Digital civil disobedience: tactics, tools and themes

Digital civil disobedience: tactics, tools and future issues

(Republish with translation from: Beatrice Martini - blog, "Digital civil disobedience: tactics, tools and future threads", June 3, 2015, Author Beatrice)

Protests, riots and riots are key elements of freedom of expression, helping to shape society and public debate throughout our history.
Over the centuries, individuals and groups have adopted countless tactics to claim their rights and to fight for justice - changing over time, turning their strategy into different historical and political circumstances.

What is the current situation today? What are the tools adopted by protesters for awareness, disruption and mobilization?
Technology has entered the world of activism and we can recognize various forms of protest that combine both offline and online elements, as well as expressions of disagreement that are only active in the digital world.
This article aims to provide an overview of what digital civil disobedience looks like (digital civil disobedience) today, observing what tactics are in use, and looking at the possible way forward for developing future tools to help global citizens to claim their rights.

 

What is digital civil disobedience?

Talking about civil disobedience (civil disobedience) and for digital civil disobedience also requires the recognition of controversies and debates that affect the actions of activists and the theoretical studies related to them.

In this context, Robin Celikates describes the political disobedience as "a deliberately illegal and principle-based collective action of protest (as opposed to legal protest and "simple" criminal offenses or "unintentional" excuses), which (unlike the conscientious objection, which is already protected in some states as a fundamental right) has the political purpose of changing specific laws, policies or institutions".

Civil disobedience has adopted a variety of approaches over the centuries in an attempt to increase the impact of mobilizing protesters and the effectiveness of their actions. Among the most popular tactics adopted are: demonstrations, squats, occupations, exclusions, strikes, resistance to tax, conscientious objection, sabotage.

Focusing on the most recent decades, we can estimate that the advent of the internet has had the most impressive effect on a growing number of countries. Since the early 90s the internet has become an increasingly (though not universally) accessible network (calculated that from less than 1% that was 1995, today about 40% of the world's population is online / accessed). This has strongly influenced a multitude of components of the life of global citizens, including the mechanisms of modern civil disobedience, and has led to the emergence of a completely new way of expressing opposition, to what is generally called, digital civil disobedience (digital civil disobedience).

The concept of digital political disobedience is not exactly something we can define directly - not yet, at least.
The diversity of activist groups have used technology to organize and develop digital tools and online actions and their values ​​and goals to vary greatly - so much so that even within the same group can arise a variety of locations at the same time. An exciting snapshot of different versions of history and currents of thought offers the debate "Hacktivism, or Fifty Shades of Gray Hat", Hosting Gabriella Coleman, Stefania Milan and Frank Rieger with host Oxblood Ruffin (May 2015).
Digital civil disobedience is not a transfer of known civil disobedience practices into a digital space. Networking technologies have their own features, capabilities and limitations and provide the opportunity to create new infrastructures, tools and processes to express disagreement and political action.

re: publica 2015 - Hacktivism, or Fifty Shades of Gray Hat

from re: publish
Posted on 7 May 2015
Learn More here.

Its history and practice hacktivism is a complicated task. Where does it come from, who does it, and why does it matter? Or is the whole debate totally over-biased? You can engage in a conversation with some people who have been thinking about hacking and political confrontation online. And come prepare to challenge that you will hear.
Oxblood Ruffin
Frank Rieger
Gabriella Coleman
Stefania Milan
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)

Forms of protest in the digital space

The tools, infrastructures and plans available to protesters active in the digital world are many and are constantly increasing. Some are just online, some enhance the potential of actions that happen simultaneously and in the real (analogue) world, some being driven by networks of anonymous actors, some being empowered by individuals and groups sharing their identities and stories publicly in public.

Drawing from the analyzes made by Molly Sauter ("The Future of Civil Disobedience Online") And Zeynep Tufekci ("Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win", TED talk) on the different expressions of digital civil disobedience, it is possible to point out the most prominent characters of modern, through-the-digital-activity disobedience at a global level.

