What's on the line for hacktivists and the common public?

               Upon further research into hacktivism I came across a couple of great articles that detail a big question I hadn't even necessarily thought about.  Is hacking a crime or just civil disobedience?  The first article I read was from PC World, "How Hacktivism Affects Us all".  The author, Edel Rodriguez, detailed the ideas of a new generation of people that grew up on the Internet and the fact that we now view the Internet as a common place in the world like a park or physical business.  The idea of online protesting as a form of hacktivism came to mind.  Normally, people can sign a petition online and cause action, sometimes.  However, think about a "sit in" at a physical business and compare it to a common DoS attack on a website.  Physically, people block others from entering the business and congest the storefront or business.  Online, a DoS attack floods the targeted website with requests for information, just the same a logging onto a site repeatedly.  Theoretically, the idea is not illegal, just like peaceful protest, but the government has enforced laws such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or CFAA to prosecute individuals involved in these events.  So whats at stake here?  Would you let the government tell you that you cannot protest anymore?

              I started thinking about about other applications where digital activism could be compared to physical activism.  Take for instance defacing a business's a sign.  When caught, the criminal would probably get a slap on the wrist, at most a month in jail and a few fines.  Get caught changing the home page of a business and you would be looking at several years in prison. In some light, it is the same thing.  There is no doubt in my mind that stealing information is illegal, but that's not what these two types of hacktivism do.  An interesting thing the article mentions, that I never knew, is that the government can prosecute someone under the CFAA law for violating a website's terms of service.  Now, picture yourself at Old Chicago.  Your plate of spaghetti comes to the table and you decide to pick it up and throw it all over the wall.  You will surely be asked to leave, but imagine if the cops were outside ready to haul you away for violating their rules or terms of service.   As the article finishes up it talks about a former member of Anonymous saying he did not agree with posting private information about civilians on the web for millions of people to see.  This is important because sometimes hacktivists can hurt the very people they are standing up for.

               While I agree with not hurting those your are standing up for, there exists some gray area here.  There is bound to be some people at any given business that will be subjected to the attack of a hacktivist, that really never had anything to do with the reason the business is being attacked.  Compare that idea to the employees at a store that are laid off because the community has decided to boycott the business.  Maybe we have a generational gap in lawmaking where they do not realize the importance the Internet is to a younger generation.  This idea pushes me into a second article I read.

               ProRepublica's article by Christie Thompson,  "Hacktivism: Civil Disobedience or Cyber Crime?", talks about the suicide of Aaron Swartz, the founder of Reddit and self proclaimed online hacktivist.  Swartz was facing 13 felonies, millions of dollars in fines and 50 years in prison for stealing scholarly articles off of a secure database called JSTOR.  While there were claims he intended to sell them, he never did and frankly why would he as he was worth more than a database of articles would fetch.  Can you imagine stealing a few dumpsters full of books and facing 50 years in the pen?  An idea I've wrestled with is maybe the fact that law enforcement and government officials are scared of these abilities.  All Swartz did was violate JSTOR's terms of service, even they didn't want to prosecute him.  Sounds like the government trying to do what they consider to be proactive?  This article goes into the methods of hacktivism similar to my first article of research.  I will say ProReublica's stance seems more in favor of the Hacktivists than PC World.  Even the titles of paragraphs used by Rodriguez of PC World like "Online Vigilantes" show the authors view of hacktivists compared to the plain titles Thompson uses.   I want to continue to dig deeper into Internet laws and what kind of court cases have came up through hacktivism.  For now, I will leave you with a great video that talks about the legacy of Aaron Swartz.