“Free as in Freedom”: Rhetorical Motive in Information Liberation Texts, from Stallman to Snowden

By

Lindsey Pamela Leitera

Dr. Ben Click Mentor

May 1, 2015

2

Abstract

In 1983, Richard Stallman's code-liberating “GNU Manifesto” was posted onto a technology mailing list; the manifesto embodies a series of political, economic and social values known as the hacker ethic. Over the next 30 years, the ethical principles outlined in Stallman's treatise have continued to manifest themselves both online and off. The scope of this project covers the time period between 1983 and 2013, exploring a series of overlapping and cyclical rhetorical trends that are present in the writings of technologists. I trace the evolution of a global debate about political ideology, enlightenment ideals, identity and transparency from the inception of the Free and Open Source Software Movement to contemporary instances of high profile national security whistleblowing. At once a product of technology and a response to it, the texts I analyze are used in part to solidify group identification within insular social scenes. More importantly, however, these texts create an ideological continuity that spans generations of hackers, programmers, cryptographers, and data security analysts. By examining rhetorical motive in representative examples of information liberation texts, I arrive at several conclusions about the future of cyber security, global technology policy and digital activism.

3

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 4 Preface 5 Introduction 10 A Brief History of Hacking, 1959-1975 11 The Kairotic Moment: Bill Gates’ “Open Letter to Hobbyists” 17 “The GNU Manifesto”: Another Response to Gates 22 Here Comes Everybody: The Future of the Hacker Ethic 25 Section I: Political Ideology 27 “I’ve Always Been More Comfortable With Outlaws Than Republicans” 32 The Radical Cryptographers 37 New Frontiers 44 Section II: Enlightenment Ideals 45 Situated Ethos and Revolutionary Rhetoric in “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” 47

Code is Speech and the DeCSS Haiku 52 “’Normal’ People Don’t Know How to Program – Only Hackers Do That” 59

Section III: Identity 61 The #OpPayback Case Study: A ‘Rhetorical’ Analysis of Decentralised Architectures 63 Imageboard Politics and the Origin of Anonymous 71 “I Came for the Lulz – But Stayed for the Outrage” 76 Section IV: Transparency 78 Cablegate: WikiLeaks and the Question of Legitimacy 82 The Legitimacy of Openness 87 “We Are All Edward Snowden Now” 90 Conclusion 92 The Coming Cyberwar 93 Glossary 98 Works Cited 100 Works Consulted 103

4

Acknowledgements Pride of place belongs to Dr. Ben Click, an amazing advisor and editor. For putting up with my 4 A.M. drafts alone, he deserves praise; more incredible, however, is the fact that his feedback was ready for our meeting time a few hours later. This project would not have been possible without those thoughtful comments. It's been a blast, and I think we both deserve a drink. To Professors Michael Taber, Brian O'Sullivan, Robin Bates and Ruth Feingold, as well as Mandy Taylor, for all the formal and informal pieces of advice. To my family – Mom, Dad, Frankie, Grammy and Granddaddy: For your unwavering support, enthusiasm, and all the dinner table debates over the years. Thanks for being my posse, and for always showing up. To the professors and students: I owe you a debt of gratitude. If we shared a class, a Res Hall or a conversation on the path, then your perspectives, stories and ideas are all in here, too.

5

Preface When I arrived at St. Mary's College four years ago, I did not know what classes I would

take or what course requirements I would need to fulfil. I wasn't quite familiar with the campus

layout or community traditions. I wasn't even sure what my major would be. But I did know my

SMP topic.

In January 2011, as I watched the mailbox for college admissions decisions, I was following

a different development with equal interest and enthusiasm. Although the revolutionary social and

political movements taking place in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and throughout the Arab world were

indeed making international headlines, I had stumbled upon a largely unseen conflict, which

involved the secret arrests of Egyptian protest organisers and a string of Internet blackout events

occurring at the behest of the state. With few foreign journalists reporting from within the country,

Egyptian telecommunication companies intentionally interrupted service during the most violent

period of Hosni Mubarak's military crackdown in an effort to quell the demonstrations. Images and

footage of teargas clouds rising over Tahrir Square, the most widely circulated posts on Twitter

during in the month of January, ground to a sudden halt on the 25th as major Egyptian blogs fell

silent.

These censorship events, which lasted for nearly a week, were countered not by the

intervention of concerned Western governments or watchdog organisations, but through the

collaborative involvement of a global network of technologists. Calling themselves “tech support

for the Arab Spring,” a group of hacktivists and volunteer programmers worked tirelessly to convert

old modems and fax machines into makeshift Internet hotspots, allowing protesters in Egypt to

communicate with each other and the rest of the world. Digital activists defaced official state

websites, such that revolutionary messages, treatments for tear gas, and images of the chaos

unfolding in the streets of the capital city replaced the online platform for state propaganda. Other

volunteers re-coded an open source application designed to detect phishing attempts by the

Egyptian government: the program scanned potentially malicious emails that, if undetected, could

6

steal users' login credentials for their social media accounts. Across the Internet, a so-called

“Anonymous Care Package” was widely distributed: a 507-page document containing first aid tips,

free software how-to manuals, schematics with instructions on converting a 2-litre plastic bottle into

a riot-ready gas mask, a list of censorship-breaking Firefox plugins, and an essay by San Francisco

cyber-hippy John Perry Barlow titled, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” dated

February 1996.

I observed the highly organised mayhem with fascination; how this decentralised and

unwieldy group of troublemakers could successfully carry out so many coordinated cyber attacks

over an extended period of time was a question that confounded me. I wondered about the

implications of this newly formed coalition: revolutionaries on the ground in MENA countries, and

revolutionaries sitting on their couches half a world away. I kept thinking about that Care Package

and the text files it contained – and what an essay criticising a U.S. telecommunications law had to

do with goings-on under some of the most repressive political regimes. Finding answers to these

questions formed the starting point of this project, which eventually compelled me to learn about

the strange and complicated world of software documentation, encryption systems and

cryptocurrencies. As an added bonus, I also managed to uncover over 9000 ways to end up on the

DHS No-Fly List.

The sections of this paper are divided into four overarching themes derived from Steven

Levy's conception of the Hacker Ethic, an ideological framework first defined in his early work,

which chronicled the rise of technologist culture and the computer hacking social scene.

Individually, these sections relate to political ideology, enlightenment ideals, collectivist values and

an adherence to civic engagement and transparency; taken together, however, each of these distinct

principles articulate a controversial political vision, advanced almost universally by democratically-

minded and egalitarian computer hackers: information ought to be free. Using representative

examples of technologist rhetoric – text files, manifestos, essays, and speeches – I trace the

historical trajectory of politically motivated hacking from its beginnings in the MIT artificial

7

intelligence lab to the anti-secrecy whistleblower websites of the present day.

The introduction describes the evolving kairotic moment, in which business-minded,

capitalist entrepreneurs are rhetorically situated in opposition to hackers, who support ethical

sharing and collaboration on free and open source software projects. These ideologies are

juxtaposed through the contrasting ideological manifestos of Bill Gates and Richard Stallman

respectively, who both articulate their vision for making money in the burgeoning personal

computer industry. Using a rhetorical analysis of “An Open Letter to Hobbyists” by Gates, followed

by detailed descriptions of technologist responses to his text, readers are introduced to the historical

context that informs the beginning stages of an ideological conflict between the hacker ethic and an

increasingly prominent capitalist faction of economically motivated programmers.

Using Burke's dramatistic pentad as an analytical tool, the first section discusses the

complex political ideologies that inform technologist advocacy of information freedom. I

contextualise and analyse increasingly fragmented hacker subcultures – such as libertarian,

anarchist, Marxist and apolitical technologists – and discuss the phenomenon of the hacker

conference as a platform for the public exercise of Aristotle's three forums of rhetoric: deliberative,

forensic and epideictic. I argue that reformist and radical hacker factions - represented by John

Perry Barlow's essay “Crime and Puzzlement” and two crypto anarchist manifestos, respectively -

reflect an expansion of the scene-actor ratio. Moreover, this section complicates the unity of the

hacker ethic that was previously discussed in the introduction.

The second section describes attempts by several technologists to create unity among the

ranks of their ideologically decentralised counterparts through Burke's notion of consubstantiality.

The first text analysis examines the symbolic significance of several Enlightenment allusions that

ultimately lend legitimacy to technologist texts, such as John Perry Barlow's “Declaration of the

Independence of Cyberspace.” In this work, for example, the nationalistic language implicit in the

Declaration of Independence, combined with the loaded and revolutionary significations created

through the invocation of the Revolutionary War, feature prominently in Barlow's arguments

8

against the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. The second text, a poem comprised of over

400 individual haikus, manipulates the legal language of a court case about DVD encryption, using

deliberative rhetoric to encourage hackers and onlookers alike to disregard the law, learn

programming and participate in civic engagement through direct action and civil disobedience.

The third section relates to the paradoxical notions of collectivism and individuality that are

discernible in technologist political language and software utilities. The rhetorical analyses describe

the role of collectivist rhetoric and direct action in creating both ideological and social cohesion,

such as the symbolic identifications used by anonymous rhetors in aligning the interests of skilled

programmers with those of largely apolitical, offensive trolling culture. Using the 21st century

phenomenon of hacktivism, embodied somewhat imperfectly by the global, networked collective

known as Anonymous, the narrative focuses on the role of poetic language in defining the often

ephemeral and multi-faceted nodes of contemporary politically-motivated cyber attacks. Because of

the difficulty implicit in capturing the group's organisational hierarchies in concrete terms,

commentators turned to comparisons when attempting to describe the collective. For example, this

section compares Anonymous's anti-Scientology street demonstrations in 2008 to the “same”

group's campaign in support of WikiLeaks two years later; though an identical title and similar

tactics were affixed to Anon's activities, the two events represent distinct and separate portions of

the networked collective's exploits.

The final section relates to transparency, which is a widely held value among technologists.

Using the competing claims of legitimacy evidenced in pieces by Julian Assange and Edward

Snowden, I analyse the validity of the claims apparent in both documents. Examining the situated

ethos of both authors, it is possible to draw conclusions about the texts' audiences. Finally, I connect

several ideological and rhetorical trends from their contemporary manifestation within the context

of national security whistleblowing back to the beginning of this paper. Several similarities exist

between Assange and Snowden's calls to leak classified information and Richard Stallman's

justification of open source software development in the “GNU Manifesto.”

9

The conclusion of this project functions as a means of looking to the future. In this coming

cyberwar, what obstacles confront the United States and the community of nations? Is it possible to

reach consensus when addressing pressing information security challenges, despite the myriad

actors exerting their will on the scene – from the military, law enforcement and intelligence

communities, to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, political elites and civil societies at home and abroad?

Is the regulation of cyberspace a logistically feasible – let alone politically saleable – solution?

Finally, following the conclusion, I have included a glossary of unfamiliar phrases,

acronyms and terminology used throughout this text. It may be useful for readers unfamiliar with

niche technology lingo to briefly peruse the glossary prior to reading this document. Unless

otherwise cited, attribution for these definitions are adapted from Urban Dictionary, a crowdsourced

platform commonly used for indexing all manner of regional and cultural slang.

10

Introduction In 1983, Richard Stallman resigned from his position as a faculty member at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology to proselytise his idea of a free and open source operating

system, which he believed would unite programmers around the world and subvert the

“commercialization” of system software. The politicisation of hacker culture1 began much earlier,

though, influenced by a strange amalgamation of labour union slogans, Anti-War activism, science

fiction tropes, and collectivist aesthetics. The events that proved most formative to later iterations of

hacker culture were similar moments of controversy. The public and fiercely contested ideological

dispute between Bill Gates and “the Hobbyists” in 1976 served as a kairotic moment for the events

that inform this research project, wherein the idealistic principles of sharing espoused by many

programmers were challenged by the spectre of capitalism.

American journalist Steven Levy produced the first of many accounts that chronicle the

history of digital culture, technology and computer security. His book, Hackers: Heroes of the

Computer Revolution (1984), investigated the formative years of computer hacker culture. At the

time of its publication, Hackers received negative treatment by the press; the New York Times called

it “trivial” and “a monstrously overblown magazine article” (Lehmann-Haupt 1984). However,

Levy's chronology of the subculture proposed a hacker taxonomy that has, subsequently, proved as

unyielding as it is expansive. Specifically, he coined the phrase “Hacker Ethic”: a set of principles

and ethical imperatives that unite each generation of computer enthusiasts. Twenty-five years after

the publication of Hackers, Levy would reflect on each of his theory's tenets:

“Some of the notions now seem forehead-smackingly obvious but at the time were far from accepted ('You can create art and beauty on a computer'). Others spoke to the meritocratic possibilities of a digital age ('Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position'). Another axiom identified computers as instruments of insurrection, granting power to any individual with a keyboard and sufficient brainpower ('Mistrust authority — promote 1 The Jargon File – the essential glossary on computer hacker slang – defines hacker culture as, “A loosely networked collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of ‘normal’ values and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than 50 years old” (Raymond 1996).

11

decentralization'). But the precept I perceived as most central to hacker culture turned out to be the most controversial: 'All information should be free'” (Levy 2010). During the intervening years since 1984, the Hacker Ethic has been broadly applied to

describe the hacker subculture; in many ways, the component that Levy regarded – indeed, regards -

to be the most controversial, “All information should be free,” continues to provide the general

public with the most recognisable of contemporary narratives about hackers. Recently, for example,

the government of the United States was forced to consider which information should be free, as an

unexpected and uncomfortable series of conversations were held regarding the domestic

surveillance practices of the National Security Agency. The individual who leaked the classified

documents, military contractor Edward Snowden, was technically skilled and a self-described

“computer wizard” (Broder, Shane 2013). Meanwhile, the Guardian journalist who used Snowden

as a source, Glenn Greenwald, styled himself as an outspoken defender of digital civil liberties,

supporter of WikiLeaks, and critic of the Obama Administration's propensity to prosecute

whistleblowers. As such, Greenwald's readership prior to the NSA controversy was primarily

comprised of hackers and technologists, who considered him to be not just an ally, but also of

similar ideological reputation.

Though this project begins with the origins of the Free and Open Source Software

Movement in 1983 and concludes during the present-day phenomenon of national security leaks,

the mythology surrounding computer hacking and the Hacker Ethic begins much earlier, before the

advent of personal computers or the development of the World Wide Web.

A Brief History of Hacking, 1959-1975

The early era of computer hacking began during the late 1950s and 60s, concentrated in

Building 26 of MIT. A group of university students who participated in the Tech Model Railroad

Club (TMRC) appropriated the word “hacking” from the broader university lexicon around this

time. Traditionally, “a hack” had little to do with computing; rather, “in ancient MIT lingo,” the

word had always been used to refer to a clever or elaborate prank (Levy 1984, 18). No longer used

12

to describe the frequently occurring campus antics – usually involving the iconic Great Dome – the

railroaders used the word “hacking” to denote “a feat [that is] imbued with innovation, style, and

technical virtuosity” (19). The label of “hacker,” moreover, was used to signal the speaker's

admiration for the level of technical aptitude on display; the word acknowledged the style and

artistry required to properly execute a functional improvement to the railroad layout, fondly called

“The System” by the TMRC members. This group would be the epicentre of the nascent

programming subculture, collaboratively creating elaborate networks of track layouts using spare

parts from the MIT phone system.

In 1959, MIT offered its first undergraduate course in computer programming, instructed by

John McCarthy, a professor of mathematics and early proponent of artificial intelligence research.

For the members of the TMRC, who were mostly undergraduate students, this was the first

opportunity to use MIT's massive IBM machine, which was typically reserved for use by Officially

Sanctioned Users: faculty members, administrators, and a few select graduate students. At that time,

the IBM machine was the only computer terminal owned by MIT and its operation was constrained

by bureaucratic oversight, to ensure that inexperienced users would not tamper with the multi-

million dollar piece of technology. Programmers operated the IBM computer by first typing their

programs into keypunch machines, which would transfer their input commands onto a stiff manilla

card. By feeding the punched card through the IBM - based on the placement or absence of a hole -

the computer could execute the appropriate series of commands.

For the members of the TMRC, the most frustrating aspect of the IBM machine was the fact

that their self-designed programs, each carefully punched into manilla cards, could be fed into the

computer only by an administrator. It was common to experience long waits between the time that

cards were handed in and when the results were returned to novice programmers. Though they now

had permission to use the machine, their access was still substantially obstructed. The TMRC

members were confounded by this regulation, because the operation of the IBM system was

antithetical to the computing environment encouraged by the club. The unspoken philosophy of the

13

TMRC understood that restricting physical access to any system made understanding its workings

impossible. The basement room that housed The System was always unlocked, and club members

were known to tinker with the layout at all hours of the night. Moreover, the atmosphere of the club

room was the inverse of the mood surrounding the IBM machine. Whereas the TMRC members

enjoyed the hours spent “constantly improving The System, arguing about what could be done next,

[and] developing a jargon of their own that seemed incomprehensible to outsiders” (Levy 1984, 18),

the IBM operators eschewed this sort of unruly interactivity.

Fortunately, that same semester, the military development laboratory Lincoln Labs

indefinitely loaned MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) a second computer terminal.

The TX-0 model - or Tixo, as it was affectionately called – was one of the first computers of its

kind: a machine that did not use punchcards. Rather, users would punch their program into rolls of

paper tape using smaller machines called Flexowriters, which resembled typewriters. This

configuration allowed the programmers to diagnose errors in their code immediately, rather than

waiting for a technician to input their programs onto the IMB machine. More importantly, however,

it eliminated obstacles constraining the use of technology. Access to information became a

technological possibility and, shortly thereafter, a cultural norm.

For the TMRC members, another innovation surrounding the TX-0 was the absence of

bureaucratic regulations. During daylight hours, Officially Sanctioned Users did exercise their

monopoly over control of the Flexowriters; however, the TX-0 was never locked up in the evenings.

The time allocated to the rest of the student body was assigned on a first-come-first-served basis: an

adhocracy rather than a rigid structure that elevated certain demographics over others. Students

came and went as they pleased, creating an atmosphere that resembled the model railroad club room.

For these early hackers, programming was not an individualistic or goal-oriented endeavour.

On the contrary, it was standard practice for students to leave their unfinished programs on the

bookshelves of the Tixo room in Building 26, so that the next programmer could improve its design.

Officially Sanctioned Users were programming with certain outcomes in mind – “they ran statistical

14

analyses, cross correlations, simulations of an interior of the nucleus of a cell” (Levy 1984, 26) –

one TMRC member summarized the motivations of his fellow hackers by comparing computing to

playing a musical instrument. In other words, the TX-0 was a vehicle for creativity and the creation

of something beautiful. To outsiders, the programs designed by the hackers appeared unremarkable;

for example, one TMRC student, Peter Samson, spent all night coding a program that converted

Arabic numerals to Roman numerals. When the professor in charge of overseeing the TX-0

operations encountered Sampson the following morning, Levy described the situation:

“Jack Dennis, after admiring the skill with which Samson had accomplished this feat, said, 'My God, why would anyone want to do such a thing?' But Dennis knew why. There was ample justification in the feeling of power and accomplishment Sampson got when he fed in the paper tape, monitored the lights and switches, and saw what were once plain old blackboard Arabic numbers coming back as the numerals the Romans had hacked with” (Levy 1984, 28). The early hackers did not particularly care about the utility of the projects they were working on,

because the creation of programs was never intended to serve as a means to a specific end.

It was that same spirit of sharing and anarchy that would inspire the first hacker-run

institutions during the 1970s. The most famous of these informal hobbyist groups was the

Homebrew Computer Club. Though the club was advertised as an “amateur computer users group”

in the first meeting invitations, most of the members had backgrounds in engineering or computer

programming. During the inaugural meeting, the yet-unnamed group “discussed what they wanted

in a club, and the words people used most were 'cooperation' and 'sharing'” (Levy 1984, 160). Their

language and attitude suggests Kenneth Burke's notion of rhetoric as creating “social cohesion”

(Burke 1950, 22). Just like the TMRC hackers before them, the Homebrew Computer Club

eschewed bureaucratic structures of any sort, rejecting leadership hierarchies based on artificial

constructions. “In true hacker spirit,” Levy continues, “the club had no membership requirement,

asked no minimum dues... and had no elections of officers” (160). Gordon French, one of

Homebrew's co-founders - and whose garage provided the space for the first meeting, would later

quantify the Club's membership as, “The damned finest collection of engineers and technicians that

you could possibly get under one roof” (Lent 2015).

15

The primary focus of the Homebrew Computer Club's interest during the first meeting was

the Altair 8800, an unassembled microcomputer kit being marketed towards do-it-yourself hardware

hackers. The company selling the kits, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), was

a struggling calculator manufacturing business seeking to provide a more affordable alternative to

computers built by legacy technology companies - companies selling computing machines that

innovative hackers perceived as out-of-date and in need of upgrades. In 1975, a model for the Altair

8800 was featured on the cover of the most popular hobbyist publication, Popular Electronics.

Under the headline, “Breakthrough!” MITS promised to revolutionise the industry and make

computers more accessible. However, after being flooded with orders – reportedly over 4,000 –

MITS was unable to produce the necessary quantity of machines within the quoted timeframe of 60

days. The long delays in shipment frustrated many, as did the rumours that the Altair lacked an

ample supply of memory. On the occasion of the first Club meeting, the first shipment of Altair

parts had arrived in the Bay Area. Despite their shared annoyance at MITS with regard to the

machine's perceived shortcomings, the assembled hackers were interested in assembling the kit and,

eventually, improving the computer's design.

Technology historians have credited the MITS Altair 8800 as the catalyst for the personal

computer revolution, largely as a consequence of the decentralised network of amateur technologist

clubs that formed around its inception. At the same time, however, the Altair was also the piece of

technology around which the first fragmentations of the Hacker Ethic became visible. One of the

most fundamental ethical principles governing computer hacking was called into question: “the free

flow of information, particularly information that helped fellow hackers understand, explore and

build systems” (Levy 1984, 179).

The controversy developed over a roll of paper tape containing a program called BASIC,2

2 BASIC was a well-known computer language. Altair BASIC was particularly coveted because, once implemented, Altair owners were able to program by typing commands directly to their machine, rather than the laborious, time-consuming practice of using paper tape. Getting the BASIC language to run on an Altair 8800 would allow users to write programs more efficiently and, in the view of many hackers, finally make

16

the first piece of software developed by Microsoft – then spelled Micro-Soft and staffed by three

employees: Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Monte Davidoff. Gates and Allen, first-year college students

who believed that the future of the hobby market depended on good software, approached MITS

with their functioning Altair BASIC application. The company began listing the BASIC script in

their catalogue, alongside the hardware products that it sold. Members of computer clubs around the

world began ordering the application, only to endure the same lengthy wait as one year prior, when

MITS delayed the shipment of the initial Altair kits. Despite the increase in consumer frustration

and MITS's apparent inability to service their existing base of customers, company president Ed

Roberts created a public relations campaign called the “MITS Caravan”: a motor home full of

MITS engineers who travelled from city to city “setting up Altairs in motel seminar rooms” and

inviting the public to see “the amazing low-cost computers at work” (Levy 1984, 182). Sardonically

dubbed the MITS-mobile by disgruntled hackers, the actual audience encountered by the Caravan

were hobbyists:

“People who ordered Altairs had questions on when they could expect delivery. People who owned them would want to know where they went wrong in assembling the monster. People who owned MITS memory boards would want to know why they didn't work. And people who'd ordered Altair BASIC would complain that they hadn't gotten it” (Levy 1984, 182).

When the Caravan reached Palo Alto, California during the summer of 1975, the Homebrew

Computer Club was similarly intent on confronting MITS. There, the members were “amazed” to

find an Altair on display running BASIC, allowing anyone to type a command and get responses

instantly. When questioned about the eventual shipment of the promised BASIC applications, the

MITS employees were non-committal. One Homebrew member, Steve Dompier, would describe

the ensuing controversy years later, saying, “Somebody, I don't think anyone figured out who,

borrowed one of their [BASIC] paper tapes lying on the floor” (Levy 1984, 182). In the following

months, the paper tape was passed around during the Homebrew Computer Club meetings, copied

using tape-copying machines, and mailed to other Computer Clubs; “[they] charged what in hacker

the machine worth the money and time spent assembling it (Crosby 2008, 25).

17

terms was the proper price for software: nothing” (Levy 1984, 183).

The coherent ethos and objectives of the hacker community were at odds with business

ventures; capitalism stands opposed to sharing. In describing the discovery of the BASIC paper tape,

Steve Dompier's language itself reflects the existence of the capitalism versus sharing binary:

“Someone... borrowed” the software, as opposed to “someone found,” “took” or “appropriated” it.

By linguistically softening – some would argue obscuring - what occurred during the BASIC

controversy, hobbyists like Dompier were able to create ethical distance between their community

and the encroaching conventions of businesses. In the words of Steven Levy, “The stage was set for

what some would call a crime and others would call liberation” (182).

The Kairotic Moment: Bill Gates' “Open Letter to Hobbyists”

The circulation of “pirated” copies of Altair BASIC were summarily passed around the

world: a symbolic affirmation of collectivity and a gesture of goodwill between hobbyists. Though

the response among hackers was unified, it was not long before the BASIC programmers were able

to voice their objections to the heist. The Homebrew Computer Club received a letter at the

beginning of 1976, signed by “Bill Gates: General Partner, Micro-Soft.” Titled, “An Open Letter to

Hobbyists,” the editor of the Club Newsletter, Robert Reiling, published the full text of the

document in the January 1976 issue. Prefacing the letter, Reiling offered his own introduction,

saying:

“Just as the Newsletter was in final preparation, a letter arrived from Bill Gates via MITS. Reproduced... on page 2, it should be read by every computer hobbyist. Surely many of you will want to write to Bill. Send a copy of your correspondence to me... and I will try to summarize your comments” (Reiling 1976, 1). Copies of the letter were also sent to every major electronics publication in the country, sparking a

widespread debate by technologists of both sides' positions.

Simply put, Gates' letter is a defence of capitalistic economic systems and ethics, arguing

that Micro-Soft deserves compensation from the community of hobbyists for their “theft” of the

Altair BASIC paper tape. The text makes multiple appeals to the audience, most obviously through

18

its gratuitous use of rhetorical questions; however, the letter's simultaneous use of business jargon

(“market,” “hired,” “royalties,” “invested”) and the top-down presentation of demands (“pay up”)

demonstrates Gates' fundamental misunderstanding of the culture he seeks to address.

After briefly outlining his business motivations for developing the BASIC software –

chiefly, the inevitable expansion of the hobby computer market - Gates concludes the first

paragraph by stating that “a hobby computer is wasted” without “good software and an owner who

understands programming.” The implications of this statement, which Gates' audience no doubt

grasped, was that their own Altair applications – which were shared freely at club meetings – were

substandard and, further, hobbyists' knowledge of programming was inferior. Gates builds from this

statement later, through the following rhetorical questions: “Who can afford to do professional work

for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting

his product and distribute for free?” In hobbyists clubs around the world, however, members had,

indeed, spent years programming, finding bugs, issuing documentation and distributing their

projects for free. Gates' letter invalidates the utility of hobbyist work, then dismisses the skill and

artistry apparent in hobby software. To a community that considered these attributes its greatest

virtue, such dismissiveness by an outsider was a clear affront.

The following two paragraphs of his letter serve to vaguely describe the development

process of Gates, Allen, and later Davidoff, in coding the BASIC software, reasserting Gates'

invented ethos of a company CEO. Gates concedes that the initial work “took only two months,”

but goes on to assert that the subsequent time spent debugging and documenting was valued at a

price “exceeding forty thousand dollars.” Additionally, he claims that 90% of the BASIC “users”

did not buy the program and hypothesises that, based on the royalties Micro-Soft had received thus

far, his time spent on BASIC was worth “less than two dollars an hour.” Rather than convincing the

hobbyists to “pay up,” though, Gates' evidence provoked quite a different response.

Lee Felsenstein, a prominent Homebrew Club member, reflected on the inflated numbers

provided by Gates, describing the situation as “[A] delineated rift within the industry... There's the

19

actual industry where they're trying to make money and there's the hobbyists where we're trying to

make things happen” (Crosby 2008, 25). In Felsenstein's opinion, the hobbyists immediately

rejected Gates' proposed monetary calculations and, by extension, his argument:

“We all knew... the evaluation of computer time was the ultimate in funny money... So we all knew this to be a spurious argument. And I doubt that anyone sent in the five hundred dollars that Bill Gates requested from that letter” (Crosby 2008, 25). In addition to scepticism surrounding the legitimacy of his data, the hobbyists suspected that Gates'

attempts to monopolise software commodities were a thinly veiled, dishonourable cash-grab.

Ironically, Gates' CEO persona was a convincing one to the hobbyists, but not for the reasons he

intended: rather than bolstering the legitimacy of his statistics, Gates' invented ethos inspired broad

distaste among his audience, who viewed all institutions as fundamentally untrustworthy.

Gates' use of invented ethos – as the founder of Micro-Soft – glorifies top-down power

hierarchies, a convention that offended the sensibilities of the hobbyist community. Specifically,

Gates elevates himself and the work of Micro-Soft over the contributions of the masses of

programmers hacking at club meetings, even presuming to give clubs instructions about how to deal

with members who pirated the Altair BASIC software: “What about the guys who re-sell Altair

BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? […] They are the ones who give hobbyists a

bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.” For the Homebrew

Computer Club in particular, this comment reflected a lack of understanding about the adhocratic

nature of hacker communities; no one possessed the authority to lead discussions or collect dues, let

alone wield the legitimate power to force a fellow member to leave. Based on precedents, moreover,

it was well known that voting privileges in club matters were extended to the participants who

attended that meeting; whether they were a first-time attendee or a club founder, everyone

assembled was given a single vote without regard for seniority. Gates had not attended any club

meetings and was therefor unqualified to advise the club about conducting its business.

Gates presupposes the hobbyists' collective motivations for “stealing software,” attempting

to undermine the honesty and morality of his audience by indicting all of the communities without

20

providing substantial evidence to prove the legitimacy of his claims. He states:

“As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had” (Gates 1976). Rather than a philosophical debate over free information and access – which was how the

discussion was framed by members of the Computer Clubs – Gates simplifies hobbyist motivations

into a juvenile, impulsive, and vindictive act of theft. Gates' sarcastic style - “Who cares if the

people who worked on it get paid?” - functions similarly: to call into question the honourable

ethical framework championed by hobbyists. This rhetorical strategy was designed by the author to

further heighten the ethical distance between his own respectable, capitalist position and that of the

anarchic, ill-behaved masses.

In the February 1976 issue of the Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter, Robert Reiling

published one response to Gates' “Open Letter.” Written by Homebrew member Dr. Mike Hayes,

the first paragraph of the answer is steeped in mild-mannered pleasantries; Hayes thanks Gates,

declaring that “[his] software has helped many hobbyists” and describing the Micro-Soft product as

“marvellous.” It quickly becomes clear, however, that Hayes' apparent politeness is intentionally

derisive - a co-optation of Gates' sarcastic style in defence of the opposite opinion. The succeeding

sentences accuse Gates of “asking for software welfare” - a phrase meant to mock Gates' capitalist

“Open Letter” through the ironic subversion of its premier enthymeme: quality work ought to be

monetarily compensated. The final paragraph provides additional evidence to support this notion:

“If you want monetary reward for your software creations, you had better stop writing code for a minute and think a little harder about your market and how you are going to sell to it. And, by the way, calling all of your potential future customers thieves is perhaps [an] 'uncool' marketing strategy” (Hayes 1976). Adopting the business jargon present in the “Open Letter,” Hayes critiques Gates' understanding of

not only capitalism (by implying that the free market has spoken to price the Altair BASIC software

as free), but also his ability to run a business in the more general sense (by directly referencing

Gates' lack of professionalism). In typical hacker fashion, Hayes is able to summarise the entire

21

hobbyist ethos not by methodically or rationally breaking down each of Gates' points, but by curtly

dismissing his behaviour as “uncool.”

The stated goals of amateur technology groups like the Homebrew Computer Club sought to

improve the functionality of computing machines, bring technology to the people and, ultimately,

create a more ethical society built on cooperation, creativity and sharing. However, the Altair

BASIC controversy suggested that the expansion of the computer market could signal the downfall

of the Hacker Ethic, forcing programmers to compromise their principles. Worse still, hackers

began to realise that the existence of less altruistic philosophies could corrupt the possibility of a

digital utopia.

Gates' letter heralded the beginning of the computer revolution: with affordable and easy-to-

use machines, technology would indeed be brought to the people. Though poorly received by the

hacker community, Gates' assumptions about the commercial software industry were economically

salient and confirmed in short order. In some ways, with the inception of the personal computer and

user-friendly operating systems, computing machines would become more accessible than ever

before. However, many of the individuals who identified as hackers saw the limitations of this

accessibility: though more people owned computers, they were policed by legal restrictions such as

software license agreements, passwords, and embargoes on sharing intellectual property. Hackers

began to devise new methods of subverting these legal obstacles; the most ambitious - and

successful – of these plans was Richard Stallman's GNU Project. While Bill Gates' letter suggested

a practical and familiar trajectory of technologist involvement in the future of global marketplaces,

Stallman's response, years later, advocated for a radical economic approach. As a consequence,

subsequent generations of hackers and technologists would develop a similarly radical rhetorical

tradition.

“The GNU Manifesto”: Another Response to Gates

By 1983, the decay and death of the hacker ethic was complete, according to Richard

Stallman, signalling the stasis moving from evaluation to extreme proposal. The MIT professor of

22

Artificial Intelligence, who “was militant in his execution of [The hacker ethic's] principles” (Levy

1983, 342), began to style himself as the “Last Hacker” in the years preceding his resignation from

the institution. Once the epicentre of hacker culture, wherein lively and audacious creativity was

encouraged, Stallman viewed MIT as a bureaucratic sell-out - an obsolete machine - that had slowly

but surely betrayed its ideological origins. Citing a series of the institution's incursions upon open

access, the increasing presence of the Department of Defence in the Research Laboratory of

Electronics and the dwindling spirit of professional camaraderie, Stallman adopted a bleak outlook

on the future. In one interview, he explained: “I'm the last survivor of a dead culture and I don't

really belong in the world anymore. And in some ways I feel I ought to be dead” (Levy 1984, 352).

Symbolically, Stallman's resignation can be viewed as an act of civil disobedience, in line

with the archetypal hacker's propensity to mistrust authority. Only through the public rejection of

oppressive and hierarchical institutional constructs – how Stallman came to view MIT – was he was

able to pursue its decentralised antithesis in the form of the GNU Project. Rather than creating a

software project in the hierarchical style of the commercial industries he despised, Stallman opted

instead for a political organisation as ephemeral and global as the technical infrastructure he sought

to develop. The ARPANet,3 populated by many like-minded hobbyists and hackers, provided a

collaborative atmosphere similar to the golden age of programming at MIT, though its participants

were geographically situated around the world.

Stallman announced his plan to create an entirely free and open source operating system in

September of 1983 over the ARPANet by using the computers in the MIT's Artificial Intelligence

3 Designed and developed by the U.S. military's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and later the Department of Defence, the ARPANet was a non-commercial project aimed at connecting various universities and research centres in the United States to share information. The network functioned using the TCP/IP communications protocol. Though the U.S. military attempted to discourage ARPANet users from “sending electronic mail over the ARPANet for commercial profit or political purposes” (Stacy 1982, 9), the network allowed for the sort of digital interaction that is frequently referenced as a model for the modern Internet. For the most part, universities tried to police users' operation of the ARPANet internally, as evidenced by MIT's AI Lab handbook of terminal etiquette, which reminds readers, “Sending electronic mail over the ARPANet for commercial profit or political purposes is both anti-social and illegal. By sending such messages, you can offend many people, and it is possible to get MIT in serious trouble with the Government agencies which manage the ARPANet” (Stacy 1982, 9).

23

Lab. His original “GNU Manifesto” was subsequently circulated over numerous programming

mailing lists, and many hackers volunteered their “time, money, programs and equipment”

(Stallman 1983) in accordance with Stallman's request. Though technologists are notorious for their

varied and fiercely contested opinions, Stallman was symbolically well-positioned to lead this

radical movement due to his ethos as both a hacker “insider” and an outspoken critic. He remained

affiliated with MIT until the Thanksgiving of 1983, at which point he devoted all of his energy to

the creation of the GNU operating system.

In addition to his frustration at MIT, proprietary software companies, and the increasingly

commercial interests of his fellow programmers, Stallman also regarded the use of commercial

software to present an unacceptable moral dilemma. Before using certain programs, for example,

users were mandated to sign a legal contract promising not to share the software. Stallman counters

the ethics of this strategy by referencing the Golden Rule - “do as you would be done by” - an

ethical code with cross-denominational spiritual connotations. Stallman references his own

academic and professional experiences when dealing with this moral conflict, saying, “I worked

within the Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other inhospitalities, but

eventually they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution where such things are done for

me against my will” (Stallman 1983). Due to its historical connections to the early days of hacker

culture, MIT's AI Lab was a well-known and regarded feature in the annals of hacker mythology;

using the audience's assumptions about the institution, Stallman emphasises the extent of the

problem at hand.

In direct opposition to Bill Gates' “Open Letter to Hobbyists,” Stallman makes frequent

allusions to communism throughout the text of the GNU Manifesto – most visibly in the title of the

document. Though the GNU Manifesto does not resemble Karl Marx's “Communist Manifesto” in

structure or style, Stallman's word choice throughout the piece suggests his similarly political,

social and economic goals. For example, in addition to his stated goal of subverting the commercial

interests of the software industry, he refers to fellow programmers as “comrades” and decries

24

licensing agreements for forcing users to “break solidarity” with each other. This loaded

terminology prompts the audience to consider the GNU Manifesto as part of a larger political

tradition. This tradition, which inspired political action in the United States such as the labour,

worker's rights, and anti-war movements, feature top-down leadership models that are overthrown

for the benefit of society. By referencing these events, Stallman is able to subtly associate his own

project with the revolutionary elements of progressive political movements, establishing Burkean

identifications between symbols.

In addition to references to communism and the Golden Rule, Stallman uses allusions that

frame his arguments in terms of the both the philosophical and the practical. Jeremy Bentham's

“utilitarianism,” Kantian ethics, the American patent system, personal experiences, and Murphy's

Law demonstrate the diversity of Stallman's proof. Stallman even uses the language of capitalism as

justification for sharing. Under the heading titled, “Nobody will use it if it is free, because that

means they can't rely on support,” he comments, “If it is true that users would rather spend money

and get a product with service, they will also be willing to buy the service having got the program

free. The service companies will compete in quality and price; users will not be tied to any

particular one” (Stallman 1985). While Stallman's identifications work on multiple levels of

persuasion, Gates' argument - by merely using capitalism as evidence - appears monolithic by

comparison.

At the same time, Stallman is also able to construct his ethos around the collective, building

credibility among his hacker audience. For example, after briefly outlining the basics of the GNU

Project – including an explanation of the title GNU, a recursive acronym that stands for “GNU's

Not Unix” - the author shifts point-of-view from the individual “I” to the collective “we” when

detailing the technical components of the operating system. The second paragraph of the document

states in part:

“We will use TeX as our text formatter, but an nroff is being worked on. We will use the free, portable X Window System as well. After this we will add a portable Common Lisp, and Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things, plus online documentation. We hope to supply,

25

eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and more” (Stallman 1983). In a modern context, this statement may appear to reflect Stallman exerting his control over the

project. However, given the deficit of non-proprietary software available to all hackers, the

specified details he does provide - such as the inclusion of the text formatter that will be employed -

were the only viable options. Though steeped in technical lingo – with which the audience would

already be intimately familiar – the Manifesto is non-specific about the shape of the eventual

operating system. This non-specificity bestows ownership of the GNU Project on the audience,

inverting the traditional model of production and furthering the appeal of openness. With the

exception of the first section, titled “What's GNU? GNU's Not Unix,” the Manifesto largely ignores

the components of the project that relate directly to technology; instead, the text serves as a

justification and defence of ethical behaviour and sharing.

Because of its expansive scope and reasoning, the stakes in Stallman's argument eclipse

those in Gates' piece. At one point, Stallman compares the importance of making “good systems

software” freely available to the importance of air remaining a free commodity. The implications of

this comparison would seem extreme to computer users today – let alone during a time when so few

individuals had access to such technologies. The effect of this comparison on his argument remains

clear, however: to Richard Stallman, the creation of free software is vital, and will serve the

interests of humanity.

Here Comes Everybody: The Future of the Hacker Ethic

Early computers were defined by their inaccessibility: not only were they massive and

nearly impossible to use but also, up to the 1950s, the only individuals who had access to

computing machines were affiliated with the U.S. military. Although the security and defence

industries developed the first computers, the culture that has since surrounded this technology since

has always welcomed - and inspired - the transgressive. The irreconcilable philosophical differences

existing between the United States military and computer hackers remain a lasting source of tension

in both communities. Similarly, the commercial interests that Stallman sought to dismantle play an

26

even greater role in the control of private information today.

Embracing Stallman's solution to the moral problems of 1983, a vocal contingent of hackers

maintain that the ideological underpinnings of the Free Software Movement offer the most viable

practical means to eliminate the world's reliance on proprietary systems by providing individuals

with alternative technological frameworks. However, others have adopted a more disruptive

aesthetic, in line with Levy's archetypal hacker image. “Liberating information” is an umbrella term,

which can encompass a variety of tactics, from gaining unauthorised access to systems, to stealing

private communications, to turning classified information over to journalists.

Richard Stallman considered himself to be the Last Hacker; however, the future of hacking,

despite its increasingly fragmented adherents, would continue to reframe political debates, create

digital spectacle and challenge the discourses of the status quo.

27

Section 1: Political Ideology

“While geek culture kind of grew up as an outsider culture, that changed. It's at the heart of politics and the heart of social movements now... Hacker culture used to be relatively apolitical, but now,

every action that you take and every piece of code that you write has political effects.” - Eleanor Saitta, 2013

Though many post-Stallman hackers were content to use computers for purely non-political

ends, the networked world and “the meatspace”4 were becoming increasingly intertwined – and at

odds. In the past, social circles of hackers were able to emerge based on geographic proximity –

MIT's Tech Model Railway Club, for example, or the Homebrew Computer Club: like-minded

students or professionals with obscure, niche interests. With the advent of the Net, however,

connectivity and engagement increased: the threshold of expertise required to access to the Internet

remained high, and those who learned to parse the arcane technical protocols to partake in online

discussions could uniformly be defined as technologists. Kenneth Burke would describe the

evolving situation, which took place in the late 1980s and early 90s, as an alteration of the scene-

actor ratio. As the number of participants, or actors, debating online, creating technologies and

attempting to establish legal order increased, the platform - or scene - through which their

communications occurred likewise expanded. This sudden disruption of established order prompted

a series of social, political and legal controversies, as the lawless culture of the computer hackers

met opposition in the form of criminal cases and regulatory legislative proposals.

It was around this time that the word “cyberspace” - adapted from William Gibson's science

fiction writings – was applied to the Internet. No longer regarded by technologists and outsiders as

an abstract collection of wires, writings about the Internet began to define it as a place: “a

qualitatively new world, a frontier” (Sterling 1994, 549). This framework was not understood and

reiterated solely by hacker “insiders”: law enforcement agencies and politicians were increasingly

4 Defined by Urban Dictionary, the de facto encyclopaedia of slang, the noun “meatspace” is, “a term, originating from cyberpunk fiction and culture, referring to the real (that is, not virtual) world, the world of flesh and blood. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The opposite of cyberspace” (2005).

28

aware of cyberspace - as a place where crimes were being committed, just like in the physical world.

In the United States, following a series of arrests related to computer crime throughout the late-

1980s, computer hobbyists and hackers envisioned an apocalyptic future for their beloved Net.

Resurrecting the spirit of Richard Stallman's “last hacker” persona, public debates among

technologists began to surface on B.B.S.s,5 then Usenet boards and, finally, on the World Wide

Web as questions regarding legal control of technology were presented for consideration. As a new

generation of technologists – more actors prepared to influence the scene - found their way onto the

Internet, their priorities solidified around a single objective: keeping cyberspace open to all and out

of the reach of the state. Despite some persistent similarities, the methods by which these

technologists influenced the scene often differed, causing internal discord and fragmentation.

The above quote comes from a contemporary lecture “No Neutral Ground in a Burning

World” by Quinn Norton and Eleanor Saitta, two journalists, computer security researchers and

social justice advocates, at the 30th annual Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Hamburg,

Germany (2013). In the early 1990s, the hacker conference was a new “scene” that technologists

adopted with enthusiasm, and the only one that occurred outside the confines of cyberspace. The

increasing significance of “real life” meet-ups – for hackers to present computer security papers,

“learn new things, meet new people, and drink a beer or twelve” (Trumpbour 2003) – is a specific

example of the expanding scene-actor ratio, as described by Burke.

In the mailing list announcement for one such conference, planned to take place from

August 6th-8th, 2003 in Pittsburgh, author Mark Trumpbour gestures jokingly at the immensity of

the technologist “scene,” referencing the diverse cast of characters who were known to frequent the

cons: “Come out and meet your favorite hackers, phreakers, phrackers, feds, 2600 kids, cops,

security professionals, U4EA, r00t kids club, press, groupies, chicks, conference whores, k0d3 kids,

convicted felons, and concerned parents!” (Trumpbour 2003). This sprawling list of personalities is 5 B.B.S., which stands for Bulletin Board System, refers to a computer server running software that allows connected users to relay messages to each other, share links to outside news sites, and uploading or downloading software. B.B.S.s are regarded as the forerunner of the modern social networking site.

29

far removed from the specificity present in classifications of the TMRC, or the Homebrew

Computer Club, or even the early GNU developers. The 1990s can be viewed as a liminal space

between a time period of coherence and one of decentralisation: whereas early technologist

generations are fairly homogenized in their makeup, later iterations are impossible to group together,

as evidenced by Trumpbour's haphazard inventory.

Even within the limited framework of computer security conferences, the scene likewise

expanded: in 1987, Phrack magazine sponsored the first hacker conference to be hosted in the

United States, SummerCon, which was held annually and would pave the way for similar events to

be developed over the next five years. DEF CON and Blackhat in Las Vegas, ToorCon in San

Diego and Hackers On Planet Earth (H.O.P.E) in New York City are all examples of conferences

that were founded within this window of time.

As an institution, the hacker conference is an LED-light and Club-Mate fuelled celebration

of hacker culture, and the most identifiable platform for the practice of Aristotle's three forums of

rhetoric among technologists: deliberative, forensic and epideictic. Keynote addresses, for example,

serve as an example of deliberative rhetoric, as they typically relate to the utilisation of technology

to solve societal problems, followed by an invocation of political action. Elements of epideictic

rhetoric appear throughout panel discussions and lectures, which frequently praise larger-than-life

figures – whilst blaming their detractors – and occasionally involving spirited heckling from the

audience.6 Finally, popular conference games, such as “Spot the Fed” at Las Vegas's DEF CON,

can be interpreted as a form of judicial rhetoric. Originally conceived as a paranoia-motivated way

for hackers to “win free T-shirts for identifying federal agents” (Thomas 2002, xxv), the contest

functions as an ironic dialectic, wherein conference-goers publicly accuse suspected Feds, both

participants are invited onstage to defend their positions (or, conversely, the Fed can “confess”),

6 A modern example of failed epideictic speech occurred during the keynote address at Blackhat, delivered by then-NSA Director General Keith Alexander, in the wake of the 2013 scandal. In his defence of the intelligence agency, Alexander stated, “We [the NSA] stand for freedom,” to shouts of “Bullshit” by the crowd. Someone else interrupted the speech, accusing the General of lying to Congress: “Why would people believe you're not lying to us right now?” (Greenberg 2013)

30

and the assembled audience votes “guilty” or “innocent.” Subverting the expectations of police-

hacker relations, “Spot the Fed” facilitates the public shaming, heckling, and adjudication of

traditionally “law abiding” attendees by those who are wont to be tried in a federal court themselves.

The wide range of topics covered in hacker conferences suggest high and diverse levels of

community participation, which includes interests in subjects ranging from lock picking and

network security lectures, new technology and civil disobedience training sessions, or Internet

memes and coffee brewing competitions. The lecture by Norton and Saitta provides one example of

this phenomenon. Despite its presentation at one of the oldest worldwide technology conferences,

the topics discussed in “No Neutral Ground in a Burning World” do not reside in the realm of the

technical; on the contrary, Norton and Saitta are primarily concerned with the societal implications

of technology and the resulting ethical imperatives that software developers must confront in the

modern era. This lecture is one example of the often pluralistic and conflicting approaches to

understanding technology present within hacker subcultures today. Upon referencing the 2013 CCC

presentation line up, a colour-coordinated schedule that categorises lectures by topic, attendees can

easily understand the diversity apparent in the lectures: for reference, listed concurrently with

Norton and Saitta's talk are panels on firmware configurations, hacking SmartTV devices and

particle collision experiments. Following their talk, the room would be used to host “Hacker

Jeopardy” (Zeitplan für Tag 1 2013). Although technology and programming continues to be the

focus around which technologists and hackers assemble, the introduction of new actors, which

began in earnest in the early 1990s, meant that the voices of feminists, politicians, anarchists,

minors and law enforcement personnel were superimposed onto a scene that was once an upper or

middle class, professional “boys club.”

Expectedly, factions began to develop among technologists as they constructed different

strategies to achieve their objectives given increasingly varied perspectives and values. Stallman's

Free Software Movement sought to establish technological systems that would allow users to

withdraw completely from unacceptable and restrictive legal conditions; yet, some technologists

31

and programmers suspected that divorcing their work from reality was, in itself, an unethical

solution. Moreover, Stallman's GNU system limped slowly toward completion, as its team of

developers struggled to code the most critical component of the operating system: the kernel, or the

part of the computer responsible for managing memory, processing and application performance. A

vocal contingent of technologists began to question whether or not Stallman's dream was even

possible.

The deficit of practical alternatives to proprietary software was one motivating factor for the

rise of the criminal hacker: a technologist who uses his or her knowledge of computers to break into

systems, steal trade secrets, or vandalise websites. Representational signs created unity within

earlier technologist collectives, such as mutually understood mythologies, in-jokes, jargon and,

perhaps most importantly, the unspoken adherence to a broader ethic. For example, MIT's Artificial

Intelligence Lab transcended its academic influence, becoming an early technologist symbol.

Universally viewed as the birthplace of hacker culture, the AI Lab once encapsulated the values of

the culture, conveying the prestige, creativity and intellectual rigour categorising the “art” of

hacking. For some new actors, however, both the signifier and the signified no longer occupied a

place of high esteem; on the contrary, many younger hackers asserted that the first instances of

hacking were perpetrated by the a subculture known as the Phone Phreaks, individuals who

manipulated audio frequencies in early telecom systems to place unpaid, untraceable prank calls.

Criminal hackers were younger, more concerned with economic gain or status, and usually less

interested in the craft of hacking – which explains their identification with the Phreaks rather than

MIT's computer science faculty. Incendiary political language and irreverence toward authority are

also part and parcel of the criminal hacker, or cyberpunk, aesthetic.

Because the GNU Manifesto did not contain ideologically satisfactory, or even feasible,

answers according to some hackers, groups continued to invent different, but equally elaborate,

technical fixes, such as cryptographic algorithms, digital currencies and radical “free information”

campaigns. Others took to the streets, crafted slogans and advocated for reform, adopting the

32

political sensibilities of conventional activists. Still others simply logged on to the Net to talk shop

or debate with ageing anti-war techno-hippies, San Francisco liberals, and the new class of digital

rebels calling themselves “Cyberpunks.” In general, the divisions that emerged can be grouped into

two camps: reformist and radical political campaigns. To service practical as well as symbolic gains,

reformist hackers began to embrace varied political ideologies in an effort to voice specific

grievances, organize demonstrations, explain unfolding events and devise new social or

technological institutions. Meanwhile, the radical faction manipulated or disregarded the law to

great effect, sometimes avoiding legal prosecution, and often creating spectacle.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – described by some as the American Civil

Liberties Union of the Internet – was the first formal technology-centric interest group. Created in

response to an unprecedented hacker crackdown by the United States government beginning in the

late 1980s, the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization remains an ever-present fixture in the canon of

technologist lore in both the United States and abroad. John Perry Barlow, one of the organization's

three founders, has written extensively about his personal exigence for undertaking the project,

explaining his intention to “fund, conduct, and support legal efforts to demonstrate that the Secret

Service has exercised prior restraint on publications, limited free speech, conducted improper

seizure of equipment and data, used undue force, and generally conducted itself in a fashion which

is arbitrary, oppressive, and unconstitutional” (Barlow 1990). Just as Stallman's GNU Project

sought to combat the legal and cultural failings of proprietary software systems, the EFF similarly

aspired to “hack” what he perceived to be unjust political and judicial institutions.

“I've Always Been More Comfortable With Outlaws Than Republicans”

John Perry Barlow's account of the events leading up to the creation of the EFF are

recounted in the essay “Crime and Puzzlement,” a title spoofing Dostoyevsky's late-19th century

Russian novel. Combining the literary influences of American Western tropes, science fiction

allusions, and Kafkaesque absurdity, Barlow describes his experiences in Cyberspace, including

bizarre encounters with a rogue band of cyberpunk “outlaws” known as the Legion of Doom and

33

the inept FBI agents whose efforts to police the deputed legal territory proved laughably ineffective

In the opening sentences of his manifesto, Barlow crafts a humorous narrative, casting

himself as the main character in a cartoonish Western. The opening conflict is a banal situation that

occurred in the late 1980s, recognisable to anyone familiar with the subtleties of B.B.S. or chat

room etiquette: two unknown, pseudonymous strangers enter a digital discussion board, prompting

confusion from community regulars. Barlow uses comedic language and irony to subvert the

audience's expectations about the event, reimagining the atmosphere of an online B.B.S. as a 19th

century frontier saloon and casting the “strangers” as mysterious bandits. This opening introduces

the notion of villainous, presumably masked cyberpunks, whose arrival alone is enough to disrupt

the established digital tranquillity. In this opening section, Barlow briefly adopts a cartoonish

Western dialect, only to revert back to standard English for the duration of the essay: “So me and

my sidekick Howard, we was sitting out in front of the 40 Rod Saloon one evening when he all of a

sudden says, 'Lookee here. What do you reckon?' I look up and there's these two strangers riding

into town. They're young and got kind of a restless, bored way about 'em. A person don't need both

eyes to see they mean trouble...”

Though he uses the metaphor initially for comedic purposes, Barlow's “Wild, Wild West”

functions on multiple literary and rhetorical levels. By drawing upon existing means of

identification, the author is able to make use of associations that are familiar to his audience.

Through the comparison, Barlow uses symbolic coding to suggest a host of meanings, which

associate the Internet to the mythic “Frontier” in the minds of his audience: specifically, notions of

freedom, exploration, lawlessness, progress, and opportunities to profit. Barlow unpacks the nature

of his metaphor explicitly, describing the Internet as,

“Vast, unmapped, culturally and legally ambiguous, verbally terse, hard to get around in, and up for grabs. Large institutions already claim to own the place, but most of the actual natives are solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of sociopathy. It is, of course, a perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and new ideas about liberty” (Barlow 1990). Barlow rejects the claim that “large institutions... own [cyberspace],” an assertion that, in itself,

34

situates his allegiance with the hackers and against any entity attempting to control the Net's

anarchic users. Although the “two strangers” in his opening are “looking for trouble,” Barlow's use

of Frontier imagery nevertheless romanticises the criminality and on display, as well as indicates

the author's sympathetic treatment of his subject. The comparison of cyberspace to the Wild West

was so foundational to Barlow's beliefs about the nature of technology that he would make

reference to it in the very title of his non-profit.

The cyberpunks that Barlow encountered on the electronic frontier, whose handles ranged

from the political (Karl Marx and The Leftist) and provocative (Prime Suspect and Unknown

Soldier) to the haphazardly misspelled (acid phreak and phiber optik), were a part of a hacker group

known as the Legion of Doom (LoD) and representative examples of a new class of technologist

actors. Named after the council of super-villains from the DC Comics universe, Barlow describes

their ilk as “fractious, vulgar, immature, amoral, insulting, and too damned good at their work”

(1990). Though their collective criminal exploits often involved fraud and identity theft, many of

the participants were most interested in pranking and stunts, such as placing unpaid calls or

disconnecting the phone lines of celebrities. The group maintained the controversial opinion that, if

computer systems are improperly or inadequately secured, hackers should be encouraged to break

into them. By that same logic, unlocked houses ought to be robbed.

The LoD frequently engaged in public, online debates with non-members over the ethics of

gaining unauthorised access to computer networks – specifically, Barlow mentions an online

conference moderated by Harper's magazine. During that conversation, reformist technologists

struggled to map Stallman-esque reasoning onto the more radical cyberpunk agenda. For example,

in one exchange, Dave Hughes, a retired army colonel, asserts, “Networks are built on trust. If they

aren't, they should be.” To which the cyberpunk acid phreak replies sarcastically, “Yeah. Sure. And

we should use the 'honor system' as the first line of security against hack attempts” (Barlow 1990).

The idealistic philosophical allusions that comprise major ethical claims in “The GNU Manifesto” -

Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism and “The Golden Rule” among them – are situated in opposition to

35

the pragmatic, result-driven objectives of the cyberpunks. Despite the heated nature of the

conversation, the assembled company's differing ideological perspectives, and the fact that the LoD

would target Barlow's telnet connection, Barlow maintains that he was inclined to sympathise with

the cyberpunks, stating, “I've always been more comfortable with outlaws than Republicans, despite

having more certain credentials in the latter camp.”

Indeed, the cyberpunk subculture of hackers share some similarities with the original

adherents of Steven Levy's hacker ethic; however, many Free and Open Source Software

developers refused to bestow the title of hacker upon individuals who engage in criminal activities,

resetting the stasis of the issue back to a matter of definition. Debates over the meaning of the word

“hacker” became a reoccurring source of controversy, with law-abiding, white-collar programmers

claiming ownership over the word and referring to illegal computer use disparagingly as “cracking,”

because it involves breaking network or software security. Other definitions of the word began to

emerge, stating an opposite claim and limiting the scope of hacking to solely criminal acts. The

abundance of technologist manifestos penned during this narrow window of time function as a

means of asserting probable truths, usually to an audience that is predestined to agree with all major

premises. The inability of the community to resolve disputes about definition parallels its inability

to move forward as a collective; at a foundational level, the controversy was indicative of

representational systems that had disintegrated or utterly failed.

Despite their differing ideological leanings, John Perry Barlow regarded the systematic

roundup of the Legion of Doom members by the Secret Service with outrage in “Crime and

Puzzlement.” The members were accused of breaking into a computer owned by the telecom

company Bell South and downloading a document that outlined the administrative procedures,

servicing, upgrading and billing protocols for a 911 emergency telecom system. As Barlow points

out, no proprietary information or access codes were contained in the three-page text file. The

document was subsequently passed around the Net and picked up for publication by various mailing

lists and hacker magazines; as a result, federal authorities convened a Grand Jury, eventually

36

executing 27 search warrants and indicting three LoD members. “The law had come to cyberspace,”

Barlow says, adding, “I've begun to wonder if we wouldn't also regard spelunkers as desperate

criminals if AT&T owned the caves” (Barlow 1990), reinforcing the exploratory – rather then

criminal – nature of cyberpunk offences.

Agents of the federal government constituted another new category of actors exerting their

influence on cyberspace. As law enforcement agencies investigated the cases, it became

increasingly clear to both new and existing technologists that “the Feds” misunderstood even

rudimentary computer processes, as evidenced by the number of search warrants served on

individuals who merely downloaded the Bell South documents out of curiosity, but had no part in

the seizure of the private information. Despite the fact that an ever-increasing number of civilians,

whose geographic locations were situated in many jurisdictions, now populated the Net, the number

of actors who determined the legality of digital speech remained confined to a select – and under-

educated – few.

Barlow contextualises the goals of his non-profit in terms of free speech and open access: to

protect the rights of “the future's opinionated nerds” (Barlow 1990). Recognising that the federal

government has the monopoly of legitimate power in adjudicating the matter, he acknowledges the

high stakes implicit in the court cases of the coming years. The outcomes of these legal proceedings

were crucial to the persistence of the lax standards of free speech and open access on the Net.

Similarly, Barlow recognises the strategic political benefits created by a unified front of

technologists, lobbying in concert for the preservation of rights via existing legal channels. Barlow's

essay thus becomes as much a defence of the cyberpunks as it is about his exigence for creating the

Electronic Frontier Foundation. Using insider hacker humour, Barlow gestures at the fact that

technologist factions were ideologically decentralised, conceding to his audience that, “Not

everyone will agree. Crackers are, after all, generally beyond... sympathy.” The non-profit, then,

can be viewed as Barlow's attempt to alter the number of actors exerting control over the political

scene of the Internet: limiting the influence of institutions like the federal government, while

37

affirming the rights of the Net's sub-category of rabble-rousers, however unpopular their actions

may be.

The language of frontier America can be used to explain the motivations of both camps of

technologists, both reformist and radical. If cyberspace takes on symbolic significance as a region

of unexplored territory, the cyberpunks adopted the southern frontiersman attitude of Captain

Simon Suggs, the fictional creation of Johnson Jones Hooper, who advised, “It is good to be shifty

in a new country.” The quote summarises the independence, intrigue and subtle humour inherent in

the criminal hacker identity, as well as captures the dubious or averse nature of authority figures –

the individuals who supply the motivation behind for their “shifty” behaviour – within that

historical narrative. Conversely, the life motto of Davy Crockett, “Be always sure you're right –

then go ahead” (1834), shares similarities with that of Stallman's or Barlow's adherents: if the

ethical stipulations of a matter are met, individuals have the authority to act unilaterally within their

own power.

The Radical Cryptographers

Barlow's reluctant defence of digital shiftiness became a more controversial position through

the involvement of the crypto anarchists: mathematicians and revolutionaries who viewed secure

communication as a multifaceted solution to numerous societal ills. Cryptography, a technological

utility, provided the practical means of ensuring that secure communication. Despite its

technological origins in the realm of military strategy, the development of superior cryptographic

tools was a cause sustained by private citizens – most of them academics – throughout the 1990s, at

which point the issue was framed as a national security concern by the intelligence community.

Over the years, self-described crypto anarchists began to seek out a forum to express their political

and social ideas anonymously, leading to the creation of entrenched social norms such as radical

notions of individual freedom, privacy and free speech. The so-called “CryptoWars” were the first

notable confrontation in a lasting conflict between governments and this faction of libertarian

hackers. Although a different scene and new actors were involved in the development of

38

cryptographic tools, as well as the ideological imperatives that were constructed around them, the

matter of legal encryption would become the first issue that reformist hackers would organize to

oppose, prompting the eventual involvement of the broader technologist community, including

reformist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The promise of unbreakable encryption was a scientific puzzle that baffled mathematicians

throughout the 20th century; reaching this objective would allow data to be securely and

anonymously shared. The solution to the encryption conundrum ensured absolute privacy for

anyone, anywhere. Articles written in the Scientific American magazine throughout the 1970s and

80s speculated that perfect secrecy could be attained through the application of public key

encryption.7 To digital trouble-makers, this technology offered protection to political dissidents and

revolutionaries; to law enforcement, however, the result would lead to criminals trafficking in

stolen information and plotting their offences with impunity. Given the high-stakes implicit in

sharing anti-government ideas, the academy, the military and ordinary hobbyists began to test the

hypothetical systems outlined in scientific articles.

One of the first technologists to invoke the ethos of crypto anarchy was Tim May, a former

Intel engineer, who was a founding member and prolific contributor to the Cypherpunks Mailing

List, an electronic message board for cryptography enthusiasts – and the occasional scholar. The

speculative writings that appeared on the mailing list, as well as the casual discussions that

frequently occurred, combined the intellectualism of the academy with the impulsivity of the

7 The work of Martin Gardner on key encryption was a non-traditional and theoretical approach to cryptography, which led scientists to consider using two keys to scramble messages instead of the conventional generation scheme of one. Imagine that Alice and Bob – cryptographers’ favourite hypothetical actors - are attempting to communicate with each other. Each would generate their own set of encryption keys: a public key for scrambling messages and a private key for decrypting them. Alice's public key can be publicised and made widely available, because it is only used for harmlessly scrambling secrets, not unscrambling them. Bob would then write his message to Alice, encrypt it using her public key, and ship the message through cyberspace. Without access to Alice's private key – the only way to decrypt a message intended for Alice – the message would remain scrambled. Provided she keeps the private key securely stored, any communications between the two would remain safe from snooping by meddling third parties (Greenberg 2012, 62).

39

telecom-hacking cyberpunks.8 Many members of the electronic mailing list identified politically as

libertarians, while others eschewed politics completely. May was just as fascinated by the societal

impacts of complete anonymity as he was by the technological structures that made such a system

possible; as such, his writings predicted and, ultimately, galvanized supporters of legal access to

cryptography, deploying both deliberative and forensic rhetoric.

A brief text, titled “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto,” was written by May and posted online

on November 22, 1992, after passing it around at a real life cypherpunk meet up in San Francisco.

In his post to the mailing list, May prefaces the manifesto by addressing his audience as, “The entire

readership of the Cypherpunks list, spooks [law enforcement officers], eavesdroppers, and all.

<gulp>” (1992). This sarcastic designation is indicative of the paranoia implicit in community

engagement, as well as the public acknowledgement the Mailing List’s lack of privacy under the

current technological system. Through this sentence, not only does May establish the intended

audience of his piece, but he also acknowledges the dichotomous relationship between his intended

readership and its actual audience.

Alluding to the language and revolutionary exigence of “The Communist Manifesto,” May

draws the conclusion that the dissemination of cryptographic technology is not only “practically

realizable,” but also a political and economical inevitability (1992). He begins by stating, “A

spectre is haunting the modern world, the spectre of crypto anarchy.” Like Marx, May appeals to

his audience's understanding of the societal structures that surround financial and political decisions.

However, rather than offering Marx’s remedy of class war between the bourgeoisie and the

proletariat, May reimagines the technologically-savvy masses as a kind of 21st century proletariat,

8 To distinguish the two radical groups, it is useful to know that the cypherpunks appropriated their name from that other technologist subculture (In cryptography, a 'cypher,' refers to the decryption key, used to unscramble a secret message). Both factions shared an affinity for cyberpunk science fiction and, indeed, some overlap existed within members’ identification. For example, before becoming the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange participated in Legion of Doom style criminal hacking, as well as proposed a deniable encryption scheme called Rubberhose to the Cypherpunk mailing list. The Rubberhose system was designed to withstand attempts by enemy third parties to gain access to encryption keys through the use of torture.

40

rising up to overthrow security-controlling political elites. Moreover, according to May,

cryptography – not capital - will fuel the coming revolution.

May bolsters his ethos not only among an audience of Cypherpunk Mailing List readers, but

also within a broader discourse of (decidedly unwelcome) participants, by using specific examples

of developing technologies, combined with esoteric scientific language. Before referencing, “High-

speed networks, ISDN, tamper-proof boxes, smart cards, satellites, Ku-band transmitters, multi-

MIPS personal computers, and encryption chips” - some of the devices or systems that would

challenge the political authority of governments – May indicts the National Security Agency for

“monitoring” cryptographers presenting mathematical research at European and American

technology conferences. Although the language of his manifesto does not explicitly reference the

forms of intimidation deployed by intelligence agencies, their tactics were widely discussed within

technologist circles to both rationalize paranoia and pragmatically motivate cryptographic progress.

May begins to build a case against those individuals, likely listening in, who he views as

overreaching government actors, endlessly striving to interfere with the work of scientists and limit

the progress of independent citizens. By including the claim that the NSA had conducted

surveillance on scientists, he charges the intelligence agency with incompetence and frivolity. At

the same time, he elevates the ethical claims of the cryptographers in question, casting them as

courageous truth-tellers, who continue to make scientific headway, despite the unceasing intrusions

of the state.

Throughout the piece, May repeatedly reminds his audience that his conclusions are sound,

despite the limits posed by the power of the state and the absence of workable encryption solutions

at the present. To endue his manifesto with legitimacy, May evokes a symbol of progress – one

familiar to any technologist, yet broadly applicable to any American reader: the frontier West. First,

May compares cryptography to the printing press and medieval guilds, grouping them together as

similar forces for limiting state power. Next, he metaphorically raises the idea of private property

by referencing another piece of technology: barbed wire. He states:

41

“And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms, thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery of an arcane branch of mathematics come to be the wire- clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property” (May 1992). True to technologist form, May illustrates his distain for intellectual property through an adherence

to the principle of free information, which he suggests will be liberated by cryptography. The notion

of the frontier is applied to technology again, for slightly different reasons than in Barlow's “Crime

and Puzzlement.” Unlike the printing presses and medieval guilds of Europe, the West refers to a

specific and American concept of progress – a notion of freedom - that was lost, presumably, with

the establishment of superfluous law, order and government regulation. Despite this, May's

comparison does not end pessimistically; rather, his essay supplies the strategy required to restore

the uniquely American ideals of freedom and progress represented by the West: Crypto Anarchy.

He concludes by declaring, “Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!”

In 1996, the application of cryptography left the realm of hypotheticals, using some of the

same technological protocols that May suggested in his 1992 manifesto. Jim Bell, another

outspoken member of the Cypherpunk mailing list and self-described crypto-anarchist, imagined the

elimination of global governments through a revolutionary technological scheme. “Assassination

Politics” was widely circulated by the members of the Cypherpunk mailing list, as well as similarly

libertarian Usenet discussion boards. Readers' responses spanned a range of opinions, ranging from

confusion to outrage to outright glee. Bell's 40-page manifesto9 suggests that computer users

harness the power of encryption and digital currencies, awarding cash-prizes to anyone who

accurately “'predicts' the death of any government employees, officeholders, or appointees” (Bell

1997, 1), effectively putting a bounty on the head of any politician in the world. In the long-term,

Bell predicted, “nobody above the level of county commissioner would even risk staying in office”

(4), ushering in a new era of limited government. Not only did the plan purport to be

technologically untraceable; Bell also asserted that the scheme would bring justice to governments

9 For the purposes of this analysis, I will examine the first two parts of “Assassination Politics.”

42

worldwide.

Bell reiterates the word “organization” throughout the “Assassination Politics” essay; he

also repeatedly revisits the practical and legal logistics of the system he devises. Both rhetorical

characteristics are attempts to legitimise the assassination lottery as a valid type of political

institution. Along similar lines, when publishing his essay, Bell does not utilise any cryptographic

tools to obscure his identity (4); on the contrary, his name appears on the title page of the document.

This decision begins the process through which Bell invents an ethos for himself: using his real

name lends currency to the seemingly fantastical notion that killing politicians for digital cash is a

legitimate form of political participation. Bell signals to his audience that he is unafraid of the legal

repercussions of his plans, not because these law enforcement officers cannot locate him, but

because he is operating within the bounds of the law.

Bell offers a stoic report of his system's technical makeup as a means of instilling trust in his

audience – the individuals who will presumably participate in the betting and killing of targeted

politicians - as well as to reinforce his own ethos as a transparency advocate. He describes the

process by which individuals would securely participate in the lottery through the following

sentences:

“Associated with each name would be a dollar figure, the total amount of money the organization has received as a contribution, which is the amount they would give for correctly 'predicting' the person's death, presumably naming the exact date. 'Guessers' would formulate their 'guess' into a file, encrypt it with the organization's public key, then transmit it to the organization, possibly using methods as untraceable as putting a floppy disk in an envelope and tossing it into a mailbox, but more likely either a cascade of encrypted anonymous remailers, or possibly public-access Internet locations, such as terminals at a local library, etc...” (1997, 1-2).

Bell is appealing to the logos of his audience by explaining his system's construction in detail,

offering them the option to “review the source code” of his system for themselves before deciding

to participate. This logical argument is almost identical to the pragmatic appeal of free and open

source software, which verifies its security through robust opportunities for peer review. The virtue

of transparency also illustrates that Bell does not stand to gain, from a monetary standpoint, by

devoting his time and resources required to create the assassination lottery. On the contrary,

43

members of his audience would be acutely aware that Bell was inviting the scrutiny of the Feds by

posting the essay onto the Internet under his own name. Again, Bell's ethos is constructed around

the premise that he is courageously standing up to the government and unafraid of the consequences.

Like Tim May, Bell was similarly interested in notions of revolution though technology; the

preface of Part 2 of “Assassination Politics” functions as a fictional narrative concerning the subject

of revolution. In it, a fictionalised Jim has a conversation with his friend Dorothy over pizza,

referring to one of his new inventions as, “A new idea, but it's really evolutionary. Literally

REVOLUTIONARY.” When Dorothy jokingly asks, “Which government [he is] planning to

overthrow,” Jim responds, “All of them” (3). The invented exchange calls attention to what the

audience is likely thinking: that Bell's assassination lottery resides in the realm of action movies or

science fiction novels. However, through this exchange, Bell suggests that scientific or

technological progress can lead to political revolution – if someone is willing to devise an inventive

system. Such a claim, with its reimagination of Marx’s bourgeoisie as political elites, relies upon

his audience's preexisting beliefs. To members of the Cypherpunk Mailing List, who had read Tim

May's manifesto years prior, the notion that technology could engender political revolution was an

idea as widely accepted as technologists’ support for civil liberties issues.

Following the fictional narrative, Part 2 opens with the following hypothetical scenario,

which echoes the sentiments of a more familiar sort of revolution: “Imagine for a moment that as

ordinary citizens are watching the evening news, they see an act by a government employee or

officeholder that they feel violates their rights, abuses the public's trust, or misuses the powers that

they feel should be limited. A person whose actions are so abusive or improper that the citizenry

shouldn't have to tolerate it” (Bell 1997, 3). Bell provides a sense of urgency and importance to his

own revolutionary statements by using the logical appeals of the Declaration of Independence, a

document which serves as justification for the American Revolution. Moreover, by paralleling his

argument to that of the United States' favourite political rebels – specifically, the Founding Fathers

– Bell establishes the historical precedent for using lawlessness and violence to bring about a more

44

just society.

New Frontiers

References to founding documents or events in United States history are predicated upon

Enlightenment-era ideals of human nature, state building and individual freedom. “Assassination

Politics” exemplifies the trend towards classical liberalism, which became increasingly pronounced

within later examples of technologist writings. As the reformist and radical factions of technologists

established differing systems of identification among their community-oriented devotees, both

subcultures were united in their renewed adherence to the virtues of private property, free

expression, and the primacy of the individual. By aspiring to such ideals, instances of ideological

diffusion and cooperation became increasingly noticeable within the ever-expanding technologist

scene.

To return to the earlier analysis of quotes from the frontier West: “It's good to be shifty in a

new country” and “Be always sure you're right – then go ahead” are phrases that offer a convenient

place-holder for the ideological differences between the radicals and the reformers. The spirit of

independence and individual agency, however, is ultimately reflected in both statements. During the

second half of the 1990s, the dragnet of illegality spread ever wider, through legislative attempts to

curtail digital privacy, limit online speech and regulate access to cryptography. Increasingly, the

representational appeal of shiftiness – an ideological mechanism that criminal hackers used to

divorce themselves from “upright” programmers and hobbyists - would morph into a broader,

community-wide obligation or virtue. The threat of arrest was not just a reality for the shiftiest of

hackers, but it was also a risk for technologists who were “just doing their jobs” as security

researchers, software developers, cryptography experts and computer enthusiasts. In other words,

while some hackers were born shifty, others had shiftiness thrust upon them.

45

Section 2: Enlightenment Ideals

“We're already passed the time when one would wrap hacking in the First Amendment. There's a traditional distinction between words – expressions of opinions, beliefs, and information – and deeds... The philosophical problem posed by hacking is that computer programs transcend this

distinction: they are pure language that dictates action when read by the device being addressed... Blurring the line between language and action, as computer programming does, could eventually undermine the First Amendment. That's a very high price to pay, even for all the good things that

computers make possible.” - Robert Horvitz (1990)

Horvitz's prediction about computers and the law, offered during the Harper's conference

referenced in John Perry Barlow's “Crime and Puzzlement,” present a perspective counter to the

idealistic defences of programming proposed by the technologists. Compared to the other forum

participants, Horvitz's claims are starkly juxtaposed, appearing beside the voices of Stallman,

Barlow and several Legion of Doom (LoD) members – all proponents of the technologist ideology.

While hackers tend to justify radical applications of technology by referencing freedom of

“opinions, beliefs, and information,” Horvitz's rebuttal recontextualises that definition, drawing a

line between the civil liberties outlined in the First Amendment and potentially harmful actions. As

a means to critique technologist understandings of “free speech,” Horvitz raises definitional

questions about the term, a persuasive technique with its roots in Stasis Theory.

Horvitz asserts that, by nature, computer programming differs from other forms of

expression, though technologists often diminish – or brazenly defy - these distinctions. Beginning

with Stallman and the Free Software Movement, the freedom to write and share code was seen as

comparable to the right to speak freely. Among open source developers, it is typical to encounter an

insistence that fellow programmers refer to their craft as “free” software, rather than simply “open

source.” This slight linguistic preference endues the process of writing code with explicit

ideological significance, prioritizing abstract ideals of liberty over the practical appeal of cheap,

peer reviewed code. Even more prevalent is the use of the phrase, “Free as in speech, not free as in

beer” (Free Software Foundation), which reflects the distinction between liberty and price when

46

discussing free software. Though free software typically does not cost money, programmers are not

referring to the monetary advantages of their software's use; rather, “free” indicates the abstract

rights that are afforded to its users, such as the right to use, study, copy, or distribute the code as

they see fit. Anthropologist Gabriella Coleman discusses the significance of the “Free speech/free

beer” dichotomy, which became popularised around the mid-1990s, within the Debian community.

When applying to become a Debian developer or maintainer, in addition to understanding the

technical details of OS development, potential members must understand the moral agenda of the

Debian project (known as the Debian Social Contract) and be able to explain the phrase, “Free as in

speech versus free as in beer” (Coleman 2012, 37).

Although similar notions of liberalism have always operated at the periphery of hacking

communities - usually taking the form of the hacker ethic - direct allusions to the political

philosophers of the Enlightenment, as well as related historical events such as the American and

French Revolutions, became a staple within examples of technologist rhetoric around the mid 1990s.

The Age of Enlightenment, as a historical reference, provided hackers with a point of comparison:

to technologists, the scientific and intellectual pursuits encapsulated by the Enlightenment resonated

with their own legal, political and social struggles. Like the Founding Fathers rebelling against an

unjust political regime, hackers cast themselves as the freedom-defending revolutionaries of the

digital age, convicted of fault in both the courts of public opinion and the law, yet morally correct.

In defence of technologist principles, the Electronic Frontier Foundation became actively

involved in a number of legal battles throughout the 1990s, becoming a respected authority within

the burgeoning area of cyber law and utilising both deliberative and forensic rhetoric to unify the

hacker community. Within the judicial system, several high profile cases were decided relating to

the Internet and civil liberties. One early case challenged the process by which state and federal

authorities executed search warrants and seized property from game developers. Another case

defended professor Daniel Bernstein's right to publish encryption software online, as well as an

academic paper describing his findings. Despite its victories in the legal realm, the non-profit was

47

increasingly concerned with attempts by the legislature to curtail digital civil liberties, particularly

with regard to online censorship and the accessibility of cryptographic tools. John Perry Barlow

continued to be a prolific writer and commenter, crafting numerous opinion pieces during this time

period. The most famous of these manifestos was his response to a piece of anti-obscenity

legislation, which asserted cyberspace's independence from all forms of governance.

Situated Ethos and Revolutionary Rhetoric in “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” The rhetorical strategies present in John Perry Barlow's “A Declaration of the Independence

of Cyberspace” rely on a strong appeal to ethos throughout. The text operates as a call to action,

with dramatic stylistic choices that are intentionally reminiscent of renowned manifestos and liberal

treatises. Written during a period of heightened tensions between Internet users and the United

States government, notions of time and place are tied to the text's persuasive claims. Additionally,

the author is particularly aware of both audience and exigence. Using his reputation as a defender of

civil liberties and an outspoken critic of technological regulation by governments - a commitment

known to the majority of technologists – Barlow deploys his situated ethos to compose an essay that

speaks not only to an existing contingent of radical veteran Internet users, but also to new actors

who have not yet been culturally and socially assimilated into the mythos of digital communities.

Written in 1996, the political motivation that inspired his confrontational address to the

“governments of the industrial world” is a piece of legislation what sought to restrict the ability of

users to communicate online. The Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, which was signed into

law by President Bill Clinton on February 8, amended the Communications Act of 1934 and

defined the Internet as a broadcast entity, thereby allowing the government to regulate it. Free

speech advocates and civil liberties groups immediately objected to the legislation, specifically the

provisions outlined in Title V, “Obscenity and Violence,” which would criminalise profanity and

pornography online, subjecting the Internet to the same standards of decency as cable television.

Under the provision, many online communities, which were known for their profane, freewheeling

48

discussions about taboo subjects, would be censored by Internet Service Providers, acting as agents

of the U.S. government. Technologists, in particular, were concerned about the implications of the

law. Not only are hackers predisposed to support the liberal applications of free expression due to

their identification with the hacker ethic, but some were also notorious for their criminal dealings;

in other words, their opposition to the law was practical as well as philosophical.

Barlow published the essay on the Internet on February 9th, the day after the Act was signed,

accompanied by a statement that outlined his motivations for writing. In this preface, the author

addresses his readership saying, “If you find it useful, I hope you will pass it on as widely as

possible. You can leave my name off it if you like, because I don't care about the credit. I really

don't. But I do hope this cry will echo across Cyberspace, changing and growing and self-

replicating, until it becomes a great shout equal to the idiocy they have just inflicted upon us.”

One consequence of its expeditious publication is that the appeals to logos present in the essay are

connected to time and place; seizing upon the kairos of the moment, Barlow articulates both a legal

and societal rebuttal to the legislation in question. The essay itself quickly proliferated across the

Net; within three months, an estimated 5,000 websites had replicated the document, amounting to a

number of pageviews too great to be calculated.

Though it seems at first as if Barlow is surrendering his situated ethos through this statement

of purpose, the opposite is true. Despite his status as the document's author, Barlow's willing

surrender of this title – or, at least, his dismissal of trivialities such as “credit” and praise – elevate

his respectability within a substantial faction of his intended audience: programmers with an

elevated admiration for meritocracy. By subordinating his own interests in favour of principle,

Barlow gains a degree of social influence greater than he ever could while demanding recognition.

Moreover, by downplaying his own situated ethos – accepting the persona of an Internet everyman,

rather than the founder of an influential non-profit – the exigence of the piece becomes evident and

more palatable for the general public.

Barlow's persona, combined with his compelling rhetoric, may have contributed to the

49

essay's rise to prominence online. As a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,

Barlow was a well-known and respected advocate for freedom on the Internet. Moreover, his

previous encounters with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies earned him a degree of

esteem among overlapping factions of hacker subcultures. To reformers, Barlow was a Thomas

Jefferson-esque visionary: a well-educated and liberally minded Renaissance Man, with cultural ties

to numerous philosophical communities and demographics. Similarly, radicals, who were often

beneficiaries of legal support by the EFF, viewed him as a similarly minded and knowledgeable ally.

Beginning with the title of the piece, Barlow creates a tone of collectivity, subtly inviting all

readers to contribute to a dialogue that is already in progress, as well as acknowledging the

contributions of previous hacker manifestos. The article “A” - as opposed to “The Declaration of the

Independence of Cyberspace” - indicates the author's manifesto as only one of many. This stylistic

decision also serves to leave room for ambiguity, signalling to the audience that, if they are

unsatisfied with the trajectory of the text or its claims, they can replicate or revise it. In doing so, the

author expresses his knowledge of insider norms and asserts his membership in the technologist

community: in accordance with established online ethics, there can be no definitive authority on the

freedoms of the Internet, and all contributions, however outlandish, are typically regarded as valid.

Although Barlow's voice is magnified by his situational ethos, he explicitly states that he addresses

the audience with “no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks,”

downplaying his own legitimacy and prioritizing the principle of free speech over himself.

Moreover, the title is a direct allusion to the enlightenment-era document, “Declaration of the

Rights of Man and of the Citizen” (1789), which informed the ideals of the French and American

Revolutions, as well as subsequent legal standards for human rights.

By invoking the broad constituencies implicit in the word “cyberspace,” the title indicates

the author's appeal to a more universal readership. The threats to free speech online do not solely

target and jeopardise the radical; by including all of cyberspace in his manifesto, Barlow is warning

all Internet users, even those who do not believe that their activity online is at odds with the

50

provisions of the Telecommunications Act. The title of the essay expands the audience beyond an

insular community of the technologically proficient to include an average, though politically-

minded, person.

Though the language of the essay can certainly be described as theatrical or “over-the-top,”

Barlow's rhetoric is markedly more subdued than the existing canon of anti-censorship rhetoric

online, such as the radical hacker manifestos written by Tim May and Jim Bell. This comparatively

“toned-down” style of reasoning tactically extends his message to a wider demographic. Barlow

does offer direct allusions to hacker writings – an oeuvre seldom known outside of tech

communities at the margins - but he applies them in an easily-understood and traditional context,

familiar to anyone versed in the Western philosophical tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.

To solidify his identification with Enlightenment-era thinkers, Barlow lists some of them by name;

one sentence indicts the Telecommunications Act by stating that it, “repudiates... [the] Constitution

and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, De Tocqueville, and Brandeis”

(1996). In solidarity with the political standards set in radical hacker writings, one short paragraph

states, “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race,

economic power, military force, or station of birth.” This sentence is identical in meaning to a

sentence in “The Hacker's Manifesto,” written from prison by Loyd “The Mentor” Blankenship, a

member of the Legion of Doom, and widely circulated among hackers: “We exist without skin

colour, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals” (1986). Yet, this

sentiment is also the same notion expressed in the Declaration of Independence: that “all men are

created equal” and rebellion against tyranny is justified (US 1776).

The essay also resembles the textposts of another radical hacker group, the Cult of the Dead

Cow, which frequently published indignant condemnations of traditional government authority. For

example, one publication from 1987 takes an absolutist stance to sovereignty and individual

autonomy: “You must fight for your rights as a person. Not as an American, but as a person who

gives a shit about the environment you live in... You must let yourself become the spirit of

51

resistance. We want to create a world so free we can run wild” (“Psychotic Opposition” 1987).

Barlow is likewise calling for a type of political anarchy in his essay. He ultimately lobbies for a

line of complete separation between the governments of the world and the Internet, rejecting the

coercive power of the US government in particular through the line: “We must declare our virtual

selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over out bodies.”

Moreover, he again rejects the authority of traditional government powers, declaring that they are

“not welcome” among Internet users and referring to regulatory laws as “tyrannies.” It is worth

noting that Stallman's “GNU Manifesto” categorised proprietary software restrictions in similar

terms, defining them as “inhospitable” and “not free” (1983).

Though the hacker manifestos that Barlow alludes to are radical and transgressive, the

author invokes the political terminology and the widely accepted ideas of John Locke to create an

argument that is persuasive to all individuals who believe in the foundational paradigms of western

democracies. Barlow creates a loose enthymeme here: if readers espouse the principles defined by

the likes of liberal writers such as Locke, Mill and Jefferson – and they believe that these political

and social principles can be applied equally to the Internet – then no governments can claim the

authority to pass legislation about the Internet, as citizens of cyberspace have not consented to be

governed.

Finally, sentence-level decisions contribute to the overall tone of Barlow's manifesto, once

again relating to his appeals to ethos. The speaker begins by creating a clear “us versus them”

dichotomy, situating the tyrannical government in opposition to patriotic and ethical computer users.

After defining these powers, the government and Cyberspace, during the opening paragraph,

Barlow abandons these terms in favour of simplistic pronouns. He frames these views in terms of

negatives: “We did not invite you,” “Cyberspace does not lie within your borders,” and simply,

“You cannot.” These sentences are short and abrupt, punctuating the argument and contributing to

the combative tone, which continues throughout.

John Perry Barlow's essay was composed in the hours immediately following the enactment

52

of the Telecommunications Act. Despite this limited compositional timespan, he manages to craft a

convincing call to action using his reputation among multiple groups of online constituencies, as

well as his knowledge of the prevailing online ideology among his audience, which can be defined

as the “ethos of the rebel.” The persuasive elements of Barlow's essay are built upon the

assumptions of his audience – about the subject matter at hand, and the author himself. Through

allusion, Barlow equates contemporary liberal radicals - hackers and technologists - with the

Enlightenment thinkers of the past; by doing so, the logical appeals to political action become a

matter of patriotism, individualism and morality.

Attempts to formulate regulatory legislation comprised only half of the government's

strategy that, in association with corporations, would limit the technological functions of most

computers, as well as curtail the civil liberties of the machines' operators. In contrast to legislation,

a different branch of government made use of the judicial system, prosecuting those who wrote and

distributed questionably legal source code. Barlow's assumptions about his technologist audience

confirm that the virtue of free speech and unfettered communication was a value that most hackers

were inclined to defend; however, the foundational principle that all hackers – regardless of

ideological persuasion – valued most highly was their own uninterrupted freedom to write code.

This point of unity influenced the cypherpunks, whose de facto motto was “cypherpunks write code”

(Hughes 1993), in equal measure as the free and open source developers.

The political interests of all factions of hackers would converge around the issue of DVD

encryption - bringing together EFF lawyers, cryptographers, open source dev teams and computer

science professors – under the slogan, “Code is Speech.”

Code is Speech and the DeCSS Haiku

Published onto the Internet in October of 1999, the source code to a program called DeCSS

provided the kairotic moment for the “Code is Speech” movement; the defence of the open source

application offered yet another opportunity for technologists to – as Barlow prompted in his

Declaration - “throw some tea in the proverbial harbour” (1996). Posted to a mailing list called

53

LiViD – or Linux Video and DVD - the program was coded by three developers and capable of

unscrambling the security system used to encrypt most commercially produced DVD disks, thereby

allowing them to be played on a computer using a Linux operating system. Shortly after its public

release, a Norwegian teenager named Jon Lech Johansen was arrested and tried in Norwegian court,

though his collaborators were never discovered. Although Johansen remained in prison, the DeCSS

script continued to circulate around the Internet, passing between technologists hell-bent on

continuing the work started through LiViD. Hollywood – in particular, Universal Studios - argued

that the ability to break DVD encryption would allow the discs to be pirated; at the same time,

however, the open source community believed that the script was harmless, increasing the

functionality of their Linux computers by enabling the DVDs to be read, just like on a machine

running Windows. What's more: according to hackers, the act of repressing the code would result in

an unacceptable legal precedent, which distinguished technical information from other forms of

knowledge, subjecting it to heightened levels of judicial scrutiny. Although all charges against

Johansen were eventually dropped in 2004, internationally accessible websites which hosted the

DeCSS script – many of them situated inside the United States – faced legal prosecution for

facilitating the spread of information that allegedly violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

(DMCA)10 - including, notably, the hacker zine 2600. Emboldened by the perceived abuses of a

billion dollar industry, the stage was set for hackers to once again mobilise around a freedom of

speech issue.

As a form of civil disobedience, technologists and hackers began to devise elaborate and

creative modes of sharing the DeCSS code. As a result, on January 20, 2000, several individuals

were sued by Universal Studios in the Southern District of New York for “distributing computer

10 Approved in 1996 by Bill Clinton, the United States DMCA criminalises the production and dissemination of “technology, devices, or services” intended to circumvent, destroy or otherwise tamper with measures that control access to copyrighted works. In addition, the law increased the criminal penalties for committing copyright infringement on the Internet. Finally, some provisions of the law removed culpability from third party Internet Service Providers and onto their users.

54

code for reading encrypted DVDs” (Kaplan 2001). Emboldened by the court's opinion, Dr. David

Touretzky, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, solicited and archived

artistic renditions of the illegal DeCSS source code. Touretzky's web-based “Gallery of CSS

Descramblers,” functioning as a virtual art exhibit, sought to explore the legal ambiguities of free

speech, particularly as it applied to source code. Specifically, he wondered about the dissemination

of illegal computer code; do the same restrictions apply to an artist singing the coded instructions as

the lyrics of a song, or a poet speaking the commands aloud? The Gallery web page description

reads in part:

“If code that can be directly compiled and executed may be suppressed under the DMCA, as Judge Kaplan asserts in his preliminary ruling, but a textual description of the same algorithm may not be suppressed, then where exactly should the line be drawn? This web site was created to explore this issue, and point out the absurdity of Judge Kaplan's position that source code can be legally differentiated from other forms of written expression” (2000). Contributions to the page include instances of programmers rewriting the code in different

programming languages, doing dramatic readings, creating a Star Wars-inspired text crawl and

reanimating Microsoft Office assistants, such as the famous talking paperclip, to explain the process

of decryption to listeners.11 Technologists were the primary contributors – and readers – of the page,

as creating the artistic alternate-DeCSS scripts required not only progressive political inclinations,

but also technical know-how.

The most famous contribution to Touretzky's gallery was known as the “DeCSS Haiku,”12

composed originally as an anonymous 465-stanza poetic epic, but later revealed to be authored by

open source programmer Seth Schoen.13 The thesis statement of the poem, which appears in haikus

11 A clothing vendor called CopyLeft printed the CSS Descramble source code on the back of a t-shirt and was subsequently “sued for their trouble,” prompting Dr. Touretzky to memorably retort, “If you can put it on a t-shirt, it's speech” (Schoen 2004). CopyLeft went on to manufacture a new design bearing the slogan, “I am a circumvention device” (Touretzky 2000), gesturing ironically at the often overlooked role of authorship in the development of any computer code. 12 The full title is derived from the poem's first stanza: “How to decrypt a / DVD: in haiku form. / (Thanks, Prof. D. S. T.)” 13 Despite his cogent merging of literary and poetic conventions, Schoen's background resided solely in the realm of the political and technical: he studied computer science at UC Berkley, then founded the anti-

55

96-98, mirrors Touretzky's description of the CSS Descrambler gallery. Addressing his audience,

the author states, “Reader, see how yet / technical communicants / deserve free speech rights; / see

how numbers, rules, patterns, / languages you don't / yourself speak yet, / still should in law be /

protected from suppression, / called valuable speech!” Simultaneously, however, the poem

functions to educate its readers about the technical process of recreating the DeCSS code, educating

them about both the political implications of the code's suppression, as well as its practical

application. Whole sections of the poem are lists of numbers and characters, creating a poetic

rendition of the banned source code; for example, in describing how to code the Xing Player, one

stanza reads in part: “Eighty-one; and then / one hundred three -- two times; then / two hundred

(less three); / two hundred twenty / four; and last (of course not least) / the humble zero” (Schoen

2001). Though most contributions to the Gallery are aspirationally driven by political motivations,

the informational component of the “DeCSS Haiku” reveal the author's intended audience: not only

technologists, who would nevertheless be entertained by his reference-laden poetry, but also

uninitiated audience, not yet versed in the political or technical facets of the decryption debate. The

aesthetic appeal of the haiku, then, is propelled by its underlying rhetorical complexities, seamlessly

channelled through a poetic medium.

Written in lines of 5 syllables, then 7, then 5, the rigid structure of the haiku lends itself

easily to the skill set of programmers, who were already adept at working within arcane boundaries.

Dating back to the early TX-0 hackers, who competed amongst themselves to reduce the length of

their programs, programmers are known for their affinity for condensing meaning and eliminating

redundancy – their shared distaste for bureaucracy is a related characteristic. The relationship

between computer science enthusiasts and haikus is one that has not been systematically

documented, but remains nevertheless observable, practiced by hackers for pseudo-ceremonial

institutional advocacy group Californians for Academic Freedom in opposition to the loyalty oath that the state made university employees swear. Finally, Schoen helped to develop LinuxCare, which provided 24-hour user support for new adopters of GNU/Linux operating systems. Taken together, these experiences reinforce the political priorities of open source developers, recalling the mistrust of authority implicit in the hacker ethic, as well as Stallman's “GNU Manifesto.”

56

purposes; for example, at the UC Berkeley Computer Science Undergraduate Association, new

students traditionally “write haiku poems about the chemical element zinc” (Schoen 2004).14 A

more recent phenomenon involved the creation of an automated script, which was then used to scan

for naturally occurring haikus in the WikiLeaks cable release, generating bureaucratic Found Poetry

such as, “Whether such tactics / will have a chilling effect / remains to be seen” and “King Hamad

flatly / stated that Bahrain is not / happy with Qatar” (Jardin 2010).15 More broadly, poetic eulogies

are equally common within hacker communities, serving as a form of epideictic rhetoric. A

humorous example comes from the poem by Vinton G. Cerf titled, “Requiem for the ARPANet,”

which first lauds the network for its role in connecting the speaker with like-minded individuals,

then traces its legacy from inception to extinction – all in iambic pentameter.16

References to Homeric epics abound throughout the haiku, including its didactic objective,

tangential mini-narratives about legendary figures, and invocation of the muse. In accordance with

the precedent set by ancient Greek epic poetry, the presence of the muse serves to elevate the

subject matter. Schoen indicates his topic repeatedly, referring to the DeCSS code euphemistically

as “controversial math”; he states, “Now help me Muse, for / I wish to tell a piece of / controversial

math” (Schoen 2001). In the same tradition of the ancients, Schoen seeks to historicise his topic,

tracing the progression of mathematics from Pythagoras to Einstein and describing the evolution of

mathematics from “shuffling... numbers” (2001, haiku 4) to computation. Connecting mathematics

to Greek literary motifs situates the legal battle between technologists and companies within the

existing canon of historic epics. The Greeks, moreover, serve as a loaded ethical symbol,

14 “This being geek humour,” the author continues, “it also expanded to include horrible puns.” One example, positioned at the intersection of philosophy, literature and weird science, reads, “Rene Descartes finds / his elemental self: I / zinc therefore I am” (Schoen 2004). 15 A similar script was deployed on a speech by Richard Stallman, generating a haiku about the economic harm caused by proprietary software: “One person gains one / dollar by destroying two / dollars' worth of wealth” (Linux Journal 2002). 16 A far less whimsical example serves as an actual eulogy: written by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, it is a poem composed via tweets following the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a prominent open access advocate and hacker, in 2013.

57

positioning the contemporary situation within a lengthy artistic and scientific trajectory.

Mathematics, as a concept, is often thought of as diametrically opposed to art; yet, by creating

parallels between numbers and words, Schoen asserts that writing code is analogous with writing

poetry. The notion that code ought to be thought of as protected speech, moreover, follows logically

from this enthymeme.

Perhaps the poem's enduring legacy and popularity relate not solely to its union of artistic

and technological elements, nor its definitional obfuscation of concepts like free speech and

literature, but from its wide ranging implementations of the rhetorical forums. Deliberative, forensic

and epideictic rhetoric all play a role in the author's claims. Most immediately, the text functions as

an accusation of “the lawyers,” who are portrayed as rash and lawless – a deliberate role-reversal.

The author poses the rhetorical question to the readers, “Do they understand / the content, or is it

just / the effects they see?” (haiku 12), at once calling attention to the ineptitude on display, while

simultaneously elevating the wisdom of the technologically-savvy reader. In describing his

exigence for writing the poem, Schoen would later state, “I believe, and I said repeatedly in my

poem, that one of the reasons courts and others have countenanced the censorship of software is that

they do not understand it” (2004). The author goes on to declare the public guilty, too, accusing

them of “brand[ing] tinkerers as thieves!” (haiku 128) and ignoring the broad First Amendment

implications of criminalising certain computer programs. Elements of forensic rhetoric are also

manifested in the text's transparent attempts to exonerate programmers of wrongdoing – not in a

court of law, but in the court of public opinion.

Epideictic speech occurs through the author's praise of allegedly criminal programmers “for

advancing the / knowledge of their colleagues / or the public mind” (haiku 129). Throughout the

text, programming, as both a hobby and an occupation, is romanticised – elevated to a plane of

higher understanding, even – though the author's intentional parody of archaic references. Haikus

13-15 read in part: “And all mathematics / is full of stories... and CSS is / no exception to this rule. /

Sing, Muse, decryption / once secret, as all / knowledge, once unknown: know to / decrypt DVDs”

58

(2001). In these lines, knowledge of decryption corresponds once again to knowledge in its

traditionally understood context, as the author asserts that all knowledge has been limited by the

logistical obstacles of the past. These lines also call attention to the democratising effect of

knowledge revealed, glorifying the dissemination of secret information. Finally, Schoen

intentionally defines mathematics as “stories,” situating the technical within the same context as “all

knowledge”: the study of poetics, the humanities and the liberal arts (2001).

Perhaps most interesting are the aspects of deliberative rhetoric present in the haiku. Schoen

is concerned with the future, urging readers to defy the judicial decision of the New York court and

defend the “free speech rights” of programmers through civil disobedience, regardless of whether or

not members of the audience are programmers themselves. When Schoen reflected upon the legacy

of the DeCSS Haiku years later, he succinctly described the poem's function as an explicit call to

action:

“If, reader, however, you are at a loss for what political act to take; if you are no designer of network architectures, no writer of legal briefs or op-eds, no poet and unacknowledged legislator - then I have a suggestion for you. Learn to program, perhaps in the Python language, which was created specifically to be a first programming language for new programmers. Then teach one other person to be a programmer, too” (2004). This reconceptualisation of hacking purposefully politicises the activity, moving the stasis of the

word's definition from a connotation of criminality to one of noble rebellion. Additionally, the

author lists the occupation of “programmer” among that of “legislators” and “poets,” creating

symbolic similarity between the words, once again critiquing the societally understood connotations

of the word. Finally, by describing the process of reconstructing the DeCSS script as a step-by-step

process, including exact numerical values and functions, the author urges the audience to recreate

the banned code. Not only is the poem itself an act of civil disobedience, but it also serves as a

recursive call to future protests.

“'Normal' People Don't Know How to Program – Only Hackers Do That”

At its heart, the issue of DVD decryption was a controversy over the rights of institutions

versus the rights of individuals; the Wall Street Journal framed the matter as “a war over the control

59

of digital media” (Hamilton 2001). Like the “proprietary restrictions” of Stallman's day,

commercial creators, determined to capitalise on the monetary value of their works, occupied one

side of the DeCSS debate. This opinion was threatened by technologists, who could use their

knowledge of cryptography to subvert the very business model upon which these enterprises relied.

Comparatively, the technologists were outraged that Hollywood would harness their own inventive

systems in pursuit of ideologically unacceptable ends, imposing hard limits on the application of

systems typically defined by their free accessibility. Throughout the early and mid 1990s, as their

radical manifestos illustrate, the cypherpunks were confident that encryption would usher in a new

era of respect for individual rights; however, Hollywood's use of these systems in the service of

profit and suppression called their assumptions into question.

At the same time, governments and the media also sought to cast hacking and hackers in a

negative light, framing the issue of digital regulation as a matter of national security. In a Senate

judicial hearing in 1997, FBI Director Louis French testified about the increasing prominence of

online criminal activity and urged Congress to place a regulatory embargo on cryptographic utilities.

He stated: “Law enforcement is in unanimous agreement that the widespread use of robust non-key

recovery encryption ultimately will devastate our ability to fight crime and prevent terrorism.

Uncrackable encryption will allow drug lords, spies, terrorists and even violent gangs to

communicate about their crimes and their conspiracies with impunity. We will lose one of the few

remaining vulnerabilities of the worst criminals and terrorists upon which law enforcement depends

to successfully investigate and often prevent the worst crimes” (Encryption 1997). The efforts by

the judiciary and legislature served as a means of deterrence; it is common among technologists to

declare that federal prosecution is “making an example” out of a particular individual through harsh

charges and lengthy prison sentences. However, just as troubling to the hacker community was the

increasingly prevalent negative image of programming – namely, the notion that hacking is a

fundamentally illicit activity and, by that logic, all hackers are criminals. Seth Schoen's description

of his haiku references this sentiment: “The larger culture today assumes - and many people rely on

60

the assumption - that 'normal' people don't know how to program, that only hackers do that. In

many ways, programming is a socially marginal activity, viewed with considerable suspicion”

(Schoen 2004).

Hackers sought to address these misconceptions by adopting the rhetorical conventions and

claims of Enlightenment figures. Rather than eschewing or denying the purported corporate,

governmental or media image of hacking, technologists in both the reformist and radical camps

adopted the image with enthusiasm, using allusions to past historical examples or philosophical

doctrines to recontextualise the very notion of freedom and point out the term's origins in resistance.

As such, examples of technologist writings employ deliberative rhetoric, encouraging readers to

participate in symbolic acts of civil disobedience and rebellion. In doing so, hackers disregarded the

whims of corporations, eluded the regulation of government institutions and defied the expectations

of the public.

61

Section 3: Identity

“It doesn't take a lot of people to change anything. It only takes one good programmer.” - Oxblood Ruffin, 2004

The rhetorical claims surrounding hacker culture are typically framed in binaries. Within the

hacker community, among both insiders and outsiders, these reactionary debates often encompass

paradoxical ideals. Fluid organisational topics - such as national security and civil liberties, privacy

and openness, patriots and traitors - coexist within the same frame of discourse, uniting or

subdividing demographics, then prompting a passionate dialectic, like an online reimagination of

Burke's Parlour metaphor. Another binary can be added to that list of binaries: the dual ethos of

collectivism versus individualism, which came to encompass the ever evolving politicised hacking

scene from the early 2000s to the present.

The term 'hacktivism' – a portmanteau of 'hack' and 'activism' – was coined as a joke in 1996

by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow (CoD); since that point, its practical application has

covered a wide range of acts, including defacing webpages, redirecting URLs, stealing information,

spreading intentionally misleading information, obstructing access to websites through denial of

service attacks, developing anti-censorship technologies and issuing anonymous speech. Not all

hacktivist tactics are illegal; however, the most high-profile activities frequently skirt the law,

proving that criminality is conducive to garnering media attention and generating public spectacle.

While technologists are prone to debate over the ethics of hacktivist tactics, the symbolic appeal of

collective actions remain deeply embedded into rhetorical ethos of many online communities, with

many subgroups creating elaborate in-jokes, shared value systems, manifestos, narratives - even

alternate linguistic systems and vocabularies.

In the contemporary era, parsing hacker attitudes about various topics is difficult,

particularly in light of the ferocious and public technologist disagreements over hacktivist actions.

Within insular hacker communities, opinions are fluid, making generalisations impossible. The

62

relationship between collective action and radical individualism is no exception, as epitomised in

the above quote by pseudonymous CoD member and self-described “chief evangelist for

hacktivism,” Oxblood Ruffin. The notion that “one programmer” has the power create change is

seemingly at odds with technologists' enduring affinity for collectivism, a trend that is identifiable

throughout the history of technologist lore, dating back to early iterations of open source principles,

which universally promoted an ethos of cooperation. Oxblood Ruffin's declaration, delivered during

a lecture on hacktivism to Yale Law School, gestures at the appeal of decisive and swift actions, as

opposed to the plodding, gradual nature of coalition building or grassroots activism required of

collective action. Compromise, which is traditionally viewed as the practical remedy to all manner

of technologist ills – from proprietary software to impossible encryption schemes to repressive

legislation - plays no discernible role in Ruffin's pronouncement, despite its historical centrality. If

Ruffin's claim is to be believed, the number of actors lobbying for change – a number that

continued to increase as ever more agents entered the scene of the Internet – becomes irrelevant. On

its surface, the statement is not only in conflict with idealised technologist visions of political and

social change, but also with most modern notions of protest politics.

Ruffin's quote serves as an endorsement of pragmatism, affirming individualistic hacktivism

and broadly elevating technologist tactics over those of traditional activists. The value of “hacking

for freedom,” derives from its utility as an outlet for autonomous political expression. Ruffin

suggests that all activist-hackers – whether they work alone or collaborate - are well positioned to

enact change, purely because their tactics are, by nature, diverse and direct. Street demonstrations or

boycotts can only subsist with the unified participation of thousands; yet, online, only one person is

required to devise an inventive program or steal incriminating documents,17 ensuring the continued

propagation of the message.

Technologist writings have consistently merged individualistic and collective rhetorical

appeals. Indeed, there is power in acting alone, though it does not always preclude technologists 17 Or spoof a mob to manufacture the unified participation of thousands.

63

from collaborating with others. Throughout the history of hacking, notions of collectivism and

individuality have always coexisted: although Stallman's “GNU Manifesto” creates unity within the

ranks of developers by using collective voice, he simultaneously vests authority in individuals,

stating, “a user who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself” (1983).

Technologist authors frequently call attention to the large and ideologically decentralised

community of hackers, as if to suggest that they are a force to be reckoned with. For example,

though there is a single speaker in “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Barlow

broadens the application of the word “hacker” to include all “citizens of cyberspace.” Throughout

the text, these united Internet users take on the form of a fearsome digital mob – resembling

Hobbes' great leviathan in both size and temperament – threatening global systems of government

by saying, “You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather... You have

no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to

fear” (1996).

Appeals to collectivism certainly appear throughout the previous examples of written

manifestos. However, hacker “texts” are not solely understood as works that are comprised of

words and sentences. On the contrary, some of the most convincing technologist appeals to

collective action occur in the development and infrastructure of networked utilities, such as privacy-

conscious email providers and an application that, according to many hacktivists, simulates a

“virtual sit-in” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). If “code is speech,” then it is no surprise that the very

infrastructure of technologist projects function through an adherence to the ideals of collectivism

and group unity.

The #OpPayback Case Study: A “Rhetorical” Analysis of Decentralised Architectures

Developed with collective action at the centre of their very design, open source hacktivist

tools are typically developed using collectivist appeals as both the organisational principle and the

motivational goal of their creation. By “reading” these appeals, it is possible to discern the political

motives of hacktivist users. For example, when developing software - beginning even in the earliest

64

developmental stages - hacktivist programmers consistently make use of Stallman's GNU General

Public License, a legal framework developed to establish a more flexible approach to free software

licensing. Throughout the development process, numerous programmers contribute to the source

code, as is typical in GNU/Linux communities. Finally, in implementation, hacktivist software

utilities tend to rely on users' active participation - not solely through testing and feedback, but also

to ensure that the application fulfils its most basic practical functions. The creation of successful

open source software is not exclusively dependent upon the dedicated work of a development team,

but also upon the collective participation of an engaged user base.

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack18 is one hacktivist protest tactic; its

widespread utilisation is likely a consequence of its simple technical mechanics and accessible

implementation. Deployed by hacktivists to obstruct access to web pages, proponents of the tactic

claim that the results of the attack are comparable to a virtual sit-in, because no permanent damage

is caused to targeted websites. A basic DDoS attack can be staged when hundreds of participants

attempt to access the same website at the same time, preventing legitimate users from having their

requests serviced. The most famous example of a successful DDoS attack occurred in late 2010, a

situation explicated in detail below.

Several hacktivists – for the purposes of this example, our rhetors – subsequently devised a

system to automate user interaction during a DDoS attack, channelling the power of all available

participants and deploying them en masse. Their design was able to more easily facilitate the

organisation of a DDoS action, as well as prolong the attack's effectiveness. Calling their creation

the Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) – a homage to a video game weapon – the programmers created

18 Net infrastructure dictates that every website can only support a limited number of users; the exact number fluctuates based on a number of variables such as allocated server bandwidth. Simply put, a distributed denial of service occurs when a server receives too many requests and, as a result, crashes. To borrow an analogy from anthropologist Gabriella Coleman, a DDoS attack is like hundreds of people trying to fit through the same door at the same time. Although participating in a DDoS attack requires no technical skill and the tactic is not a “hack,” it is considered to be a serious cybercrime and punishable by up to ten years in prison (Espiner 2006).

65

an ideal tool for direct and collective action campaigns: on their own, participants' attempts to

disrupt websites were futile; however, when hundreds of individuals used the LOIC at the same

time, the results could be staggering. To create the application, the programmers first appropriated

an open source network testing tool by Praetox Technologies, originally designed “to allow

developers to stress test their servers and applications to see how well they will perform under

heavy load” (Nardi 2012). After adding several new features, discussed at length below, the

hacktivists re-released the application to serve a completely different purpose, making their creation

available for download on Windows, Apple, Android and Linux operating systems. The

development of the LOIC demonstrates the practical utility of Stallman's “freedom to modify”

clause, as its developers repurposed an existing piece of code, tailoring its operations to fit their

unique situation and requirements.

The LOIC revolutionised distributed denial of service attacks. The most successful

campaign was launched against the webpages of Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon by a

loosely aligned and ephemeral network of trolls,19 tech enthusiasts and hacktivists known as

Anonymous. The online payment companies attracted Anonymous' ire when they froze donations to

WikiLeaks at the behest of the U.S. government, shortly after the whistleblowing website published

a trove of secret diplomatic cables. Using the modified LOIC program, roughly 8,000 individuals

downloaded the application, congregated in a IRC20 channel called #OperationPayback and

successfully obstructed access to the sites. The campaign began on December 8, 2010 and

19 In Internet slang, a troll is a person who deliberately causes controversy by posting disruptive, inflammatory or provocative messages online. Although the word has become synonymous with cyberbullying in recent years, pranks perpetrated by trolls occupy a spectrum ranging between the humorously lighthearted to outright malicious. One famous troll, Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer, categorised trolling activities by ironically elevating the practice, saying, “Trolling is a method, a style of rhetoric and action. It can be used for constructive or destructive purposes. Some of the greatest champions of Western philosophy have implemented the troll method” (Encyclopedia Dramatica). 20 IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, an electronic messaging platform. Users, or clients, connect to discussion forums called channels, which are subdivided by topic. Considered by many to be an obsolete system, Anonymous participants tend to prefer IRC as a means of communication.

66

continued for two days; the DDoS attack against PayPal was the most effective, delaying loading

times and paralysing the service's ability to transfer funds on behalf of their clients. The DDoS was

widely regarded by participants as a success, due to the loss of revenue to the services and the

ensuing media coverage of their activities. Deploying his now-familiar style of patriotic rhetoric,

John Perry Barlow commented on the event in an interview with the New York Times, referring to

the DDoS as, “Kind of the shot heard round the world... This is Lexington” (Cohen 2010).

In the past, political issues related to technology were steeped in jargon or concealed from

view on arcane computing systems. As a result, the heated online debates over encryption,

proprietary software and online censorship were overly obscure and inaccessible to otherwise

politically-conscious citizens. Because the majority of the population did not understand the finer

technical details of, say, telecommunication systems, a sense of urgency and importance was lost to

them, despite the fact that the outcomes of these legal or judicial battles effected their daily lives –

and despite attempts by technologists to harness suitable rhetorical forums to advance their

perspectives. The 8,000 people gathered on IRC, however, largely identified themselves as ordinary

people, not tech-savvy hacktivists. For example, one OpPayback participant, referred to as <m> in

archived chat logs, defended his involvement in the DDoS protest by saying, “There's nothing

wrong with technological protest. Other then we struggle to organize... Hardly any of us are proper

hackers” (Coleman 2014, 132). His statement, while acknowledging the logistical and technological

deficiencies of the assembled masses, asserts the legitimacy of DDoS as a conventional protest

tactic.

The LOIC program facilitated this high level of participation and engagement among non-

hacker demographics, providing some technological solutions to the obstacles <m> describes. The

ease of access to the application, combined with its non-technical instructional materials, epitomise

Michel de Certeau's notion of “Everyday acts of resistance,” defined as an opportunistic protest

tactic used to improvise organisation and facilitate improvised support structures (Coleman 2014,

127). Because DDoS attacks are only possible through the participation of a large number of

67

individuals, it was necessary that the LOIC tool be 'user friendly' enough for casual Internet

enthusiasts to use – not just the code-writing hackers, who had spent years learning programming,

attending hobbyist meetings and contributing to mailing list discussions. In describing the

simplicity of the tool, researcher Gabriella Coleman says that the application “allows users to

individually contribute to a DDoS campaign from the comfort of their own home by simply

entering the target address and clicking the temptingly giant button marked 'IMMA CHARGIN

MAH LAZER'” (2014, 101-2). To cease the attack and disconnect from the DDoSing leviathan, a

user can click a button clearly marked “Stop.” The program also calculates the amount of time it has

been running, and alerts users of potential problems through humorous error messages.

Not only did these improvements and features increase the clarity of the application's use for

the benefit of unknowledgeable audiences, but they also instilled a sense of superficial

professionalism into the protest. With its myriad customisable options and features, the LOIC

resembles pushbutton applications with whole teams of paid developers, rather than a piece of

unsupported freeware; this appearance disguised that fact that the LOIC was, contrary to the claims

of its developers, not a secure, low-risk utility. It would soon be revealed that the identities of LOIC

users could be easily obtained by law enforcement personnel, exposing them to prosecution and up

to 10 years in prison; 14 Operation Payback participants would later be formally charged.

Throughout the campaign, this dangerous reality went unaddressed by most Anonymous

participants, including the de facto organisers of the action. What's more, the basic mechanics – and

vulnerabilities - of the LOIC went unnoticed even by technology journalists covering the event.

Somewhat famously, the tech site Gizmodo published an article on December 8th claiming that

using the application involves “little risk to the user.” The reporter goes on to assert: “Because a

DDoS knocks everything offline – at least when it works as intended – the log files that would

normally record each incoming connection typically just don't work” (Johnson 2010). Casual

Internet users – those who could not review the source code of the open source LOIC program –

had no available means of discerning the tool's capabilities besides blind trust. It would have been

68

easy for the original developers to create a program without a fluent user interface system; however,

by using professional-looking designs and graphics, the developers promote an allusion of

legitimacy and confidence.

The LOIC further appeals to non-hackers through the use of motifs and phraseology known

as Internet memes,21 or pieces of micro-media that quickly replicate via social interactions across

cyberspace. These instances of silly or off-colour allusion attempt to recruit trolls and technology

enthusiasts – individuals who knew little about programming, but who still spent lots time on the

Internet, becoming a different brand of computer hobbyist: one more interested in the social

elements of cyberspace. To recruit these casual technologists and invent a collective ethos, subtle

details in the LOIC architecture are designed to appeal to the social norms embedded in Internet

culture. For example, “Imma chargin mah lazer” seems like gibberish to technology outsiders;

however, the slogan is derived from a well-known video circulated among trolls and tech

enthusiasts. The LOIC error messages, too, make use of similarly humorous and obscure slang,

such as the phrase, “U dun goofed,” an allusion to a Youtube video wherein a victim of trolling

attempts to confront her harassers. Among casual technologists, who shared many of the ideological

imperatives outlined in the hacker ethic, details as subtle as a shout-out or in-joke were an effective

means of inciting them to action, particularly because the matter at hand related to information

freedom.

Despite their similar adherence to principles outlined in the hacker ethic, Anonymous

participants were a radically different brand of technologist actor than earlier iterations of

technologist subcultures. Many Operation Payback participants were sympathetic toward the

21 To outsiders and the uninitiated, memes often sound like bits of unintelligible nonsense. In 2010, for example, several researchers from MIT conducted a content analysis of 4chan and its random board, /b/ – a notorious website sometimes called the “meme factory” of the Internet. In describing the content of /b/, the researchers compare their role to that of a “translator,” adding, “The extreme nature of community practices on /b/ can obscure the underlying role these behaviours play to the casual observer” (Bernstein et al. 2010, 7).

69

political claims of previous technologist groups - and at least tangentially aware of their legacies;22

however, these new actors were by no means assimilated easily into their ranks. In the aftermath of

the Payback DDoS, Oxblood Ruffin criticised the group's tactics and impulsivity, accusing them of

the very crime they were protesting: censorship. He describes the demonstration's participants as

hypocritical and impulsive, saying:

“Anonymous is fighting for free speech on the Internet, but it's hard to support that when you're DoSing and not allowing people to talk. How is that consistent? They remind me of awkward teenagers. I think they're trying to do the right thing, but they're stumbling around and doing some really stupid shit” (Mills 2012). This statement is most notable for its logical framing of an anti-DDoS argument, which Ruffin

would staunchly support for decades. Operation Payback united participants who self-identified as

“information freedom” activists – one promotional Payback manifesto exuberantly declares, “Julian

Assange deifies everything we hold dear. He despises and fights censorship constantly”

(Anonymous 2010). Yet, Ruffin points out the hypocrisy implicit in that claim by deploying a long-

standing definitional argument in opposition to DDoSing: censorship means robbing a person or

organisation of open channels for communication, and DDoS attacks do just that. By blocking

access to websites, DDoS participants are using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house, a

comparison borrowed from radical feminist scholarship. Obstructing any individual's right to speak

freely remains ideologically and ethically repellent to many hackers – even among those who have

no issue with breaking the law (Coleman 2014, 137). The logic of Ruffin's comments – and his glib

description of the DDoS event as “some really dumb shit” - was further legitimised when it became

clear that Payback participants could face jail time as a consequence of their involvement.

Ruffin's comments, moreover, were amplified by the speaker's situated ethos; as the self-

described “chief evangelist for hacktivism,” his accusation of hypocrisy quickly generated

discussion among Operation Payback participants, prompting debates and extended moral scrutiny

22 After all, Operation Payback was a campaign in support of WikiLeaks; Julian Assange, the founder of that site, was known for his previous exploits as a criminal hacker and member of the Cypherpunk Mailing List.

70

on IRC. Some members of Anonymous acquiesced to Ruffin's logic: one member of the initial

protest retroactively commented, “Trying to find a sure-fire ethical defence for Anonymous

DDoSing is going to twist you into moral pretzels” (Coleman 2014, 137). Others, after examining

the costs and benefits of the act, defended the tactic despite its ethical dubiousness: “I have had

several discussions about DDoS with people who, similar to myself, are not overly fond of it, but

we keep coming back to it, as it is effective; the media does drive a lot of this activity” (Coleman

2014, 137).

Technologists' inability to rectify their disagreements in opinion form yet another example

of collectivism. Pluralistic ideological workings are apparent throughout examples hacktivist

rhetoric and, more broadly, their relationship to earlier manifestos. The impossibility of consensus

was easily recognisable as early as Anonymous' first traditional demonstration in opposition to

censorship by the Church of Scientology. One observer, a journalist for the Baltimore Sun,

commented on this characteristic absence of unity, turning to poetic language as a means of

definition. He uses a comparison, stating:

“[Anonymous is] the first Internet-based superconsciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely” (Landers 2008). This sentiment, an endorsement of plurality, is likewise reflected in the words of many participants:

“Anonymous is not unanimous.” Although their joint label simulates unity, the collective is

comprised of numerous independent projects, channels or centres of activity, a phenomenon that

Gabriella Coleman compares to the mythic hydra. “Members” of Anonymous – a turn of phrase that

fails to capture the fluidity implicit in participation – feud amongst themselves, drift between

operations, disappear from IRC channels or, in a few notable instances, assist law enforcement

agencies in arresting fellow “Anons.”

To understand the collectivist language and organisation of Anonymous during the 2010

DDoS, it is crucial to interpret the collective's birthplace on the notorious website 4chan.org, known

71

for its grotesque imagery, shocking humour and borderline-illegal content. Urban Dictionary

attempted to capture the website's ethos by calling it, “An image board in which jaded and cynical

Internet users compete to see who can be the biggest asshole” (2008). Similarly, one academic

observer described the site's random board, /b/ – its most heavily trafficked and virtually

uncensored page – in more eloquent terms, calling it, “the single most broadly offensive artefact in

the history of human media” (Schulz 2010). The production of a single text is credited with

inspiring the political manifestation of Anonymous, encouraging the Internet's hivemind to leave

cyberspace; in it, the then-decentralised and apolitical members of the group are urged to adopt a

serious cause: “taking down” the Church of Scientology.

Imageboard Politics and the Origin of Anonymous Created in 2005 by a high school student, the broadly applied and widely enforced social

norms on 4chan dictate that users post anonymously when interacting with other online participants.

Instead of a chosen handle, the name “Anonymous” is used by default. Users invented a complex

mythology surrounding the Anonymous signifier, joking about the existence of a single person

named Anonymous – the collective embodiment of 4chan's ethos - who is responsible for every post

on the site; this figure is typically stylised as a featureless, suited man. For 4chan's participants, the

conventional appeal of anonymity serves dual purposes, one practical and the other symbolic. First,

because unsavoury material typically circulates on 4chan, users rely on anonymity to protect their

real life identities. Second, anonymity is viewed as a tool to ensure that posts are judged by their

content, rather than the reputation or status of their author – in democratic terms, a “great equalizer.”

Anonymity is the only enforced “rule” on /b/, where standards of decency are anathema. Nothing is

considered too vulgar or off-topic, with participants frequently excusing racism, sexism and

cyberbullying by declaring “I did it for the lulz,” or, “I did it for the laughs.”

In addition to the collective identity of 4chan's participants – their shared adherence to

values of free information, free speech, and anarchy - the very infrastructure of the website

reinforces a culture of radically open communication. Discussions are unarchived, and the only way

72

to ensure that a conversation remains online is for comments to be posted at a continuous rate,

“bumping” the thread up to the front page. Because the average length of a thread on /b/ is three

minutes (Bernstein et al. 2010), the use of shocking language and imagery is a culturally reinforced

norm, as these references are an effective means of generating attention. Scholars frequently

reference the ephemeral nature of discussions on 4chan as one of the primary reasons for its

popularity among trolls and free speech enthusiasts:

“One of the important things about 4chan is to have a thread that really explodes and lasts for a really long time. Because, if it doesn't, it disappears – it's a site that's unarchived. So it creates conditions for anything that grabs attention... and humour and grotesqueness are very good for that” (Knappenberger 2012). The exigence for Anonymous' first overtly political action – which catapulted the nebulous

collective from the darkest corners of the Internet into the public's view - was a leaked Church of

Scientology propaganda video, which was uploaded onto the Net, then censored by the Church.

Designed for internal use and featuring an interview with actor Tom Cruise, the video found its way

onto the video hosting site, Youtube, and was summarily picked up by online news media sites in

January of 2008. Famous for attacking critics via litigation and harassment, the Church of

Scientology was able to remove the original video from Youtube – presumably at the behest of a

copyright notice. However, the online magazine Gawker was undeterred, refusing to take down the

republished video hosted on their site; under the headline “The Cruise Indoctrination Video

Scientology Tried to Suppress,” the article boldly concludes, “It's newsworthy; and we will not be

removing it” (Denton 2008). Shortly thereafter, lawyers from Scientology's Religious Technology

Center – the department in charge of intellectual property – served the magazine a DMCA

takedown notice, the same legal standard invoked by Universal Studios to prevent the spread of the

DeCSS code in 2001.

Adopting the ethos of the technologists, 4chan's trolls mobilised under the banner of “free

information,” posting numerous outraged calls-to-arms on /b/, decrying the Church's abuses and

defending Gawker's right to publish the leaked footage. The content of the video itself likely drew

73

the attention of 4chan and Anonymous, as trolls were eager to ridicule Cruise's strange behaviour.

In the video, he speaks erratically, oscillating between seriousness and mania, fanatically praising L.

Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and the Church's pseudo-scientific practices. If the

potential for cheap laughs wasn't enough, there was also the controversial nature of the subject

matter to capture the attention of the trolls: provoking the Church would undoubtedly elicit a

response, which typically provides the motivating force for trolling. As one Anon explained,

“Streisand was in full effect”23 (Coleman 2014, 55); in other words, because the Church was known

to ruthlessly hound their enemies, some Anons speculated that antagonizing Scientology would not

only generate hilarity and spectacle, but it could also produce a positive outcome: raising awareness

about the human rights abuses and secrecy of the Church. In a thread on 4chan, one anonymous

user urged his fellow trolls to “use [their] resources to do something that is right,” describing

Scientology as “an organisation that makes absolutely no fucking sense.”24

Once again, Anonymous was not unanimous. The online debate proved lengthy and

antagonistic, perhaps as a consequence of the vague original post, which serves as an example of

failed deliberative rhetoric. Some commentators were sceptical about Anonymous' chances for

success, sarcastically invoking the Cruise blockbuster and calling the hypothetical action “Mission

Impossible”; however, it was not long before other 4chan threads and IRC channels devoted to anti-

Scientology activism began to propagate. Although the initial idea took a few days – and several

threads - to gain traction, the online “raid,” which became known as Project Chanology, soon found

a dedicated audience through early successes, as well as the employment of varied and inventive

23 The Streisand Effect is a well-known Internet phenomenon wherein, by trying to censor a piece of information, an author's attempts prompt the inverse outcome: the troublesome information spreads more rapidly, as more people try to access it to understand the motivation for the censorship. The situation is named after Barbara Streisand's 2003 effort to stop photographs of her Malibu home from being published. 24 The fact that Anonymous could, to outsiders, likewise be defined as “an organisation that makes absolutely no fucking sense” was an irony not lost on some Anons. Mike Vitale, a Project Chanology participant, commented on the protest retrospectively, saying, “People who knew what Anonymous was to begin with, they were, like, 'Oh my god, Anonymous is going to go to war with Scientology? This should be really interesting.' Especially because it's two weird ass groups. I mean, you know, I've been an Anon for a long fucking time, I know Anonymous is really strange” (Knappenberger 2012).

74

tactics. In describing the structure of the operation, one core participant referenced both the

collective fitness of Anon, as well as the personal satisfaction implicit in individualistic actions:

“The unified bulk of Anonymous collaborated through massive chat rooms to engage in various forms of ultracoordinated motherfuckery. For very short periods of time between January 15th and the 23rd, Scientology websites were hacked and DDoSed to remove them from the Internet. The Dianetics telephone hotline was completely bombarded with prank calls. All-black pieces of paper were faxed to every fax number we could get our hands on. And the 'secrets' of their religion were lasted all over the Internet. I also personally scanned my bare ass and faxed it to them. Because fuck them” (Coleman 2014, 58). Participants' enthusiasm spread memetically, fortified by instances of triumph; the symbolic effect

of removing the Scientology website swayed sceptics, reversing the initial power structure: now,

Scientology was being censored.

Despite Anonymous' successful online actions, a small but vocal minority began to

ironically suggest organising “IRL” street protests, proposing something unheard of: a political

demonstration, which required Anonymous to leave the confines of cyberspace. Eight devoted

participants gathered in a chatroom and began to collaboratively draft a video manifesto titled “A

Message to Scientology,” which was uploaded to Youtube on January 21. The message, which

deliberately parodies Anon's perception of the Church's own propaganda; is both ironic and earnest,

comical but menacing. Threatening clouds gather over industrial skylines, while a robotic voice

recites an ominous message, first listing Scientology's numerous crimes, then concluding

dramatically: “Anonymous has therefore decided that your organisation should be destroyed – for

the good of our followers, for the good of mankind, and for the laughs – we shall expel you from

the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form”

(Church0fScientology 2008). The final sentences of the message inaugurated the group's now

famous tagline – which was used during Operation Payback and all subsequent actions: “We are

Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us” (2008). The video

was well received by existing Chanology participants; however, many Anons could not tell if the

suggestion to protest was legitimate or not.

Although the Message contains direct and uncompromising language, threatening the

75

Church with destruction, its success as a piece of deliberative rhetoric depends upon its ambiguities.

Rather than outlining a direct plan of action, the authors of the manifesto obscure their specific

intentions to reinforce a hostile tone. For example, there is no mention of the authors' desire to

incite Anonymous to organise street protests. Rather, they vaguely state the intended outcome of

Anonymous' operation and the relentless dedication of the hivemind to continue its assault unabated:

“We acknowledge you as a serious opponent, and we are prepared for a long, long campaign”

(2008). The most memorable line of the message is its final sentence - “Expect us” - which

simultaneously threatens the Church, and also reassures participants of the campaign's legitimacy.

By expressing these statements in a formalised fashion, satirising the very propaganda that the

Church regularly produced, the authors seek to unite the collective interests of their audience,

moving the stasis from qualitative to translative.

Collective voice is another feature of the Message, used not only to signal the text's multiple

authors, but also to create solidarity between passive audience members and the broader network of

Anonymous. Punctuated by short, disjointed declarations, such as “We cannot die,” “We are forever”

and “We're getting bigger every day,” the authors reaffirm their threatening tone. Collective voice

also becomes a symbolic trope: using an allusion that directly references the Christian bible, the

authors address the Church, “If you want another name for your opponent, then call us Legion, for

we are many” (2008). The identifications inspired by the word 'Legion' first call to mind the

pluralistic madness – or demonic possession – of a man with an “impure spirit” who, when asked

his name by Jesus, replies, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” At the same time, however, the

word also inspires militaristic identifications, and is featured as collectivist characters in numerous

science fiction texts and video games storylines.

Finally, the text draws parallels between the Church of Scientology and the collective

speakers themselves. The authors state: “Our methods are a parallel to your own,” indicating the

similarities between both groups. The text casts its subject as a larger-then-life nemesis, addressing

its leaders directly and supplying a list of the Church's evils: “Your campaigns of misinformation;

76

suppression of dissent; your litigious nature.” However, rather than confronting the Church's

practices with morality and virtue – as Stallman does in his opposition of proprietary software –

Anonymous gleefully adopts the characteristics of a villain, one that not only utilises the same

tactics as the Church, but also surpasses their efficiencies in terms of ruthlessness and competency.

Finally, the speakers adopt internally-used Scientology acronyms to mock these terms' use and

subvert their legitimacy. By inverting the connotations of these phrases – such as the term

“Suppressive Person,” which is used by Scientologists to identify and attack its so-called enemies –

Anonymous participants reclaim them. The Message declares, “Yes, we are SPs” - uniting their

own supporters against the Church by making use of its own phraseology.

“I came for the lulz – but stayed for the outrage” Prior to January of 2008, most Anons were content to remain apolitical trolls; yet, the IRL

protests that materialised in early February attracted tens of hundreds of protesters, surpassing the

expectations of onlookers and participants alike, as well as attracting the interest of the international

news media. At Scientology locations in major cities around the world, Anons – many wearing the

Guy Fawkes mask popularised by the movie V For Vendetta, another collectivist pop culture

symbol - gathered to chant slogans and shout obscenities. Gregg Housh, one of the protest

organisers and authors of the “Message to Scientology” video, compared the rapid transition of

Anonymous from trolling to political activism – or anonymity to publicness – to the act of flipping

a switch. Like a popular thread on /b/, the linear progression of Anonymous' actions self-replicated

and intensified, beginning as a single, insufficient call to digital arms then expanding, less than one

month later, into a protest movement with defined socio-political objectives. Housh – and many

other participants and academic spectators – questioned how that transformation took place.

Participants' own responses to the protests stress the qualities of spontaneity and

ephemerality. According to many Anons, their politically charged provocation against the Church

of Scientology was the product of happenstance or the consequence of serendipity; perhaps if a

different post had suggested targeting a different organisation, it is possible that the protests would

77

have occurred at a different time for different reasons. However, these claims are reasonable only if

one views Anonymous as an entity that is divorced from previous iterations of technologist

subcultures. The collectivist rhetorical appeals made during both the 2008 and 2010 operations are

situated within an existing canon of technology writings, which have consistently challenged

opponents of free speech, harnessed creative or disruptive digital tactics, and asserted the individual

freedoms of online actors.

Moreover, the insular community exemplified in collectivist rhetorical texts suggest that the

symbolic identifications fostered within online meeting spaces were effective in creating unity.

Participants occupying both online and IRL spheres of influence were willing to subordinate their

own individuality in favour of symbolic and pragmatic unification – a designation that transcends

mere notions of collaboration and consensus. Adopting the figure and styling of a single individual

– calling themselves Anonymous or “Legion” - the most concrete source of Anon's success was its

unity. Mike Vitale, a Chanology participant, likewise credited the existence of shared norms and

values as the reason for the protests' success: “We all met each other. The idea of an Anon is that

you're fucking alone until you get to 4chan... and then, you know, these people all think like you.

And then, all of a sudden, you're not alone – you're with 500 others – and they all know the same

jokes as you, they all clearly have the same interests as you. Here's your culture” (Knappenberger

2012).

78

Section 4: Transparency

“The State will fight back, of course. They will improve their controls on secrets, raise surveillance and punishment of possible leakers, try to negotiate multilateral media controls. But even then, the net change is likely to be advantageous to the leakers – less free today, perhaps, but more free than prior to 2006. Assange has claimed, when the history of statecraft of the era is written, that it will be divided into pre- and post-WikiLeaks periods. This claim is grandiose and premature; it is not,

however, obviously wrong.” - Clay Shirky, 2013

During the concluding months of 2010, a website called WikiLeaks – framing itself as a

legitimate media organisation – attracted international scrutiny by publishing a trove of the U.S.

government's classified diplomatic secrets. Under the banner of free information and the free press,

Julian Assange, the founder and editor in chief of the website, evaded jail time by employing

dramatic geopolitical spectacle, eventually taking up residence in the Ecuadorian Embassy in

London, England to avoid answering questions in Sweden as part of a sexual assault investigation.

Fearing subsequent extradition to the United States, where Grand Jury hearings had already been

opened, Assange requested and was granted diplomatic asylum by Ecuador, continuing to work on

various WikiLeaks projects, conduct media interviews, and occasionally deliver speeches from the

window of the Embassy.

The above quote comes from an article published shortly following the Cablegate scandal,

wherein over 250,000 State Department cables – followed by 400,000 documents about the Iraq

War - were published in October 2010. WikiLeaks' source was later revealed to be Chelsea (then

known as Bradley) Manning, a young Army Private. In 2012, Manning testified in a military court

that her motivation for leaking the cables was to spark a domestic debate about the ethics of the

“role of the military and our foreign policy... as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan” and to provide

herself with “a clear conscience” (Manning 2012). Among the cables, Manning also revealed a

classified video of a 2007 airstrike in Bagdad, which showed an Apache helicopter firing upon a

group of unarmed Afghani citizens – two of them Reuters journalists – after the pilots mistook their

79

cameras for weapons.25

Clay Shirky, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, provides a

summary of this new scene of technologist dissent, as well as qualifies the government's response to

the headline-grabbing leaks, which supplanted Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers as

the largest disclosure of classified documents in U.S. history. Largely, Shirky's hypothetical

forecast of future State attempts to reign in cyberspace did indeed materialise: Chelsea Manning,

WikiLeaks' source, was sentenced to 35 years in prison; there is no sign that attempts to reform

“Washington's culture of secrecy” (Ball 2012) will produce any significant outcomes. International

telecommunication treaties, such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) have been

signed by the United States to combat intellectual property theft, prompting a coalition of Polish

parliamentarians to don Guy Fawkes masks – a deliberate homage to Anonymous – to protest the

treaty, a gesture that legitimised the hacktivist collective on the international stage. Yet, the author's

conclusion does not indicate the imminent breakdown of the unregulated Internet. On the contrary,

he argues that transparency is coming whether governments like it or not, citing the simple technical

processes that are used to share classified information securely and the difficult task of tracking

down leakers.

Because the WikiLeaks scandal was a fluid situation, reactions from the traditional press

about the episode varied. In the same article, Shirky responds to the predominant media response to

the website, claiming that the initial leak and distribution of the State Department cables were the

result of “a series of unfortunate events” (2011). Distancing himself from those media outlets,

however, Shirky recognises trends in journalism during the Internet age, arguing that cyberspace

does not merely pose a challenge to the traditional press; rather, the utility represents a paradigm-

shifting alternative to the comparatively sluggish and increasingly state manipulated news media

25 Provocatively titled “Collateral Murder,” the video also contains audio of the strike, including the voices of the pilots. During a particularly chilling clip, after firing upon the van of a family who stopped to recover the bodies and discovering that two children had been killed, one pilot states, “Well, it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle” (Sunshine Press 2010).

80

industry. As newspapers and cable television programs attempted to understand the geopolitical

implications of the leak, Shirky focuses instead on the unfolding meta-story: according to many

commentators, the fact that the intimate details of the United States' foreign agenda were being

gleaned from internal emails proved that the traditional press had failed to ask the right questions of

public officials.

The media was overlooking another emerging trend, however – one that Shirky fails to

reference, too. Both before and after the 2010 WikiLeaks episode, numerous technologically skilled

government whistleblowers acted to release documents relating to national security issues. The

leakers made each revelation independently of each other and were often respected, life-long

government employees - unlike in the highest-profile cases of Chelsea Manning and, later, Edward

Snowden. Moreover, all possessed sets of skills relating to information technology and, during

subsequent court cases - and sometimes jail sentences - they expressed their discomfort at the

State's lack of transparency and a perceived disregard for the rule of law. The notion that

whistleblowers are impulsive, young and unaware of the consequences of their actions – a thesis

that has been amplified by the press – ignores the scores of whistleblowers who have recently

challenged the post-9/11 security apparatus in the United States, many by referencing and publicly

discussing the same surveillance programs that Snowden revealed. The cast of actors in this scene

was much larger than the media acknowledged, a sentiment that many technologist commentators

recognised.

Before Edward Snowden revealed specifics about various NSA programs to the Guardian,

for example, Thomas Drake, William Binney, Edward Loomis and J. Kirk Wiebe – whistleblowers

and Agency veterans – resigned from their positions to go public about the government's

warrantless collection of domestic phone and Internet records. Their actions were preceded by

Russell D. Tice, a technical intelligence specialist who expressed concern about the lack of judicial

oversight involved in NSA communications interceptions, then was dismissed from the Agency

after urging Congress to reform whistleblower protection laws. In 2006, an AT&T technician

81

named Mark Klein exposed the company's cooperation with the NSA to knowingly monitor

domestic telecommunications by installing network hardware. He had been an employee for 22

years.

The National Security Agency was not the only organisation to come under scrutiny as a

result of this cacophony of whistleblowing. In 2002, Department of Justice employee Jesselyn

Radack disclosed that the FBI had committed an ethics violation during the interrogation of John

Walker Lindt, the so-called “American Taliban.” After advising her supervisor via email that Lindt

had been questioned without his lawyer present26, Radack later discovered that those interrogations

were, indeed, submitted in evidence by the FBI and that her emails had been deleted. She was able

to recover those missing emails, then handed them over to the media – and resigned. John Kiriakou,

a CIA analyst, was the first government official to discuss the United States' use of waterboarding

when interrogating Al Qaeda prisoners, describing the technique as torture to a reporter. Though

seemingly unrelated to the NSA leaks, both Radack and Kiriakou are two more examples of a

growing trend towards open disclosure. The ensuing policy debates surrounding both cases are

evidence of the strategic power of leaking; without Radack and Kiriakou's testimony, both national

security issues would have never been debated by members of the civil society.

In particular, the question of legitimacy surrounding the WikiLeaks disclosures vis-a-vis the

traditional press allowed the stasis of the argument to stall. The WikiLeaks case was notable

because of the sheer volume of documents leaked, as well as the unredacted nature of those

documents. In the past, other leakers sought out experienced journalists and established journalistic

institutions – Kiriakou talked to CBS News, for example, Radack sent those incriminating emails to

Newsweek magazine and William Binney provided information to the New York Times. Manning,

on the other hand, sent military documents in bulk to Julian Assange, a computer hacker, who

proceeded to publish them onto the Internet without consulting any foreign policy professionals,

26 It was later revealed that, while reading the Miranda rights, an FBI agent stated, “Of course, there are no lawyers here in Afghanistan” when noting Lindt's right to council (Radack 2005).

82

making discretionary redactions or considering the security implications of that information

becoming public. Although the leak was circulated by transparency advocates in the name of

government accountability, the stasis of the mainstream debate was stuck in the realm of

definitional arguments, with many observers rejecting Manning's action as an act of whistleblowing

in the first place.

Cablegate: WikiLeaks and the Question of Legitimacy

Founded in 2006, WikiLeaks was a relatively unknown enterprise prior to the Cablegate

scandal, which were leaked to the “not-for-profit media organisation” by U.S. Army Private

Chelsea Manning. The website's low profile is likely the consequence of the niche political subjects

covered by WikiLeaks prior to Cablegate; Nigerian elections, for example, or an Icelandic bank are

not as prominent a target as the U.S. State Department and military, or its conflicts abroad. Despite

the website's dignified self-description, found on a webpage labelled “About,” it is easy to refute

each of Assange's three claims about his project's definition and purpose. Little is known about

WikiLeaks' financial structure, so the assertion that it is “not-for-profit” remains dubious; the fact

that “articles” on the website are written by anonymous volunteers sets it apart from legitimate

media outlets; and - given that one volunteer has described Assange as, “the heart and soul of

[WikiLeaks], its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the

rest" (Burns, Somaiya 2010) – it can hardly be classified as an “organisation.” Regardless, the

“About” document finds many opportunities to restate its legitimacy as a well-established media

institution, referring to itself as “a publishing organisation” and “a new model of journalism”

throughout (2011). Within the public sphere, WikiLeaks had no recognisable ethos; as such, its

sudden arrival on the geopolitical scene was widely regarded as suspect and illegitimate.

Assange's own description of himself attempts to rectify these uncertainties, yet fails to do

so with any semblance of credibility. Under the subheading “What is WikiLeaks?” the author states,

“We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our

journalists” (2011). Yet, given the conventional definition of a journalist, his claim is in conflict

83

with the very next sentence, “One of our most important activities is to publish the original source

material.” The role of journalists is not solely to publish the information that is leaked to them;

rather, they must also convey to their readers details about the unique context and varied

perspectives that result from the issues they cover. Assange's redefinition of the word “journalist”

notwithstanding, the prioritisation of source material – and its disclosure in full to ensure that

“readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth” - is reminiscent of the practical

aspirations of free and open source software developers.27 To programmers, the value of source

code results from the same appeals of transparency: without the ability to review the work of fellow

hackers, or improve upon their ideas, it is impossible to ensure that the software does what it claims

to do. Source material and source code thus function in an identical fashion: to remove the necessity

of trust within human interactions, to eliminate hierarchies of expertise, and to facilitate the

democratic propagation of knowledge. Among a technologist audience, these allusions to open

source institutions indeed inspire confidence; yet, predictably, these details did little to convince the

general public or the mainstream press of the site's legitimacy.

The parallels to open source software continue, as Assange indirectly likens liberal

notions of freedom with the dissemination of restricted information, creating a comparison that is

more accessible to general audiences. To do this, he references the Declaration of Human Rights, in

particular Article 19, saying, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this

right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart

information through any medium regardless of frontiers.” The construction of this comparison relies

on the assumptions of the audience; namely, it requires readers to make a logical leap from

supporting the relatively uncontroversial freedoms of opinion and expression to defending the

“transparency-by-force” agenda of WikiLeaks. Yet, by using the universal language of the

Declaration of Human Rights, Assange endues his enthymeme with global, collectivist and ethical

27 Assange's hacker ethic-inspired approach to journalism is not surprising, given his background reading and contributing to the Cypherpunk Mailing List, as well as hacking into U.S. military servers.

84

significations: although the organisation is unapologetically breaking the law by making classified

information public, the ethical justifications being deployed transcend the moral authority of the law.

In this respect, the author is successfully able to build the legitimacy of the organisation.

The author utilises another enthymeme, which indicts the traditional media for charging

money to access stories and for acting as knowledge gatekeepers rather than bestowing agency on

their readers. Assange states, “Because we are not motivated by making a profit, we work

cooperatively with other publishing and media organisations around the globe, instead of following

the traditional model of competing with other media. We don't hoard our information” (2011). The

unspoken claim implicit here is that the traditional press is motivated by self-interest and beholden

to capitalism, whereas WikiLeaks' proposed methods offer solutions to these vices. Assange implies

that, because WikiLeaks is able to uncover so many stories “that are often picked up by other media

outlets,” this is evidence that the traditional press has failed to report on newsworthy matters

promptly. In order to accept this conclusion, the audience must already be familiar with the internal

workings of the publishing industry; moreover, to embrace Assange's criticisms, readers must

experience the same dissatisfaction with the press as Assange outlines.

Despite his knowledge of audience, Assange deploys a number of inartistic proofs when

discussing the specific technical elements of WikiLeaks that are put into place to protect its sources.

This absence of specificity and detail seems surprising, given the fact that Assange demands

absolute openness and transparency from governments. The subsection titled, “How WikiLeaks

Works” describes its internal process as “combin[ing] high-end security technologies with

journalism and ethical principles” (2011), without detailing the specifics of these technological

processes. The submission process for potential leakers, for example, is described in vague terms.

Assange deploys empty verbiage in his description of the WikiLeaks dropbox, calling it “a high

security anonymous dropbox fortified by cutting-edge cryptographic information technologies”

(2011). There are a number of encryption schemes and implementations that have been developed

as a means of scrambling communications, so merely describing WikiLeaks' method of source

85

protection as “cutting-edge cryptographic information technologies” is insufficient in proving that

their tools are dependable – or even in defining what those tools are. Moreover, many newspapers

maintain “secure dropboxes” for potential sources to utilise; yet, no details are provided to

differentiate between WikiLeaks' security system from other, allegedly inadequate news platforms.

Among open source hackers and transparency advocates, these claims of security would likely be

met with scepticism, as Assange is requesting the same trust of potential sources - “just trust us” -

as he so vehemently denounces when identical requests of confidence are issued by governments.

In the section titled, “How WikiLeaks Verifies Its News Stories,” Assange issues another

similarly vague and patently anti-transparency claim. Specifics are once again missing from the

descriptive section on document verification; instead, the author references extrinsic evidence, such

as examples and the testimony of witnesses. For example, to support the claim that WikiLeaks

“use[s] traditional investigative journalism techniques as well as more modern technology-based

methods,” Assange describes the process of verification used prior to the release of the Collateral

Murder video. The account states:

“We sent a team of journalists to Iraq to interview the victims and observers of the helicopter attack. The team obtained copies of hospital records, death certificates, eye witness statements and other corroborating evidence supporting the truth of the story. Our verification process does not mean we will never make a mistake, but so far our method has meant that WikiLeaks has correctly identified the veracity of every document it has published” (Assange 2011). Once again, rather than justifying the process of verification using a logic-based defence of the

organisation's practices, the above description issues a piece of testimonial evidence to support

claims that each document is subjected to a “very detailed examination procedure.”

Finally, no names or data about the organisation's volunteers are mentioned throughout the

explanatory text; rather, in the subheading focusing on “The People Behind WikiLeaks,” a general

list of occupations are provided: “accredited journalists, software programmers, network engineers,

mathematicians and others” (2011). Instead of naming or providing examples of WikiLeaks' writers,

the author uses the section to address the rumour that an intelligence agency or government is using

WikiLeaks as a front, rebutting that claim by again using examples. Assange puts into practice

86

Aristotle's refutation enthymeme, stating, “By definition, intelligence agencies want to hoard

information. By contrast, WikiLeaks has shown that it wants to do just the opposite. Our track

record shows we go to great lengths bring the truth to the world without fear or favour” (2011).

These sentences indeed rule out ownership by an “intelligence agency or government”; yet, readers

are still unable to glean information about who – specifically – is behind the WikiLeaks

organisation. Even Assange's name is absent from this section of text, despite his prominent role as

the face of the organisation and its founder. Rather, the section prioritises the notion the WikiLeaks

volunteers work and publish anonymously. Names and reputations do not play a role in WikiLeaks'

defence of itself, therefore none of its arguments are overtly ethos driven, creating another claim

based on trust.

Ultimately, however, the author's character is nevertheless revealed to its audience. The tone

of the piece, for example, borders on paranoid in several subheadings – as evidenced in the claim

that intelligence agencies started the rumour that WikiLeaks is actually a front for governments

seeking to entrap potential whistleblowers. Another sentence discusses the potential risks of leaking

information, stating, “Sources who are of substantial political or intelligence interest may have their

computers bugged or their homes fitted with hidden video cameras.” Once again, the speaker aligns

the actions of the government with overt corruption, juxtaposing its nefarious behaviour against the

comparatively ethical – yet illegal – acts of whistleblowing by potential sources. More important is

the speaker's attitude of paranoia and fear towards the government; yet, despite these apparent risks,

WikiLeaks remains nevertheless committed to protecting its sources and advocating for radical

transparency. The tone of the piece is used to invent an ethos of legitimacy for the organisation, as

well as assure the audience that WikiLeaks is acting with honourable intentions. The author then

solidifies this point, bolstering WikiLeaks' “journalism record” by including a list of the awards that

the organisation has received.

Collective voice is used throughout the piece, functioning once again to establish the

organisation's legitimacy and reassert the anonymity of its volunteers. The speaker of the text,

87

therefore, takes on a broad range of characteristics, embodying the qualities and voices of

WikiLeaks unspecified number of volunteers. In technology manifestos, the faceless mob trope is

one reoccurring collectivist image, usually appearing in texts that operate at the margins of the law:

from Anonymous' unruly calls to digital protest to the untraceable hoards of potential assassins in

“Assassination Politics,” technologist texts frequently use anonymous speech as both a practical

tactic and symbol of dissent or secrecy. When these texts are penned as a defence of openness and

transparency, however, it is difficult to reconcile the contradiction implicit in the method of

authorship and its intended meaning.

The anonymous nature of publishing and whistleblowing espoused by WikiLeaks is both

reflected and challenged in the example of Edward Snowden, who publicly leaked classified

information to established journalists then swiftly revealed his identity to the public. Although

Assange equates anonymity with security, asserting that sources would be harassed and jailed for

their disclosures, this identification does not hold true in Snowden's case, as he was eventually

granted diplomatic asylum. The fact that Snowden was able to avoid arrest – combined with the

unrelenting nature of the NSA-related reportage – served to amplify the story and prolong its impact.

While anonymity is a valuable and protective utility, its deployment can be delegitimised and

framed as an act of cowardice.

The Legitimacy of Openness

On June 5, 2013, The Guardian published the first of many stories revealing the technical

details of various NSA surveillance programs – specifics pieced together using documents provided

by defence contractor Edward Snowden. The minimally redacted “source material” was published

alongside the reports, to allow readers to verify the presented information. Snowden had not used

WikiLeaks' document-sharing service, nor did he follow the model of leaking espoused by the

organisation; rather, the process mirrored that of traditional whistleblowers, with sources contacting

investigative reporters directly.

Following the first wave of reporting, in August of 2013, Snowden's first public statement

88

was read aloud by another prominent Internet privacy advocate at an awards ceremony in Germany.

The setting and occasion for the text are notable. Given the political history of Germany in relation

to the threat of domestic surveillance, polls conducted at the outset of the NSA scandal concluded

that German citizens were particularly supportive of Snowden, with many advocating for his

diplomatic asylum request. The speech is presented on the site of a 20th century surveillance state;

though the institutions of that state are now defunct, the fact remains that the reading occurs before

an audience that is able to recall with clarity living conditions under an oppressive government. The

fact that German citizens identify and readily oppose the NSA's domestic surveillance programs,

comparing their malign influence to that of the East German secret police, is a particularly

provocative and convincing attestation.

The ceremonial nature of the piece is disrupted by the fact that it is delivered by proxy:

Jacob Appelbaum, a privacy advocate and vocal supporter of WikiLeaks, read the statement aloud,

as it would be impossible for Snowden to accept the award in person.28 Although Snowden's own

ethos is brought to bear on the subsequent text, the influence of another agent is also at play;

Appelbaum's work on online anti-censorship tools have earned him a degree of respect within

hacktivist and technologist circles. Moreover, his support of WikiLeaks – and subsequent

harassment by law enforcement in the United States as a result of this support – have made

Appelbaum both the public face and spokesperson of organisations that support individuals' rights

to privacy and anonymity, such as his position as a core developer of the Tor Project, an open

source anonymity browser. As a result, Appelbaum's experiences run somewhat parallel to

Snowden's, making him an ideal proxy in this situation.

The text of Snowden's speech functions to praise the efforts of individuals around the world

who advocated for reform both before and after the NSA story broke. The epideictic forum of the

piece, therefore, takes on dual significance: not only is the award ceremony intended to commend 28 In an interesting coincidence, Appelbaum first established himself as an influential figure within the technologist subculture in 2010, when he unexpectedly spoke on behalf of Julian Assange, delivering the WikiLeaks keynote address at a hacker conference called H.O.P.E. following the Cablegate scandal.

89

Snowden for his actions, but through the text of his speech, another demographic of individuals are

praised in turn. Snowden begins by minimising his own action, stating:

“In is a great honour to be recognised for the public good created by this act of whistleblowing. However, the greater reward and recognition belongs to the individuals and organisations in countless countries around the world who shattered boundaries of language and geography to stand together in defence of the public right to know, and the value of our privacy” (2013). Snowden acknowledges the efforts of numerous individuals – from the journalists who helped bring

the story to the public to the protest organisers who subsequently mobilised global coalitions of

activists. By doing so, Snowden counters the prevailing media narrative, which revolved

exclusively around his own identity and the heroism or villainy implicit in his actions. By

recognising the contributions of the civil society in response to the scandal, Snowden gestures at the

meta-discourses surrounding media production. Without an audience, there can be no author; or,

without the public's reaction and advocacy, there can be no change.

The images Snowden utilises as representative examples of concerned citizens demonstrate

his attention to audience, as well as his attempts to situate the historical moment into a broader

context of technologist references. He does this by introducing emblematic characters into an

otherwise unemotional and logic-driven speech. He states:

“My gratitude belongs to all of those who have reached out to their friends and family to explain why suspicionless surveillance matters. It belongs to the man in a mask, on the street, on a hot day; and the woman with a sign and an umbrella in the rain. It belongs to the young people in college with a civil liberties sticker on their laptops, and the kid in the back of a class in high school making memes” (2011). These examples reference and elevate the subtle or unobtrusive political acts of ordinary citizens,

likening them to his own comparatively grandiose endeavour. Although the “mask” referenced in

the first example is likely an allusion to Anonymous, which mobilised their supporters to organise

pro-4th amendment rallies on July 4, 2013, the abstract nature of the successive examples allow for

a more broad application. Both the first and second figures represent the ordinary and unremarkable

activism characteristic of democratic life, invoked to signify the patriotism and importance of

traditional demonstrations. The last two images are less overtly connected to conventional activism,

90

embodying a passive form of resistance, which occurs when participants identify as members of a

group. The civil liberties sticker, for instance, signifies a more passive form of resistance than

participating in a rally. Snowden's shout-out to the creation of online jokes, or memes, appears at

first as an out-of-place, apolitical reference as well. These allusions, however, serves to praise the

oft-overlooked elements of resistance, enduing the most minuscule act – silently supporting a cause,

for example - with political significance.

