Laptop keyboard. Credit: DarkSideX/flickr
Late last week there was a great story about anonymous online activists using electronic civil disobedience (ECD) to express their outrage at the continued effort to censor the Internet by Australian Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy and the Rudd Labor Government – details here, here and here.
The form of ECD utilized was the trusty old distributed denial of service (DDoS) action, which was, according to reports, successfully used to stop access to a number of government agencies’ websites. The background to the protest action is the Australian Government’s mandatory Internet filtering scheme, the so-called Clean Feed, which will require all Australian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to filter the content they provide before it is delivered to customers; there is no voluntary customer opt-in (or opt-out) for the system. See details here and here.
Of course there have been those that have questioned the legitimacy of using these kinds of tactics. And for the most part they offer sound justifiable reasons for not using such methods of protest, or at least not until all other means have been exhausted.
This is always an appealing position to take, committing to taking the already tried and true means of protest; more rallies, more letters to Members of Parliament, more letters to the Editor, more calling talkback radio, more citizen action groups and more meet ups. I’ll admit that this is the bread and butter of running long running campaigns, and especially when it is against the government and incumbent political party.
Community anger expressed
But what makes this story really interesting? It’s that electronic civil disobedience, in the form of the distributed denial of service (DDoS) action, was chosen to express the outrage of the community, or part thereof anyway.
The DDoS caused no real harm. There was no website defacement or redirection and no other indications that the security of the websites targeted had been compromised. Simply put; the only ‘harm’ caused by the DDoS was lost time in the government ability to spread its propaganda on the Internet. And if reports are correct, though admittedly conflicting, the maximum time these sites were down for was one hour.
That is one hour out of 24 hours, leaving 23 hours for the government’s propaganda to be available. There is no indication of the ‘cost’ of the ‘damage’ done by the DDoS, or whether a server or computer was harmed during the action. Maybe one of the website’s technical staff got a paper cut? We’ll never know.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. Credit Dr Ron/flickr
This is truly the first decent act of ECD in Australian cyber space since 2002/03 when the federal Department of Education’s websites were disrupted for 30 minutes. The action also helped illustrate that ECD can be an effective tool for supporting campaigns, especially in terms of raising awareness. Of course, like all forms of civil disobedience, they must be used sparingly or they lose their impact and can begin to have negative impacts on the campaign. The particular point about damaging the campaign against the government’s internet filtering scheme needs further exploration too.
Counterproductive?
Here many commentators arguing against the use of (electronic) civil disobedience speak of how such action damages the campaign, thereby playing into the hands of Senator Conroy and the government. They argue that Conroy uses such things to justify his government’s position on filtering the Internet. This is going to be a concern about any method used to try to raise awareness of any issue, but should not be a reason for not seeking publicity for this (or any) campaign. In this case the action could not be used by Conroy as it wasn’t about filtering the Internet but about blocking the telecommunications infrastructure supporting the government agencies’ websites.
Sure it gave Conroy more opportunities to nationally espouse his government’s brand of propaganda for a broken system of censorship, but it also gave voice to the greater number of opposing opinions. And this is really the point. Given the inertia surrounding the issue and the uncoordinated efforts of the individuals and lobby groups battling the Clean Feed, the DDoS re-invigorated the campaign.
If the action did do one thing, it did the most important thing in my humble opinion – it re-ignited the debate about the government’s proposed blanket censorship of the Internet. Even if for only a couple of days.
Alex Schlotzer is a straight talker when it comes to politics and loves to vent his spleen. He is actively involved in Australian and international politics with a keen understanding of the dynamics of the political machine. Alex has a prolific online presence and has been a cyber activist for over 15 years. He can also be found at his blog and his exciting online project Australian Politics TV.
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