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On Hacktivism
z84976 writes "Oxblood Ruffin, of cDc fame, has produced a nice article discussing various aspects of hactivism and some of the approaches used by their own Hacktivismo group in supporting freedom (of thought, mainly) on the internet. Check it out over at The Register when you get a chance."
You know, the antics of the music industry (and the kind of thing that MS is kowtowing to with their DRM scheme) really pisses me off, but also convinces me that there will eventually come something to replace them both. But, know what? It's their property. If they want to fuck up their distribution channels, fuck em. I can do without "so-called" modern music anyway. I go see live bands locally, get lit, and have a great time and I didn't need to buy a fucking copy-protected by the DMCA CD or cassette or anything. These guys are out there trying to make a living, maybe you should check em out. And if you catch them after the show, you might can convince them that they should distribute their songs on CD's for cheap and ask them (ask them) about how they feel about MP3's and music-sharing in general. Of course, they might not agree with you (or myself), but they have that *right* to do so. So, I encourage, nay I *challenge* each and every one of you who would boycott MS or the RIAA to pick up a local newspaper and see what's going on in y our town this weekend. Chances are, there's a band or two actually worth checking out, and hey, it's not like you're going to meet chicks sitting behind your monitor. Oh, and on-topic: Rock on Beale! I'm encouraged to see that grassroots hactivism coming alive! :) (hacker used in "coder" definition) Keep up the good work and keep fighting the good fight.
If anyone is ever in a cybercafe in Mauritania or Elbonia, let's mail them 64k of encrypted random data. Let the government snoops try to decode that!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
The article quotes McLuhan: "World War Three will be a guerilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation."
I firmly believe that this is true, and is going on right now. But I wonder if it is appropriate to mix this concept with hacktivism. Consider Bush's current position. He's convinced most of the world (most of the US, anyway) that he should be given free reign to wage war anywhere in the country, all in the name of fighting terrorism. I'll keep theories about military-industrial complex profits to myself, at this point.
The point is, he is using major media outlets to spread his message, and in the mainstream media, very few people are questioning him. And at the moment, it is the mainstream media that carries the perception that it reflects the national consciousness.
Not enough people have switched off their TVs and let their corporate newspaper subscriptions expire to make hacktivism effective. It's unfortunate, and I expect (hope) things will change in the coming years, but for now, it's largely irrevelevant.
To quote cDc at DefCon a couple of years ago.
Personally I think 'hacktivism' is a grossly overused excuse for vandalism. Hacking sites as a 'service' to the operators is passe... now the kiddies have to act like they've got some sort of noble political agenda.
In 1968 the Canadian communications guru Marshall McLuhan stated, "World War Three will be a guerilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation."
/. effect an attack? Maybe we should call it a /. blitz or /. offensive. On that note we've been hitting a lot more good guys than bad guys, sheesh! Us geeks can't even get a techie war right!!
So if the war is being waged on the Internet by civilians would that make the
I stole this Sig
Once the product is in China, then the reverse engineering can start. This has happened with a couple of rocket launches a few years ago. Also, it is purported that the former US administration allowed classified technologies into China.
Unfortunately, I cannot provide links to help prove this post ... and that appears what you wanted in the first place ...
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
I have two things to say about this article.
1) It was VERY VERY long2) I really liked the analogy of OSS to Resturants.
Think about it. The majority of people never think twice about never seeing the ingrediants, but there are some who feel "I'm putting this stuff in my system, I have the right to know what's in it!". Some even have good reasons like peanut reactions and so forth.
The resturant will say "If we tell you how we made it, we will lose business". I think that's nonscence personally. Ten to one, I'm not going to be able to cook that by myself anyway, and I'm just going to come back to the restaurant to get it donecorrectly. Plus if I do make it and feed it to all my friends and they say "where did you get that recipie?" and I tell them, don't you think they are going to go check out the menu for themselfs?
And finally, what if the majority of the people eating at your restaurant wanted the food cooked a different way, but didn't have any other choice on the menu? They are going to take those ingrediants and make the food better. If the cook was smart enough, he might be able to learn from what the other cook did, and make his own product better!
Am I making my analogy clear here, or is this just gibberish?
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Losing your rights (and especially your right to privacy) is not going to happen in one fell swoop.
Rather, it's more like the oft-spoken-of boiling frog - if privacy is taken away in tiny little increments, then before long it will be compromised in a big way without any substantial opposition.
I'm not saying that we should all wear tinfoil hats - but constantly recognizing (and opposing, where necessary) the gradual erosion of our right to privacy and governmental abuse of information is our only defense against being... boiled alive.
