A Look Into Hacktivism

 Earlier in one of the previous posts, I mentioned one of the characters was a hacktivist, and didn’t go into further detail on how that is how it can be a good or bad thing to be on the internet. A hacktivist in text book definition is an Internet activist or an activist using their hacking skills to cause civil disobedience to promote a political agenda. These people are usually portrayed in a variety of ways, like the hacktivist group Anonymous, Chaos Computer Club, or even the Homebrew Computer Club. Hacktivism is usually targeted against corporate and government officials, though these are not their only targets. They also target terrorists, religious organizations, drug dealers, and pedophiles, though this seems like they are two faces of the same coin; it only depends on what they do with the information they gain. For example if they reveal a big scandal of a government official they may be charged with hacking and leaking of personal information (the hacktivist) while the government official is charged with multiple things that may put them in for life and get them removed from office. Hacktivists are to not be confused with hackers, as hackers are notorious for stealing information that’s valuable like bank account information, credit card info, social media accounts, scamming, and stealing files left unsecured.

    Though what hacktivists do in TV shows, movies, and video games is different from what they do in reality. Most if not all hacktivists fight for making the world a better place, and are not some evil mastermind who hides weapons of mass destruction. An example of hacktivist doing good in the world is an operation that happened in 2011 dubbed Operation DarkNet in which the hacktivist group, Anonymous, shut down up to 40 child pornography sites and leaked names of over 1500 names of the users who frequented those sites. Though every good has some bad, though bad for companies, in 2012 the CIA tried to block many payment services like PayPal and Amazon to prevent people from fundraising the political whistleblower WikiLeaks. Again Anonymous stepped in shut down all websites to those payment services to make those companies allow many transactions to happen. 

Episode 5 & 6: Physanto's Ruin

     The fifth episode of the series, foreshadow's someone being tortured in a warehouse, and leaves that as a cliffhanger till the near end of that show. After Ned and Jesse's fiasco in the outback, where the last episode Jesse was framed for assault and battery, they're both in hiding since Jesse cracked the encryption on the files he stole. However, Andy King, a character who has been essentially been hunting the case files from Hani and Jesse, gets information about Hani's family and where they're staying from the Iranian Embassy. He enters their home and waits for someone to come home, unfortunately, Hani comes home and is ambushed by King and briefly water-boarded to get the information of where the files are. While she is being water-boarded her parents come home and witness King torturing Hani; King then makes them all hostages but leaves Hani with an associate of his, Niko Gaelle, to finish his black market deal. King succumbs to his wounds from being stabbed and harpooned and perishes, while Hani is tortured and gets a message out to Jesse who after a video of Hani being tortured goes ballistic and wants to save Hani out of his love for her. After many hours of planning, they get information on where Hani is located after a failed trade between Ned and the black market dealers. 

       Ned then tells Alex about the chemical that could have infected the water sources in the nearby area and tells her that they may have haphazardly cleaned it. When Lucy sees the effect of it on wildlife she gets everyone away from the water and says it's poisoned. Thus ends episode 5 with poisoned water, Hani being tracked down, and the nuclear files on the loose and unaccounted for. 

    The climax and the final payback happens in episode 6, Hani is rescued and taken to a hospital. Jesse really wants to end all loose ends, he goes to the hospital with a disposable phone and asks a nurse to take it to her hidden in a dinner bowl, they call each other and they after the conversation get back together. Jesse also heads back to the outback to make amends with the man that framed him for assault and battery and find out what the true reason was behind it. It turns out his kids were threatened by Physanto and he had to do it so they wouldn't harm them. They eventually make amends and become allies towards the end, towards their master plan. Ned's love interest, Sophie Walsh, has started a coup with her boss Randall Keats. Hani's kidnapper and torturer, Niko Gaelle, is killed by North Korean agents as they want the files for Physanto's nuclear deals.

    As the files are basically gone away from anyone's hands Hani, Ned, Jesse, and Walsh plan a massive framing of Ian Bradley, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. They being the communicators of the framing and they must all work together and hope Bradley is curious to look at an image. Though human curiosity takes the better of him and the image he clicks is a trojan horse virus. It looked like it was nothing, but as soon as he clicked it, his computer started recording him and was shown a picture of the two kids that were harmed at the beginning of the show.  Upon seeing the pictures, Bradley says "Who the fuck are these kids?" and that clip of him saying that is saved. Hani and Jesse start working on the files Bradley starts trashing files about Physanto,  which they start copying over to their server. Also with that clip saved they start uploading all the files, he is trashing and upload them all over any broadcast media for everyone in Australia to see. Though broadcast media consists of TV, film, social media, or radio they only sent it to all TVs or anything with a screen. This was the end of a great show called The Code where everyone that deserved a happy ending got one.