Information distribution

An act of disseminating information is relevant to the acquisition and release (public disclosure) of hidden or secret information. This can present itself as:

• a complaint of malfunctions (information / whistleblowing- the act of deliberately disclosing information that is considered illegal, dishonest or inaccurate in a public or private organization
• a data rendering (data exfiltration- the illegal transfer of data
• a doxing - research and transmission of personal information for an online person
• set (crowd-sourced) surveys.

These practices can be used to expose injustice, corruption and the violation of rights, to reclaim justice in cases or situations where politics and institutions seem to have failed (at least in the view of those protesting). . Public media is the key factor that can strategically help to publicize and disseminate the newly acquired data.
For a complete understanding of these methodologies, it is also important to note that they can even be adopted with criminal intent by individuals and groups to harm vulnerable individuals, such as online doxing harassment. Such criminal activities can only focus on violating one's privacy and security, which are unrelated to other applications of these rights seeking, transparency, and accountability practices. However, it is essential not to dismiss these practices as just dangerous and damaging: as with almost any new tool in history - from fire to electricity and the Internet itself - depending on their purpose, human beings can use that they have at their disposal to make or destroy. The dividing lines, as is often the case, are not clear.

Information distribution has been adopted by many individuals and groups over the last few decades. Referring to our most recent story, it is typical and essential to remember groups like this WikiLeaks and informants like Edward SnowdenThe Chelsa Manning, The William BinneyThe Annie Machon.

Snapshot from Exposing the invisible. "Our currency is information"(Exposing the invisible." Our currency is information ") - with Paul Radu. Tactical Tech Collective. Watch the movie (00: 16: 57).

Disruption

Annoying the status quo by disrupting the regular flow of information can help draw attention to a cause. Among the most popular techniques to achieve this result are:

• the website defacements - attacks that change the visual appearance of a web site or website
• distributed actions denial of service (DDOS) - attacks sent by two or more people or bots to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users

The potential of this practice is to acknowledge the action by a wide audience (possibly through the large media), so it is therefore limited to the difficulty of generating the desired awareness of a subject, if ultimately the media does not report the attack.

The disruptive tactics have been adopted since the mid-nineties of 1990 by countless groups such as Electronic Disturbance TheaterThe the Strano Network and more recently, the Anonymous.

Mobilization

Digital networking technologies allow community connection, organization and mobilization more effectively than ever before in history.

Of course, due to cost-constraints, connectivity and fairness, mobile phones, e-mails and social media are not accessible to all, and under regimes and dictatorships the use of networking technologies needs to be upgraded the adoption of enhanced anonymisation and privacy protection technologies (see below on the Infrastructure section).

But even taking into account the above-mentioned variables, digital network technologies are increasingly being available to global citizens and can be considered as tools that change the game for activists who need to use alternative communication loops.

They can greatly help to:

• to circumvent media exclusions by sharing information in another way in a regime that keeps silent with government and state-controlled media
• facilitate the formation of a collective identity that is supportive of protest and mobilization to maximize the impact of actions
• record and report injustices and violations, also allow transmission beyond national borders.

It is important to note that these tools have both advantages and disadvantages.
For example, Twitter can be a great tool for organizing efforts, promoting information, and sharing support (the hashtags can be very effective, as it was recently proven by #Ferguson or #BlackLivesMatter). At the same time, however, as Jillian York recently pointed out during the talk on "The cost of digital civil disobedience" (as part of the workshop Civil disobedience beyond the state II), many activists have begun to prefer WhatsApp to it for a number of reasons: some find it more appropriate to avoid some random online hassles, some find that it better protects their personal safety, others think it's more effective.

