Hacks of Valor | Foreign Affairs

Hacks of Valor | Foreign Affairs
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137382/yochai-benkler/hacks-of-valor?page=show

Anonymous demonstrates one of the new core aspects of power in a networked, democratic society: Individuals are vastly more effective and less susceptible to manipulation, control, and suppression by traditional sources of power than they were even a decade ago. At their worst, Anonymous’ practices range from unpleasant pranksterism to nasty hooliganism; they are not part of a vast criminal or cyberterrorist conspiracy. Instead, Anonymous plays the role of the audacious provocateur, straddling the boundaries between destructive, disruptive, and instructive. Any government or company that fails to recognize this will inevitably find itself at odds with some of the most energetic and wired segments of society. Any society that commits itself to eliminating what makes Anonymous possible and powerful risks losing the openness and uncertainty that have made the Internet home to so much innovation, expression, and creativity.

Une brillante démonstration de la façon dont Anonymous est l’équivalent dans le cyberespace des manifestants de l’espace géographique... et un prise de jiu-jitsu envers les tenants de la manière forte de considérer Anonymous comme des dangers pour la cybersécurité.

Hacks of Valor | Yochai Benkler - Foreign Affairs
►http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137382/yochai-benkler/hacks-of-valor

Many of these cases, however, are ambiguous: Last November, for example, #Anonymous activists released the personal details of a police officer who had pepper-sprayed protesters at the University of California, Davis. Similar personal disclosures were a mainstay of the hacks against Arizona law-enforcement officers in 2011. In those cases, there are fewer easy answers to the questions of who is a valid target, what of that target’s information can rightfully be exposed, and who gets to answer these very questions.

We are left, then, with the task of assessing threats in a state of moral ambiguity. In more naïve times, one might naturally prefer a law-bound state deciding which power abuses should be reined in and which information exposed. But these are no longer naïve times. A decade that saw the normalization in U.S. policy of lawless detentions, torture, and targeted assassinations; a persistent refusal to bring those now or formerly in power, in both the public and private sectors, to account for their failures; and a political system that increasingly favors the rich have eroded that certitude. Perhaps that is the greatest challenge that Anonymous poses: It both embodies and expresses a growing doubt that actors with formal authority will make decisions of greater legitimacy than individuals acting collectively in newly powerful networks and guided by their own consciences.

Anonymous demonstrates one of the new core aspects of power in a networked, democratic society: Individuals are vastly more effective and less susceptible to manipulation, control, and suppression by traditional sources of power than they were even a decade ago.

#Internet n’est pas contrôlable | Reflets
►http://reflets.info/internet-nest-pas-controlable

Une interview de Laurent Chemla.

Bon, voilà un point où je me distingue de la plupart de mes coreligionnaires hacktivistes : si je suis opposé au contrôle, je suis en revanche de moins en moins motivé par la lutte pour la vie privée.
Du moment que personne ne tente de m’imposer tel ou tel style de vie, je n’ai que faire qu’on me surveille, qu’on sache tout de moi, qu’on m’espionne et qu’on m’épie, du moment que je sais qui le fait, comment, pourquoi, et que moi aussi je sache tout de ceux qui me surveillent.
Je pose donc deux préalables : la transparence totale pour tous (y compris et surtout celle de tous les pouvoirs et de tous les surveillants) et la non-ingérence totale. Et je crois que c’est, sinon souhaitable, au moins inévitable et probablement pas si grave que ça.