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The Advent of Wireless Global Distributed Hacktivism |
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by Stefan Wray
Email: swray (nospam) io.com (unverified!) |
03 Jun 2002
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A paper delivered as part of the Electronic Disturbance Theater's performance at Cybertree 2002, Harvard Law School, Berkman Center, May 31, 2002. |
The Advent of Wireless Global Distributed Hacktivism
by Stefan Wray
A paper delivered as part of the Electronic Disturbance Theater's performance at Cybertree 2002, Harvard Law School, Berkman Center, May 31, 2002.
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Part One: Street Activism to Net. Activism
On April 30, 1975, the last helicopter evacuating American diplomatic and military personnel left from the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The United States had lost the war in Vietnam.
On April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was born in California.
These may seem like unrelated events.
But let's fast forward to 2002.
In May, Dell Computers, based near Austin, Texas, received a 17.7 million dollar defense contract to provide the Marine Corps and Navy with 9,940 notebook computers.
The end of the Vietnam War marks a turning point for the U.S. military. The Pentagon began to reshape its military doctrine. A Revolution in Military Affairs evolved into Information Warfare.
On the civilian side, post-Vietnam War era technologies emerged which would later be adopted by social movements.
The first cell phone system began operation in Tokyo in 1979. Activists in the streets of Seattle, 20 years later, protesting the WTO, communicated news from the street via cell phone to the Independent Media Center.
In 1981, IBM released its first PC. In 1982 the term 'Internet' is used for the first time.
The origins of electronic civil disobedience, hacktivism, and web-based actions by the Electronic Disturbance Theater - and more broadly the use of computers by social movements - is in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
This is when the digital networks started - when personal computers connected to other personal computers.
Among the early examples of the political use of the Internet is the formation of EcoNet in 1982. It emerges during the Reagan presidency, and at the start of a contentious decade regarding U.S. policy in Central America.
By 1983, TCP/IP becomes the universal language of the Internet. That same year, 300,000 fax machines were in use in the United States.
And in 1983, the United States invades Grenada under the name "Operation Urgent Fury" and begins a six year period troop maneuvers and base construction in Honduras.
Greater technology. More war.
The antecedents to hacktivism are clearly traceable to 1984. That year,"2600: The Hacker Quarterly" starts publishing, William Gibson coins the term "cyberspace," and the Domain Name System (DNS) is introduced.
By 1985, Internet e-mail and newsgroups are part of life at many universities. The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) is created.
PeaceNet forms in 1986 in San Francisco to serve movements for peace, human rights, and social justice. Groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and groups supporting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua use PeaceNet.
One year later, PeaceNet joins with EcoNet to form the Institute for Global Communications (IGC). That same year Americans watch televised Congressional hearings into the Iran-Contra affair.
It takes the federal government time to legislate computer use. In 1986, Congress passes the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In 1988 DARPA creates the Computer Emergency Response Team.
By 1989 in the U.S., 4,000,000 fax machines are in use. Activists use faxes to blast their opponents with messages. That year another hacker publication - Hacktic - is born in Amsterdam.
The U.S. military ends the decade with a bang. With George Bush as president, on December 20, 1989, U.S. troops invade Panama. In the grand tradition of U.S. military operations, thousands of innocent people are killed. Panama is an operational test for U.S. communications systems that are deployed in full force a year later during the Gulf War.
Bush delivers his "new world order" speech to a joint session of Congress in September 1990, signaling a new era of globalization and U.S. world domination.
Most military analysts studying Information Warfare credit the Gulf War - due to the combined role of computers, satellites and information dominance in that war.
But opponents of that war use computers. News of anti-Gulf War protests spread across the Net, while the mainstream media ignored them.
U.S. cities erupt in protest when the Bush administration launches its aerial assault on Baghdad on January 16, 1991. Protestors in San Francisco swarm into the street and clog traffic arteries. They flood the Bay Bridge linking San Francisco to Oakland and temporarily block users of the bridge from accessing the city-site.
