[00:00.000 --> 00:00.280]  Alright.
[00:02.660 --> 00:08.220]  And I know I just have to find my announcement that I buried in the program here somewhere.
[00:09.560 --> 00:10.640]  Hate it when I do that.
[00:13.980 --> 00:15.200]  Always hate it when I do that.
[00:17.020 --> 00:17.420]  Alright.
[00:18.840 --> 00:19.980]  It's around here somewhere.
[00:20.200 --> 00:22.700]  Does anybody remember what my next announcement was supposed to be?
[00:23.800 --> 00:25.900]  Rodent, do you remember what my next announcement was supposed to be?
[00:25.900 --> 00:27.360]  Clean up your trash.
[00:27.700 --> 00:29.500]  Okay, I said that three times.
[00:29.640 --> 00:33.260]  So you guys are all doing a pretty good job of cleaning up trash, chowing on your dinner.
[00:33.820 --> 00:35.200]  Where'd you guys get that pizza from?
[00:35.800 --> 00:37.180]  Pizza Town?
[00:37.340 --> 00:38.040]  Down the street?
[00:38.160 --> 00:38.720]  This is pretty good.
[00:39.060 --> 00:42.680]  Any other recommendations for dinner for those of you who are going to stick around until the bitter end?
[00:43.140 --> 00:43.540]  Viselka.
[00:44.020 --> 00:46.700]  I love Viselka Bowery or Viselka Village?
[00:46.800 --> 00:47.160]  East Village.
[00:47.260 --> 00:47.520]  Village.
[00:47.660 --> 00:47.980]  Village.
[00:48.940 --> 00:50.740]  You got to check out Viselka Bowery though.
[00:50.840 --> 00:51.720]  It's really, really amazing.
[00:52.420 --> 00:55.880]  Yeah, they have the blueberry pierogies there are much better than blueberry pierogies.
[00:55.900 --> 00:59.380]  at the regular Viselka, which are still pretty good, but they just put a little bit too much sugar in them.
[00:59.600 --> 01:01.400]  I'll go to Nostalgia in five years later.
[01:01.940 --> 01:03.320]  That's why everybody goes there.
[01:03.360 --> 01:08.740]  They don't even care about the food anymore because people like you, the tourists, always show up regardless.
[01:09.280 --> 01:09.520]  Huh?
[01:11.680 --> 01:12.080]  Anyway.
[01:14.480 --> 01:20.060]  See, this late in the day, you really, you just, you're struggling for all of that material and I apologize for that.
[01:20.160 --> 01:23.660]  Anyway, please everybody give Molly Sutter a huge round of applause.
[01:23.660 --> 01:24.980]  Activist DDoS attacks.
[01:25.220 --> 01:26.220]  Thank you guys for sticking around.
[01:26.620 --> 01:28.080]  Robert Steele's next after this.
[01:28.200 --> 01:28.440]  Thank you.
[01:31.040 --> 01:32.520]  Good evening, everybody.
[01:32.780 --> 01:34.000]  My name is Molly Sutter.
[01:34.180 --> 01:37.020]  I'm a graduate student in comparative media studies at MIT.
[01:37.300 --> 01:40.760]  And I also do research with the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab.
[01:41.260 --> 01:45.380]  I have to apologize in advance if my voice gives out before the end of this talk.
[01:45.480 --> 01:49.820]  I'm still getting over some sort of horrible flu I picked up in an airport in the Netherlands.
[01:50.700 --> 01:54.140]  So I'm sorry if I sound like a frog at the end of 45 minutes.
[01:54.940 --> 02:12.820]  So this talk is about how previous characterizations of activist DDoS attacks have more or less failed to give us the analytical groundwork that we need in order to determine whether or not DDoS attacks are something we want to incorporate into our activist repertoire.
[02:16.300 --> 02:18.140]  This is also the late night edition.
[02:18.440 --> 02:28.280]  And because you guys have been so kind to show up at 11 o'clock at night and listen to me talk rather than go out and drink and party, there are going to be lots of cat pictures in this presentation.
[02:28.280 --> 02:28.840]  Yeah!
[02:29.900 --> 02:31.460]  I aim to please.
[02:31.820 --> 02:39.360]  So in the course of this talk, I'll be looking at the previous characterizations that have been most widespread about activist DDoS attacks.
[02:39.640 --> 02:45.860]  And looking at how different DDoS campaigns over the course of history do and do not fit into those models.
[02:46.260 --> 02:51.640]  And next I'll be looking at the current state of activist DDoS, DDoS over the past two, three years.
[02:51.640 --> 03:02.700]  And then I'll be using... I'll be presenting a new analytical model and then using that model to look at the Operation Payback attacks from December of 2010.
[03:05.240 --> 03:07.540]  So first, previous characterizations.
[03:08.720 --> 03:09.160]  Censorship.
[03:11.320 --> 03:15.100]  Censorship is something that a lot of people talk about when they talk about activist DDoS attacks.
[03:15.260 --> 03:20.440]  This is something that you hear a lot from people who are associated with Call to the Dead Cow or Hacktivismo.
[03:20.440 --> 03:25.920]  They say that basically it's the equivalent of shouting people down when you don't agree with them.
[03:26.640 --> 03:29.040]  Sometimes this characterization is extremely apt.
[03:29.300 --> 03:34.040]  Sometimes the goal of a DDoS attack is simply to remove content from the web.
[03:34.620 --> 03:39.640]  But this isn't actually always the most accurate point of view to look at a DDoS attack.
[03:39.880 --> 03:44.880]  I'm going to be looking at one DDoS attack where this was actually the most accurate way of characterizing it.
[03:45.940 --> 03:57.620]  So in July of 1997, a large-scale DDoS attack was launched against the Institute for Global Communications, otherwise known as the IGC, which was a non-profit Internet service provider.
[03:58.160 --> 04:01.480]  A number and the organizers of this attack aren't really well known.
[04:01.480 --> 04:04.540]  It was a large-scale attack and mostly originated in Spain.
[04:04.540 --> 04:12.300]  The goal of this attack was to pressure the IGC to stop hosting something called the Escol Jerea Journal.
[04:12.600 --> 04:16.700]  And if anyone here speaks Basque, I'm really sorry for butchering that.
[04:17.480 --> 04:26.420]  It was thought that this journal, which was a Basque cultural and political journal, had ties to ETA, which was a Basque paramilitary organization.
[04:26.420 --> 04:32.820]  The attack consisted of a combination of mail bombing and network-based DDoS attacks.
[04:33.120 --> 04:47.260]  This was a very populist-minded action and it initially was supported by major mainstream news organizations like Alpay, which is the major national Spanish newspaper, who originally published the targeted email addresses for the mail bombing attack.
[04:47.420 --> 04:53.600]  But later they figured out that that wasn't probably the best idea, so they retracted their support for the action.
[04:55.180 --> 05:04.260]  The IGC servers were knocked offline and their email server was completely hosed and it disrupted service to over 13,000 subscribers.
[05:04.680 --> 05:10.860]  They did eventually remove hosting for the journal, though it was under heavy protest.
[05:11.080 --> 05:20.460]  In fact, they replaced the content that they were removing with a big letter that basically said, we have been bullied into removing this content and that's totally not okay.
[05:20.460 --> 05:28.540]  And it was supported in their arguments by groups like Net Action, the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and the Association for Progressive Communications.
[05:29.420 --> 05:34.740]  The goal of this attack was to force IGC to remove this content.
[05:34.960 --> 05:37.420]  It wasn't an objection to a national policy.
[05:37.520 --> 05:40.340]  It wasn't an objection to even a policy that IGC had.
[05:40.680 --> 05:43.480]  The goal was to make this content unavailable.
[05:44.140 --> 05:48.960]  For as long as this attack was successfully running, it was achieving its goal.
[05:48.960 --> 05:51.920]  It didn't need to convince anybody of anything.
[05:52.080 --> 05:54.000]  It didn't need to have an argument with anyone.
[05:54.140 --> 05:55.240]  It didn't need to have a debate.
[05:55.420 --> 05:58.640]  It needed to keep going to keep this content down.
[05:58.960 --> 06:01.740]  This wasn't an invitation to political activism.
[06:01.740 --> 06:05.860]  This was a, if you don't take this stuff down, we'll take it down for you.
[06:06.660 --> 06:11.400]  So, in essence, the goal of the DDoS was a permanent imposition of its immediate effects.
[06:11.640 --> 06:18.260]  While DDoS actions are often condemned for being as good as censorship, the actual goal of this particular attack was censorship.
[06:18.540 --> 06:22.820]  And in the end, the condemnation it suffered was as much for its goal as for its tactics.
