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Give me the keys please, I want to keep it as a memory of my house
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Activists in Ireland launch a ship to demand breaking the blockade and stopping the Israeli genocide in the Gaza.
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Activists staged a demonstration inside #Vienna's trains to raise awareness about what is ongoing in the Gaza.
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Let it be recorded in history that in 2024, surgeries in #Gaza are being performed under cellphone light. All healthcare resources have been destroyed, with no supplies or support remaining.
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CSULA SJP posted this on instagram 5 hours ago:
LETS BE ABUNDANTLY CLEAR: WE ARE NOT HOLDING ANY BODY HOSTAGE. UNLIKE GAZAN FAMILIES, YOU ARE FREE TO LEAVE. SIGNS ARE BEING HELD IN FRONT OF THE EXIT.
DEMANDS MUST BE MET, PRESIDENT EANES. #FreePalestine
LETS BE ABUNDANTLY CLEAR: WE ARE NOT HOLDING ANY BODY HOSTAGE. UNLIKE GAZAN FAMILIES, YOU ARE FREE TO LEAVE. SIGNS ARE BEING HELD IN FRONT OF THE EXIT.
DEMANDS MUST BE MET, PRESIDENT EANES. #FreePalestine
𓂆 Princess™
Incredibly inspiring stuff happening at CSULA. Helicopters are circling and the cops are staging by the forensics building. Get there if you can!
Police helicopter putting their spotlight on students inside & outside the building.
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Pro-Palestine activists held a die-in vigil in Dublin to honour Palestinian who lost their lives during the Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
UCLA People’s University graduation
Generation after generation, until total liberation… LONG LIVE THE STUDENT INTIFADA🇵🇸
Generation after generation, until total liberation… LONG LIVE THE STUDENT INTIFADA🇵🇸
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UCLA People’s University graduation
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Gazze açlıktan ölüyor ey Müslümanlar
Gaza is dying of hunger, O Muslims!
Gaza is dying of hunger, O Muslims!
"The Rise of Hacktivism" A Look into the past and Futile Future of Online Protests
Article by Ghosts of Palestine
2023/24 have witnessed record-setting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against Israel, as well as defacements and breaches that have caused significant harm. A decade since ‘the year of the hacktivist’, online protests never lost to return.
Hacktivism
Many of us vaguely remember the word “hacktivism” from a decade ago. This was a time before serious ransomware attacks dominated current cybersecurity concerns, when certain hacking techniques were being used to send political messages to governmental and corporate entities.
Hacktivism has since retreated as a form of protest, in part due to the prosecution of prominent hacktivists, sometimes with what appear to be disproportionately severe sentences. But with the ongoing pandemic restricting physical protests globally, and new bills being drawn up to curb offline protest, it looks as if hacktivism may be set for a return.
My research into hacktivism and cybercrime helps place hacktivism in its historical context – from which we can understand how, where and why hackers may soon resort once again to digital protest across the world.
Hacktivism may have reached its peak a decade ago, but it’s been a feature of online activism since the early popularisation of the internet. Major hacktivist groups, such as the Electronic Disturbance Theater, the Electrohippies and Hacktivismo, were already active in the late 1990s. At the time, they supported the Zapatista movement in Mexico, protested global wealth inequality and flagged security issues in popular software.
Even traditional activist groups – such as Greenpeace and the German anti-racist collective Kein Mensch ist illegal – were known to use hacktivist protest tactics long before its rise to global prominence.
In fact, Kein Mensch ist illegal led a “collective blockade” of Lufthansa’s website in 2001 to protest the airline’s cooperation with the German government’s deportation policies. A Frankfurt Appeals court would eventually rule that this hacktivist activity amounted to freedom of expression – not criminal activity – but this legal precedent was not followed by courts elsewhere.
Hacktivism’s heyday
Hacktivism began attracting global attention when Anonymous – a loose collective of hackers, politicised internet users, trolls and pranksters – decided to focus on political issues. The collective targeted the Church of Scientology for censoring online content in 2008, and mobilised to protect whistleblower websites such as WikiLeaks in 2010, among various other actions with national and international implications. The activities of Anonymous would eventually lead major cybersecurity companies to characterise 2011 as the “year of the hacktivist”.
