Online hacktivism can be considered positive in the way that white-hat hacktivists reveal hidden crimes that are harmful or put pressure on organizations to fight for people’s right. They are the digital Robin Hood, about which I have one blog post which you can check out here.
However, as cyberspace is a world, and just like other worlds, it has both sides. And the other, darker side I want to mention in this post is black-hat hackers. Due to the fact that the information system still contains many gaps that are too hard to be fulfilled as the system is too complicated, several people exploit it and make profit for themselves. Since not a huge proportion of population have understanding in this field, the ones who have gain so much power. And once they have such significant power, it is understandable that their purposes changed from raising people’s voice like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, to stealing people’s credit card, like LulzSec.
This reminds me of a recent phenomena which is the Clown Prank. Clowns are supposed to bring joy to people, and now just because of some idiots pushing the game to far, they become people’s fear and anger. The purpose changes from right and pure, to wrong and dirt. White now turns into black.
Nonetheless, I still believe that there is a need for the existence of such bad sides, as every society needs them to reflect the good sides, and be a motivation for the good to keep being good, and outplay the bad. Julian Assange or Edward Snowden have so much power, but they choose to be the white-hat, and they will still be.
The black-hat hackers will be hunted by the cyberspace community, just like how the creepy clowns have to defend themselves against Aussie’s anger.
Cuong Lam 