Re: AKA (Was: Re: Hactivism comments by EFF)

[pete <pete@tao.ca>]

[: hacktivism :]

> The situation of American activism is pretty pathetic, with activists
> not even willing to risk misdemeanor arrests. Fortunately, new forms of
> direct action (RTS-style) imported from Europe will make street protests
> in the next decade pretty interesting.

I would point out that there is indeed hope for radical action today, both
on the street and online. Anti-Racist Action, as the largest anti-fascist
group today, has no illusions about liberal pacifism.

The key tool for ARA's rapid growth has been organizing online. They are
able to coordinate demostrations involving activists from a large geographical
area to arrive on occasionally extremely short notice. The recent focus on
class analysis within their organization guarantees that their street
level confrontations will grow even more radical. This is a good thing.

On the online front, while so-called hacktivists fluff about the ethics of
disrupting kkk.com, they have their punk kids turned cyber-sleuths using
samspade.org and domainwatch.com, cross-referencing information,
contacting system administrators, locating ISP's physical addresses, and
scouring nazi site message boards for pertinent real-world information
like addresses and phone numbers.

Kind of puts Jam Echelon Day, essentially a useless waste of bandwidth, to
complete shame. Why is it even going forward when we all know that they 
are not searching for keywords so much as patterns? Are you, the organizers,
prepared for the blood spilling on your hands if the disinformation you've
created causes an unknowing Police Brutality Day activist to be arrested
or worse?

Pete


[: hacktivism :]
[: for unsubscribe instructions or list info consult the list FAQ :]
[: http://hacktivism.tao.ca/ :]