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On July 31, 2004, hundreds of villagers of Shiji­ahecun hamlet in rural Henan province demon­strated against local corruption. Provincial police from the capital at Zhengzhou dispatched a large anti-riot unit to the village, which attacked the crowd with rubber bullets, tear gas, and electric prods.[12] Propaganda officials immediately banned media coverage of the incident, and the outside world might not have learned of the clash if an intrepid local "netizen" had not posted news of it on the Internet. The Web correspondent was quickly identified by Chinese cybercops and arrested during a telephone interview with the Voice of America on August 2. While the infor­mant was on the phone with VOA interviewers in Washington, D.C., he was suddenly cut short, and the voice of a relative could be heard in the back­ground shouting that authorities from the Internet office of the Zhengzhou public security bureau (Shi Gonganju Wangluchu) had come to arrest the interviewee. After several seconds of noisy strug­gle, the telephone connection went dead

In January 2004, Amnesty International documented 54 cases of individuals arrested for "cyberdissent," but concluded that the 54 cases were probably just "a fraction" of the actual number detained.[

In April 2004, The Washington Post described a typical cyberdissidence case involving a group of students who were arrested for participating in an informal discussion forum at Beijing University. It was a chilling report that covered the surveillance, arrest, trial, and conviction of the dissidents and police intimidation of witnesses. Yang Zili, the group's coordinator, and other young idealists in his Beijing University circle were influenced by the writings of Vaclav Havel, Friedrich Hayek, and Samuel P. Huntington. Yang questioned the abuses of human rights permitted in the "New China." His popular Web site was monitored by police, and after letting him attract a substantial number of like-minded others, China's cyberpolice swept up the entire group. Relentlessly interrogated, beaten, and pressured to sign confessions implicat­ing each other, the core members nevertheless with­stood the pressure. The case demonstrated that stamping out cyberdissent had become a priority state function. According to the Post, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin considered "the investigation as one of the most important in the nation." In March 2003, the arrestees were each sentenced to prison terms of between eight and ten years-all for exchanging opinions on the Internet.[9] Then there is the case of Liu Di, a psychology student at Beijing Normal University who posted Internet essays under the screen name of Stainless Steel Mouse. She is an exception among cyberdis­sidents-after a year behind bars, she is now out of jail. The then 23-year-old Liu was influenced by George Orwell's 1984 and became well known for her satirical writing and musings on dissidents in the former Soviet Union. She defended other cyberdissidents, supported intellectuals arrested for organizing reading groups, attacked Chinese chauvinists, and, in a spoof, called for a new polit­ical party in which anyone could join and every­one could be "chairman." Arrested in November 2002 and held for nearly one year without a trial, she became a cause célèbre for human rights and press freedom groups overseas and apparently gained some notoriety within China as well. Although she had been held without trial and was never formally charged, she was imprisoned in a Beijing jail cell with three criminals. In December 2003, she was released in anticipation of Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to the U.S. Yet nine months after returning to the Beijing apartment that she shares with her grandmother, Liu still finds police secu­rity officers posted at her home. She has found it impossible to find a regular job, and police moni­tors block her screen name Stainless Steel Mouse from Web sites

Although President Hu's anti-porn crusade has superficially lofty goals, the nationwide crackdown conveniently tightens state control over the spread of digital information. In fact, more than 90 per­cent of the articles in China's legal regime govern­ing Internet sites is "news and information," and less than 5 percent is "other inappropriate con­tent."[

In February 2003, a mysterious virus swept through the southern Chinese province of Guang­dong, decimating the staffs of hospitals and clinics. According to The Washington Post, "there were 900 people sick with SARS [sudden acute respiratory syndrome] in Guangzhou and 45 percent of them were health care professionals." The Chinese media suppressed news of the disease, apparently in the belief that the public would panic, but: [News] reached the Chinese public in Guangdong through a short-text message, sent to mobile phones in Guangzhou around noon on Feb. 8. "There is a fatal flu in Guangzhou," it read. This same message was resent 40 million times that day, 41 million times the next day and 45 million times on Feb. 10.[36] The SARS epidemic taught the Chinese security services that mobile phone text messages are a powerful weapon against censorship and state control of the media. The Chinese government announced in 2003 new plans to censor text mes­sages distributed by mobile telephone.

