Terrorist, freedom fighter, or hacktivist?
I read a collection of articles today confirming that the traditional hacker ethic isn't quite as dead as I might have thought it to be. Firstly, David Glance tells the story of a Canadian student "expelled for idealistically point out security flaws" in The Conversation, while The Register ran articles on the prosecution of Aaron Swartz for fraudulently obtaining access to scientific articles on JSTOR and an attack on the University of Western Sydney criticising its decision to purchase iPads for its student population.
The recent Whitehaven Coal Hoax spawned a lot of comment on civil disobedience vs vigilantism in Australia. I don't think I've seen the same terminology applied to computer-based protest — "hacktivism" seems to be the preferred term — but it's surely much the same issue. When is defying the law nobly standing up for a cause, and when is it attempting to get one's way by force?
The cynical answer is that it's "civil disobedience" when one agrees with the political view being expressed, and "vigilantism" otherwise. More nuanced answers involve the availability of alternative methods of protest, the level and kind of harm resulting from the action, and the perpetrator's willingness to brave the ascribed punishment for his or her actions.
Hacktivism typically seems to me to fail most or all of the above tests, starting with the cynical one. The "rights" championed by the hacker ethic are frequently of little interest to anyone other than computing experts, and some of them would come at the expense of other people and industries (such as free access to private and commercial information). Of course computing experts might have genuine rights that are particular to their profession, but is anyone outside the hacker community impressed by the vandalisation of web sites, much less see the need to establish a right to it?
The Western liberal democracies that hosted all of the events listed in the first paragraph of this entry, and many others besides, provide numerous avenues through which people can make known their opinion on iPads, open access and just about anything else without needing to resort to fraud and the commandeering of other people's computer equipment. Librarians and academics, for example, are already making significant strides towards open access to scientific literature, so what need is there for vigilantism? Sure, your opinion may not be as well-known or as influential as you'd like it to be, but just about everyone else would probably say the same thing.
