The Hacktivists – study guide - FRAW

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The bizaare Zurich-based art group etoy.com…surrealist businesspeople responsible forhacktivism’s finest moment so far, the legendary Toywar of 1999; INCREASINGLY, FACED WITH THOUSANDS OF RIOT POLICEAND EVER STRONGER FENCES TO KEEP THEM OUT, ANTI-GLOBALISATION PROTESTERS MAY HAVE NO OPTION BUT TO GO ‘ELECTRONIC’;clockwise top left: Hacktivism unmasked…Nart Villeneuve (Canada), Renaud Corvoisier (France), Ricardo Dominguez(United States) & Paul Mobbs (UK) … working across four continents towards a single day of cyber protest againstglobalisation.sites that refer to ‘Cyber War’. Accordingto Alex Fowler, Strategic InitiativesDirector for the Electronic FrontierFoundation, ‘Taking responsibility isnot something we see happening. Oneof the critical things in environmentalcauses and the civil rights movementwas that groups who used strongtactics and intentionally broke thelaw eventually came forward and tookresponsibility for their actions. It wasowning up that really helped thesemovements forward’.CYBERSLEUTHS AND CIVILRIGHTShttp://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,416954,00.htmlthe Internet with software calledCarnivore. This would allow them totrawl for emails containing particularwords’. These actions have civil rightsimplications that you may wish todiscuss and explore further.THE BATTLE OF SEATTLEHere is one of numeroussites about this large antiglobalisationprotest inthe USA. It also has linksto many others, includingUS government sites, toprovide official versionsof what happened as wellas the versions of thosewho protested.Electrohippies Collectivehttp://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/etoy corporationhttp://www.etoy.com/Defense, Ben’s former employerhttp://www.idefense.com/This is another useful site with astory that could be used as the basisfor discussion or activities. It hasexcellent defi nitions and includes acritical discussion of the motivationof the hacktivists as well as some ofthe measures that governments arebeginning to take against them. Forexample, ‘In Britain, the Regulationof Investigatory Powers Act has giventhe police and security services thepower to collect Internet data withouta warrant and to demand the keysto encrypted material. In the UnitedStates, the FBI is seeking the rightto capture all messages sent acrosshttp://past.thenation.com/cgi-bin/framizer.cgi?url=http://past.thenation.com/issue/991227/1227greider.shtmlUSEFUL WEB SITESThe Hacktivist online magazinehttp://www.thehacktivist.com/Electronic Disturbance Theatrehttp://www.thing.net/~rdom/Federation of Random Actionhttp://this.is/etoytech/fra/REFERENCESEllicott, J., ‘Gadgets leave us poorer’,The Courier Mail, Brisbane, Queensland,10 September 1998, p.3.Knight, J., Internationalization: Elementsand Checkpoints, CBIE, Ottawa,1994.Speth, J., ‘Economic Growth andEquitable Human Development’, thelaunch of the 1996 Human DevelopmentReport, UNDP, 16 July 1996.ISSUE 29 AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION9