|
|
Cyber activism in Australia
Cyber activism in Australia has been limited and relatively non-existent. The save.higher.ed collective was established to be an active cyber activist lobby group in Australia for, primarily, affordable and accessible higher education. This page will, eventually, contain links to other savehighered campaigns and campaign materials for distribution and reproduction.
The internet is an extremely powerful tool for an activist to organise and agitate. It enables the activist to be in contact with potentially hundreds of thousands of like-minded people and the ability to distribute information and material to potentially hundreds of thousands of like-minded people in the blink of an eye.
"In the 21st century authorities fear those with the will and ability to use the internet to organise and agitate."nlightn 2003
However the internet uses different rules to the traditional and mainstream civil action. It occupies an essentially non-existent space but generally has a similar effect as traditional and mainstream civil action. The power of the internet is that it is global, anonymous, almost instantaneous, and effective. As noted above, authorities in the 21st century do fear the cyber activist - lets face it there is so much reliance on computers, the internet, email and intranets that cracker (criminal hacker) attacks could cripple global stock markets and ruin nations like the United States of America, Europe and Asia. There is tight controls on internet use in several nations like China, Iran and Iraq. Australia and other western nations have changed laws to make some forms of activism as equivalent to terrorist acts. In Australia this can mean you will be arrested and held without charge or access to legal representation.
Cyber activism really became visible with the zapitista floodnet during the mexican freedom fighters struggle and also with etoy. Cyber activism has been generally focussed on global issues like GATS, free trade and was heavily involved in anti-globalisation protests around the world with denial-of-service actions. It was also prevalent during the lastest illegal attacks on Iraq with success in denying access and occassionally crashing the websites of tony blair and george 'w' bush. Cyber activism has also been strongly involved with freedom of information, freedom of speech and content on the internet and general internet freedom and access. These have been the traditional areas of cyber activism with its beginnings in the United States and Europe.
There are fantastic websites that provide news and updates for cyber activism and campaigns (thehacktivist.com). There are also a number of activist sites where you can get involved and get more info on being a cyber activist and using the internet for organising and agitating (netaction.org, eactivist.org, thehacktivist.com). The egroup has more papers and articles - some of them will be and have been included below:
|
Training Events
|
ACTionS |
Hints, Tips and
Papers
|
|
Cyber activism workshops in Oz COMING SOON |
Denial of Service paper |
|
|
|
ECD paper | |
| Register your interest here | ||
|
The Digital is Political paper |
||