The World Wide Web is born a few months after the U.S. military ends its first round of assaults on Iraq. May 17, 1991 marks the general release of WWW on central CERN servers.
Between 1992 and 1994, the United States leads the UN occupation of Somalia. On December 17, 1992, Canada, the United States, and Mexico sign the North American Free Trade Agreement. William Clinton takes the reigns from Bush in January 1993.
While Bush's war against Saddam segues into the World Wide Web. Clinton's first year in office coincides with the development of Mosaic, the first graphics-based Web browser.
Meanwhile the hackers are organizing. In the summer of 1993 Hacking at the End of the Universe in The Netherlands is "a 3-day summer conference for hackers, phone breaks, programmers, cyberpunks and all the other 'unshaven techno-anarchistic riff raff'"
Two events in 1994 are direct antecedents to the Electronic Disturbance Theater.
On January 1, 1994 - the date NAFTA goes into force - the Zapatistas emerge from the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas, to the streets of San Cristobal de las Casas, and eventually onto the World Wide Web. It becomes a war of words - a war rapidly dispersed by the Internet.
The other is the publication of The Electronic Disturbance by Autonomedia/Semiotext(e). This book provides the theoretical underpinnings for the Electronic Disturbance Theater.
For the international left, the Zapatistas are a sign of hope. And the coincidental rise of the World Wide Web provided a new and exciting means to transmit that hope and possibility. The possibility for globalization from below.
Part Two: EDT to Distributed Street Activism (Seattle)
In May of 1994, CERN holds its First International WWW Conference. Three months later, the Zapatistas host a national meeting for civil society. Ernesto Zedillo becomes the Mexican president on December 1.
The globalizers stay the course. They establish the World Trade Organization in 1995. The rapid expansion of the Internet certainly helps their cause. By 1996 the Internet covers the globe with nearly 10 million hosts online.
The Internet also facilitates people wanting a different kind of globalization. On January 1996, the Zapatistas issued the First Declaration of La Realidad for Humanity and against Neoliberalism. As a result, in July some 3,000 people from 43 countries attend the First Intercontinental Encounter in five different Zapatista communities in Chiapas.
Also in 1996, Autonomedia/Semiotext(e) publishes another book - Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas, which argues that the streets are dead capital, the place for real intervention is in the electronic fabric, where capital now resides and flourishes.
In Chiapas, Mexico, on December 22, 1997, in a small village called Acteal, a death squad massacres a group of over 40 people, mainly women. This incident lead to an international outcry. People take to the streets in cities around the world. And others act on the Net. On January 29, 1998, a group in Italy, the "Anonymous Digital Coalition," calls for a NETSTRIKE FOR ZAPATA.
The Electronic Disturbance Theater is inspired by the Netstrike response to the Acteal Massacre. FloodNet is born.
EDT's first act of Electronic Civil Disobedience - using FloodNet - to Stop the War in Mexico takes place on April 10, 1998. The action targets the Web sites of the Zedillo Administration, the Clinton White House, Mexican Stock Exchange (Bolsa), and Chase Manhattan Bank. The FloodNet URL gets 8,141 hits.
Between April and September a series of similar actions, all involving FloodNet, focus on the web sites of the White House, President Zedillo, Mexico's Secretaria de Gobernacion, and the Mexican Embassy in London.
At Ars Electronica in Austria, EDT showcases FloodNet, speaks to the subject of Electronic Civil Disobedience, and demonstrates a SWARM action against the Pentagon, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and Mexican government.
In September, 1998, Ars Electronica's theme is Information Warfare. It is an interesting convergence of the net.art, net.politics, and net.hacker communities. Traditionalist hackers, who alleged that FloodNet was nothing more than a denial-of service device, just didn't get it. They didn't understand that we are playing with metaphors.
Fast forward to Yugoslavia.
In March 1999, the United States leads a NATO air campaign against Belgrade and other cities in Yugoslavia, destroying bridges, buildings, and military targets. Their smart bombs hit the Chinese Embassy. And not without good cause, people with Chinese Internet addresses begin hacking into U.S. government web sites.
