Cyber Disobedience: Re://Presenting Online Anarchy

by Jeff Shantz

  It might be said, too, that the term “war” has similarly lost meaning in the context of the post-9/11 world. Only now has it been possible to declare war on terrorism. For Badiou: “Indeed, how can war be declared on a few delinquent civilians, on some fanatical bombers, or on a group of anarchists” (2011, 26–27). Repression, as Shantz (2012) has outlined, has been a constant response, to be sure, but it has taken the form of the police, not the military in acts of war.

  In the end, contemporary actions of the anarchists, in the web and in the streets, are always affirmative. They assert their aims and take responsibility. There is no silence as followed the 9/11 attacks. As Badiou suggests, “with affirmative liberating, non-nihilistic political violence, responsibility is not only always claimed, but finds its essence in being claimed” (2011, 32–33). They always claim their acts as they claim themselves.

  A Creative Passion

  The Unabomber episode served to reinforce prejudices against anarchism that view anarchists as modern day Luddites hell bent on violently smashing any and all new technologies.

  More than this, it positioned anarchism as a purely destructive, rather than critical or creative, force for change. Even as hacktivists became renowned for their tech skills and creative use of resources there would remain a sense that their main aim was not to build up but to tear down.

  On one hand, any movement that seeks a radical (i.e. one that gets to the roots of social problems) change in social structures (and the abolition of specific systems, institutions, or tools of oppression or repression) will be susceptible to charges that they are destructive—which in a literal, if limited, sense, they are. A movement like anarchism, which explicitly seeks to end all systemic forms of exploitative authority are perhaps especially likely to be subjected to such claims and vulnerable to having such accusations stick.

  The early anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin famously claimed that, “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.” By this is implied rather straightforwardly that the vision of the social critic or activist seeks a remaking of social relations. As a sculptor must often rework an earlier piece, taking apart the unsatisfactory aspects to build it up again, so too the social critic seeks not the end of society but a reworking, a remolding, of social life—to create something new, hopefully better.

  The early twentieth century Red Scare saw a range of laws enacted that criminalized anarchist organizing—and indeed criminalized working class organizing that simply exhibited traits of anarchism in workplaces, such as direct action, wildcat strikes, sabotage, demands for workers’ control, and certain forms of union organizing. The so-called criminal anarchism or criminal syndicalism laws served to break up working class radical organizations and drive anarchism underground. As notes, one result was that anarchism became a largely cultural, or subcultural, movement with its influences largely in such modernist artistic circles as dada, surrealism, fluxus, and post-figurative or post-representational art.

  The reference to “criminal anarchism” did not die as the anarchist movements subsided. Indeed, in 2013 popular authors as well as academics have revived the notion of criminal anarchism to explain current forms of political violence and acts of terrorism. In one prominent article in the otherwise liberal Huffington Post, commentator Steven Kurlander uses the term criminal anarchism in reference to the Boston Marathon bombings—this despite the fact that the presumed bombers had no connection at all to anarchist movements, politics, or philosophies. In fact there is no sign of any kind that they even knew what anarchism, as either movement or theory, is.

  Such is the mythic character of anarchism in the popular eye (or at least the mainstream media and academic eyes) that it can be deployed as a floating signifier for almost any extreme act—regardless of the reality of the act or those carrying out the act. Such is true, regardless, too, of the real world history of anarchist movements over almost two centuries.

  One might do well to remember that the anarchists targeted in the various red scares and anti-terror panics have been largely labor activists and were not involved in violent, much less terrorist acts. If anything the modern hacktivists, techtivists, and cyber anarchists represent aspects of a long lineage of self-management and workers’ control of industry—of anarchists motivated by attempts to self-manage their labors and use their technical skills to produce use values for communities rather than exchange values for capital.

  Rather than trying to “blow up” the internet, or any other part of advanced technological society (a silly proposition anyway) most anarchists (whether technologically inclined or not) have viewed the internet and personal computer networks more broadly as potentially valuable self-organizing tools. As the activists of from TAO Communications to Riseup.net have argued, the real crimes are ones of control of technology and the purposes to which it is put—as a technological commons for human and ecological need or a privatized tech market for profit). Underlying these issues are the central ones of ownership and control. These are at the heart of the debates and efforts discussed in this book.

  Still, despite this reality, the moral panic over hacktivists and cyber anarchists has been powerful (and potently deployed by states and corporations seeking to enclose the global technological commons while criminalizing those who would mobilize opposition). Even more, it draws fundamentally upon tried and true tropes deployed against anarchists historically in the various anti-anarchist panics and scares since the late 1800s. To understand manifestations of contemporary power it is worth examining the current forms of these portrayals in some detail and this is undertaken in a subsequent chapter of Cyber Disobedience.

