Armin Medosch on 12 Mar 2001 21:41:24 -0000


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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Hackers: the political heroes of cyberspace + URL target for NeTstrike



This article

> Hackers: the political heroes of cyberspace

which was written before the actual event, shows how different a mediated
representation of an event can be from what actually was going on.

In short: The panel on  Hacktivism Thursday March 8 in London in 
the ICA was total Cyber-Bollocks. 

It only showed what happens when you let loose English University 
lecturers/Professors of sociology with a left leaning mind on issues 
such as hacktivism. It also should be noted that these academics, 
one Paul Taylor and a Tim Jordan, his mate, have a possibly (more 
or less) lucrative book deal in the pocket, for a book on, guess 
what, Hacktivism. But at the same time they were able of brushing 
aside any suspicion of them taking part in the commodification of 
Hacktivism - a notion which was raised by Korinna Patelis in the 
discussion part.  
Moreover, with the exception of Caroline Basset, who gave a 
reasonably serious talk about hacking and gender and was the 
only panelist showing a fair degree of intellectual honesty, 
panelists, including "electrohippie" Paul Mobbs, seemed to have 
agreed on the idea, that "old style hackers" were closet 
technophiliacs with no interest at all besides showing off their skills 
in manipulating unix-based operating systems, whereas Hacktivists 
were the brand new hip and politizised global counter cultural 
avantgarde. This was underlined by Mr.Taylor quoting Naomi Klein 
at least 10 times (in a declarative way) and repeated onslaughts on 
the apolitical "old hackers".
But the real disappointment (who expects anything from 
sociologists anyway) was Mr.Mobbs, who publicly distanced 
himself from everything that possibly nurtured his development into 
a fully fledged hacktivist. The bad (old hackers), the good (a 
vulgarized explanation of Situationism) and the rewriting of history 
(computer supported political activism started in 1998, according to 
him) signified his speech which was held in the tone as if he was 
talking to children. He also seemed to claim (someone please 
correct me, maybe I misheard) that his group, the electrohippies, 
owed nothing to Floodnet - this, when I remember a press release 
from electrohippies 1999, before doing their Seattle thing, where 
they said that they had adapted and used the code of Floodnet (but 
again, I might misremember).
So all in all, we are faced with a new threat, much worse than 
net.art, Hacktivism becoming the latest media item of affection and 
people like THEM becoming known as leading protagonists in this 
oh so very exciting field where technology, art and politics merge...

      
 
