Egypt and Wall Street

Hacktivism is the non-violent use of computers and networking sites as a tool for protesting one’s political beliefs. Groups such as Anonymous are known for using the concept of hacktivism for online and offline community users. They despise any type of internet censorship or policing of activities by the government.

It’s interesting to observe some of the parallels between the protesting that took place in Egypt and the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the United States. Protesters in both countries had grievances with their governments. In the case of Egypt, they were fighting to overthrow their oppressive leader and make their country more democratic and equal to all. The Wall Street protesters have been fighting against the government and the corporations that leave a great gulf between those that have much and those with very little. In both cases, social networking sites were being attempted to unite those with a common cause and to get the word out on where and when protests would be taking place. Both countries were participating in non-violent protests, and much of each country’s age of the protesters was young people. In both cases, they were younger in age, because it is the young people who participate and utilize social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and texting the most.

It seems difficult to imagine the United States government shutting down all Internet access to its citizens, as it was done to the Egyptian people last year. The government keeps surveillance on us all while we are on the Internet, and goes after those they deem is a threat to its “national security,” but I just can’t see the government pulling off what the Egyptian government did to their people. In large part it is because our government is already set up to give certain freedoms to our citizens under the protection of the Constitution, whereas the Egyptian people were protesting for these very types of rights. Also, the Egyptian government owned and controlled the majority of the companies that provided Internet service to its citizens, while Internet corporations here are not under the control of the government. It is frightening to think of how paralyzing it would be for us here if we lost the ability to communicate with each other through technology.