Cyberactivism Online Activism in Theory and Practice By: Martha McCaughey Michael D Ayers ISBN: 0415943205 See detail of this book on Amazon.com Book served by AMAZON NOIR (www.amazon-noir.com) project by: PAOLO CIRIO paolocirio.net UBERMORGEN.COM ubermorgen.com ALESSANDRO LUDOVICO neural.it Page 1 Introduction 15 Looking Ahead We have divided Cyberactwisin into three sections. In part I, Cyber-Social Movements Emerging Online, contributors show us new social movements that have emerged as a direct result of Internet technologies. Activists often utilize the %X'eb to recruit, strategize, and create change, and some activism fixes on the politics of the Net itself. In chapter 1, Laura J. Gurak and John Logic trace two XVeb-based protests around the Internet. This chapter reveals the Internet to be a space for activists not only to promote and rally around RL movements , but also to challenge injustices that occur on the Internet itself. Presenting cases of Lotus Marketplace and the Clipper chip, the more recent Web-based protests enabled by sites such as Petitionsite.com, and the protest against Yahoo!'s attempt to appropriate Web spaces built by "citizens" of GeoCities, Gurak and Logic analyze the emergence , because of the Internet itself, of new movements that protest the corporatization of the Internet. In chapter 2, Dorothy Kidd examines the trials and tribulations of launching a social-change group on the Internet, the Independent Media Center. In so doing, she discusses the kind of public space the Internet makes possible for an alternative media source devoted to social change. Further, by tracing the Seattle organizers' use of the Internet and its multimedia capacities to bypass corporate-controlled media, Kidd shows powerful ways in which online and RL anti-corporate globalization efforts support one another. In chapter 3, Sandor Vegh classifies the many forms of online activism, offering useful ways of distinguishing types of cyberactivism, including haektivism. From virtual sit-ins to Web site defacements, Vegh examines hacktivist techniques against the state and big, business in the anti-globalization movement, presenting haektivism as a new form of protest unique to cyberspace. This research raises questions about parallels between haektivism and RL activism. Is hacking into the online World Bank meetings with e-mail spams, for instance, the equivalent of defacing a building or planting a bomb in a building, or is haektivism a newer, less violent form of protest unique to the Internet, demanding different ethical considerations? How do the politically powerful frame and respond to haektivism? Do they consider it a dan- Page 2 Page 3 1 Internet Protests, from Text to Web Laura J. Gurak and John Logie Cyberspaces as Protest Sites From its earliest days, the Internet has been about networking: not J List networks of wires and hubs but networks of people. Protests, too, are always about networks, usually networks of people who have a common interest or concern and come together-whether in a physical place, such as in front of a government building, or via a petition or other campaign. No wonder, then, that the Internet has been a useful site for social activism of many forms. But how much do we know about the rhetorical dynamics of Internet protests? Are electronic petitions seen to be just as credible as paper ones? Do mass Web protest campaigns make a difference? Do the speed and reach of online communication bring the same features to electronic protests? This chapter presents a comparison of two of the earliest Internet- based protests, the cases of Lotus MarketPlace and the Clipper chip, with more recent Web-based protests, such as the protest efforts enabled by sites such as Petitionsite.com and the "Haunting of GeoCities"-a protest against Yahoo!'s attempted appropriation of Web spaces built by "citizens" of GeoCiries, the leading purveyor of "free" Web space. In Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 text-based network to the graphically rich environments found on the World Wide Web. Also, our comparison of "then and nosy" illustrates that way back when, in the early, 1990s, Internet- based petitions and the like were still novel and may, have caught people off-guard (such as the CEO of Lott, s, who canceled the product after receiving too much e-mail). Today, companies and governments alike take electronic correspondence, including electronic petitions, with a grain of salt. But protests that take advantage of the key, features of the Internet, especially the Web's potential for using powerful visual images to reinforce the protest's core message, can still be effective. The Cases of Lotus MarketPlace and the Clipper Chip On April 10, 1990, Lotus Development Corporation announced ..ERR, COD:1.. key, features of the Internet, especially the Web's potential for using powerful visual images to reinforce the protest's core message, can still be