[06:23.440 --> 06:23.920]  However...
[06:25.040 --> 06:25.780]  I'm sorry?
[06:27.040 --> 06:30.300]  This, there's no records of who actually organized this attack.
[06:30.300 --> 06:30.780]  I'm sorry.
[06:30.920 --> 06:31.620]  I wish there was.
[06:31.760 --> 06:33.320]  My paper would be better for it.
[06:33.320 --> 06:44.720]  But where this censorship condemnation falls short is in its assigning equal value to any potential target and any potential motivation online.
[06:45.180 --> 06:49.040]  The IGC attack targeted politically vulnerable speech online.
[06:49.040 --> 06:53.640]  And it obliterated this particular journal's ability to reach its audience.
[06:53.640 --> 06:59.200]  And it crippled the IGC's ability to perform its professional function, which was serving content to people online.
[06:59.200 --> 07:14.740]  However, targeting the website of, for instance, a large multinational corporation or a government agency often has little effect on the actual operations of that entity and its ability to communicate both internally and to the public through media appearances or press releases.
[07:15.080 --> 07:33.260]  It would be absurd to declare an ethical equivalency between seeking to silence content entirely, as was the goal in this attack, and the relatively inconvenience suffered by large corporations whose online posters have been briefly torn down, to paraphrase XKCD.
[07:34.240 --> 07:40.260]  The second major characterization that is often applied to DDoS attacks is the electronic sit-in.
[07:40.780 --> 07:42.720]  I really love this picture.
[07:44.040 --> 07:55.180]  The electronic sit-in was clearly articulated by a group called the Critical Art Ensemble, which is a performance art and activism collective in their essay Electronic Civil Disobedience.
[07:55.340 --> 08:07.160]  There they drew an equivalency between the monopolization of resources that takes place in a IRL sit-in and the monopolization of resources that occurs on the technological level during a DDoS campaign.
[08:07.440 --> 08:13.240]  This characterization draws heavily on the history of sit-ins in social movements for a lot of its validity.
[08:14.680 --> 08:23.140]  In 2001, the Electronic Disturbance Theater, which was a spin-off of the Critical Art Ensemble, launched a campaign that they called the Deportation Class Action.
[08:23.600 --> 08:28.720]  Estimates put the number of participants in this particular action at roughly 13,000, give or take.
[08:28.960 --> 08:36.200]  These participants were primarily recruited through websites and mailing lists, mostly performance art and activism related.
[08:36.200 --> 08:45.440]  The goal of this action was to pressure Lufthansa Airlines to stop flying deported immigrants out of the country on its flights.
[08:45.660 --> 08:51.840]  And it was to draw awareness to this issue and also to pressure the airline to stop doing it.
[08:52.000 --> 09:00.780]  The online action was powered by something called Floodnet, which was a DDoS tool that Electronic Disturbance Theater developed in 1998.
[09:00.920 --> 09:05.360]  The tool allowed participants to participate in pre-planned DDoS campaigns.
[09:05.360 --> 09:08.740]  There was a predetermined list of targets that you could select from.
[09:08.840 --> 09:11.040]  You couldn't just target anything that you wanted.
[09:11.280 --> 09:15.720]  It also required users to take positive steps in order to participate in those campaigns.
[09:15.980 --> 09:23.220]  It was web-based, so you had to be online, sitting in front of your computer, and you had to click a button to positively participate in the campaign.
[09:23.980 --> 09:29.800]  The Floodnet action was augmented by press releases and protests at Lufthansa stockholder meetings.
[09:30.380 --> 09:39.120]  This action did result in downtime for the Lufthansa website, and they did eventually stop flying the deported immigrants out of the country.
[09:39.920 --> 09:40.340]  So, yay.
[09:41.460 --> 09:55.360]  The other thing that happened was that this action resulted in the arrest and trial of Andreas Thomas Vogel, who was an activist who hosted a website called Libertad.de, which posted a call to action for the Lufthansa protest.
[09:55.360 --> 10:04.140]  Initially, a lower court found Vogel guilty of using force against Lufthansa, based on the economic losses the airline had suffered during the campaign.
[10:04.640 --> 10:14.920]  Upon appeal, however, a higher court overturned the verdict, finding that the online demonstration did not consist of a show of force, but was rather intended to influence public opinion.
[10:15.640 --> 10:26.480]  Now, the stated goal of the Lufthansa action was to draw public attention to a specific aspect of the airline's business, and through that attention, changed its behavior.
[10:26.860 --> 10:33.500]  Though the DDoS attack took place on the Internet, the effect it sought to have was not limited to and was not even present online.
[10:33.920 --> 10:40.360]  It is important to note that in and of itself, the DDoS attack could not have achieved what EDT and Vogel set out to accomplish.
[10:40.360 --> 10:46.740]  They set out to change the behavior of a corporation, but it took positive action on the part of Lufthansa to make that happen.
[10:46.980 --> 10:50.520]  It could not be accomplished by fiat by activists on the outside.
[10:51.160 --> 10:57.680]  One of the benefits of the electronic sit-in characterization is that it references a tactic with a very visible history.
[10:58.000 --> 11:00.340]  Most people already know what a sit-in looks like.
[11:00.480 --> 11:13.740]  The comparison holds up provided that the technology used is heavily reliant on individual agency, with participants either using manual DDoS tools like Floodnet or participating in strictly voluntary botnets.
[11:13.940 --> 11:26.860]  The use of sophisticated traffic multipliers, exploits, or non-voluntary botnets complicates the situation enormously and can make the use of this characterization seem overly simplistic and self-congratulatory.
[11:28.160 --> 11:37.800]  Now we're going to move on to a description of the current state of the tactic, looking at how it's sometimes different from the different... the attacks that I just described and how it has new challenges to face.
[11:39.160 --> 11:43.780]  But first, we're going to look at the desired impacts of the most recent DDoS attacks.
[11:43.960 --> 11:45.520]  I also really like this picture.
[11:46.940 --> 12:04.440]  The primary goal of many popular DDoS campaigns, and by popular DDoS campaigns I mean campaigns which seek the participation of large groups of people, the sort of wildcat use of DDoS strikes by individuals is beyond the scope of this talk, but I'm happy to talk about it in the question session.
[12:05.120 --> 12:15.160]  So the primary goal of many of these popular DDoS campaigns is to direct media coverage, and to impact the identity of those participating in the action.
[12:15.640 --> 12:23.600]  Like the Lufthansa campaign, these actions ultimately seek societal and policy changes that cannot be achieved simply by taking down a website.
[12:23.600 --> 12:33.440]  Rather, the goal is to attract significant attention to a set of issues, and to cultivate a population that considers themselves activists, and who can be called on to participate in further actions.
[12:36.420 --> 12:38.260]  Second is technological challenges.
[12:38.540 --> 12:40.020]  I want one of those kittens.
[12:40.300 --> 12:42.180]  I don't want that computer, but I want one of those kittens.
[12:42.800 --> 12:54.580]  It is way harder now than it was in 1997 or even in 2001 to take down a major corporate site through the power of a bunch of people sitting behind their computers pressing a button.
[12:55.040 --> 13:10.780]  Traffic multipliers and non-volunteer botnets can give all volunteer efforts the boost they need to bring down a huge site, but these tactics have the potential to delegitimize activist DDoS in the eyes of the media, policymakers, as well as the people who participate in the actions.
[13:12.840 --> 13:15.800]  Third, the organizer and participant pool has shifted.
[13:16.160 --> 13:22.700]  The Electronic Disturbance Theater spread word of its actions via activism and performance art-centered mailing lists and message boards.
[13:22.700 --> 13:31.280]  As a result, their participants were, more often than not, experienced activists, well-versed in the practices and risks of on-the-street activism.
[13:31.780 --> 13:41.900]  While they may have had an incomplete understanding of the online space they were moving into, it is safe to assume they had an understanding of the legal risks often associated with acts of civil disobedience.
[13:42.140 --> 13:46.120]  This has not necessarily been the case with more recent DDoS campaigns.
[13:46.760 --> 13:54.100]  Activism-minded individuals have come onto the scene with little actual activism experience, against either IRL or in the digital realm.
[13:54.320 --> 14:01.660]  Their tactics are often innovative and interesting, but they lack a core awareness of the basic risks they are exposing themselves to.
[14:01.900 --> 14:17.860]  The media attention attracted by these actions has attracted more neophytes to the cause, but this puts more pressure on people in leadership positions to educate the newcomers as to tactics, norms, ethics, and the actual legal implications of what they're doing.
