Visit NYC
Posted on 08/28/2004 8:07:03 AM PDT by Libloather
Technology Playing Role in GOP Protests
By ELLEN SIMON
NEW YORK - Gary Boston and Jeff Adler are just two guys with a dream: shutting down New York City for a day. What they want is a general strike, with everyone from Broadway dancers to Madison Avenue street sweepers calling in sick Wednesday to protest the Republican National Convention, which begins on Monday.
Both men are in their 30s and have full-time jobs, and neither has any organizing experience. Boston, who had never built a Web site before, put together ShutItDownNYC.com in three days, using Microsoft FrontPage software and the book "FrontPage for Dummies." The site has received more than 22,000 hits since it launched in late June.
"It's pretty amazing the amount of attention we've been able to generate with very simple tools," said Boston, a Wall Street analyst.
Technology has changed how protests are organized.
Activists are using the Internet to arrange housing for out-of-towners, organize a mass-flash of underwear emblazoned with anti-Bush messages and tell protesters what to say if they're arrested ("I am going to remain silent. I would like to speak with a lawyer.").
There are at least two Web guides for protesters packed with calendars of events and dining guides _ including Dumpster diving tips for those on a tight budget.
Cell phones work well for on-the-fly mobilizations, and text messages add to their power. Some protesters are signing up for 10 p.m. daily text updates telling them where the next day's events will be.
The phones have also put a technological twist on street theater.
An activist who calls himself Rev. Billy and members of his organization, The Church of Stop Shopping, plan to gather Tuesday at the commuter train station at Ground Zero, where they are to mill around reciting lines from the First Amendment into their cell phones for a half-hour, then recite it together, then disperse.
Technology, predictably, has also changed crowd control and surveillance.
Earlier this month, the New York Police Department showed off a machine called the Long Range Acoustic Device, developed for the military and capable of blasting at an earsplitting 150 decibels _ as loud as a firecracker, a jet engine taking off or artillery fire at 500 feet, according to the Noise Center at the League for the Hard of Hearing.
The NYPD said it would use the machine to direct crowds to safety if there's a terrorist attack or remind protesters where they're allowed to march. Police said they wouldn't use the earsplitting screeching noise feature at the convention.
"It's only to communicate in large crowds," Inspector Thomas Graham of the police department's crowd control unit said.
Free speech advocates say New York's police have videotaped past protests, so organizations like United for Peace and Justice are encouraging protesters to bring their own video cameras to videotape the police. A Web protest guide from Just Cause Law Collective suggests that protesters who see police brutality document it by leaving a detailed cell phone message for themselves or recording what they see on their portable music player.
Mobile bloggers, or mobloggers, are expected to show up in droves and quickly post on the Web photos, text and even video chronicling events as they happen.
"People will be able to quickly upload what is being seen, what is being felt and what is being done," said Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of a tech-steeped civil disobedience group called The Electronic Disturbance Theater. "We will be able to keep an eye on the police the same way they keep an eye on us."
The New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union will be using cell phones and two-way pagers to monitor demonstrations. Its legal team will be in close contact with the police "so we can hear about problems and trouble-shoot them instantly," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Will the convention be a target for hackers?
"The word 'target' is inappropriate," said Emmanuel Goldstein, editor and publisher of 2600, a hacking magazine. "Hackers are interested in what the cops are doing, how the city is being operated during that (convention) period, what kinds of technology are being implemented here for the first time, as well as all sorts of ways to infiltrate and spread information."
Not many hackers are warning of electronic disruption.
One speaker at this summer's Defcon, an annual hackers conference, advocated disrupting the convention. And one group released tools online to mount so-called denial-of-service attacks aimed at overwhelming the main Web sites for the convention, the Republican National Committee and the Bush campaign, said Greg Shipley, chief technology officer of the security company Neohapsis Inc. Such tactics have been used in the past to try to disrupt annual meetings of the global business elite run by the World Economic Forum.
"I don't anticipate much of an online 'hacker' response," said Bryan Burns, who attended Defcon. "People I know who can hack and are politically motivated see themselves as more effective doing civil disobedience in person."
"The site has received more than 22,000 hits since it launched in late June."
Well, that's pretty lame...My Dead Cat's video game site gets way more hits than that...LOL
-Toonces
I'm rooting for NYPD to shut them down quickly and efficiently.
Saw LAPD do it in 2000.
If these "anarchists" didn't learn their lesson there, then they will be SOL in NY.
I agree---22,000 is very lame. A site dedicated to the rescue of an obscure AKC dog breed got 187,000 hits last week.
In all the romanticizing, no one told them that the NYC construction workers finally got fed up and took matters into their own hands. And they don't have civilian review boards to worry about.
Now if they could shut it down, and shut it down for say ... a month, that would most certainly remove the Dims from the face of the earth!
I wish them well.
...that Republicans are not allowed to speak.
These clowns think their insane actions (showing their grody underwear, etc) are going to appeal to the masses and persuade others to be like minded and anti Bush? I hope the MSM will treat all of us to views of these fanatical terrorists and their repulsive actions. Go, Kerry, Go! Bwahahahaha!
Look at how admiring the "old media" is! How impressed! They do not call this "discrimination" or "censorship" or even "hate" like they would if this were a "Right Wing" stunt - rather, they help them "get out the word".
So if someone dies, or gets hurt, will the "old press" remember how they helped add to the destruction?
---These clowns think their insane actions (showing their grody underwear, etc) are going to appeal to the masses and persuade others to be like minded and anti Bush? ---
These bozos are working for us and we don't even have to pay them. They should be charged for the cost of their arrests and bookings too!
Am I the only one or does it seem like these a lot of bored people trying to have fun and play games? There seems to be nothing they are really protesting about that has any strong moral implictions.
---Geeze, that's awfully mean-spirited of you. ---
I'm a mean-spirited Republican! :^)
When the first gulf war started there were protesters blocking some overpasses leading into and out of Ft.Ord, CA. After they were hit with the cost of their first arrest they didn't block traffic again. They were very careful not to!
Super!!!!!!!!!!
I am game for overloading all their lame sites and let them pay for the bandwidth overages ---- especially if they have download videos etc!
I put a 1 meg flash on my site for 2 days and ended up with 8 GIGS of traffic just those 2 days.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.