Snapshot from Do not track, "Episode 4: The spy in my pocket"- with Harlo Holmes, Nathan Freitas, Julia Angwin, Kate Crawford, Rand Hindi. From Upian, the National Film Board of Canada, Arte, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Radio-Canada, RTS and AJ +.
Other episodes from the series: S01E01: "Morning Rituals", S01E02:"Breaking Ad", S01E03:"Like Mining", S01E05:"Big Data: Inside the Algorithm"

Infrastructure

When existing infrastructure is endangered by government-led or corporate-led data collection practices, activists may decide to build new and uncompromised infrastructure.
One of the most remarkable examples of infrastructure dismantling is provided by mass monitoring today. Whilst it is justified by governments and business as essential to protecting national security, combating terrorism and child pornography, it is also a practice that may violate privacy, restrict individual and political rights, and freedoms and also to be illegal, in some legal systems. It is no coincidence that the UN Human Rights Council has appointed a Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy (United Nations Human Rights Council's, UNHRC).

Some examples of tools and infrastructure built to protect citizens' privacy in a number of ways are:

• The Tor - free software and an open network designed to protect the privacy and freedom of users and their ability to conduct confidential communication without monitoring their Internet activities
• The dispora * - a free personal web server that implements a distributed social networking service based on the core values ​​of decentralization, freedom and privacy
• The Open Whisper Systems apps - various communication applications, including: RedPhone, a free and open source Android application that provides end-to-end (end-to-end) encryption for phone calls, Signal, a free and open-source iPhone app that uses end-to-end encryption, allowing users to send messages and make calls while keeping their communication secure.
• Alternative VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) - alternative network connections, for example, often provided to communities are confronted with government scrutiny and censorship about activist communications from other countries (in fact, the use of a VPN is now beginning to be recommended as essential for all people who simply use the internet today)

The hard point here is that: these tools often require significant operational effort on the part of the user to operate, and only a limited number of citizens and activists around the world today know about them and how to use them. It makes sense: this whole scenario is very new and ever-changing. Therefore, it is very important for developers, skilled technology makers and educators to work together to spread knowledge and training efforts and with technical developments to provide global citizens with the most effective tools, to make their voices heard and fight for their rights.

What's next? A possible route

This article provided a brief picture of the tactics and tools of digital civil disobedience. Already, however, in a concise form, it makes clear that this new field of practice is becoming increasingly important to raise awareness of rights violations both globally and locally and to fight for positive changes in legislation. , in policies and institutions.

However, as already mentioned, the knowledge of these tools and practices is still not widespread, even the most digitally equipped activists often fight with operational boundaries and challenges.
So what is the next step?

This question is often discussed at this time, and during the recent workshop Civil Disobedience Beyond the State II, Gabriella Coleman suggested a case that sounds particularly interesting.
He suggested looking at other historical examples to see if there was any placement of learning that we could draw from the past to understand how to move forward.
The example he chose was remarkable: The History of Free Software.

In an extremely brief recap: 1983, in response to the appearance of proprietary software (which to a different extent prevents users from studying, modifying and sharing software), Richard Stallman, from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, launched the GNU Project, a collective effort to create a functioning system that respects freedom. In the coming years, we saw the advent of the term "free software" (the official definition of which was published by 1986) and the Free Software Foundation (Free Software Foundation).
(cf. Free as in Freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution and Free Society - Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman)
The concept of free software was revolutionary - it gave end users complete freedom to use, study, exchange and modify the software. But its potential will not be transformed into new and popular infrastructure and tools overnight.
It took many years of work, from hundreds of developers, most of whom volunteers, to develop this operating system. 1991, Linux, the free kernel written by Linus Torvalds, developed, and gradually began to attract media attention - Today, the combination of GNU and Linux is in use by millions of people around the world. The late 1990 became an exciting time for the world of free software. The developers of that era were "the heirs of an older hacking culture that flourished in the 1960 and 1970, when computers were still new, a community that believed that software should be shared and that everyone would benefit as a result. […] Thanks to the emergence of relatively low-cost, but powerful personal computers and the global wiring of the internet, the new hackers [were] incomparably more numerous, more productive, and more united than their forebears. They were bound by a goal-mandate: to write great software, and by a code-mandate: that this software should be freely available to everyone". Their achievements have proven to be durable over time.