  Chapter 2

  Finding the Middle Ground in Cyberspace: A Content Analysis of Hackers in Film

  Hackers have become an influential global community, affecting systems both inside and outside of cyberspace. This study was designed to explore the portrayal of hackers through five popular hacker films: “WarGames” (1983); “Sneakers” (1992); “Hackers” (1995); “Swordfish” (2001) and “V for Vendetta” (2005). Understanding the portrayal of hackers through content analysis is important to contemporary society with the insurgence of the loosely associated hacktivist group, “Anonymous.” The data in the study was supported using a select review of pertinent academic journals and news articles. Moreover, insurrectionary anarchist theory was applied to the study in order to contextualize hackers as they have evolved throughout history. This study found that portrayals of hackers can be discerned into nine categories, with the three most popular being: revolutionary & political—shaping the world; advanced understanding of computers; and terrorist—anarchist enemy of the state. The data revealed that these portrayals were most prevalent and that a number of real world examples confirm the findings.

  Ideas shape society. Some ideas are highly contagious and resilient spreading from person to person, like a virus. Meanwhile others pass us by comparatively without notice. Disseminating a popular idea rests upon systems of delivery and the capacity to resonate with many persons. Conceptually, this is a complex process. Twenty-first century ideas about hacking have largely been viewed with ambivalence and misconstrued trepidation. To some extent, society has a general sense of what hacking is and how hackers are delineated. Notwithstanding, it is important that the phenomenon is examined as society moves forward in the age of information and as the conspicuous hacktivist collective Anonymous comes to light. The idea of anonymity is not new and its inception is likely indeterminable. Until the age of information, knowledge was neither readily accessible nor could it be organized without significant time or expense. Today, the Internet has allowed ideas to be shared across the globe through a virtual medium consequently revolutionizing the way we think and live. To date, hackers have paved the way for Internet users to access a variety of applications ranging from corporate use to personal communications. Anonymous, a loosely associated hacktivist group has emerged over the last decade and strives to be the chaotic non-partisan group
, only by the idea that information and knowledge should be free. Going forward into the technological age, there is a need to learn what has been mistakenly discerned hitherto as a haphazard collection of hacking.

  When looking at hacker categories, we can discern three principal types: white-hats, black-hats, and grey-hats. A white-hat hacker is generally regarded as an ethical person who discovers weaknesses in a working security system and brings the attention to a network administrator (Wing 1998, 31). This type of hacker is useful for improving security systems and lessening opportunity for cyber-attacks. A black-hat is someone who “violates computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain” (Moore 2005, 258). Black-hats are generally regarded as criminal in contemporary society and have been associated with the malicious security hacks of the faceless hacktivist group, “Anonymous.” The use in terminology for the above hacker types originates from Old Western films where the ‘bad guys’ wore black hats and the ‘good guys’ wore white ones (Neumann 2004, 132). Last but not least, there are grey-hats: a combination of a black-hat and white-hat hacker. This type of hacker is known to victimize those who are in opposition to their own sense of morality, and at the same time providing support to those whom they feel empathetic toward. Needless to say, hackers and hacking ought not to have been reduced to a binary summation.

  The earliest examples of hacking took place in tandem with the first electronic computers. One of the world’s first hackers, Nevil Maskelyne, was a 39-year-old British magician. The hack occurred in June of 1903 while physicist John Ambrose Fleming was preparing a demonstration to an eager audience at the Royal Institution’s lecture theater in London, England. Fleming was demonstrating long-range wireless communication systems developed by his boss, Guglielmo Marconi. The aim was to showcase the first public transmission of Morse code over long distances, 300 miles away. Makelyne hacked into the system by beaming strong wireless pulses into the theater, and delivered a personal message: “There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily.” The message was not well received. On the other hand, the hack highlighted the flaws in the technology’s security network, and paved the way for improved technologies. In similar fashion, so-called “white-hat hackers” or “sneakers” explore such weaknesses today.

  The activity of hacking is a misapprehended aspect of contemporary online society. Without fail, the idea of “hacking” generally pulls people in opposite directions. Is hacking an activity that is good or bad? Are hackers in cyberspace criminals or revolutionaries? In the computer world, a hacker has been described as someone who is committed to re-engineering computer systems and taking the technology of the computer into unexplored directions. In spite of this “hacking” does necessarily have to involve computers. More specifically, there is no generally agreed upon definition of what ‘hacking’ actually is. It’s meaning is constantly being reinvented. In recent years, the media has mistakenly characterized the majority of hackers as being a threat to national security and to digital information systems (Gunkel 2005, 595). In any case, ideas around hacking should not be reduced to a binary summation. To complicate matters further, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2012) contains two contradictory entries for “a hacker”: “a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity” and “an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer.” The fact of the matter is, hacking and hackers take on all sorts of shapes. Needless to say, the summation of who a hacker is or what constitutes hacking is far from conclusion as time passes and as knowledge continues apace.

  In the following, we intend to present the various ways that hackers are portrayed in culture through contemporary film. This is accomplished through a content analysis approach that examines the depiction of hackers from the perspective of five Hollywood films: “WarGames” (1983), “Sneakers” (1992), “Hackers” (1995), “Swordfish (2001), and “V for Vendetta” (2005). Guiding research questions took the following shape: how might hacking practices be a vehicle for individual or collective gain? How are they portrayed in film? Do film portrayals reflect cultural realities of hackers accordingly?

