[Nettime-bold] The Free Trade Area of the Americas protest site is now online! + Reports

["ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>]

The Free Trade Area of the Americas protest site is now online!

http://www.gn.apc.org/pmhp/quebec.html


The first action that commenced at 00.00UTC, 20th april 2001, consists
of a "virtual sit-in" of web sites associated with the FTAA
conference. The purpose of the 'virtual sit-in' is to indicate your
objection to the FTAA conference and the entire FTAA process by
generating an electronic record of public pressure through the server
logs of the organisations concerned. The objective of the action is
not to crash the servers of these organisation (although this is
possible if a few hundred thousand people take part), it is to provide
a record of the public's participation in the sit-in. We are then
challenging the organistions concerned to release their server logs to
show the level of take-up of the sit-in.

Shortly, there will be an opportunity to take part in an "automated
letter-writing lobby" - this will be uploaded sometime during
Friday/Saturday.


Please participate, and let the FTAA and it's supporters know the
level of public opinion against them.


DJNZ
(technical and media contact,
the electrohippie collective)

<<<MSNBC REPORT>>>>
http://www.msnbc.com/msn/561761.asp?cp1=1

Activists target 28 government and corporate Websites to disrupt during
the Summit of the Americas

By Lesia Stangret
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR


TORONTO, April 19 - The 2 1 mile long fence surrounding the site of this
weekend's Summit of the Americas and the 6,700 police officers on hand to
control protestors on the streets of Quebec City may succeed in keeping
demonstrators away from visiting heads of state, but they'll do nothing to
protect the Summit's most vulnerable targets.


THE HEAVY SECURITY may be encouraging a far less predictable form of
protest at the three-day summit, one aimed at computer systems rather than
delegates. As one Website -thehacktivist.com- is pointing out, "The Mouse
is Mightier than the Baton."

"Where governments and authorities are actively restricting protest and
public expression, we regard it as valid to exert some form of restriction
back," the Website says. The site has posted a call to participate in an
"electronic civil disobedience campaign" against the Summit and its
corporate sponsors.

"We call upon hackers, activists, hacktivists and netizens to engage in an
Electronic Civil Disobedience campaign against the Summit of the Americas,
the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and the Corporate Sponsors.
Let data bodies join in non-violent direct action on-line in solidarity
with the real bodies on the streets."

Leaders from 34 countries, aiming to create a vast trading bloc of 800
million people spanning from Canada in the north to Chile in the south,
are gathering this weekend to discuss ways of dismantling hurdles to
hemispheric trade.

But opponents of globalization, expressing many of the concerns that were
voiced at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in December 1999
and at subsequent international meetings, see dangers with the trade
momentum. As many as 20,000 oppenents of the Summit are expected to rally
on the streets of Quebec City.

Organizers at thehacktivist.com say they are concerned that the Free Trade
Agreement of the Americas was negotiated in secret. "The secrecy has gone
on too long," the site asserts. "The right to know is fundamental in a
democracy." They demand that the text of the draft agreement be made
public and that it be posted to the Internet in at least four languages.
They warn that "if these just and reasonable demands are not met," they
will endorse "legitimate and strictly non-violent means" to "obtain the
texts, physically and electronically."


TWENTY-EIGHT TARGETS

On Wednesday, one group, called the "electrohippies," which runs the site
www.gn.apc.org/pmhp/quebec.html, released a list of twenty-eight Internet
targets to disrupt. They said the targets were chosen because "they are
involved with the operation of the FTAA conference, they are corporate
sponsors of the FTAA conference, or they are involved in the extremely
excessive security measures being arranged . to restrict the ability of
the public to access the conference.,"

While the group notes that one of the reasons for organizing the action is
the lack of public consultations on the FTAA, it says "the issue that
really convinced us of the need to provide support in this instance was
the excessive level of security to prevent any form of meaningful lobbying
and protest."

Indeed, about 1,200 troops, in addition to police have been dispatched to
Quebec City. And a 10-foot high chain link fence snakes through the walled
city.

The "electrohippies" said their primary disruptive efforts will begin late
on April 19 and continue through April 23 and will be targeting various
federal and provincial Canadian government Websites. Prime Minister Jean
Chretian's Website is on the list, as is the site for Quebec's premier.
Quebec's city police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are also
on the hit list. Corporate targets include Cisco System, Alcan, Telus, and
Bombardier, as well Sun Microsystems, Barrick Gold Corporation, CIBC and
KPMG. Also targeted are the sites for the FTAA and the Inter-American
Development Bank.

Activist have used hacking to promote their causes at a number of forums
in recent years.

With protestors at January's meeting of the World Economic Forum in
Switzerland stymied by heavy security, hackers broke into the database
containing information on delegates and posted the itineraries of visiting
world leaders to the Internet.

The World Economic Forum said hackers had also stolen credit card numbers
and personal information on 1,400 previous delegates. A hacker group
called Virtual Monkey-wrench claimed responsibility, saying the theft was
aimed at "attacking the powerful and those in power." The stolen
information included Bill Gates' email address, the direct phone number of
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and the credit card number of Pepsi-Cola CEO
Peter M. Thompson.

In some cases, attacks on government sites have yielded retaliation. In at
least one instance, the Pentagon responded to a Web attack by redirecting
participants' browsers to a page that downloaded an applet program to
their computers. Once installed, the program endlessly tied up their
computers trying to reload a document until they rebooted. In a similar
action against the site of Mexico's president, the government retaliated
with software that crashed protesters' browsers.

For companies or organizations that believe they may become potential
targets, the safest route may be to take preventative measures. "Before an
event like this, I would backup everything," said René Hamel, a former
officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and now a manager at
KPMG's Forensic Technology Services, which itself is on the list of the
electrohippies' 28 targets.

"Whenever you have a feeling that you might become a victim, it's time to
raise your system monitoring and logging," he added. "Logs are like
fingerprints. They're like an electronic trail, and they make it a lot
easier for us to investigate."

Hamel said that with the client-based distributed denial of service attack
that the electrohippies have coordinated in the past, "it is pretty tough
to defend yourself."

What about the people on the other side of the screen - the protestors
participating in the online campaigns?

Dan Lambert, a spokesman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service,
says the agency is monitoring the potential for politically motivated
online attacks. He said attacks that might amount to computer crimes under
the Criminal Code would likely be investigated by the RCMP.

>From a legal perspective, it doesn't matter if the action is for a good
cause or if a participant is just one of many. "People have to be aware of
the fact that they do it for a political purpose is not going to protect
them from prosecution," said Jennifer Granick an American criminial
defense lawyer, and a director with the Center for Internet and Society at
Stanford University.

Lesia Stangret is an information technology lawyer with Mann & Gahtan LLP
in Toronto and an Internet law columnist for the National Post.

<<<WIRED REPORT>>>>

long article:

Wired News
 Hacktivists Target Trade Summit
         By Jeffrey Benner

         2:00 a.m. Apr. 20, 2001 PDT

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43137,00.html


         A coalition of cyber-protesters plan to flood 28 websites
associated with this weekend's free trade negotiations at the Summit of
the Americas with page requests and e-mail messages.

         If enough people participate, the action could amount to a
denial-of-service attack.

         Led by a group called "electrohippies collective," the
"hacktivist" actions will mirror the summit's schedule, beginning Friday
evening and running through Sunday in Quebec City. Leaders from 34 nations
are meeting there to discuss the establishment of a single free trade zone
from Canada to Chile.

<snip>

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