Introduction

The previous chapters looked at the importance of people's vital interest in maintaining their autonomy, privacy and liberty, exploring how these interests manifested through various information rights, especially the freedom of speech, association and right to access relevant and important information. These chapters reflected the focus on information freedom that many hackers, especially Anonymous, have placed as a core of their political agenda. This chapter will build on these cases, expanding to look at non-cyber, non-information related threats, including when the state and its representatives fail to, first, provide and enact good laws equally and fairly, including the failure to apply fair processes, equal treatment, misapplying laws, and lacking the ability and political will to enforce the good laws; or second, when the state develops unjustifiably harmful laws, policies, procedures or institutional cultures. It will be argued that in both instances, given the failure of the state and the subsequent threat these failures represent, hackers can use political violence to defend people from harm, though the type of response must be matched to the threat posed. This chapter will look at police brutality, the failure of due and fair process, the development of laws that seek to directly discriminate and foster hatred and violence against members of the LGBTQ+ community, and the locating and unmasking of online paedophiles.

The value of good laws

Chapter 2 argued that when people come under threat there is value in any agent defending them, even if in that defence they cause the threatening agent harm. The political hacks examined here again all necessarily involve a clear coercive (or the threat of a coercive) element against a threatening agent, most often the state or its local representatives, but where the aim is to correct the misapplication of good laws or to prevent what Les Johnson referred to as ‘evil laws’ (Johnston, 1996). These attacks are performed outside the usual and state-sanctioned mechanisms for remedying or appealing bad state behaviour, and arguably a form of ‘idealized citizenship’ where the legitimacy of the political hacker's actions are determined by what the state should be doing in an idealized situation. This importantly distinguishes it from acts of private political violence that promote hatred, division and hate crimes, as they aim to protect or provide for people's vital interests.