Is Hacktivism Wrong?

In a purely legal sense, any form of hacking is wrong. It is the virtual equivalent of breaking and entering, even if nothing is stolen. But like most everyone in this modern world, activists have found ways to utilize cyberspace to their advantage. While many organizations are content to launch campaigns and take donations via websites and social media outlets, there are always extremists willing to cross the line between pushing the envelope and breaking the law. And these people call themselves hacktivists. They hack not for their own gain, but rather to introduce issues and entities that they find questionable into the public eye, or else to take them down from the inside. So the question is not really whether these actions are legally wrong (they clearly are), but if they are immoral or unethical in some way.

This is a difficult question to answer largely because morals and ethics are often gauged on an individual basis. Certainly we all agree that crimes like killing are wrong…right? In fact, we can’t even seem to draw a line on this most serious of infractions because there are instances in which killing is justifiable (in self-defense, war, and so on). The truth is that the rightness or wrongness of any action on moral and ethical grounds is largely open to interpretation. But when it comes to hacktivism, which seems to be on the rise of late, there are a few things to consider.

The first would be the goals and actions of any given hacker organization. Many people have recently become familiar with the concept of hacktivism thanks to the group Anonymous and the role they have played in the Occupy movement. Although they are credited with hacking banks, social networking sites, and even official government servers, mainly to protest censorship issues, they are probably most recognized for their real-world protests, during which they often show up wearing Guy Fawkes masks (as in the movie V for Vendetta) to retain anonymity.

Most recently, the group took credit for temporarily disabling a number of websites (including the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Motion Picture Association of America, amongst others) in reaction to the shutdown of Megaupload.com just one day after the SOPA/PIPA blackout protests. But they were also notably linked to Iranian election protests in 2009, wherein they aided other international hacker groups in setting up a site called Anonymous Iran to provide information and support to protestors in the country.

Their actions may be illegal, and many would say unwise, but at least there are a few people out there putting degrees from top online masters in IT programs to good use by supporting a worthy cause. The flip side of this issue is the hacktivist groups out there that seem to be in it for fun rather than a noteworthy purpose. A recent example of this unfortunate side of hacktivism occurred just a few days ago when a group known as Swagg Security hacked into Apple manufacturer Foxconn. In a statement released on Pastebin (along with emails and passwords gleaned from the company’s database), the group claimed that they had done this not in protest of the notoriously poor working conditions at Foxconn’s Chinese factories, but rather for “the hilarity” of the exploit.

So while there are certainly hacktivists out there who seem to be resorting to criminal behavior for a good cause, there are also plenty of run-of-the-mill hackers that are simply flexing their virtual muscles with no higher aim than to cause some mischief. Whether they are right or wrong is largely in the eye of the beholder.