The internet is a political tool used by many already with 12.6% of blogs on the internet are of a a political nature (Herring, Kouper et al. 2005). However there is a difference between simply blogging about politics and actual doing something about it.
Hacking is a much misunderstand "medium" for expression as early movies about hackers proves. The public as a whole are continually driven by media-hype in believing that hacking is 100% bad and illegal. People such as Julian Assange divide opinion wherever you go (Khatchadourian 2010), so is hacking to uncover the truth or to help democracy really just?
Take the recent attack on the Playstation Network. A supposed statement from hackers rebelling against Sony's actions to track down those people who have cracked their PS3's in order to charge them. However whilst they were in the system they just decide to steal a few thousand credit card details? This is a case where I am sure everyone agrees, the message definitely got lost.
So what about hackers that don't leave a trace, don't ruin or destroy anything, and don't "steal" but rather copy. It is interesting to note how stealing now does not cover online technology. Stealing used to refer to when one thing was taken from one by another. However now it is possible for someone to simply take a copy whilst leaving the original intact and freely available to the owner. But that is a side note.
So if you agree people such as Julian Assange who simply uncover the truth are in their rights to do so, then surely organisation such as the CIA and ASIO have the right to monitor computers for threats and the like? An interesting discussion in class found that this was not the class that rather, people tend to like the idea of people standing up against governments through hacking, but do not like the idea of the government retaliation with the same tool. Food for thought.
Hacktivism, is it a justified crime?
Crabtree, J. 2003, 'Civic Hacking: A New Agenda for E-democracy', 6 March, Open Democracy, accessed 13/9/2011, http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-edemocracy/article_1025.jsp
Herring, S, Kouper, I, Paolillo, J, Scheidt, L, Tyworth, M, Welsch, P, Wright, E, & Ning, Y 2005, ‘Conversations in the blogosphere: An analysis “from the bottom up”’, Proceedings of the 38th Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences, vol.4, pp.1-11, accessed 10/8/2011, http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/HICSS.2005.167
Khatchadourian, R. 2010, 'No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency', 7 June, New Yorker, accessed 13/9/2011, http://newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100604fa_fact_khatchadourian#ixzz1Y7jrtkW7
I believe we feel empowered when we hack or agree with hackers. Because the Government, CIA and ASIO already must have hackers who work for them, we feel like we need to fight back against that power. I obviously am not a hacker myself but I think it's just about having the freedom of speech, which some people believe is taken away from us when the Government hide valuable information from us.
ReplyDeleteGreat post though Robert.
I agree that there is a fine line when it comes to hacking. When have hackers gone too far?? What is far enough to make a point?? Not that I know a lot about the Sony case but I think Sony only said they were trying to track down the hackers to retain credibility. Their reputation was dramatically damaged when so many credit card details were taken, because as human nature does, we trust. In addition I am in full support of Julian Assange, I believe that we all have a right to know what our governments and other organisations are doing.
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