Hacktivism: A Week of Electronic Disruption during the Republican National Convention

Hacktivists have launched a campaign of electronic civil disobedience to coincide with the demonstrations against the Republican National Convention. Joining millions of protesters who took to the streets of New York to say no to the Bush agenda, hacktivists have taken to the net to explore a new medium of protest: the internet. Various tactics include staging financial disruption against major credit card corporations, disrupting various right-wing fascist groups, and an electronic sit-in against Republican websites.

Credit card numbers stolen from major news corporations have been used by anti-RNC hacktivists to make $2600 in donations to various humantarian and civil rights organizations. In a statement posted to the NYC Independent Media Center, the hacktivists declared "either the credit card corporations are going to have to spend tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer and investigation fees to track down and retrieve a mere few hundred dollars per account, or these humanitarian organizations are going to get their donations. We’ll have to see whether Corporate America is heartless enough to take money away from hungry children, AIDS victims and the homeless and give it straight to law enforcement, attorneys and the banks". The hacktivists have claimed that they have hundreds of additional credit card numbers spread out over an underground network of hackers and will continue to make $2600 in donations a month until all military troops are pulled out of Iraq.

A right-wing fascist organization known as ProtestWarrior was also hacked and defaced a week before the convention began. In a statement condemning the group's defense of the occupation of Iraq and support for the Bush agenda, the hacktivists spoke, "by infiltrating and crashing legal, peaceful assemblies, the ProtestWarriors are fighting against the democratic process while claiming to uphold the 'core values of this country'". The cell/home phone numbers, names, addresses, and passwords of the site's lead organizers along with the email addresses of all ProtestWarrior members were posted to the site and emailed out to every member. Major components of their website remained down for the remainder of the day.

The hacktivists have also staged a mainstream electronic sit-in on various Republican websites during the convention. In a document sent to thousands of hackers, activists, press people and email lists, the group provided the means to disrupt Republican webservers, email accounts, phone and fax systems. These actions were joined by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre, who have launched similar successful actions against the World Economic Forum, the Mexican Surpeme Court, and more. The flood scripts allowed users to combine their bandwidth to overload RNC servers with so much traffic that it would be unable to serve any more requests. Although the RNC websites remained online for the majority of the convention, many users along with web monitoring company AlertSite have reported periods of slowdown and complete disruption on September 2nd as George W. Bush was nominated as the presidential candidate for the Republican Party.

Hacktivists are defending the attacks on right-wing and corporate systems as a legitimate protest tactic. "When the machinery of law is working towards acts of injustice, then the people have not only the right but the duty to break the law to combat tyranny and oppression". Following in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Jefferson and other famous revolutionaries, these hacktivists are exploring the internet as a new medium of civil disobedience. "Electronic civil disobedience does not cause any physical damage to people or property: it is merely the shifting of data around in such a manner as to mock or disrupt the injustices of the corporate machine".

Through the redistribution of wealth to charities, disruption of right-wing fascist groups, and flooding Republican websites and communication systems, this sort of non-violent electronic civil disobedience is setting new standards for online protests.

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The campaign website and all email addresses have been knocked offline, but it will not erase the memories of what has happened.

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