Are Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks a form of Civil Disobedience Online?

Why are Gandhi and Thoreau AFK?
In search for civil disobedience online
Jan-Peter Kleinhans

Master’s Thesis (1 year) submitted to the Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala
University, May 2013, for obtaining the Master’s Degree of Social Science in the field of Media
and Communication Studies. Supervisor Peder Hård af Segerstad.

The author would like to thank James Losey for valuable ideas and critical thoughts, Erwin
Spil for writing together all over town and Markus Hildebrand for being a friend. A 'thank
you' goes also to Christian Fuchs and Daniel Trottier for help during the early stages.

N Abstract N
This thesis investigates if Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks constitute a valid form of
civil disobedience online. For this purpose a multi-dimensional framework is established,
drawing on Brownlee’s paradigm case and classical theory of civil disobedience. Three
different examples of DDoS attacks are then examined using this framework - the attacks
from the Electronic Disturbance Theater in support of the Zapatista movement;
Anonymous’ Operation Payback; Electrohippies’ attack against the World Trade
Organization. Following the framework, none of these DDoS attacks are able to constitute a
civilly disobedient act online. The thesis then goes on and identifies four key issues, drawing
on the results from the examples: The loss of 'individual presence', no inimitable feature of
DDoS attacks, impeding free speech and the danger of western imperialism. It concludes that
DDoS attacks cannot and should not be seen as a form of civil disobedience online. The
thesis further proposes that online actions, in order to be seen as civilly disobedient acts
online, need two additional features: An 'individual presence' of the protesters online to
compensate for the remoteness of cyberspace and an inimitable feature in order to be
recognizable by society. Further research should investigate with this extended framework if
there are valid forms of civil disobedience online.

Keywords: Civil Disobedience, Electronic Civil Disobedience, Virtual Sit-Ins, Distributed
Denial-of-Service attacks, DDoS attacks, Political Action, Anonymous, Electrohippies,
Electronic Disturbance Theater, Digital Activism, Hacktivism

N Table of Contents N
Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1
Civil Disobedience .................................................................................................................... 3

B Nature and Purpose .......................................................................................................... 4
B How to Define Civil Disobedience ................................................................................... 6
B Features of Civilly Disobedient Acts ................................................................................ 9

B Summary ......................................................................................................................... 13
Analysis of DDoS as Civil Disobedience ................................................................................. 14

B The Zapatista Movement ............................................................................................... 15

B Anonymous’ Operation Payback .................................................................................... 20
B Electrohippies against WTO .......................................................................................... 24

B Summary ......................................................................................................................... 26
Discussion of DDoS Attacks .................................................................................................. 27
B Individual Presence ........................................................................................................ 27
B Inimitability of Occupying Space ................................................................................... 31

B Free Speech ..................................................................................................................... 34
B Western Imperialism ...................................................................................................... 35

B Techno-libertarianism ................................................................................................... 36
B Summary ......................................................................................................................... 37
Limitations and Further Research .......................................................................................... 38
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 39
References – Online Resources ............................................................................................... 42
References – Books and Articles ............................................................................................. 46

N Introduction N
What have the Spanish police, the Tunisian government, the Westboro Baptist Church,
PayPal, the Church of Scientology and 9gag.com in common? They all have been targets of
denial-of-service (DoS) attacks by the hacker collective Anonymous. A denial-of-service
attack tries to take down – or at least slow-down – a website by sending vast amounts of
requests to the server. Ultimately the server will break down under the workload and thus the
website is no longer accessible. (Mirkovic and Reiher 2004, 39) The frequency and variety of
DoS attacks by Anonymous makes it hard to keep track of all their targets. While writing this
section North Korea (Huffington Post UK 2013) and Myanmar (LeakSource 2013) are
amongst their newest targets. Although Anonymous is the most prolific hacker collective and
hits the headlines regularly, other hacktivists like the Electronic Disturbance Theatre or the
Critical Art Ensemble also used DoS attacks in the past as a form of online protest. (Wray
1999, 107) Their argument is that by “occupying” online space these kinds of attacks are
virtual sit-ins and thus a form of civil disobedience. (Calabrese 2004, 332) With this
reasoning Anonymous started in January 2013 an online petition at the White House that
asked to recognize distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks as a valid form of protest.
(Jauregui 2013)
The Critical Art Ensemble stated already 1996 that “as far as power is concerned, the streets
are dead capital!” (Critical Art Ensemble 1996, 11) Following their argument occupying
streets or entrances of buildings has become ineffective because “information-capital
continues to flow.” (ibid. 9) Thus new forms of protest and civil disobedience are needed.
This is in line with Castells’ view that our “new economy is organized around global networks
of capital, management, and information, whose access to technological know-how is at the
roots of productivity and competitiveness.” (Castells 2000, 502) According to him the
biggest challenge for social movements today is how to influence global financial and
information flows, or rather “how to ‘grassroot’ the space of flow.” (Castells 2009, 52) If we
assume that transnational networks play a vital role in our today’s society and because of that
classic civil disobedience is ineffective: Are DDoS attacks a viable new form of civil
disobedience?
Evidently this research question makes some assumptions that I in the following want to
make transparent. The first and foremost is the assumption that civil disobedience is
important and plays a vital role in a healthy democracy. This argument is brought forward by
a variety of philosophers and will be covered in-depth in the chapter about the history of civil
disobedience. The second presupposition is that civil disobedience is different from violent

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protests or revolution and constitutes a specific form of dissent by upholding certain values
and characteristics. These characteristics will also be discussed in the chapter about civil
disobedience. Since there is no clear definition of civil disobedience and quite some
disagreement about different characteristics – e.g. the question of non-violence or
accountability – a framing for this thesis will be established. The last two presuppositions are
that our society changed and that virtual networks and information play a fundamental role
today. And that accordingly civil disobedience needs to be effective also in the virtual sphere.
Thus there is need for new forms of civil disobedience that take place online.
In a nutshell the assumptions for this thesis are that civil disobedience is important for a
democracy but new forms need to evolve just as society advances. The tricky part though is
not to sacrifice the spirit of classical civil disobedience just for the sake of protesting and
voicing once discontent. Consequently in the research investigated if DDoS attacks can be
seen as such an evolutionary step of civil disobedience. The conclusion is that for several
reasons DDoS attacks cannot be seen as a form of civil disobedience online.
The structure of the thesis naturally follows this line of arguments by first giving an overview
of the discourse of civil disobedience, identifying crucial characteristics and establishing a
multi-dimensional analytical framework. A short introduction of Distributed Denial-ofService attacks follows that focuses on understanding the general technique and the different
actors who use these kinds of attacks. The third chapter gives three examples of DDoS
attacks that will be analyzed using the framework established in chapter one. It concludes
that DDoS attacks, following the framework, may not constitute a valid form of civil
disobedience. The subsequent discussion chapter elaborates on certain issues of DDoS
attacks as civil disobedience that are not covered by classical theory. In a nutshell the
following questions will be answered in the course of this thesis: (1) What is Civil
Disobedience and what are the key characteristics? (2) What are Distributed Denial-ofService attacks? (3) Do DDoS attacks constitute a form of civil disobedience? (4) What are
the key issues of DDoS as civil disobedience online?

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N Civil Disobedience N
Four African-American students sat down in the ‘whites-only’ area in Greensboro
Woolworth’s on February 1 st 1960. With this they conscientiously acted against the racial
segregation law of that time. The waiter asked them to leave and then ignored them but the
students kept their seats until the store closed. The following days more and more AfricanAmerican students entered the Greensboro Woolworth’s and occupied the seats to protest
non-violently against the racial segregation. Local newspapers and TV stations immediately
picked up the story. (Edwards 2010) Today these events are seen as important moments of
the Civil Rights Movement in the US. The student sit-ins were quickly adopted in other cities
and just a few months after these civilly disobedient acts started, Greensboro changed its
racial segregation law. (Morris, 1981, 751)
Another example of more recent civil disobedience happened 2003 in Denver when three
nuns entered military grounds for anti-war protest. The three elderly nuns cut fences to get
access to a nuclear missile silo on which they painted crosses using their own blood, pounded
against the silo and tracks with household hammers and lastly prayed for world peace until
they were arrested. (Cada 2003) One of the nuns explained their intent that, “''It is our duty
to do what we can to stop the slaughter, these weapons were on high alert and they were
pointed at thousands of innocent people.” (ibid.) The three nuns did similar acts of civil
disobedience in the past and were sentenced to 2-3 years – although the maximum sentence
would have been 30 years and the guidelines call for a minimum of six years. (USA Today
2003) The case got a lot media attention since many people felt that the sentences were too
severe.
By and large the Occupy Wall Street and later Occupy Everywhere protests can also be
perceived as acts of civil disobedience. Everything started in September 17 th 2011 when
hundreds of protesters illegally occupied the privately owned Zucotti Park in New York,
between Wall Street and World Trade Center. Although without a clear goal but with a lot of
determination the protesters built tent cities and organized street protests – identifying
themselves as “the 99%”. (Schneider 2011) Over the following months the protests acquired
massive media attention, in part due to unwarranted use of force by the police and the
obvious lack of tangible demands. (ibid.) The protests were quickly adopted in a myriad of
cities all over the world – thus evolving from 'Occupy Wall Street' to 'Occupy Everywhere'.
Jeffrey Juris writes that “the impact of the #Occupy movements can already be gleaned from
subtle shifts in public discourse, including that of U.S. politicians, who are increasingly
talking about unemployment, poverty, and inequality.” (Juris 2012, 273)

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These examples are just a glimpse of what falls under the umbrella term of civilly disobedient
acts. They shall rather provide a vantage point for the following endeavor of illuminating the
history and discourse of civil disobedience. One can easily recognize that already these three
examples differ drastically in many aspects. To name just a few: The number of participants
can differ from rather small groups of citizens to large protests of several thousand people.
Acts of civil disobedience can be focused on a particular law or they might have a more
revolutionary character – like that of the Occupy Wall Street protests. It can be non-violent
or include violence against private or public property as seen in the example of the nuns.
Furthermore it is either directed at the government or private companies. It is a bit like
David W. Selfe wrote in 1988, that “a major problem facing any analysis of civil disobedience
is simply determining what one is actually discussing. The criteria and preconditions of civil
disobedience mean many different things to many different people.” (Selfe 1988, 149)
Thus in order to determine “what will be actually discussed” the chapter first illuminates the
purpose and role civil disobedience plays in a society. After that the focus lies on identifying
key characteristics and the justification of civil disobedience to ultimately establish a multidimensional framework for analyzing supposed acts of civil disobedience.