> Stuart Millar, technology correspondent
> Thursday March 8, 2001
> The Guardian
> 
> Hackers, the most maligned species of the digital age, will tonight be
> declared the ideological heirs to the great protest movements of the 19th
> and 20th centuries.
> 
> Once hacking was regarded as the pastime of attention-grabbing nerds. But
> a meeting at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London will be told how
> credible an activity it has become in the era of direct action.
> Old-fashioned hacking, the meeting will hear, has given way to hacktivism:
> a highly politicised underground movement using direct action in
> cyberspace to attack globalisation and corporate domination of the
> internet.
> 
> "Hacktivists have provided a new political ethic for the hacking activity
> of the past 'that tended to be more about narcissistic power games than
> any real protest against the system," said Paul Taylor, a sociology
> lecturer at Salford university. "Hacktivism can be seen as the latest
> manifestation of a long history of opposition to capitalism and its
> disorienting effects."
> 
> Targets - mainly multinational corporations and political parties - have
> been hit with a range of electronic weapons, from viruses to email bombs,
> which crash websites by bombarding them with thousands of protest
> messages.
> 
> Paul Mobbs of a British hacktivist group, the electrohippies collective,
> will tell the meeting that the internet "removes the advantages that
> larger or mainstream groups possess, for example money, influence and
> preferential access to media. No longer are small minorities restricted by
> lack of access. On the internet all access is roughly equal."
> 
> Companies are spending increasing amounts on protecting their computer
> systems while governments introduce tougher legislation.
> 
> Under the Terrorism Act, which came into power last month, anyone who
> tries to "seriously disrupt an electronic system" with the intention of
> threatening or influencing the government or the public, and does it to
> advance a "political, religious or ideological cause", can be classed as a
> terrorist.
> 
> Another new law, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, gives police
> and the security services the power to collect internet information
> without a warrant and to demand the keys to encrypted material.
> 
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,448352,00.html
> 
> <<>>>
> 
> ENGLISH TRANSLATION AT BOTTOM
> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> tratto da / from:
> http://www.noglobal.org/blocchia.htm
> 
> LET'S BLOCK THE HIGHWAYS OF GLOBALISATION
> NETSTRIKE AGAINST THE TRADING ON LINE
> 
> BLOCCHIAMO LE AUTOSTRADE DELLA GLOBALIZZAZIONE
> NETSTRIKE CONTRO IL TRADING ON LINE
> 
> Dal 15 al 17 Marzo i tiranni della globalizzazione si ritroveranno a
> Napoli per discutere di e-government. Parallelamente e contro il Global
> Forum migliaia di persone riempiranno le strade e le piazze di Napoli per
> contestare e contrastare questo vertice internazionale. Il senso e gli
> obiettivi del contro global forum sono gli stessi che hanno attraversato
> le mobilitazioni di Seattle, Melbourne, Praga, Nizza, Davos e che
> ritroveranno in luglio a Genova un ulteriore momento di condensazione. A
> Napoli, come nei precedenti appuntamenti, nostra intenzione è contrapporre
> alla globalizzazione neoliberista delle logiche del profitto e del
> capitale, una globalizzazione dei diritti e dei movimenti sociali.
> Riteniamo però giusto e necessario entrare anche nel merito dei contenuti
> del Global forum sull'e-government: per questo motivo ad un uso
> strumentale della tecnologia per aumentare profitti, speculazioni,
> controllo sociale - e quindi rafforzare le attuali relazioni di dominio -,
> al battage ideologico su new-ecnonomy, e-government, e-business (che
> troverà in questo Global Forum un ulteriore slancio ), vogliamo
> contrapporre la sperimentazione sul campo un possibile uso antagonista
> della telematica. Per questo motivo lanciamo in occasione del giorno di
> apertura del Global Forun, un netstrike contro il trading on line, con
> l'obiettivo di bloccare seppur parzialmente le autostrade della
> globalizzazione, gli snodi centrali dell'economia globale. Vogliamo
> infatti bloccare una parte dell'immensa massa finanziaria che avvolge 24
> ore su 24 l'intero globo terrestre, migliaia di miliardi che rimbalzano da
> Tokio a Wall Strett passando per Londra, determinando crisi economiche,
> licenziamenti, carestie, accentuando ancor più la miseria e la povertà dei
> già poveri e la ricchezza e il potere per i pochi già ricchi.
> Quest'iniziativa, che si muoverà nella dimensione virtuale del cyberspazio
> ma strettamente connessa alle iniziative concrete che a Napoli metteremo
