Today in class we was learning about Online Civil disobedience and Hacktivism, but before going straight in to discussion I will give you a brief answers what this words mean.
So the Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. The civil disobedient, finding legitimate avenues of change blocked or nonexistent, feels obligated by a higher, extralegal principle to break some specific law. It is because acts associated with civil disobedience are considered crimes, however, and known by actor and public alike to be punishable, that such acts serve as a protest. Because Internet became so powerful and the most used source of information / communication in our life’s civil disobedience embrace and created a new form called online civil disobedience. A good example would be riots in London in August 2011. People was using Blackberry private social network to message each other and to plan organize violence. Some of the people were using Facebook for inciting rioting. Lammy said BlackBerry Messenger was “one of the reasons why unsophisticated criminals are outfoxing an otherwise sophisticated police force”. He added: “BBM is different as it is encrypted and police can’t access it.” Computer hackers defaced the RIM official blog in a retaliatory attack over the company’s pledge to assist the ongoing police investigation.
Hungry 1956 students communicated a protest by using an old printing press for posters and an old radio equipment to send messages in Morse code.
When it comes to the Hacktivism its individual or a group of people who is the act of hacking, or breaking into a computer system, for a politically or socially motivated purpose. The individual who performs an act of hacktivism is said to be a hacktivist.
In my own opinion Online Civil disobedience and Hactivism are for political or social cause. So that’s the people who involved in Online Civil disobedience use an Internet as a technology tool, which gives them ability to create a new forms of protest or extralegal principles to break some specific law.
Anonymous is an Online Hacktivist group, this community acting anonymously all across the globe in a coordinate manner. “Anonymous is a decentralized network of individuals focused on promoting access to information, free speech, and transparency.” Anonymous is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known. Wired has called Anonymous a culture, complete with its own “aesthetics and values, art and literature, social norms and ways of production, and even its own dialectic language.” Good example of anonymous would be on the Italian branch of the hacking collective Anonymous took down the Vatican’s website on Wednesday 7th of March in retaliation for the “corruption” of the Roman Catholic Church.
Another Hacktivist group I was studying about called LulzSec, it is a computer hacker group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures, Fox.com, Nintendo and etc… The LulzSec is a group of people who are very skilled and knowledge, they joined together to perform computer hacking. In my own opinion this group together with the Anonymous are organised ”Operation Anti-Security”. They steal and publish government information as well as user data and password.
I don’t think that I could be convinced to become politically active through social media. Yeah of course I’m person who uses new technologies and Internet on every day basis, and sometimes I come across different online disobedience and other political activism forms, but I don’t get involved in any of these cases. I just not interested in any of these activities and propagandas, I’m busy with my own life, I let my government to dill with this situation, because on my own opinion they way the government will dill different in this matter for example (the way they says / do) that’s the way it will happened. No matter if you attends any riots live or not its doesn’t matter, the government is more educated in terms of political point of view, and I just an ordinary person (designer).