Julian Assange is undoubtedly one of the most gutsy men in this entire world. His use of the internet to broadcast confidential documents has won him the respect of many organisations including Amnesty international, however it does come at a price. Assange is currently under house arrest and often is threatened with legal action by power players in world politics and religions, just to name a few. Assange's wikileaks is not quite an organisation; it is better described as a media insurgency, it turns private documents viral so they are literally unable to be removed form the internet. To delete these documents from the web would require basically dismantling the whole internet, (something that no one is prepared to do). This type of work has been named hacktivism, hacktivism is hacking for a course. In Assange's case i believe he does it for the right of free speech, the belief of freedom of information and he believes that others have the right to know what the governments and other organisations are doing behind closed doors. Hacktivism is increasing in popularity, wikileaks is not the only site that gains information through Hacking. Anonymous is another common organisation that initiates civil disobedience via the internet, however they ensure the remain anonymous so that the organisers do not receive the same fate as Julian Assange.
However, hacking ethics are not uncommon amongst these leading hacktivists. They believe in information freedom, sharing, no authority, no secrets and quite commonly humour. These are the characteristics that define hacktivists from hackers. Hackers are those who hack into areas of the internet to cause damage whilst hacktivists are those just trying to retrieve information.
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