{"id":8918,"date":"2010-12-20T00:00:03","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T23:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=8918"},"modified":"2010-12-18T02:21:53","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T01:21:53","slug":"legitimate-civil-disobedience-wikileaks-and-the-layers-of-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/12\/legitimate-civil-disobedience-wikileaks-and-the-layers-of-backlash\/","title":{"rendered":"Legitimate Civil Disobedience: WikiLeaks and the Layers of Backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Note: There are so many parts to the Wikileaks story<\/a> that it\u2019s almost impossible to cover them all\u2013once you start to detangle one angle, you discover twenty more. Slip down that rabbit hole, and you\u2019ll come out dizzier than when you went in. In any case, this isn\u2019t meant to be a comprehensive discussion of the entire topic, but to expand on a conversation sparked yesterday.)<\/em><\/p>\n

I attended Personal Democracy Forum\u2019s symposium on Wikileaks<\/a> yesterday\u2013a fantastic lineup of speakers and attendees, gathered quickly to discuss one of the most complicated intersections of Internet and politics that we\u2019ve seen in a while. During one of the earlier forums, my friend Noel Hidalgo<\/a> put forth an idea that divided the room pretty quickly: that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are a legitimate form of civil disobedience.<\/p>\n

A quick lesson on DDoS for the unfamiliar: a group of people gets together and decides to render a website unusable. They do this by flooding the website\u2019s server with so many requests that the server gets overloaded and either slows down, or stops responding altogether. A big important point: this is not hacking.<\/strong> \u201cHacking\u201d generally applies to incidents where systems are actually broken into and data is compromised. DDoS doesn\u2019t do this.<\/p>\n

To use the case from this week, a group of activists called Anonymous<\/a> (more on them in a second) decided to render, among others, Mastercard\u2019s website unusable. This does not mean that credit card data was stolen, or that people were unable to use their Mastercards for purchases. It means that if you went to Mastercard.com, you got a message that the website was unavailable.<\/p>\n

So, the question: is this a legitimate form of civil disobedience?<\/p>\n

The first sentence of the civil disobedience entry in Wikipedia<\/a> reads, \u201cCivil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power.\u201d After that, all bets are off on what you consider the term to mean. It\u2019s generally accepted in the US to mean an organized, non-violent way of protesting or expressing extreme displeasure with a situation. I\u2019m certainly open to hearing others\u2019 definitions, here\u2013this is as concisely as I can nail my own understanding.<\/p>\n

The next part of this question is to look at the word \u201clegitimate.\u201d Legitimate doesn\u2019t always mean legal; in fact, most of the time, it doesn\u2019t have much to do with law at all. I want to clarify this because it also explains how I approach politics. As I said in my talk at PdF this year<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear about what politics are. \u201cPolitics\u201d is not just about candidates, elections, and ballot initiatives. Politics is the art and science of influencing or changing any kind of power relationship: the cultural norms by which we act; the laws that govern us; the expectations we experience based on our gender, race, class, sexuality, abilities, and more. When I talk about political work, I\u2019m talking about challenging and radically redefining those power relationships.<\/p>\n

Because \u201clegitimate\u201d is so much more than laws, in the same way that politics is more than government, I use the term to mean \u201cjustifiable,\u201d or otherwise \u201cacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, most DDoS attacks are rarely explicitly politically motivated; the people that commit them are often just in it for the lulz<\/a>. (In other words, in it for kicks \u2018n\u2019 giggles.) Those folks, typical of Anonymous\u2019 membership, are what I call \u201cchaos enthusiasts.\u201d They want to cause disruption for its own sake, and love watching the theater and drama of an attack play out. When politics do become involved, other tactics are often added to the DDoS attacks, and aren\u2019t what I\u2019d consider OK within the realm of protest vs. power. Friends, clients and colleagues have been the victim of this end Anonymous\u2019 work in the past\u2013particularly my feminist cohorts have experienced their brutal misogyny.<\/p>\n

When we face issues of free speech on the Net, we\u2019re confronted with a severe reality in the harshest moments: we consider this here to be public space, but in reality it\u2019s owned and operated by private companies. There is currently no set of accepted standards that say we have a set of rights online. (Though many have tried\u2013 Katrin Verclas referred us to a very short history of Internet rights<\/a>, for example.)<\/p>\n

Several corporations bowed to political pressure and cut off services to Wikileaks. It has not yet been proven that the organization broke any laws, but Paypal, Mastercard and others decided to stop allowing citizens to show their support for the organization by giving them money. This is a clear violation of limiting a form of speech\u2013 the Supreme Court ruled this year that political donations are a form of free speech<\/a>, at least when corporations are doing the donating. To me, this was the first volley in this theater of battle. It angered me, and a whole lot of other people, clearly. I\u2019ve been told that in Germany, where the citizenry are notoriously suspicious of technology, privacy and politics, the federal courts there have labeled DDoS a form of free speech. (Link tk.)<\/p>\n

