Monday, 27 March 2000
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Nonviolent protest and principled civil disobedience are among the primary ways to accomplish social change. But what happens when you cross civil disobedience with the Internet? You get distributed, denial-of-service attacks as the Internet, tcp/ip analogue of nonviolent, active non-cooperation. The Electrohippies are going to try to shut down the IMF and World Bank Web sites in conjunction with the 'real world' protests in D.C. during the middle two weeks of April.
If you can't get to D.C., and you want to engage in principled civil disobedience, you may want to join the Electrohippies in their protests. If I were in that situation, and I may well find myself there before too long, I'd certainly participate in an organized, overtly political denial of service attack, rather than grabbing a script-kiddie-kit and wailing away from my Linux box by myself. The only chance you have, if the Feds catch you, of getting treated as a politically-motivated 'criminal' is to have acted in concert with like-minded others who have publicly made plain their position.
It will be interesting to see how badly the mainstream press is able to slander these folks if they're successful; as will it be interesting to see how they are treated by law enforcement and the courts if they are arrested and indicted. This kind of civil disobedience may be inherently more dangerous to the personal liberty of its participants since this kind of 'computer crime' will almost certainly warrant federal felonious charges.
See also A16: Mobilization for Global Justice <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/284>
This is The Electrohippies' Electronic Civil Disobedience Website <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/370>