Hackers and the fight against censorship – An insight into Aaron Swartz
1. Hackers and the fight
against censorship –
An insight into Aaron
Swartz
First Draft
The censorship of information on the Internet and, by extension, internet freedom
in the United States of America consists of two opposing views in terms ofthe
availability of information within the public domain. One of these views being that
corporations and individuals have the right to own pieces of information, allowing
that specific information to be controlled by its owner and subject to copyright.
The United States’ Government agrees with this point of view. The second
standpoint pertains to the idea that information should not be made available for
ownership by any natural persons or corporations. Instead, it should be made freely
available to the public in order to educate and to enhance social awareness. The late
Aaron Swartz, who wasa fervid member of the hacktivism community and eager
supporter of the second view, was one of the early creators of the “Creative
Commons” and co-founder of the information sharing website “Reddit”. A
detailed look into the turmoil and impact of Swartz’s life and death will bring to
point the ethical, and very real, consequences of hacktivism and its contextwithin
the fight against information censorship in the USA, whilst exploring both of the
above mentioned views. This will prove to educate the reader about the
methodology of hacking, the implications of hacktivism, what being a hacktivist
entails, the role of the US government in information censorship and how
individuals such as Aaron Swartz hinder its supporters.
2015
Mark Coetzer(14044537), Tyler Hoffman(14365040), Amy
Lochner(14038600), Arno Grobler(14011396), Khathu Musekwa(14342236),
Matthias Harvey ( 14027021)
3/22/2015
2. Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................2
Who was Aaron Swartz ......................................................................................................2
What was Aaron fighting for? ............................................................................................3
I. Aaron and SOPA..................................................................................................3
Types of Hacking.................................................................................................................4
Methods used by Hackers..................................................................................................5
Works Cited..............................................................................................................................8
3. Hackers and the Fight Against Censorship- An Insight Into Aaron Swartz
Introduction
In the invisible world of online computing, there is always the problem of privacy and
how much personal information is being spread, as well as with who the information
is shared. Users of any mobile computing device, that has internet capabilities, are at
risk of having an unwanted entity using and distributing that user’s personal details,
such as passwords, without any knowledge or trace of them doing so. This poses the
question: if information is so easily taken from a user without their consent, how easy
is it to censor? The answer is simple; very easy. This means large corporations can
hide information that they do not want as public knowledge, for in some instances
this could potentially hurt the company or put it in a negative light. Sharing of public
data or information then has the potential to be hidden. There are people who
oppose this view of censorship and are often viewed as being deleterious. To try and
better understand what their reasons for fighting against censorship are (and the
view against withholding data sharing) a study of one of the most well-known
hacktivists, Aaron Swartz, must be made. This study will include who he was and
what he fought for, how censorship affects the user, what a hacker is and the
different types of hacking.
Who was Aaron Swartz
According to Wikipedia, Aaron was an American computer programmer,
entrepreneur, writer, political organizer and an Internet hacktivist who was involved
in:
the development of the web feed format RSS,
Markdown publishing format,
the organization Creative Commons,
the website framework web.py, and
the social news site, Reddit, (after its merge with his company - Infogami)
On the 6th of January 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on breaking-and-
entering charges, after he downloaded academic journal articles from JSTOR.
Federal prosecutors had him charged with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations
of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This resulted in a maximum penalty of $1
million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised
release.
Swartz declined a plea bargain which would have resulted in him serving 6 months in
federal prison. Aaron Swartz was found dead in his apartment two days after the
prosecution rejected his counter-offer. It is believed that he committed suicide.
In June 2013, Aaron Swartz was inaugurated into the Internet Hall of Fame.
4. What was Aaron fighting for?
The main aim of Aaron’s activism was the freedom of information. This is why he
played a significant role in the beginning of the non-profit organisation Creative
Commons. This organisation is geared towards increasing the number of creative
works available for others to legally share and build upon. He believed that this
approach to sharing of information would lead to universal access to education and
research which would result in growth, productivity, and development in many
different places and situations.
After setting up Creative Commons, Aaron turned his focus to the government and
their mission to censor data. He started this by developing Watchdog.net which was
a website that would aggregate and visualise data about politicians. He would also
be very vocal in his fight against various acts being considered by the government
that would only increase their ability to censor information. One of these acts is the
Stop Online Piracy Act.
Aaron and SOPA
Aaron founded the online group known as Demand Progress, which is well known for
its campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act. Now you might be wondering what
exactly SOPA is.
SOPA as stated previously stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. The SOPA was based
on the act: Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), as well as
the Protect IP Act (PIPA, and its intended purpose was to prevent copyright
infringement)
This act would achieve this by allowing copyright holders and the Justice Department
(of the USA) to obtain court orders against websites that have been proven to
infringe upon copyright. The SOPA (the House version) applies to both domestic and
foreign websites, while PIPA targets foreign websites. If the court order is granted,
the entire website would be shut down, and it would appear to have never existed.
