Hacktivism Jack Goldberg and Mateo Conde Activism Examples of Activism
- Occupy Wall Street - Greta Thunberg - Riot on the Capitol - QAnon Hacktivism Brief History
Cult of the Dead Cow
- Started in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas - Several cDc members have also been members of ACM and IEEE - Coined the term hacktivism in 1994 - Hacktivismo - Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Access to information as a human right - Open source software Hacktivism
WikiLeaks - Julian Assange - Snowden Later added Operation DarkNet: - “Broke into 40 child pornography websites and published over 1500 names of users who frequented one of the sites” Sony Data Breach - Leaked personal information of people who used Sony’s services Anonymous Nature of Anonymous
- Represented by the Guy Fawkes mask - Anti Establishment - Emerged from 4chan - Decentralized network of hacktivists - Raids i.e “lulz” - "Pool is closed due to AIDS" - “Moralfags” - Ideology driven operations - War on ISIS - Child Pornography - Scientology - Operation Payback Ethical Discussion Operation Payback Operation Tunisia
During the Arab Spring, an anti-government movement, the group Anonymous staged several attacks against the Tunisian government and helped to support the Tunisian protestors from government surveillance to help support free speech. The group went after news agencies that were censoring information, and government websites “to highlight a spate of recent riots.” In these efforts to accomplish the DDOS attacks, they had developed a script for citizens to aid in the attack. Noting that DDOS attacks are illegal. Ethics Discussion
First, discuss the ethics of the Pirate Bay situation. Who was justified in their actions? Anonymous? MPAA? AiPlex? No one? Anonymous wants open access to information no-matter what form it takes. Is this ethically sound? Use the moral frameworks to assess the situation. (Kantianism, Rule Utilitarianism, Act Utilitarianism, Social Contact Theory, Virtue Ethics) Second, discuss the ethics of Operation Tunisia. Was Anonymous justified in their actions? Now, compare the two situations. In both, Anonymous were trying to enable freedom of information. Are they acting morally by applying this Universal Law (freedom of information)? Anonymous As A Group
Discuss the distributed nature of Anonymous.
Can we consider it an ethical organization despite its less savory sects?
What about the individuals involved? Are they violating some ethical principle by being a part of this group? Should their identities be known?
Is it right for a group like Anonymous to “act as the law” and bypass the legal structures that governments have put in place?
Sources https://cultdeadcow.com/about.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11371315 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12110892 https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wikileaks-hillary-clinton/ https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/08/edward-snowden-wikileaks-cia-hacking-us-government-reckless-beyond-words.html https://www.theregister.com/2010/09/20/4chan_ddos_mpaa_riaa/ https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cyber-attacks/hacktivism-101-a-brief-history-of-notable-incidents