The government wants to know more and more about us these days - the excuse du jour is homeland security and counter-terrorism. Throw in stopping child-porn and just about any legislator will support any bill that enables more monitoring of citizens.
Better to be watchful and vocal - without screaming that the sky is falling - than to sit quietly, watching the privacy we enjoy now disappear for our children.
Well spoken. I realized one day that pretty much the only education I'd had about Communism, at least before college, consisted of 'Communist = Evil'. Not even in high school did we ever cover the basics of what it really is.
I spoke to a friend who spent some time travelling around Laos. Apparently the system's worked pretty well for them. They've got better education and nutrition now, access to healthcare, and at least some hope of sending their children on to something beyond a subsistence-level existence in a small village. And when you're operating on that scale, I really can't see how capitalism could be argued to be that much better.
Empirical evidence would suggest, however, that communism hasn't worked out terribly well for the long term in larger implementations.
Back in 1995 I had some arguments... that is um... discussions (in Cannes at Milia) with Nicholas Negroponte and John Perry Barlow. Both Negroponte and Barlow believed that the Internet was an unstoppable force that would inevitably make countries like China become free.
My argument was that the Chinese and other repressive governments would be sure to set up national proxies with filtering that blocked out sites the government didn't want people to see and kept track of what people were accessing.
Both Negroponte and Barlow told me that was impossible and would never happen. They also pointed out that the TCP/IP is designed to route around obstacles.
Well, I've been proven right (so why am I not running Media Lab or flying around the world giving speeches?). China and other countries (Singapore, etc.) have in fact put in national proxies and are blocking thousands of sites, tracking people's usage, and putting people in jail.
On the other hand, I think that there is a hope that Barlow and Negroponte will eventually turn out to be right in the end, as hackers and other renegades put in alternative links via satellite and other means, which bypass these government blockades.
If enough of that happens, the blockades will come down, since they won't be useful any longer.
But I think there will be a long hard struggle befoe that happens.
Our definition of hacktivism is, "using technology to advance human rights through electronic media."
You might not know it from reading the manifesto, but cDc and Hactivismo have actually been working on a product called Peekabooty that allows users to sneak through the firewalls that oppressive regimes set up to restrict access to the Internet.
Hacktivism chooses open code, mostly.
Peekabooty is open source under the GPL but the FAQ advises people who would like to do testing: "You should have enough equipment to run at least three nodes, which means three MS Windows machines (we are in the process of porting it to Linux). You should also be skilled with tracing through code using Visual C++ or your own favorite debugger."
the main challenge for hackers is to keep focused on the goal of liberating the Internet.
There seems to have been some kind of falling out between cDc and Hactivismo over Peekabooty. The lead developer Paul Baranowski (aka Drunken Master) said he has "decided to sever ties with the Hacktivismo group but he will continue to develop the Peekabooty app. Occasionally developers can't find the environment they need to do their best work and now is one such time."
Now let's get a piece of that article linked above...
What's this about? Are they friend of foe??? And lastly, the thread was modded -1, offtopic. Evidently somebody didn't want us to see that....
josh crawley
So, in my mind, hacking a web page can never really be justified--no matter what the cause is. On the other hand, refusing to obey government censorship (in places like China) by hacking through their censors is, in my mind, is a very noble thing.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Re: China...
/ ch.html
...
If I said I could *quadruple* the living standard of the poorest 20% of the globe in less than 3 decades, would you laugh? If I really did it, might you be impressed?
The Chinese govt did just that between 1972 and 2000. Quadrupled the average income of the nation from about $800 to $3,600. Without spilling buckets of blood (see Stalin, Mao South America). http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
Yep, their govt is corrupt from stem to stern, a true cleptocracy. But it is undergoing change much more rapidly than gov't in the west, (which are selling their children's health and souls to big corporations).
Can you really claim they the Chinese persecution is worse that the US war on drugs? Or the Israeli's treatment of the Palestinians? Or the US in central America?
Don't fight them, wait, watch, keep perspective. Change is happening.
The Oxblood essay is kind, progressive and well intentioned. But if you want to make a huge change in people's lives, stop playing in the
Internet, go where help is needed and pick up a shovel. Or sign a check to feed a starving kid. Or help develop a better strain of rice. Or
It's easy to be Robbin Hood. High-profile heroics is more fun than the hard work, but doesn't feed more people. Which, oddly enough, is
what the chinese govt has been doing with amazing success.
rant over,
=brian