[Reader-list] Virtual Sit Ins and Electronic Disturbances

[florian schneider]

> As I see it, the main protagonist of 'public hacktivism' for the moment, are
> RDom cs & the Electrohippies; RTMark; and The Cult of the Dead Cow Hackers,
> this representing a kind of spectrum going from "bad" to "good". Other
> protagonists include No Borders/Kein Mensch ist Illegal (tending to side
> with RDom), and the Critical Arts Ensemble (against - superbly deconstructed
> Rdom years ago). Before engaging in, or even supporting, any form of
> 'hacktivism' I would enjoin all of you to give a good look at the matter,
> gather information, and think before acting.

thanks a lot, patrice, for that sort of ranking ;)
do you know these car drivers, who bitch at
street rallye participants, when their way home
is blocked for some minutes? i know, it's a really
cheap argument, but anyway:

"no one is illegal" tends to side with everybody,
who is not only deconstructing deportations, but
*constructive* in a way that prevents deportations
in every single case. after the deportation-class
campaign was started, hundreds of deportations
were stopped or even not processed, because people
have now very oftenly a chance to declare, that they
are "not willing to travel" and pilots or the crew
stop... that's maybe very pragmatic in the spectrum
between "good" and "bad", but that's changing the 
lifes of more than a few human beings. the online-
demonstration on june 20th might be a chance,
to encourage lufthansa ag to drop out from 
deportation business at all. and the next campaign
against the rumainian airline tarom has already
started.

<http://www.deportation-alliance.com>

i guess, some context might be helpful, so here 
is what i answered to geert in a related debate 
on another list. sorry for the delay...

geert lovink schrieb:

> I am coming back to Steve Gibson's fascinating reconstruction of the DoS
> attacks against his server. This is his conclusion. I think it could be good
> to discuss this here, taking into account that some of us are both involved
> in the promotion of DoS attacks (against Lufthansa) and are a victim of
> these very same tools (see mails from Melbourne).

on the content-site, i'm afraid it's a bit more complicated: 

1. if the online-demo <http://go.to/online-demo> can be called DoS, 
then everything, what happened over the last 150 years offline, was DoS 
as well: demonstrations, picketings, strikes, sabotage, street actions. 
the only difference: it was taking place within the borders
of a nation-state, from a certain moment on it was regulated by
some laws and high efficiently administrated. 

2. ironically, what the deportation-class campaign demands from 
lufthansa, is nothing else than denial of service: not to provide 
their services for deportations anymore.

3. the very protestantic and puritanical debate about the 
correctness of an online-demonstration doesn't lead to many new 
insights, besides the technocratic one, that in future there 
might be smth like a guaranteed freedom for demonstrations in 
cyberspace (compare it with the .sucks TLD demand), which is 
regulating a sort of legal DoS-attacks, managing the immaterial 
damage and cutting the losses.

4. in that special case of the online-demonstration against
lufthansa such a moral, bound in honour argument has to fail: 
what is a ten minutes, announced and legitimate online protest, 
which causes in the worst case, that lufthansa has to shutdown 
the webserver, what is this compared to more than 10,000 
deportations (may i call them: denials of life?) carried out
by lufthansa each year? remember, in europe there were six 
people killed during deportations within a few months in 99.

5. we all are victims and committers at the same time. i see,
that's far to general, but at least don't call me schizophren ;)
one server i adminstrate was used for a real DoS attack some 
weeks ago during the cyber war china vs. usa. of course, this 
was very annoying and it took me hours of work to let the 
machine work again in the proper way. but i am not so romantic 
to spend my time dreaming, that there might be a chance to 
preserve the net as a clean and healthy environment. of course 
it will be spoiled and destroyed and overwhelmed by good and 
bad purposes reaching from humanism to spamming, well meaning 
activities to commercialisation, from stupid DoS to clever 
campaigns... 

6. the idea of the online demonstration against lufthansa
turned out last autumn and it was brought up and carried
out by libertad!, a group which wasn't before part of the 
no one is illegal network and probably will do smth else 
afterwards. that's how no one is illegal was working all
the time: you don't have to become a member to do smth,
it's better to have an idea, and to think about how to
adapt it to the specific tactical context. for example there 
was another group which wanted to copy an action deportation
class activists made one year ago at the occasion of the
opening of the international tourism fair. instead of
being offended they were invited by the no one is illegal
activists, to think how to make it a little bit better 
next time. the same happened with the idea of the
online demonstration against the deportation business.
a lot of activists were against that type of action,
not because of digital correctness, but because of plain 
and simple disguise against everything online. it was
a very long process to synchronize the offline and online 
activities, to adjust the proposed actions and activities,
to find a proper date and context for that kind of actions.
you may call it hand knitted: what happens before
that online demonstration is much more important than
the demonstration itself. since weeks there is one
article bigger than the one before in german mainstream
newspapers. the story is as simple and easy to understand
as in toywar or as if greenpeace would have invented it. 
it simply works on the virtual level of image pollution. 
the technical sequence of the so called DoS attack remains
meaningless, and after all, me personally, i even would 
suggest to do nothing at all ;)

7. the deportation-class campaign always received a lot of 
messages from dubious sources like "we can attack the 
lufthansa server, just tell us when we should do it!".
and in fact two days before an action day against 
deportation business on german airports, the 
lufthansa webserver was shut down for more than two days 
in december. but politically it didn't make any sense,
since there was no outcome at all, just some panicking
on the side of the lufthansa tech-crew.
now it might make sense as an announced, self-determined,
politically legitimated type of action. people are
gathering in mailinglists and meetings, people are 
designing websites and banners, printing flyers,
posters, magazins -- actually they are networking.
 
8. in my eyes the idea of online-demonstrations has to be  
critizised on another level: it's just the translation of
an action from offline to online. nothing more and nothing
less than trying to do smth in the digital way, which is 
well known and maybe not working not so fine anymore in 
the analogous world. so it has to remain far away from only
touching the potential of netactivism at all. it's just
the beginnning like everywhere else, you can do it only
once, and it has to be overcome by much more creative, 
innovative and constructive types of action... but isn't
this is a matter of course? 

best,
florian