| Protesters don't have right to disable Web sites
I enjoyed your watchdog article covering police surveillance of Internet use by protest groups – and, by extension, all of us, since the first step is to decide who is and isn't in such a group (Be careful of what you put in that Google search, by Tom Babin, Activist Guide, March 7 - 13, 2002). Let me first admit to being one of those Ikea-shopping, though not SUV-driving, folks who is sympathetic to many protesters' ends, but not always their means.
I think that you stray into euphemism when you call Web site hacking, denial-of-service attacks and the like "culture jamming." It is hypocrisy to imply, as you do, that Internet activity for the purposes of organizing protest should be safely swaddled in the basic freedoms associated with speech and assembly, while Internet activity for the purposes of commerce and politics should not enjoy the similarly fundamental safe harbours of property rights and democratic mandate.
Legal protest is just that, legal. It is bound by, and subject to, rules that make it acceptable and intelligible to the larger political body. For protest to function as a source of "social course-correction," we should encourage it and be very wary of any deliberate or accidental shifts that would stifle the voice of reasoned dissent. But should we not be similarly wary when groups begin to trample roughshod over rules that protect other things, like the operation of our economic marketplace and our system of government?
Web sites have evolved far past their 1980s status as electronic billboards – they are now critical pieces of infrastructure, as protest groups have themselves learned! Disabling them is fundamentally different from protesting in the streets or even the trivial offence of spray-painting graffiti on signage. These days, disrupting an organization's site in many cases disrupts the organization.
My sympathy to those passionate about global trade or the environment ends when they step outside the boundaries which serve to structure the larger debate of these issues. Or perhaps burning down government buildings or blowing up factories should also be condoned as "culture jamming." Revolution and martial law are simply equivalent and opposite suspensions of political order. Almost all of us want none of either.
To paraphrase centuries of political thought, our civilization may be best evaluated by examining the manner in which we change it.
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