ɢʜᴏꜱᴛꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴘᴀʟᴇꜱᴛɪɴᴇ™

Cybercrime laws have only intensified in the years since, forcing hacktivists into a retreat. But their tactics remain effective and, given that the pandemic has restricted our capability to conduct physical protests worldwide, hacktivism could soon be redeployed as an alternative way of expressing dissent in the post-COVID era.

Hacktivist tactics

Traditionally, hacktivists have tried to mimic offline forms of protest and civil disobedience, but in the online space. They’ve used website defacements, often called “internet graffiti”, to scrawl political messages on targeted websites. And denial of service (DoS) attacks, which are designed to overwhelm a website with traffic in order to make it crash, are also common. Hacktivists often call these virtual sit-ins.

In contrast to internet graffiti, which can be facilitated by a single skilled hacker, virtual sit-ins require mass participation. That makes these protests far more democratically legitimate and impactful – as well as sharing the criminal liability among the virtual protesters.

I’ve highlighted the positive aspects of these tactics in my research, praising how they bring citizen dissent into the online environment while globalising important political causes. But virtual sit-ins also have financial implications for the attacked organisations and systems. Meanwhile, some commentators have criticised hacktivism as a form of empty “slacktivism” which they say isn’t comparable to the political conscientiousness and resolution of street protests.

Although hacktivism in principle is all about promoting socially beneficial causes while minimising harms. Anonymous members have in the past exposed the personal details of individuals such as police officers, corrupt politicians and personal details of family members. Meanwhile, the hacktivist group Lulzsec has been known to target big organisations for the sake of the challenge, rather than for a political purpose. Finally, nationalist hacktivists have historically been involved in cross-border hacker wars which has, in some cases, escalated into real-world violence.

Hacktivism’s revival?

Irrespective of these criticisms, one can’t help but think that in the new post-pandemic era, with all of us spending much more time online, these political tactics could become popular again across the political spectrum. In fact, there have already been activities that indicate hacktivism may be becoming a side-tactic for groups such as Extinction Rebellion, which has been reconsidering its future tactics in light of restrictions and preemptive arrests.

Hacktivism never went away entirely. Anonymous did in fact reemerge during the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, targeting police forces’ websites with hacks. But we’re still in a transitional period, with organised hacktivist efforts far less common than they were a decade ago.

Yet the stage seems set for a third wave of hacktivism. New protest movements are gradually gaining traction with the public, and hacktivist activity could make for a popular alternative to in-person civil disobedience in a period when many of us are still concerned about COVID-19 transmission.

As environmental and anti-discrimination movements grow internationally, and their underlying goals unite citizens on a global scale, it’ll be fascinating to see whether hacktivist tactics can seriously contribute to galvanising change in an increasingly politicised world.

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