ART 80F - WEEK 7 LECTURE CONTENT
EDt - electronic disturbance theater
Activist group originally formed in solidarity with Zapatista communities in Chiapas circa 1998
Stefen Wray + Ricardo Dominguez
Version 1.0
- Developed FloodNet java applet to disrupt targeted web pages with DoS attack
- 1998 - targets included Mexican government websites, School of the Americas + and Clinton Whitehouse website
- Described as "Virtual Sit-Ins"
- Later did this with the Minutemen website in 2005
- Key members - Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Stefan Wray, and Carmin Karasic
From 1998 NY TIMES Article first reporting on Hacktivism, including FloodNet + EDT
Guerrilla attacks on Web sites may seem more of a headline-grabbing ploy than true information warfare. But security experts said the recent spate of digital vandalism underscores the risk to companies and governments that increasingly rely on the Internet for commerce and communication.
''What this demonstrates is the capacity of groups with political causes to hack into systems,'' said Michael A. Vatis, chief of the National Information Protection Center, a new Federal agency. ''I wouldn't characterize vandalizing Web sites as cyberterrorism, but the only responsible assumption we can make is there's more going on that we don't know about.''
Established by Attorney General Janet Reno this year, the center is in part a response to the perception that ''political forces which could not take on the United States in conventional military terms stand a better chance on an electronic battlefield,'' said Mr. Vatis, deputy assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The potency of the slingshot approach is not lost on would-be hacktivists. ''If you have 10 people at a protest, they don't do much of anything,'' said a Toronto-based computer jockey who calls himself Oxblood Ruffian. ''If you have 10 people on line, they could cripple a network.''
.....
Under United States law, terrorism is defined as an act of violence for the purpose of intimidating or coercing a government or a civilian population. Breaking into a computer system and altering data are felonies.
For that reason, the members of the Electronic Disturbance Theater emphasize that the software they use to attack Web sites disrupts Internet traffic but does not destroy data. In the tradition of civil disobedience protests, they encourage mass participation and use their real names.
The group was forged in an on-line discussion among several American supporters of the Zapatistas, the first armed revolutionaries known to have solicited public sympathy for their struggle by publishing their communiques over the Internet.
Version 2.0
Developed Transborder Immigrant Tool (EDT) circa 2009
From TBT website
Mixed Media: i335 Motorola, walkingtools.net software, images, poetry, and audio
Artists: Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Elle Mehrmand and Brett Stalbaum
The Customs and Border Protection Agency’s 2009 fiscal year report documents 416 border-crossing related deaths from January to October 2009. When the Berlin Wall fell, official reports claimed that ninety-eight people in total died trying to cross from East to West Berlin. In contrast, local and international nongovernmental organizations estimate that 10,000 people to date have perished attempting to cross the Mexico-U.S. border. The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT) repurposes inexpensive used mobile phones that have GPS antennae. The project represents a multi-valenced code-switch, a queer technology. Its software aspires to guide “the tired, the poor,” the dehydrated—citizens of the world—to water safety sites. Concomitantly, its platform offers poetic audio “sustenance.” Incapable of resolving the long histories of fear, prejudice and misunderstanding on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border, TBT remembers the often overlapping traditions of transcendental and nature writing, earthworks, conceptual art, performance, border art, locative media, and visual and concrete poetries. It learns equally from the efforts of humanitarian aid organizations ike the Border Angels and Water Station, Inc. “Poetry in motion,” TBT navigates the borderlands of G.P.S. as a “global positioning system” and what, in another context, Laura Borràs Castanyer and Juan B. Gutiérrez slyly misread as a “global poetic system.”
From MetroActive article
Stalbaum says Transborder Immigrant Tool was influenced by nongovernmental humanitarian organizations like Border Angels, which helped maintain water caches in case immigrants ran into trouble in the high desert. The conceptual goal was to similarly aid the migrants, just as the NGOs had done. As a conceptual art project, however, they weren't sure if it the theory behind Transborder Immigrant Tool could actually be implemented in practice.
"The biggest challenge was getting the software into people's' hands, since organized crime basically controls the border crossing," Stalbaum said. "One of the first things the coyotes (human smugglers) often did was take peoples' mobile phones away, if they had them, because they wanted to be completely in control of the immigrants they were guiding into the country."
That was 2009 and the racket has changed quite a bit since then. Many migrants leaving Mexico now have mobile phones. The process of helping immigrants cross over into the country now actually involves text messaging, smartphones and many familiar technologies. Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before the right wing echo chamber began to misinterpret EDT's art project—one designed to help people find water—as something intended for foul play. Editorials appeared in the Orange County Register and the San Diego Union-Tribune. Conservative carnival barkers like Glenn Beck began to hyperventilate over the project, attacking EDT as if they were aiding and abetting terrorists.
Stalbaum reiterated that the phones were conceptualized for short-term navigation purposes so that migrants could find water, experience poetry and survive in desert conditions. None of the hysterics seemed to understand that this was an art project designed to highlight failed policies on both sides of the border.
"There are GPS devices—you can go into the Best Buy in Tijuana if you want one—that are actually designed for long-distance, over-land navigation," Stalbaum said. "Whereas our platform is designed to help you find a water station. So if you live in a facts-based reality, your concern should be with Best Buy, not the Transborder Immigrant Tool."