[14:17.860 --> 14:33.680]  The relative ease with which individuals can become involved in in a piecemeal fashion with different campaigns also leads to high turnover in the active population, which makes it difficult for a political culture which is trying to establish its own internal norms and modes,
[14:33.820 --> 14:38.040]  as well as its legitimacy to outsiders continue in a consistent mode.
[14:39.540 --> 14:40.620]  Legal status.
[14:41.480 --> 14:51.230]  Just in case anyone in this room has any doubt about it whatsoever, DDoS attacks are illegal in this country and in many other jurisdictions.
[14:51.620 --> 14:53.360]  In this country, it's a felony.
[14:53.740 --> 14:58.740]  Please don't take anything I'm saying to go out and do something illegal and then yell at me about it.
[15:00.740 --> 15:13.340]  Participating in a DDoS attack, even if you're doing it for a political reason, remains a very high-risk activity, unlike many other activities associated with IRL activism, including street marches and sit-ins.
[15:13.680 --> 15:27.340]  The onus to educate inexperienced participants about these risks falls to the organizers, as does the ethical issue of whether or not these types of actions are, at this time, worth the legal risk that you are incurring by participating in them.
[15:28.900 --> 15:34.020]  Finally, there are massive debates about what the definition of a successful attack is.
[15:41.250 --> 15:41.850]  Okay?
[15:42.150 --> 15:42.290]  Okay.
[15:43.230 --> 16:01.790]  Many activists are moving away from a strict binary website-up, website-down conception of what success is to more nuanced views like number of participants, number of participants who stick around for other campaigns, and levels of media coverage of both the attack and the issues that the attack was meant to draw attention to.
[16:03.370 --> 16:11.170]  Next, we're moving to the new analytical model that I'm proposing that we use to look at these DDoS attacks to determine whether or not they're valid.
[16:13.090 --> 16:22.110]  In order to take into account both the new developments in activist DDoS campaigns and to allow for an accurate analysis of the use of the tactic, I propose this analytical model.
[16:22.110 --> 16:39.910]  Rather than reacting based on an objection to DDoS as a whole or comparison to what is already existing, this model looks at motivations behind a campaign, its intended effects, its actual effects, and the technologies used before coming to a conclusion about the legitimacy of an activist action.
[16:40.370 --> 16:50.210]  Using this model, we can look at Anonymous' December 2010 Operation Payback DDoS campaign against PayPal and other sites in the same way that we looked at the campaigns earlier.
[16:50.850 --> 16:52.250]  Everyone can laugh at the cat now.
[16:56.120 --> 17:01.320]  Well, Operation Payback began as an opposition to the MPAA and other copyright associations.
[17:01.700 --> 17:10.560]  December 6th in 2010 marked the beginning of the second stage of the campaign, sometimes known as Operation Avenge Assange, which is hard to say.
[17:10.560 --> 17:21.040]  These attacks were powered by the LOIC DDoS tool and volunteer botnets run through the LOIC f*cking hive mind mode, and as well as non-volunteer botnets.
[17:22.140 --> 17:35.860]  This stage of the campaign targeted organizations and individuals that Anonymous believed were acting against the interests of WikiLeaks, either by cutting off its channels of financial support, refusing to supply hosting to the website and its domain name,
[17:35.860 --> 17:38.110]  or by speaking out against the organization publicly.
[17:38.660 --> 17:45.100]  The overall goal was to draw attention to the ongoing banking blockade against WikiLeaks and to force media coverage of the issue.
[17:45.300 --> 17:58.580]  Over the course of about four days, Anonymous would launch DDoS attacks against the websites of the Swedish Prosecution Authority, EveryDNS, Joseph Lieberman's website, MasterCard, two Swedish politicians, Visa, PayPal, and Amazon.com.
[17:58.700 --> 18:03.240]  Many of these websites registered some amount of downtime over the course of these attacks.
[18:04.200 --> 18:15.540]  The campaign led to a truly massive amount of media coverage, mostly of Anonymous itself, but also of the banking blockade and various other grievances publicized in Anonymous press releases and calls to action.
[18:15.840 --> 18:23.180]  It brought extraordinary public attention to Anonymous, and with that came many new participants who joined in the DDoS attack as it was going.
[18:23.460 --> 18:34.300]  It also led to the arrest of over a dozen participants in the United States who were later charged with felony violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and more individuals being arrested individually.
[18:34.600 --> 18:38.680]  Others had their homes raided by the FBI and their various electronic possessions confiscated.
[18:40.380 --> 18:52.460]  The December DDoS attacks and Operation Payback bear a far closer resemblance to the Electronic Disturbance Theatre's 2001 Lufthansa action than they do to the IGC attacks in 1997.
[18:52.460 --> 19:09.060]  Though the diffuse, unorganized, and leadership anons bear a much closer resemblance to the participant population in the IGC attacks, made up as it was of individuals recruited through enthusiastic media coverage, disparate people coming together in one moment around one emotional issue,
[19:09.360 --> 19:17.860]  the motivation and actual effects of Operation Payback are far more akin to the Electronic Disturbance Theatre's push for popular attention and policy change.
[19:17.860 --> 19:26.340]  A primary goal of Operation Avenge Assange was to bring widespread attention to the plight of WikiLeaks, and in that, it succeeded.
[19:26.640 --> 19:39.200]  A secondary goal was to cause financial damage and embarrassment to the corporations targeted, but, as I stated earlier, bringing down a corporate website does not restrict that corporation's ability to function or communicate with the outside world.
[19:39.200 --> 19:48.600]  Rather, the corporations targeted by Anonymous had caused more harm to WikiLeaks' ability to function by unilaterally cutting off its means of support and refusing to host it.
[19:48.780 --> 19:54.720]  Those actions in and of themselves constituted a denial of service attack in the most basic sense of the term.
[19:55.300 --> 20:08.220]  The use of non-volunteer botnets to achieve downtime in the targeted servers is very troubling, as is the lack of success in educating participants in the legal risks that they were facing.
[20:08.540 --> 20:19.620]  I feel that neither of these facts are troubling enough to completely delegitimize Operation Payback as a reasonable act of civil protest, but they are mistakes that need to be learned from in future actions.
[20:21.540 --> 20:22.060]  Conclusions.
[20:22.060 --> 20:29.740]  In conclusion, there are uses of DDoS attacks that are more appropriate and acceptable in an activist context than others.
[20:30.020 --> 20:34.200]  Not every DDoS attack that claims the activist label does so appropriately.
[20:34.620 --> 20:46.860]  It is also possible to say that though the technological results of one DDoS attack may be indistinguishable from another, the actual effects differ widely based on the circumstances and context of a given action.
[20:46.860 --> 21:02.860]  An attack on the homepage of a large corporation may draw a large amount of media attention, but have little immediate effect on the corporation itself, while an attack on a smaller Internet-based organization may completely wipe it out while attracting no attention or criticism at all.
[21:03.280 --> 21:12.620]  What may be considered censorship in one instance can reasonably be considered not censorship in another, though the technological facts at hand remain the same.
[21:12.620 --> 21:27.460]  While attempting to determine the validity of an activist DDoS action or any contentious computer action, it is vital that we not privilege the technological facts over the motivations and stated goals of the participants and the actual effects of the action.
[21:27.680 --> 21:38.840]  To do so would ignore the fact that identical technological states can be arrived at under vastly differing circumstances and ultimately devalues human agency in our dealings with technology.
[21:41.520 --> 21:43.500]  Questioning Kat wants to know if you have questions.
[21:46.260 --> 21:50.180]  I was told to make sure you come to that microphone, otherwise no one will hear you.
[21:50.360 --> 21:50.860]  I think it's on.
[21:51.020 --> 21:51.160]  Okay.
[21:51.560 --> 21:53.500]  I am actually a trained activist.
[21:54.220 --> 22:11.060]  And so I wanted to hear more about sort of how the people who are organizing or unorganizing the DDoS attacks or like organizing themselves and like more about the state of the trained or the untrained activists or organizers.
[22:11.920 --> 22:15.260]  So I think the current landscape is extremely varied.
[22:15.420 --> 22:22.040]  This is one of the awesome things about looking at different digital tactics in the digital activism realm.
[22:23.200 --> 22:24.800]  Everyone's doing something different.
[22:25.020 --> 22:28.840]  Everyone's sort of waiting to shake out what is going to be the most effective.
[22:28.840 --> 22:43.380]  There are some people who operate more in the traditional EDT realm where they have organized mailing lists of potential participants who have been around for a while, and calls will go out over that.