Thus, in response, Anonymous launched a DDoS attack against the websites of the companies that took away people\u2019s rights to support a political organization. Many, myself included, consider DDoS in this context to be much like a sit-in in the offline world. The point of a sit-in is to render a building\/room\/service unusable for a temporary period of time. Sit-ins aren\u2019t \u201clegal\u201d\u2013 you get arrested, and most activists who participate in them know this ahead of time and prepare for it. (At the event, I was asked what happens after arrest; most of the time, it\u2019s a misdemeanor charge, and you\u2019re issued an ACD<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

No permanent damage is done in a DDoS attack. This is particularly important to note when discussing DDoS as a political tool. It\u2019s the difference between participating in a die-in at an embassy, for example, and smashing the windows of an embassy. As with any other form of activism, it shouldn\u2019t be the only prong in a campaign strategy, and shouldn\u2019t be used in every campaign.<\/p>\n

Many at the forum disagree vehemently with this line of thinking: from what I understand, the argument is that \u201cattacking the network does everyone a disservice.\u201d I understand this and see the nobility it tries to bring; I was pointed to a quote from 2000 by Cult of the Dead Cow<\/a> opposing early political DoS attacks\u2013 \u201cOne does not make a better point in a public forum by shouting down one\u2019s opponent.\u201d However, I disagree in cases where we are dealing with powerful corporations who do not respond to traditional forms of protest. I also believe it is, in cases against corporate abuse of power, a way to get direct media attention for a cause.<\/p>\n

Noel asked what I\u2019d ask people who disagree with me: how do I digitally throw myself in front of a tank? What we do online often runs the risk of slacktivism. For example, I\u2019m surprised at how many people rallied around last weekend\u2019s \u201cchange your Facebook picture to a cartoon character to raise awareness about child abuse.\u201d Really? This is the innovation we\u2019re coming up with? What does a picture-swap do except make us feel chummy with each other?*<\/a><\/p>\n

We \u2014 tech activists and politically-minded folk, especially in the US \u2014 bring a tremendous amount of privilege to the table. We have the ability and freedom to risk ourselves for the benefit of many who do not. So with that in mind, we\u2019re using our privilege to poo-poo the temporary disabling of a giant corporate website, while looking for just the right shot of Mickey Mouse? Power dynamics matter. There is a reason<\/em> that David and Goliath is such a powerful story in Western culture.<\/p>\n

Perhaps what some people are afraid of is that giving a stamp of approval to DDoS as a political tool makes it okay for their political enemies to do the same. What\u2019s to stop the CIA, or Iran\u2019s government ops, or whomever to do the same to sites we believe in and support? Again, I understand, but I maintain another angle on the slippery-slope fears: I fear cataloging DDoS as illegitimate will ultimately prevent other forms of digital activism from being used, or even from being able to be used. There\u2019s a nicely nuanced post about DDoS<\/a> from the Iranian protest period of 2009 that discusses pros and cons, vis a vis the \u201cwe don\u2019t want to stoop to the enemy\u2019s level\u201d argument.<\/p>\n

The last point of discussion I want to bring up is one of accountability\u2013 over on Twitter, my friend Ben Greenberg<\/a> made this point<\/a>: \u201cI question actions that are not accountable to a community or to the other side. How is that \u2018civil\u2019 disobedience?\u201d Well, I think Anonymous certainly is accountable to itself, with its own set of wacky mores and rules. In a case like this, who else do they need to be accountable to? Maybe I\u2019m misunderstanding the question, which is why I wanted to take this part beyond the 140-character limit. An anti-war group that sits-in at a recruiting station is accountable to whom? Themselves, certainly. Are they accountable to the entire rest of the anti-war movement? The opposing side, in this case, the military or the police, can hold them accountable by arresting them. In the case of DDoS, that\u2019s not as easy, but still quite possible<\/a>. (Especially when the publicly released tool to propel the DDoS on Wikileaks\u2019 detractors didn\u2019t disguise IP addresses.)<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, anonymity is mainstay of DDoS, and this could be the sticking point for many as to whether it\u2019s considered \u201ccivil.\u201d My friend Arthur<\/a> said, \u201cAnonymity is generally not accepted as civil disobedience- that is not a bad thing, it\u2019s just a different category. Civil disobedience uses the spectacle of the citizen confronting the mechanisms of the state to create its power. I don\u2019t think denial of service attacks are comparable in that regard.\u201d What if members of a DDoS attack volunteered their names? Would that change how people who currently disagree with the tactic feel?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I\u2019m far more fearful of (and angered by) corporate reactions to politically sticky situations, and what we\u2019re going to be doing to aid people I buy Internet services from in protecting me against politically-motivated squelching, and how we\u2019ll stop those companies that seek to do it anyways. Until we have clear, strong protection globally, I have few to no issues with using many of the tools at our disposal.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Noel sent me this article on Electronic Civil D<\/a>isobedience<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 deannazandt.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anonymous launched a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack against the websites of the companies that took away people\u2019s rights to support a political organization [PayPal, Master Charge, Amazon.] Many, myself included, consider DDoS in this context to be much like a sit-in in the offline world. The point of a sit-in is to render a building\/room\/service unusable for a temporary period of time. Sit-ins aren\u2019t \u201clegal\u201d\u2013 you get arrested, and most activists who participate in them know this ahead of time and prepare for it\u2026. Most of the time, it\u2019s a misdemeanor charge, and you\u2019re issued an ACD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}