction all the time. The people who are hackers by anybody's definition have done some... uh... mischevious things in their time; it's part of the nature of the beast. To say that "a real hacker would never break into a computer system" indicates - to me - a lack of understanding of the original meaning of the word. Of course a real hacker would break into a computer system, if it was an interesting enough problem and they didn't anticipate anybody having a problem with it. I agree that the media should widen it's definition of what a hacker is, but that's not the argument I usually see, especially here on slashdot. I see a lot more of "they aren't a real hacker, because they break into systems and/or do security stuff", which is plain silly.
Personally, I refer to people by whatever term they would like me to use, unless I don't like them.
Besides which, if you are doing something unexpected, unforseen, or disallowed to any system (which is my pocket definition of hacking) somebody is always going to think it's bad, until you laboriously convince them otherwise, on a case by case basis.
Why get caught up in semantic arguments when you could be doing cool things and get noticed for THAT, instead?
style protests.
Oddly enough, one of the things I remember about them is angry teens spray painting graffiti.
I also remember riots, tear gas, shootings, stealing from "the man", kids dying from drug overdoses, etc.
Jerry Rubin, bless his little insurance selling little Yippie heart, entitled his book " Do It!" ( Perhaps he should have sued Nike?)
The phrase comes from a suggestion in the book. Jerry advises angry, protesting teens to walk into a bank and attempt to hold them up by threatening to shit on the floor, and if they refuse to give you the money. . . Do it!
Yeah, angry teens used to be so much better than they make them today.
KFG
I know, I know, semantics. But still, it would be nice if the word at least reflected what people are really doing: cracking into other people's systems to make their voices heard.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Personally I think the general defacement of a website is downright dumb and those responsible seem to forget its outright illegal for one.
Its nice to get a message across but hacking for a so called cause only makes things worse for the hackers, and can sometimes work to the advantage of the target, as they can turn it around and misconstrue the scenario as something of a terroristic attacks. Not only that but the media has the whole concept of hackers distorted to hell due to some of these "hackers'" actions
I've interviewed about a dozen of hackers, a virus creation group, and a script kiddiot defacer. Now the "hackers" I've interviewed are not what media considers hackers, these are professionals in the security field so don't get it distorted, however the script kiddiot defacer and others I've spoken with use the curtain of "hacktivism" to solely get attention, nothing more.
If someone really wants to get a point across I think they should start an organization and speak up on it to raise awareness. "Hacking" to promote an idea is no better than what the Chinese did at Tiananmen Square in my eyes, its painting the kettle black at any cost.
Don't get me wrong I believe in Freedom of Speech, Privacy and all that good stuff, but at the same time I hate racism, I will not condone someone from saying what they want on a racist site. I don't think double standards should apply on subjects, and while some of the older hackes from the mid - late 90's were funny as all hell, no one has the right to take away someone freedom of mind, speech.
360 degrees of Karma
Boycotts don't work anymore - at least not against the large multinationals. Want to boycott RJR Nabisco? No more Kraft Mac and Cheeze for you! Disney? May as well turn off the TV. Sony? Forgetabout it. They have their hands in just about every aspect of your life - you may as well forget any form of entertainment you know about. Even if you do manage to hit one business group, the corporation can easily spin this to their own advantage.
I imagine many people are boycotting DVDs or CDs due to the MPAA/RIAA. These groups can easily claim that lack of sales was not due to boycotts, but to theft from "those meddling hackers and their mangy mutt".