B Nature and Purpose

Referring to works from Virginia Held (Held, Nielsen, and Parsons 1972) and Martin Luther
King’s letters from jail (King 1963), Lawrence Quill argues that every modern democracy is
in need of the possibility for “creative tension” that is created by civil disobedience. (Quill
2009, 166) According to him the purpose and most important feature of civil disobedience is
to alter “the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed by asserting
an element of spontaneity and freedom into the order of things, providing a space in which
citizens might see their society from a different angle thereby alerting them to political
possibilities that, hitherto, remain hidden inside common sense.” (Quill 2009, 165) Others
before Quill have already pointed out the importance of civil disobedience in a democratic
society. In his famous essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” from 1849 the American
transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau states that once a majority is allowed to rule it “is
not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the
minority, but because they are physically the strongest.” (Thoreau 1849, 2) Peter Singer
argued 1973 that “it has long been recognized that there is a danger of injustice in democracy
because the democratic system takes no account of the intensity with which views are held, so
that a majority which does not care very much about an issue can out-vote a minority for
which the issue is of vital concern. By civil disobedience the minority can demonstrate the

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intensity of its feelings to the majority.” (Singer 1973, 122) Howard Zinn also argues that one
of the purposes of civil disobedience is to give intensity to the expression of a minority. In
Zinn’s view this cannot be done by voting or public speaking. He says that “if we are to avoid
majority tyranny over oppressed minorities, we must give a dissident minority a way of
expressing the fullness of its grievance.” (Zinn 1997, 383) Another purpose in his view is to
break through prejudice and tradition, “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from
democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. It is a corrective to the sluggishness of "the proper
channels," a way of breaking through passages blocked by tradition and prejudice. It is
disruptive and troublesome, but it is a necessary disruption, a healthy troublesomeness.”
(ibid.) But not only oppressed minorities benefit from acts of civil disobedience as Matthew
R. Hall argues. In his view “civil disobedience broadly benefits society by liberating views
divergent from the status quo – in much the same manner as free speech itself – and
maximizing the prospect that a democratic society will correct its mistakes.” (Hall 2006,
2083) The German sociologist Jürgen Habermas takes a similar stand and argues that “civil
disobedience is part of a thriving civil society and public sphere, because it is a way for the
citizens to turn around the circulation of power.” (Thomassen 2010, 127)
The question now is how civil disobedience achieves this? What is so special about its nature
that civilly disobedient acts can be of such vital importance for a society? In Matthew R.
Hall’s opinion “civil disobedience occupies a crucial, but precarious, role in our political
system. The philosophy of civil disobedience embodies the recognition that obligations
beyond those of the law might compel law breaking, but the doctrine steers that impulse
toward a tightly-cabined form of illegal protest nevertheless consistent with respect for the
rule of law. As such, civil disobedience serves as a firebreak between legal protest and
rebellion, while simultaneously providing a safety valve through which the profoundly
disaffected can vent dissent without resorting to more extreme means.” (Hall 2006, 2083)
Brian Huschle also argues that, in its nature, civil disobedience lies between legal activism
and revolutionary acts. He elaborates that “the power of civil disobedience lies on the fine
line it walks between activism and revolution… By maintaining this delicate balance, the
agent simultaneously shows both respect for the system of law and a willingness to work
within that system to bring about the desired change – characteristics also found in activism.
Unlike activism, civil disobedience demands the immediacy of change that revolutionary
behavior demands. If this delicate balance is not maintained, the agent loses both the power
to demand immediate change and the respectability of the moral high ground.” (Huschle
2002, 73) American philosopher John Rawls wrote that “civil disobedience has been defined
so that it falls between legal protest and … conscientious refusal and the various forms of
resistance on the other. In this range of possibilities it stands for that form of dissent at the

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boundary of fidelity to law. Civil disobedience, so understood, is clearly distinct from
militant action and obstruction; it is far removed from organized forcible resistance.” (Rawls
1973, 367) Ultimately “the civil disobedient’s actions are political by their very nature.”
(Cohen 1969, 212)
It appears there is sufficient evidence to support the argument that civil disobedience plays a
vital role in a democratic society. At the heart of civil disobedience lays the idea of providing
a space for citizens to see another perspective of dominant politics – to question the status
quo. Through this act and in this space minorities have the possibility to voice their
discontent with greater intensity. It creates the opportunity to challenge power relations –
however short it may be. Ultimately civil disobedience may introduce elements of
unpredictability and spontaneity into institutionalized democracy that may encourage civic
engagement and commitment.
Those aspects can be easily recognized in the before mentioned examples. By painting crosses
on the nuclear missile silo using their own blood and pounding with household hammers
against the outer concrete wall the three nuns expressed how intensely they feel about nuclear
weapons. At the same time they showed their fidelity to law by accepting being arrested by
the police and the following sentences. Looking at Occupy Wall Street the determination of
many disobedients, who sat in the parks for months, speaks in itself about how strongly they
feel about the issues against which they protest. This is also true for the Greensboro sit-ins
and the Civil Rights Movement in general. Apparently the majority did not care about racial
segregation laws in this time. Only through their civilly disobedient acts were the AfricanAmericans able to show the majority how strongly they feel about this issue. While at the
same time identifying themselves as part of the system. Keeping the purpose of civil
disobedience and its special nature in mind, the next chapter will focus on identifying key
features of civilly disobedient acts.

B How to Define Civil Disobedience

After assessing that civil disobedience plays a vital role in society, the task ahead now is to
shed some light on what exactly constitutes an act of civil disobedience. This could be done
rather quickly by pointing to American philosopher Carl Cohen, who defines that “an act of
civil disobedience is an illegal public protest, non-violent in character.” (C. Cohen 1966, 3)
John Rawls takes a similar stand by arguing that civil disobedience has to be a “public,
nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of
bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.” (Rawls 1973, 364) And he
further elaborates that “by engaging in civil disobedience a minority forces the majority to

6

consider whether it wishes to have its actions construed in this way, or whether, in view of the
common sense of justice, it wishes to acknowledge the legitimate claims of the minority.”
(Rawls 1973, 366)
Both definitions grasp the spirit of the Civil Rights Movements and its non-violent sit-ins
quite well. Looking at the example of the Greensboro sit-ins the African-American students
conscientiously broke the racial segregation law by sitting down in the “whites-only” area in
Woolworth’s. It was a public, non-violent protest against a specific law or policy. Their aim
was to bring about change by appealing to the common sense of justice. This seems to fit
quite well with both definitions. But what about the three nuns in Denver? Their acts were
not public until they were arrested and the media covered the story. They used violence –
however minor – against military property and they prayed for world peace. So they were not
focused on a particular law or policy but rather against war in general. Yet they broke the law
conscientiously and wanted to shift the public’s perspective on this issue. One of the nuns
said that “''We are willing to go to prison if that is what we have to give for peace. We know
that there are millions of others who share our dream and hope for a world without war.”
(Cohen 2003) Thus they displayed how strongly they feel about this issue and were willing to
accept the consequences. Their actions fit the purpose of civil disobedience but they are
somewhat outside the definitions of both Cohen and Rawls. The same is true for the Occupy
Everywhere protests. Who is right?
Just as society evolved over the decades so did the theory of civil disobedience. Especially
during 1960 to 1980 this field got a lot of academic attention. Philosophers, sociologists,
legal scholars and others tried to define the boundaries and features of civil disobedience
while society used it in countless ways for a myriad of reasons. LeGrande put it best by
observing that “when examining 'civil disobedience', one must immediately recognize that
the formulation of a single all-encompassing definition of the term is extremely difficult, if
not impossible. In reviewing the voluminous literature on the subject, the student of civil
disobedience rapidly finds himself surrounded by a maze of semantical problems and
grammatical niceties. Like Alice in Wonderland, he often finds that specific terminology has
no more (or no less) meaning than the individual orator intends it to have.” (LeGrande 1967,
393) This can be exemplified by critically analyzing Rawls theory and its assumptions.
One of those presuppositions in Rawls theory is the “common sense of justice” in a “nearly
just society. This implies that there exists a constitutional regime and a publicly recognized
conception of justice.” (Rawls 1973, 386) However the theory of a ‘common sense’ in society
has been challenged by many authors. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci writes that the
“most fundamental characteristic [of common sense] is that it is a conception which, even in

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the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity
with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is.” (Gramsci 1971,
419) Hannah Arendt wrote about modernity after the Second World War that “‘since the
beginning of this century, the growth of meaninglessness has been accompanied by loss of
common sense.” (Arendt 2011, 383) But even if we would agree that there – hypothetically –
can be a common sense of justice in a society this does not automatically mean that this
common sense provides an unambiguous answer to an issue. Peter Singer thus argues that
“many of the issues which have led to civil disobedience in recent years have been of this
more complex kind. This is why I do not think it helpful to assume that most issues arise
from deliberate disregard of some common principles.” (Bedau 1991, 128) Looking at some
of the viewpoints of Occupy Wall Street it is immediately clear that this form of civil
disobedience cannot be characterized as a deliberate disregard of a common principle. (NYC
General Assembly 2011)
Another important aspect of Rawls’ theory, which has been mentioned in the previous
chapter, is the conception that civil disobedience “attempts to formulate the grounds upon
which legitimate democratic authority may be dissented from in ways that while admittedly
contrary to law nevertheless express a fidelity to law and appeal to the fundamental political
principles of a democratic regime.” (Rawls 1973, 385) Thus he sees it in stark contrast to
revolution and militant protests since civil disobedience acknowledges the basic principles of
democracy and expresses “fidelity to law”. However as Lawrence Quill points out, Gandhi,
Thoreau and King – often seen as the founding fathers of civil disobedience so to speak – all
“thought that a higher law compelled them to resist state law.” (Quill 2009, 16) According to
Quill “some forms of civil disobedience appear to contain a revolutionary element.” (ibid.)
Indeed Gandhi states December 1909 in his newspaper Indian Opinion that his “notion of
loyalty does not involve acceptance of current rule or government irrespective of its
righteousness or otherwise.” (Gandhi 2010) Similar revolutionary aspects can be found in
speeches from Martin Luther King, Jr. In a speech called “Love, Law and Civil Disobedience”
from 1961 he refers to the political and legal system as evil and promotes noncooperation as a
“moral obligation”. (King 1990, 623) David Lyon also criticizes that popular civil
disobedience theory often misses that “it would not have been reasonable for [Gandhi, King
or Thoreau] to have regarded the prevailing system as sufficiently just to support political
obligation.” (Lyons 1998, 40) Hence contrary to Rawls’ understanding it seems there can
very well be civil disobedience with a revolutionary character that denies the political system
its legitimacy.

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These two critical points of Rawls’ theory should just demonstrate that – as Welfe and
LeGrande observed – every clear-cut definition is bound to fail. Since the concept of civil
disobedience is so dependent on world views and ideology it seems much more promising –
especially in the scope of this thesis – to approach this problem as a paradigm case. For that
purpose Kimberley Brownlee’s work will be utilized, who said that “a definition implies that
civil disobedience has clear edges. Since, however, people undertake political dissent for a
variety of reasons and their dissent takes a variety of forms, it is not possible to draw sharp
lines between civil disobedience and other types of dissent such as conscientious objection,
terrorism and revolutionary action. Thus, a paradigm case approach, which specifies only
what surely counts as civil disobedience, is more accommodating of the complexities in this
multifarious practice than a definitional approach would be.” (Brownlee 2004, 339)

B Features of Civilly Disobedient Acts

In her paradigm case approach Kimberley Brownlee defines the following “key features:
these actions involve (1) conscientious and (2) communicative breaches of law for the
purpose of (3) demonstrating protest against a law and/or (4) persuading lawmakers to
change the law.” (Brownlee 2004, 338) These key features of civilly disobedient actions will
be discussed in the following.
Conscientiousness. Brownlee elaborates that the two important attributes of a conscientious
act are sincerity and seriousness. (ibid. 340) A person sincerely and seriously believes that a
law or policy is so wrong that she cannot just try to avoid but has to act against it. She must
have the sincere belief that the government is also wrong in pursuing this law. Thus she has
certain reasons to make her voice heard and weighs them against reasons who speak against
protesting. “What matters for conscientiousness is that a person acknowledges the reasons
for action that are generated by her commitments and beliefs.” (ibid. 341) One can find
similarly clear definitions from other authors, like Matthew R. Hall who defines civil
disobedience as “an act of conscience – defiance of law borne out of a deeply-held belief in
the injustice of a law or policy.” (Hall 2006, 2088) “The person who believes that a law
warrants revision and who makes an all things considered judgment to engage in civil
disobedience against that law demonstrates the sincerity, seriousness and consistency of
commitment found in true conscientiousness.” (Brownlee 2004, 342) Thus self-respect and
moral consistency are of great importance so that the civil disobedience actually happens.
(ibid. 343) Looking at the students, nuns and occupiers from our examples the centrality of
conscientiousness can be easily understood. All of these civilly disobedients felt so strong
about an immoral law or injustice that they could no longer ignore it. Ignoring it would have

