 public and national convention and the very nature that we're here at these talks and The fact that I'm worried as soon as I step outside of this room There's going to be a bunch of men in black suits for questions for me is an indication that something needs to be done about it Let's see your answer All right, so We're gonna start with an introduction to civil disobedience Not black hat or white hat as opposed to black hat heading minus destruction or white hat hacking The mindless protection of the status quo and protecting corporations. We believe that hacking is a tool It's a means to an ends unlike a mineless black heading or says quit hacking We believe that hacking could be used as a practical application of network in security skills or security skills as a means of fighting for social justice By putting direct pressure on politicians and institutions. It is a legitimate act of online protest And we would like to use all mediums whether it be on the street actions smashing windows holding signs or using the internet in nonviolent disruption And we believe it to be a time-tested and necessary act of democracy to continue the democratic process and keep the people on top it is not cyber terrorism as Certain federal agencies would like to believe There's actually been a very little documented cases of cyber terrorism Although the Homeland Security's budget would like to indicate that their priorities are all screwed up it differs from cyber terrorism the fact that terrorism tries to put fear into the population and hacktivism would rather unite people and bring people together and empower people to Give them the ability that together we can make a difference and we can put people on top of unjust corporations and governments Why electronic civil disobedience well, especially over the past few years With the Bush administration. We've witnessed a multi-pronged attack on humanity on all fronts Whether it be the madness of the war on terrorism carpet bombing villages the cowardice act of sending cruise missiles and shotgun Or the domestic attacks on our civil liberties at home the Patriot Act tapping phones office of Homeland Security Total information awareness. It's obvious that something needs to be done about it it's going to get a lot worse before it gets a lot better and We can't trust politicians and capitalists to solve these problems because politicians and capitalists themselves are the problem We're not going to be able to win this thing by voting for Kerry or by voting for Bush or by using any sort of Electoral means to do so because if anyone catch the the hack the vote election, I mean, it's it's a joke I mean, they've already started. There's already been documented cases of voter irregularity documented cases of voter fraud It's very direct If we're gonna able to whoever win this thing we're gonna have to do it outside of the realm of mere electoral politics It's not to say don't vote, but don't just a vote Okay history shows that change has to be made by the people coming from below And we believe that the internet is a powerful new medium where just a handful of people In small groups just by shifting data around in the right directions can make big changes and big damage or Creation or depending on which side of the law you are on Okay, a history of electronic civil disobedience. It's been around for a while but There's been a group called the electronic disturbance fear which designed flood net scripts to be used as a form of electronic sit-in unlike a normal sit-in where people either like occupied buildings or campus buildings or federal buildings or they lock arms in front of intersections to physically disrupt the system When the madness of law is working towards acts of injustice electronic civil disobedience or electronic sit-in is usually a series of scripts that are Deployed on a website and they set a target date on time where people Would Visit the website and they download these tools and it would continuously bombard Selected targets with traffic usually report 80 to physically shut down the website now This differs from typical DDoS attacks in the fact that instead of one person like infecting systems or Just bombarding them themselves This is more of a legitimate act in the fact that it encourages everyone to individually use their own computers as Kind of like a mass online action. It is legitimate protest act and The electronic disturbance theater use these scripts in solidarity with the Zapatistas the the anarchist collectives of Chiapas Mexico and This type of attack or this type of action is still in use today Another group called the electro hippie collective Deploy these scripts the day after the Iraq war started. They set up a series of scripts on their website to Bombard the Pentagon with so much traffic that it was able to shut it down for a few days And unlike the electronic disturbance theater They actually prepared these scripts and put them on the website So people could actually download the code modify the code just a bit and use it to launch their own actions in the future So far what I've only talked about like electronic sit-in scripts There's also a large and growing number of hacker organizations and individuals who are doing more direct methods of disruption whether it be actually infiltrating and defacing websites or Gathering private information or using corporate credit cards to purchase like symbolic items of political significance One example of such is the cramp think hackers block Which defaced dare's website about last February all the drug fee anti drug propaganda thing they put a large message to oppose the war on drugs and to oppose the criminalization of marijuana and Unlike typical defacement