Hacking for a Better World

LAS VEGAS -- "Hacktivism" means hacking for a political cause or statement. To many executives and security personnel, the word conjures unsavory images: tattooed and pierced activists hunched over PCs acting out against Web sites or servers.

But hacktivism need not follow that deprecatory script, says members of the hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) and human rights activists in a panel discussion held at the Def Con hacker conference here Saturday.

"Hacking is finding things out, discovery ... of hidden, obscure, and important information," says Patrick Ball, the deputy director of the Science and Human Rights program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. who spoke on the panel.

Hacking to Help Others

"Hacktivism is [using] technology in the service of human rights," Ball says. He has worked on United Nations human rights projects investigating war crimes and genocide as well as on projects in Guatemala, Haiti, and South Africa.

"Hacktivism isn't any sort of cyberterrorism," says CDC member and panelist Reid Fleming. Instead, the panelists agree, hacktivism is part of a balanced, disciplined program to use data and technology to improve human rights.

Ball, a participant in many such programs, detailed his experiences using technology to gather and document cases of human rights abuses. Simply gathering and documenting isn't enough; without a sufficient amount of data, oppressive governments can still deny that any systematic campaigns were underway, he says.

"If you want to say something has happened as a result of policy, you need an awful lot of data," he says, adding that proving such policies are at work in violating human rights is the only way to indict people or remove them from power.

Data-Mining for Justice

In order to amass this sort of scientific data, human rights workers need not only conduct extensive research and interviews with victims, but they must also employ technologies like encryption and databases and even write their own code, Ball says. The use of databases and custom-written code helped Ball's organization identify Guatemala's worst human rights abusers and target them for prosecution or pressure.

It was "only big data, technology, that lets us do this," he says.

Additionally, many human rights groups use cryptography and encryption software such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) to protect their messages and information, which is often a matter of life and death, Ball says. PGP keeps information from falling into the wrong hands and can verify whether messages are authentic using digital signatures.

"[PGP] has had an enormous impact on human rights [groups]," Ball says.

One effort, the Martus Project, is working on ways to present and provide information across the Internet, while also encrypting and replicating it across multiple servers to protect the data, he says.

Hacktivism for Hackers

Any hacker can also engage in hacktivism, the panelists say. For those who do want to get involved, they should seek out established groups to work through, such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, who know what they're doing, Ball says.

Additionally, computer users should get involved with computers rights organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, or the Center for Democracy and Technology, Ball says.

Lastly, hackers and coders interested in promoting freedom and human rights can write software, Ball says. Needed programs include those that promote privacy (as being able to use the Internet anonymously can be a deadly serious matter in some countries), and those that remove embedded ID numbers from text documents, Ball says.

But it must be easy to use.

"If your mom can't use the software, we can't either," he says.

Cult to Add Hacktivism Tool

Though tight-lipped on the details, a CDC member known as Drunken Master, did mention the group's upcoming privacy and information freedom application, Peekabooty. Peekabooty, a peer-to-peer Web browsing system designed to allow users in countries that restrict Internet use to get the information they seek, was slated to be released at Def Con, but has since been pushed back due to concerns that it may not have provided enough anonymity, panelists say.

"Peekabooty is just one instance of hacktivism," Drunken Master says. "We're going to see a lot more in coming years."