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The computer hacking community has a rich history of political activism -- or 'hacktivism' -- that has come to define it in the era of WikiLeaks. If there's one thing that unites hacktivists across multiple generations, it's dedication to the idea that information on the Internet should be free -- a first principle that has not infrequently put them at odds with corporations and governments the world over. Adapted from the source document.

This short essay explores how the notion of hacktivism changes due to easily accessible, military grade Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). Privacy Enhancing Technologies, technological tools which provide anonymous communications and protect users from online surveillance enable new forms of online political activism. Through the short summary of the ad-hoc vigilante group Anonymous, this article describes hacktivism 1.0 as electronic civil disobedience conducted by outsiders. Through the analysis of Wikileaks, the anonymous whistleblowing website, it describes how strong PETs enable the development of hacktivism 2.0, where the source of threat is shifted from outsiders to insiders. Insiders have access to documents with which power can be exposed, and who, by using PETs, can anonymously engage in political action. We also describe the emergence of a third generation of hacktivists who use PETs to disengage and create their own autonomous spaces rather than to engage with power through anonymous whistleblowing.

This research explores hacktivism as a new form of online political activism. It uses qualitative interviews with a gender-equal sample of 10 self-defined hacktivists to address issues of gender and the discursive strategies used by males and females to handle the hacktivist community's male-only stereotype. The semi-structured interviews are analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA). The analysis indicates that male hacktivists relate to this dominant male-only representation through discursive techniques such as the suppression of gender (Male Oblivious Discourse) or mechanisms of vindication (Male Justification Discourse). Female hacktivists use the accentuation of gender and sexism to counteract male-dominant discourses and establish Female Discourses of Resistance (Emphasis Discourse; Negation Discourse). These gender-related argumentative positions and rhetorical mechanisms demonstrate how the male-only stereotype is created and maintained and how it affects not only hacktivists' talk and sense-making but also their identity and the hacktivist actions they perform.

This book focuses on the phenomenon of hacktivism and how it has been dealt with up to now in the United States and the United Kingdom. After discussing the birth of the phenomenon and the various relevant groups, from Electronic Disturbance Theater to Anonymous, their philosophies and tactics, this timely and original work attempts to identify the positive and negative aspects hacktivism through an analysis of free speech and civil disobedience theory. Engaging in this process clarifies the dual nature of hacktivism, highlighting its potential for positive contributions to contemporary politics, whilst also demonstrating the risks and harms flowing from its controversial and legally ambiguous nature. Based on this hybrid nature of hacktivism, Karagiannopoulos proceeds to offer a critique of the current responses towards such practices and their potential for preserving the positive elements, whilst mitigating the risks and harms involved in such political practices. Finally, the study focuses on identifying an alternative, symbiotic rationale for responding to hacktivism, based on a cluster of micro-interventions moving away from the conflict-based criminal justice model and the potentially unjust and inefficacious results it entails

It has been claimed that historically, anarchism has adopted a 'highly ambivalent' relationship with technology, 'oscillating between a bitter critique driven by the experiences of industrialism, and an almost naive optimism around scientific development' (Gordon, 2008: 111-113). Early influential anarchists, including Malatesta, Goldman and Kropotkin, viewed technology as providing workers with an emancipatory potential from capitalism, while oppositional readings of technology from the likes of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, however, reinforced the pessimistic view that technology can only have 'the needs of capital encoded into it from the start' (ibid.: 129). Within such a deterministic reading of technology what space is left for models of anarchist organizing in the twenty-first century? We currently live in a society where technology is ubiquitous and increasingly responsible for mediating most, if not all, aspects of our lives. What space is left for a contemporary, technology-enabled organization of society along anarchist principles, if any? Rather than seeking answers within these binary positions, this note will suggest a more complex reading of technology through its inculcation with contemporary social practices. Such a view will aim to reveal how any earlier ambivalence between anarchism, organization and technology can be fruitfully explored and potentially resolved through the adoption of contemporary anarchist perspectives, such as postanarchism, as well as recent approaches to technology, such as abstract and critical hacktivism, which permit more open and complex readings of technology's latent, socially progressive and radical potential. Before we can address such issues, however, it is helpful to first offer a short commentary on some recent anarchist engagements with technology, such as Cybernetics, Web 2.0 and Network Theory. Such debates, while moving closer to more pragmatic accounts of the contemporary technology's radical potential have also revealed deterministic limitations similar to those experienced by earlier anarchist thinkers.

From Europe to the USA, from Australia to South America, from the Left to the Right, Jordan introduces us to activism in all is multifarious guises: from eco-activists, animal liberators, neo-fascists, and ravers, to anti-abortionists, squatters, hunt saboteurs and hacktivists

"This book examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. The internet is a vital arena of communication, self expression, and interpersonal organizing. When there is a message to convey, words to get out, people to organize, many will turn to the internet as a theater for that activity. As familiar and widely accepted activist tools--petitions, fundraisers, mass letter-writing, call-in campaigns and others--find equivalent practices in the online space, is there also room for the tactics of disruption and civil disobedience that are equally familiar from the realm of street marches, occupations, and sit-ins? Grounding the analysis historically, focusing on early deployments of activist DDOS as well as modern instances to trace its development over time, this book uses activist DDOS actions as the foundation of a larger analysis of the practice of disruptive civil disobedience on the internet."--

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. What is Hacktivism? In The Coming Swarm, rising star Molly Sauter examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. The internet is a vital arena of communication, self expression, and interpersonal organizing. When there is a message to convey, words to get out, or people to unify, many will turn to the internet as a theater for that activity. As familiar and widely accepted activist tools—petitions, fundraisers, mass letter-writing, call-in campaigns and others—find equivalent practices in the online space, is there also room for the tactics of disruption and civil disobedience that are equally familiar from the realm of street marches, occupations, and sit-ins? With a historically grounded analysis, and a focus on early deployments of activist DDOS as well as modern instances to trace its development over time, The Coming Swarm uses activist DDOS actions as the foundation of a larger analysis of the practice of disruptive civil disobedience on the internet.