Au cours des dernières décennies, la massification de l’usage de l’informatique, notamment connectée, a eu de nombreuses et profondes conséquences sur l’ensemble de la société. Loin d’être le produit d’une histoire ou d’un « progrès » linéaire, les techniques s’inscrivent dans un rapport social matérialisé. Entre technicisation du politique et politisation de la technique, toute une dialectique ne cesse de se déployer. Les acteur·e·s engagé·e·s dans ces conflits se trouvent à différentes échelles : institutions supra-étatiques, inter-étatiques, États, entreprises, organisations diverses et militant·e·s individuel·le·s. Dans cette arène particulière de lutte se déploient épreuves et grammaires singulières. À partir d’entretiens réalisés auprès des différent·e·s acteur·e·s engagé·e·s dans des luttes pour la politisation de la technique, cette thèse de doctorat s’attache à étudier les différentes stratégies utilisées lors de trois conflits distincts, à la fois contemporains, et inscrits dans une histoire longue. Sont ainsi étudiées les luttes en faveur et en opposition à la neutralité du Net, menées de 2009 à 2014 ; celles pour la protection de la vie privée et des données personnelles menées entre 2012 et 2016 ; et enfin, celles réagissant à la mise en place de l’état d’urgence en France à partir de 2015. Cette recherche étudie les agirs des différents groupes impliqués dans ces conflictualités sociales, afin d’établir une cartographie de leurs stratégies. Ainsi, notre analyse mettra en lumière la manière dont les groupes engagés dans la lutte créent les conditions de victoires sociales au sein de ces espaces, ou au contraire échouent à atteindre leurs objectifs. / Over the past decades, the increased use of computers, particularly connected to the internet, has had numerous and deep impact on the whole society. Far from being the outcome of a linear "progress," its technologies are embedded in material social relationships. Between the technicization of the political, and the politicization of the technological, a deep dialectic keeps unfolding. The actors involved in these conflicts can be detected at different levels, supra national institutions, among the Nations, companies, diverse organizations and individual activists. In these specific arenas of fighting arenas, people rely on singular trials and repertoires. Based on interviews conducted with different actors involved in the struggle for the politicization of technology, this dissertation explores the various strategies used during three conflicts, both contemporary and with long-standing history. We thus study the fights among pro and con concerning internet neutrality, taking place between 2009 and 2014; the fights for the protection of private life and personal data between 2012 and 2016, and those organized in reaction to the emergency state in France, starting in 2015. This research studies the repertoire of action from the different groups involved in these social conflicts, in order to map out their strategy. Therefore, our analysis will shed a new light on how the groups involved in this struggle create the conditions for success within those spaces, or on the contrary fail to achieve their goals.

Thesis (MTech. degree in Journalism) -- Tshwane University of Technology, 2010. / Explores the themes derived from the six tenets of the hacker ethic in blog posts about the Gautrain project over a one-year period. It also describes how citizen journalists express the six tenets of the hacker ethic when blogging about the Gautrain project.

This thesis both draws from and contributes to the ongoing project of critiquing and reconstructing the theory of the public sphere; an undertaking that has been characterised as both valuable and necessary by Fraser (2005: 2) and many others. The subsection of theory variously described as ‘postmodern’, ‘radical’, or ‘agonistic’ informs an intensive practical and theoretical critique of the pre- and post-‘linguistic turn’ iterations of the Habermasian ideal, before culminating in the articulation of a concise and operationalisable ‘neo-Habermasian’ public sphere ideal. This revised model retains the Habermasian public sphere as its core, but expands and sensitizes it, moving away from normative preoccupations with decision-making in order to effectively comprehend issues of power and difference, and to allow publicness “to navigate through wider and wilder territory” (Ryan, 1992: 286). This theoretical framework is then mobilised through a critical discourse analytical approach, exploring three cases of hacktivist counterpublicity, and revealing the emergence of a multivalent, multimodal discourse genre capable of threatening and fracturing hegemony. The case studies are selected using Samuel’s (2004) taxonomy of hacktivism, and explore the ‘political coding’ group, Hacktivismo; the Creative Freedom Foundation and the ‘performative hacktivism’ of their New Zealand Internet Blackout; and the ‘political cracking’ operations carried out by Anonymous in protest against the Australian government’s proposed Internet filter. The analysis focuses on how the discursive form and content of hacktivism combines to function counterhegemonically; that is, how hacktivists work to provoke widespread political preference reflection and fracture the hegemony of the publics they are oriented against. This approach generates a fruitful feedback loop between theory and empirical data, in that it enriches and extends our understanding of new modes of counterpublicity, as well as providing a detailed account of the under-researched yet increasingly widespread phenomenon of hacktivism.