9

meant to act against one’s moral believes. “Justified disobedience is disobedience grounded
upon deeply and conscientiously held values and commitments.” (Brownlee 2006, 189) An
important aspect of this definition of conscientiousness is that it is only focused on the
seriousness, sincerity and moral consistency of the disobedient and thus evades many
problems of where this strong believe may come from. Hall points out that there is a
controversial debate about what constitutes a “permissible source of this belief.” According
to him for some scholars this source can only be religion, a common sense of justice (see
Rawls), or “multiple obligations overriding the law.” (Hall 2006, 2088)
Communication. The feature of communication will need some elaboration since Brownlee
distinguishes between means of communication – those are the words, gestures, signs or
language that is used – and the modes of communication which refers to aspects like coercion,
violence, publicity and direct or indirect action. (Brownlee 2004, 343) By highlighting the
communicative aspect of civil disobedience and seeing violence or publicity as modes of
communication Brownlee evades a pitfall of classical theories. Furthermore responsibility
lies on both, the sender and the receiver of the communicative act. The protester (sender of
communication) must consider if the receiver (likely the government but also private parties)
is able to understand her message and if the chosen means and mode of communication are
“likely to foster that understanding”. (ibid.) At the same time there is the responsibility of
the receiver to listen – which might render acts of civil disobedience less successful in
authoritarian regimes. Additionally the intentional communication that Brownlee speaks of
is more than mere 'expression' of other theories. The intention of the disobedient is “to
communicate certain views and ideas through disobedience of the law.” (ibid. 344)
The communicative feature has a forward-looking and a backward-looking aspect. The
backward-looking aim of the dissident manifests itself in her protest, the disavowal of the
immoral law and the need to communicate to society based on moral consistency of the
dissident. The forward-looking aim is to bring about a lasting change – that the government
not only changes its policy but internalizes it for the future. This aim to bring about change
and to communicate not only with the government but with society connects with the first
feature of seriousness and sincerity. “To be sincere and serious in her aim to bring about a
lasting change in governmental policies, she must recognise the importance of engaging
policymakers in a moral dialogue.” (ibid. 347) Lastly civil disobedience can also be indirect –
conscientiously breaking a law that is not opposed by the protester in order to communicate
the law one opposes. (Brownlee 2010) This would be the case for the nuns who trespassed in
military area in order to protest against nuclear weapons. This is also true for the Occupy
Wall Street protests who illegally occupied the privately owned Zucotti Park while protesting

10

for global justice. In contrast to that the Greensboro sit-ins were direct civil disobedience
since the broke the racial segregation law which they deemed immoral.
Violence and Coercion. Following Brownlee’s paradigm case approach violence and coercion
are modes of communication. While coercion is counter-productive if one wants to make a
lasting change, violence can be a justifiable mode of communication for civil disobedience.
She argues that civilly disobedient acts can be violent without being coercive. An example
would be Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire in protest against Buddhist persecution
by the Vietnamese and Chinese government. (Huffington Post 2013) The same is true for the
three nuns who used violence against themselves and against military property to
communicate without being coercive. Yet ultimately “a person should use violence in civil
disobedience prudently, discriminately and with great reluctance.” (Brownlee 2004, 350)
Although many authors in the 60s and 70s perceived non-violence as a key characteristic of
civil disobedience, especially during the last decades more and more scholars concluded that
there might be justifiable violent civil disobedience.
In Matthew R. Hall’s opinion “civil disobedience must take place nonviolently, with a
minimum of force, and with respect for the rights and interests of others.” (Hall 2006, 2083)
The rationale why it is so important to protest in a non-violent way provides John Rawls.
According to Rawls civil disobedience tries to address issues in the public – similar to public
speech. Thus civil disobedience has to be non-violent, not out of distaste for violence but
“because it is a final expression of one's case. To engage in violent acts likely to injure and to
hurt is incompatible with civil disobedience as a mode of address. Indeed, any interference
with the civil liberties of others tends to obscure the civilly disobedient quality of one's act.”
(Rawls 1973, 366) David Lyons and other argue in a similar way by saying that violence
“diverts attention from the issues”. (Lyons 1998, 43) From a theoretical point of view Rawls’
argument that violence impedes the chances that the public listens, seems reasonable.
Additionally, Gene Sharp found in his studies about nonviolent protests that “as cruelties to
nonviolent people increase the opponent’s regime may appear still more despicable, and
sympathy and support for the nonviolent side may increase. The general population may
become more alienated from the opponent and more likely to join the resistance.” (Sharp
1973, 680) Greenawalt, himself quite skeptical about civil disobedience as a strategy to
change laws, thinks that the justification of an act depends heavily on “nonviolence and
willing submission to punishment.” (Greenawalt 1970, 76)
Although these sources seem to establish a clear case for non-violence as an immanent
feature of civil disobedience one has to distinguish between violence against a person and
violence against property. As Neumann put it one has to differentiate “the rock thrown

11

through a window from the rock thrown at another human being.” (Neumann 2000) Another
distinction is if the violence is directed at others or oneself. Following Sharp’s argument and
drawing on the work of David Garrow (1978), Lawrence Quill states that Martin Luther
King, Jr. chose protest places with a great likelihood for police violence. Quill concludes that
“the intention was to generate public sympathy as the media focused attention on violence
against peaceful demonstrators.” (Quill 2009, 17) Lefkowitz considers also the symbolic
destruction of public property inside the boundaries of civil disobedience. (Lefkowitz 2007,
216)
Thus Brownlee’s assessment that it might be justifiable to use violence without being
coercive in an act of civil disobedience seems very reasonable. Since “discriminate, wellconsidered violent civil disobedience can provide an eloquent statement of both the
dissenter’s frustration and the importance of the issues he addresses.” (Brownlee 2004, 350)
The truthfulness of this consideration can be easily seen in the Occupy Wall Street protests
and the civilly disobedient acts of the three nuns. The former gained a lot of media attention
after unwarranted police violence against peaceful protesters. (Schneider 2011) The latter
used violence against military property and themselves conscientiously to communicate their
plea with grater intensity.
Publicity. Another mode of communication is publicity. Similar to non-violence many
scholars perceived publicity or openness as a mandatory characteristic of civilly disobedient
acts. John Rawls stresses “that civil disobedience is a public act. Not only is it addressed to
public principles, it is done in public. It is engaged in openly with fair notice; it is not covert
or secretive.” (Rawls 1973, 366) Habermas connects civil disobedience to his theory of the
public sphere and argues that it is “[part of the] ‘wild’ public, that is, the unorganized
networks of communication and action outside the formal political system.” (Thomassen
2010, 127) Francis A. Allen also argues that “the conduct of the actor, even though illegal,
must be open and public”. (Allen 1967, 9) Katz has a similar view by defining civil
disobedience as a “conscientious, public, and nonviolent protest against a law or policy that
the actor considers unjust.” (Katz 1984, 905) American philosopher Hugo Adam Bedau
argues that the disobedient is “making an appeal to conscience” of society. (Bedau 1991, 6)
He elaborates that in order to achieve this “it is unlikely that illegal conduct done covertly is
to be regarded as civil disobedience. Or at least it is clear why, if one regards the purpose of
civil disobedience to be in part the moral education of society at large, it is impossible to
achieve that aim while keeping hidden the fact that one has broken the law.” (ibid. 7)
Again coming back to the examples this seems reasonable for the Greensboro sit-ins and the
Occupy Wall Street protests. Because these protests were open and public media and society

12

in general had the chance to interact with the protesters – understand their claims and form
an opinion. Yet it leads to a problem for the three nuns in Denver. If they would have
informed the officials beforehand, it quite surely would have made their act of disobedience
impossible. There are more examples of secretive or at least non-public civil disobedience
during the last decades – like from some animal rights activists. Brian Smart thus argues that
“the requirement of fair notice might well frustrate the performance of the civil disobedience
and prevent it from being made public, so advance publicity cannot be a requirement of all
civil disobedience.” (Smart 1978, 260) Brownlee, drawing on Raz’s and Smart’s work, also
concludes that “covert disobedience is sometimes more successful than action undertaken
publicly and with fair warning. Only after the fact does a person need to make it known that
an act of civil disobedience has occurred, and what the motivation behind it is.” (Brownlee
2004, 349) Thus one can argue that in the case of the three nuns it was sufficient that, after
being captured, they talked to the media and military officials about their intention and
motivation. Lastly, as Greenawalt points out one may not forget that there might be
circumstances where a law or government is so wicked that one cannot possibly act in public.
(Greenawalt 1970, 67)
Protest and Persuasion. The final two key features of the paradigm case for civil disobedience
are directed at the purpose of the civilly disobedient act. The first purpose is to express ones
protest against an immoral law or practice. The second purpose seeks lasting change by
persuading the government to amend the law. Both of these purposes connect to the forwardand backward-looking aspects of communication and the conscientiousness of the protester
as mentioned before.

B Summary

It has been stated before that conscientiousness and communication have a close link. If a
citizen sincerely believes that a decision, practice or law is immoral, in order to be morally
consistent, she has reason to communicate her disavowal of that law. Thus this close
connection between conscientiousness and communication leads to the person protesting
against the law with the purpose to bring about change. How sincere a person is about these
outcomes is “reflected in the mode of civilly disobedient communication that a person
adopts: aiming not to coerce, but to persuade lawmakers and the public of the need to revise
a law or policy is a mode of communication that demonstrates conscientiousness.” (Brownlee
2004, 350) Using this multi-dimensional framework, or paradigm case, and looking back at
the three examples of protests from the beginning one can indeed assess that all of them –
although quite different in nature – are acts of civil disobedience. Using this framework,

13

which focuses on the conscientiousness of the dissident and the communicative aspects of
her acts, one evades many of the pitfalls of classical all-encompassing definitions. The
following graphic visualizes these four key features of civilly disobedient acts and the
interplay between them. This provides a viable framework to analyze Distributed Denial-ofService attacks in the next chapters.

14
N Analysis of DDoS as Civil Disobedience N
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks have been around for more than a decade now.
In general DDoS attacks can be defined as “a large-scale, coordinated attack on the
availability of services of a victim system or network resource, launched indirectly through
many compromised computers on the Internet.” (Kaur and Sachdeva 2013, 332) These
attacks exploit the infrastructure of the Internet by sending vast amounts of requests to the
targeted server and “consume the resources of a remote host or network that would otherwise
be used to serve legitimate users.” (Moore et al. 2006, 116) This exceptionally high workload
ultimately renders the server – and thus all the services and websites that are hosted on this
physical server – unavailable until the attack ends. DDoS attacks as a form of online
protesting almost always rely on vast amounts of participants who voluntarily use certain
programs to take part in coordinated attacks against certain servers or websites. The
hacktivist group or collective that organize these attacks propagate the necessary information
through their websites, Twitter channels and IRC chats. Everybody who follows the simple
instructions can then participate in these protests. (Mansfield-Devine 2011b, 6) In this

chapter three different examples of DDoS attacks will be analyzed. Similar to the three
examples of classic civil disobedience these cases were chosen to be as diverse as possible.

B The Zapatista Movement

When talking about DDoS attacks as a form of online protest one has to mention Electronic
Disturbance Theater’s (EDC) attack in support of the Zapatista movement on 9 th September
1998 – which could be seen as one of the first uses of DDoS as online protest. The Zapatista
movement consists of indigenous Maya people that struggled against the domination by the
Mexican government and the exploitation through the Free Trade Agreement. To support
their cause the EDC launched a DDoS attack using their own FloodNet software. The goal
was to show their support of the Zapatista movement by taking down websites of the
President of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the US Department
of Defense. (EDC 1998) One of the EDC members said that the aim was “to help the people
of Chiapas to keep receiving the international recognition that they need to keep them alive.”
(McKay 1998) The FloodNet software relied on the number of participants and the EDC
described the action as a “collective weapon of presence” and “an example of conceptual net
art”. (Stalbaum 1998) On their official website the EDC explained the action, why they chose
these targets and how to participate. (EDC 1998) Stefan Wray, co-founder of the Electronic
Disturbance Theater, writes about this action that “globally, 20,000 connected to the
FloodNet browser on September 9 and 10. This action reverberated through European
media.” (Wray 1999a, 6) The question now is if this protest can indeed be perceived as civil
disobedience online?
Following the multi-dimensional framework established in chapter one, the first step is to
examine the conscientiousness of the protesters. Brownlee writes that “Conscientiousness
essentially involves a sincere and serious commitment to, or belief about, something.”
(Brownlee 2004, 340) Furthermore she elaborates, “What matters for conscientiousness is
that a person acknowledges the reasons for action that are generated by her commitments
and beliefs… Considerations of self-respect and moral consistency thus give her subjective
intrinsic reasons relating to her own values to communicate her judgments by dissociating
herself from laws that she opposes.” (ibid. 342) This degree of serious commitment and
sincerity of their reasons can surely be said about the members of the Electronic Disturbance
Theater. Coordinating this campaign, creating the websites and programming the tool, speak
at least to some extent about a conscientious act and a serious commitment to their cause to
help the Zapatista movement. Stalbaum, one of the members, said in an interview about their
choice of targets that “We protested the Mexican president's site for an obvious reason. We