Soon, hacktivist groups were springing up across the world. Anonymous itself sported many national branches, and these groups contributed to common political struggles at the same time as weighing in during local uprisings. For instance, Anonymous took down dozens of the Egyptian government’s websites in 2012 during the Arab Spring protests.
This explosion in hacktivist activity did not go unpunished, despite the hacktivist claim that online protest is as valid as offline protest. Some hacktivists were found to violate cybercrime laws, such as the UK’s Computer Misuse Act 1990, and various protesters were prosecuted and convicted in the UK and the US.
Perhaps the most high-profile prosecution was that of the American internet wonder-kid Aaron Swartz, who’d bypassed university cybersecurity safeguards in an attempt to download and make public an entire database of academic papers. Swartz died by suicide in the lead up to his trial, bringing US cybercrime laws and their aggressive enforcement into question.
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Article by Ghosts of Palestine
2023/24 have witnessed record-setting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against Israel, as well as defacements and breaches that have caused significant harm. A decade since ‘the year of the hacktivist’, online protests never lost to return.
Hacktivism
Many of us vaguely remember the word “hacktivism” from a decade ago. This was a time before serious ransomware attacks dominated current cybersecurity concerns, when certain hacking techniques were being used to send political messages to governmental and corporate entities.
Hacktivism has since retreated as a form of protest, in part due to the prosecution of prominent hacktivists, sometimes with what appear to be disproportionately severe sentences. But with the ongoing pandemic restricting physical protests globally, and new bills being drawn up to curb offline protest, it looks as if hacktivism may be set for a return.
My research into hacktivism and cybercrime helps place hacktivism in its historical context – from which we can understand how, where and why hackers may soon resort once again to digital protest across the world.
Hacktivism may have reached its peak a decade ago, but it’s been a feature of online activism since the early popularisation of the internet. Major hacktivist groups, such as the Electronic Disturbance Theater, the Electrohippies and Hacktivismo, were already active in the late 1990s. At the time, they supported the Zapatista movement in Mexico, protested global wealth inequality and flagged security issues in popular software.
Even traditional activist groups – such as Greenpeace and the German anti-racist collective Kein Mensch ist illegal – were known to use hacktivist protest tactics long before its rise to global prominence.
In fact, Kein Mensch ist illegal led a “collective blockade” of Lufthansa’s website in 2001 to protest the airline’s cooperation with the German government’s deportation policies. A Frankfurt Appeals court would eventually rule that this hacktivist activity amounted to freedom of expression – not criminal activity – but this legal precedent was not followed by courts elsewhere.
Hacktivism’s heyday
Hacktivism began attracting global attention when Anonymous – a loose collective of hackers, politicised internet users, trolls and pranksters – decided to focus on political issues. The collective targeted the Church of Scientology for censoring online content in 2008, and mobilised to protect whistleblower websites such as WikiLeaks in 2010, among various other actions with national and international implications. The activities of Anonymous would eventually lead major cybersecurity companies to characterise 2011 as the “year of the hacktivist”.
Soon, hacktivist groups were springing up across the world. Anonymous itself sported many national branches, and these groups contributed to common political struggles at the same time as weighing in during local uprisings. For instance, Anonymous took down dozens of the Egyptian government’s websites in 2012 during the Arab Spring protests.
This explosion in hacktivist activity did not go unpunished, despite the hacktivist claim that online protest is as valid as offline protest. Some hacktivists were found to violate cybercrime laws, such as the UK’s Computer Misuse Act 1990, and various protesters were prosecuted and convicted in the UK and the US.
Perhaps the most high-profile prosecution was that of the American internet wonder-kid Aaron Swartz, who’d bypassed university cybersecurity safeguards in an attempt to download and make public an entire database of academic papers. Swartz died by suicide in the lead up to his trial, bringing US cybercrime laws and their aggressive enforcement into question.
1/3
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