The DDoS attacks aren't lie-ins--they're tea parties

Here Boing Boing contributor and all-around internet superstar Cory Doctorow talks about the recent DDoS attacks by Anonymous and whether they can be justified:

Doctorrow from REC Radiocentrum on Vimeo.

I think I mostly agree with everything he's saying here, though I would say that, though ultimately anonymous DDoS attacks are not a legitimate and effective tactic for the reasons he describes, it's also true that in rare cases it's more important to take a drastic, imperfect action than no action at all. For all the ethical hand-wringing and negative public reaction the attacks have induced, they have also made the issue of internet freedom and corporate control of political speech front-page reading in newspapers around the world, and the subject of discussion and debate in the blogs.

As Doctorow mentions in the video, supporters of the DDoS attacks have likened them to the lie-ins of the civil rights era, but to my mind a closer historical parallel isn't the calculated, well reasoned lie-ins of the 1960s but the cathartic "fuck you" impetuousness of the Boston Tea Party in 1773. As in today's case, that act of defiance--in which 342 chests of British East India Company tea were dumped into the ocean--was carried out anonymously and, it seems, without a whole lot of forethought:

While Samuel Adams tried to reassert control of the meeting, people poured out of the Old South Meeting House and headed to Boston Harbor. That evening, a group of 30 to 130 men, some of them thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded the three vessels and, over the course of three hours, dumped all 342 chests of tea into the water.[59]

A further similarity to today's DDoS attacks is that the Tea Party--which involved the destruction of private property--was not readily embraced by supporters of the Colonial cause, and did much to anger and unify the broader British consensus against them:

In Britain, even those politicians considered friends of the colonies were appalled and this act united all parties there against the colonies. The Prime Minister Lord North said, "Whatever may be the consequence, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over".[63] The British government felt this action could not remain unpunished, and responded by closing the port of Boston and putting in place other laws known as the "Coercive Acts".

In the colonies, Benjamin Franklin stated that the destroyed tea must be repaid, all 90,000 pounds. Robert Murray, a New York merchant went to Lord North with three other merchants and offered to pay for the losses, but the offer was turned down.[64]

Like today's DDoS attacks, the Boston Tea Party was difficult to justify and, on its face, harmful to the cause it purported to defend. But its value was not in its academic correctitude or tactical efficacy, but rather in its function as a catalyst of events and the rallying effect that such a sheer act of bravado can have on the hardcore supporters of the cause. Consider the chain of events--of harsh British responses and resulting Colonial escalation--that the Tea Party helped set in motion:

The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston's commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.

We must remember that when Anonymous launched the attacks, it was not working with the benefit of hindsight. There was no way to know how many people would end up joining the attacks, or if they would provoke the government into some kind of blundering over-reaction, or what. And yet, it was a near certainty that if no extraordinary action were taken, the government and its corporate proxies would continue business as usual and the establishment media would do little to challenge them. So it was a way to shake things up and perhaps introduce a little serendipity into the historical proceedings.

In the end, though of course it is important to dutifully rebuke the DD0S attacks, I would hope that rather than spend our energies heaping criticism on Anonymous and their flawed methods we would instead salute their pluck and turn our attention to a more constructive task: devising an ethical and tactically sound method of internet civil disobedience.