RE: Some inflammatory coverage of J18 and N30 hactivism

["Grugnog" <grugnog@tao.ca>]

[: hacktivism :]

Hi all,

> ('The hactivism@tao mailing list, responsible for the
> recent anti-spook surveillance Jam Echelon Day event,
> has released a general press release, announcing that
> they will be holding a 'cyber-sit in' on the WTO web
> site during the entire course of the meeting...')

One thing to bear in mind is that the list can't really be 'responsible' for
anything, as we don't really have any means to decide on anything, let alone
really organise the nitty gritty of something (it's mainly a list for
discussion - yes). So, any ideas resulting from the list are probably best
being 'spawned off' into separate projects. This would, IMO be better for
the project, and better for the list. There isn't really a problem with the
list being 'associated' (as in 'resulting from discussions on the hacktivism
list' in JED) with projects though IMHO as long as it is made clear we don't
'sponsor' or 'organise' a project.

> In the case of a direct
> action WTO campaign, well, most anyone who would care
> already knows about WTO, and there's that whole
> gray-area legality involved with intentionally
> disrupting the functionality of someone's web site.

True, in my opinion there are also some ethical issues involved with
censorship, and tactical issues about it being more important to focus on
getting our message out than stopping others. However both of these are in
my 'fuzzy/slightly flexible' catagory, as in an life/death emergency (such
as some of the ones in chiapas) it is OK to override them if we are looking
for better alternatives at the same time.
One thing that could get round this, for example would be to target the
computers which are involved in internal movement of communications rather
than publication of information. By blitzing IPs or mailboxes this coule be
a radical disruption action, rather than one which could be misinterpreted
as 'we don't want people to see this nasty information'.
Just 2@c

- Grug


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