Computer Hacking New Tool of Political Activism
By Naomi Klein
From The Toronto Star, July 23, 1998
Imagine if computer hackers, the daredevils of the networked world, suddenly
became principled political activists.
Imagine if they had a mission besides breaking and entering; if they had
more to prove than that they are smarter than whoever designed your computer
system. Imagine if their targets were selected as part of well organized,
thoroughly researched, international human rights campaigns.
In truth, "really good hackers use their skills like a chess game,"
explains Oxblood Ruffin, the name used by the Foreign Minister of the Cult
of the Dead Cow, one of the oldest and most infamous hacker cabals.
Most hackers aren't out to destroy, just to gain access and say they did.
When they slide into a supposedly secure network, its checkmate time. The
invaded institution then has two choices: call the police or offer the kid
a job. "Good hackers", Ruffin says, "are the richest 21-year-olds
I know."
But Ruffin is among a growing group of outlaw programmers determined to
make hacking more than job interviewing as an extreme sport. They are beginning
to experiment with the mind-blowing skill locked in the global network of
hackers as a powerful political tool for what Ruffin calls "human rights
hacking."
Over the past few months, there has been an upsurge in political hacks,
the highest profile of which was pulled off by a group of teenagers from
England and New Zealand in June. Protesting the nuclear tests, three teens
broke into the computer system at India's Bhabba Atomic Research Centre,
downloaded top secret documents and replaced Websites with a site of their
own: a mushroom cloud and an anti-war message.
The real message was the fact of the hack: if the weapons system isn't safe
from a bunch of meddling teens, how can these so-called security experts
be expected to prevent disaster when an actual enemy is after them?
A less invasive approach to political hacking is the "virtual sit-in,"
a technique developed by New York-based supporters of the Zapatistas' struggle
against the Mexican government. At a designated date and time each month,
the group has tried to overload key Mexican and American Websites by flooding
them with simultaneous hits from cyber protesters. All of this is
relatively benign, however, compared to what is in store from the Hong Kong
Blondes. The Blondes are the hacker wing of China's pro-democracy movement,
scattered around the world and forced underground after Tiananmen. On July
7, days after Bill Clinton returned from his trip to China, Blondie Wong,
the pseudonymous director of the Blondes, met with Ruffin and the two went
public with a new level in political hacking: the Yellow Pages.
In their conversation, a rare public
communication from the Blondes, Wong says the U.S. foreign relations
agenda with Beijing has been hijacked by corporations wanting access to
the Chinese market. "Beijing successfully went around Congress and
straight to American business, so in effect, businessmen started dictating
foreign policy," he says.
What they have dictated is a situation where trade is so open, there is
no longer any incentive left for the Chinese government to reform. If change
is to come, Wong reasons, pro-democracy activists must target their actions
at the multinationals pulling the political strings. "By taking the
side of profit over conscience, business has set our struggle back so far
that they have become our oppressors too."
The implications of this are profound. The Blondes are highly skilled computer
scientists and astrophysicists who have already claimed responsibility for
shutting down a Chinese government communications satellite. They have operatives
around the world, including, according to Wong, several members inside the
Communist party.
Now they are tapping into the wider hacker community. The Yellow Pages are
a group based in California which formed to support the Blondes' political
goals by targeting the computer systems of multinationals in China.
"Human rights is an international issue, so I don't have a problem
with businesses that profit from our suffering paying part of the bill.
Perhaps they will see the wisdom of putting some conditions on trade,"
Wong says.
And here's the kicker: Blondie Wong lives in Toronto. Ruffin seems to spend
quite a bit of time here, too. Marshall McLuhan wrote that "World War
III would be a guerilla information war with no division between civilian
and military participation."
Wouldn't he be proud to know that the first salvos were being fired from
his home town?
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