Abstract
The current literature and experience of online activism assumes two basic uses of the Internet for social movements: straightforward extensions of offline organising and fund-raising using online media to improve efficiency and reach, or “hacktivism” using technical knowledge to illegally deface or disrupt access to online resources. We propose a third model which is non-violent yet proves commitment to a cause by enabling a group of activists to temporarily or permanently sacrifice valuable online identities such as email accounts, social networking profiles, or gaming avatars. We describe a basic cryptographic framework for enabling such a protest, which provides an additional property of binding solidarity which is not normally possible offline.
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Bonneau, J. (2014). Digital Immolation. In: Christianson, B., Malcolm, J. (eds) Security Protocols XVIII. Security Protocols 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7061. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45921-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45921-8_6
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