With the continual advancement of technology, I am disappointed to also note the increasing reports of cyber crime [1]. While some claim that the prevalence of crime is inevitable in such an unregulated arena as the Internet, it could also be that some cyber crimes are digital manifestations of acts of non-violent protest akin to those employed in the real world by social activists. The recent activities of the Anonymous hacker group have brought this issue to the forefront in today’s tech-savvy society. This group’s aid to protests movements, such as those in Arab Spring, are to be applauded, however many governments are now in the process of investigating and apprehending suspected members of Anonymous for their illegal attacks on organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America, in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act [2].
Hacktivism is the use of computers and other technology to aid political protests and thus protect the rights of the individual and the freedom of information [3]. Hacktivism has a number of manifestations including defacing webpages, web sit ins (a form of denial of service by increasing web traffic), email bombing, code distribution, website mirroring (to combat censorship), geotagging, and blogging. Anonymous has aided and supported the rights of Middle Eastern peoples in Arab Spring protests by launching distributed denial of service attacks on websites of the Tunisian and Egyptian governments. The group has been part of social protests by disrupting the operations of supporters of the controversial SOPA. Many of the attacks perpetrated by the group require infiltration of digital security systems and are criminal because they break privacy laws. Therefore, members of Anonymous have proven themselves to support the rights of individuals and it can be argued that their actions are forms of digital protest similar to acts of protest in the real world.
On the other hand, Anonymous has been branded as a terrorist group by many people because of their numerous threats of punitive and retaliatory action. Terrorism by definition is a term that is somewhat similar to that of Hacktivism. Bruce Hoffman describes terrorism as acts or threats of violence with political motives committed by a non-state or sub-national organization that has an identifiable chain of command [4]. This interpretation is problematic in the case of Anonymous because of the ambiguous nature of the group. Since the group is free to join for anyone and involvement in specific initiatives are optional and they have an egalitarian structure with no formal leadership, Anonymous has no chain of command and its status as an 'organization' is called into question. Nevertheless, many of their actions and threats could have serious repercussions despite lacking the element of physical violence. For example, their Operation Global Blackout is a threat to shut down Facebook internationally or to 'take down' the Internet via an attack on root name servers. The consequences of such an attack would be disastrous on e-commerce and by extension the world economy and welfare of the global public. Furthermore, Anonymous' actions would be anti-activist because the disabling of online tools such as Facebook hinder other activists who use such tools for organization and communication. Thus, Anonymous has the potential to be a terrorist group the results of their attacks could cause serious harm to others.
Overall, Anonymous' actions on the Internet can be categorized as either examples of Hacktivism and/or Terrorism and this is subject to one's own opinion. What is concrete about this group is that, albeit criminal, their actions have brought awareness to the plight of many oppressed peoples and important social issues that we can take a stand on today.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/02/technology/fbi_cybersecurity/index.htm
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/29/25-anonymous-arrests-made_n_1308832.html
[3] http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2004/07/64193
[4] Bruce Hoffman, Inside terrorism, 2 ed., Columbia University Press, 2006, p. 41.
No comments:
Post a Comment