Intervasion of the UK
Encyclopedia
1994 electronic civil disobedience
and collective action against John Major
's Criminal Justice Bill
which sought to outlaw outdoor dance festivals and "music with a repetitive beat". Launched by a group called The Zippies from San Francisco's 181 Club on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, 1994, it resulted in government websites going down for at least a week. It utilised a form of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) known as the Email bomb
in order to overload servers as a form of online protest and Internet activism
. It was the first such use of the Internet
and technology as a weapon of struggle and/or civil disobedience, and preceded the 1995 Italian NetStrike. This fact has yet to be acknowledged by the Electronic Disturbance Theater
which claims to have pioneered the technique or the Free Range Electrohippies
in the United Kingdom, who appear to have taken most of the credit for the event.
, the definition of music played at a rave was given as: "music includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats".
Sections 63, 64 & 65 of the Act targeted electronic dance music played at rave
s. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act empowered police to stop a rave in the open air when a "ten or more people are attending, or where two or more are making preparations for a rave". Section 65 allowed any uniformed constable who believes a person is on their way to a rave within a five-mile radius to stop them and direct them away from the area; "non-compliant citizens may be subject to a maximum fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale (£1000)".
The Zippies sought to jam the mailboxes of UK politicians associated with the Bill in order to bring their attention to the issue of natural justice involving basic rights and freedoms. In effect, the collective action was saying: "If you take away our freedom, we have the power to take away something you take for granted, and to do this in a way which deploys the Internet as a weapon".
Several "hackers" not directly associated with the group launched all-out penetration and load testing operations against several UK government sites, resulting in a tit-for-tat battle, as the Zippies mailbox on morph.com went down, along with the entire morph server. Morph was a well-known Bay Area BBS.
The online protest culminated with a protest rave in Hyde Park.
The protest action occurred during the manhunt for Kevin Mitnick
and was thus partly an underground event. The media also refused to entertain the implications of electronic civil disobedience, with public attention focused on the problem of illegal raves and black-hat hackers, prompting scare stories about "evil hackers" and "young hoodlums" penetrating the British defences while the zippies were written off as nothing more than electrohippies.
who complained about the "lack of a cutoff date". Other criticism on the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) BBS centered around the use of militant language. The online protest action also suffered from conflict between its stated aims: "To clog the servers of the UK government", and its call to send email messages to UK politicians. Thus jamming mailboxes with email and large file attachments defeated the purpose of the exercise which was essentially an early form of hacktivism. The nature of the collective action was also not articulated well enough. For instance, the digital be-in which occurred during the launch of Tim Leary'
s Chaos and Cyberculture, in which Leary was "kidnapped" without the consent of his publisher, and "forced" to DDoS the UK government, was simply a protest message, sent repeatedly to mail-boxes around the world.
Electronic civil disobedience
Electronic civil disobedience, also known as ECD or cyber civil disobedience, can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disobedience often involves the computers and/or the Internet and may also be...
and collective action against John Major
John Major
Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...
's Criminal Justice Bill
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It introduced a number of changes to the existing law, most notably in the restriction and reduction of existing rights and in greater penalties for certain "anti-social" behaviours...
which sought to outlaw outdoor dance festivals and "music with a repetitive beat". Launched by a group called The Zippies from San Francisco's 181 Club on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, 1994, it resulted in government websites going down for at least a week. It utilised a form of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) known as the Email bomb
E-mail bomb
In Internet usage, an email bomb is a form of net abuse consisting of sending huge volumes of email to an address in an attempt to overflow the mailbox or overwhelm the server where the email address is hosted in a denial-of-service attack....
in order to overload servers as a form of online protest and Internet activism
Internet activism
Internet activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as e-mail, the World Wide Web, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local information to a large audience...
. It was the first such use of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and technology as a weapon of struggle and/or civil disobedience, and preceded the 1995 Italian NetStrike. This fact has yet to be acknowledged by the Electronic Disturbance Theater
Electronic Disturbance Theater
Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Stefan Wray, and Carmin Karasic are collectively known as The Electronic Disturbance Theater or EDT for short. Taking the idea of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the EDT members always used their real names. They never concealed their identities...
which claims to have pioneered the technique or the Free Range Electrohippies
Electrohippies
The Electrohippies Collective is an international group of internet activists based in Oxfordshire, England, whose purpose is to express disapproval of governmental policies of mass media censorship and control of the Internet "in order to provide a 'safe environment' for corporations to do their...
in the United Kingdom, who appear to have taken most of the credit for the event.
Campaign against the CJB
Under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It introduced a number of changes to the existing law, most notably in the restriction and reduction of existing rights and in greater penalties for certain "anti-social" behaviours...
