Hacker Activism

Thu, Apr 11

Hacker activism or "hacktivism" has been claimed to be an invention of the late 1990s, but is that accurate? Depending on our definition of "hacker" and the act of "hack," we can go back to the circumvention of punch cards and card-sorting machines in occupied France during the WWII. One thing for certain, however, is the scale of the impact of hacker activism with the popularization of the Internet and the alter-globalization of "hacking" as a community---well-beyond its original national contexts, such as US, UK, Australia, Germany just to stay with the most studied and mediatized cases. In this context, "Anonymous" is a particular hacker-activist community of interest.

After this class, you should be able to:

• Contextualize the phenomenon of "hacker activism" from the late 1990s to the present
• Connect contemporary cases with historical ones we examined in the first half of our course
• Reflect on the ethical implications of hacker activism for the present and future of the Internet

Our digital artifact for this class is the famous (or infamous) Low-Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) made popular in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attacks by Anonymous.

Here is the slidedeck for today's class.