(Johnson, 2012).
As a result of the SOPA, sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter could easily be
shut down because a single user decided to share a copyrighted image, video,
sound clip, or anything of that nature, with his/her friends. This in turn would change
millions of users’ interactions with one another, over the internet, in a matter of hours
simply because the website has been shut down by law.
For example, all the millions of Facebook users would no longer be able to engage
with each other using Facebook because a user shared a short video clip from a
copyrighted source. By extension, this would then affect users’ freedom of speech
simply because they won’t be able to speak or share their own opinions via the
platform of their choice.
5. Although SOPA was generally aimed at foreign websites who were providing illegal
content, the Act would allow for the removal of large amounts of non-infringing
content such as political and other content from the Web, simply because the site
hosts copyrighted material.
According to a letter written by Aaron himself, his main argument was that if the US
Government wanted any way to censor the Internet, creating SOPA would be the
way to bypass the First Amendment1 to do so. Aaron claimed that the US
Government could use the bill to shut down entire websites by claiming that the
website infringed upon copyright, which would get results faster than pursuing a
website for something like pornography (Herrman, 2013).
Through this research it can be conclusively determined that Aaron Swartz is a
hacktivist. Hacktivist is a term coined recently because of the latest rise of acts of
terrorism and activism on internet technology. A hacktivist, defined by dictionary.com
(Dictionary.com, 2015), is a practise involving the unauthorized access of computer
and internet technologies, and using this access to cause various disruptions to carry
out political and social goals. It is a combination the words activist and hacker.
Hacker is then the term to describe the person performing these deeds
(Dictionary.com, 2015). A hacker is still a very broad category in which these people
can be classed and thus can be put in simpler terms.
Types of Hackers
White Hat Hackers - these are computer security experts who specialize in
testing system security to ensure the safety of a company’s information
systems.
Black Hat Hackers – term used for hackers who network or create computer
viruses. Cracker is also a term used to describe Black Hat Hackers, their
motivation is generally to get paid.
Script Kiddies – this is a derogatory term for crackers who use borrowed
programs to attack networks and vandalize websites whilst trying to earn a
reputation.
Hacktivists – hackers whose motivations are either politics, religion, to expose
wrongdoing, exact revenge or simply harass their target.
State Sponsored Hackers – used by the government to serve their military
objectives, or to control cyberspace.
Spy Hackers – Hired by corporations to infiltrate the competition or to steal
trade secrets. Their tactics often involve hacking in from outside or by gaining
employment in the competition. Their goal is generally to meet the client’s
needs and to get paid.
1 “The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law
respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech,
infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning
for a governmental redress of grievances” adopted from Wikipedia.
6. Cyber Terrorists – These hackers are generally motivated by religious or
political beliefs. They attempt to instil fear and create chaos by disturbing
infrastructures. (Siciliano, 2011)
Although all these terms can be classified into one general form of hacking, the
methods used by the hackers can differ greatly. These methods require a great
amount of skill and knowledge of how a computer system works, and how to
overcome complex security placed to prevent intrusion. A hacker does not need to
be someone special, in fact these people often form part of base society, with normal
jobs (Computer Hope, n.d.).
Methods used by Hackers
Hackers can gain access to sensitive information by using several different methods
(Armor2net, 2002), some being:
Trojan horse programs – a common way of using social engineering to trick
users into installing “back door” programs, that is, programs that the user did
not intend or want to install. These frequently include adware but sometimes
can have harmful viruses.
Back door and remote administration programs – these are programs that the
user installs but are ignorant to the fact that these programs gain
administrative rights to the computer and thus have complete control over
who controls it, whether it is the program itself or someone else remotely.
Denial of service – A very common hack called Denial of Service or DoS
attack is a form of hacking where the hacker overloads the victim’s computer
with large amounts of garbage or network data, causing the victim’s computer
to slow down significantly. This stops the user from doing anything on that
computer or server and then could possibly create a route for another
computer connected to the network or server to face a similar attack through
the victim’s computer.
Mobile code – Mobile code is a term that loosely defines a few web
programing languages such as Java, JavaScript, and ActiveX. This lets
programmers write 3rd party applications2 that can run on any website but in
the same light hurt or gather sensitive information. This happens when the
web developer does not take caution in what 3rd party applications they run on
their websites or servers.
Cross-site scripting – A hacker could easily, if the web developer did not
protect the website against this attack, inject code into a form in any website
2 This refers to any application or script that was not created or run by the user or the host, but rather a separate
entity, usually unknown. Google creates many 3rd party applications to aid in the development of websites but many
of these are also made by hackers to gain entry into a website.
7. (this being a username field for instance) to do a malicious activity or run a 3rd
party application.