15

protested the Pentagon site because we believe that the US military trained the soldiers
carrying out the human rights abuses at the School of the Americas.” (McKay 1998) But what
about the tens of thousands of participants who “heed the call” and took part in the collective
action? The participants visited a website and clicked on a button. One does not know their
motivations for that – which could have been manifold. Some perhaps participated out of
pure curiosity, others out of a seriously felt commitment to the Zapatista movement or out of
entirely different reasons. Because of the negligible threshold for participation one can only
be sure about the conscientiousness of the initiators. This issue of the participatory threshold
will be addressed in-depth in the discussion chapter.
Of interest is furthermore the communicative aspect of the action which can be divided in
means of communication and modes of communication. Means of communication in this
context refers to the words, images, body language, etc. the protester uses to communicate
with the other party. Brownlee writes that the protester must “consider whether the means
that she uses to communicate her message are likely to foster that understanding.” (Brownlee
2004, 343) Since the campaign websites were publicly available and the Electronic
Disturbance Theater communicated their intentions quite clearly together with their
reasoning, one could argue that the means of communication were adequate in this case. Yet
what about the actual Distributed Denial-of-Service attack? During the time of the attack
there was no possibility to communicate – in fact the key characteristic of a DDoS attack is
that it stops any kind of communication. In this regard it is quite questionable if DDoS
attacks are a means of communication at all since these attacks essentially negate
communication. Proponents of DDoS attacks as a form of civil disobedience could state that
the protesters drown the target in a cacophony of voices. But what actually happens is a form
of pseudo-communication – the server of the website gets so many requests for
communication that the server breaks down. Thus no kind of communication takes place.
This form of pseudo-communication might pose a barrier in the transfer of classical civil
disobedience to cyberspace and will be further considered in the subsequent chapter.
What about the modes of communication? Brownlee states that the dissident “must consider
what impact her mode or manner of communication has upon the hearer. Some modes of
communication relevant to civil disobedience include: coercion, violence, publicity,
collective action and direct or indirect action.” (Brownlee 2004, 343) Since speaker and
hearer do not physically meet each other there cannot be any form of violence against
persons. That is one of the key arguments of the Critical Art Ensemble in favor of so-called
'electronic' civil disobedience, who state that it “is a nonviolent activity by its very nature,
since the oppositional forces never physically confront one another.” (Critical Art Ensemble

16

1996, 18) Thus there might only be violence against government or private property. The
resulting down-time of a website or service and the possible financial loss because of this
disruption might be seen as a form of violence against private, government or military
property. Calabrese writes in this regard that “in either cyberspace or the real world,
destruction of corporate or government property, including capital equipment, may be based
on very rational grounds, reflecting opposition to the destruction of a way of life in all of its
complexity, ... Regardless of one’s views of these practices, in most cases, they cannot be
simply dismissed as random, wanton or meaningless, but instead they are often clearly
motivated and highly symbolic acts of political communication.” (Calabrese 2004, 335) This
way the violence of DDoS attacks might be comparable to that of the three nuns who painted
crosses on the nuclear missile silos – a symbolic act of political communication. Brian
Huschle makes the point that the distinction if an action is violent or non-violent ultimately
rests on the person’s disposition – if the intention is to harm or to be heard. (Huschle 2002,
76) Yet the aspect of violence must be linked to that of proportionality. Again comparing
DDoS attacks in this regard to the violent act of the nuns one must assess that three nuns in
the real world only have so much capacity to act violently and destroy property. In the
Internet this proportionality might not be true since a few tech-savvy 'hacktivists' can cause
huge financial losses. Coming back to the Zapatistas there seemed to be only minor financial
losses involved, since both the website of the Pentagon and the website of Frankfurt Stock
Exchange thwarted the attacks and experienced no down-time or disruption of services.
(McKay 1998)
Another mode of communication in the framework is publicity. The members of the
Electronic Disturbance Theater did not act anonymously – all their identities can be found
on their website. Furthermore the FloodNet software that they used to conduct the DDoS
attacks does not obfuscate the identity of its users. Subsequently if the participant did not
take any measures to hide her identity one might theoretically be able to track down the
individual protesters. (Wray 1999a, 6) Nonetheless, how can this type of publicity be
compared to that of typical civilly disobedient acts, like sit-ins? Some argue that it is of
entirely different nature. Joshua McLaurin argues that “hidden behind individual computer
screens, even well-meaning dissidents who voluntarily pit their computing resources against
the most notorious targets are at best participating in a shallow gesture. The relative or actual
anonymity that participants enjoy in large-scale DoS attacks depersonalizes their message,
requires much less commitment, and thus evidences much less conviction than a public act of
disobedience in which an individual must take responsibility for her actions and face possible
criminal punishment.” (McLaurin 2011, 245) Huschle proposes that society has to transform
its understanding of publicity. According to him it serves the purpose of publicity if

17

hacktivists act under their real names and make sure that they are traceable. (Huschle 2002,
78) Yet it seems that neither McLaurin’s nor Huschle’s position really identifies the problem
of publicity in DDoS attacks. On the one hand all participants of the Zapatista DDoS might
be identifiable but on the other hand they were not publicly present. Thus one has to
consider publicity in combination with the before mentioned issues of low participatory
threshold, remoteness and take into account that other actors also utilize DDoS attacks for
different purposes. The cases of classical civil disobedience from the first chapter, especially
the Greensboro protests and the Occupy Wall Street protests had as the most important
characteristic the presence of the people – African-American students sitting at a counter
and young protesters occupying a park and the streets. With the presence came naturally
publicity. But what happens if there is no presence? Can there be presence in cyberspace?
Again, this seems to be a barrier in the transfer of civil disobedience to cyberspace.
The last modes of communication that need to be assessed are those of indirect and collective
action and the question if both are appropriate. DDoS attacks are obviously collective – at
least ideally. They are also indirect since the laws that are being broken (if any) are different
from the ones that the protesters oppose. The justifiability of indirect civil disobedience has
been questioned in the past by many scholars. Nonetheless the dominant position today is
that indirect civil disobedience can very well be justifiable and sometimes even preferable to
direct action. But Brownlee cautions that, “since persons who use indirect civil disobedience
ceteris paribus have no objective intrinsic reasons to breach the law that they breach, the
justification for their act of disobedience must turn on subjective intrinsic reasons of moral
consistency and self-respect to make their protest known, objective reasons to protest in
some way against an objectionable policy, and instrumental reasons favouring indirect action
in this case over direct action.” (Brownlee 2006, 184) Whether or not someone engages in
direct or indirect action should depend on the estimation which type of action causes less
harm and is more likely to result in the desired recognition by society and government.
(ibid.) “In a case where indirect civil disobedience would be either misconstrued or viewed in
isolation from the law or policy opposed, then direct disobedience, assuming it meets certain
moral standards …may have greater justification.” (ibid.) In the example of the Zapatista
DDoS attacks this means that the choice of targets and the technique of DDoS attacks should
be considered. Regarding the choice of targets the official Electronic Disturbance Theater
website declares that both the Mexican President’s website and the Pentagon’s website are
“obvious choices”, the latter “given the level of U.S. military and intelligence involvement in
Mexico.” Targeting the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Germany “makes sense as it is a key
European financial site with high symbolic value and as Germany is a major player in the
global neoliberal economy.” (EDC 1998) Particularly the latter choice seems like a stretch if

18

the aim is to support the Zapatista movement in their struggle against domination and
exploitation by the Mexican government. In contrast to that the Occupy Wall Street protests
were also indirect but the location and the sit-ins were of high symbolic value. The Zucotti
Park was once called “Liberty Park” and directly between Wall Street and World Trade
Center. (Schneider 2011) Jeffrey S. Juris writes about the advantages and symbolic values of
the tent-cities that “occupying space and provoking conflict to garner media attention and
inspire participation, making visible the disproportionate influence of monied interests, and
creating a symbolic contrast between the concerns of the powerful and those of everyone
else.” (Juris 2012, 268) In comparison to that the DDoS attacks against the mentioned
websites seem random and disconnected from the actual struggle of the Zapatistas. This
leads to questions of socio-political domination and implications of hegemony – who speaks
for whom in an online protest? These questions will be further discussed in the following
chapter.
Now these different threads have to be tied together. As has been stated by Brownlee,
“conscientiousness and communication of civil disobedience are linked to certain aims. One
is the aim to demonstrate protest against a law; another is the aim to bring about a change in
the law. The sincerity of these aims (the second in particular) is reflected in the mode of
civilly disobedient communication that a person adopts: aiming not to coerce, but to
persuade lawmakers and the public of the need to revise a law or policy is a mode of
communication that demonstrates conscientiousness.” (Brownlee 2004, 350) How sincere
are the aims of the Electronic Disturbance Theater – to help the Zapatista movement – in the
light of the chosen means and modes of communication?
Going back to the start, one can reasonably assess that the members of the Electronic
Disturbance Theater acted conscientiously with sincere motives and serious beliefs. Yet the
same cannot be reasonably assumed for the countless online participants. The chosen means
of communication are in part questionable since DDoS attacks essentially negate
communication. Furthermore they had to expect that the “hearer” does not stay receptive –
meaning that both, the Pentagon and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange thwarted the DDoS
attack. Looking at the modes of communication, violence seems at first glance like a nonissue in this example. Publicity is not clear since only the members of the Electronic
Disturbance Theater took personal responsibility – not the thousands of participants online.
One in fact does not know how many protesters were actually involved. The choice of the
means and modes of communication thus leads to serious doubts about the
conscientiousness of the aim to engage in a moral dialogue. Hence although looking at
different aspects of the DDoS attack of the Electronic Disturbance Theater individually does

19

not necessarily rule out the possibility of a valid act of civil disobedience, yet the same is not
true for the aim of the action as a whole. With this the example of the Zapatista DDoS attacks
cannot be seen as civil disobedience online.

B Anonymous’ Operation Payback

The next case is Operation Payback from the hacker collective Anonymous. The reason for
examining this case is that, in contrast to the DDoS attacks by the Electronic Disturbance
Theater in support of the Zapatista movement, Operation Payback did not target
government entities but instead private companies and institutions. Furthermore the
structure of Anonymous is quite different compared to that of the Electronic Disturbance
Theater. Although Operation Payback went on for months and changed its targets and
reasons quite a bit it all started in September 2010 when members of Anonymous found out
through the news that the Indian company Aiplex uses DDoS attacks against websites hosting
copyrighted movies and are not responding to take-down requests by Aiplex. Working
mainly together with Bollywood film studios Aiplex has also been hired by Hollywood
studios. (Grubb 2010) Anonymous stated that their DDoS attacks are in retaliation of
Aiplex’s supposed attacks against the public BitTorrent 1 tracker website The Pirate Bay. The
collective intended to first attack Aiplex but the website had already single-handedly been
taken down by another Anonymous member. Hence they switched gears and coordinated
attacks against the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Record Industry
Association of America (RIAA). (Correll 2010) Similarly to the DDoS attacks in the
Zapatista movement, Anonymous published information about how to participate in these
attacks through different websites, IRC channels and message boards – most importantly
their “origin” 4chan.org. Over the course of the following weeks many different private
companies, institutions and associations were attacked by Anonymous. Amongst those were
ACS:Law a “firm of solicitors being investigated by authorities over thousands of threatening
letters to alleged unlawful filesharers” (Williams 2010) and the International Federation of
the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). In total Anonymous supposedly attacked around 30
websites and was responsibility for an accumulated downtime of almost 40 days. (Correll
2010) As can be read in the initial statement by Anonymous, the intent was to protest against
present copyright law and copyright enforcement by law firms and the entertainment
industry. (Anderson 2010) Although Operation Payback later focused on supporting

1

A BitTorrent tracker is a website that hosts links to any kind of files in a BitTorrent file-sharing network and is
thus the only critical central infrastructure for the distribution of these files. The Pirate Bay is the largest
BitTorrent tracker.

