Computer Support Blog

Those who lived through the late 1960s laugh at the absurdity of protest today.  Protests since the late 1990s, like when protests erupted against NAFTA or the World Trade Organization, have become highly choreographed events that usually involve getting permits, inviting the media and the like.  They are also remarkably ineffective.  The fact that Occupy Wall Street does not actually feature tents and human chains physically blocking access to the critical financial buildings there illustrates the differences between protest then and protest now.  Protesters of days of yore fought for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly (Constitutionally-protected rights) using means that were frequently illegal (trespassing).  Today’s protestors seem very pale by comparison.

Then there are hackers.  Hackers today, like the members of Anonymous, frequently see themselves as freedom fighters, like the protagonist from V For Vendetta.  But what do hackers do today and what do they accomplish?

Recently, the United States Department of Justice seized a series of pirating sites from the Megaupload.com group and made several arrests in relation to the operation of the sites.  In response, the hacker group Anonymous launched attacks on the websites for the Department of Justice, the Recording Industry Association of America, Universal Music and the Motion Picture Association of America.  If you didn’t notice, it is not much of a surprise.  The mainstream media does not widely report such attacks and all of the sites came back online relatively quickly.

Part of the reason Anonymous’s attacks have been largely ineffective is the method of their most common attacks.  While their recent efforts involved actual hacking –  Anonymous temporarily deleted the content on the Department of Justice’s website – their most common attacks are distributed denial of service attacks.  DDoS attacks are very effective at temporarily incapacitating websites by flooding the website with so many requests that the site cannot accommodate them and the server crashes.  This is the Internet equivalent to getting a mob to block the doors to a building you are all boycotting.  What separates it is that in a physical protest, you may be arrested, assert that your right to protest is Constitutionally-protected, even if it is illegal or unpopular, and face the law directly.

Anonymous and other hackers carry out attacks like DDoS attacks anonymously.  The hope is to make a statement and not get caught and this seems remarkably spineless for people who claim to be fighting for a higher principle.

Fighting for a principle can be messy and it may lead to your own imprisonment, fines or other legal consequences.  The nature of protest, though, factors that in and if the cause truly is just and your methodology in protesting is truly an effective one, you can sway people to your cause.  What Anonymous is doing seems less like a protest and more like a bunch of juvenile delinquents setting a bag of dog poop on fire on the front door of major companies, ringing the doorbell and running away.  Their cause and their followers deserve better.

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