Hacktivism: Good or Bad?

Hacktivism is when people employ the use of hacking for activist purposes as a form of political or social protest. Hacktivists believe that citizen have the right to be informed and that if corporations and governments are not willing to provide citizens with information, then citizen have the right to hack and expose this information for themselves and for the greater public.

Over the years hacktivism has been a topic of concern. While some people see hacktivism as a form of positive protest and as a push towards freedom of information, other see hacktivism as being negative in that it is the illegal access of information that can threaten both personal and government security.

One of the biggest and most controversial hakctivist organizations is Anonymous. Anonymous has deface government and corporate website along with hacking and shutting down numerous child pornographic sites. They have done some good things, however, in the process they have often leaked personal information potentially putting people at risk.

While I believe in the freedom of information, when it comes down to it, there is some information that should remain privet. Bringing down illegal organization is commendable and I am all for it. However, I do not agree with the leaking of personal information. In 2015 a group know as Impact Team, claiming to be a hacktivist organization, hacked the dating site Ashley Madison and leaked account details that included users credit card info, emails, names, and addresses. This is a form of supposed hacktivism that I do not agree with. There was no real activist purpose behind this hack. People may not agree with the Ashley Madison website, however, hacking and sharing peoples personal information does not accomplish anything. The people who use this site have families and jobs and what they choose to do in their personal time is no ones business. By sharing these peoples personal information Impact Team put the lives and livelihoods of these people at risk.

Overall hacktivism, if done responsibly, can be a successful form of activism. That said, not all groups claiming to be hacktivists use hacking in responsibly manner. There are those organizations that abuse the phenomenon of hacktivism and use it as an excuse to perpetrate criminal activity and steal and share people’s personal information.

Privacy and Security in a Digital Age

If you had to choose between using social media or your privacy and security, which would you pick? For some this may seem like an absurd question, obviously ones privacy and security is more important then using social media. However, this is where you would be wrong. Every time we use a social media site or agree to the terms and conditions of a social media app, we forfeit our right to privacy and enable their use of our personal information. 

When we sign up for sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, we are asked to provide them with our personal information and access to our contacts and location services. This is information that we normally keep to ourselves in fear of misuses. However, when a social media sites ask us for this information we willingly without a though give it up. While adding your full name, age, birthday, province, and city to your Twitter or Facebook page may seem harmless, this is information that can be used to steel your identity or discover where you live. 

Criminals use social media sites to hunt for potential victims. There has been an increase in online identity theft in which criminals have taken peoples information right from their social media pages and used this information to create fake identities and bank accounts. Another threat is the use of location data, this has been adopted by sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Location data allows users to not only check in at certain locations but also allows these sites and potential third parties to track users travel patters. 

Marketing firms and advertising agencies have also begun to take advantage of location data in order to better understand consumer behaviour. Social media location data in combination with user information, provides them with the data needed to build consumer profiles. These consumer profiles can then be used to better reach their target market.

To think of a life with out social media is hard and I personally know that I would not be able to last a week without being connected. Hence, this is why I myself and many others choose to give up our information in order to stay connected to the online public sphere. In doing so, we also put our selves at risk of having our personal information, our photos and our identity stolen. 

Maybe this is just the price we pay to live in a digital world.

Hypertext Essay

Social media allow for the “extension of the public sphere to an online platform” in which anyone can both consume and produce media content. This participatory aspect of social media has allowed citizens to utilize sites such as Facebook and Twitter as platforms for both political and social activism. John Downing discusses how social media have become “integrated in the processes of social movements” and have become tools used by activists to protest and bring awareness to particular causes. 

An example of this can be seen in the ways in which the activist group Black Lives Matter has both used and relied on social media as a means to bring awareness to the injustice taking place in the legal system in regards to the criminalization and victimization of black people. #blacklivesmatter was used to gain support on Twitter and Facebook and to bring people together in order to organize street protests. This is just one instance where social media aided in activism. However, not all social media activist groups are as successful in their use of media as Black Lives Matters. Consider, for instance, Kony 2012. This was an activist campaign that targeted social media users by asking them to share and like a video in support of their cause. People shared the video all over Facebook but in the end there was no action taken and on the day in which people were suppose to go out and rally no one showed up. This is an example of how social media can fail as an activist platform. People watched the Kony 2012 video liked it and shared it but that was as far as the movement went. It stayed within the media platform and did not resonate into action.

This is often referred to as slacktivism and Morozov Evgeny, states that “the success of online political and social causes is hard to predict, let alone engineer” and that although online activism can sometimes bring about political or social change, it is rare. There is no doubt that social media have the ability to bring awareness to injustice. It is easy for someone to like or share something on Facebook or retweet a hashtag on Twitter. The challenge lies in transforming these likes into engaged activism and taking the passion to support a cause and putting it into action. As Bijan Stephen speculates, “social media could serve as a sources of live, raw information. It could summon people to the streets and coordinate their movements in real life.” Stephen is right in his assertions. Social media have allowed for a new way for activists to be informed and come together and they can be used in positive successful ways but there is no way to tell what social media activist campaigns will gain traction and what will not. What is certain, however, is that social and political power can be applied to the Internet and its sounding technology, but it takes a commitment by those involved to turn those Facebook likes into protest in the real world for change to happen.