[22:43.660 --> 23:00.560]  There's also the more anonymous mode of recruiting participants, which is throw up a call to action on Twitter or Pastebin and see who shows up, which has the potential for having far more people participate, and you can have it go viral and suddenly you have way more participants than you know what to do with,
[23:00.700 --> 23:12.900]  but you also run into the issue where sometimes people don't know what they're doing and sometimes people put themselves at risk, and how do you keep people safe who you are essentially saying this is a legitimate call to action, this is legitimate action,
[23:13.100 --> 23:15.360]  and people are trusting you.
[23:16.120 --> 23:21.560]  And if they're far away and you can't readily get in touch with them, sometimes it's hard to protect them.
[23:23.160 --> 23:24.560]  Any other questions?
[23:26.120 --> 23:27.760]  Questioning Cat loves questions.
[23:30.160 --> 23:30.720]  Really?
[23:33.440 --> 23:40.380]  You said that you might have some things to say about individual DDoS in the question session.
[23:40.380 --> 23:47.540]  So, individual DDoS campaigns tend to be far more oriented towards strict downtime.
[23:48.000 --> 23:54.060]  And there's a lot of scalping mentality, I think.
[23:54.360 --> 24:02.460]  A lot of people who want to say, Tango Down on Twitter or on their blog or on Pastebin.
[24:02.460 --> 24:10.460]  And there is that one-upmanship mentality that happens with the wildcat one-person DDoS campaigns.
[24:11.820 --> 24:12.760]  It also...
[24:14.400 --> 24:25.900]  There's less legitimacy around that because that one is far more like throwing a brick through a window than it is getting a bunch of your friends together and sitting in at a lunch counter.
[24:25.900 --> 24:29.640]  If we're going to go back to the metaphors and similes, which I promised I wouldn't do.
[24:31.900 --> 24:35.880]  So, those tend to be far less defensible as a civic action.
[24:36.120 --> 24:46.160]  Because they're only oriented around one person forcing their opinion on somebody else rather than a large group of people stating their opinion in a collective voice.
[24:46.520 --> 24:47.860]  That is my opinion.
[24:48.540 --> 24:50.800]  And I'm sure other people have different opinions.
[24:51.000 --> 24:52.360]  And I would be delighted to hear them.
[24:56.100 --> 24:57.900]  Who thinks I'm totally full of shit?
[24:58.000 --> 24:59.820]  I want to hear from someone who doesn't agree with me.
[25:01.220 --> 25:02.680]  Maybe they all went out drinking.
[25:07.280 --> 25:19.300]  I guess I have, like, two opinions I kind of wanted to express regarding effectiveness in general of, like, the stated goals of various, like, communiques of these attacks and stuff.
[25:19.300 --> 25:33.760]  Like, one is, you know, on the one hand, it's like, it only takes one dedicated person theoretically with a good amount of knowledge to, you know, do some concerted damage to some entity or something.
[25:33.960 --> 25:36.280]  Like, you know, f*ck up their servers or whatever.
[25:36.640 --> 25:47.040]  Whereas, like, the DDoS thing, it's like more based on getting a lot of people involved with or without their consent to then just basically flood a website usually is what it is.
[25:47.040 --> 25:57.500]  I've never actually even seen or heard of a DDoS attack that wasn't basically just against some, like, public website or something that an average person goes to.
[25:57.880 --> 25:59.800]  And I don't know.
[25:59.860 --> 26:08.300]  I feel like it's like if your goal is to, like, cause an entity damage, it seems like the former seems like it's more effective than actually doing damage.
[26:08.300 --> 26:11.120]  Whereas the other is just, like, temporarily preventing access or something.
[26:11.740 --> 26:25.000]  But then, like, the other thing is, like, I'm wondering, like, in general, a lot of these things usually, and it seems like in the modern era, like, it's gotten a little lazy in, like, the primary way in which hacktivism happens is just through DDoS.
[26:25.260 --> 26:37.200]  But the other thing is, like, a lot of these things attack, it's like, in terms of effectiveness, it's kind of like, well, how, what is this, how is this even hurting these people?
[26:37.300 --> 26:43.660]  Because a lot of time I listen to, like, these articles from various, like, organizations that are, like, seriously, like, really scared.
[26:43.660 --> 26:50.360]  And they're really scared of these hacktivists and hackers who are trying to do damage to them just by taking down their website temporarily.
[26:50.640 --> 26:51.520]  And it's like, this is terrible.
[26:51.520 --> 26:52.360]  It's a huge threat.
[26:52.460 --> 26:53.860]  And I'm like, what threat?
[26:54.060 --> 26:55.440]  Your website goes temporarily down?
[26:55.560 --> 26:56.320]  It's like...
[26:56.320 --> 26:58.900]  Someone tore down a poster hung up by the CIA.
[26:59.460 --> 27:11.600]  And it, I mean, there is this one attack, maybe it was by anti-sec or something like that, that they basically just temporarily took down a bunch of police-oriented websites around the country.
[27:11.800 --> 27:18.380]  And these are probably websites that only, like, you know, 500 people a year go to a lot of them.
[27:18.500 --> 27:20.760]  There's, like, some website for a sheriff's association or something.
[27:20.880 --> 27:27.960]  And it's like, these websites being up or down, like, has literally nothing to do with, like, you know, calls coming in to report crimes.
[27:27.960 --> 27:30.620]  Or, like, whatever they thought theoretically, like, they were disrupting.
[27:30.780 --> 27:34.980]  Like, it's just some website that just has a phone number on it or something.
[27:35.200 --> 27:41.440]  Well, that goes back to the fact that downtime is now, frankly, not a serious goal.
[27:42.300 --> 27:44.740]  Downtime isn't the prime... it's sort of a perk.
[27:45.400 --> 27:46.400]  Downtime... you're right.
[27:46.700 --> 27:52.080]  And like I said, this doesn't actually have a real effect on how a lot of these organizations operate.
[27:52.080 --> 27:58.680]  What does have a real effect on how these organizations operate is a lot of the media coverage that follows these DDoS attacks around.
[27:58.880 --> 28:03.520]  Frankly, journalists have been trained over the last two to three years to follow DDoS attacks.
[28:03.600 --> 28:06.000]  Because they sound like hacking.
[28:06.260 --> 28:07.340]  They look like hacking.
[28:07.600 --> 28:10.700]  They don't enough... they don't generally know enough to know that it's not really hacking.
[28:11.040 --> 28:15.900]  And hacking sells newspapers slash magazines slash... is clickbait.
[28:16.520 --> 28:20.200]  So these types of actions tend to attract a lot of attention.
[28:20.480 --> 28:22.580]  And it's that attention that is the goal.
[28:22.740 --> 28:25.240]  The downtime is... it's fun.
[28:25.420 --> 28:28.240]  You can say, we took this website down for five minutes.
[28:28.600 --> 28:30.700]  But it's not the primary goal.
[28:30.800 --> 28:33.100]  You're not actually aiming to disrupt anything.
[28:33.100 --> 28:34.800]  You're aiming to attract attention.
[28:35.380 --> 28:37.380]  I guess it depends on what your goals are.
[28:37.500 --> 28:42.140]  But I mean, you know, in some of these communicators, it seems the goals were seemingly larger than that.
[28:42.140 --> 28:46.120]  And they believed that they, like, were trying to really, like, disrupt serious things.
[28:46.300 --> 28:48.360]  And so... I just question the effectiveness of that.
[28:48.460 --> 28:50.600]  I feel like we need to get more back to the... in real life.
[28:50.600 --> 28:57.260]  I would question the effectiveness of a call to action that said, we're going to get Gawker to cover this DDoS attack if you show up.
[28:59.340 --> 29:06.680]  It attracts way more people to participate if you say, we're going to bring down the Maricopa Sheriff's website.
[29:07.320 --> 29:08.080]  Show up.
[29:08.200 --> 29:09.120]  We'll bring it down.
[29:09.120 --> 29:13.460]  We'll show those people in Arizona that they can't boss us around.
[29:14.940 --> 29:15.400]  It's... yeah.
[29:16.260 --> 29:25.960]  But frankly, like, civil action and this types of protests have always been a very large part about primary the newspaper coverage and the news coverage.
[29:26.880 --> 29:33.900]  It's... does a lot more for your cause when the New York Times has a huge picture of your protest than if nobody pays attention to you at all.
[29:35.080 --> 29:35.460]  Maybe.
[29:35.680 --> 29:36.060]  I don't know.
[29:36.380 --> 29:42.860]  My main thought is... I don't mean to... I know this is like a whole very digital conference and everything, but I kind of... I don't know.
[29:42.920 --> 29:45.140]  I feel like we need to get more back to...
[29:45.140 --> 29:48.120]  There's a whole, like, Internet activism thing going on, legal and illegal.
