The next set of literature on hacktivism came from an almost diametrically opposed direction – the “broad based artist as activist collective” founded in 1986 and known as the Critical Arts Ensemble (CAE). The group of six core members is at least semi-academic: appearing regularly on the art and academic circuit; publishing regularly in art journals; producing several publications; and creating “[s]ituationist- style performances, street theatre and other disturbance ‘art’” (Liu 2004: 361). Their art and literature is firmly and knowledgably grounded in postmodern theory, such as that of Deleuze & Guattari, Foucault, Baudrillard and Debord, with their methods proceeding on “the basis of a primarily Deleuzean critique of the social, economic, political and military powers of dominance” (ibid.).
CAE’s contribution to the discourse on hacktivism began with The Critical Disturbance (1994), a collection of essays. One of the critical observations of this collection is that the forces of global dominance no longer reside in physical
locations, but exhibit ‘rhizomatic mobility’, using the instantaneous world flow of capital as their new instrument of domination:
Elite power, having rid itself of its national and urban bases to wander in absence on the electronic pathways, can no longer be disrupted by strategies predicated upon the contestation of sedentary forces. The architectural monuments of power are hollow and empty, and function now only as bunkers for the complicit and those who acquiesce. They are secure places revealing mere traces of power… These places can be occupied, but to do so will not disrupt the nomadic flow.
(CAE 1994: 23)
As such, CAE urge the transferal of resistance to the new virtual geography of cyberspace, proposing the ‘electronification’ of traditional methods of civil disobedience. They envisage a small group of hackers covertly bringing the “destructive force of inertia into the nomadic realm” (ibid.: 25) by disrupting or blocking the command and control of information, just as traditional protesters create blockages or disruptions in physical space. However, at the time of writing, they acknowledge that this is a purely fictitious scenario. The hacking community is seen as too apolitical and fragmented, with their ‘free information’ ethic in opposition to the disruption of the structures of cyberspace. Perceiving futility in asking them to “destabilize or crash [their] own world”(ibid.: 26), CAE encourage artist-activists to take up the mantle and encourage “speculation on a model of resistance within emerging techno-culture” (ibid.: 27), before electronic power relations are fully solidified and “we are left with only critique as a weapon” (ibid.). (This differentiation between politicised hackers and, for lack of a better word, ‘hackerised’ activists, is prescient in that it identifies a future actual schism within hacktivism.) However, they pessimistically conclude that when “[c]onsidering the history of utopia in ruins, the probability that this opportunity will be successfully used looks discouraging” (ibid.: 125).
CAE extend this discourse in Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas (1996), exhorting activists to comprehend that the streets are “dead capital”:
Nothing of value to the power elite can be found on the streets, nor does this class need control of the streets to efficiently run and maintain state institutions. For C[ivil] D[isobedience] to have any meaningful effect, the resisters must appropriate something of value to the state.
(CAE 1996: 11)
This is information, with its blockage and disruption striking most effectively at the core on the institution. This hypothetical new form of civil disobedience (CD) gives the book its title: Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD). This term is one that is later sometimes conflated with hacktivism as a broader set of practices, but the distinctions between the terms and their individual relevance will be teased out through the subsequent literature.
An important point of note here is that although the CAE are arguably correct in identifying information as having become the most valuable political-economic resource (as opposed to the concrete artifacts of ‘the street’), they go too far in classifying the streets as entirely ‘dead capital’. There is, of course, still much value to be found in traditional street-based protest, as the 2010 New Zealand anti-mining protest and any number of constantly-occurring overseas protests show. Furthermore, the nexus between the streets and the internet is also proving immensely valuable, with most online protests incorporating some form of offline dimension, and many offline protests relying on web technologies for organisation and co-ordination.
Nonetheless, the CAE’s call for activism to move to the electronic pathways is an important one (provided we avoid their extremist denial of the power of protest in the offline world), and they identify the schism between hackers and activists as the primary obstacle to the realisation of their vision. Because hacking is an extremely time-consuming form of constant self-education, hackers have little time left for politics, and tend to stay within their own community, hence, the opportunity for
hackers and activists to socialise is rare. Activists are lacking in the technical knowledge to effect ECD (ibid.: 19-20), hence “the schism between knowledge and technical skill has to be closed, to eliminate the prejudices held by each side (hacker intolerance for the technologically impaired, and activist intolerance for those who are not politically correct)” (ibid.: 20). (Oddly enough, it turns out that hacker intolerance for activist ‘digital incorrectness’ is more of a problem, as we shall see in section 5.4.3).
Drawing on negatively fraught media representations of hacking, CAE also posit that ECD will be demonised, conflated with malicious computer criminality without regard for motive, identifying the reasoning for this and their counter-argument as below:
While the computer criminal seeks profit from actions that damage an individual, the person involved in electronic resistance only attacks institutions…Conflating electronic civil disobedience (ECD) with criminal acts makes it possible to seal off cyberspace from resistant political activity. Attacks in cyberspace will carry penalties equivalent to those merited by violent attacks in physical space…The same legal penalties that apply to CD should also apply to ECD.
(CAE 1996: 17-18)
Some might argue that the literature of CAE is irrelevant; its authors lacking institutional academic status and their writing too subjective, rhetorical and hypothetical to be of any real use. However, their identification of the possibilities inherent in the convergence of hacking and activism is remarkably insightful. Furthermore, there is a strong argument for it having actually inspired its own realisation, in some instances at least. Finally, their prediction that ECD would be institutionally conflated with computer crime is yet another indicator of the perceptiveness of these texts.