In 2009 Dominguez was named by CNN one of its “Most Interesting People” for his work in developing the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT

Professor Dominguez’s work, first with Critical Art Ensemble and then with Electronic Disturbance Theater, has been highly cited, and he has been invited to lecture on the work across a host of important international venues…The esteemed status of Professor Dominguez’s field-defining work has been duly noted by the external referees, who include major international intellectuals working in performance art, new media and globalization.

EDT illuminates a new set of possibilities for understanding the relation between performance, embodiment, and spatial practice in cyberspace. Unlike a number of other performance artists, who have explored the relation of the body to technology through the literal encounter of individual physical bodies to machines, those working at EDT have placed the very notion of “embodiment” under question. Rather, they have sought to understand the specific possibilities for constituting presence in digital space that is both collective and politicized.

taking known forms and then augmenting or subverting their messages in order to provoke thought, discussion and emotion. What made the EDT different is how they applied these age-old principles of artistic expression to “new” media and digital technology.

performances and interventions were based upon questioning (but never fully answering) contemporary social problems and injustices.

Members of the EDT, including Dominguez, contributed to the artistic front of the EZLN’s fight for the indigenous people of Mexico. They crafted themselves as Digital Zapatistas, “attacking” the websites of the Mexican government and the agencies of the US government, which were supporting the oppression of the people in Chiapas. But the “attacks” were never effective… only affective.

developments of EDT was FloodNet — the technology behind Virtual Sit-Ins such as the one against the UCOP website for which Dominguez is now under investigation.

EDT’s goal was to take the long respected tradition of a peaceful sit-in to the virtual space of a website.

And, just like an embodied sit-in, to be effective the virtual sit-in must be open and transparent.

There are key differences between the virtual sit-in and a “Distributed Denial of Service Attack,” which Dominguez has been accused of launching. With the latter, computers of unknowing individuals become conduits to increase traffic to a particular Internet address, therefore rendering it inoperable, threatening the potential crash of the system itself. In this type of attack the identity of the perpetrators remains obscured in a prolonged assault usually motivated either by retribution, financial gain, and/or attempts to censor free speech.

In contrast, with the virtual sit-in, the goals of the action are stated, grievances described, participants known and once it is over no physical damage is done. FloodNet is a Java applet that is the code equivalent of going to the target website and constantly clicking the “reload” button. It also allows the participants to leave messages in the server’s error log by looking for non-existent URLs in the target server, which will then generate error messages. For example, a search for “human_rights” will generate an error message “File not found. ‘human_rights’ does not exist on this .gov server.”

by the same administration, which is now threatening him.

Also among his scholarly and artistic accomplishments cited as reasons to grant Dominguez tenure were the various uses of FloodNet technology to conduct virtual sit-ins on websites run by governments, international finance organizations, anti-immigrant sites and even UCOP’s website.

In the hour to come Professor Dominguez would frame his encounter with the administration “Zapatista style,” transforming a closed meeting, the purpose of which was to conduct “fact finding” in relation to his March 4th actions, into a collective meeting or “consulta.”

Rejoining the crowd of supporters he sat quietly listening to faculty and students as they read letters that spanned the globe, and which voiced solidarity, alliance, and outrage at the administration’s criminalization of his work.

these five portals seem to provide a useful starting point for a more in-depth, yet to come, examination of the convergence of activism, art, and computer-based communication and media.

PeaceNet enabled - really for the first time - political activists to communicate with one another across international borders with relative ease and speed.

The international role of email communication, coupled to varying degrees with the use of the Fax machine, was highlighted in both the struggles of pro-democracy Chinese students and in broader trans-national movements that lead to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

the role of international email communication in linking together the world.

an overarching dominant paradigm that privileges discourse, dialogue, discussion and open and free access.