Taken together, Snowden's enthymeme is particularly obvious within the context of the

setting: an intellectual German audience, familiar with the writings of Nobel Laureate Thomas

Mann, would readily identify the message: “Everything is politics.”

“We Are All Edward Snowden Now”

Edward Snowden's speech gestures at the symbolic advantages of grassroots activism,

glorifying everyday acts of overt or subtle resistance. The effects of his call to action – its

successful appeals to logos and pathos – manifested themselves in the continued and widespread

political mobilisation he glorifies. Indeed, the July 4th protests were the first of many

demonstrations against domestic surveillance in major American cities; this initial protest facilitated

the unification of localised coalitions of actors, meeting to discuss ideas and plan future political

actions. Once a decentralised web of individual groups united by progressive politics, Restore the

4th was an exercise in coalition building; at the Washington D.C. protest, for example, activists from

Code Pink and Amnesty International marched with Anonymous participants, EFF supporters and

former Occupy Wall Street organisers. This unification proved crucial in establishing the staying

power of the movement.

Personal identification between Snowden and the community of technologists is a subtle

element of his speech, hidden behind the speaker's humble deflection of public praise. However, the

importance of these identifications cannot be understated for their role in reunifying existing

subcultures of hacktivists in pursuit of a more opened society. Snowden himself became a symbol

to many hackers: his middle class upbringing, eloquent justifications for leaking and victorious

91

thwarting of U.S. imprisonment allowed him to take on the ethos of a heroic leader. Snowden's

whistleblower origin story was one that paralleled the political and social experiences of hackers

universally – even down to his laptop cover, plastered with stickers supporting the Tor Project and

the EFF. A slogan printed on anti-surveillance picket signs embodies the significance of these

technologist identifications. Held up during European demonstrations for Snowden's asylum bid

and at American Restore the 4th Rallies alike, it read, “We are all Edward Snowden now” - a

sentiment that glorifies acts of whistleblowing, reinforces collectivist iconography and forecasts the

leaks to come.

92

Conclusion

This project can be summarised in one picture.

It's an image posted by the WikiLeaks Twitter account: in front of a staged backdrop in the

Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange and Richard Stallman hold up a picture of Edward Snowden,

redesigned to look like Barack Obama's HOPE poster popularised during the 2008 presidential

campaign. The tweet reads, “Yes We Can” - a remixed statement of inspiration for a freshly

mobilised grassroots campaign, dedicated to pressuring EU countries to pass surveillance reform

and extend asylum protections to Snowden, then a fugitive of the United States residing in a

Moscow airport terminal. The image circulated on a predictable list of social media sites, leading

science fiction author Bruce Sterling to reflect on the monumental implications of the meeting

between Stallman and Assange, a concrete manifestation of an apparent geopolitical trend thirty

years in the making. Together, the two comprise what Andy Greenberg calls “the Secret-Killing

Machine”: Stallman, the ideological kernel of the information liberation movement, accompanied

by Assange, the compiler, who converted that philosophical and legal jumble into an executable

language of resistance – though, leaking documents may not have been Stallman originally had in

mind. Ironically calling the image “epic,” Sterling intones: “They have the beatific look of

righteousness rewarded. Che Guevara in his starred beret had more self-doubt than these guys. They

are thrilled with themselves” (2013).

Prior to the NSA scandal, the contemporary trajectory of technologist political activity can

be categorised by widespread pessimism. At hacker conferences and in online discussions, the

general technologist sentiment is one of lethargy and defeat - the collective repetition of “We Lost

the War,” an allusion to a 2005 lecture given at the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin. The now

famous and oft-quoted panel summarised “the eminent loss of privacy and civil rights” online and

promised to instruct attendees about how to “simply survive the times ahead” (Gonggrijp, Rieger

2005). The broad idealism and early technologist successes of the past had given way to a bleak

outcome: the re-appropriation of hacker utilities by intelligence agencies and corporations to repress

93

open access and the once-venerated cause of information freedom. For example, after the

development of the Linux kernel successfully launched the free and open source software

movement from conception to reality, law enforcement infiltration of F/OSS communities and the

successful backdooring of open source distributions inundated many hackers with a sense of futility

toward both their mission and methodology. Moreover, in the past, hackers were inclined to meet

federal suppression and scrutiny with vitriolic opposition; however, rather than devising holistic

surveillance-bypassing systems, contemporary technologists began to publicly reject the feasibility

of absolute security, opting instead for strategies of mere “survival” (Gonggrijp, Rieger 2005).

Yet, following the government's trial of Chelsea Manning and its widely successful

muzzling of WikiLeaks, the NSA scandal reinvigorated the aspirational objectives of technologists.

Suddenly, issues of surveillance entered the stage of the mainstream news cycle, leaving the

comparably insular scene of science journals and shadowy encryption debate forums. The Snowden

disclosures confirmed what many technologists already knew about the data collection in the U.S.,

such as the workings of secret FISA courts tasked with approving NSA requests, the cooperation of

technology enterprises like Google or Microsoft, and the passive indifference of Congressional

oversight committees. The fact that the civil society was now able to debate the merits of the U.S.'s

security strategy ultimately inspired unity among technologists and moved the stasis of the

argument about free information forward once again. At conference keynotes throughout the

summer of 2013 – when they weren't too busy heckling suspected feds - technologist panelists and

lecturers encouraged attendees to “Leak it all.” Among many technologists, the NSA scandal stood

as a shining example of the most effective and ethical possible course of action against

unacceptable political realities, replacing Stallman's vision of an open source solution with acts of

whistleblowing.

The Coming Cyberwar

Political involvement and civic engagement is at an all-time low in the United States, yet

technologists have consistently displayed high levels of interest in political and social commitments

94

– from filling courtrooms to donating money to nonprofit organisations. Despite a brief spike in

political enthusiasm during the 2008 election, the celebratory atmosphere once again reverted to a

climate of political frustration. Technologist engagement can be attributed in part to the social unity

and cohesion that can be observed throughout these representative examples of technologist rhetoric:

the often casual repetition of symbols, jokes and slogans. The appeal of these communal cultural

identifications spans generations of hacker politics, which explains Anonymous hacktivists'

decision to include a John Perry Barlow's essay when assisting pro-democracy Egyptian

demonstrators. In his examination of the declining relevance of political society, contemporary

political theorist Robert D. Putnam outlines a method for addressing the disengagement of the

citizenry in his work, Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community. Across the

board, Putnam notes, Americans' involvement in the political sphere has diminished over time: we

distrust our government, avoid membership in civic organisations, rarely attend community

meetings and are unenthusiastic participants even during the most contentious of election cycles.

Somewhat famously, in proposing a remedy to these democratic ills, Putnam encourages

individuals to join a bowling league, so that they are exposed to valuable social interactions and

civic discussions with other citizens. Technologists and computer hackers never stopped

participating in the conversations Putnam describes; instead of joining a bowling league, though,

they became members of mailing lists and deface crews.

These strong associational ties may seem out-of-place in a culture that tends to devalue

individual identity, prioritising meritocratic ideals such as “the quality of the code” instead.

Anonymous hackers, an extreme example of this phenomenon, frequently attest to the sense of

community and camaraderie that occurs between participants, despite the lack of information about

the real people behind the online pseudonyms. Rather than conventional forms of interaction, bonds

are formed instead through hours of exclusively text-based communication. The importance of

these “weak ties” of association can be similarly observed in open source communities, where

developers are likewise geographically situated around the globe, yet are able to collaboratively

95

code complicated software utilities and craft jointly-authored press releases.

All of this indicates long-term trouble for the United States security apparatus, which has

already revealed its hiring paranoia, taking a page from the hacker playbook. Federal agencies are

anxiously seeking to enlist young, computer-savvy college graduates – new recruits eager to create

and deploy the sophisticated cyber weapons of tomorrow. Military and intelligence recruiters

organise digital “Capture the Flag” games on college campuses to survey the field of potential

employees; DARPA funds computer upgrades and robotics tournaments in American high schools.

There is a knowledge vacuum that demands to be filled; yet, oftentimes, the most skilled

programmers do not boast resumes with computer science degrees from elite universities or

experience gleaned through competitive internships. On the contrary, the self-taught criminal

hackers, who are inclined to use their knowledge of computer systems “for fun and profit,” are

usually the most qualified for computer security positions, having clocked thousands of hours of

experience on IRC. Oxblood Ruffin, who spouts pithy technologist wisdom from Twitter these days,

summarised the difficult position of intelligence agencies by saying, “No nation will come to a state

of cybersecurity preparedness until they get rid of their hiring phobias against the hacking

community” (2012). The problem transcends mere phobia, however; these days, intelligence

agencies are acutely aware of the pro-leaking attitudes of new computer science hires, measuring

technological expertise and ideological fitness in equal measure.

The hacker ideology diametrically opposes that of the intelligence industry ideology – and

many corporate tech outfits, too. The patriotic slogans about “Securing the Homeland” plastered on

NSA recruitment pamphlets represent a direct affront to the anarchic, anti-government sentiments

expressed in the hacker ethic. For-profit technology utilities are another hacker villain; not only is

the code proprietary, but the Snowden documents also revealed corporate compliance with

government spying, indicting massive tech giants for funnelling user metadata onto NSA databases.

According to many hackers, the U.S. government and corporate enterprises alike have revealed

themselves to be unethical and inhumane, disregarding the rule of law in favour of convenience. In

96

the coming cyberwar, the sides have already been appointed – the participants chose where to stand

over thirty years ago.

The future of cyber security in the United States, then, is all rhetoric. Not always the kind of

rhetoric that is relevant to the analyses presented in this paper – rhetoric in the Aristotelian sense,

meaning “the faculty of observing the available means of persuasion” - but a more sinister

definition of the word, indicating calculated manipulations and falsehoods. In this country,

technology debates are rarely built on fact. On the contrary, technology issues represent a perfect

storm for public misinformation: a potent combination of technical complexity, public

incomprehension and the nature of matters about classified intelligence. For example, in a 2010

interview with General Keith Alexander, the Director of the NSA told reporters that hacktivists

were capable and inclined to target electronic utilities such as the power grid, which would cause

nationwide blackouts. In a Wall Street Journal report, technology writer Soibhan Gorman debunks

the legitimacy of the alleged security threat, referencing Anon's precedent for targeting government

and corporate entities, not the very infrastructure upon which their ability to communicate relies.

When the story went public, few journalists countered Alexander's claims with facts - such as the

simple reality that no parts of the power grid are attached to the Internet, making it a secure utility –

or approached Anonymous participants to comment on the validity of the General's assertions.

Rhetoric is the study of probable truth, making it an exceptionally valuable tool for

examining the contradictory, well-articulated and sometimes maddeningly dubious truths about the

political implications of networked living. I am not convinced that viable solutions to this security

powder-keg can be found in blind trust of the NSA, an agency that has demonstrated its willingness

to curtail inter-governmental oversight and manipulate private companies. Politicians lack the

interest, expertise and political will to address this problem, let alone provide solutions. CEOs of

technology companies have been summoned to the White House to discuss the process of

rebuilding user trust in the wake of the NSA scandal; however, businesses should not be entrusted

with the important task of representing the public's interest, as their primary goal is the pursuit of

97

capital. Perhaps the first step toward consensus would resemble a White House advisory panel

composed of the cryptographers, private computer security researchers and free speech advocates

who have followed the stasis of this debate from its inception.

During all these discussions of cyberwarfare, few people are considering the feasibility of

cyberpeacebuilding. It is true that computers were originally designed for spying and censoring and

controlling contingents who can't keep up; “That's what Alan Turing was all about,” technology

writer Bruce Sterling summarises, pointedly calling out the militaristic origin story of the modern

information technology industry. It is also true that computers represent vast corporate interests,

designed for calculated efficiency, brand recognition and a competitive market space. Computers

are built for data-mining and serving targeted advertisements, using algorithms to ensure that the

right people get paid. What Sterling's quote calls attention to is the fact that, without an exigence of

domination – whether it is the pursuit of corporate or military hegemony – computers would not

exist. Notions of violence are tied to technology, as in any other form of rhetorical identification.

Computers were invented to make war and to make money – in that order.

But within that bleak context, in a proudly democratic society, technologist reactions to

these truths should be greeted with understanding - even sympathy. The hacker notions that

computers can create beauty, impart knowledge, expand frontiers and, ultimately, spread humanity?

That is the only vision worth fighting for.

98

Glossary

Adapted from Anonymous entries to UrbanDictionary.com, a crowdsourced archive of regional and cultural slang. Anonymous: (n.) A loosely-associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as "an internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives." The network became known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial of service attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites. /b/: (n.) 1. 4chan's "Random" imageboard. A place where you go to become your inner asshole and live out your sickest fantasies. Or, 2. Hell. Backdoor: (n.) A piece of code built into software that allows the creator entry. This type of system is usually unnecessary, but has two main functions: 1. To automatically create an account with full privileges that is hidden from the user(s) of the program, to more easily facilitate the creation of a maintenance account Or 2. As above, but with ulterior motives. See spyware. BBS: (acr.) An acronym for “Bulletin Board System,” which were old-timey computer networks. Each was privately owned, and users would dial in to connect. The first one went up in 1978, and they reached their peak in 1996 with over 5000 systems in the USA alone. They were essentially killed off by the Internet. CryptoWars: (n.) The unofficial name for the U.S. government's attempts to limit access to strong cryptographic systems. Cyberpunk: (n.) 1. In fiction, the word is considered a sub-genre of Science Fiction. Or 2. A term that generally covers the computing underworld of hackers, as well as various underground technology. Cypherpunk: (n.) An activist advocating for widespread use of strong encryption as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. DDoS Attack: (n.) A form of electronic attack involving multiple computers, which send repeated HTTP requests or pings to a server to load it down and render it inaccessible for a period of time. Often used by freedom fighters on the Internet, usually attacking the systems of greedy corporations who want to sacrifice your freedom for their profits. Dropbox: (n.) A file sharing application F/OSS: (acr.) An abbreviation for “Free and Open Source Software.” I did it for the lulz: (phrase) A slogan which serves as justification for any trolling or Internet drama caused. IRC: (acr.) Abbreviation for “Internet Relay Chat,” a chat protocol initially developed as a means of communication back in the days of Bulletin Board Systems. IRC is a text only means of communication; non-text communications or files are sent via IRC's file transfer protocol, known as DCC.

99

IRL: (acr.) An abbreviation for "In Real Life." Often used in Internet chat rooms to let other users know that you are talking about something in the real world and not in the Internet world. Legion of Doom: (n.) A notable cyberpunk group that was active from the 1980s to the late 1990s. LOIC: (acr.) An acronym for “Low Orbit Ion Cannon,” an open source distributed denial of service client. Meatspace: (n.) A term, originating from cyberpunk fiction and culture, referring to the real - that is, not virtual - world, the world of flesh and blood. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The opposite of cyberspace. Meme: (n.) 1. A unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea to be transferred from one individual to another, and subjected to mutation, crossover and adaptation. Or 2. A word used to give a bit of pseudo-academic gravitas to stupid viral shit. Metadata: (n.) A fancy word for "information" invented by tech folks to make their jobs sound harder than they really are. Phishing: (v.) Tricking an Internet user into giving up his/her login name and password. Could also be used to get credit card information. Spyware: (n.) 1. Software that collects personal information about the user, such as mining workstations or monitoring behaviour. Or 2. A piece of shit program designed to track you down and collect personal information. TMRC: (acr.) An abbreviation for “Tech Model Railroad Club.” Troll: (n.) A person who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argumentation. TX-0: (acr.) An abbreviation for “Transistorized Experimental Computer Zero,” affectionately referred to as “Tixo.” An early, fully transistorized computer that was developed by the military and is now regarded as the computer of hacker culture. WikiLeaks: (n.) A “not-for-profit media organisation” that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of classified, "top secret" or sensitive government and corporate documents. 4chan: (n.) 1. A message board and imageboard on the Internet where people congregate to post various kinds of pictures, flash animations, and discuss things such as anime. Or 2. A meeting place and breeding ground for the utter dregs of humanity. A festering polyp in the colon of society.

100

Works Cited

Anonymous. "UpFront." Linux Journal June 2002: n. pag. Print. Anonymous. "Zeitplan Für Tag 1." Chaos Communication Club 2013. Web. February 18, 2015 2015. Barlow, John P. "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace." Web log post. John Perry Barlow Library. Electronic Frontier Foundation, 8 Feb. 1996. Web. Barlow, John P. "Crime and Puzzlement." Web log post. John Perry Barlow Library. Electronic Frontier Foundation, 8 June 1990. Web. Bell, Jim. Assassination Politics. N.p.: JR Books Online, 3 Apr. 1997. PDF. Blankenship, Loyd 'The Mentor'. "The Hacker Manifesto." Phrack 1986. Print. Broder, John, and Scott Shane. "For Snowden, a Life of Ambition, Despite the Drifting." The New York Times 2013: A20. Print. Cohen, Noam. "Web Attackers Point to Cause in WikiLeaks." The New York Times 9 Dec. 2010: A1. Print. Coleman, E. Gabriella. "Code Is Speech: Legal Tinkering, Expertise, and Protest among Free and Open Source Software Developers." Cultural Anthropology 24.24.3 (2009): 420-54. Print. Coleman, E. Gabriella. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2012. Print. Crockett, Davy. A Narrative of the Life of Davy Crockett of the State of Tennessee. 6th ed. Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1834. Print. Crosby, Kip. An Oral History of Lee Felsenstein. El Cerrto, California: Computer History Museum, 2008. Print. "denial of service attack (DoS attack)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 25 Apr. 2015 Encryption, Senate Judiciary Committee Cong. (1997) testimony of Louis J. Freeh, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Print. Gates, Bill. "An Open Letter to Hobbyists." Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter 1976. Print. Greenberg, Andy. This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information. New York: Dutton, 2012. Print. Greenberg, Andy. "NSA Director Heckled at Conference as He Asks for Security Community's Understanding." Forbes. N.p., 31 July 2013. Web. Hamilton, David P. "Banned Code Lives in Poetry and Song: Critics of DVD-Copyright Ruling Argue Constitution Protects Posting in All Forms." The Wall Street Journal [New York City,

101

New York] 12 Apr. 2001: n. pag. Print. Hayes, Mike. "Regarding Your Letter of 3 February 1976 Appearing in Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter Vol. 2 No. 1." Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter 29 Feb. 1976: 2. Print. Hitt, Jack, and Paul Tough. "Is Computer Hacking a Crime?" Ed. Lewis Lapham. Harper's Mar. 1990: 45-55, 57. Print. Hughes, Eric. "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto." N.p., 9 Mar. 1993. Web. Jardin, Xeni. "HaikuLeaks: 'Cable Is Poetry'" BoingBoing. 29 Dec. 2010. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. "Books of the Times; Hackers as Heroes." The New York Times 1984. Print. Lent, Adam. Small Is Powerful: Why the Era of Big Business, Big Government and Big Culture Is Over. Unbound, 2015. Print. Levy, Steven. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. New York City, New York: Dell Publishing, 1984. Print. Levy, Steven. "Geek Power: Steven Levy Revisits Tech Titans, Hackers, Idealists." Wired Magazine 2010. Print. May, Timothy C. "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto." Mailing List. Cypherpunks Mailing List. N.p., 22 Nov. 1992. Web. Norton, Quinn, and Eleanor Saitta. "No Neutral Ground in a Burning World." 30th Chaos Communication Congress. Congress Centrum Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. 30 Dec. 2013. Psychotic Opposition. "Society Sucks (And What To Do About It)." Cult of the Dead Cow Files. cDc Communications, Inc., Sept. 1987. Web. Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Print. Raymond, Eric S. The New Hacker's Dictionary. 3 ed. Boston, Massachusetts MIT Press, 1996. Print. Reiling, Robert. "A Letter from MITS." Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter 31 Jan. 1976: 1. Print. Ruffin, Oxblood. "Hacktivism, From Here to There." CyberCrime and Digital Law Enforcement Conference. Yale Law School, New Haven, Connecticut. 28 Mar. 2004. Speech. Schoen, Seth. "decss-haiku.txt." Gallery of DeCSS Descramblers. Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Department, 12 Feb. 2001. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. Schoen, Seth. "The History of the DeCSS Haiku." Web log post. Loyalty. N.p., 2004. Web. 25 Apr. 2015.

102

Stacy, Christopher C. Getting Started Computing at the AI Lab. N.p.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 7 Sept. 1982. Stallman, Richard. "The GNU Manifesto." GNU Operating System. The Free Software Foundation, 1983. Web. Sterling, Bruce. The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. N.p.: Project Gutenberg, 1994. Print. Sterling, Bruce. "The Ecuadorian Library Or, the Blast Shack After Three Years." Web log post. Medium. N.p., 2 Aug. 2013. Web. The Other Joey. "Meatspace." Urban Dictionary. N.p., 24 Feb. 2005. Web. Thomas, Douglas. Hacker Culture. Minneapolis, Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 2002. Print. Touretzky, David S. "Gallery of CSS Descramblers." Carnegie Mellon University, 2000. Web. Trumpbour, Mark. "Official SummerCon 2003 Announcement." Message to InfoSec News. 5 Feb. 2003. E-mail. Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes. Southern District of New York. 17 Aug. 2001. Print.

103

Works Consulted

Aristotle. The Rhetoric. Trans. Edward, Meredith C. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1877. Print. Aristotle. The Politics and The Constitution of Athens. Ed. Stephen Everson, Raymond Geuss, and Quentin Skinner. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print. Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley, California: U of California P, 1969. Print.

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. Boston, Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. Print. Jensen, Richard J. "Analysing Social Movement Rhetoric." Rhetoric Review 25.4 (2006): 372-75. Print. Kavanagh, James H. "Ideology." Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. 2nd ed. Chicago, Illinois: U of Chicago, 1995. Print. Kelty, Christopher. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Duke UP, 2008. Print. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. Ed. Ian Shapiro. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale UP, 2003. Print. Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and E. J. Hobsbawm. The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition. London: Verso, 1998. Print. Pease, Donald E. "Author." Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. 2nd ed. Chicago, Illinois: U of Chicago, 1995. 105-17. Print. Parker, Robert D. "Marxism." How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. Oxford, England: Oxford UP, 2008. 211-43. Print.