20

WikiLeaks, in this thesis and case the focus lies on the initial action as described. Thus the
question is if these DDoS attacks can be perceived as civil disobedience online?
Again utilizing the established framework from chapter one the first point of interest is the
conscientiousness of Anonymous’ action. Is it reasonable to infer that Anonymous had
serious and sincere believes about the immorality of these companies’ business practices?
Was it thus in fact moral consistency that leads from conscientious disavowal to the
communication of their beliefs?
The initial attack announcement states that “In the end, our DDoS efforts have been
compared to waiting for a train. What do we have to do to be heard? To be taken seriously?
Do we have to take to the streets, throwing molitovs [sic], raiding offices of those we oppose?
Realize, you are forcing our hand by ignoring us. You forced us to DDoS when you ignored
the people, ATTACKED the people, LIED TO THE PEOPLE! You are forcing us to take
more drastic action as you ignore us, THE PEOPLE, now.” (Anonymous 2010) Another
attack announcement from Anonymous against the Gallant Macmillan law firm states that
“The people are tired or vultures like ACS:Law and Gallant Macmillan preying on us for
profit feigned as justice… To make matters worse, they mock the people! They have belittled
our previous efforts against ACS:Law in spite of our ability to deliver TRUE justice against
them for their crimes! If they desire so much to be the successor to ACS:Law LET US MAKE
THEM SO! … Just as we forced ACS:Law to learn the hard way, and just as we will continue
against all others that challenge us.” (Enigmax 2010)
Part of determining the seriousness and sincerity of a protester’s belief and disavowal of a law
or practice is evaluating if there is “constancy, a degree of self-sacrifice, a willingness to take
risks, a spontaneous response to opposition, and a capacity to defend the reasons for
engaging in the pursuit. Such marks of commitment reflect a person’s adherence to her own
sincerely held beliefs about what she has reason to do.” (Brownlee 2004, 341) Looking at the
language in the announcements made by Anonymous, it sounds at least to some extent more
like retaliation, revenge and raging and less like “sincerely held beliefs”. Of course these
announcements have to be taken with a pinch of salt since most of Anonymous’
communication takes place in IRC chats and message boards and thus one cannot judge their
conscientiousness just based on these 'official' statements. Yet since Anonymous is infamous
for many different actions – ranging from mere pranks to large scale protests against
Scientology – it is actually quite hard to determine Anonymous’ sincerity in any particular
action. Because of their playfulness and carnivalesque character one can never rule out that
Anonymous just did it out of pure amusement. Gabriella Coleman put it best by observing,
that “sometimes coy and playful, sometimes macabre and sinister, often all at once,

21

Anonymous is still animated by a collective will toward mischief—toward 'lulz'.” (Coleman
2012) Hence the outcome is even more blurred than in the case of the Zapatista protests.
One can hardly assess the degree of self-sacrifice or willingness to take risks (even despite the
fact that many members of Anonymous had been arrested over the course of the last years) –
let alone the sincerity of their actions. This is even truer for the protesters who participated
in the DDoS attacks. Conscientiousness of their motivation and action might be true for the
initiators and organizers but it seems like a stretch to say the same about all the participants.
Thus, as has been mentioned before, the interrelations between participatory threshold,
commitment and anonymity need to be investigated in-depth as they pose a problem for the
seamless transfer of civil disobedience to cyberspace.
Next to consider are the means and modes of communication. The same paradox applies as
for the Zapatista protests. Although Anonymous’ announced most of the attacks via different
channels – thus using language and images to communicate – the actual protest negates
communication. It is thus questionable if the means of communication are likely to foster the
understanding of the 'hearer' – in this case the private companies.
Looking at the modes of communication one can describe the DDoS attack, just like the one
from the Electronic Disturbance Theater, as public, non-violent, indirect, collective action.
While indirectness and collectiveness are obvious and of no further concern, one can
challenge the assumption that these attacks indeed were public and non-violent. In contrast
to the DDoS attacks in the Zapatista protest Anonymous provides elaborate guides on how to
obfuscate a protesters identity in these attacks. (Coleman and Ralph 2011) Indeed in the case
of Anonymous the boundaries of our perception of “publicity” are being tested even more.
On the one hand they take full responsibility for all the actions as the collective Anonymous,
on the other hand although not impossible (Donohue 2012) it is still hard to identify
individuals inside the collective. This lies at the heart of the Anonymous collective, moniker,
phenomenon, “Anonymous takes us to the heart of what it means to be an individual yet part
of a collective; to reconfigure, camouflage, or misrepresent the most intimate index of all,
one's identity. To play at the boundaries of, transgress and even question the law. This is the
promise and peril of Anonymous.” (Coleman and Ralph 2011) Also in contrast to the
Zapatista protests one could assess that Anonymous’ indirect action was by and large nonviolent but coercive. Considering the language of the attack announcements and the attack
pattern – sometimes targeting companies that are just remotely involved and choosing
targets based on their attitude toward Anonymous – it could be perceived as coercive action.
Andrew Calabrese, drawing on Katz’s notion of “social evil”, argues that “civil disobedience
is, first and foremost, the public expression of the politics of shame.” (Calabrese 2004, 326)
He elaborates that it can be dangerous to inform the public and protest openly about an

22

injustice by exposing the perpetrator. In his view this takes a lot of courage and civil
disobedience can essentially be understood as “acts of courage.” (ibid.) Following this logic,
publicity and openness help the protesters to convince the majority of the sincerity and
conscientiousness of their acts by illuminating it as a courageous act of protest. Additionally
Bedau states that it is not only about the conscientiousness of the protester. He writes about
the purpose of civil disobedience that “its purpose is to frustrate and then change the law
itself, by making an appeal to conscience, the conscience of the authorities and especially the
conscience of the majority of the public – the conscience, in short, of whoever it is that issues,
enforces, and supports the law being broken.” (Bedau 1991, 6) And goes on by stating that
“civil disobedience thus conceived must be viewed as an exercise in public moral education …
But no such appeal to the public conscience can be made unless the illegal conduct is done
openly, in the public forum, as a political act.” (ibid. 7) John Rawls also emphasizes that “to be
completely open and nonviolent is to give bond of one's sincerity, for it is not easy to
convince another that one's acts are conscientious, or even to be sure of this before oneself.”
(Rawls 1973, 367) Although both might over-emphasize the importance of openness and
publicity, as others have pointed out, the point they try to make still needs to be considered.
Protesters have very well the responsibility to convince the public of their sincerity and
seriousness. Brownlee states that the aim of the chosen means and modes of communication
should be to engage “policymakers in a moral dialogue.” (Brownlee 2004, 347) Considering
the means and modes of Anonymous’ action the aim did not seem to be to start a moral
dialogue – let alone 'public moral education' in Bedau’s sense.
That the focus did not lie on engaging in a dialogue becomes even more evident when
considering Anonymous’ reaction to a plea from the American and British Pirate Party. In
November 2010 both the UK and US Pirate Party published an open letter to Anonymous to
stop the DDoS attacks. “We, the undersigned, call upon you to immediately cease the
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and to instead seek out a legal method to
express your frustration and disquiet with the copyright industry, and their perversions of
copyright law for personal gain,” reads part of the letter. (Enigmax 2010b) Yet the
Anonymous collective distanced themselves from the Pirate Party and stated that they will
continue Operation Payback until they “come up with more efficient ways to better achieve
our common goals.” (Brown 2010)
In the end, although Anonymous gathered vast amounts of media attention through
Operation Payback the action lacked many important features of civil disobedience. Starting
with a questionable display of conscientiousness of their beliefs and followed by means and
modes of communication that did not aim to engage in a moral dialogue with decision
makers but might rather be perceived as vengeance, rage and retaliation. Furthermore part of

23

the action was coercive in nature which impedes chances for lasting change. In sum this leads
to the conclusion that their actions do not constitute a valid form of civil disobedience
online.

B Electrohippies against WTO

The last example is that of the British-based hacker group Electrohippies who organized and
coordinated DDoS attacks against the World Trade Organization during the summit
meeting in winter 1999 in Seattle, USA. (Radcliff 2000) The street protests against the
summit meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle are well known and got a lot of
media attention. Castells writes, that “the shutting down of the meeting of the World Trade
Organization in Seattle on November 30, 1999, as a result of the action of tens of thousands
of demonstrators, signaled the coming of age of a major social movement that opposes, on a
global scale, the values and interests shaping the current globalization process.” (Castells
2004, 145) Jordan and Taylor perceive the street protests and direct actions in Seattle as “a
key event in the late twentieth century anti-globalisation movement.” (Jordan and Taylor
2004, 74) Furthermore they state, that “the virtual direct action that coincided with the
Seattle street protests operated perfectly in tune with those protests.” (ibid.) The
Electrohippies claimed that over the period of 5 days around 450.000 participants joined the
DDoS attack against three different servers of the World Trade Organization. (Goldstein
2010) Similar to the DDoS attacks from the Electronic Disturbance Theater and
Anonymous, the Electrohippies spread information online through various channels to
gather participants for their collective action. The difference between the WTO DDoS
attacks and the before mentioned two examples is that this DDoS attack was synchronized
with the offline protests and targeted at a specific institution. “In both cases, the overall aim
was to prevent the conference, in order to prevent the most visible global neo-liberal
organising institution from functioning.” (Jordan and Taylor 2004, 75) Furthermore it was
directed at a supra-national institution and what this institution stands for and not, as the
previous examples, against either a nation state or private companies. In this regard the scope
of the protests in Seattle might be roughly comparable to that of the Occupy Wall Street
protests. Again the question is, if the DDoS attacks in this specific case could constitute a
valid form of civil disobedience online.
In a paper released by the Electrohippies they state that their “method [of DDoS attacks] has
built within it the guarantee of democratic accountability.” (DJNZ 2001, 3) They further
elaborate that “the acts or views perpetrated by the targets of a DoS action must be
reprehensible to many in society at large, and not just to a small group. It is on this basis that

24

the collective undertook the action against the WTO during their conference in Seattle, and
it is also the basis upon which we are planning future actions.” (ibid. 7) They additionally
incorporated a strict guideline for the usage of their DDoS tool. Paul Mobbs, co-founder of
the Electrohippies group, said in an interview, “if you want to be effective, it's more
justifiable to disrupt a server for one day and make your point, rather than dragging the
action on for a few days and cause more generalized disruption.” (Cassel 2000) Additionally
in another statement Mobbs said, “Today we can use the power of that system for people all
over the world to join together and protest about the insane policies being developed by the
political elite and global corporations.” (BBC News 1999) In combination these
proclamations show at least to some extent a conscientious belief in the cause – disavowal of
what the World Trade Organization stands for – and a seriousness and sincerity about the
chosen collective action.
In contrast to Anonymous’ Operation Payback the indirect collective action organized by the
Electrohippies was in synchronization with the street protests. Thus the question of whether
or not the choice of the means of communication was reasonable only applies to a lesser
extent, since other actions were already in play. Furthermore because of this the risk that
indirect action is not seen in connection by the public with the law, policy or practice the
protester opposes is also attenuated. As Brownlee writes, “in a case where indirect civil
disobedience would be either misconstrued or viewed in isolation from the law or policy
opposed, then direct disobedience, assuming it meets certain moral standards (which are
determined by the content of the law opposed), may have greater justification.” (Brownlee
2006, 184) Hence by taking place at the same time as the street protests, Electrohippies’
DDoS attack might be perceived as significantly more justifiable by the public, since it is seen
as just another action in the repertoire. This would be supported by the before mentioned
statement that the goal was to stop the WTO from communicating and functioning over the
course of the summit.
Regarding the modes of communication – non-violent, public, indirect, collective action – of
interest are again mainly non-violence and publicity. While the feature of non-violence still
has the same implications as ins the other two examples, namely the interrelation between
proportionality and violence in cyber space, the Electrohippies’ attack can be seen as much
more 'public' than those of Anonymous’ Operation Payback. Why? The British-based hacker
group published guidelines together with their DDoS software, emphasizing that “The users
of the tool must identify themselves – in a way traceable by law enforcement authorities…
The users of the tool must include within the tool details about the motives of their group in
promoting the action.” (DJNZ/Electrohippies 2001, 9) Assuming that the participants
followed these instructions it would at least theoretically result in a higher level of “non-

25

anonymity”. However this still does not solve the problem of remoteness and presence in
cyberspace, as mentioned before.
In total the conscientiousness of the Electrohippies and the chosen means and modes of
communication might illuminate the sincerity of their aims to protest against immoral
practices and “to persuade lawmakers and the public of the need to revise a law or policy.”
(Brownlee 2004, 350) Yet one may not forget that this depends heavily on the framing that
these DDoS attacks were just another action in the repertoire of the protesters. Hence one
would have to compare it with classical acts of civil disobedience on the streets of Seattle,
which in return throws one back to questions of proportionality, commitment, participatory
threshold and technolibertarianism. It seems that it is not as easy as Klang states by
concluding, that “the criteria of disobedience and justification are easily met in online
environments and do not conflict with traditional theory.” (Klang 2008, 11) Ultimately one
has to assess that even though the Electrohippies went to great lengths to transfer classical
civil disobedience to cyberspace, at the end of the day the logic of the Internet might pose an
insurmountable barrier for civil disobedience to occur online – at least in the form of DDoS
attacks.