So the first portal of Computerized Activism is important for understanding the roots of today’s extraparliamentarian,

Computerized activism, defined more purely as the use of the Internet infrastructure as a means for activists to communicate with one another, across international borders or not, is less threatening to power than the other types of uses we see emerging in which the Internet infrastructure is not only a means toward or a site for communication, but the Internet infrastructure itself becomes an object or site for action.

Infowar here refers to a war of words, a propaganda war. Grassroots infowar is the first step, the first move away from the Internet as just a site for communication and the beginning of the transformation from word to deed.

emerge fully cognizant they are on a global stage, telepresent across borders, in many locations simultaneously.

a desire to push words towards action. Internet media forms become vehicles for inciting action as opposed to simply describing or reporting.

war of words

war of words

war of words

lists, newsgroups, discussion lists, and web sites

A primary distinction, then, between earlier forms of computerized activism and forms of grassroots infowar is in the degree of intensity. Coupled with that is the degree to which the participants are noticed and seen as a force.

in grassroots infowar comes the desire to incite action and the ability to do so at a global scale.

Within a matter of days there were protests and actions at Mexican consulates and embassies all over the world

At the end of 1997, news of the Acteal massacre in Chiapas, in which 45 indigenous people were killed, quickly spread through global pro-Zapatista Internet networks.

following there has been a shift, the beginning of the move toward accepting the Internet infrastructure as both a channel for communication and a site for action.

tactics of trespass and blockade from these earlier social movements and are experimentally applying them to the Internet.

A typical civil disobedience tactic has been for a group of people to physically blockade, with their bodies, the entranceways of an opponent's office or building or to physically occupy an opponent's office -- to have a sit-in.

utilizes virtual blockades and virtual sit-ins

an ECD actor can participate in virtual blockades and sit-ins from home, from work, from the university, or from other points of access to the Net.

a theoretical exploration of how to move protests from the streets onto the Internet.

street protest, on-the-ground disruptions and disturbance of urban infrastructure and they hypothesize how such practices can be applied to the Internet infrastructure

after the 1997 Acteal Massacre in Chiapas, there was a shift toward a more hybrid position that views the Internet infrastructure as both a means for communication and a site for direct action.

Electronic Civil Disobedience is the first transgression, making Politicized Hacking the second transgression and Resistance to Future War the third.

The realization and legitimization of the Internet infrastructure as a site for word and deed opens up new possibilities for Net politics, especially for those already predisposed to extraparliamentarian and direct action social movement tactics.

In early 1998 a small group calling themselves the Electronic Disturbance Theater had been watching other people experimenting with early forms of virtual sit-ins. The group then created software called FloodNet and on a number of occasions has invited mass participation in its virtual sit-ins against the Mexican government.

FloodNet to direct a "symbolic gesture" against an opponent's web site.

it launched a three-pronged FloodNet disturbance against web sites of the Mexican presidency, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and the Pentagon, to demonstrate international support for the Zapatistas, against the Mexican government, against the U.S. military, and against a symbol of international capital.

hacks into Mexican government web sites where political messages have been added to those sites.

the young British hacker named "JF" who hacked into around 300 web sites world wide and placed anti-nuclear imagery and text. This method has been tried by a number of groups.

while ECD actors don’t hide their names, operating freely and above board, most political hacks are done by people who wish to remain anonymous. It is also likely political hacks are done by individuals rather than by specific groups.

As already stated there are critiques aimed at the effectiveness and the appropriateness of cyber-protests. In terms of effectiveness, three closely related types of questions have appeared regarding political, tactical, and technical effectiveness. Concerning appropriateness there are ethical questions, that may be also considered as political questions, and of course there are legal questions. Some of the legal concerns raise issues of enforceability and prosecuteability.

Are these methods of computerized activism effective?

If the desired goal of hacktivism is to draw attention to particular issues by engaging in actions that are unusual and will attract some degree of media coverage, then effectiveness can be seen as being high.

Rather hacktivism appears to be a means to augment or supplement existing organizing efforts, a way to make some noise and focus attention.

a period of expansion, rather than contraction.

To judge blocking a web site, or clogging the pipelines leading up to a web site, is to take an ethical position. If the judgement goes against such activity, such an ethical position is likely to be derived from an ethical code that values free and open access to information.

