Hackers Helping Freedom
Liberty is on the decline in America but may be on the rise elsewhere.
A collection of activist hackers is about to release software designed to
thwart governmental censors of the Internet. The pro-democracy Six/Four
project from Hacktivismo is a potentially valuable step to protect
political dissidents and other people who have the quaint idea that their
access to information shouldn't be thwarted by government-run firewalls in
places like China and Saudi Arabia.
The basic idea is to use the Internet's decentralized nature in a way that
lets people create anonymous, secure data tunnels from here to there and
everywhere. If this works, governments will be harder-pressed to prevent
their people from communicating freely and seeing online material that, for
whatever reason, is considered objectionable.
In a novel but possibly futile gesture, the activists and their legal
advisers have written a license for the software that, in theory, could
make governments liable for damages if they tamper with the code or
otherwise use it to harm human rights. The language in the draft I've seen
is stern, but I'm not clear on how anyone expects to enforce it.
Oxblood Ruffin, the project leader, says he won't be surprised if China
becomes the first scofflaw. But he also says one goal in creating the new
license, not to mention the entire effort, was to bring more public
attention to the promotion of political freedom around the world.
Growing U.S. moves to control the Internet may make the Hacktivismo
projects (Six/Four is the second) more global than anyone expected. It will
be truly ironic if these tools end up being equally vital on the continent
from which they originated.
( Posted by Dan Gillmor, 11/20/2002 07:13 PM PST)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/dan_gillmor/ejournal/
