THE BLEEDING EDGE

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZl8le-M_a0)

The advances made in technology during the last 20 years has brought growing fears around information kept by various governments and corporations around the world. Privacy, it seems, has become somewhat of an elusive luxury. The Internet and its social media sites like Facebook, have meant that anyone, anywhere is able to search a name and discover details that were, before the internet, unknown. As a result of these issues and the growing evidence that governments and businesses are not disclosing crucial information that the general public have a right to know, cyber activism has become a very real part of our society. This online activism, known as ‘hacktivism’ can be described as politically motivated hacking (Mikhaylova 2014, p. 1) and has become synonymous with what is now the worlds largest collective of hacktivists, the ‘Anonymous’ group. The group is described as “loosely associated” with a “decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives” (Kelly 2012, p. 1678). In other words, Anonymous describes itself as an internet ‘gathering’ rather than an official network with specific guidelines and rules. Due to this loose association and the idea that members must remain anonymous, the group has come under a lot of scrutiny in regards to the actions of certain members. As any person can label themselves as ‘Anonymous’, misconstrued opinions and ideas of what is right and wrong has brought about demonstrations that have been seen by the general population as controversial and wrong. It can be noted that because there is no one member in charge of Anonymous, issues like anarchy and disorder within the groups structure and actions has caused issues in the past and most likely will do in the future.

The consequence of the disorganisation within the group is the questioning of whether or not Anonymous as a hacktivist network is a necessary function of 21st Century citizens to keep check on governments and corporations. In order to answer this question, evidence from the past must be inspected, specifically in regards to the overall fear and mistrust held by governments and corporations toward Anonymous and whether these suspicions prove these entities (governments and corporations) need to be held accountable by a separate operation that isn’t biased (Anonymous or another similar organisation). As well as this, it must be noted whether Anonymous’ cyber demonstrations can be described as vigilante activity and if yes, can their behaviour be justified as good and necessary? As a part of this, the consequences of the collective having no rules or specific guidelines must be considered. Moreover, how can members be stopped/held accountable if and even more so, when, their hacktivism turns into cyber terrorism in order to maintain itself as a necessary function in 21st Century society.

Governments and corporations have been notoriously skeptical of hacking and as a result, hacktivism - and rightly so, as said by Richard A. Clarke, a former special advisor on Cyberspace Security to President George W. Bush,

“The threat is really very easy to understand. If there are major vulnerabilities in the digital networks that make our country run, then someday, somebody will exploit them in a major way doing great damage to the economy. What could happen? Transportation systems could grind to a halt. Electric power and natural gas systems could malfunction. Manufacturing could freeze. 911 emergency call centers could jam. Stock, bond, futures, and banking transactions could be jumbled. If that major attack comes at a time when we are at war, it could put our forces at great risk by having their logistics system fail.” (2003)

Clarke points out the detrimental effect hacktivism could have if unregulated. It is also important to distinguish the difference between hacking and hacktivism. Mikhaylova explains that “hacktivists share many, if not all, of the principles of the original hacker ethic. Both hacker and hacktivist ethics are libertarian and anarchist in nature: their ethics puts them “on a collision course with the commercial-industrial complex who wish to own and control the Internet”” (2014, p. 3). Mikhaylova goes on to distinguish that “hacktivists are different from other types of hackers because their motivations are driven by the pursuit of social change, as opposed to seeking profit or intellectual pursuit" (2014, p. 1). In other words, hacktivists are hackers who take on more of a ‘cyber vigilante’ role as opposed to a criminal one (Serracino-Inglott 2013). It is evident from this why governments and corporations are afraid of hacktivism’s potential; many point toward the thin line between hackers and hacktivism. These entities also note that Anonymous’ lack of guidelines can and have lead to members crossing that line- thus making the groups function unnecessary to society as it ceases to keep check on the behavior of governments and corporations.

The Anonymous network’s previous demonstrations have publicly exposed confidential and sensitive information from many public and private agencies. Many would suggest the networks political motivations can be summed up as ‘vigilante’ behavior. Serracino-Inglott makes parallels to Anonymous’ cyber vigilantism and fictional heroes like Batman and Dirty Harry- characters who “defend the weak when the law fails them” (2013). As with any story that hinges on a Robin Hood-esque, ‘steal from the rich and give to the poor’, philosophy, there is always going to be one side that comes out better off. Many scholars argue Anonymous’ are not cyber vigilantes, rather they are website vandals and criminals. Sharon D. Nelson, president of IT and Computer Security firm, Sensei Enterprises, explains in an interview with academic Joe Drysart for his thesis on Hacktivists, “Anonymous is heroic to many people who are sick of government lies and weary of government intrusion.” Nelson goes on to highlight inherent risks Anonymous take by exposing information that could be detrimental to national security (Drysart 2011).