attacks This is very targeted against a specific unjust institution and they didn't just put some lame Script kitty. Oh, I'm so cool. Check it out. I defaced this website. I was here They put serious their serious political foundations to this and they released press releases and it made a big media splash and even though it's only up for a couple hours a lot of people went to it and a lot of people understood the politics surrounding it and No damage was done and it was a legitimate protest tactic and we'd hope to see a lot more in the future And over the past couple of years there's been a lot more as the where oppression breeds resistance. There's been a lot more politically motivated defasements And then since then there's been a large variety of Hacker magazines or hacktivist magazines that have increasingly talked about electronic civil disobedience The hacktivist.com is a very good resource for talking about the latest news in the hacktivist scene whether it be unjust computer laws in China or whether it be actions such as the Electronic civil disobedience campaign against Republican National Convention. There's also a magazine on hack this site.org that Talks mainly about the latest campaigns and electronic civil disobedience and they cover a lot of really good stuff like the deep old voting systems and so forth So what is this on me? I Guess so I don't know. This isn't in my computer. I don't use windows So Open source is applied anarchism There are so the Republican National Convention I don't think I need to tell you about the horrors of the Republican Party or the horrors of the Democratic Party for that matter But uh, the Republican National Convention is being held in New York City around September 11th in a very low pathetic attempt to capitalize off of the fears and emotions surrounding 9-11 they want to use the city as a tactic to push forth their political agenda of endless war and Giving corporations tax breaks and legal breaks so they could push forth their capitalist agenda of domineering the world at The poor's expense Hundreds of thousands will be descending upon the city to take their frustrations on the Bush administration to the streets And various organizations have pledged to use direct action to shut down the convention whether it be the cliche smashing windows spray painting Starbucks windows or a Wide array of diverse creative direct action techniques such as changing the LCD displays on Madison Square Garden and so forth In addition to the battle on the streets several Hacker organizations and individuals have pledged to commit electronic civil disobedience against the Republican National Convention a variety of right-wing websites conservative websites large multinational corporations and other key elements of the military industrial complex Unlike past electronic civil disobedience actions Where there's only been like one institution who's participated in these protests We are calling out for various people who might be interested or might be vaguely interested in this sort of thing to autonomously commit their own direct action against whatever targets they feel and while we're doing is we're serving as Kind of a focus point a coordinating organization. We're not directly going to be participating any legal acts ourselves but we're going to be communicating with the media about different actions different people are going to be doing and We're going to hopefully try to coordinate different people's actions This is a very decentralized campaign. There are no central groups to give orders or to organize this campaign All are free to participate in any way they can and that means every one of you in the audience right now Do your own thing. We only exist to communicate with the media and coordinated actions amongst groups What is planned or encouraged or make up your mind? We're going to be doing is essentially there's going to be a two-step attack a Week before the National Convention, which is around the convention takes place from August 28th or so to September 2nd a week before August 22nd There's going to be a series of direct disruptions of Republican right-wing websites And I'll let you use your imagination. There's going to be a series of defacements financial disruption email flood campaigns And this is basically to stir discussion of the Republican National Convention in the media and hopefully get the word out about the demonstrations and encourage people to take the bus from their local city and Actually engage in the demonstrations against the Republican National Convention in New York City We are also going to be announcing and preparing for preparing for The electronic sit-in scripts and other electronic flooding systems that is going to be taking place The day of the convention August 29th So a week before and then the day of August 29th And the electronic sit-in scripts will be composed of a typical electronic sit-in script where people could use the flood tools that will be available on our website, and I'll show you that later on and We'll also be giving email lists of all the key Republican party context whether it be fax numbers email addresses phone numbers and we're just going to put them on the website And everyone is free to do with whatever they is they want You know we have a couple suggestions, but we won't be directly doing anything ourselves One thing we'd like to see is people like faxing together black sheets of construction paper Like tied together in a big loop to these like he Republican like fax numbers So they get bombarded by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of like black sheets we'd like to see a variety of mail bombings and There would be a list of Republican National