, the definition of music played at a rave was given as: "music includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats".
Sections 63, 64 & 65 of the Act targeted electronic dance music played at rave
Rave
Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
s. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act empowered police to stop a rave in the open air when a "ten or more people are attending, or where two or more are making preparations for a rave". Section 65 allowed any uniformed constable who believes a person is on their way to a rave within a five-mile radius to stop them and direct them away from the area; "non-compliant citizens may be subject to a maximum fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale (£1000)".
The Zippies sought to jam the mailboxes of UK politicians associated with the Bill in order to bring their attention to the issue of natural justice involving basic rights and freedoms. In effect, the collective action was saying: "If you take away our freedom, we have the power to take away something you take for granted, and to do this in a way which deploys the Internet as a weapon".
Several "hackers" not directly associated with the group launched all-out penetration and load testing operations against several UK government sites, resulting in a tit-for-tat battle, as the Zippies mailbox on morph.com went down, along with the entire morph server. Morph was a well-known Bay Area BBS.
The online protest culminated with a protest rave in Hyde Park.
Media Coverage
The event was broadcast on Radio Free Berkeley.The protest action occurred during the manhunt for Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick
Kevin David Mitnick is a computer security consultant, author, and hacker. In the late 20th century, he was convicted of various computer- and communications-related crimes. At the time of his arrest, he was the most-wanted computer criminal in the United States.-Personal life:Mitnick grew up in...
and was thus partly an underground event. The media also refused to entertain the implications of electronic civil disobedience, with public attention focused on the problem of illegal raves and black-hat hackers, prompting scare stories about "evil hackers" and "young hoodlums" penetrating the British defences while the zippies were written off as nothing more than electrohippies.
Criticism
Some criticism of the Intervasion was expressed by the Electronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
who complained about the "lack of a cutoff date". Other criticism on the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) BBS centered around the use of militant language. The online protest action also suffered from conflict between its stated aims: "To clog the servers of the UK government", and its call to send email messages to UK politicians. Thus jamming mailboxes with email and large file attachments defeated the purpose of the exercise which was essentially an early form of hacktivism. The nature of the collective action was also not articulated well enough. For instance, the digital be-in which occurred during the launch of Tim Leary'
s Chaos and Cyberculture, in which Leary was "kidnapped" without the consent of his publisher, and "forced" to DDoS the UK government, was simply a protest message, sent repeatedly to mail-boxes around the world.
Tools
- Distributed Denial of Service
- Email BombE-mail bombIn Internet usage, an email bomb is a form of net abuse consisting of sending huge volumes of email to an address in an attempt to overflow the mailbox or overwhelm the server where the email address is hosted in a denial-of-service attack....
- UUCPUUCPUUCP is an abbreviation for Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. Specifically, a command named uucp is one of the programs in the suite; it...
- VT100VT100The VT100 is a video terminal that was made by Digital Equipment Corporation . Its detailed attributes became the de facto standard for terminal emulators.-History:...
Terminal Emulator - Powerbook 180Powerbook 180The PowerBook 180 was a portable computer released by Apple Computer, Inc. along with the PowerBook 160 in October 1992. At the time, it constituted the new top-of-the-range model replacing the previous PowerBook 170. Its case design and features are the same as that of the 170, but it shipped with...
- Ping of DeathPing of deathA ping of death is a type of attack on a computer that involves sending a malformed or otherwise malicious ping to a computer. A ping is normally 32 bytes in size ; historically, many computer systems could not handle a ping packet larger than the maximum IPv4 packet size, which is 65,535 bytes...
See also
- Culture JammingCulture jammingCulture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming.Culture...
- Electronic civil disobedienceElectronic civil disobedienceElectronic civil disobedience, also known as ECD or cyber civil disobedience, can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disobedience often involves the computers and/or the Internet and may also be...
- ElectrohippiesElectrohippiesThe Electrohippies Collective is an international group of internet activists based in Oxfordshire, England, whose purpose is to express disapproval of governmental policies of mass media censorship and control of the Internet "in order to provide a 'safe environment' for corporations to do their...
- E-mail bombE-mail bombIn Internet usage, an email bomb is a form of net abuse consisting of sending huge volumes of email to an address in an attempt to overflow the mailbox or overwhelm the server where the email address is hosted in a denial-of-service attack....
- HacktivismHacktivismHacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends. The term was first coined in 1994 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega...
- NetStrike
- Reality Hacking
- Internet activismInternet activismInternet activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as e-mail, the World Wide Web, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local information to a large audience...