EDT is a hacktivist group that emerged out of the Critical Arts Ensemble's suggestion that street-based tactics of non-violent direct action should be adopted for use in cyberspace. edt might be seen as a group putting CAE's theory into practice.
THEORISTS:
subcomandante marcos
Zapatismo
TRADITIONS:
anti-globalization
revolutionary artistic movements
situationist
zapatistas
GROUPS:
Critical arts ensemble
cult of the dead cow
electrohippie collective
rtmark
zapatistas
PRACTICES:
blocking movement
culture jamming
detournement
direct action
impeding existing forms
protest
psychogeographic
subversion
The Pentagon, the FCC, frankfurt stock exchange (1998 to present): simultaneous virtual sit-in/denial of service campaign organized in support of the zapatistas.
Mexican government website, June 18 1999: virtual sit-in organized to protest massacre of civilians at acetel by mexican paramilitary--to coincide with g8 meeting in koln germany.
N30, Seattle, 1999: organized virtual sit-in to protest the closed meetings at the wto.
etoys, dec. 15-25, 1999: virtual sit-in organized to protest the hostile take over of the "etoy" domain name by corporation.
WEF, jan. 31- Feb.. 4 2002: organized denial of service virtual sit-in. See the edt website for a listing of all " past actions ."
Web homepage:http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html
Email : listproc@listproc.thing.net
Spokespersons : Stefan Wray: sjw210@is8.nyu.edu
Ricardo Dominguez: rdom@thing.net
personal webpage: http://www.thing.net/~rdom/
Cyberspace. EDT have made the presence felt as well as sites that host the virtual entity of various state and corporate institutions (the servers of the mexican government, the pentagon, wef). additionally, Edt's floodnet program/tool has been widely distributed throughout the world and exists as a tactic employed by many users.
Instigated by the Critical Arts Ensemble’s 1994 call to electronic civil disobedience (note: ricardo dominguez was a member of cae from 1987-1995) and the Zapatista’s own electronic protest efforts, EDT’s first massive hacktivist action took place on September 9th 1998 against several neo-liberal targets in support of the Zapatista effort. Since this action, EDT have been very active and have staged several hacktivist campaigns each year, mostly targeting institutions of globalization. Most recently (March 10-17th 2003), EDT have targeted the Dow chemical websites and the disinformation they have spread about Bhopal.
Inspired by the zapatista uprising in chiapas and their call to develop an international network premised on the multiplicity of struggle and resistance, edt formed in 1998 as political group drawing from radical activist traditions as well as performance art. seeing their activist work as collaborative fine art, members of edt have chosen the internet as their primary theatre to engage in information war. following the work of both hakim bey and deleuze and guattari, edt have adopted the zapatismo conception that the Internet is an open network different from "real world" networks that are constrained and codified by state machines.
The primary tactic of edt, the floodnet program/tool, collapses the distinction between the individual/collective within political action: political activity becomes a performance of presence, where multiple nodes of actors operate against a singular target. In a sense, the tradition direction and flow of propaganda is reversed and inverted. since their initial support of the zapatista struggle, edt have subsequently expanded their scope and have taken up various causes opposed to corporate, instructional and cultural globalization (wto, g8, wef, starbucks, nike), e-commerce (etoy), militarism (mexican government, the pentagon, israeli military, nato), the erosion of civil liberties (various anti-terrorism bills).
To gain some understanding of emerging theory on Electronic Civil Disobedience it is probably best to first look at several short pieces by the Critical Art Ensemble. In 1994 the Critical Art Ensemble produced a work called The Electronic Disturbance and in 1996 they produced a sequel called, not surprisingly, Electronic Civil Disobedience. Both works argue that capitalism has become increasingly nomadic, mobile, liquid, dispersed, and electronic. Moreover, they argue that resistance needs to take on these very same attributes. Instead of physically blocking a building entranceway, or occupying a CEO’s office, Critical Art Ensemble argues that we need to think about how we can blockade and trespass in digital and electronic forms. The intellectual roots of the Critical Art Ensemble’s work, especially in relation to their nomadic conceptions of capital and resistance, can be first traced to Hakim Bey’s (1991) T. A. Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, who in turn borrows ideas about nomadology from Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Bey’s temporary - and nomadic - autonomous zones, existing in cyberspace, become the launch pads from where electronic civil disobedience is activated. The influence of A Thousand Plateaus, especially the chapter called “Treatise on Nomadology and the War Machine,” can be seen running throughout the Critical Art Ensemble’s work. All of these works just mentioned should be required reading for the serious student and practitioner of electronic civil disobedience. (" On electronic civil Disturbance " by stefan wray, 1998)
Insurrection --a tactic rather than explicit ideological entity. Definitely oppose forces of globalization and corporate entities.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
Marcos
Neo-liberalism, globalization, corporations, militarism, gentrification of cyberspace.
Non-violent (though an argument can be made that their acts are violent in the sense that they destroy portions of ‘electronic space’) non-branded tactics aimed at disrupting the electronic manifestations of ‘real world’ bad guys like the United States government, corporate giants, etc.
Many actions (many of them on-going) have been directed against the electronic or cyber versions of the US Whitehouse, the FBI, the Pentagon, the government of Mexico, the Summit of the Americas, etc. in support of such causes as freedom of speech, anti-surveillance, anti-globalization, criminal justice, the Zapatista movement, etc.
Critical arts ensemble -- EDt founder ricardo domingues is a former member of cae.
rtmark -- both edt and rtmark joined forces for the etoy action. rtmark provided detourned
electrohippie collective (disbanded as of july 5th 2002)
Articles:
"The Cult of the Dead Cow's response to - Client-side Distributed Denial-of-Service: Valid campaign tactic or terrorist act? " issued by the cult of the dead cow
"A response to criticism of 'distributed Denial of Service' (dDoS) protest actions online" issued by electrohippie collective
The two above articles detail the denial of service/freedom of speech debate within hacktivist circles
Downloadable material:
Floodnet the denial of service program that edt have made famous: FloodNet is an example of conceptual net.art that empowers people through activist/artistic expression. By the selection of phases for use in building the "bad" urls , for example using "human_rights" to form the url "http://www.xxx.gb.mx/human_rights", the FloodNet is able to upload messages to server error logs by intentionally asking for a non-existent url.
This causes the server to return messages like “human_rights not found on this server.” This works because of the way many http servers process requests for web pages that do not exist. FloodNet's Java applet asks the targeted server for a directory called, in this example, "human_rights", but since that directory doesn't exist, the server returns the familiar “File not Found” or “Error 404” message, recording the bad request. This is a unique way to leave a message on that server. " The zapatista tactical floodnet " by brett stalbaum
Articles:
"On electronic Civil disobedience" by Stefan Wray."
'Where Do We Go From Here?' Jenny Marketou interviews Ricardo Dominguez" Inter-Activist Info Exchange Website.
"Wide Area Disturbance " by Coco Fusco and Ricardo Dominguez, metamute website.
News site: hacktivismo website maintained by the cult of the dead cow group. provides extensive hacktivist news as well as mainstream media coverage.