Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Stefan Wray, and Carmin
Karasic are collectively known as The Electronic Disturbance Theater or EDT for
short. Taking the idea of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the
EDT members always used their real names. As a collective group they organize
and program computer software to show their views against anti-propagandist and
military actions, and begin mobilizing micro-networks to act in solidarity by
staging virtual sit-ins on-line and allowing the emergence of a collective
presence in direct digital actions.
Background
the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), established in
1997 by performance artist and published writer Ricardo Dominguez, is an
electronic company of cyber activists, critical theorists, and performance
artists who engage in the development of both the theory and practice of
non-violent acts of defiance across and between digital and non-digital spaces.
The EDT created a program to allow Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD), called
FloodNet a form of hacktivism which would help create the simulation of a
sit-in protest over the Internet simply known as a virtual sit-in demonstration
to disrupt Zapatista oppressors' websites, by overloading their computer networks
and servers. The Electronic Disturbance Theater group have the belief that the
Internet should not be used purely as a means for communication and data
exchange. Instead it is also a forum for direct action.
Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0
Current active members of the Electronic Disturbance
Theater, who refer to themselves at Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 include
Brett Stalbaum, Amy Sara Carroll, Elle Mehrmand, Micha Cárdenas, and Ricardo
Dominguez. The group has received a storm of media attention for their new
project, the Transborder Immigrant Tool, which they have described as the next
step of Electronic Civil Disobedience, or ECD 2.0. The group is currently under
investigation for their Virtual Sit-In in support of the 2010 March 4 strikes
and occupations in support of public education. The Transborder Immigrant Tool
was shown in numerous museums and galleries in 2010, including the California
Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in
San Diego, and at the Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco.
FloodNet
Their objective was with the use of digital media and
internet based technology, to cause online civil disobedience in support of the
Zapatista rebels residing in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. EDT uses both
e-mail and the internet to promote their work around the world, encouraging
fellow supporters to download and run a HTML (Hyper Text Makeup Language) and
Java applet, (an internet program used to help support interactive web based
features or programs that a HTML cannot provide alone), based tool called
FloodNet. FloodNet is a computer based program, created by members of the
Electronic Disturbance theater company Carmin Karasic and Brett Stalbaum. The
FloodNet program would simply reload a Uniform Resource Locator or URL for
short several times; effectively slowing the website and network server down,
if a high number of protesters were to join in the sit-in at one time. The EDT
would first execute the FloodNet software in what would be for them a dress
rehearsal before attacking their main targets on April 10, 1998 and a month
later, on both Mexican and American government websites, representing both the
Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and American President Bill Clinton.
The Flood Net would work on this basic idea taken from
street theatre practices and political rallies and protest but instead present
it on a much larger and international stage, with the facilitation of
macro-networks and non-digital forms of action.
The EDT's mission was to allow the voices of the Zapatista
Army of National Liberation to be heard, after the attack of the small remote
village of Acteal in Chiapas, Mexico. The Paramilitary a government funded
military squad would surround a Catholic church during a Tsotsil Mayan, (a spoken
Mexican language from around the Chiapas area of Mexico), for the next several
hours the Paramilitary would shot everyone to death. Those inside the church
and any which tried to escape resulting in the death of fifteen children, nine
men, and twenty one women, four of which were pregnant at the time on December
22, 1997. This event would become known as the Acteal Massacre. Those who were
convicted of this crime were later released in the Supreme Court to the outrage
of many, after ignoring eye witness reports and allowing those that confessed
to this crime on humanity. Instead the Supreme Court focused on the
mismanagement of the investigation and the fabrication of evidence.
The Electronic Disturbance Theater took notice of these
actions, when others did not and arranged their first act of Electronic Civil
Disobedience against the Mexican Government. In a subsequent version of
FloodNet, those that had downloaded the FloodNet program in support of the
Zapatistas were asked to input the names repetitively of those that had lost
their lives at the hands of the Mexican Army in military attacks. This would
then target the servers to return an error message each time these URLs would
be requested. This data request would then be stored on a server's error log
and in the eyes of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the Electronic
Disturbance Theater group, a symbolic list of those forty five Acteal civilians
that had died straight to their murderers. If enough people were to use the
FloodNet applet, this would cause the computer server running the website to
overload, so that when a regular visitor or somebody working within the site
was to try and access the website or send company based emails and files, the
pages would ether load extremely slowly or not at all. Working off the same
basis of a real sit-in demonstration, where the protestors block the entrance
to a public building of their oppressors and preventing access to the building.
With around twenty five percent of the world's population, in
one way or another connected to the World Wide Web, with the use of dial-up
internet connection, wired or wireless internet broadband connection and even
mobile internet technology, everyone of these means of communication can allow
the internet to be used as a means of non-violent action within our Human
Rights, and is viewable around the world, and can be translated into different
languages but most importantly not controlled by the government. The EDT
networked performances have already opened access and communication between
three unlikely micro-networks: net.art, net.activism, and net.hackers, with
technology always evolving there is no telling how these areas will grow.
However June 10, 1998, the EDT would strike the Mexican
Secretaria de Gobernacion (Secretary of Government), which is involved in
immigration policies as well as Mexico's federal public security forces working
in conjunction with the military Zapatista communities in Chiapas
unsuccessfully. The Mexican government would have a programmed countermeasure
in place. This is what the EDT believe took place. A countermeasure built into
the operating JavaScript was placed in the Secretaria de Gobernacion's website
that was designed to activate whenever FloodNet was directed toward its servers.
Upon activation, the website would open window after window on the FloodNet
user's internet browser. If the FloodNet user remained connected long enough,
their browser whether it is Netscape or Internet Explorer, could crash the
activist's computer, forcing the activist to reboot their system stopping the
FloodNet program at the source. The EDT has now since dealt with both the
Mexican government both online and offline, and the United States Department of
Defense, who has now inserted a counter attack system into their internet
browser based coding to prevent any more FloodNet based attacks to the system
and server.
The FloodNet system would be used again against the World
Trade Organization in 1999, where the group would release their online civil
disobedience software to the public under the name Disturbance Development's
Kit.
Cyber terrorism?
The Electronic Disturbance Theater has and will remain a
heated topic of debate, within its area of political up rise, civil
disobedience, hacktivism, and to a much larger scale extremes acts of cyber
terrorism. Many people do have the right and believe in free speech. The
FloodNet programs does allow this in a safer way to the protestors, (as their
real identities can be hidden under their user names), allowing people around
the world to express their views on the subject without travelling to the
protest rallies and provide a non-violent way to be heard in the form of these
sit-in demonstrations. However this causes incorrect actions that block
bandwidth, and the internet should be open for everybody no matter what their
political views. The Virtual Republic representatives view this blocking of
communications and data as an act of cyber terrorism. They believe the system
should be open for all internet users, and be accessible with a simple point
then click and to those individuals or groups should be banned. Protestors are
asked to protest outside of their oppressors location, with signs and don't
interact with the business inside which with the blocking of communication and
data the EDT are doing. Against such self-evident truths, the digital agit-prop
actions of EDT call for the right to block data in the struggle for the
development of democracy and human rights.