> in piedi in quei giorni, non avrà quindi solo un carattere simbolico, ma
> anche una ricaduta materiale attraverso l'intasamento di uno dei tanti
> servizi bancari che offrono la possibilità di compravendita di titoli
> azionari via internet. Per quel giorno i tanti piccoli Soros e speculatori
> di provincia potranno staccarsi dai monitor e dagli indici di borsa e
> passeggiare per i boschi o sul mare, e perché no, venire con noi a
> contestare a Napoli i tiranni della globalizzazione. Perché internet sia
> uno strumento di lotta e non di ulteriore sfruttamento, partecipa e
> propaganda il netstrike.
> 
> Target http://tradequote.fineco.it/
> Ora 15.00-17.30
> Data giovedì 15 marzo 2001
> Info: www.noglobal.org
> IRC : #hackit99
> 
> CHE COS'E' UN NETSTRIKE?
> 
> Netstrike o più propriamente corteo telematico è una pratica di
> mobilitazione in Rete che consiste nell'invitare una massa considerevole
> di utenti possessori di accessi Internet e browsers a "puntare" i propri
> modem verso uno specifico URL ad una precisa ora e ripetutamente in
> maniera tale da "occupare" un sito web fino a renderlo inutilizzabile
> almeno per la durata della mobilitazione. Un'occupazione di "banda" simile
> ad un corteo fisico che occupa una strada fino a renderla inaccessibile ad
> altre/i. L'idea base è quella che un'azione individuale in rete ritenuta
> legittima a tutti gli effetti se portata avanti contemporaneamente da una
> massa di utenti e su un comune indirizzo puo' causare un disservizio.
> Ulteriori info : http://www.netstrike.it
> 
> Network campano per i diritti globali
> 081-5522399
> 0335-6215304
> info@noglobal.org
> http://www.noglobal.org
> 
> ------
> ENGLISH TRANSLATION
> ------
> 
> Let's block the highways of globalisation
> 
> Net-strike against the trading on line
> 
>  From the 15th until the 17th of March, the tyrannies of globalisation
> will partecipate to the third Global Forum about e-government in Naples.
> At the same time thousands of peoples will fill the roads and the squares
> of the city to protest against this international summit. The sense and
> the goals of the counter-Global Forum are the same that characterised the
> mobilizations of Seattle, Melbourne, Prague, Nice, Davos, and that we will
> find another time in Genova. In Naples, as well as in the other occasions,
> we want to contrast the neoliberalist globalisation with the globalisation
> of the rights and of the social movements.
> 
> But we also think that it's right and necessary to enter in the contents
> of the Global Forum about e-government: for this reason we want to oppose
> the actual function of thecnologies, used to grow speculations and social
> control, with an antagonist use of the new technologies. So we are
> organising a netstrike against the trading on-line for the first day of
> the Global Forum, and our goal is to block, also if only partially, the
> highways of globalisation, the main points of the global economy. We want
> to block a part of the immense financial mass that weighs 24 hours a day
> on the earth, billions of dollars that going from Tokyo to Wall Street,
> cause the growth of the poverty of the poor peoples and the growth of the
> Riches of the few powerful patrons.
> 
> The character of this initiative, that will be done in the virtual
> dimension of cyberspace, but that will be strictly connected to the
> concrete initaitives that we will organise in Naples during the Global
> Forum, won't be only symbolic because it will cause the blocking of one
> within the many bank services which offer trading on-line. In that day,
> the many little Soros won't use internet to buy and sell, and perhaps they
> will decide to go for a walk on the beach or in the park, or, why not, to
> come to protest with us against the tirannies of globalisation. To make of
> internet a means of struggle and not of exploitation, let's partecipate to
> the net-strike.
> 
> Target   http://tradequote.fineco.it/
> Time    15.00-17.30
> Date   thursday 15th of March 2001
> Info: www.noglobal.org
> IRC : #hackit99
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> centro sociale occupato autogestito OFFICINA 99 - Via Gianturco 101
> Laboratorio occupato S.K.A. - Calata Trinità Maggiore 15/6 (p.za del Gesù)
>                  tel/fax ++39-81-5522399
>            cell. 0335-6215304   0368-3913247
>                    e-mail: ska@ecn.org
>                   http://www.ecn.org/ska
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tommaso Tozzi
> 
> Docente di Teoria e Metodo dei Mass Media, Accademia di Belle Arti di
> Carrara Docente di Teoria e Metodo di Sceneggiatura Multimediale, Master
> in Multimedialita', RAI e Universita' di Firenze Via XXIV Maggio 14,
> 50129, Firenze, Italia Tel. 055-485996
> 
> 
> 
> 
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