[29:48.600 --> 30:02.260]  And I feel like a very difficult part about, like, you know, people seeking to be in supposed movements today is that they think being in a movement means, like, clicking a like button on Facebook and, like, oh, like this person, it helps them.
[30:02.360 --> 30:03.920]  Like, it really doesn't, like...
[30:03.920 --> 30:07.360]  So, slacktivism slash clicktivism is a whole nother...
[30:07.360 --> 30:08.360]  I think it's kind of related.
[30:08.380 --> 30:08.960]  ...pan of issues.
[30:09.540 --> 30:09.940]  Yeah.
[30:09.940 --> 30:10.260]  Okay.
[30:10.640 --> 30:11.000]  Well...
[30:11.000 --> 30:16.160]  Like, that, again, has a lot of impact... that has a lot of impact on identity issues.
[30:16.780 --> 30:20.860]  And I'm happy to talk about this more, but there's a dude behind you who wants to ask a question.
[30:20.860 --> 30:22.800]  Actually, there appear to be two dudes behind you.
[30:24.180 --> 30:27.820]  I don't know if you mentioned anything about this, but it also...
[30:27.820 --> 30:33.860]  I would like to counter the former speaker, but there's a DDoS for a higher market out there.
[30:34.520 --> 30:34.860]  And...
[30:34.860 --> 30:35.240]  Guapo?
[30:35.740 --> 30:36.240]  Is that it?
[30:36.360 --> 30:39.960]  Well, there's... I mean, various people are providing this service.
[30:40.120 --> 30:40.740]  They sell it for...
[30:40.740 --> 30:42.360]  He's the one with the funny ads.
[30:42.660 --> 30:43.500]  Yeah, on YouTube?
[30:43.780 --> 30:44.020]  Yeah.
[30:44.300 --> 30:44.740]  Okay, yeah.
[30:45.320 --> 30:49.160]  And, you know, corporations are using this against each other.
[30:49.980 --> 30:52.820]  People in competition with each other in business.
[30:53.480 --> 30:59.620]  And if a website... if their website goes down, they could potentially be losing, you know, $1,000 per day.
[30:59.860 --> 31:00.180]  Hmm.
[31:00.480 --> 31:03.780]  So, I mean, I don't know if you said anything about that.
[31:03.940 --> 31:07.000]  I wasn't fully paying attention, but I think that's significant.
[31:08.920 --> 31:15.180]  So, what you're describing could not even begin to be described as DDoS as an activist action.
[31:15.180 --> 31:17.200]  So, I did not cover it in this talk.
[31:17.560 --> 31:17.860]  But...
[31:19.140 --> 31:21.320]  You're right in that DDoS is used in that fashion.
[31:21.500 --> 31:25.020]  In that the technological tool is used in that way.
[31:25.280 --> 31:26.020]  Yes, you're right.
[31:26.740 --> 31:27.180]  But...
[31:27.180 --> 31:28.200]  I don't...
[31:28.200 --> 31:35.800]  I would be loath to delegitimize a mode of civic participation and a civic action, because people can use it to bully each other.
[31:36.040 --> 31:43.760]  Because, frankly, I can stand in front of Hanni's house with a sign and yell at him for 20 minutes, and that doesn't delegitimize street protest.
[31:44.040 --> 31:44.500]  Sorry, Hanni.
[31:46.220 --> 31:46.660]  Yeah.
[31:47.460 --> 31:48.920]  So, going to two guys back.
[31:49.180 --> 31:49.620]  Okay.
[31:49.740 --> 31:50.360]  Two guys back.
[31:50.720 --> 31:51.400]  Two guys back.
[31:51.760 --> 31:54.120]  Talking about DDoS is just taking down websites.
[31:54.400 --> 31:54.640]  Mm-hmm.
[31:55.080 --> 31:59.600]  Coming from a security operations center and having clients that have been targeted before.
[32:00.080 --> 32:02.080]  Just taking down the website isn't the only concern.
[32:02.440 --> 32:02.560]  Yep.
[32:02.700 --> 32:07.080]  And, you know, that's something that, you know, I don't know if that's outside of the scope of what you're talking about here.
[32:07.620 --> 32:11.000]  But, to relate to him, you know, that's not only taking down manpower.
[32:11.240 --> 32:16.020]  I mean, there's a call to arms when all of a sudden Anonymous comes and says, hey, we're going to target you.
[32:16.220 --> 32:16.500]  Yep.
[32:16.660 --> 32:18.060]  You know, that's massive manpower.
[32:18.260 --> 32:20.740]  That's, you know, wanting to make sure all your signatures are in place.
[32:21.200 --> 32:28.680]  Making sure that, you know, you have every possibility accounted for just in case that does happen and in case there's some other security breach.
[32:29.000 --> 32:29.320]  Yeah.
[32:29.320 --> 32:31.860]  So, it's not just from the outward facing as well.
[32:32.020 --> 32:32.900]  There is that back end.
[32:33.040 --> 32:35.500]  And there is more of a concern from the corporate side.
[32:35.500 --> 32:44.120]  Yeah, there's a huge cost in manhours when it comes to defending against DDoS attacks, when it comes to preparing and going through all the prep work.
[32:45.540 --> 32:53.820]  But, like I said, I would be loathe to delegitimize a mode of civic engagement because it costs people money.
[32:54.040 --> 32:54.520]  Oh, absolutely.
[32:54.520 --> 33:03.700]  Like, street protests cost cities money because all those police officers and horses and stun guns, and they all cost money.
[33:04.240 --> 33:06.800]  But, we're not delegitimizing street protests.
[33:07.280 --> 33:07.380]  Right.
[33:07.440 --> 33:16.040]  So, while I certainly understand and sympathize, I have many friends who are in the InfoSec business, that it's a real pain in the ass when this happens.
[33:16.680 --> 33:23.300]  It is also quite legitimately, probably, we can still talk about it as being a legitimate mode of protest.
[33:23.540 --> 33:23.920]  Absolutely.
[33:27.030 --> 33:33.090]  I just wondered if you might be able to comment at all on kind of a DDOS counter activism.
[33:33.450 --> 33:39.290]  Like, around the same time that people were protesting against PayPal and everything, WikiLeaks itself was DDoSed.
[33:39.310 --> 33:39.490]  Yep.
[33:39.810 --> 33:51.570]  And I wanted to get your thoughts on whether you thought that delegitimizes even the prosecution of the, you know, the people who participated in the...
[33:51.570 --> 33:53.650]  Do I think it delegitimizes the prosecution?
[33:53.650 --> 33:54.170]  Yes.
[33:54.590 --> 33:57.870]  I think the prosecution is already delegitimatized.
[33:58.230 --> 34:05.530]  But, I already do not have a whole lot of sympathy for people who are using criminal statutes to prosecute political speech.
[34:06.550 --> 34:08.010]  That's purely my opinion.
[34:08.370 --> 34:10.730]  It's my angry opinion, but it's my opinion.
[34:11.710 --> 34:17.930]  I don't think that the use of DDOS to target groups like WikiLeaks and Anonymous delegitimizes the tactic.
[34:19.130 --> 34:26.050]  This is one of those sort of a version of, I don't support what you have to say, but I support your right to say it.
[34:26.270 --> 34:34.990]  If I'm going to say that DDOS is a legitimate political action, then it's a legitimate political action even if people are using it to target organizations that I like.
[34:36.030 --> 34:39.010]  And also, I'm pretty sure you're not a lawyer, but...
[34:39.010 --> 34:39.970]  I am so not a lawyer.
[34:40.230 --> 34:41.390]  So not a lawyer.
[34:41.870 --> 34:52.090]  I remember, like, yesterday, one of the comments they were talking about, one of the talks was about, you know, like, leaks and how the administration prosecutes only the leaks that disfavors.
[34:52.090 --> 35:07.690]  I mean, do you think that there's any kind of, like, legal theory similar to that with, you know, prosecuting the people who are protesting WikiLeaks being defunded and just not giving a f*ck about the people who went after WikiLeaks?
[35:07.850 --> 35:10.650]  I don't think that I have a legal theory about it.
[35:10.730 --> 35:12.590]  I have a theory about it that it happens.
[35:13.850 --> 35:20.390]  Like, I've been to a lot of protests where I got chased by cops, and I don't think anyone at a Tea Party protest has been chased by cops recently.
[35:29.340 --> 35:32.660]  A related question about your model for legitimacy.
[35:33.100 --> 35:45.720]  Do you think the history and consistency of the attacks sponsored by any one particular group are relevant to the legitimacy of that group's activities as a whole?
[35:46.180 --> 35:48.520]  I'm considering Anonymous specifically.
