DefCon: hacking for human rights

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,s2091393,00.html

[A Defcon story that slipped passed me, not hard with all the DMCA
stories that were published in the days following DC9.  - WK]

Tuesday 17th July 2001 
By: Robert Lemos, ZDNN   

Hackers are turning their attention to creating anonymous, private
methods for sending human rights information across the Internet

Human rights activists put out a call to hackers here to help get the
word out about their cause -- not by having them deface sites, but by
creating applications that can help the organisations manage data.

Greg Walton, a freelance human rights researcher, spoke to hackers at
the Def Con conference in support of the Hacktivismo project, an
attempt to create an anonymous, private way of getting human rights
information across the Internet while protecting the identities of
those who report the abuses.

"We are talking about more constructive, more positive ways of dealing
with human rights abuses," said Walton, who is studying how the
Chinese government is censoring the Internet for its citizens. "It's
not ethical to own someone's Web site as a way of getting the message
out."

Started by the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a group of hackers and
performance artists, the project's first goal will be to finish an
application known as Peekabooty, which will form the infrastructure of
such a private network. Though the cDc originally expected to release
the software at Def Con, which concluded Sunday, unresolved technical
problems have put the project on hold.

While the number of people that are prevented from speaking about
human rights abuses cannot be quantified, the need for such an
application is great, said Patrick Ball, deputy director of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science and
Human Rights programme.

Potential human rights informants "know that governments monitor the
Internet, so in many cases they won't send e-mail to report abuse," he
said. Ball also called for hackers to produce easier-to-use code to
protect privacy.

Referring to his own project cataloging human rights abuses, Ball said
that a way of storing information on the individual incidents is also
necessary.

Using a simple database, Ball and his colleagues were able to track
the war crimes in Bosnia, Haiti and other trouble spots. The group
also kept track of the people commanding the forces that committed the
crimes and presented summaries of the data to the respective
peacekeeping forces.

"We didn't get the (commanders) put in prison, but we did get them
taken out of positions of power," he said, referring to the results of
posting statistics in public places in Bosnia.

Hackers in the United States and other countries where abuses are
infrequent should not be complacent, Ball stressed. Technology like
Peekabooty could help prevent the censorship of all sorts of
information.

"What if you write a piece of code that someone doesn't like?" he
asked, making a veiled reference to the DeCSS case in which the movie
industry has successfully prosecuted Web sites that have posted the
DVD-decrypting code.

These types of incidents should convince hackers that censorship
affects everyone, he said. "It's time to support your own community."




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