Cyber Disobedience: Re://Presenting Online Anarchy

by Jeff Shantz

  In the film “Swordfish,” Gabriel Shear’s curiosity leads him to wonder “what countries will harbor terrorists, when they realize the consequences of what I will do?” This excerpt reveals willingness to create social experiments for the purpose of envisioning what the future may bear. Another example can be found in film “Hackers” when one hacker is talking to a police officer and claims that “yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity.” These examples suggest that hackers are willing to go to extreme lengths to have their ideas come to fruition, while simultaneously remaining fearless of persecution or to pursue their curiosity and enter into highly secure systems. In the real world, many in the hacker community share this message as hacks are often done because they powered by curiosity (Nikitina 2012, 149).

  Lack of Malicious Intentions

  For hackers in the aforementioned films, the majority of their aims do not result from malicious intentions. In the film “WarGames,” David Lightman did not have malicious intentions when he accidently hacked into NORAD’s War Operation Plan Response computer. Lightman accessed the system by accident and without knowledge that the program was not a game he said, “let’s play thermonuclear war.” This excerpt demonstrates the innocence that the character possessed and in reality he was only seeking fun and entertainment. In “Sneakers,” we observe similar ‘innocent’ acts when one hacker honorably explains, “I simply want peace on earth and good will to good men.” This suggests that the hacker had no intention of causing harm to any persons and that the white-hat hacking that he engages in throughout the film is done, from his perspective, for mutual benefit to the general population. This category, however, would least likely be portrayed in reality, as news consortiums rarely would produce articles on hacking that lack malicious or harmful intent (Gunkel 2005, 595).

  Financially Motivated

  For most hackers, the least likely motivator is money. This category is similar to the findings by Orly Turgeman-Goldschmidt (2005) where only one of her fifty-four Israeli hackers’ accounts in her study revealed money to be a motivation for hacking (14). In the film “Swordfish,” money was a main motivator for Stanley Jobson at the beginning of the film when he is offered, “$100,000 just to meet [Gabriel Shear].” As the movie progresses, Jobson’s motivation increases exponentially when he accepts a job for ten million dollars to hack into banking system to steal nearly ten billion dollars for Shear, a insurrectionary anarchist. Similarly, hacker Martin Brice (Robert Redford) in “Sneakers” accepts a job from the NSA to locate and retrieve a “black box”—a device with access to the Federal Reserve, the U.S. department of Emergency and the Air Traffic Control System—for the sum of $175,000 and a clean criminal record. If we are to apply this portrayal to reality, the topic is not equally recurrent. This example becomes less likely in reality when we look to examples of Anonymous such as operation “Robin Hood” where hacktivists accessed thousands of private and government organization stealing their credit card information and making donations to charities on Christmas Eve (Williams 2011). So while money may not be a central motivation, it can play a part at times.

  Vengeful

  The least common portrayal of hackers is that they are vengeful. As Turgeman-Goldschmidt (2005) argues, “revenge is an emotional factor that is not related to computer characteristics offences” (17). In “Swordfish,” Shear reveals his vengefulness and explains, “If they bomb a church, we bomb ten. They hijack a plane, we take out an airport.” This example proposes that some hackers are forceful by nature and are in need of having the upper hand. Themes of revenge are also manifested in the film “V for Vendetta.” Apart from the explicitly vindictive title, the philosophy of V was one of vigilante justice, annihilation, and also one of creation. The protagonist sought to avenge the harm that was done to him with an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth mentality. Needless to say, his vengeful behaviour emanated from intentions that would create a better society for the people of England. In the film, V felt as though he was a prisoner to the government, even while living as a so-called free man. His beliefs, however, seem rightly justified as the government conducted horrific experiments on him while in he was a prisoner at Larkhill (details in Appendix E). His revengeful nature is also reflected in his favorite film, “The Count of Monte Cristo.” Identical to the plot of Monte Cristo, V is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes jail, and is determined to getting his revenge. Interestingly, a brief clip of “The Count of Monte Cristo” appears in the film “Hackers” (1995) when character Dade Murphy seeks revenge against hacker “Acid Burn” for hacking into his computer. The symbolism in both films suggests that hackers are vengeful and carry vendettas across time while also viewing themselves as heroic or trope figures.

  Each hacker is unique. Portrayal of hackers are neither exclusively agreed upon nor easily summed up in one sentence. It is a matter of perspective. And our subjective perspectives change everything. Members of the hacking community take special precautions against being caught. It is for this reason that portrayals differ as we shift in and out of our own socially constructed realities. Looking through the three most common portrayals of hackers—revolutionary and political, advanced understanding of computers, and terrorists—it is open to question whether or not hackers may well be the most powerful group shaping contemporary society. In any period of time, people invariably adapt to their perpetually changing environments as a survival strategy. Notwithstanding, life today is somewhat dualistic as we exist and connect both physically and virtually. With the Internet being an integral part of our daily lives in western democracies, it is conceivable that hackers will increase in numbers and that greater access to our personal data will be available. The irony of uploading our lives for the entire world to see is that it is largely done voluntary. For this reason a person can decide to opt out of cyberspace, but this option is becoming less available as a quasi-dependent relationship between machines and humans continues apace.