At the same time people throughout Yugoslavia gain access to the Internet and provide the outside world with a different version of reality than what the Pentagon reports through CNN and the networks.
Six months later in Seattle, the massive demonstrations against the WTO leap immediately onto the Web through the Independent Media Center. 50,000 people take to the streets and inside the convention center delegates from developing countries stage their own rebellion.
At the same time, a group in the UK called the electrohippies, drawing on EDT's example from the previous year, host an online action that on the second day of the conference results in the WTO's web site going down due to high traffic levels. Their action draws 500,000.
Seattle kicks off a series of large demonstrations aimed at corporate controlled global trade and finance. On April 16, 2000, protests against the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC draw 30,000. In September, in Melbourne, Australia, people protest the World Economic Forum and in Prague they protest the IMF again. Protests against the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) take place in Quebec on April 20, 2001 and against the G-8 in Genoa, Italy, between July 20 and 22, 2001 - drawing 100,000 people.
These large demonstrations are augmented by a Web presence in several forms. The events themselves have Web sites dedicated to promotion and education. Each of these actions gets covered by the Independent Media Center. Reports in print, photos, audio and video gets posted in real-time to IMC web sites. These actions have an electronic civil disobedience or a hacktivist component.
A cyber action coinciding with the Prague S26 was organized by the Federation of Random Action and toyZtech. Affiliates for the A20 anti-FTAA electronic civil disobedience are the Hacktivist, EDT, and the electrohippies.
There is a VR-Sit on May Day 2000 by the Federation of Random Action. On November 30, there is a NetStrike Against the Death Penalty. On May 7, 2001, there is a Virtual Sit-in to support the demand for a Living Wage for all Harvard University employees. On June 13, 2001, there is a Virtual Sit-In for Vieques. On June 20, 2001, there is a "no one is illegal" and "libertad!" call for a virtual sit-in against the deportation business.
Hacktivism begins to occur with greater frequency. More groups start performing it and issuing calls for online action. Hacktivism also begins to receive more attention from the media and Congress hears about it.
Dorothy E. Denning, a professor at Georgetown University, on May 23, 2000, testifies before the Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism of the Committee on Armed Services in U.S. House of Representatives. The subject is cyberterrorism. She makes an argument that the type of actions employed by EDT and others is not cyberterrorism. She writes: "These sit-ins all require mass participation to have much effect, and thus are more suited to use by activists than by terrorists."
By November 2000 articles appear by Reuters and the San Francisco Chronicle on this new Hacktivism. The Reuters piece traces hacktivism to the Zapatistas.The San Francisco Chronicle cites the origins of what it calls "socially conscious hackers" to the "virtual sit-ins" of EDT in 1998.
This coverage is greatly overshadowed by news of election fraud on the part of the George W. Bush campaign in November 2000 and the case of the dangling chads.
On January 3, 2001, seven years into the Zapatista revolution, the Electronic Disturbance Theater distributes new code for a Zapatista Tribal Port Scan. A port scan is described not as a crime "It is no different in spirit from counting the windows of a building on a public sidewalk, or observing the number of doors."
The metaphor of paper airplanes is invoked. The Tribal Port Scan is a "digital translation of the Zapatista Air Force Action" of a year earlier in which "the Zapatista Air Force 'bombarded' the federal barracks of the Mexican Army with hundreds of paper airplanes."
January 2001 is also an auspicious moment in U.S. history. The selected president George W. Bush ascends to the White House while thousands hold counter inaugural actions in Washington and around the country.
Part Three: Wireless Streets and Global Activism(s)
Within days of September 11 many feel we were doomed, not so much by the threat of more terrorism directed against the United States, but from the excuse this gave the Bush administration to remove the velvet glove and to rule with an iron first.
People envisioned suspension of the Constitution and round-ups of dissidents who argued against Bush's war. It is true that thousands of immigrants have been detained and the political environment for activism has changed.
