Re: Digital Affinity Group --> Questions

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

[: hacktivism :]



--- Stefan Wray <swray@io.com> wrote:
> [: hacktivism :]
> 
> -------------------------------
> D.A.G.
> 
>      (Digital Affinity Group)
> 
> -------------------------------
> 
> Question (1): If in Seattle, activists are
> organizing themselves into
> affinity groups, small cells of people who know and
> trust one another, then
> in cyberspace, following this model, how can we
> organize ourselves into
> digital affinity groups, small cyber cells of people
> who know and trust one
> another?
> 
I'm all for it - the problem is that in order to
develop and maintain trust within these cells, at
least in the more conventional, fully-flesh
incarnation, any new 'members' are introduced to the
group by someone who knows and trusts them; the group
the extends their trust of the introducer to the new
member (at least on some kind of probationary status).
Here, no one really knows anyone else, save a few of
us who've met on certain occaisions, no one really
knows anything about anything else; no one knows who
the CIA spook really is.

Hence, I've got no idea on how you'd divide into
smaller cells, save going out and doing something a
little more direct action (read: illeagle) - and if no
one goes to jail, then your group might be
trustworthy.  Maybe.

(perhaps we should ask some of the cracker groups out
there, many of them seem to work together effectively)

> -------------------------------
> C.C.
> 
>      (Cyber Cell)
> 
> -------------------------------
> Question (2): But if trust that developes from
> sustained interaction among
> a small group is one of the bases for forming a
> solid cell or affinity
> group, how can such trust develop in cyberspace when
> the most we may know
> about someone in this environment is an email
> address?
> 
Hmmm...  I seem to have gotten ahead of myself with
that last question.  :)  (the answer was: I dunno)

> Question (3): Does this mean that a cyber cell must
> have a non-Internet
> component? Rather, does this mean that people in a
> cyber cell, however
> dispersed geographically, need to have met and known
> one another?
> 
In this age of telecommunications, I'd like to think
that it's not necessary - besides, the theory is that
the more geographically diverse the group, the more
diverse the connections and methods of the group. 
(there's the opportunity to make use of more members
of congress, ect.)
Unfortunatly, I don't think this is really all that
possible, with the level of trust nessecary for a
functional group of activists.  I think that it's
probably a requirement that your cell have met face to
face, at some point.

> -------------------------------
> T.
> 
>      (Trust)
> 
> -------------------------------
> 
> Question (4): If there is no trust, how can
> hacktivists engage in direct
> action? Can we then only engage in symbolic action
> without risk that puts
> no one in danger?
> 
This seems like the most probable course of action,
but the problem is that almost all (semi)effective
action, symbolic or not, is at least border-line
illeagle (JED was nothing but a spam campaign, virt.
sit-ins are just a more polite version of a DOS
attack, both are arguably illeagle)

I think that cells are an effective and logical
development for direct action hactavism (in theory,
they already exist, but I don't know about them :),
but are hard to implement, unless you've already got
people you trust.  (we could always hold raffles, and
just assign list members to eachother in groups of
four or five, and just say 'trust them. - if you end
up in jail - oh, well.  your cell has a rat' :)

if we can figure out a way to instill trust, without
face to face meetings, I'm all about cells.

(the other option is to organize local cells of
hactavists, which, while less effective, have the
opportunity to meet face to face, and develop trust)

-mia k.


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