  Without a doubt, hackers and the collective Anonymous are a phenomenon worthy of attention. Whether you are a citizen, government employee, or policy maker; the world will have to decide how to deal with hackers as societies move forward in the information age. The answer, however, should not be criminalization or heavy punishment toward hackers as it has recently been observed. Hackers have much to offer society and we have much to learn from various communities. This project, without adornment, can serve as a one starting point for examining this community through the use of content analysis. Findings confirmed initial assumptions that the community is largely counter-cultural, works within a quasi-cyber-criminal framework, and are largely regarded as radical revolutionaries or terrorists, depending on one’s perspective. In contemporary society, hackers are either portrayed as good or bad, with little movement in between. As one Anonymous hacker, Commander X, argues, “Anonymous is the art of indignation. Anonymous is the art of being one and yet being nothing. Anonymous is what happens when governments and corporations screw up too badly” (Solyom 2012). Without a doubt, some could argue that there are hackers in reality that explicitly fall into these categories; however, again, it is a matter of perspective.

  As the project evolved, the data tested and challenged what we knew. With vast amounts of information on the issue, it took an enormous amount of time to decide which avenue would be most fitting given the timeframe. Overall, throughout the research process we clarified questions and meaning based upon initial assumptions. In a world dominated by technology, it seems likely that research on the subject matter of hacker’s portrayals using film as content analysis is in its infancy given that few films to date that portray hackers’ and their lives. The results of this study can be extrapolated for further research in the future. If our own research were to be expanded in the area, we would look at what social conditions produce ethical hackers and ethical hacking. Likewise, we would like to explore the socio-political or economic conditions that drive hackers to be law-abiding, deviant or civil disobedient. Through
out the research over the past year on Anonymous, it seems that blocked economic and social opportunity in today’s society has driven some hackers to drift in-and-out of favorable and unfavorable views of the law. Without a doubt, hackers will not subside until a balance is struck between access to information, transparency and equality in society.

  Chapter 3

  Sailing the Cyber Sea: Hacktivism and a Capitalist Response to Piracy

  Everyone agrees that the Age of Information is here. Already, the Internet has become a collective intelligence of digitized knowledge. Emerging from the collaboration and competition of capitalist systems, the global community strives to create preventative measures for securing the ubiquitous territory. The World Wide Web has allowed for an ongoing global exchange of ideas; however this is currently under threat. It’s likely that 2011 will be remembered by future generations as the year of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.1 There’s nothing new about this kind of hacktivism2, but its use has accelerated; and the attention has warranted mainstream publicity thanks to a faceless Internet hacking idea, respectfully named “Anonymous.” The collective is loosely organized and its membership is open to any person willing to engage in Internet hacktivism given that they are not taking credit for their attacks (i.e., anonymously). One idea of anonymous is simple: freedom of speech and information. The name originated as an Internet meme through a virtual community on the popular imageboard website, 4chan, by members whose identities were unknown to one another. On the imageboard site, registration and names are not required. As a result, the only thing that matters is the ideas that foster in the nonhierarchical community. Philosophically, some parts of Anonymous work on a system of anarchy as they strive to push toward a society that is free oppression and corruption. The loose-knit collective bestows several agendas, but there is no identifiable leader or goal. Simply put: their philosophy knows no boundaries as the Internet and the streets are their playgrounds. They are everywhere. And because Anonymous is an idea, it is unstoppable. Politically, some participants stand on left-wing practices and ideologies as they recognize and fight against the current capitalist-based society, and strive toward an egalitarian global community. Anonymous strives to be the chaotic neutral united by the idea that information and knowledge should be free.

  The idea of anonymity is not new. And the starting point is likely indeterminable. Some argue that the Internet hacktivist group, Anonymous, may be traced philosophically to a specific piece of literature. A French essay entitled, The Coming Insurrection, has become the “manifesto” for some as the essay hypothesizes the “imminent collapse of capitalist culture” (2009, n.p.).3 The essay was written by an anonymous group of contributors who call themselves the “Invisible Committee.” The book is divided into two parts: the first presents a diagnosis, similar to the Communist Manifesto, of the current capitalist structure. The latter part illustrates how to effectively mobilize to potentially produce an anti-capitalist revolution through political, social, and environmental means. In the first part of the book, the authors are effective in illustrating some of the current social crises in terms of structural organizations as they advocate for a communal approach:

  Organizations are obstacles to organizing ourselves. In truth, there is no gap between what we are, what we do, and what we are becoming. Organizations—political or labor, fascist or anarchist—always begin by separating, practically, these aspects of existence. It’s then easy for them to present their idiotic formalism as the sole remedy to this separation. To organize is not to give structure to weakness. It is above all to form bonds—bonds that are by no means neutral—terrible bonds. The degree of organization is measured by the intensity of sharing—material and spiritual. (15)

  Comparable to the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Coming Insurrection outlines current social breakdowns in an emerging capital-based market.

