Lecciones del grupo antiglobalización Tute Bianche sobre la desobediencia civil digital y el sujeto “revolucionario”

This paper is part of the investigation into the possibility of using the concept of civil disobedience to analyze the online disclosure of secret documentation or “eleaking”, that is, the ethical and electronic leak of confidential information. While other works have already summarized the legitimacy requirements of disobedience, here we study the possi-ble parallelisms between eleaking and another unprecedented form of civil disobedience, carried out by the Italian collective Tute Bianche. By ignoring the identity of its agents, the bianca disobedience would also be groundbreaking and problematic with respect to the dominant liberal definition. Thus, a crucial and not enough examined role of civil disobe-dience is claimed: its visibilization of both injustices and exclusions systematically caused by today’s neo-liberal capitalism. The experience of the aforementioned anti-globalization movement offers a double teaching. On the one hand, it demands a more complex rein-terpretation of publicity, a classic condition of validity, with the consequent clarification of the normative arguments that have been previously used to defend eleaking. Second, the bianca strategy also arises as a consequence of the eventual crisis of the categories that should represent and promote democratic social change. In short, once again social praxis allows a (self) criticism of the hegemonic theory of both civil disobedience and the subjec-tivities of emancipation.Este texto se enmarca en la investigación sobre la posibilidad de usar el concep-to de desobediencia civil para analizar la revelación online de documentación secreta o “efiltración”, es decir, la filtración ética y electrónica de información confidencial. Mientras que en otros trabajos ya se han resumido los requisitos de legitimidad de la desobediencia, aquí se estudian los eventuales paralelismos entre la efiltración y otra forma inédita de desobediencia civil, protagonizada por el colectivo italiano Tute Bianche. Al desconocer la identidad de sus agentes, la desobediencia bianca también sería rupturista y problemática respecto de la definición liberal dominante. Se reivindica así una función crucial y poco atendida de la desobediencia civil: su visibilización tanto de injusticias como de exclusiones provocadas sistemáticamente por el capitalismo neoliberal actual. La experiencia del mo-vimiento antiglobalización citado ofrece una doble enseñanza. Por un lado, exige una rein-terpretación más compleja de la publicidad, una condición clásica de validez, con la conse-cuente matización de los argumentos normativos que se han usado previamente para defender la efiltración. En segundo lugar, la estrategia bianca surge también como conse-cuencia de la eventual crisis de las categorías que debían representar e impulsar el cambio social democrático. En definitiva, una vez más la praxis social permite una (auto)crítica de la teoría hegemónica tanto de la desobediencia civil como de las subjetividades de la eman-cipación

Book review: the coming swarm: DDoS actions, hacktivism, and civil disobedience on the internet

The internet is increasingly becoming a tool for political activism and protest. The Coming Swarm is one of the first publications which profoundly examines the dynamics of civil disobedience and specifically Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) actions online. Molly Sauter has provided a solid historical analysis of the evolution, theory and practice of these activist/hacker/hacktivist tools and paved the way for future research on online tactics of disruption. Although the book has a US-centric emphasis, Leonie Maria Tanczer encourages specifically scholars of internet-specific social movement and collective action research to have a close look at this investigation. DDoS actions are certainly more political than the public discourse portrays them to be

The Coming Swarm

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. What is Hacktivism? In The Coming Swarm, rising star Molly Sauter examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. The internet is a vital arena of communication, self expression, and interpersonal organizing. When there is a message to convey, words to get out, or people to unify, many will turn to the internet as a theater for that activity. As familiar and widely accepted activist tools—petitions, fundraisers, mass letter-writing, call-in campaigns and others—find equivalent practices in the online space, is there also room for the tactics of disruption and civil disobedience that are equally familiar from the realm of street marches, occupations, and sit-ins? With a historically grounded analysis, and a focus on early deployments of activist DDOS as well as modern instances to trace its development over time, The Coming Swarm uses activist DDOS actions as the foundation of a larger analysis of the practice of disruptive civil disobedience on the internet

Filtering, Piracy Surveillance and Disobedience

There has always been a cyclical relationship between the prevention of piracy and the protection of civil liberties. While civil liberties advocates previously warned about the aggressive nature of copyright protection initiatives, more recently, a number of major players in the music industry have eventually ceded to less direct forms of control over consumer behavior. As more aggressive forms of consumer control, like litigation, have receded, we have also seen a rise in more passive forms of consumer surveillance. Moreover, even as technology has developed more perfect means for filtering and surveillance over online piracy, a number of major players have opted in favor of “tolerated use,” a term coined by Professor Tim Wu to denote the allowance of uses that may be otherwise infringing, but that are allowed to exist for public use and enjoyment. Thus, while the eventual specter of copyright enforcement and monitoring remains a pervasive digital reality, the market may fuel a broad degree of consumer freedom through the toleration or taxation of certain kinds of activities. This Article is meant largely to address and to evaluate these shifts by drawing attention to the unique confluence of these two important moments: the growth of tolerated uses, coupled with an increasing trend towards more passive forms of piracy surveillance in light of the balance between copyright enforcement and civil liberties. The content industries may draw upon a broad definition of disobedience in their campaigns to educate the public about copyright law, but the market’s allowance of DRM-free content suggests an altogether different definition. The divide in turn between copyright enforcement and civil liberties results in a perfect storm of uncertainty, suggesting the development of an even further division between the role of the law and the role of the marketplace in copyright enforcement and innovation, respectively