[35:48.960 --> 36:01.700]  You have things like, I think, within a month or two of the WikiLeaks related stuff, they were doing things like declaring war on the Weather Channel over the blizzard of 2011.
[36:03.040 --> 36:11.440]  I was personally pissed off about the blizzard of 2011, because I was in California, and I usually live in Boston, and I totally missed all the snow, and I was upset.
[36:11.940 --> 36:16.740]  I think that the history of groups does have an effect on the legitimacy of a tactic.
[36:17.380 --> 36:32.280]  It's difficult when you start talking about Anonymous, because the history of Anonymous is so up and down all the time that people who were participating last week aren't participating next week, and their modes of endorsing different actions are equally helter-skelter.
[36:32.440 --> 36:32.660]  Yeah.
[36:32.900 --> 36:39.720]  With Anonymous, it feels a lot like they just sort of randomly flail around and hit things, and occasionally they hit something that deserves to be hit.
[36:39.720 --> 36:48.200]  If you want to talk about Anonymous, I highly suggest tracking down Quinn Norton, who is somewhere at this conference, and talking to her, because she knows way more about it than I do.
[36:48.400 --> 36:49.700]  Or she's over there, apparently.
[36:52.440 --> 36:52.840]  Hi.
[36:52.840 --> 36:58.140]  I just wanted to give like a real-life, you know, kind of contrast.
[36:58.980 --> 37:03.360]  So, there are AIDS activists that shut down drug factories.
[37:04.620 --> 37:23.440]  And a few years ago, there was a group called Act Up Paris that shut down an AIDS drug factory in France, because the company was not lowering its prices and allowing people in developing countries to get the drugs, so they were dying of AIDS, shut it down for three weeks,
[37:23.500 --> 37:25.080]  and there were like no arrests.
[37:25.400 --> 37:26.880]  Or maybe there was like a slap on the hand.
[37:27.100 --> 37:35.860]  So, just to think about what kind of money was involved, and what kind of horrific publicity was involved, and there were really no reper... there were no repercussions.
[37:36.120 --> 37:38.600]  There were no negative repercussions at all for the organization.
[37:38.600 --> 37:48.280]  Yeah, that's one of the really interesting things about IRL protests, is that has a history of legitimacy.
[37:49.520 --> 37:51.960]  Street protests have a history of legitimacy.
[37:52.200 --> 37:59.460]  The street is viewed as some place where you can stand with your sign and scream and shout and hold up traffic, because the street is viewed as a public venue.
[37:59.740 --> 38:03.520]  There is no equivalent public venue on the Internet.
[38:03.840 --> 38:06.160]  There is no street on the Internet.
[38:06.160 --> 38:09.240]  There's nowhere where I can stand with a sign and make a big fuss.
[38:09.780 --> 38:14.740]  This is a huge problem when it comes to the perceived legitimacy of online activism.
[38:15.240 --> 38:18.720]  This is a good point, but also just... I was just... I mean, it's actually private property.
[38:19.100 --> 38:23.220]  I mean, what you said is true, but also in the case of a drug company, it's actually their property.
[38:23.340 --> 38:23.540]  Yeah.
[38:25.160 --> 38:34.460]  But if I chain myself to the front gate of the White House, I'll probably get arrested, because it's really irritating to have me chained to the front gate of the White House, because people need to like go in and out and stuff.
[38:34.460 --> 38:44.520]  But I will also probably be released within 24 hours, and I probably won't be charged with anything, because that's publicly perceived and popularly perceived to be a legitimate protest tactic.
[38:44.720 --> 38:50.080]  If I participate in a DDoS attack against WhiteHouse.gov, that's a totally different legal issue.
[38:55.370 --> 38:55.930]  Hi.
[38:56.120 --> 38:56.450]  Hi.
[38:56.450 --> 39:11.890]  I probably have like a two-part question, but first I wanted to ask you about, in regards to like 2600 and this being our community and so on, what about hacktivists using those same tactics against their own community that supports them and so on and so forth?
[39:11.930 --> 39:18.310]  In regards to like DDoSing our website or DDoSing IRC services and so on and so forth, how do you feel about that?
[39:18.310 --> 39:28.290]  As I previously stated, if I am going to support DDoS as a valid political activism tactic, I have to support it when people use it against people that I like.
[39:28.290 --> 39:28.890]  Okay.
[39:29.120 --> 39:30.870]  Even if it's censorship across the board?
[39:31.020 --> 39:31.330]  I mean...
[39:31.330 --> 39:38.100]  If it falls in the censorship part of my analysis, it's going to fall in there whether or not I like the people that they're targeting.
[39:38.410 --> 39:38.500]  Sure.
[39:38.560 --> 39:50.660]  I can't say, this is my home base, these are my people's, therefore you're a big jerk and I don't like you, even though you fit in with how I would originally analyze you as being valid.
[39:50.930 --> 39:51.190]  Sure.
[39:51.390 --> 39:57.120]  So would that also include using criminal organizations to fulfill your political gain with hacktivism?
[39:57.120 --> 40:02.710]  So that falls under the what are the technologies being used part of the analysis.
[40:03.060 --> 40:20.520]  So in the case of the IGC action, the use of mail bombing tactics affects a lot of people, far more than people you were initially targeting, and it directly attacks the ability of individuals to communicate with other people, which in my view is an ethical and helps to delegitimize the tactic.
[40:20.520 --> 40:29.370]  The use of criminal botnets and the use of non-volunteer botnets heavily affects the legitimacy of a tactic.
[40:29.600 --> 40:36.250]  Even if you're enabling criminal organizations and legitimizing the criminal organizations for your own political gain?
[40:36.930 --> 40:47.930]  So the reason why I think that the use of criminal botnets delegitimizes a tactic is because you have taken a huge step away from the volunteer defense.
[40:48.290 --> 40:54.350]  You've taken a huge step away from being this is the voice of the people to being this is the voice of the people and a bunch of computers that we kidnapped.
[40:54.350 --> 40:59.850]  And that's not really okay with me.
[40:59.960 --> 41:18.790]  If you're going to make a popular stand, and if the force of your argument is going to be based on popular disapproval, which is essentially what a DDoS attack should be in its purest form, then you can't be co-opting other people's voices without their consent.
[41:19.120 --> 41:20.810]  Sure, I can agree with some of that.
[41:22.040 --> 41:23.350]  Did that answer your question?
[41:23.480 --> 41:24.830]  I might not understand your question.
[41:24.960 --> 41:25.890]  No, I'm not sure.
[41:26.020 --> 41:26.270]  Okay.
[41:26.830 --> 41:27.120]  Thanks.
[41:28.160 --> 41:29.430]  We can talk later.
[41:35.230 --> 41:35.630]  Hi.
[41:35.870 --> 41:36.210]  Hi.
[41:38.570 --> 41:42.070]  So, you've been saying, I would like to talk to someone who disagrees with me.
[41:42.210 --> 41:50.270]  I've been sitting there trying to take that at heart and trying to come up with the hardest curveball question I can throw at you.
[41:51.910 --> 42:03.130]  The best I was going to come up with is not so much about the analysis itself, which is a great reflection, but more about how important the topic is at all.
[42:03.130 --> 42:15.330]  So, my question would be, what are the works you have worked on, and what are the work you could have worked on, and why did you choose this particular topic?
[42:15.530 --> 42:16.870]  What have I worked on personally?
[42:17.150 --> 42:17.330]  Yeah.
[42:17.630 --> 42:25.510]  And why did you choose this particular topic, and what do you hope will be the impact on the activist community of your work?
[42:25.510 --> 42:27.950]  How big do you want this reflection to be?
[42:28.570 --> 42:34.410]  So, before I was a graduate student at MIT, I was a research assistant at the Berkman Center for Internet Society.
[42:34.410 --> 42:43.150]  And while I was a research assistant there, the week I was supposed to take the LSATs, CableGate happened.
[42:43.230 --> 42:44.950]  And all this stuff went down.
[42:45.130 --> 42:57.870]  And I basically spent that week sleeping four hours a night, working with my boss, learning everything I possibly could about WikiLeaks, CableGate, Anonymous, the DDoS attacks, and then took my LSATs and promptly bombed them.
[42:57.870 --> 43:04.670]  And this topic never stopped being interesting.
[43:04.890 --> 43:11.670]  It didn't stop being interesting to me because I'm really interested in figuring out how civil disobedience functions online.
[43:11.710 --> 43:18.070]  Because the online space is entirely privatized and entirely corporatized.
[43:18.170 --> 43:24.390]  There are no public spaces available online for me to stand with my sign and shout about things.