effective. The Cases of Lotus MarketPlace and the Clipper Chip On April 10, 1990, Lotus Development Corporation announced Page 27 Internet Protests, from Text to Web 27 sources in the United States, from credit profiles to grocer), store checkout scanning systems to government files. Furthermore, the data were provided on the noncorrectable CD-RONI medium. If an entry %yas in error, it could not be corrected until a subsequent repressing of the database. And although Lotus indicated the privacy protection measures they had put in place, including an encryption scheme so that only "authorized business users" (those who had purchased the program and had somehow been prescreened by Lotus) had access to the data, privacy advocates were not convinced. From Lotus's first announcement until months after it canceled the product, various electronic bulletin boards and e-mail were full of discussions about Marketplace. In fact, computer-mediated co-iununication (CMC) was a critical forum in this case. In late November, the Mall Street Journal ran a piece about Marketplace. This story presented Lotus's position as well as the position of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), an advocacy group that took a position against Marketplace. Networks were immediately abuzz with dlscussions of theJournal article; soon, debates about the privacy implications of Marketplace and suggestions for contacting Lotus began to circulate . People posted Lotus's address and phone number, the e-mar] address of Lotus's CEO, and information about how to get names removed from the database. Some people posted "form letters" that could be sent to Lotus. Notices were forwarded around the Net, reposted to other newsgroups, and sent off as e-mail messages. In one case, a discussion group was formed specifically to talk about Marketplace. One of the most powerful voices within the Lotus protest was that of Larry Seiler, a New England-based computer professional. Shortly after the Marketplace announcement, Seiler wrote a message that circulated widely via e-mail and Usenet newsgroups: Summary: Basically, Lotus is putting together a database, about to be released on CD-ROM in March. It will contain a LOT of personal information about YOU, which anyone in the country can iccess by just buying the discs. It seems to me (and a lot of other people, too) that this will be a little too much of a big brother, and it seems like a Page 28 Lotus. (qtd. in Gurak 1997,88-89) While Seiler's messages do not outline specific strategies for protest, they were nevertheless resoundingly effective, triggering waves of ad hoc action by sympathetic Netizens. During the following Internet-based protest, over thirty thousand people contacted Lotus and asked that their names be removed from the database. The product, which had been scheduled for release during the third quarter of 1990, was, ultimately, never released. On January Z3, 1991, Lotus issued a press release announcing that it would cancel Marketplace: Households because of "public concerns and misunderstandings of the product, and the substantial, unexpected costs required to fully address consumer privacy issues" (Gurak 1997, 19). In the end, mane acknowledged the role of Internet-based networks in stopping the release of Marketplace. Some subsequently called it "[a] victory for computer populism" (Winner 1991, 66). Four years later, a similar online action took place. The Computer Security Act of 1987 required that the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), a federal standards-setting organization under the Commerce Department, develop a new national standard for computer encryption. This standard would replace the existing data encryption standard, known as DES, in response to the need for a more sophisticated approach. Unlike the proposed Clipper standard, which Page 29 Internet Protests, from Text 'o Web 29 requires two keys (each held by a different agency), the DES involved a single key to both encrypt and decrypt a message; by 1987, t >>s design was considered outdated and not sophisticated enough to support the continuing "information revolution." NIST thus followed the directive of the 1987 Computer Security Act and began work on a new federal encryption standard. To do so, they turned to the National Security Agency (NSA), described as "the United States' most secretive intelligence organization" (Markoff 1993, D1). The NSA proceeded to develop an escrowed encryption standard (EES), which would be implemented in a chip that came to be known as Clipper. This chip could be inserted into a telephone handset or fax machine. On April 16, 1993, President Clinton proposed the EES as the new encryption standard. This announcement triggered immediate concern among privacy advocates. The lack of concern on the government's part for public input caused groups like CPSR and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to begin sounding alarm bells.