Hacktivism – Our gateway to freedom of expression?

My communications professor forwarded a very fascinating article to me about Hacktivism. For those unfamiliar with the term, it means hacking for political purposes. This practice is not strange amongst the Chinese, seeing as millions of them have been trying to fight for freedom of speech through this method. Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and Michael Hull are computer experts who, like most of us, are simply fed up with the extent our governments would go to in order to have complete power over mass media and eliminate the political use of the most popular and expansive medium. China reportedly spent hundreds of millions on its firewalls, and along with Iran and Bahrain, it’s been listed as one of the most dangerous countries to blog from. With ISPs monitoring and recording your every virtual move, it’s pretty much impossible to hack through certain systems in order to be able to surf and publish freely without the constant interference from the legal and “security” authorities.

Hacking has always been frowned upon, but this is different than what we’re used to. Some people hack randomly because they’re bored mingers with no lives to get busy with, the “hacktivist trio” are doing it for a very justifiable reason. The use of the internet and blogging with political intentions has proven to be extremely powerful, and the number of political websites and forums are drastically increasing. People finally realized that you can successfully use it as a tool to re-shape people’s minds. The number of countries that censor the internet and moderate its users keep growing, because many governments and political organizations have woken up to this reality as well. You can’t stop people from having an opinion, you can only control the means to which they could express it (if they choose to.)

Hacktivists believe that there are too many great minds being silenced for reasons that aren’t good enough to stop them from wanting to break that silence by introducing a medium with no limits. In the words of Villeneuve, “we have a global system that doesn’t value that this technology is being used to undermine people’s human rights.” One of his main interests is censorship in China, which is one of the first places they chose to execute this program. Their team of “programming geeks” have been working on this for hours each day, trying to perfect the system’s abilities to hack through servers and immobilize ISPs from spying on or blocking websites and putting the lives of those who use it in danger.

China uses filtering technology from North America and Canada in order to upgrade and maintain its sophisticated firewalls. I find it interesting that these products originate from “democratic” states known for promoting peace and freedom of expression, perhaps it’s only for economic reasons, but it’s no secret that the “freedom fighting” administrations of these countries regulate and limit what their citizens can see, say, or do in the media. To their credit, at least they don’t make their biases painfully obvious.

Primarily popular for being “free,” the internet is now becoming a huge source for advertising. The number of e-commercial websites is constantly multiplying itself. This should come by no surprise, after all, ‘.com’ stands for commercial, which is defined as “having profit as a chief aim.” Prices for such domains are rising, and the prices for hosts keep increasing depending on the amount of traffic and attention it receives. My theory (and I’m assuming that I’m one of many who predict this) is that the internet will be the furthest thing from being free in the near future, and even further from being private. It’s incredibly easy to install programs on other people’s computers, even without their permission or awareness.

Online, private space could be easily associated with public space. In fact, I trust the internet so little that everything I write on forums, e-mails, and comments is something I wouldn’t mind sharing with the public, because I know through experience that it will get there one way or another. People, particularly Americans, still claim that the internet is not indirectly state-owned. Now the Bush administration is not even hiding it:

WASHINGTON – Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

[The above excerpt was published on Friday, December 16, 2005 by the New York Times]

While people might be baffled and shocked by this confession, the truth is that governments of all countries, in one way or another, are guilty of this. It’s for their own sake and security. The only difference is the actions taken by government officials once they find out certain things about people or rebellious communities and organizations. In countries like China, Iran, and Bahrain, you may be detained for an unspecified amount of time or thrown in jail while the government insists that the person has just “disappeared,” as was the case with Argentina in the mid-70’s, where the government refused to take responsibility for the political journalists’ lives. With the installation of Psiphon, the innovation Hacktivists are currently working on, we can successfully abolish these violations.

The “nerdy trio” have increased my hope for a brighter future within the virtual world, which appears to be the only way we can communicate with like-minded individuals with similar dreams and ambitions. The more freedom we have within the sphere of the media, the better we react as intellectual beings. I’m convinced that the number of riots and protests will decrease conspicuously if we had the ability to express our critical opinions otherwise and still be heard loud and clear.

Bookmark this article

•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     

E-mail this article to a friend

* Required Field

Your Name: *

Your E-Mail: *

Your Remark:

Friend's Name: *

Separate multiple entries with a comma. Maximum 5 entries.

Friend's E-Mail: *

Separate multiple entries with a comma. Maximum 5 entries.

Image Verification: *

 Loading ...

Close