But seven months after 9-11, on April 20, 2002, between 75,000 and 100,000 people were in the streets of Washington calling for an end to the war on terrorism. A growing numbers of Americans are skeptical of the Bush administration.
Under the triumvirate rule of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft, it's still unclear how online tactics involving electronic civil disobedience and hacktivism will be handled by law enforcement.
In October, 2001, the U.S. launched its air war against Afghanistan - leaving innocent civilians dead - and Congress passes the Patriot Act, which amended the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
But that same month, an action called Jam Echelon 2 is held on October 21. Echelon is the name for a U.S. National Security Agency system to intercept email, telephone, and fax communications. The action attempted to flood Echelon with code words that it uses to trace communications.
In November, the electrohippies hosted virtual sit-ins against the bombing of Afghanistan and "The War Against Terrorism" and in December against the UK anti terrorism bill.
Between January 31 and February 4, 2002, there was a NETSTRIKE against the World Economic Forum meeting in New York City.
On April 15 the electrohippies called another online action against Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government to demand military withdrawal from Palestinian areas and the unconditional resumption of peace negotiations.
Even so, the post 9-11 environment is not safe for all computer activists. This year in Los Angeles on January 23, heavily armed with high-powered machine guns, shot guns, and hand guns, the FBI, Secret Service, and LAPD surrounded the founder of raisethefist.com in his house.
Fast forward to the future.
A number of trajectories and tendencies will shape and influence the future of computer activism, electronic civil disobedience, and hacktivism.
Whereas FloodNet, other actions by the Electronic Disturbance Theater, and the actions of others have largely been accomplished by use of the PC, activists in the future will increasingly rely on the PDA and other small portable handheld devices.
The cell phone has already become an important tool for street activism. IMC street reporters call back to the IMCs to file field reports which are typed immediately onto Web browsers providing onlookers with near real-time news.
Cell phones, and radio systems, already allow street activists to communicate and coordinate action.
The mobility and portability of wireless devices like cell phones and smaller more portable interfaces to the Web, bring the world of computer-based activism out of the cubicles, out of people's homes and workplaces, and into the streets and outside environments.
The development of 802.11 wireless networks and the emergence of other wireless Internet infrastructure built from the bottom-up will function in parallel to the wireless structures already constructed from the top-down by Sprint, Cingular, ATT, and others.
Handheld devices will be modular and inter-operable allowing for different configurations and combinations of devices. We already have the model of wireless laptops connected to digital video cameras - and the ability to transmit images back to a base station server, or directly to the Web.
Laptops can now function as servers. As smaller devices have larger data capacities, we see the possibility of portable servers linked to a wireless Internet. This new environment points the way to wireless global distributed hacktivism.
Hacktivist code can already be distributed over a series of computers. With data housed on one computer, scripts can be located on another, that reference template scripts found yet again on another.
A series of handheld 1 gigabyte PDAs linked together in a chain on a wireless 802.11 network could host distributed code for tools like FloodNet or the Zapatista Tribal Port Scan or other hacktivist tools as yet un-imagined.
A cyborg army of street activists and hacktivists armed with handheld computers could march down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House and while physically prevented from entering the White House grounds, they could launch a FloodNet-type action on the White House web site.
At the same time, IMC video teams could capture images of these activist-hacktivists, and transmit these back to the IMC for immediate live streaming reportage.
People at home, at work, or in school, from anywhere on the planet could both join in the PDA action against the White House, by using their PCs, and at the same time they could view the action on the street through a Real or Quick Time media player.
This increased hybridity, this increased merging of what transpires in the streets and on the Net, is what we can expect to occur with the advent of wireless global distributed hacktivism.
The hybrid actions thus far are precursors to this. When thousands hit the streets of Seattle, thousands also hit the World Trade Organization's web site.
The next generation of hybrid street-Net action will bring the Net into the streets through the widespread dispersion of handheld devices and wireless networks.
This new terrain is part of the ever-changing electronic fabric of struggle.
Electronic Disturbance Theater
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html
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Stefan Wray
swray (at) io.com
Iconmedia
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See also:
http://www.iconmedia.org
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