If you cannot measure, you cannot manage. This is an age old saying, but still very true, especially within the current South African cybercrime scene and the ever-growing Internet footprint. Due to the significant increase in cybercrime across the globe, information security specialists are starting to see the intrinsic value of logs that can ‘tell a story’. Logs do not only tell a story, but also provide a tool to measure a normally dark force within an organisation. The collection of current logs from installed systems, operating systems and devices is imperative in the event of a hacking attempt, data leak or even data theft, whether the attempt is successful or unsuccessful. No logs mean no evidence, and in many cases not even the opportunity to find the mistake or fault in the organisation’s defence systems. Historically, it remains difficult to choose what logs are required by your organization. A number of questions should be considered: should a centralised or decentralised approach for collecting these logs be followed or a combination of both? How many events will be collected, how much additional bandwidth will be required and will the log collection be near real time? How long must the logs be saved and what if any hashing and encryption (integrity of data) should be used? Lastly, what system must be used to correlate, analyse, and make alerts and reports available? This thesis will address these myriad questions, examining the current lack of log analysis, practical implementations in modern organisation, and also how a need for the latter can be fulfilled by means of a basic approach. South African organizations must use technology that is at hand in order to know what electronic data are sent in and out of their organizations network. Concentrating only on FreeBSD PF firewall logs, it is demonstrated within this thesis the excellent results are possible when logs are collected to obtain a visual display of what data is traversing the corporate network and which parts of this data are posing a threat to the corporate network. This threat is easily determined via a visual interpretation of statistical outliers. This thesis aims to show that in the field of corporate data protection, if you can measure, you can manage.

The topic of this diploma thesis is body modification culture phenomenon called 'suspension'. It is a voluntary act of suspending a human body from hooks or piercings that have been temporarily pierced through the skin. Suspension is an age-old technique practiced for example by North American Indian Mandan tribe. It has been brought to the modern era and body modification culture by modern primitives. The part of the thesis is a placement of suspension to the broader sociocultural and historical context, there will be also space for development of concept of body, embodiment and pain in the western word and ritual aspect of suspension. The source for this work is mainly accessible literature, internet pages dedicated to body modifications and participant observation completed with interviews with people who had been suspended.