  Method

  Qualitative researchers have a number of methods at their disposal. The diversity in methods allows researchers to present evidence in a variety of sorts, and depending on approach, results may vary. Previous studies have looked at how hackers view themselves within their culture context (Jordan & Taylor 1998; Lakhani & Wolf 2003; Turgeman-Goldschmidt 2008) and others on how they are viewed by the general public (Taylor 1999; Warren 2003; Olsen 2012), but few studies have focused on how hackers are portrayed using content analysis and film. In order to guide decisions and give direction to our research, a deductive approach using anarchist theory to contextualize hackers in contemporary society was employed. Given that some hackers are apart of an underground community, and often mistakenly characterized as “criminal” or “deviant,” the anarchist perspective fits well for the chosen films as themes of disorder, revolution, and lawlessness surfaced. Ultimately, the application of theory served as a map from where we could start and where we could go (McCotter 2001, 3).

  The chosen method to contextualize the research was through content analysis. Content analysis is a method used in both qualitative and quantitative research and is described as “the study of recorded human communications, such as books, websites, paintings and laws” (Babbie 2003). The method was systematic yet flexible in its approach to coding as it allowed for concepts and themes that were not anticipated to emerge. The research was mostly exploratory, as it involved tapping into hidden aspects of social realities, hacking, but also previous knowledge on the topic enabled educated analysis. When it comes to sampling procedure, we chose to use a combination of purposive and theoretical sampling. In terms of purposive sampling, the sources for our data were chosen based on our research questions and available resources. The use of film as a data source was unobtrusive and non-interactive, preventing timely and stringent ethical guidelines compulsory with human participants.

  One of the most pivotal steps to gathering data on this community was deciding on the samples. Initially, a number of movies came to mind when we thought of the topic, but we wanted to ensure that each film presented offered a distinct asset to the product. To help set parameters to the sample, “Top 20 movies about computer hacking” was entered into Google’s search engine. Consequently, five Hollywood films were chosen based on hacking or hackers as the aforementioned theme. The interpretation of these films rested upon the assumption that “we can learn about our society by investigating the material items produced within it” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy 2011, 227). This small sample allowed for rich and thick descriptions to contextualize contemporary hackers. During the research process, two goals were kept in mind: discover relevant categories for hackers’ portrayals and examine the shared or contested relationships among them. There were two primary benefits of using film as a sample as Reinharz (1992) explains: (1) the data are non-interactive, and (2) the data exist independent of the researcher (as cited in Hesse-Biber & Leavy 2011, 228). Another strength of the data is seen its ability to offer symbolic representations and includes some measure of diversity among each film. Though, it should be understood that the film producers fictionalize facts that deviate from real-life situations of hackers, but may not be realistic portrayals. In terms of the research, reliability and validity would have been increased had there been more time to employ triangulation methods (i.e., combining more than one qualitative or quantitative method). Regardless, the film and literature review allowed the research to be more advantaged than disadvantaged in the process. If time constraints were not an issue, we would have conducted interviews with hackers in the community. Also, we would have applied two different theoretical perspectives (an anarchist approach and a strain theory approach) to investigate the phenomenon. In particular Robert Agnew’s (1992) contemporary strain theory would have been applied by looking at expectations and ac
tual achievements of hackers in society, and how blocked opportunities results in personal disappointment and how this may serve as a motivational factor. From the outset of the research, this theory came to mind as we consider blocked opportunity to play a key role in the individual variation found within the hacker community.

  Data for the study were derived from five Hollywood films between the years of 1983-2005. The use of Hollywood films was based out of the feasibility of access and low cost to rent. The starting point of 1983 corresponded with the first film, “WarGames,” by Lawrence Lasker. This film was important for establishing a starting point as it introduced hacking to the wider public in a period where the usage of computers was on the rise. The next film we chose was “Sneakers” (1992) by Phil Alden Robinson as it presents the ethical “white-hat hacker” to the audience and revealed the importance of network security. The third film was “Hackers” (1995) by Iain Softley, which presents “black-hats” and “white-hats” pitted against one another in a corporate extortion conspiracy case with capabilities to hack and manipulate physical systems. Next, Dominic Sena’s “Swordfish” (2001) demonstrated the virtuosity of hackers and the lengths that some are willing to take for money and love, concurrently revealing themes of anarchy and lawlessness. Lastly, “V for Vendetta” (2005) by James McTeigue presented a theoretical basis to hacking and contextualizes present-day hacking efforts by the faceless hacktivist group “Anonymous.” The ending point for the films was effortlessly decided as no film has had a greater influence—both symbolically (e.g., with the use of Guy Fawkes masks displaying both affiliation and ensuring anonymity) and philosophically (e.g., one of vigilante justice and natural law)—on Anonymous.