[43:24.510 --> 43:25.910]  And I believe there should be.
[43:25.910 --> 43:31.450]  I believe that political action online should be as legitimate as political action offline.
[43:31.850 --> 43:36.490]  Because frankly, I spend 18 hours a day online.
[43:36.850 --> 43:38.130]  I'm a grad student.
[43:38.350 --> 43:39.550]  That's what I do all the time.
[43:39.870 --> 43:41.530]  So I'm working on this.
[43:41.730 --> 43:50.570]  I'm also working with Ethan Zuckerman at the Center Pacific Media on a more broadly based review of digital activism on an international scale.
[43:52.290 --> 43:58.450]  Less sort of angry than this, but more perhaps mainstream, more readily legitimate activism.
[43:58.750 --> 43:59.850]  But I'm also working on that.
[44:00.230 --> 44:03.310]  I also do a lot of work about depictions of hackers in the media.
[44:03.850 --> 44:10.230]  Because I think that's really interesting and it gives me an excuse to watch dozens of movies about hackers in like two weeks.
[44:10.230 --> 44:11.470]  Which is super fun.
[44:12.590 --> 44:13.710]  Does that answer your question?
[44:14.050 --> 44:16.030]  And one word about the impact you hope to have?
[44:16.610 --> 44:22.970]  Frankly, I hope that the impact of this research is to get people to think seriously about the legitimacy of DDoS as a tactic.
[44:22.970 --> 44:28.890]  Because I think that people do sort of automatically sort themselves into, no, it's censorship and it's wrong.
[44:29.150 --> 44:31.930]  Or, no, it's a sit-in and it's totally awesome.
[44:31.930 --> 44:34.410]  Because, hey, they let people sit in at lunch counters.
[44:34.830 --> 44:41.590]  And I think that both of those draw on mistaken assumptions about DDoS and mistaken assumptions about activism in general.
[44:41.870 --> 44:43.770]  And need to be reconsidered.
[44:44.430 --> 44:46.370]  That's what I hope will come out of this.
[44:46.470 --> 44:47.090]  Thank you.
[44:50.430 --> 44:52.890]  What do you make of collateral damage?
[44:53.290 --> 44:57.130]  Because very few DDoS attacks hit only the site that they're targeting, right?
[44:57.250 --> 45:09.470]  Friends and neighbors sitting on the same networks or served by the same ISPs will often experience severe degradation in service levels that are just entirely unintended.
[45:09.850 --> 45:10.050]  Yeah.
[45:10.370 --> 45:11.790]  So, collateral damage happens.
[45:11.790 --> 45:16.210]  I think it should be grouped into the actual effects part of the analysis.
[45:17.010 --> 45:21.750]  But as long as we're talking about collateral damage, collateral damage also happens during street protests.
[45:22.370 --> 45:24.250]  People's gardenias get trampled.
[45:24.370 --> 45:26.230]  I can't get to my office on time.
[45:26.450 --> 45:35.390]  I get inconvenienced by the fact that there are several thousand people walking down Main Street expressing their political views in a constitutionally protected manner.
[45:35.390 --> 45:38.150]  But I had a meeting at 9am and now I'm going to be late.
[45:38.150 --> 45:51.270]  So, collateral damage happens every time we decide that someone's right to express their political views should be prioritized and protected over my right to get to my meeting on time.
[45:51.490 --> 46:00.390]  So, this is a tradeoff we make in lots of protest situations and should not automatically delegitimize this type of action.
[46:00.390 --> 46:09.330]  It should be considered, like, if I make it impossible for 13,000 people to access their email, maybe that should weigh a little heavier.
[46:10.010 --> 46:15.990]  But if I slow down traffic to a group of websites a little bit, maybe that should weigh in a little lighter.
[46:16.230 --> 46:16.470]  Right.
[46:16.550 --> 46:21.030]  What we don't know, though, in advance with DDoS is who will be affected and on what scale, right?
[46:21.870 --> 46:22.490]  Yes, I agree.
[46:22.490 --> 46:28.810]  With street protest, it's clearer, you know, it's these shops down the street and we can have some sense of whether we're knocking out anything critical.
[46:29.090 --> 46:29.390]  True.
[46:29.630 --> 46:30.590]  You're absolutely correct.
[46:30.810 --> 46:34.110]  I still don't think it should delegitimize it as a tactic right off the bat.
[46:36.210 --> 46:36.650]  Hi.
[46:36.730 --> 46:40.930]  My question isn't even to suggest that we should delegitimize it as a tactic.
[46:41.130 --> 46:46.150]  My concern is, are they having the desired effect?
[46:46.410 --> 46:54.170]  Because the impression that I get outside of the community is that when you say that you're a hacker, the response is, oh, so you break stuff.
[46:54.370 --> 46:56.250]  And it's like, well, actually, I do IT.
[46:56.410 --> 46:57.250]  I try to fix stuff.
[46:57.390 --> 47:01.410]  I do sometimes break stuff, sometimes intentionally, mostly by accident.
[47:01.610 --> 47:03.090]  But it depends.
[47:03.770 --> 47:06.450]  But my point is that's the public perception.
[47:06.450 --> 47:10.090]  So if that's the perception, are you really having the desired effect?
[47:10.090 --> 47:13.350]  Or are you just being a nuisance and turning people against you?
[47:13.430 --> 47:21.190]  Because for me, I agree with you, if it is an effective attack strategically, you know, the predator drones are strategically effective.
[47:21.190 --> 47:27.910]  But if they cause so much collateral damage in civilian lives, it turns the population against us.
[47:28.030 --> 47:30.390]  And the net effect is a loss.
[47:30.570 --> 47:37.470]  While we might get two more baddies per week, we're turning, we're making things worse with those predator drones.
[47:37.470 --> 47:40.850]  So I'm positing to you, not the legitimacy.
[47:40.870 --> 47:52.950]  Yes, of course, if it's used in a certain way, and it's getting us the desired results, and we're raising awareness about corporate responsibility in a way that actually makes people aware of the issue, then that's great.
[47:52.950 --> 48:02.590]  But is shutting down someone's email really making them aware of the issues connected to, say, Yahoo's responsibility to protect privacy?
[48:02.590 --> 48:06.350]  Or is it just, oh, these frickin' hackers again, I can't get to my email?
[48:06.750 --> 48:10.010]  You know, like, that's my concern, is just, is this working?
[48:10.670 --> 48:30.790]  So, the issue that you're bringing up, which is the popular perception of hackers as, as I recently wrote, adolescent boys in basements who take out their angst about not having any dates on the body politic, is a much bigger problem and has been around far longer than the popular use of DDoS and activism.
[48:31.910 --> 48:44.830]  And, frankly, you have more of an argument with movies like Live Free or Die Hard than necessarily people who are trying to use DDoS in an activist context.
[48:45.110 --> 48:45.650]  Yeah.
[48:46.150 --> 49:02.070]  And, so my concern with the, but what will they think of us argument, is I don't want to be in the business of shutting down outlets of political speech because I'm worried about what someone is going to think of me and my friends.
[49:02.330 --> 49:20.670]  I think the Internet is far too valuable and technology is far too valuable a tool for political participation and political speech and political protest and disruptive political protest which should be legitimized than me worrying about what the Joneses down the street think of me.
[49:20.790 --> 49:23.890]  But what the Joneses down the street think is the only point.
[49:25.210 --> 49:33.290]  If the point is to get media coverage to raise awareness, if the purpose of activism is to get people to agree with us on point A or B.
[49:33.470 --> 49:40.010]  So if our action makes everyone disagree with us on point A or B, then it's like we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
[49:40.110 --> 49:41.530]  We might as well be working for Yahoo.
[49:41.890 --> 49:46.370]  And frankly, it's viewed as illegitimate now because it hasn't been around that long.
[49:46.730 --> 49:48.530]  I'm not saying the attacks are illegitimate.
[49:48.670 --> 49:50.630]  I'm saying, are we getting what we want?
[49:50.810 --> 49:53.430]  No, what I'm saying is that it's viewed as illegitimate now.
[49:53.430 --> 49:57.770]  Not that it is illegitimate now, but that it's viewed as illegitimate now.
[49:57.930 --> 50:00.910]  It's viewed as illegitimate now because it hasn't been around that long.
[50:01.690 --> 50:03.550]  Whereas tying yourself to a fence...
[50:03.550 --> 50:08.590]  Tying yourself to the front gate of the White House has been around for about as long as the White House has been there.
[50:08.930 --> 50:12.090]  And tying yourself to the front gate of anything has been around for as long as there have been gates.
[50:13.610 --> 50:16.410]  And I'm not protesting, I think...
