Cyber Activism Quotes

In 1791, the right to bear arms to defend against an over-reaching government wasn't theoretical. Today, it's hard to imagine physical weapons serving the same purpose. But it's easy to see how hacktivists might - especially if you broaden the opponents to include hate groups and rapacious multinationals.

[People] somehow assume that the Internet is going to be the catalyst of change that will push young people into the streets, while in fact it may actually be the new opium for the masses which will keep the same people in their rooms downloading pornography.

Still I have been invited I don't know how many times to Turkey, where Turkey has been following very quickly in the footsteps of what is sometimes referred to as the movement of cyber-dissidents. They have been training young people and also encouraging them to come into contact with western Muslims.

If you want to change the world right now, it’s not so much a secret how you do it. You put the secrets of a criminal government on the Internet.

The Internet is accelerating the speed of acceptance and social justice.

No outdoor sports can be more elegant than throwing stones at autocracy; no melees can be more exciting than those in cyberspace.

Now we have the hacker kids playing politics.

Hacktivists, roughly speaking, are individuals who redeploy and repurpose technology for social causes. In this sense they are different from garden-variety hackers out to enrich only themselves.

One could think of ways to defeat the censor. I could put up the answers on my Facebook page or website or Counterpunch. In today's world it's not easy to suppress information. Technology has helped us a great deal.

Indeed, the best practical reason to think that social media can help bring political change is that both dissidents and governments think they can. All over the world, activists believe in the utility of these tools and take steps to use them accordingly. And the governments they contend with think social media tools are powerful, too, and are willing to harass, arrest, exile, or kill users in response.

I think (the internet) is contributing to Chinese political engagement..access to the outside world is preventing more censorship.

When Paul [Greengrass] was writing, he'd send me story ideas that he had. He was particularly interested in social movements and revolutions that had been happening all over the world, and how computers and the internet had helped those movements. He encouraged me to read a book about Anonymous, the hacker group called "white hat" hackers, meaning they're driven by ideology and social disruption as opposed to just greed.

Digital activism did not spring immaculately out of Twitter and Facebook. It's been going on ever since blogs existed.

Hacktivism: The merger of hacking and political activism can wreak enormous havoc.

I was really fascinated by some of the things happening with Anonymous, the hackers group. I don't necessarily agree with everything they've done, but I thought it was a really interesting use of technology and the fact that there's a whole group of people who can take over systems and fight things from behind the scenes.

We need all the newfangled web-based Internet spread, you know, social media that can catalyze, you know, some serious consciousness about what's going on. But we also need people on the streets pounding the pavement to make a significant and dramatic appearance to suggest that what's going on here is unacceptable.

A rousing tale of techno-geek rebellion, as necessary and dangerous as file sharing, free speech, and bottled water on a plane.

There's always the danger that people will simply sign online petitions, the way they used to just mail in checks, and there's the greater possibility we'll just spend our whole lives staring at screens and never get anything done.

Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

This is what we’ve been waiting for, this is the cyberchryst moment. This is when the activists that have been pushing against the FED are going to win.