Diese Arbeit verbindet zwei Perspektiven, nämlich den Blick auf die soziale Praxis des digitalen Ungehorsams mit dem anhaltenden Diskurs über zivilen Ungehorsam in der politischen Theorie. Digitaler Ungehorsam entwickelte sich im Verlauf der Evolution digitaler Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien in überraschendem Facettenreichtum: vom BTX Hack des Chaos Computer Clubs über den Widerstand der Cypherpunks für die weltweite Verbreitung von Verschlüsselung hin zu Anonymous, Aaron Swartz und Edward Snowden. Reload Disobedience plädiert für eine Revision des dominierenden Verständnisses von zivilem Ungehorsam und stützt sich dabei auf Theorien von Hannah Arendt, Michael Walzer und Etienne Balibar. Viele Beispiele in der Geschichte des digitalen Ungehorsams werden diesem neuen Verständnis durchaus gerecht, doch gibt es gleichzeitig Faktoren, die weitere Fragen aufwerfen: Kann ziviler Ungehorsam anonym sein oder automatisiert durchgeführt werden? Wie verändert sich das kollektive Handeln, das maßgeblicher Teil der Tradition zivilen Ungehorsames ist, durch die globale Vernetzung? Um diese und andere Effekte digitalen Handelns zu verstehen, diskutiert die Autorin die Entscheidungen der digital Ungehorsamen sowie Möglichkeiten und Grenzen digitalen Handelns im Kontext demokratie-theoretischer Überlegungen. Eine Kernthese der Arbeit ist, dass ziviler Ungehorsam in digitalen Formen potentiell eine neue Direktheit des Politischen erzeugen kann. Gleichzeitig muss sich diese Praxis einer besonderen Unsicherheit sowie neuen Risiken und Herausforderungen stellen, um dem demokratischen Geist des zivilen Ungehorsams unter neuen Bedingungen gerecht zu werden. / This work combines two perspectives, namely the social and activist history of digital forms of disobedience with the ongoing discourse around civil disobedience in political theory. In the course of the internet’s evolution, digital disobedience developed in a surprisingly multifaceted nature: From cases like the BTX Hack of the Chaos Computer Club, to the Cypherpunks and their effort to spread encryption, from Anonymous to Aaron Swartz or Edward Snowden. This work argues for a broader understanding of civil disobedience than the mainstream in political thinking suggests based on arguments from a radical democratic line of thinking, inspired by Hannah Arendt, Michael Walzer and Etienne Balibar. Many cases of digital disobedience meet the spirit of this new understanding, while at the same time their digital nature provokes a new set of questions as well. For instance the question, if civil disobedience may be anonymous or even automated. How does the internet change collective action which is often seen as a core element of the tradition of civil disobedience? The author discusses the choices and principles behind digitally disobedient action as well as the possibilities and limits of digital action in the context of democratic theory. She shows that civil disobedience in digital action even develops a new directness of encounter that adds a new potential to this delicate form of political action. Nevertheless, digital practices of civil disobedience are at the same time precarious and faced with new risks and challenges, like automation of and the risk of elitist tech-avant-gardes overriding the democratic spirit that civil disobedience is rooted in.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T20:21:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 resistenciasprotocololares.pdf: 1911757 bytes, checksum: fb058f2802dff579fdb7fabfd81640b0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-05-26 / This study investigates contemporary manifestations of resistance. The starting point for such study is the flow of information - the Internet is deemed herein as the model diagram and a fundamentally important mechanism, entwined in power relations in the control society. Resistance and control are inevitably associated and therefore operate through this mechanism. Hence, this study investigates not only contemporary control, which operates through mechanisms of social subjection and mechanistic servitude, where men are components of a machine, controlled and directed by a superior unit, found in this study to be in protocols, operated in turn by molar and molecular lines that seal the Internet s control grid, but escape lines are also contemplated, represented by hackers, who assemble as war machines and throw themselves against the State apparatus and the global war machines in search of freedom / Este trabalho investiga expressões de resistências contemporâneas. O fluxo informacional é um ponto de partida para o estudo destas resistências - a Internet é aqui pensada como modelo de diagrama e mecanismo de suma importância que atravessa as relações de poder na sociedade de controle. Resistências e controle formam par indissociável e operam através deste mecanismo, portanto. Assim, não só o controle contemporâneo é investigado neste estudo, controle que se dá através de mecanismos de servidão maquínica e sujeição social, onde homens são peças constituintes de uma máquina, sob controle e direção de uma unidade superior, aqui encontrada nos protocolos, protocolos que por sua vez são operados por linhas molares e linhas moleculares, que fecham as malhas de controle da Internet, mas também são contempladas suas linhas de fuga, representadas pelos hackers, que formam máquinas de guerra e lançam-se contra os aparelhos de Estado e as máquinas de guerra mundiais em busca de liberdade

