the electrohippie collective -  http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/

O N L I N E P R O T E S T A C T I O N N O T I F I C A T I O N

15th April 2002 -- 00.00GMT, no embargo


"ARIEL SHARON IS TAKING THE PEACE" -
An online protest again Israeli military action in the West Bank

Location -  http://www.fraw.org.uk/peace.html

Target systems -
Any information or messaging service used by the core of
the Israeli government that is attached to the Internet.


In response to requests for an action to respond to the recent Israeli
military incursions into the major settlements of the West Bank, the
electrohippie collective are mounting an online 'electronic civil
disobedience action' against the information systems of the Israeli
government. This action begins at 00.00GMT 15-4-02, and as yet has no end
date.

The action is specifically aimed at the role of Ariel Sharon in the current
conflict. Not only in his current role as Israeli Prime Minister. But also
for his role in provoking violence as a means of weakening the previous
Israeli government, and earlier still his alleged implication in war crimes
as part of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres in 1982. It does
not seek to apportion blame for the current problems in the area, but
highlights the need to remove the Israeli military from the West Bank as an
essential precursor to any progress on peace talks.

There are three elements to the action:

# Participants will be able to use online tools to jam the electronic
Internet services of the Israeli government in a symbolic "occupation" of
the Israeli government's cyberspace;

# There is an extensive directory of email contacts within the Israeli
government and diplomatic service to allow the public to send comments on
the recent Israeli action to the Israeli state; and

# There are links to local/independent news services to enable the public
to access first hand accounts of the Israeli Defence Force's devastation of
town in the West Bank.

For the first time, as well as web-based action tools, this action includes
tools specifically developed for use with the GNU/Linux operating system.

This provides a higher level of flexibility for the development of simple,
computer amateur-friendly software tools for use as part of computer-based
actions by civil society. In addition to the other activities of the
electrohippies, we hope that this action will help promote the role of Linux
in meeting the computing needs of civil society groups.

Unlike the more well know 'computer hacker' actions against Internet sites,
the tools developed by the electrohippie collective have 'democratic
accountability' built into them. Unless significant numbers of people take
part in the online actions - many thousands simultaneously across the world -
then there will be no effect on the Israeli's information systems. However,
if significant numbers do take part then the target systems will collapse
under the weight of traffic.

In most countries, this action is not unlawful. This is because it does not
involve 'computer abuse'. Instead thousands of people across many countries
use the computer systems precisely as they are intended to be used - but
co-ordinated in a way that causes significant disruption or closure of the
services.

To ensure that there is no collateral disruption, the electrohippies have

carried out research into the organisation if the Israeli government's
Internet services. The systems that our action will target are restricted to
the specific network subnets wholly controlled and used by the Israeli
government. Currently the action only targets a small number of web servers.
But as the action evolves, and the numbers of participants grow, the
distribution of the action will hopefully grow to also include email and
domain name services for all the key Israeli government departments.


For more information on the action see:

# The main action page -  http://www.fraw.org.uk/peace.html

# The action justification -
 http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/peace/peace_justification.html

# the electrohippie collective web site -  http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/

# 'About the electrohippie collective' -
 http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/about.shtml

# 'Past actions' -  http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/past.shtml

# electrohippies occasional paper 1 - "Distributed Denial of Service" -
 http://www.fraw.org.uk/archive/ehippies/papers/op1.html

# electrohippies occasional paper 2 - "I've Seen the Future and There's a

Penguin On It" -  http://www.fraw.org.uk/archive/ehippies/papers/op2.html