It can be seen from their history that Anonymous attacks have been for many different reasons, both positive and negative. For example, in 2011, Anonymous hacked a website called ‘Lolita City’, advertised through ‘Hidden Wiki’: a site found on the dark web which is a part of the internet that can only be reached through special tools and could be described as the underworld of the internet. Lolita City provided a platform that allowed paying pedophiles easy and open access to child abuse pictures. Anonymous launched a two pronged digital attack, firstly taking the website servers offline and secondly, publicly exposing the login details of its 1500 users. This assault was seen in the media very positively, as Hidden Wiki as a site is incredibly unsavoury, offering not only avenues to pedophilic content but “promotes money laundering services, contract killing, cyber avenues to order restricted chemicals, along with instructions on how to make explosives (Williams 2011). In a stark comparison to it’s more ‘heroic’ demonstrations, Anonymous has also been known for it’s revenge attacks on organisations that it’s members do not like. As an illustration, in 2012, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shutdown MegaUpload, an illegal website where users could pirate copyrighted films and television shows. Anonymous, whose members were unhappy the site, which was at the time the fifteenth most popular website on the internet, was shutdown. The group retaliated with a revenge attack whereby they shutdown government sites like justice.gov, the US Department of Justice, the FBI website itself and many other entertainment industry sites like Universal Music Group, Motion Picture Association of America and Broadcast Music Group (Internet Strikes Back: Anonymous’ Operation MegaUpload Explained 2012). Opinion differs on whether this attack was titt-for-tatt revenge on the MegaUpload shutdown or rather a warning to governments and corporations on the capabilities of the Anonymous. What is obvious is the differing reason behind Anonymous attacks and the risk this kind of unpredictable behaviour can bring.

In conclusion, it can be seen that the network has the potential to keep check on governments and corporations but in order to become a necessary function in 21st Century Society, it must stay within the bounds of hacktivism and not escape into the realm of hacking. Anonymous’ previous demonstrations have been effective in placing fear within governments and corporations. This fear is warranted within the risk caused by the unpredictability of what it’s members could do if they go too far. As demonstrated, Anonymous’ mission is to be political vigilantes, which if justified as ‘good’ and for the benefit of the majority would be highly beneficial to society in ensuring transparency within large entities whose actions affect many. Unfortunately, at this stage due to its previous actions, Anonymous ceases to be a necessary function of 21st century citizens to keep check on governments and corporations because it does not always stay true to its hacktivist philosophy.

References can also be found in full here.

Is the worldwide hacktivist network ‘Anonymous’ a necessary function of 21st Century citizens to keep check on governments and corporations?

When we think about activism we often picture protestors or people who tie themselves to trees so they don’t get cut down. We don't think of sharing a post on Facebook to raise awareness.

Nonetheless, our tutor proved to us that even the smallest acts of raising awareness can be activism.

We were given quite a few tasks this week, which I'm going to try to tackle in under 500 words. Sadly, the amount of questions given this week amounted to 130 words so I don't have very many left. To make this easier for myself, I'm going to use our questions as headings but I apologise in advance for the length:

Sign an e-petition. I went to google and searched the words 'petition website' and received quite a few search results. I clicked the first result which was a site called 'change.org'. It gave you the option of making your own petition or browsing other peoples. The only way you could sign or create a petition was to give your email and sign up. I receive too many emails so I didn't bother to go any further and sign any petitions.

Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site. This task confused me, I wasn't sure if the question was meant to read journalist instead of blogger as it directed me to a major news site. I tried to think about the kind of journalist that is more of a blogger and came to the conclusion that a journalist/blogger is probably someone who write 'fluff' pieces. I decided to go to the most major 'fluff' news site I could think of. BuzzFeed came to mind so I typed that into my browser. I perused the home page until I came across a post called 'Justin Bieber's Lock Screen Is A Bunch Of Photos Of Justin Bieber' by BuzzFeed Staff member, Christian Zamora (2016). I responded the following:

What is Barak Obama up to today? Can you send him a message about the importance of freedom on the internet? To find out where POTUS is today I went to the White House's website. From there I clicked on to the President’s Schedule. Today, Obama is in Lake Tahoe, Nevada to deliver remarks at the 20th annual Lake Tahoe Summit. At the top of the page there were links to posting him a message via Twitter, Facebook or Email. I could send him a message about the importance of freedom on the internet but unfortunately I don't think he'll personally see it so I'm not going to.

What are/were the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")? A Clean Feed is an internet 'filter' that was proposed to block access to around 10,000 websites as of December 2008. The designations would be controlled by the same authority that rates film and television shows. After public backlash in 2010 the Coalition parties announced that they would not vote for the proposed policy. However, in June 2011, Telstra and Optus announced they would voluntarily block access to a list of websites that was provided by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Dudley-Nicholson, 2011). Further, in 2012 the Australian Government dropped the proposed plans for an internet filter and instead made it mandatory for all Internet Service Providers to filter certain child abuse websites as a sort of 'meet in the middle' solution (Cullen, 2012).

What place does censorship have in a democracy? This question has no right answer. Internet censorship, if done with good intentions, keeps internet users safe from coming across websites deemed as offensive, obscene or against the law. However, many Australians have asked how much is censored and how is the government using the information they are censoring? It also begs the question of what right does the government get to decide on how Australians use the internet? Freedom of speech and press is written into our constitution and it is a blurry line of whether censorship is putting a restriction on what is considered a right for all citizens (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, 2011)

What are the benefits of the NBN? What potential form(s) will the NBN take when it is finally rolled out?

The benefits of the NBN is supposed to mean fast and reliable internet for all Australians. When it’s fully rolled out, the NBN will be able to be used not only by a home computer but also, EFTPOS Terminals, fire and security alarms, emergency medical buttons, faxes and typewriter devices and other similar technologies (NBN, 2016).

Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. Send one a message. Look up the Queensland or Australian Hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament. Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.

This week our task was to create a social media survey via the website SurveyMonkey and invite people via social media to participate. We would then need to analyse the results. I knew it was going to be hard to get a lot of results from my survey if I posted a link to it openly on my Facebook page- with no obligation most people would rather not waste their time. So with this knowledge I asked myself who would be obligated? After not much thought the answer came to me: my friends and family!

As I thought more on the subject I began to actually wonder how my immediate circle uses social media differently to me. People often say you are the average of the people you surround yourself with and I wondered if this is true when it comes to social media. It is and was pretty easy to assume that my friends would of course use the same platforms I do- often our social media accounts are an extension of our actual social lives. 

So off I went to my Facebook page to message my girlfriends and try to rope them into my 1 minute survey. And because they are good friends they all filled it out! I expressed my gratitude to them and promptly went to analyse the results. 

In total I asked six questions with multiple choice answers: 1. What social media platform do you primarily use? 2. What is your least favourite social media platform? 3. Have you ever made a friend on social media? 4. Out of these options, which platforms do you regularly use (at least once a week)? (options were: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube) 5. How many hours per week do you usually spend on social media? 6. How important is social media in your day to day life? From the results I could see some very clear similarities in how my friends use social media to how I use it. 7 out of 15 of us use Instagram as our primary platform (see below) with Facebook coming in second.

For me, Instagram is my primary form of social media on a day to day basis. and I supplied this answer when I took the survey myself.

Another similarity between us as a friendship group is that over half of us listed LinkedIn as our least favourite platform (see below).

I wondered why LinkedIn was the least popular amongst my friends. Alex Shaak of The Huffington Post made some interesting points when she wrote that millennials don’t like LinkedIn for four reasons: “there is no one really to connect with, it’s too structured, it’s not a ‘fun’ social media” and finally because “people can tell when you’ve looked at their profile” (Shaak 2016). 

I’m not sure if this is true for my friends but it certainly is for me. The only reason I ever made a LinkedIn profile was for a university assignment (and I promptly deleted the account as soon as the semester was over). Social media is for personal time, I don’t want to be spending that time looking for job connections and networks. In saying this though, I may change my mind on that once I get into looking for career prospects closer to graduating.

As much as there were plenty of similarities, there were a few differences between our regular social media use and the opinions we have on it. The most interesting to note was the varying results from the question “How important is social media to your day to day life?” 