Convention delegates available on our website later on and In addition, there's lists of all the Republican National Convention delegates who are coming from each state We know where they're going to be staying in the hotels We know what Broadway shows are going to be going to all this information is going to be available on the website And we'd like to encourage people to harass these fuckers in any way they can Okay Now anyone is has the ability to engage in their own electronics it was to be these campaigns All we're doing is we're just trying to coordinate different people doing different things So if you want to if you're talking targeting a Sarah Lee for example for Exploited workers now is a good time to do it because it's all part of the same capitalist infrastructure If you've got your eye and Boeing. Yeah, please go for it. I'd like to see those fuckers go down Same with Halliburton Bechtel total information awareness use your imagination. I have a list of websites And they will be available on the website Basically, you either select your target specifically or you could Broadly sweep for targets and look for anything that might be right wing or conservative Specifically stuff that may already be in the news or may already be in the hot seat Such as Google going corporate like a week ago. There's been a variety of different texts To bring light to how they support China's oppressive internet laws That's a very good tactic for disruption, especially when you like DDOS their website and the day that they go public That's a very good technique of disrupting the corporate infrastructure Then the next step is to gather contact information for different national news services And different hacker organizations are different, you know magazines or so forth gather big email It's just going to big campaign just get mega stoned out of your mind and just go look at all these web Sends a gathering my list and get a big huge list. I know I did good website to get free email is zip lip comm It's very it's secure and use several proxies and don't use your home computer when you do it There's also several remailers if you if you really concerned about security Declare your attack time and date Before you actually go and do it Say when you're going to be doing it why you're going to be doing it and prepare a very well worded press release I suggest you look up like a there's a good book called making the news It's a guide for activists in how to like bring about their campaigns. Hold your questions to the end I'd really like to debate this so so I'd usually give it a couple days before I actually go and do these actions and then like send your press Leases out to various national news services and give them like a secure email address where they could get in contact with you because they love to Do background things and ask questions and so forth And that'd be very good for your cause if you get like interviewed by national news services And it would give you an opportunity to kind of present yourself to the media Basically The real end in this is we like to see people get involved get politically motivated and start hacking for political Foundations instead of just mindless games and ego battles Don't limit your activism to just the mere world of computers take it to the streets We need more foot soldiers in the streets to fuck up shit. All right There's many ways you can get involved with the RNC We like to see every method of disruption possible whether it be shutting down the power to Madison Square Garden Whether it be defacing 10,000 different Republican websites. We like to see everything we like to see RNC delegates get harassed on the streets. Fuck them up get run away There's the charter buses that they're gonna be going up and down 7th Street There's ways you can shut them down. There's a little emergency switch on the side They're gonna be clearly labeled for the Republican National Convention You get a team of two or three people to go shut it down and it'll completely cause disruption sneak into the RNC become a volunteer There's different ways you could volunteer for the RNC just go to the RNC's website and become a volunteer and then in the middle of the Convention itself cause also to disruption get silly string get light shows start screaming megaphone Don't tell him to fuck shit up Free country democracy Yes, ma'am And you know basically that's all I got to say so I mean this is this is an open forum We'd like to see everyone participate this in any way they can so I'm gonna just open this up for questions or debates So anyone got anything to say we'll start with this guy over here Okay, I could give you a couple of few specifics right off hand He asked about a few specifics of criteria for what you consider to be unjust corporations and unjust government institutions I guess one off the bet that is on everyone's mind would be Halliburton And I don't think I really need to talk about this, but basically Former CEO Dick Cheney is now vice president Halliburton has contracts with the Department of Army Engineers to privatize the Iraqis oil supplies and Dwight Eisenhower said it himself that When the people who make money for more whether it be by privatizing the nation's resources or by building the bombs Or by the reconstruction efforts if it's the same corporations these private American corporations are the same ones who are making the decisions Whether we are going to war or not Then we're going to be going to war a lot and there's gonna be a lot of rich motherfuckers making a lot of money Yep Eisenhower Military industrial complex, it's right out there in your face Bechtel Rumsfeld SBC monopolizing the phone systems. I get his prattle on and on