We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists Page #3

which use the tactic of

a denial of service attack.

Denial of service has been

around for a long long time.

The equilevant of, like

if you, for some reason,

wanted to disrupt a bus service, right?

You can hire a thousand extras to all

go and like, line up at the bus station

and get on the bus,

until that anyone who was

really trying to get on

the bus, couldn't do it.

It's as simple as that.

When you stop trying to visit, the

website goes back up, no permanent damage.

And this tactic has been used

by a number of different groups.

Probably the most famous is the

Electronic Disturbance Theatre.

Another really interesting case happened

in Germany, where a group

of activists got together,

who wanted to protest the

fact that the airline, Lufthansa,

was using, they were using their

planes to deport immigrants

and they would take down the site

and in fact eventually

the German courts ruled,

that this was a legitimate form of protest.

From airports security

to subway bag checks,

there's no question,

it's a new world post 9/11.

It's worse now,

for humans, post 9/11,

because intrusion and surveillance,

which is always going to be misused

by those who can misuse it,

has created a different kind of society,

in which freedom, the freedom

to move unobserved, is a privilege

only of the rich, privacy is a

privilege only of the rich.

Hackers see the technology giving them sanction

to buy their privileged exclusion as well.

Intrinsic to the technology,

is the power to self transcend

and get out of the

hump of the Bell Curve

and move forward on par with the masters

of society and do battle with them

on an equal, level, playing field.

That's hactivism.

Anonymous grew out of,

what's known as, 4chan.

Essentially this is just

a website, where people can upload images

and you don't actually give your name,

it's just sort of anonymous.

When you look at 4chan,

you're often surprised,

because it looks like a site

from, like, 1995 or something.

The idea is very simple:

You post a comment and you post a picture

and you can post it under

your name, or anonymously

and it's seperated into

boards about particular topics.

There's a topic on anime,

there's a topic on weaponry.

There's like a 4chan board for origami.

You just upload interesting pictures of origami.

And then there was a group

called /b/. The /b/ board,

which essentially was

for like, anything goes.

The first time anybody goes on /b/,

it's kind of an instant.. revulsion,

'cause there's never a time that you go in

there where you don't see something horrible.

That instantly puts off a lot of people.

The idea is, post something

that can never be unseen.

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