Hacktivism in the Cyberstreets

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9223

David Cassel, AlterNet
May 30, 2000

In early May an activist calling himself "Reverend Billy" called for
thousands of computer owners to fire up their modems for an assault on
Starbucks. From unseen corners of the globe, they'd converge on the
company's Web site -- hoping to overload it.

Though the media portrays hackers as secretive, destructive intruders,
some individuals and groups are openly committing online attacks in
the name of furthering specific causes. It can be a symbolic massing
on a Web page which, with enough participants, makes it inaccessible
to others -- or more invasive "monkey-wrenching" to disable a site's
equipment. Others just want to bypass government restrictions they see
as unfair. But they're all trying to fuse their passions to their
technology, using the power of the Internet to discover new forms of
social protest.

In December a group called the Electrohippies
(www.gn.apc.org/pmhp/ehippies) organized a "WTO virtual sit-in" that
overloaded the machines keeping the World Trade Organization's Web
pages on the Internet. The five U.K. activists estimate that over
452,000 people swamped the site. (During the action the group says
participants sent them up to 900 e-mails each day.) Paul Mobbs, the
group's co-founder and media liaison, says they accomplished their
goal -- disrupting the World Trade Organization's online presence for
four- to five-hour stretches -- and reduced that site's overall speed
by half.

In April the group launched an even more ambitious series of events
protesting genetically modified crops. If you had a computer equipped
with a modem, you were already a potential co-activist in their
radical action. A surprise "special action" began April Fool's Day
with the media-friendly name "Resistance is Fertile." The
Electrohippies called for an e-mail campaign from the 3rd to the 7th
targeting 78 officials listed on the Hippies' Web site, including U.S.
Department of Agriculture communications official Vic Powell -- to
build public pressure against genetically modified foods. But the
tactics remain so controversial that they called off their main event
that had been scheduled for the next week -- "an email and client-side
denial of service extravaganza" -- after an online vote for the action
failed to muster a simple majority.

[...]


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