[50:16.410 --> 50:29.370]  We're not going to have this tactic viewed as legitimate until we engage in a serious intellectual interrogation of what its value is and what the norms and modes of its use should be.
[50:29.610 --> 50:36.950]  I agree with that, but part of that question should also be, does chaining yourself to the gate get your point across?
[50:37.090 --> 50:39.670]  And if it does, then let's chain ourselves to the gates.
[50:39.690 --> 50:45.610]  But if it's not getting us what we want, then the problem isn't the legitimacy of the tactic.
[50:45.610 --> 50:54.210]  The problem is, are we being effective in this way, or is there a better way to use media and technology to get a point across, is what I was saying.
[50:54.330 --> 50:59.490]  Then that falls under the actual effect part of the analytical metric.
[50:59.710 --> 51:00.470]  I would agree with that.
[51:00.590 --> 51:01.050]  Okay, cool.
[51:01.390 --> 51:02.290]  I'm glad we're still friends.
[51:02.570 --> 51:02.830]  Okay.
[51:03.210 --> 51:03.790]  Thank you.
[51:07.450 --> 51:08.410]  I'm awfully tall.
[51:08.670 --> 51:09.410]  Thank you for your talk.
[51:09.410 --> 51:10.310]  You are awfully tall.
[51:10.950 --> 51:12.130]  Your talk was awesome.
[51:12.270 --> 51:12.490]  Thank you.
[51:12.730 --> 51:12.770]  Thank you.
[51:12.830 --> 51:15.510]  I have more of a comment, I think, than a question.
[51:17.010 --> 51:23.570]  I think that DDoS attacks are still important, and we have to continue to do them.
[51:23.990 --> 51:42.130]  But we should think about doing them in a two-step process, where, like you said before, okay, we do a DDoS attack on somebody and take some cooperation down or whatever for a couple of hours, but it goes into the press, and that press time is really,
[51:42.350 --> 51:44.830]  really important, because that's what informs the public.
[51:45.190 --> 51:48.930]  So, like, I think what we need to think about now is, okay, let's...
[51:48.930 --> 52:08.450]  Okay, we're going to take down Target X, but we want to make sure that the public and the press is going to see it, because then when that goes into the press, that's going to have a much larger effect than just, like, a bunch of f*cking geeks in their basements ran a denial of service attack.
[52:09.090 --> 52:11.090]  And that has a much larger effect.
[52:11.350 --> 52:21.250]  So, as hackers or activists, hacktivists, or whatever we want to call ourselves today, or whatever it is this week, you need to think about that.
[52:21.330 --> 52:23.730]  You need to think about, like, it's a two-step process now.
[52:23.890 --> 52:35.530]  You need to do that action and then figure out, like, but, like, how can we get into the press, because that's going to have a much larger, a large, larger thing on the bigger realm of things.
[52:36.070 --> 52:38.850]  You know, I mean, I, that's my feeling.
[52:39.050 --> 52:50.210]  Like, when I perceive this stuff, it's like, that's what, as hackers, I don't know if there's any people here, there's not a lot of people here, which suck, because your talk is great.
[52:50.930 --> 52:54.550]  But, like... There are more people here than any other talk we've ever given, so I'm happy.
[52:54.830 --> 53:06.010]  But people here that, people that are here listening to your talk that, all right, all right, whatever, that are going to do... Guys that are involved in doing this stuff, that's what you have to think about now.
[53:06.190 --> 53:07.850]  It's, you have to think about the bigger picture.
[53:08.310 --> 53:11.530]  It's no longer just, like, I'm going to hack somebody.
[53:12.550 --> 53:14.030]  You got to put it into the media.
[53:14.790 --> 53:17.270]  And that's where you, that's where we win.
[53:17.730 --> 53:17.950]  Yep.
[53:19.110 --> 53:23.410]  So the dude with the sign just told me that we have, like, five, now less than five minutes.
[53:23.590 --> 53:25.590]  So if you have a question, come up now.
[53:25.870 --> 53:26.050]  Yeah.
[53:26.050 --> 53:30.290]  I will totally admit to getting here late, and so, if this has been covered.
[53:30.590 --> 53:32.010]  Did you talk about Poland at all?
[53:32.630 --> 53:33.890]  I did not talk about Poland.
[53:33.990 --> 53:34.910]  Would you like to talk about Poland?
[53:35.070 --> 53:35.410]  No.
[53:35.530 --> 53:40.430]  I mean, like, there's... I mean, like, during the active protests, right, there was the...
[53:40.430 --> 53:42.870]  when the, like, anonymous guys masked up in Parliament.
[53:43.310 --> 53:47.550]  The Parliament's website was under DDoS, like, at that time.
[53:47.550 --> 53:47.850]  Yep.
[53:48.670 --> 53:50.790]  That's, like, serious politics.
[53:50.810 --> 53:51.370]  I don't know.
[53:51.470 --> 53:52.410]  Serious business, right?
[53:52.570 --> 53:56.810]  Like, and I don't know, like, I... that sort of kind of changed my opinion a little bit.
[53:57.010 --> 54:01.570]  Like, that just... a tactic that I was like, I'm kind of on the fence about this.
[54:01.750 --> 54:06.050]  Like, that it had that impact and kind of helping to get that treaty and kind of...
[54:06.050 --> 54:07.330]  That's a pretty strong, cool little statement.
[54:07.650 --> 54:14.170]  And so that just sort of kind of forced me to, like, start asking questions about, like, you know, kind of from the base again.
[54:15.310 --> 54:16.010]  Questions are good.
[54:16.150 --> 54:16.730]  We like questions.
[54:16.970 --> 54:17.070]  Yeah.
[54:17.570 --> 54:18.590]  So, we can talk later.
[54:18.730 --> 54:24.550]  I'm very interested in having the second female person who's asked it up to ask questions, who's behind you, ask a question.
[54:24.670 --> 54:24.930]  Sorry.
[54:25.230 --> 54:25.550]  It's okay.
[54:27.850 --> 54:31.030]  So, according to the U.S. government at the moment, corporations are people.
[54:31.330 --> 54:39.670]  So, any right you give people, such as DDoSing a website, you're technically at the moment, which may or may not change sometime in the future, giving to corporations.
[54:41.750 --> 54:46.270]  And DDoSing a website for a day and, oh, there's a big press about it, doesn't seem that bad to me.
[54:46.490 --> 55:00.570]  On the other hand, if Citibank decided that it really didn't want it memos up on the Internet, and in... and as well as all the takedown notices, they were going to DDoS every site that mentioned its memos, I would be a lot more offended.
[55:02.550 --> 55:10.490]  So, right now, being like really late at night, I am unwilling to get into a very fine-grained parsing of this... of the Citizens United decision.
[55:10.790 --> 55:13.370]  I'd much rather leave that to the lawyers that I work for.
[55:15.290 --> 55:23.630]  Again, though, I do not want to take rights away from people because I feel they could be misused by other people or other fake people.
[55:27.370 --> 55:28.290]  So, you're right.
[55:28.470 --> 55:30.310]  This could be used in a disturbing fashion.
[55:30.870 --> 55:36.630]  That does not mean that it is illegitimate in the hands of actual political activists.
[55:37.290 --> 55:42.230]  But we can get into an argument about the fine-grained implications of Citizens United with Hanni later.
[55:42.470 --> 55:50.890]  But if you were to ever make this legal or legitimize it in any other way, I feel like you would legitimize something much worse.
[55:51.390 --> 55:55.450]  And people who are killing people and putting their bodies in bags is horrible.
[55:56.050 --> 56:03.070]  And that doesn't mean you shouldn't, you know, have Fourth Amendment protection rights for people searching random bags in your house.
[56:03.350 --> 56:10.890]  On the other hand, something this big, it's not just going to be a small thing.
[56:11.130 --> 56:11.610]  And I'm confused...
[56:11.610 --> 56:17.450]  I mean, the Citizens United decision doesn't mean that we should take away the rights of people to give money to political campaigns.
[56:17.910 --> 56:20.650]  It means that the Citizens United decision was a shitty decision.
[56:22.370 --> 56:28.490]  But it doesn't mean that we should go around restricting the rights of actual individuals because we feel that they could be misused.
[56:36.870 --> 56:39.930]  Is there not any point at which you can misuse something too much?
[56:40.870 --> 56:45.210]  That's a whole other philosophical can of I'm not talking about it at midnight.
[56:46.250 --> 56:48.130]  When I, like, didn't sleep last night.
[56:49.630 --> 56:51.070]  We have to stop now.
[56:51.290 --> 56:52.590]  Thanks, everybody, for coming!