so I Hope that answered your question any any real corporation that exploits the masses or Contributes to the war machine it by whether bombing third-world countries or by cutting down workers benefits and essentially Stealing from the poor and giving to the rich is fair game as far as I'm concerned Okay Okay, I got ten minutes left Okay, I believe I was in reference to a CDC who I believe it was originally the ones who coined the term hack to Vismo, and I guess it really depends on who gets to define the terms and who owns these ideas When I say hack to Vism, I really mean the merging of activism and hacking and using hacking as a means of fighting for social justice I Agree on that as well, but um DDS thing is not hacking But it is a method of disruption and I I can't stand idly by while these motherfuckers are able to get away with it So any method disruption at any cost any means necessary It goes both ways. Um while at the same time the actions by the anti-war movement might alienate or Give the other side the rich motherfuckers the ability to And use it against us by portraying us all as destructive mindless Anarchists and so forth. I think it goes a bit both ways while at the same time It really beat the fuck out of a lot of people in Chicago in 68 It did radicalize a lot of different people and it really exposed how reactionary and how Inherently violent the police state really is and there's just an example of that if you look at the daily news a couple weeks ago in New York they trying to portray anarchists as Hardcore lunatics and in the article they're talking about how they contain these hardcore anarchists that is by Shooting them with rubber bullets gassing them chemical weapons shooting people they are they killed a Remember his name a guy in Genoa, Italy at a g8 demonstration. All right, I'm gonna hurry it up because these guys look pretty antsy cool That lady over there with a pink shirt One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist Anyone who is especially in our modern police state times was even the least bit of criticism of the American government could easily be portrayed as terrorists or and We've especially seen that you were either with us or you're against us And I see that as a sign that if we don't speak up now, we may never have another chance to so let them call us terrorists I'll still bomb their buildings Please do Ladies and ladies and gentlemen, I need to interrupt for a second It came to my attention that some words were said by the speakers involving acts of violence acts of vandalism acts of what I'm sure they term social anarchistic disobedience The staff of DEF CON DEF CON itself And the individuals with the DEF CON do not condone Those activities and do not associate ourselves with those activities. I Would also like to point out from a law enforcement point of view If you do that you will be considered a terrorist You will be prosecuted on those laws. Do I agree with that? I'm a strict constitutionalist Which means that to me the the First Amendment is sacrosanct The Fourth Amendment is sacrosanct the Fifth Amendment is sacrosanct Have I seen a deterioration in those rights in the interest of freedom? I'd just like to say that how do you boil a frog? Will you jump the water slowly? Until the frog can't jump out I'm sure these guys would agree with that I would encourage you to be Active politically and I would encourage you to be active politically responsibly Okay, that as you say your right stop at the front of another man's nose and You do have the right to speak your mind in this country, but do it responsibly and don't do it stupidly Don't blow things up. Don't shoot people Don't crash systems Because I can kill people There was an accurate event They went on I can't remember way back when they broke into a hospital and they wiped a whole bunch of hospital records Medications were given to wrong patients patients died. That's not activism. That's murder. I Don't really the gang who was back in the 60s who robbed the bank where the guard was killed Thank you, the weatherman once again that was supposed to be political activism wasn't was simple terrorism and murder It was terrorism and murder they blew up they blew up. What do they blow up? They're running back to the blow something up them That's a way. Thank you. I'm mixing my metaphors. Sorry guys had to come to say that just you were you were a little off the edge We don't want to share the news doesn't suddenly go and a defcon They said to blow the Republican bus and please do so and so forth. So thanks guys There's a difference between terrorism and electronic civil disobedience and the fact that this does not cause damage to people or individuals or any sort of Infrastructural damage. This is simply just the shifting of data around in the right directions That could be used to make political points and we actually we ask people to be responsible in their actions These delegates are responsible for the deaths of 10,000 people in Iraq Silences complicity if you if you protect these delegates All right, we are gonna have a shotting match if we have more questions More questions Okay, I'm gonna bring up a historical context here when the machinery of law is working towards acts of injustice Then it's up for the people to rise up and combat the law and build a free society example This is the people of the American revolutionaries who shot up the pigs at Lexington and Concord would be accused of being a terrorist By the in the eyes of the British government They were freedom fighters man. It's about democracy. It's about taking back your own country from the oppressors Any questions? Excuse me. We one at a time by any means necessary. I guess that's it