For this question I gave 4 options and as you can see my friends all admitted social media was important to them in some way. How important was the difference:

I asked myself if I thought I could live for a week without social media and came to the conclusion that I doubt I could. This is interesting considering I grew up without social media and the big platforms I used in my survey have only recently become part of my day to day routine. Could I wake up and not check Instagram? Could I not spend my lunch break browsing Pinterest? Knowing my friends that answered ‘somewhat important’ I wondered if they were lying to themselves and should have answered ‘very important’?

During our time off during Week 3, the Census date came around. This year the Census moved to being almost completely online. Instead of large paper forms being sent out to each household, a small letter containing a specific log in number for your household arrived with detail on how to get online and complete your census. 

Typically, as is normal with anything the government tries to accomplish in this country, the 2016 Census brought about harsh criticism. The backlash began around it’s new privacy policy. Changes were being made to how long the data from the Census would be kept and also it is now compulsory to submit your name when filling out the form (Allen, 2016). Obviously, concerns like this should be taken seriously and many Australian’s used their favourite Social Media platform, Facebook, to express these concerns. 

The world has become a scary place, online threats like being hacked and having your identity stolen are very real realities for a lot of internet users. Cyber safety must be taken seriously and it was interesting to see so many Australians distrusting of the Australian Bureau of Statistics- not because the Bureau was going to leak the information or give it away to anyone that wants it, but more so, people were asking questions about whether the servers could be hacked from the outside.

This conversation becomes even more interesting when we think about how many marketers have servers filled with our information. In the midst of all of the controversy it seemed as if many Australians were not going to give over their information to a government agency whose sole purpose is to find ways to build on our infrastructure but very interested in giving over any kind of information to receive a free voucher from their favourite store.

I’m old enough to remember a time when my family and I didn’t have a computer or subsequently, in home access to the internet. I feel very lucky to have lived through what was a bit of a transition stage where people were just beginning to be introduced to the value of having a computer at home. I remember my first ever internet research assignment- in grade three of primary school. The assignment was a poster board on Dolphins and my Dad had to type it all up for me because I was too young to understand this new machine.

Jump forward to 2016 and I definitely know more about computers and smart phones than my Dad ever will. I use social media daily and know the foundation of writing HTML Code, something Peg Tyre at the Smithsonian says is “the new second language” (Tyre 2013) and will be incredibly necessary for students moving into the workforce in years to come. 

The Internet has become a big and important medium in our society, not only for research purposes but as a means to find community. Living today without some kind of Social Media account is like leaving the lights off in a dark room- it seems to defy all common sense! 

This week our New Communication Technologies task was to try and experience some new options and tasks featured on platforms that I already use on the internet. Firstly, I looked into merging my email addresses. I keep a personal email and a specific university address that was given to me upon enrolment. To be honest, when I first looked at this task I had no idea what it would take to merge my emails and wondered if it was going to be a little painstaking. Email is not my favourite form of social media. I find it to be outdated and boring and it often baffles me to think about the different tutors I've had at uni and their different expectations on how an email addressed to them should be written (last semester I had a tutor who wouldn't reply to your email if you didn't begin with 'Good Morning/Afternoon' and finish with 'Kindest Regards'.) Needless to say, I was a little overjoyed when I figured out I had already merged my email by downloading the Gmail app onto my iPhone and logged into both accounts!

Next I became a Google 'Superuser'. When I read this next task I rolled my eyes a little bit. I asked the void, "Who on earth doesn't know how to use Google?" Granted, a lot of people have probably never used a computer, let alone Google (My Grandma is one of them) but I wondered if their was anyone specifically in this course that had never searched via this website. I clicked the link (Google 2016) anyway and went through some of the points I hadn't tried before. One of them directed my to try searching using voice commands. Underneath the title of this one, the article asked me if I was "tired of typing?" My answer was, "not really" but I tried it anyway. After four attempts of trying to search using my voice and having Google misunderstand me I came to the conclusion that it's surely faster to type your queries into the search bar than try to speak them. Maybe when the technology advances and I'll try again?

Finally, I opened a new Word Document and tried to find an action I hadn't used before. In year 8 of High School I had an IT teacher who seemed pretty intent on teaching us every inch of how Word works and after a few minutes of searching I couldn't find an action I've never used before. Part of me is secretly impressed with myself.