Re: hackerism?

["Me Uh, K." <pram512@yahoo.com>]

[: hacktivism :]

Forgive the reply to older messages, I've not been in
the office for the last few days.  Comments
interjected.

--- Jason Castonguay <castongj@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
> [: hacktivism :]
> 
> I expect to change things. How much may vary. Please
> remember that
> hacktivism may be different for different people.
> Hooking up a live
> webcam at a protest, helping distribute computers to
> people who want them,
> education/workshop programs, setting up a bandwidth
> co-op, setting up some
> space for your community, defacing webpages, and
> shutting down
> telephone/fax/internet communications are all forms
> of hacktivism. They
> are all appropriate depending on the situation. Also
> note that this does
> not mean that DoS'ing someone or changing a webpage
> to read "I got root.
> You loosers!" is hacktivism.

Arguably, if you DOS, say, a company who illeaglly
dumps a trillion gallons of bleach into the Gulf of
Mexico a day, you're disrupting their service, because
of the fact that they're polluters...  That's not all
that different than chaining 30 people together,
blocking their front door (aside from the fact you're
less likely to get arrested for the DOS attack)

Alternately, if you deface webpages in the same style
as Doctor Nuker, of the Pakistan Hackerz Club (who
seems to exclusively crack .mil sites, based on their
NT os, and defaces the page with short essays on the
evils of India, in a free-kashmir vein) (see
http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/1999/10/30/www.ftscpac.navy.mil)
- doesn't that count as socially motivated vandalism? 
Is that really all that different than spraypainting
accusations on a company van?

When compared to their real-world counterparts, don't
both the activities count as (hacktavism) activism?
(or, at the very least, hackerism)

Another point, one we've probably already covered in
this thread (in one of those 60 or so emails I haven't
gotten to), is terrorism through hacking really that
bad a thing?
The law makes little differentiation between what I've
seen defined as hacktavism, and any more extreme form
of protest/malicious attack I can think of.
<americ-ocentric> (Uncle Sam says, "Hacking is Hacking
is Hacking") </americ-ocentric>
And figure if you're going to jail for the same amount
of time anyway, wouldn't you be better off to do as
much as possible, within your power?

> I grew up reading the Cult of the Dead Cow
> (www.cultdeadcow.com) and am

cDc Ahhhhhhhh.  <warm, happy sigh as I recall misspent
evenings of my youth, pacing restlessly, printing up
cDc articles, hoping no one would come into the
computer lab and expel me for using school resources
to acquire subversive materails>

Do I just have my definitions wrong? (it does seem to
be the primary problem with the list - the lack of a
definition)  Am I counting things as hackerism that
really fall under the domain of hacktavism? (or
vice-versa)

-mia k. (insert witty comment here)

> deathcubek of Maryland 2600
> 
> Jason Castonguay	castongj@bigfoot.com
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