B Summary

In all three examples the DDoS attacks as a form of online protest were not able to constitute
a valid form of civil disobedience online. Although conscientiousness of the organizers can be
safely assumed in at least two cases, the means and modes of communication were always
questionable in pursuing the aim to engage society and lawmakers in a moral dialogue for
lasting change. Throughout this chapter and its cases one can identify a pattern where the
logic of the Internet poses a severe barrier for the seamless transfer of civil disobedience from
the 'offline world' to cyberspace. First, the perception of publicity of the actions is challenged
by remoteness of the online participants and the resulting de facto-anonymity. Second, the
notion of non-violence needs to be reconsidered because of disproportionality in cyberspace.
Third, because of low participatory threshold and the potentially low commitment in DDoS
attacks sincerity, seriousness and conscientiousness of the participants might be questioned.
Fourth, since the logic of the Internet crosses nation state borders one has to question who
protests for whom? (Like in the example of the Zapatista protests) Fifth, the inimitability of
a civilly disobedient act like a sit-in seems to be broken in cyberspace, if nothing else because
a plethora of different actors is able to utilize DDoS attacks for countless purposes. Sixth,
DDoS attacks essentially negate communication and thus could constitute a fundamentally
flawed means of communication in a civilly disobedient act. These critical issues that
concern the logic of the Internet and the transfer of civil disobedience to cyberspace will be

26

discussed in the subsequent chapter. In the end although every group or collective, be it the
Electronic Disturbance Theater, Anonymous or the Electrohippies, claimed that their
technique is essentially the virtual pendant to a sit-in and constitutes civil disobedience
online, in reality every action lacked several key features of civil disobedience.

N Discussion of DDoS Attacks N
The previous chapter demonstrated that in none of the three cases the DDoS attacks can be
seen as a valid form of civil disobedience online. Furthermore certain critical issues
reoccurred in all the examples, suggesting fundamental problems in the transfer of civil
disobedience to cyberspace. This chapter will analyze these issues in detail to illuminate
elementary flaws in the idea to utilize DDoS attacks as civil disobedience online. For that
purpose the six previously identified issues will be connected to four overarching themes –
individual presence, inimitability of occupying space, free speech and western imperialism.

B Individual Presence

The Greensboro sit-ins and the Occupy Wall Street protests were both public and open.
Although the three nuns in Denver acted in secrecy, after they had been arrested they shared
their intentions, beliefs and motivation with the public. In both cases it is rather easy to
identify publicity or secrecy as a mode of communication. This publicity helps the protester,
as Rawls has argued, to demonstrate her sincerity and conscientiousness to society. The first
chapter illuminated the close connection between conscientiousness and publicity as a mode
of communication that aims to engage the opponent in a moral dialogue. Especially in sit-ins
– collective actions that occupy physical space – the importance and force of publicity
becomes apparent. In sit-ins publicity is directly connected with commitment, dedication,
seriousness and sincerity. The latter are exactly the characteristics that were hard to assess in
the three cases of DDoS. With the remoteness through cyberspace came uncertainty about
the commitment, the dedication, seriousness and sincerity of the protesters beliefs. Why is
that the case? What is the reason that these aspects seem to come naturally to civilly
disobedient acts in the 'offline world' and their absence is immediately felt in the cases of
DDoS attacks? Physical presence. Jordan and Taylor describe the loss of the physical
presence in cyberspace from the protesters’ perspective and argue, that “the loss of
physicality in cyberspace means a loss of so many parts of a demonstration: sights, sounds,
smells and the elation or depression that can follow when it becomes clear just how many

27

people have come together to protest… The epic qualities of the best demonstrations, both in
terms of size and drama, are lost in cyberspace.” (Jordan and Taylor 2004, 80) Although this
might seem like a romantic account of what it means to protest in the streets one simply
cannot overestimate the importance of physical presence in an act of civil disobedience –
specifically sit-ins. Observing the street protests in Seattle against the WTO summit meeting
in 1999, Smith writes, “Participation in protests, moreover, serves to motivate and encourage
movement sympathizers and adherents, as the act of protesting creates and nurtures activist
identities by dramatizing conflict and polarizing identities in “us versus them” terms. It can
generate new levels of commitment on the part of activists.” (Smith 2001, 11) Through her
physical presence the protester furthermore ensures that “everyone can see who is
participating in the sit-in. In this important respect, traditional acts of civil disobedience are
public.” (Huschle 2002, 78) This connects seamlessly with Rawls argument that publicity is
expression of one’s sincerity, “for it is not easy to convince another that one's acts are
conscientious, or even to be sure of this before oneself.” (Rawls 1973, 367) Going even
further back to Martin Luther King, Jr. he perceives a sit-in as “direct action, whereby we
would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local
and the national community.” (King 1963) But it is also so much more than just “presenting
the bodies”, because what automatically happens through the occupation of space is the
emergence of a form and sense of community – especially in sit-ins that stretch over a longer
period of time. Jeffrey Juris writes in his reflections on the Occupy Movement that the
occupation of physical space serves a myriad of purposes. “These might be summarized in
terms of their tactical role—occupying space and provoking conflict to garner media
attention and inspire participation, making visible the disproportionate influence of monied
interests, and creating a symbolic contrast between the concerns of the powerful and those of
everyone else; their incubating role—providing a space for grassroots participatory
democracy, ritual and community building, strategizing and action planning, public
education, and prefiguring alternative worlds that embody movement visions; and their
infrastructural role—facilitating ongoing interaction, collaboration, and networking,
establishing a point of contact between occupiers and interested members of the public, and
furnishing concrete spaces for meetings and activities. Occupiers thus came to realize the
vital importance of space.” (Juris 2012, 268) One can easily recognize that the simple fact of
sitting down and occupying space with a tent is at the same time a specific feature of civil
disobedience and its vantage point from which further action evolves.
Of course the loss of the need for physical presence opens up a lot of possibilities and
potential. Stefan Wray from the Electronic Disturbance Theater wrote enthusiastically that
everybody “can participate in virtual blockades and sit-ins from home, from work, from the

28

university, or from other points of access to the Net.” (Wray 1999a, 5) A lot of research has
shown that online communities can benefit from this remoteness as the members tend to
focus more on the collective than individual identity. (Postmes and Brunsting 2002, 295)
Dahlberg furthermore argues that “the Internet supports online and offline counter-public
contestation of dominant discourses, and hence the contestation of the deliberations of the
mainstream public sphere.” (Dahlberg 2007, 56) Indeed one could easily go on about how
the open network structure of the Internet capacitates 'netizens' to organize themselves in
forms of counter-public spheres. However civil disobedience is a specific type of political
action that has to embrace certain key features in order to be effective. In fact Habermas
perceives civil disobedience as “a challenge to the existing order.” (Thomassen 2010, 130)
John Rawls argues that “since civil disobedience is a last resort, we should be sure that it is
necessary.” (Rawls 1973, 373) Quill sees the power of civil disobedience in its ability to
“rupture of the fabric of social and political reality, thereby opening a space for new political
possibilities.” (Quill 2009, 23) Huschle put it best by pointing out that “the power of civil
disobedience lies on the fine line it walks between activism and revolution.” (Huschle 2002,
73) And he cautions that “if this delicate balance is not maintained, the agent looses both the
power to demand immediate change and the respectability of the 'moral high ground'.”
(ibid.) Hence it is understandable that the Electrohippies and the Electronic Disturbance
Theater tried to account for this loss of physical presence. Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder
of the Electronic Disturbance Theater, said they are trying to create “the unbearable weight
of human beings in a digital way.” (Meikle 2002, 142) The Electrohippies tried to bring
“community accountability to the Internet.” (DJNZ/Electrohippies 2001, 9) In a later
article, Graham Meikle argued, that a “virtual sit-in enacts a simulation of a real-life physical
gathering… they should be recognised as manifestations not of coercive violence or force, but
of symbolic power.” (Meikle 2008, 19) And yet the DDoS attacks struggle with many
problems, if one perceives them as virtual sit-ins and most of these problems originate from
the loss of physical presence. Why?
The prior statements about street protests and sit-ins showed how physical presence is
connected to commitment, motivation, community building and many more aspects for the
protesters. The same is also true for the general public that observes the protests and sit-ins.
In acts of civil disobedience society has a need to judge the dissenters conscientiousness and
sincerity and for this physical presence is beneficial. In this regard physical presence is closely
linked to commitment and determination because it leads to clues about seriousness. It
surely is a difference if one sits five days in front of the World Trade Organization to occupy
space than to engage for five days in a DDoS attack – in the first case the general public sees
one’s commitment and may infer from that the protesters seriousness. Physical presence is

29

furthermore closely related to proportionality and accountability – features the
Electrohippies focused on. 200 protesters sitting in front of the WTO seems like a less urging
and important matter than 20.000 that also occupy streets and parks. But, perhaps most
importantly, physical presence makes sure that society realizes that there are protests in the
first place. And it naturally opens up possibilities to engage with the protesters – be that as a
bystander, reporter or law enforcement. Granted, even in the 'offline world' that is not always
the case – it would have been practically impossible to interact with the three nuns in the
middle of the night on military grounds. Yet proponents of DDoS attacks compare their
actions to sit-ins and these exhibit all the before mentioned characteristics that originate
from physical presence. Andrew Calabrese argues, that “civil disobedience need not be done
by many people at once in order to qualify as such, but the scale of “disobedience” that occurs
when a vital Web site is disabled by a few clever hacktivists raises questions about the fidelity
of translation from real space to cyberspace. And by remaining anonymous, the public
dimension of their action is limited because, unlike civil disobedients, they did not stand
with the courage of their convictions, and thus they may have done harm to the cause they
claim to represent.” (Calabrese 2004, 332) Hence the lack of individual presence leads to
questions about proportionality and because of that seriousness and conscientiousness are
automatically questioned, too.
Thus the argument is that the most important reason why DDoS attacks cannot be perceived
as civil disobedience online – let alone virtual sit-ins – is that the technique lacks any form of
presence of the individual. But this 'presence of the individual' is extremely important for an
act of civil disobedience and is much more than mere accountability. Physical presence
naturally leads to indications about commitment, sincerity, seriousness and proportionality.
DDoS attacks lack such a form of individual presence (it does not necessarily need to be
physical presence) and thus struggle with exactly those features that are elementary in order
for civil disobedience to unfold its power. In the case of civil disobedience online Jordan and
Taylor speak of “alienated civil disobedience”. “We might ask: What use is an online mass
action? Who knows it has occurred? Are not some of the most powerful uses of mass
demonstrations – the sense of being on the march with so many others – simply absent
online? There are no bystanders in cyberspace, nor can you see the people you are marching
with… Mass action hacktivism might, in this way, simply be inventing alienated civil
disobedience, while simultaneously refusing the powers cyberspace does offer.” (Jordan and
Taylor 2004, 168)