Civil disobedience in a distorted public sphere

Rawls’s notion of civil disobedience, which still dominates the literature on this subject, comprises at least these three characteristics: it involves breaking the law, is non-violent and public. But implicit in this notion is a certain tension: it shows pessisimism about the proper functioning of the public sphere as earlier normal appeals have failed, but it also displays a certain optimism about its proper functioning as it assumes that civil disobedience may be effective. In my paper I argue that Rawls cannot explain how civil disobedience may be effective as a public appeal for social justice because he does not fully understand what it means for civil disobedience to be public in relation to the public sphere. His analysis would require an additional notion of publicity which, as I argue, is the notion of hermeneutical publicity. From a Bourdieusian perspective I then make a case for the claim that public spheres always suffer from hermeneutic invisibility. This may explain why non-violent appeals for social justice fail as dialogical practices. Finally I suggest how we nevertheless could understand that civil disobedience can be effective as a dialogical practice

The Coming Swarm

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. What is Hacktivism? In The Coming Swarm, rising star Molly Sauter examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. The internet is a vital arena of communication, self expression, and interpersonal organizing. When there is a message to convey, words to get out, or people to unify, many will turn to the internet as a theater for that activity. As familiar and widely accepted activist tools—petitions, fundraisers, mass letter-writing, call-in campaigns and others—find equivalent practices in the online space, is there also room for the tactics of disruption and civil disobedience that are equally familiar from the realm of street marches, occupations, and sit-ins? With a historically grounded analysis, and a focus on early deployments of activist DDOS as well as modern instances to trace its development over time, The Coming Swarm uses activist DDOS actions as the foundation of a larger analysis of the practice of disruptive civil disobedience on the internet

Activism and radical politics in the digital age: Towards a typology

This article aims to develop a typology for evaluating different types of activism in the digital age, based on the ideal of radical democracy. Departing from this ideal, activism is approached in terms of processes of identification by establishing conflictual frontiers to outside Others as either adversaries or enemies. On the basis of these discussions, we outline a typology of four kinds of activists: the salon activist, the contentious activist, the law-abiding activist, and the Gandhian activist. The typology’s first axis, between antagonism and agonism, is derived from normative discussions in radical democracy concerning developing frontiers. The second axis, about readiness to engage in civil disobedience, is derived from a review of studies of different forms of online activism. The article concludes by suggesting that the different forms of political engagement online have to be taken into account when studying how online activism can contribute to social change

Justifying Uncivil Disobedience

A prominent way of justifying civil disobedience is to postulate a pro tanto duty to obey the law and to argue that the considerations that ground this duty sometimes justify forms of civil disobedience. However, this view entails that certain kinds of uncivil disobedience are also justified. Thus, either a) civil disobedience is never justified or b) uncivil disobedience is sometimes justified. Since a) is implausible, we should accept b). I respond to the objection that this ignores the fact that civil disobedience enjoys a special normative status on account of instantiating certain special features: nonviolence, publicity, the acceptance of legal consequences, and conscientiousness. I then show that my view is superior to two rivals: the view that we should expand the notion of civility and that civil disobedience, expansively construed, is uniquely appropriate; and the view that uncivil disobedience is justifiable in but only in unfavorable conditions

Direct action ethic

Direct action has long been associated with European anarchism, from the industrial sabotage espoused by nineteenth and twentieth century anarcho-syndicalists to the anti-Poll tax activists and the "DiY culture" of more recent British movements. A particular ethic is identified within anarchist direct action, which has two features: the first requires that means be in accordance with ends (prefiguration); the second the identities of the subjects involved in the act. prefiguration distinguished direct action from both Leninist consequentialism and the deontological approaches of liberal and anrcho-capitalist traditions. The identities of the agents involved and created through direct action illustrate important differences between anarchist direct action and that of more conservative groupings. The paper not only clarifies direct action but also considers whether a prefigurative ethic necessitates non-violence. Additionally, the paper answers the question of why direct action is embraced by the anti-hierarchical anarchist tradition, explaining the attractions of such methods to contemporary movements and illustrating parallels between contemporary anarchism and politically-engaged post-structuralisms. Examples are drawn from actions from the 1990s to early 2000s' the publicity and discussion materials of contemporary groupings and their critics as well as texts more centrally located within the academy

The Impact of Information Security Technologies Upon Society

This paper's aims are concerned with the effects of information security technologies upon society in general and civil society organisations in particular. Information security mechanisms have the potential to act as enablers or disablers for the work of civil society groups. Recent increased emphasis on national security issues by state actors, particularly 'anti-terrorism' initiatives, have resulted in legislative instruments that impinge upon the civil liberties of many citizens and have the potential to restrict the free flow of information vital for civil society actors. The nascent area of cyberactivism, or hactivism, is at risk of being labelled cyberterrorism, with the accompanying change of perception from a legitimate form of electronic civil disobedience to an abhorrent crime. Biometric technology can be an invasive intrusion into citizens' privacy. Internet censorship and surveillance is widespread and increasing. These implementations of information security technology are becoming more widely deployed with profound implications for the type of societies that will result