While it is true that some forms of hacktivity are fairly easy to see as being outside the bounds of law - such as entering into systems to destroy data - there are other forms that are more ambiguous and hover much closer to the boundary between the legal and the illegal. Coupled with this ambiguity are other factors that tend to cloud the enforceability or prosecuteability of particular hacktivist offenses. Jurisdictional factors are key here. The nature of cyberspace is extraterritorial. People can easily act across geographic political borders, as those borders do not show themselves in the terrain. Law enforcement is still bound to particular geographic zones. So there is a conflict between the new capabilities of political actors and the old system to which the law is still attached. This is already beginning to change and legal frameworks, at the international level, will be mapped on to cyberspace.

It seems that hacktivity has met and will meet resistance from many quarters. It doesn't seem as if opposition to hacktivist ideas and practices falls along particular ideological lines either.

hacktivism represents a spectrum of possibilities that exists in some combination of word and deed.

What remains unclear about hacktivism emerges when we start to ask questions like: what does this mean and where is this going?

Theorizing about grassroots or bottom-up Information Warfare doesn't nearly get as much attention as the dominant models and as a consequence there is not much written on the subject. 11 The case of the global pro-Zapatista networks of solidarity and resistance offers a point of departure for further examination of grassroots infowar. One feature of Zapatista experience over the course of the last 5 years is that it has been a war of words, as opposed to a prolonged military conflict. This is not to say there isn't a strong Mexican military presence in the state of Chiapas. Quite the contrary is true. But fighting technically ended on January 12, 1994 and since then there has been a ceasefire and numerous attempts at negotiation.12 What scholars, activists, and journalists, on both the left and the right, have said is that the Zapatistas owe their survival at this point largely to a war of words. This war of words, in part, is the propaganda war that has been successfully unleashed by Zapatista leaders like Subcommandante Marcos as well as non-Zapatista supporters throughout Mexico and the world. Such propaganda and rhetoric has, of course, been transmitted through more traditional mass communication means, like through the newspaper La Jornada. 13 But quite a substantial component of this war of words has taken place on the Internet. Since January 1, 1994 there has been an explosion of the Zapatista Internet presence in the forms of email Cc:

Because of the more secret, private, low key, and anonymous nature of the politicized hacks, this type of activity expresses a different kind of politics. It is not the politics of mobilization, nor the politics that requires mass participation. This is said not to pass judgement, but to illuminate that there are several important forms of direct action Net politics already being shaped.

hackers' desires to make information free.

Web 2.0 is paving new routes around Internet censorship.

Nowhere is Internet activism more visible than on Twitter

t's amazing how naturally people who are not necessarily technical have found ways to organize information on-line and decide who to trust using things as simple as Twitter -- a 140 character micro-blogging service with a basic search feature. "It's a pretty incredible counter-intelligence network," he said.

In recent days these social media networks are getting more important as mainstream reporters have been confined to their hotel rooms on government orders or forced to head home when their visas expire.On YouTube users can find street scenes in Iran, including videos of protesters being beaten and shot by police. "The traditional media is in some ways not able to provide it because there are restrictions placed on them by the Iranian government," said YouTube spokesman Scott Rubin ."It's the citizens stealing the story."

proxy servers have become a critical conduit for information.

"Twitter is such a cut-out-the middleman type of situation,"

This has made information available to a wider group of people, but it in addition to spreading information about proxy servers, it has made home-grown attack tools available to a wider audience.

But soon the anti-government activists realized that DOS attacks were maybe not such a good idea. Not only is it illegal in many countries to launch a DOS attack, but this type of activity also slows down the network throughout Iran, making it hard to get messages out.

Twitter, in particular, has proven particularly adept at organizing people and information, said Zittrain. Although Proxies are the most popular way of reaching Twitter, updates can also be sent via other Web applications, SMS (Short Message Service) or even e-mail. "It's a byproduct of the way Twitter was built," he said. "The fact that the APIs are so open has meant that there are already lots of ways to get data in and out of Twitter, that do not rely on direct access to Twitter.com."