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T14:55:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 resistenciasprotocololares.pdf: 1911757 bytes, checksum: fb058f2802dff579fdb7fabfd81640b0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-05-26 / This study investigates contemporary manifestations of resistance. The starting point for such study is the flow of information - the Internet is deemed herein as the model diagram and a fundamentally important mechanism, entwined in power relations in the control society. Resistance and control are inevitably associated and therefore operate through this mechanism. Hence, this study investigates not only contemporary control, which operates through mechanisms of social subjection and mechanistic servitude, where men are components of a machine, controlled and directed by a superior unit, found in this study to be in protocols, operated in turn by molar and molecular lines that seal the Internet s control grid, but escape lines are also contemplated, represented by hackers, who assemble as war machines and throw themselves against the State apparatus and the global war machines in search of freedom / Este trabalho investiga expressões de resistências contemporâneas. O fluxo informacional é um ponto de partida para o estudo destas resistências - a Internet é aqui pensada como modelo de diagrama e mecanismo de suma importância que atravessa as relações de poder na sociedade de controle. Resistências e controle formam par indissociável e operam através deste mecanismo, portanto. Assim, não só o controle contemporâneo é investigado neste estudo, controle que se dá através de mecanismos de servidão maquínica e sujeição social, onde homens são peças constituintes de uma máquina, sob controle e direção de uma unidade superior, aqui encontrada nos protocolos, protocolos que por sua vez são operados por linhas molares e linhas moleculares, que fecham as malhas de controle da Internet, mas também são contempladas suas linhas de fuga, representadas pelos hackers, que formam máquinas de guerra e lançam-se contra os aparelhos de Estado e as máquinas de guerra mundiais em busca de liberdade

<p>How does collective action operate in digital space, particularly for those social movements at the cutting edge of technologically innovative contentious politics? This dissertation analyzes activist (and hacktivist) groups engaged in what I call <i>digital contention</i> with state and corporate institutions over the future of Internet policy and governance, or what they see as “the freedom of the Internet.” Based on case studies of the Digital Rights movement and the Anonymous hacktivist collective, I use a combination of computational and qualitative analyses of online texts, along with participant-observation at meetings and protest events, to explore how certain collective action dynamics are changing in digital space. Specifically, these include how movements internally perceive political opportunities and threats, as well as how they construct frames to communicate to external audiences. I find that: 1) Political opportunity is less important than threat for activists in digital contention, which is likely due to the lower costs of collective action; and 2) The digital divide and technological knowledge gap create a barrier to frame resonance which digital activists address either through “strategic inclusiveness” or “communities of anonymity,” both of which encourage diversity among participants while also reifying other inequalities in different ways. These findings have significance for the study of social movements, communication and technology studies, and Internet policy. I argue that they portend changing dynamics that may ultimately affect all forms of collective action, and indeed the balance of power in whole societies, in the future as digital technology continues to spread into every facet of our lives.</p>

While there are many examples to turn to regarding the thriving phenomenon of private persons being exploited to launch cyber attacks on behalf of states, this thesis will direct it’s attention onto two special cases. Russia has been accused of being the state actor behind the cyber attacks on Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008. The cases are chosen as Estonia have been recognised as the first coordinated cyber attack on a foreign country, and Georgia being the first case were cyber attacks have been utilised in synchronisation with military action. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the facts of each case in relation to the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (DARSIWA). The analysis will work through article 4, article 5, article 8 and article 11. The main question is how Russia may be hold as legally responsible under international law for the private conduct of ’patriotic’ hackers, the Nashi Youth Group and the Russian Business Network. The thesis concludes that while the circumstances of each case highly indicate state-involvement, this cannot be proven under the respective criterias of the articles and Russia does therefore not bear legal responsibility.