Electronic civil disobedience, also known as ECD or cyber civil disobedience, can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disobedience often involves the computers and/or the Internet and may also be known as hacktivism. The term "electronic civil disobedience" was coined by a book by that same name, the Critical Art Ensemble’s (1996) Electronic Civil Disobedience.[1][2] Electronic civil disobedience seeks to continue the practices of non violent, yet disruptive protest originally pioneered by Henry David Thoreau who in 1848 published "Civil Disobedience."[1]
A common forms of ECD are coordinated DDoS against a specific target, also known as a virtual sit-in. Such virtual sit-ins may be announced on the internet by groups such as The Electronic Disturbance Theatre and the borderlands Hacklab.[3]
Computerized activism exists at the intersections of politico-social movements and computer-mediated communication.[4] Stefan Wray writes about ECD:
"As hackers become politicized and as activists become computerized, we are going to see an increase in the number of cyber-activists who engage in what will become more widely known as Electronic Civil Disobedience. The same principals of traditional civil disobedience, like trespass and blockage, will still be applied, but more and more these acts will take place in electronic or digital form. The primary site for Electronic Civil Disobedience will be in cyberspace.[1]
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The origins of computerized activism extend back in pre-Web history to the mid 1980s. Examples include PeaceNet (1986), a newsgroup service, which allowed political activists to communicate across international borders with relative ease and speed using Bulletin Board Systems and email lists.[4] The terms "electronic civil disobedience" was first coined by the Critical Art Ensemble in the context of nomadic conceptions of capital and resistance, a concept that can be traced back to Hakim Bey’s (1991) "T. A. Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone: Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism" and Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s (1987) "A Thousand Plateaus". ECF uses temporary - and nomadic -"autonomous zones" as the launch pads from where electronic civil disobedience is activated (for example, temporary websites that announce the ECD action).[1]
Before 1998, ECD remained largely theoretical musings, or was badly articulated, such as the Zippies 1994 call for an "Internet Invasion" which deployed the metaphor of war albeit within the logic of civil disobedience and information activism. Some commentators pinpointing the 1997 Acteal Massacre in Chiapas, Mexico, as a turning point towards the internet infrastructure being viewed not only as means for communication but also a site for direct action. In reaction to the Acteal Massacre a group called Electronic Disturbance Theatre (not associated with Autonomedia) created a software called FloodNet, which improved upon early experiments with virtual sit-ins. The Electronic Disruption Theatre exhibited its SWARM project21 at the Ars Electronic Festival on Information Warfare, where it launched a three-pronged FloodNet disturbance against web sites of the Mexican presidency, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and the Pentagon, in solidarity with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, against the Mexican government, against the U.S. military, and against a symbol of international capital.[1][4] The Acteal Massacre also prompted another group, called the Anonymous Digital Coalition, to post messages calling for cyber attacks against five Mexico City based financial institution’s web sites, the plan being for thousands of people around the world to simultaneously load these web sites on to their Internet browsers.[1] Electrohippies flooded the World Trade Organization site during the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity.[5]
The term electronic civil disobedience and hacktivism may be used synonymously, although some commentators maintain that the difference is that ECD actors don’t hide their names, while most hacktivists wish to remain anonymous. Some commentators maintain that ECD uses only legal means, as opposed to illegal actions used by hacktivists. It is also maintained that hacktivism is done by individuals rather than by specific groups.[4] In reality the distinction between ECD and hacktivism is not clear.
Ricardo Dominguez of the Electronic Disturbance Theater has been incorrectly referred to by many as a founder of ECD and hacktivism. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California of San Diego and teaches classes on Electronic Civil Disobedience and Performance Art. His recent project the Transborder Immigrant Tool is a hacktivist gesture which has received wide media attention and criticism from anti-immigration groups.
ECD is often open-source, non-structured, moves horizontally and non-linearly. For example, virtual sit-ins may be announced on the internet and participants may have no formal connection with each other, not knowing each other's identity. ECD actors can participate from home, from work, from the university, or from other points of access to the Net.[4]
Electronic civil disobedience generally involves large numbers of people and may use legal and illegal techniques. For example, a single person reloading a website repeatedly is not illegal, but if enough people do it at the same time it can render the website inaccessible. Another type of electronic civil disobedience is the use of the Internet for publicized and deliberate violations of a law that the protesters take issue with, such as copyright law.
Blatant disregard of copyright law by millions of Internet users every day on file sharing networks might also be considered a form of constant ECD, as the people doing it have decided to simply ignore a law that they disagree with.
In order to draw attention to John Major's Criminal Justice Bill, a group of cyber-activists staged an event in which they "kidnapped" 80s counter-cultural hero Tim Leary at a book launch for Chaos & Cyberculture held on Guy Fawkes Day 1994, and then proceeded to "force him to DDoS government websites". Leary called the event an "Intervasion". The Intervasion was preceded by mass email-bombing and denial of service attacks against government servers with some success. Although ignored by the mainstream media, the event was reported on Free Radio Berkeley.[6]
One well publicised instance of electronic civil disobedience in the form of large scale intentional copyright infringement was on February 24, 2004, in an event called Grey Tuesday announced as "a day of coordinated civil disobedience". Activists intentionally violated EMI's copyright of The White Album by distributing MP3 files of The Grey Album, a mashup of The White Album with The Black Album, in an attempt to draw public attention to copyright reform issues and anti-copyright ideals. Reportedly over 400 sites participated including 170 that hosted the album.[7][8] Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School, comments that "As a matter of pure legal doctrine, the Grey Tuesday protest is breaking the law, end of story. But copyright law was written with a particular form of industry in mind. The flourishing of information technology gives amateurs and homerecording artists powerful tools to build and share interesting, transformative, and socially valuable art drawn from pieces of popular cultures. There's no place to plug such an important cultural sea change into the current legal regime."[9]