>While they consider a DDoS attack a ‘peaceful protest’ the real thing is that it is a crime.
I'm getting really tired of this. "Peaceful" and "criminal" are not mutually exclusive. Sit-ins are often not legal, lying down in the road is not legal, that's why people get arrested for it.
Not that I necessarily support anything anon are doing, I am just tired of the really weak moral arguments made against them over and over again. There are much more internally-consistent ways to criticise them.
Agreed. Indeed, in order to be civil disobedience the act must violate the some law or rule to which the person is subject in a context in which the person is subject to it.
Indeed. Participating in a DDoS is actually about as close as you can get on the Internet to chaining yourself to a public building.
And there's nothing wrong with arresting those people so long as the law they violate is just. Which is of course the point— it's calling the government's bluff.
Of course, I have to imagine that all the people who participate by running LOIC or whatever have no expectation that they might be arrested, and wouldn't be doing it if they thought they might. Even a slight risk of that would probably stop the attacks from succeeding altogether. That fact alone casts the whole "civil disobedience" angle into turmoil— they're willing to do damage as long as they don't face consequences personally. It's politically much closer to a few hardline individuals blowing up a public building, which is much less okay even if their cause is just.
Technically this is LulzSec, which isn't really exactly the same as Anonymous since it has a -name-.
And 'real activism'? Why do you get to judge what is 'real' or not? The protests they've been staging have been very effective at opening eyes. They have clearly gotten their point across. And they continue to do so.
A DDOS is not necessarily a crime, same a blocking a road to hold a protest is not a crime, while "just blocking a road" is. The motives for doing so are much more important than the author recognizes.
And the harsh way gov'ts worldwide are responding to these protests are worrying. "Let's just smash 'em" is probably not a politically wise response.
To clarify, as one who has now and again been involved in "IRL" activism: blocking a road to hold a protest is a crime, legally-speaking.*
In fact, police SOP for a protest that's beginning to get a bit rowdy is to cite them for just such a crime. "Disperse from the road, or be incarcerated," as it were. Some protests will take this as a sign to move back into sanctioned areas (if it seems strategically appropriate to keep the action going); others will choose to stay and go to prison for the night.
In some sense, it doesn't qualify as "civil disobedience," in the Dr. King sense, unless the latter happens:
"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."
— Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963[1]
> "The motives for doing so are much more important than the author recognizes."
And who judges the motives? Law enforcement cannot start making such decisions, so they will have to consider DDOS a crime and let the courts sort them out.
Well for it to be a crime there must be a law against it. Some countries don't have laws about it, meaning some places on earth don't consider DDOS a crime.
This is why I asked the question, as the grandparent poster seemed to be making some sort of legal or moral point conflating a DDOS with the right of assembly. Nonetheless, strictly speaking there are clearly many forms of DDOS that are not illegal (DDOSing your own equipment, for example, and those situations you explain) but they don't seem to fit well into the point he/she was trying to make.
Causing problems for PayPal's service is shortsighted and has a lot of collateral damage. For many small business owners, PayPal is the only viable way to take global payments online. There are a few other payment providers, but their fees are usually much higher than PayPal's, or their payment schedules and API integration are severely limited in comparison. With PayPal I can charge a customer and have the money in my account within a couple of days, plus feel safe that most fraud is going to be stopped at the door.
bear in mind protest can be seen as a way to change a company policy. noone is saying paypal shouldn't exist, but personally i do agree they shouldn't be disallowing payments on behalf of wikileaks.
Agreed, but plain old DDOS against PayPal seems like a great way to get PayPal to upgrade their DDOS defensive measures and not a great way to get them to change their policies. Companies change their policies when their customers become educated about them and the company starts to lose business and look bad in the media as a result.
In this case, Anonymous will achieve making PayPal's website even slower for a while. If they lose customers it'll be for the wrong reasons. Anonymous needs to find a way to educate the public about a company's wrongdoings, not just disrupt the company's service while not making sure everyone knows exactly why that company's service has been disrupted. They seem to have this misguided idea that DDOS = public education and corporate humiliation. That's what I find shortsighted.
Anonymous needs to find a way to educate the public...
Anonymous has its own means and methods which you may or may not agree with.
If you agree that something needs to be done but think there is a better way to do it, then you need to carry it out, enough "armchair quarterback"-ing.
Not causing problems for PayPal is shortsighted and has a lot of collateral damage. It invites other companies to bend to every whim of the federal government(with or without a warrant or subpoena).
Maybe this isn't the way you'd like to go about it. It sure isn't what I had hoped for, but the fact of the matter is, it's time. This needs to happen. And if you hadn't noticed, in the age of the internet, sometimes you have to be loud to be heard.
While it's not my position, some people might believe that you can lose that right if you do something like killing dozens of people. The freedom to travel inside your own country is important too, but if you kill or rob someone, most people will agree that you should be jailed.
Again, I don't agree with it, but it's not necessarily hypocrisy, just different values.
Governments don't want people to protest over anything bad they do. They want them to sit nice and quiet and let them take the decisions themselves, so they've criminalized almost any type of protest. The few types of protests you can do today are because other people have fought for them before us, too. But ideally, the Governments wouldn't want you to protest at all, whether you do it in crowds or on your own on Twitter.
From a current Government's view, all revolutions are illegal, too.
They want them to sit nice and quiet and let them take the decisions themselves
This is the very definition of a government's job in many western countries. The government is elected by the electorate in order to make decisions on our behalf while we get about our lives.
Whether or not governments "allow" protest to certain levels or not is a different matter, but the design of most current western democracies is one that should, in essence, not require significant levels of protest, since they were elected to do exactly what they're doing by a plurality (or even majority) of the electorate.
But ideally, the Governments wouldn't want you to protest at all, whether you do it in crowds or on your own on Twitter.
Ideally, would anyone want to protest or want other people protesting? Ideally, I certainly wouldn't. Of course, in our less than ideal world, sometimes it is necessary, but unless they're doing it for fun or attention, I doubt anyone "wants" to have to protest.
I'm getting really tired of this. "Peaceful" and "criminal" are not mutually exclusive. Sit-ins are often not legal, lying down in the road is not legal, that's why people get arrested for it.
Not that I necessarily support anything anon are doing, I am just tired of the really weak moral arguments made against them over and over again. There are much more internally-consistent ways to criticise them.