30

B Inimitability of Occupying Space
Because of the previously mentioned aspect of de facto non-violence and the fact that – at
least in theory – one needs many participants for a successful DDoS attack, various
proponents argued that DDoS attacks are essentially “virtual sit-ins”. Yochai Benkler, CoDirector of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, argued that
“by design, these [DDoS attacks] are sit-ins: Participants illegally occupy the space of their
target.” (Benkler 2012) Both, the Critical Art Ensemble and the Electronic Disturbance
Theater also focus on the aspect of non-violently occupying space online. (Wray 1999a)
Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, compares DDoS attackers to
protesters who “enter through the site's front door, and it just can't cope with the volume.”
(Stallman 2010) Hence many of the DDoS proponents focus on the supposed similarity
between occupying space and occupying a website. But in what way are these two actions
actually comparable?
The previous section demonstrated that DDoS attacks lack a form of individual presence in
cyberspace – regardless of how traceable the attackers are. This provides the first lead that
there may be a problem with the analogy between occupying space online and offline. The
second lead can be found when analyzing what happens at a sit-in. Jeffrey Juris wrote about
the tent cities of Occupy Everywhere in Boston and how these grounds were vantage point for
so many different activities and with such high symbolic value. (Juris 2012, 268) Others have
been mentioned that talked about the sense of community in a sit-in and how it affects the
commitment and determination of participants. (Smith 2001) It has furthermore been
argued how important it is for society to simply see the protesters and be able to form an
opinion about their conscientiousness and sincerity. (Huschle 2002) But what has gone so far
unnoticed is the simple fact that the natural act of occupying space is unique to sit-ins.
Protesters sitting in front of a building and blocking the entrance, waving banners and flags
and perhaps chanting phrases can be immediately recognized as a sit-in – even without any
banners, flags or songs. What about DDoS attacks in cyberspace?
One of the first quantitative studies of DDoS attacks found over 68.700 attacks on more than
5.300 companies over the course of 3 years – and that was almost a decade ago. (Moore et al.
2006, 116) A more recent study warns that “DDoS incidents are growing day by day but the
technique to attack, botnet size, and attack traffic are also attaining new heights.” (Kaur and
Sachdeva 2013, 335) One of the problems to investigate and understand the threat of DDoS
attacks is the fact that “the DDoS field contains a multitude of attack and defense
mechanisms, which obscures a global view of the DDoS problem.” (Mirkovic and Reiher

31

2004, 51) Drawing on the categorization discussed by Moore et al. (2006) one can roughly
identify three different kinds of actors and motives. Next to political protesters there are
authoritarian governments who censor human rights and independent media websites
through DDoS attacks against those servers. Lastly organized cyber crime circles utilize
DDoS attacks for financial gains.
Authoritarian Governments. While there are a lot of suspicions about DDoS attacks carried
out by governments there is little actual data or evidence about specific cases. The most
comprehensive study of DDoS attacks against human rights and independent media websites
was conducted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
(Zuckerman et al. 2010) Their research was based on interviews, surveys and working
meetings with administrators of independent media and human rights websites with a focus
on China, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Vietnam, and Burma. (ibid.
25) During the interviews most of the administrators made it very clear that the “national
government of the country was ultimately responsible for the attacks.” (ibid. 41) And
although DDoS attacks are not the biggest problem for these websites – compared to
defacement and offline persecution – the report concludes that there is a “rise of DDoS as a
technique for silencing human rights and independent media sites.” (Zuckerman et al. 2010,
57) More recently, the “Hong Kong-based citizen media platform inmediahk.net” was
apparently attacked by the Chinese government after continuously reporting about dock
worker strikes. (Lam 2013) Another more definite case is the 2007 DDoS attack against
Estonian infrastructure. Which at that time lead to a hot debate about “cyber warfare” and
how nation states can defend themselves. (Goth 2007) Two years later Russian officials
admitted involvement in these cyber attacks. (Miller 2009) As has been mentioned by the
Berkman Center report governments supposedly utilize DDoS attacks to target websites of
the political opposition during elections, to render human rights websites unavailable and to
censor independent media. Yet often one can only guess if the source of the attack is a
government unit or rather a political or ideological sympathizer who acts autonomously.
Cyber Crime. Of an entirely different breed are DDoS attacks with financial interests which –
most of the time – can be seen as part of organized cyber crime. During September 2012
several US banks have been targeted by DDoS attacks. The Bank of America, JP Morgan
Chase, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, Citigroup and PNC Bank were amongst the victims.
(Goodin 2012) What sets those attacks apart from DDoS attacks done by hacktivists – at
least from a technical perspective – is the attack pattern. “Typical hacktivist DDoS attacks

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wield bandwidth in the range of 1Gbps 2 to 4Gbps, far less than the 60Gbps torrents seen in
these attacks.” (ibid.) Since at least a decade ago DDoS attacks have been used for “either
extortionate reasons, or to disable or impair the competition.” (Poulsen 2004) Another,
more recent, event were the DDoS attacks against the online Bitcoin 3 trader Mt.Gox. The
company guessed that these attacks had financial motives. “Attackers wait until the price of
Bitcoins reaches a certain value, sell, destabilize the exchange, wait for everybody to panicsell their Bitcoins, wait for the price to drop to a certain amount, then stop the attack and
start buying as much as they can. Repeat this two or three times like we saw over the past few
days and they profit.” (Mt.Gox 2013) Also during March this year the Swiss non-profit antispam organization Spamhaus4 got targeted by a massive large-scale DDoS attack. With more
than 300Gbps this has been the largest DDoS attack in the history of the Internet. (Bright
2013) Alleged attacker was a collective that calls themselves “STOPhaus” and supposedly
consists of many different spam companies – loosely affiliated with Dutch hosting company
CyberBunker. (ibid.) The attack went on for several days and attacked at some point an
Internet Exchange5 (IX) and thus caused severe collateral damage. (Prince 2013b) Because
the attackers changed their strategy and did not attack Spamhaus directly anymore but
instead focused on the disruption of the Internet Exchange some talked about an attack of
“Internet-threatening size”. (Bright 2013b) A 2011 report from the American Internet
Crime Complaint Center 6 stated that DDoS attacks “in general are on the rise” and goes on
that “gaming sites in particular have come under attack by multiple hacking groups.” (IC3
2011) This is supported by an annual report from Arbor Networks – a company that
specializes in mitigating DDoS attacks. According to Arbor Network’s survey data DDoS
attacks became more complex and targeted with a focus on gaming websites, e-commerce
platforms and cloud services. (Leyden 2013) Since some years ago everybody can rent DDoS
services per hour and attack any website. As Brian Krebs notes, “hackers are openly
competing to offer services that can take out a rival online business or to settle a score.”
(Krebs 2011) These examples and reports make it obvious that there is thriving, organized
cybercrime based on botnets and DDoS attacks with clear financial motives. These kinds of
attacks are apparently so common and serious that companies like CloudFlare, Prolexic or
2

‘Gigabits per second’ (Gbps) measure the amount of data that flows through a network per second. In the case
of DDoS attacks it is an indicator for the seriousness and thus the scale of the attack.
3
Bitcoin is a virtual currency that is traded online. The exchange rate reached extreme heights early 2013.
4
The team of Spamhaus searches the Internet for spammers and publishes a list with their Internet server
addresses. This blacklist can be implemented by any administrator and is said to block around 80% of all the
spam. (Prince 2013)
5
An Internet Exchange is a point where different networks connect to each other. These are run as non-profit
organizations.
6
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).

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Arbor Networks exist, with the sole purpose to thwart those attacks for their customers. One
wonders how the investigation of politically motivated DDoS attacks can lead to the
conclusion, that “the threat of online crime has been greatly overstated and is founded upon
a lack of understanding of the technology or even technophobia.” (Klang 2008, 11)
Why is it important to analyze the different actors who utilize DDoS attacks? These attacks
pose a serious threat to many different organizations, companies and nation states. The
attacker’s motivation can be political, out of fame and glory or monetary. Yet the outcome
for the victim is most of the time the same – a virtual blackout probably accompanied by
financial losses. In order to assess the potentials and benefits of DDoS attacks as a form of
civil disobedience one has to understand the environment in which these “virtual sit-ins”
take place. What became obvious through this section is, that DDoS attacks lack an
inimitable feature in cyberspace. This leads to perhaps insurmountable problems. First and
foremost the target does not and cannot distinguish between political protester and cyber
criminal and just tries to defend the attack as quickly as possible. Secondly DDoS attacks
conducted by circles of organized cyber crime are much more powerful since they have a
financial incentive and more resources at their disposal. (Prince 2012) Both problems result
in the fact that DDoS attacks from protesters could become ineffective in the future since
companies prepare themselves against attacks of much higher magnitude. Already now many
researchers and security experts do not see DDoS attacks from protesters like Anonymous
and others as a real threat and state that “such groups tend to target ‘low-hanging fruit,’
which while a nuisance - even at times illegal - is often only done because companies and
government institutions are lax in instituting proper cyber security measures.” (Sheldon
2012, 11) But probable ineffectiveness is not the only problem. If DDoS attacks are treated as
virtual sit-ins then protesters literally sit at the moment next to authoritarian governments
and cyber criminals on the streets and all of them occupy space. But the protesters expect
that society identifies them as sincere, conscientious citizens. This seems pretentious and
destined to fail.

B Free Speech

It has been argued in the previous chapter that DDoS attacks as a means of communication
essentially negate communication. Since the target server is buried in requests for
communication, no communication takes in fact place. Additionally, since the goal is to
ultimately break down the server DDoS opponents argue that these kinds of attacks impede
the targets right to free speech. This is the reason why the hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow
(cDc) condemns DDoS attacks, since they “are a violation of the First Amendment, and of

34

the freedoms of expression and assembly. No rationale, even in the service of the highest
ideals, makes them anything other than what they are -- illegal, unethical, and uncivil. One
does not make a better point in a public forum by shouting down one’s opponent.” (Ruffin
2000) While proponents of DDoS attacks perceive them as an act of free speech (Leiderman
2013) they are decidedly not. Karanasiou concludes from a legal perspective, that “it would
indeed be paradoxical to offer free speech protection to DDoS, which are ultimately acts of
infringing a target’s right to free speech and communication… The fact that DDoS are
proscribed acts of particularly aggressive nature combined to the threats incurred for free
speech online would undercut the feasibility of granting them free speech protection.”
(Karanasiou 2013, 29) McLaurin adds that “the pure transfer of information is not
necessarily pure speech” (McLaurin 2011, 245) and wraps up that “DoS attacks are an
underappreciated threat to speech, infrastructure, and the economy and that they serve as an
example of the evolving means by which Internet users can employ otherwise benign
technologies to do harm.” (ibid. 254) Thus the previously mentioned 'We the People' White
House petition by Anonymous to recognize DDoS attacks as a valid form of protest – and
thus protect them as free speech – is based on false, perhaps naïve assumptions. If these
attacks would be perceived as protests it would result in the justification of muzzling one’s
opponent to make your own voice heard. This is obviously diametrically opposed to the goal
of civil disobedience to engage in a moral dialogue with society and lawmakers to bring about
lasting change.

B Western Imperialism

Shortly after the Electronic Disturbance Theater coordinated DDoS attack in support of the
Zapatista Movement in Mexico, Miguel García Ramirez, a member of the Mexican civil rights
group AME LA PAZ wrote an open e-mail to the activists. (Ramirez 1998) In his letter
Ramirez respects the DDoS attacks from the Electronic Disturbance Theater but also
questions its usefulness and sees potential dangers for the movement. “Because this is what is
important: Did somebody ask the Zapatistas or Marcos? Did somebody tell us “let’s
encourage hackers and mail bombers”? Did somebody ask us, webmasters in Mexico that are
dealing not one but various sites linked to the social movement, whether we considered such
an action convenient? Did they consult it with anyone?… An action such as the one suggested
had to be consulted both with the Zapatistas and the organizations that have sites from
Mexico. Or perhaps, immersed in the colonial perception, we are considered unable
babies?... We fly over the Chiapas sky, we walk on its roads at night, we supply them with a
little help, we could die for operating a web page or in one of those roads. In fact, we have
already been threatened to be killed; we continue working when you leave.” (ibid.)