Packet sniffing – this is a program that can read and write to packets3 being
sent over a network. This provides a hacker with a gold mine of easily
obtainable user credentials. Dial up users and cable modem users are at a
greater risk to packet sniffing since everyone in the neighbourhood is
essentially connected to the same network.
Why Aaron Swartz is considered a hacktivist
The United States of America’s Government holds exclusive rights of all scientific
articles and how information gets access or used. These articles are not made
readily available to the general public, and if someone wants to access these for
research purposes, they will need to pay a huge access fee to the public library
(Haselton, 2013). Aaron Swartz and many others were against this form of
withholding journals. Many fought and protested against this and censorship of other
information that the government deemed inappropriate for the public eye. Aaron
Swartz then used his vast knowledge and skills against the government and
managed to gain access to the MIT network and hacked into the system to download
all the scientific articles.
How did Swartz do this? Aaron planted a laptop in a wiring closet in MIT. He
registered on JSTOR under a fake name, Gary Host. According to the indictment,
Aaron then used a computer program to download a large volume of articles from
JSTOR. MIT and JSTOR tried to block the unauthorised downloads. Aaron allegedly
avoided this by disguising the source of the demand for data. Aaron then returned to
MIT to collect his hard drive when he was caught on video camera. (Farberov, 2013)
His goal was to upload all of these articles to the internet, to be accessed freely and
to be used by anyone for research. Sadly he was caught in the act by the MIT police
(Herrman, 2013). Even though the crime, being that of hacking into the university’s
private system, only warranted a few years in prison at most, the federal government
saw Swartz as the personification of hacktivism and saw an opportunity to make an
example of him to the rest of the hacking community to show that they will not
tolerate hacking.
3 Packets are units of data corresponding to pieces of information that can be broken down, sent through a network
and reassembled at the end of the network path. These packets contain everything about the websites including user
names and passwords
8. Conclusion
Since Swartz had downloaded documents, JSTOR has made millions of documents
freely available to the general public. After Swartz committed suicide there have
been many non-profit organizations who have dedicated themselves to increasing
the access to publications made by scholars.
There have been many researchers who have put their PDF files online as a tribute
to Swartz, even if it may infringe upon copyright. (Peter Singer, 2013)
We must ask: can one person truly make a difference? Aaron Swartz has proven this
statement true by changing the way copyright is viewed in an age where the spread
of information is a lot different to what it was a few years ago.
This paper set out to give an insight into the life and works of Aaron Swartz and it did
this by detailing who he was and what he fought for. The general effect that Aaron
Swartz had on the internet and its many users was explored in finding out how
censorship affects a general user.
Finally this paper provided a brief look at hacktivism by explaining what a hacker is
and going through many of the various was of hacking.
While we may be many years from becoming a society where all information is
shared freely and legally and all information is uncensored, the work done by Aaron
Swartz and his colleagues are definitely a step in the right direction.
9. Works Cited
Armor2net, 2002. The most common methods used by Hackers.. [Online]
Available at: http://www.armor2net.com/knowledge/hackers_methods.htm
[Accessed 31 03 2015].
Computer Hope, n.d. How do I become a hacker?. [Online]
Available at: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001183.htm
[Accessed 2015].
Dictionary.com, 2015. hactivism. [Online]
Available at: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hacktivism
[Accessed 2015].
Haselton, B., 2013. The Real Reason Journal Articles Should Be Free. [Online]
Available at: http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/03/01/1331244/the-real-reason-journal-articles-
should-be-free
[Accessed 2015].
Herrman, J., 2013. How Aaron Swartz Joined the Fight Against Censorship. [Online]
Available at: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/how-aaron-swartz-joined-the-fight-against-
sopa#.ldeR1qqE6
[Accessed 15 03 22].
Johnson, L., 2012. What Is SOPA? Anti-Piracy Bill Explained. [Online]
Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/what-is-sopa_n_1216725.html?
[Accessed 22 03 2014].
News, H. A. S. J. T. F. A. S. -. B., n.d. How Aaron Swartz Joined The Fight Against SOPA - BuzzFeed News,
s.l.: s.n.
Peter Singer, A. S., 2013. The Death of Aaron Swartz. [Online]
Available at: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/jan/18/death-aaron-swartz/
[Accessed 25 April 2015].
Siciliano, R., 2011. 7 Types of Hacker Motivations. [Online]
Available at: https://blogs.mcafee.com/consumer/family-safety/7-types-of-hacker-motivations
[Accessed 22 03 2015].
SOPA/PIPA: Internet Blacklist Legislation | Electronic Frontier Foundation. 2015. SOPA/PIPA: Internet
Blacklist Legislation | Electronic Frontier Foundation. [ONLINE] Available at:
https://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copyright-bill. [Accessed 22 March 2015].