Hacktivism: Digital Activism and the Haves vs. Have-Nots

From Hacking to Hacktivism: Origins and Motivations

Once upon a time, not very long ago, hackers just wanted to have fun. Hacking — breaking into someone else's computer system — began primarily as a way for computer enthusiasts to show off their talents. Breaking into another system was a puzzle, an intellectual challenge, akin to solving a mathematical problem, with the additional appeal of transgressing the social rules of a world that generally rejected the type of individual most inclined to become a hacker.

Teenage boys — the primary demographic of the first generation of hackers — had very little power within overall social structures. Hacking provided them a higher status within a community of their own than they could ever possibly attain in a society that celebrated the physically beautiful and athletically gifted. Hacking was something they were better at than anyone else, and competence is almost necessarily something one revels in.

Those who are seen by society as generally incompetent are likely to take full advantage of whatever realm allows them to gain a sense of competence and even mastery. Hackers came from the ranks of the disenfranchised — though not disenfranchised in the ways that term has traditionally been applied. They were not disenfranchised by virtue of race, gender, age, class, or any other demographic quality. Rather, they were disenfranchised simply because they could not fit in. This gave them a natural alliance with others who could not fit in, for whatever reason and in whatever society. When hacking became hacktivism, this empathy for the underdog would often translate into empathy for human rights activists living under repressive regimes.

The original hackers had certain anti-social tendencies. Not all of them, but a large percentage. Fitting the popular image of the nerd who emerged from a darkened room only to grab chips and sugary cereal to eat straight from the box, many hackers understandably felt a degree of antagonism toward society as a whole — toward those who had good jobs and good salaries despite possessing none of their technical skills.

Hackers almost necessarily began to translate these feelings of exclusion and anger into their hacking, blending technical skills with personal anger and angst (The Atlantic Wire, 2011). This is the line that differentiates hacking from hacktivism: hacking was far more individual in its philosophy — a way for individuals to strike back at a society that had rejected them — rather than a collective effort by the cyber-intelligentsia to band together across human divides and act in concert. Hackers of the first generation would hardly recognize hacktivism as the same kind of activity they had devised as a form of personal expression.

Somewhere along the way, the initial waves of hacking — often done either to cause problems for other people or organizations, or to reap financial reward — were replaced by two different types of hacking. The first was simple fraud or destruction: people perpetuating the kind of mayhem that criminals have caused since the beginning of human society, with only the weapons changed.

Hacking New Frontiers: Defining Hacktivism

The second, newer kind of hacking is the subject of this paper: the kind called hacktivism. The term was first used in 1996 by a hacker collective called Cult of the Dead Cow. Hacktivism combines hacking and activism — the use of technological intrusion for activist ends (Old-time hacktivists, 2012). This combination allowed hackers to do good for the world, or at least to believe that they were doing good in the world (Old-time hacktivists, 2012).

Samuel (2004) addresses this point:

The lines that separate hacktivism from related areas of political (and apolitical) activity are tactical, principled, and cultural. At a tactical level, hacktivists adopt tools and strategies that are more direct and transgressive than those used by online activists, because they believe that the confrontational tactics of hacktivism can be more effective than more conventional forms of online activism. For reasons of principle, they stop well short of cyberterrorism out of respect for human welfare; and turn from hacking to hacktivism because they believe their skills should be harnessed to meaningful social ends. And for cultural as well as tactical reasons, they diverge from the tradition of offline civil disobedience in order to tackle issues on the digital playing field: this field is both their home turf, and — many hacktivists believe — an increasingly powerful political realm. (Samuel, 2004, p. 8)

For the first time since the beginning of hacking, a large contingent of hackers began to define themselves as the guys in the white hats, galloping in to save society from its darker elements. Seen from a certain perspective, this shift from hacking to hacktivism could be viewed as the hacking community's way of making amends for the collective harm it had caused (Castells, 2001). Of course, many traditional hackers remain at work, doing harm either for financial gain or simply because they have the ability to harm others.

In the first dissertation to address the technical and social dynamics of hacktivism, Samuel described hacktivism as follows:

…hacktivism combines the transgressive politics of civil disobedience with the technologies and techniques of computer hackers. The result has been the rapid explosion and diffusion of a digital repertoire of political transgression, harnessed to a wide range of political causes. (Samuel, 2004, pp. 1–2)

Samuel, as do others, distinguishes hacktivism from online activism, which also tends to be politically oriented but does not break laws in its cyber-activity. Samuel (2004) further distinguishes hacktivism from other forms of hacking as well as from forms of cyber-violence:

First, by specifying that hacktivism is nonviolent, it differentiates hacktivism from cyberterrorist acts that harm human beings. Second, by specifying that hacktivism involves illegal or legally ambiguous activity, it differentiates hacktivism from non-transgressive forms of online activism. Third, by generalizing hacktivism to encompass any use of digital tools, it explicitly includes all forms of nonviolent, transgressive digital actions that have sometimes been labeled hacktivism. (Samuel, 2004, p. 3)

Hacktivists are interested in causing harm to systems and institutions, but for what they view as the right reasons — operating within a framework that forbids violence in the real, non-virtual world.

Conclusion: The Digital Revolt of the Have-Nots

Our world in the twenty-first century has grown increasingly unequal to the point that the distance between the haves and the have-nots seems impossible to bridge. The haves may view this as their due; the have-nots are much more likely to see this division of wealth as terrible and unbearable. People in industrialized countries fear that the generations that follow them will face an increasingly limited and impoverished life.

Hacktivism gives some people powerful tools to attack those who hold power in every other aspect of society. Even more satisfying — not just for hacktivists but for many members of the 99% — is that hacktivism uses the tools of the establishment itself to challenge the rich and the powerful. This desire to see the mighty humbled has always existed. It is only that the peasants have put down their rocks and picked up their iPads.

Works Cited

"Analysis: WikiLeaks — a new face of cyber-war?" Reuters. Retrieved 8 May 2012.

The Atlantic Wire. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/07/did-lulzsec-trick-police-arresting-wrong-guy/40522/. Retrieved 10 May 2012.

Castells, Manuel. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Old-time hacktivists: Anonymous, you've crossed the line. CNET News, 30 March 2012. Retrieved 10 May 2012.

Ruffin, Oxblood (3 June 2004). "Hacktivism, From Here to There." http://www.cultdeadcow.com/cDc_files/cDc-0384.php. Retrieved 9 May 2012.

Samuel, Alexandra. (2004). Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation. http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/dissertation/pdfs/Samuel-Hacktivism-chapter1.pdf. Retrieved 9 May 2012.