What we can learn from this is that when we think of the difficulties that we are experiencing today with the tools that are intended to preserve freedom of expression and the right to protest, we can remember that it is worthwhile to allow more time for the development of these new infrastructures.
Η end-to-end encryption (ie ensuring that the message has been turned into a secret message by the original sender and can only be decoded by its final recipient) is a powerful tool at our disposal, an ever-increasing number of developers are working every day (as it used to be with free software, often as volunteers) to create new tools to protect the rights of citizens around the world, as the sudden availability of advanced and relatively low-cost devices made all the difference to the development of emerging technologies in the decade '90, something quite comparable could possibly happen in the near future.
All of this will help diversify the tools available to today's digital demonstrators - and this will be the key to the effectiveness of their actions, as evidenced by centuries of (offline) political disobedience, Being equipped with a variety of tactics gives you stronger support and makes it harder to eliminate law enforcement (legitimate and unfair).

In conclusion

Civil disobedience is an act of protest that will always be fundamental to the collective ability to express the disagreement. At the same time, new digital media and tactics present a valuable opportunity for the future of civil rights. Along with existing forms of expression of disagreement, they provide world citizens and activists with the means to be able to compete with the structures created by the institutions against those who protest and offer the opportunity to increase the impact of the actions in the name of rights and justice.

Understanding, adopting and improving these new practices is essential to the defense of global civil liberties and only through a collective effort we will understand, adopt and improve this opportunity to be able to contribute to the creation of responsible and fair societies around the world.

References / bibliography:

• Civil Disobedience - Between Symbolic Politics and Real Confrontation - Robin Celikates, Critical Legal Thinking (July 2, 2012)
• Hacktivism, or Fifty Shades of Gray Hat - panel discussion with Gabriella Coleman, Stefania Milan, Frank Rieger, moderated by Oxblood Ruffin (May 7, 2015)
• The Future of Civil Disobedience Online - Molly Sauter, io9 (June 17, 2013)
• Whistleblowing: A Case for Civil Disobedience - Manohar Kumar
• Doxing: an etymology - Megan Garber, The Atlantic (March 6, 2014)
• The history of DDoS attacks as a tool of protest - Joseph Cox, Motherboard (October 1, 2014)
• LOIC will tear us apart': the impact of tool design & media portrayals in the success of DDOS attacks - Molly Sauter, American Behavioral Scientist (March 15, 2013)
• Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win - Zeynep Tufekci, TED talk (October 2014)
• What Happens to #Ferguson Affects Ferguson: Net Neutrality, Algorithmic Filtering and Ferguson - Zeynep Tufekci, Message (August 14, 2014)
• Why I refrained from joining Twitter all these years ... but joined in the end nevertheless - Maria Xynou (May 13, 2015)
• Witness' library of free resources for video activists, trainers and their allies - the resources can be sorted by issue, content type, user type and topic, and most of them are available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French.
• How we can use livestreaming apps to promote justice - Sam Gregory, Wired (May 10, 2015)
• If you use the Internet, you need a VPN. Here's why - Kashmir Hill, Fusion (May 15, 2015)
• The Info-Activism how-to guide - Digital tools - Tactical Technology Collective
• Me & my shadow - Tactical Technology Collective
• Activist or protest? How to keep you and your communications safe wherever your campaigning takes you - Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Human rights defender? Recipes for organizations who need to keep safe from government eavesdroppers - Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Surveillance in the South: human rights defenders under threat - Renata Avila
• Freedom of expression, encryption and anonymity – World Wide Web Foundation, in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Human Rights at European University Viadrina, Oficina Antivigilância at the Institute for Technology and Society — ITS Rio, Derechos Digitales.
• Do Not Track - a personalized documentary series about the privacy and the web economy, by Upian, the National Film Board of Canada, Arte, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Radio-Canada, RTS and AJ +.