  Two centuries of capitalism and market nihilism have brought us to the most extreme alienation—from our selves, from others, from worlds. The fiction of the individual has decomposed at the speed that it was becoming real. Children of the metropolis, we offer this wager: that it’s in the most profound deprivation of existence, perpetually stifled, perpetually conjured away, that the possibility of communism resides.4

  The notion of alienation presented by the Invisible Committee is identified by “seven circles”: self, social relations, work, the economy, urbanity, the environment, and to close civilization. The language of the text reflects a similar tone to Marx and Engels as they argue that communist should disdain to conceal their views, and “openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions…the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”5 Interestingly, The Invisible Committee cautions about the use of the using the word “communism” as the word is no longer considered very fashionable and has incessantly been tattered through propaganda to identify hostile enemies. In short, The Coming Insurrection calls for all power to be in the hands of communes and that society is currently situated within the collapse of a civilization; it is within this reality that we must choose sides. And many have.

  By tracing back to the origins of the word “Hacktivism,” and the means in which hacktivists planned on achieving their political ends, we can see an ideological dichotomy. The word “hacktivism” was coined in 1996 by Omega (Oxblood Ruffin 2004, n.p.)—a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc): a computer hacker organization. He linked the word to Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR), which read “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” The idea for Omega was simple: connecting technology and human rights. At this point in time, Omega was in contact with the Legal Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Cindy Cohn, who explained that the UNDHR was a declaration and not legally binding. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—another United Nations document—essentially said that same thing, “everyone shall have the right to freedom and expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.” Omega understood that hacking for human right was one thing, but there had to be established and clear rules for engagement on how their political ends should be achieved. He also knew that it did not take a lot of people to make change, but rather that it took one good programmer. But a separation occurred along the way. Some members wanted to engage in illegal activities of hacktivism by using Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, and to interfere with the process of economic exchange. Meanwhile, others believed that the means to an end should be guided through established legal processes. In turn, the Internet would be lawfully utilized as a medium to transmit and to receive information in public forums. One goal for Omega was to circumvent government communication systems, rather than hacking. This ideological dichotomy set the stage for different “political hats” of conducting hacktivism, which can be seen in the present day with the online movement behind the idea of “Anonymous”. Today, there are White-Hats, who engage in pro-security movements by finding weak points in online security and reporting it; Black-Hats, who engage in anti-security movement by finding weak points online and using it to their advantage; Grey-Hats, who engage in both anti-security and pro-security movements depending on their own views of a company or an industry; and finally those who do not wear a hat and simply observe and discuss the hacks. As a result of these different sentiments, there is a vast assortment of political ideologies and targets for these anonymous hacks. And because it is difficult for law enforcement agencies and governments to pinpoint the characterized offending activity, a multitude of response
s have incurred, which in effect impact all users in cyberspace.

  At the moment, members of Anonymous are sailing the stormy seas of cyberspace as they fight against piracy laws being imposed around the world in reaction to hacktivists. The cohesive philosophical essay—The Coming Insurrection—explains, “From now on, to materially organize for survival is to materially organize for attack.” This statement assumes that people must fight for what they have in order to survive; there is nothing to lose. In the United States, two controversial bills are in play: Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Stop Online Piracy Act was introduced as a means to expand U.S. law enforcement agencies ability to fight online piracy and copyright infringement of intellectual property. PIPA is a proposed law that would provide U.S. law enforcement agencies with more power to access websites dedicated to publishing “infringing or counterfeit goods,”6 notably those who are beyond U.S. borders. The SOPA bill demonstrates the powerful extent of the U.S. government throughout several sections:

  Section 102(a)(2) permits the attorney general to take action against foreign sites (i.e., sites that do not fall under U.S. jurisdiction) if “they owner or operator of such Internet site is facilitating the commission of [copyright infringement]

  The currently in effect SOPA bill now allows the U.S. government to unilaterally censor foreign websites and makes it a felony to post a copyrighted song or video. Despite problems obvious problems with this bill (e.g., U.S. law enforcements ability to shut down foreign websites without a trial or conviction), the bill is extremely vague and many sites such as YouTube and Facebook, which hosts millions of users who post copyrighted songs and videos, are now at risk for prosecution. As a result, the vast majority of Internet users, especially among the youth who use social media and social entertainment networks sites (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook), become criminalized and thus the censorship of the Internet sets sail. Undoubtedly, software piracy and intellectual property infringements are a crime. Despite this, it is problematic to allow U.S. law enforcement agencies to engage in Internet censorship. The Internet should be an open-source7 platform as almost anything can be considered “knowledge” should be readily available and accessible; but if government agencies come in and are able to remove websites without trail or criminalize those beyond their continental borders, retaliation will ensue.8 And it has.