35

Ramirez addresses a variety of issues in his letter. The most important one though is that of,
perceived or actual, western imperialism. The activists that conducted the DDoS attack
apparently never thought about that although DDoS attacks could be their way to help the
Zapatistas, it does not necessarily mean that it actually helps the Zapatistas or if they even
want it. Fidele Vlavo writes in this context that so called electronic civil disobedience
“reproduces and reinforces political inequality and socio-cultural domination. The
Eurocentric interpretations of the potential of digital technologies need to be reassessed
within informed understandings of digital technology and socio-political activism
worldwide.” (Vlavo 2012, 140) The socio-cultural domination can be perfectly seen in
Ramirez’ remark that, “in the colonial perception, we are considered unable babies?”
(Ramirez 1998) It is safe to assume that similar difficulties might be in play with different
DDoS attacks from Anonymous against various Burmese government websites in support of
Rohingya Muslims who are persecuted in Burma. (AnonNews 2012) It all boils down to the
question of who protests for whom? Granted, this is not specific to DDoS attacks but digital
activism in general. And yet in the case of DDoS attacks it should be treated with much care
since the technique is invasive and disruptive – much more than online petitions and
campaigns. As Ramirez pointed out, using DDoS attacks against a foreign government in
support of a persecuted minority in this country imposes one’s own ideology directly on these
people and their struggle. It lacks any kind of insight or empathy, even if done with best
intentions. Vlavo warns that this kind of exclusive online protest is a “form of resistance,
whereby global participants can select social movements online and ‘click to protest’ from the
comfort of their secured environment, unaware of and unaffected by the possible outcomes
of their virtual engagement. Ironically, the visions of so-called transnational solidarity and
global mobilisation actually seem to deny, or minimise, the importance of local populations
and their distinctive struggle.” (Vlavo 2012, 138) Closely related to the problem Vlavo
describes is that of the 'digital divide'. Almost a decade ago Chris Atton cautioned, that “the
virtual protest is not the same as the physical protest. To transfer the tactics of the latter to
the former is to ignore the digital dynamics of inequality of access and the new threats to
democracy and human rights that have emerged (and continue to emerge) across the
Internet.” (Atton 2004, 23)

B Techno-libertarianism

The exclusive use of information technology for protesting raises questions about the
perception of these technologies and techno-deterministic notions. Especially in the
examples where DDoS attacks have been used to protest against complex socio-political
issues – political persecution of indigenous people or their economic exploitation – one has

36

to scrutinize the belief DDoS proponents have in the power of information technology. What
Scottish philosopher Gordon Graham writes about technophiles seems to describe this
mindset quite well, “the question of means is the dominant (even sole) consideration and the
question of the value of ends to which they are the means is left to take care of itself.”
(Graham 1999, 10) How does it help the Rohingya people if Anonymous’ members attack
Burmese government servers? Zizek’s notion of 'pseudo-activity' comes to mind. He criticizes
that “the threat today is not passivity but pseudo-activity, the urge to ‘be active’, to
‘participate,’ to mask the nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, ‘do
something’.” (Zizek 2008, 183) But DDoS attacks as a form of online protest are not only
pseudo-activity but also techno-utopianism. At its core is the strong belief that technology
can solve societal issues. In this way it is the perfect example of 'slacktivism' – “political
activities that have no impact on real–life political outcomes, but only serve to increase the
feel–good factor of the participants.” (S. H. Christensen 2011) Thus DDoS attacks as a form
of protest can be seen as the next step of the discourse of 'liberation technology' – the belief
that “social networking technologies have been vital tools in the struggle for freedom” during
the Arab Spring. (Christensen 2011, 234) If one is convinced that Twitter or Facebook made
the struggles in the Middle East and other countries possible, then it is only logical to see
DDoS attacks as a potent solution to protest online. Yet this only exposes the underlying
rhetoric, that “digital technology is attributed a new redeeming function, usually
disseminated through distorted narratives that promise new social order, fair economic
growth and democratic political structures.” (Vlavo 2012, 126)

B Summary

The purpose of this chapter was to illuminate fundamental issues of DDoS attacks, as a form
of civil disobedience online, following leads illuminated by the multi-dimensional framework
of the previous chapter. The absence of any kind of individual presence and the lack of an
inimitable feature are at the core of the argument against the use of DDoS as a form of
protesting online. The first leads to uncertainty about commitment, sincerity, seriousness
and ultimately conscientiousness. These come naturally to civilly disobedient acts in the
'offline' world but pose insurmountable problems for DDoS attacks in cyberspace – because
of the lack of individual presence. This in turn makes it harder for society and lawmakers to
form a favorable opinion about the protesters’ beliefs and disavowals. Connected to the
classical framework of civil disobedience this allows the conclusion that DDoS attacks are an
inappropriate means of communication since they do not support the aim to engage in a
moral dialogue. The second fundamental issue is the lack of an inimitable feature. Neither
the target of the attack nor society can identify these as politically motivated since the action

37

utilizes the same technique as cyber crime circles and authoritarian governments. It is thus
an ineffective means of communication since it cannot be distinguished from those of other
actors. Lastly this form of online action impedes free speech itself by literally muzzling one’s
opponent and thus has to be perceived as opposed to the ideals of civilly disobedient acts.
Not exclusive to DDoS attacks but of relevancy are notions of western imperialism and
techno-libertarianism. DDoS attacks are an invasive and disruptive technique and the
Internet makes it possible to protest in another country for another one’s cause. This leads to
the problem of imposing – most of the time western and libertarian – ideology upon the
other and ignoring the distinctiveness of their struggle. Lastly a general critique was given by
seeing DDoS attacks originating from a techno-utopian mindset and that it ultimately is a
manifestation of the illusion that societal issues can be solved by the exclusive utilization of
technology.

N Limitations and Further Research N

Herbert J. Storing wrote that “the most striking characteristic of civil disobedience is its
irrelevance to the problems of today.” (Storing 1991, 85) One obvious limitation of this
research is that it depends on the assumption that civil disobedience is of importance and
that furthermore some sort of definition or framework is necessary to analyze and describe
these acts of political protest. Throughout the second chapter the aim was not only to define
or at least capture the spirit of the phenomenon but also to illuminate its importance for
society. If one disagrees with that point the further analysis of DDoS attacks is indeed of little
relevance. Nonetheless Storing has been proven wrong, if nothing else because of protests
from global justice, anti-globalization and environmental movements during the last decade.
Another obvious limitation of this thesis is that it had to rely solely on second source data. It
would be interesting to examine the different views of hackers and hacktivists regarding
DDoS attacks as a form of protest. Apparently there are different opinions about that, as the
statements from Cult of the Dead Cow and the Electrohippies illustrated. In this regard
Molly Sauter’s, Research Assistant in Comparative Media Studies at the MIT Center for
Civic Media (Sauter 2012), forthcoming research will be highly interesting. Sauter
approaches the topic from an ethical perspective and gathered a lot of primary sources.
Further research should investigate other forms of civil disobedience online by extending
existing definitions or frameworks with the two proposed features: 'individual presence' and
inimitability of the action.

38

N Conclusion N
This journey started with a simple question. Are Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks a valid
form of civil disobedience online? On this journey the discourse and the importance of civil
disobedience were first illuminated. It has been demonstrated that civilly disobedient acts
can play a vital role in our society, since they inhibit a special place between legal protest and
revolutionary acts. It capacitates a minority to display how strongly they feel about a
grievance and aims to engage lawmakers and society in a moral dialogue. But as always, with
power comes responsibility and thus acts of civil disobedience need to embrace fundamental
features to walk this fine line between legal protest and revolution. First and foremost society
needs to see the protesters’ conscientiousness, sincerity and seriousness. It has been argued
that the chosen means and modes of communication should have the aim to engage in a
moral dialogue and that this in turn is an important indicator about the protesters sincerity.
Yet when analyzing and comparing classical acts of civil disobedience and DDoS attacks
online several things were amiss. Neither society nor lawmakers are able to see the protesters’
conscientiousness, sincerity or commitment since DDoS attacks focus solely on the
disruption of the information flow. What they are missing is that in order to work, civil
disobedience needs individual presence. Classical forms of civil disobedience – like sit-ins –
achieved that naturally through physical presence. This is not possible in cyberspace though
and although the ability to protest from a distance has been celebrated by many proponents
of DDoS attacks, it severely impedes the protesters’ ability to demonstrate their sincerity and
commitment. This together with the fact that DDoS attacks are also used by authoritarian
governments and professional cyber crime for entirely different purpose lead to the
conclusion that DDoS attacks are inferior and inefficient means of communication for civilly
disobedient acts online – especially when considering that this technique muzzles free speech
of the opponent.
But the journey did not stop there. Civil disobedience online is still in its early stages and
activists have to think of good ways how to transfer its philosophy and characteristics to
cyberspace. DDoS attacks are just one wrong way. Indian author and political activist
Arundhati Roy put it best by stating, that “we can re-invent civil disobedience in a million
different ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective
pain in the ass.” (Roy 2003) In order to re-invent it online this research illuminated two
features that may be of great importance. First, since there is no physical presence online,
one needs to demonstrate some form of individual presence – which is more than mere
accountability. ‘Individual presence’ attenuates the negative effects of remoteness for

39

political protests in cyberspace. This renders it more likely that society sees the commitment
and sincerity of the protesters and their action. Second, civil disobedience needs an
inimitable – a unique – feature online. Just like everybody can immediately recognize a sit-in
in the 'offline world', it is also necessary to be able to identify these actions online. This
means that focusing solely on the disruption of the information flow is counter-productive.
Protesters that utilize DDoS attacks expect from society to be able to differentiate between
political protest, cyber crime and authoritarian regime – although all of them utilize the
same technique and are thus indistinguishable. These two aspects, individual presence and
an inimitable feature, should be added to existing frameworks for the analysis of civil
disobedience, in order to examine online actions.
To give an example, Facebook’s censorship of “pornography” has long been perceived by
some as hypocritical. Pictures of breast feeding mothers get banned (Bindley 2012), together
with anatomical illustrations of a vagina. (MotherWise 2013) Some Facebook users
continuously post those pictures to protest against Facebook’s terms of use – by breaking the
latter. Although this surely is just a minor act of disobedience, it illustrates ‘individual
presence’ and an inimitable feature. The ‘individual presence’ is possible because everybody
has an account associated with her real name and quite likely much more than that. The
inimitable feature would be the picture of a breast-feeding mother or the particular
illustration of a vagina. These two features together enable others to form an opinion about
the protester’s seriousness and conscientiousness. In this regard it is much more likely for
these protests to constitute an act of civil disobedience online, than it is for DDoS attacks. To
make sure, the point here is not if these protesters are right in their belief, nor should it be
perceived as a plea for real-name accounts. It shall rather demonstrate that there already are
forms – however minor – of civil disobedience online.
Thus DDoS attacks should be perceived as one of those re-inventions Arundhati Roy spoke
of, but after more than a decade it is time to realize that this re-invention of civil
disobedience online went in the wrong way. It is surely true what Spanish sociologist Manuel
Castells concluded in his monumental trilogy The Information Age, that “the new economy
is organized around global networks of capital, management, and information.” (Castells
2000, 502) And with this in mind it is easy to understand why digital activists that favor
DDoS attacks argue, that the streets are the “location of dead capital. To seriously confront
capital in its current mobile, electronic form, resistance must take place in the location where
capital now exists in greatest concentrations, namely in cyberspace.” (Wray 1999, 109) But
what would it mean to allow DDoS attacks to be the solution? It is how American economist
W. Brian Arthur famously warned, we should not “always equate what is possible with what is

40

desirable.” (Arthur 2009, 216) That realization Arthur speaks of is even more important in
the case of DDoS attacks, because “technology is not a thing in the ordinary sense of the
term, but an "ambivalent" process of development suspended between different possibilities.
This ambivalence of technology is distinguished from neutrality by the role it attributes to
social values in the design, and not merely the use, of technical systems. On this view,
technology is not a destiny but a scene of struggle. It is a social battlefield, or perhaps a better
metaphor would be a "parliament of things" in which civilizational alternatives contend.”
(Feenberg 2002, 15) The social values inherent in DDoS attacks as protests would be,
favoring disruption over discourse and activity over conscientiousness as a society.
This journey comes to an end by arriving at the beginning. Why are Thoreau and Gandhi
'away from keyboard'? They are not. Although one cannot find their spirits in actions like
DDoS attacks, their ideas can be found in protests like the before mentioned Facebook
examples. Some Anonymous’ hackers now face prison time – among other things because of
DDoS attacks. Yet it is unlikely that in the near future DDoS attacks as 'protests' will cease to
exist. Consequently the arms race between DDoS attackers and defenders will go on and
Anonymous will continue to hit the headlines with new attacks against Westboro Baptist
Church, PayPal or others. In the meantime one can only hope that society accomplishes to
re-invent civil disobedience online since it is needed desperately in a time in which
“cyberspace is mainly a sphere of commerce, sex, and entertainment; it is economically
dominated and a stratified sphere that reflects social inequalities and class relationships.”
(Fuchs 2008, 281) Sadly, in this environment it is highly likely that civil disobedience online
will (continue to) “represent a symptom of pseudo-activity for the young and the
dispossessed.” (Quill 2009, 165) Thus Isaac Asimov’s observation still holds true, that “the
saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers
wisdom.”
But, 'Hope dies last.'

41

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